Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Waiting for hell to freeze

Hell will have to fall into the deepest freeze imaginable for me to accept the poll findings that suggest that Donald Trump could actually defeat President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup in 2024 for the White House.

For the ever-lovin’ life of me I cannot fathom where or how or who is supporting the twice-impeached former POTUS as he pretends to seek the presidency for the third time.

He slithered into the White House in 2017 after narrowly defeating Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote by 3 million ballots. Then he got thumped by Joe Biden in 2020, garnering 7 million fewer votes than the eventual president.

Between those two elections he got impeached twice by the House for violating his oath of office. He managed to piss off damn near every ally this nation has in the world. He vilified Americans who opposed his election. He went through four White House chiefs of staff, an untold number of Cabinet officials and behaved for all the world like a moron who didn’t know what the hell he was doing with all that executive power at his disposal.

Now he is on the verge of being indicted possibly by three prosecutors, two at the state level and then the U.S. attorney general.

Oh, did I mention the insurrection he incited on 1/6? There. I just did.

And yet he remains — reportedly — the favorite for the GOP presidential nomination next year. God help us all!

Trump said he’s going the distance regardless of any indictments that end up in his lap. Fine. I am just waiting for the hammer to drop on his severely coiffed noggin.

Someone among the officials examining the crimes I believe he committed is going to make history by indicting a former POTUS for the first time in our nation’s history. Look also for the others to follow suit when the first indictment falls out of the sky.

Meanwhile, someone will have to explain to me how this clown can pretend to be a serious contender for an office he damn near destroyed during the single term he occupied it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Taxing the rich: sensible

President Biden’s decision to seek greater tax loads for wealthy Americans makes sense on a couple of levels.

He unveiled his plan while announcing a proposed $7 trillion federal budget he said would reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade. Biden wants to protect programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. As an elderly American patriot, I welcome the president’s initiative.

Taxing those who make more than 400 grand annually? That makes sense too.

It does because even by increasing the tax burden by a few percentage points will not make rich Americans “un-rich.” They’ll still be wealthy beyond belief. They just will have to pay more to finance the government from which they seek favors.

Billionaires will still be billionaires.

Moreover, it makes no sense to realize that working-class Americans pay more per capita in taxes than rich folks.

Spare me the argument that taxing rich Americans will harm the economy. It damn sure won’t! We’re all in this together, isn’t that right? So, make the rich men and women pay their fair share of taxes and — so help me! — find some method of closing those damn loopholes through which they avoid paying taxes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news

Biden tax strategy makes sense

Joe Biden drew a few lines in the sand today with his budget proposal, but I want to look at just one of them with this brief post: tax policy.

The president has dared congressional Republicans to oppose his notion that those who earn $400,000 per year should pay more in taxes than those who earn less than that. Interestingly, that is the amount of money that Biden earns annually as president of the United States; that amount, plus first lady Jill Biden’s teaching salary and the assorted other income he receives puts him in the rich folks’ tax bracket.

Middle-class Americans won’t pay more in taxes, Biden said.

Fine. I’m all for that. As an American on a fixed income who makes a little scratch each year writing freelance articles for a weekly newspaper group and for a public radio station in North Texas, I don’t want to pay any more in taxes than I do already.

Too many uber-rich Americans perform the Houdini act of not paying taxes. Ditto for corporations, according to the president.

Joe Biden has positioned himself as being “for the average American” and has positioned his political foes — namely Republicans in Congress — as being in the corner of the “rich and powerful.”

Hmm. Which side am I going to take? Oh, wait! I am one of those average Americans for whom the president says he is fighting.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Biden budget = political weapon

Let’s put it all on the table: President Biden’s announcement of a new federal budget proposal is aimed at a political audience, not at anyone in Congress who he can persuade to join him in the effort to advance the “values” he espouses.

Joe Biden ventured to Pennsylvania to unveil a budget he says will cut the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade. That is, to borrow a phrase, a Big F****** Deal.

He wants to raises taxes on rich Americans and corporations. He wants to preserve Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act. The president wants to shore up our military, our national intelligence network, the fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty. Biden wants to make community college attendance free.

Is this going to fly with what he referred to continuously today with the “MAGA Republicans”? Not a chance, man!

Instead, he has laid out a predicate for his 2024 re-election effort, which many believe he will announce soon. President Biden is going to put congressional Republicans on record as opposing the very things he said he wants to do.

I am all in with what he wants to accomplish.

Of course, looming mightily over all this is the threat by Republicans to crash the world economy by allowing the United States to default on the national debt that it has accrued since the beginning of the Republic. The president made that point, too, telling Republicans that they had a hand in running up that debt and that the U.S. Constitution requires the nation to maintain its “full faith and credit.”

Republicans, particularly the know-nothings who comprise the MAGA cabal, need to understand that they cannot mess with the national debt without collapsing the entire world economy. Got it? They had better!

President Biden’s budget as he has presented it won’t get through Congress. A big part of me believes the president — who knows how Congress works — understands that, but he has thrown down the gauntlet and dared the GOP to pick it up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmaial.com

national news

How about the ‘I’ word?

The MAGA cabal within the Republican Party wants to impeach President Biden for … what, precisely, is beyond me.

We keep hearing the yammering from the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who proclaims that the president is a failure. She doesn’t specify a “high crime or misdemeanor” on which she would base an impeachment. She just talks about it.

Actually, Greene is as stupid a member of the MAGA cabal as there is.

It’s good to remember the last three presidential impeachments that occurred within the past 25 years. Two of them were legit; the third was, well, questionable.

House of Representatives Republicans were looking for a reason to impeach President Clinton throughout the 1990s. When the late Kenneth Starr, the special counsel appointed to examine a real estate deal called Whitewater, began snooping around beyond his original charge, the president handed the GOP a reason to impeach him.

He lied to a federal grand jury about an affair he was having with a White House intern. Yes, Clinton committed a crime by perjuring himself. That was all Republicans needed. They impeached him on three counts. He was acquitted. I question the political motivation behind that impeachment and wonder to this day why impeach a president for lying about a dalliance.

Then came the twin impeachments of Donald Trump, who in my mind committed far worse offenses. The first impeachment was triggered by his seeking a “favor” from the Ukrainian president; Trump wanted a foreign leader to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Wrong! He can’t do that, says the Constitution.

Then came his incitement of the assault on the Capitol on 1/6, which was a clear violation of his oath of office.

The House impeached him for each offense. The Senate trials ended up with Trump staying in office. The second trial resulted in a 57-43 vote to convict, but it wasn’t enough, as the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority to boot a POTUS from office.

One can argue that all three were “legitimate” issues for which a president could be impeached. The Clinton case was technically legit; both Trump cases were the real thing.

Now we have the MAGAites calling for Joe Biden’s impeachment.

I am left to ask: for … what?

Impeachment madness must end in the House. Joe Biden has done not a damn thing that falls remotely into the category of “impeachable offense.” All he has done is seek to right a ship of state that was damaged when he took office.

To my reckoning, he has largely succeeded. That won’t shut down the MAGA cultists. They are a shameful pack of demagogues.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news

Happy anniversary, Vlad!

This is an “anniversary” that Russian goon/strongman Vladmir Putin likely never presumed he would commemorate.

It’s been one year since the Russian tyrant launched his illegal and immoral war against Ukraine. He sought to bring the former Soviet republic to its knees in days. It didn’t happen.

What Putin is now realizing, even if he doesn’t admit it, is that people whose sovereignty is threatened by an evil aggressor will fight to the death to protect themselves and their nation.

Ukraine has done that … and then some!

Yes, the Ukrainians have had help. It has come from President Biden, whose leadership has melded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a cohesive alliance hell-bent on ensuring the Russians do not attack NATO. Doing so would doom the Russians.

Putin’s cakewalk into Kyiv has turned into a stumble-bum quagmire.

May the Russians continue to suffer the shame they have earned by their conduct on the battlefield. May they also be denied a second “anniversary” of this disgraceful episode.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Who’s going to get indicted?

OK, allow me to admit it: I am officially on pins and needles awaiting the details of the sketchy outlines of what a Georgia grand jury foreperson said about “several indictments” coming out of the Donald Trump election-manipulation scandal.

The grand juror said out loud, in a most unusual fit of candor, said several people will be indicted. She didn’t mention any names, but the “big name” everyone ought to be on the lookout for is none other than Donald Trump.

My ol’ trick knee, which I have kept under wraps for some time, suggests that Trumpie is going to face the Fulton County criminal justice system. You see, I have thought all along that the Georgia probe was the easiest for prosecutors to prove, given the existence of that phone recording with the Georgia secretary of state and Trump demanding that Brad Raffensberger “find 11,780 votes” to give Trump the state’s electoral tally that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

Well, whatever …

I’m just going to wait now for DA Fani Willis to finish the job — and indict Donald Trump!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Joe Biden: ‘wartime president’

Joe Biden has done the impossible by becoming a “wartime president” without a single American fighting man or woman engaging in combat with a foreign enemy.

How did the president do it? By sneaking into war-ravaged Ukraine and delivering one of the more stirring speeches in recent memory, assuring Ukrainians that the United States and our many allies worldwide stand with them in their fight against the immoral invaders from Russia.

“Kyiv stands. Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden told the Ukrainians. Yes, it’s all true.

It was a remarkable feat for President Biden to venture into Ukraine under the cover of darkness. He strolled the streets of Kyiv, the capital city that just a few months ago was under siege by Russian artillery. Yes, there were sirens blaring to warn Ukrainians of pending danger from Russian artillery. Joe Biden would not be deterred … nor should he.

The visit reportedly buoyed the Ukrainian troops who are fighting valiantly — and successfully — against Vladimir Putin’s armed forces.

To be sure, the president’s visit drew expected criticism from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party back home. These are the nimrods who express skepticism about Ukraine’s ability to fend off the Russians, who invaded their country on multiple phony pretexts uttered by Putin.

Biden, though, has stitched together a strong alliance comprising NATO and EU nations committed to opposing Putin’s land grab in Ukraine as he seeks to reincarnate the Soviet Union-style of ham-handed rule. Putin sought to weaken NATO. Thanks to Joe Biden’s leadership, all he has done is strengthened the alliance formed after World War II to protect Europe against the kind of aggression the world is witnessing at this moment.

Joe Biden spoke like a man in the middle of a struggle. Indeed, he is. President Biden is fighting to preserve democracy, which is fighting for its life against the authoritarian instincts of a brutal killer.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

What’s fair is well … fair

Fairness is forcing me to hold back on my feelings about the MAGA crowd’s unwillingness to refer to Joe Biden with the title he won during the 2020 presidential election.

The right-wing extremists refuse to use the term “President Biden” when referencing the commander in chief. But yet — and this is where the conflict arises — they attach the word “President” in front of Donald Trump’s name.

Where am I going with this?

I acknowledge freely and without apology my own refusal to afford Donald Trump the same “recognition” the MAGAites refuse to grant to President Biden.

Years ago, when Trump took the presidential oath of office, I vowed publicly on High Plains Blogger that I never would place Trump’s name after the word “President.” I have delivered on that pledge. Spare me the lecture that Trump did get elected in 2016 because he garnered enough Electoral College votes to declare victory.

It is incumbent on me, therefore, to withhold any outward criticism of the MAGA cult members who refuse to bestow the courtesy of referring to Joe Biden as President Biden. I am acutely aware that none of this has a thing to do with policy differences.

I have been tempted, to be sure, particularly when I see the likes of Ronny Jackson, the Republican-MAGA member of Congress who represents my old haunts in the Texas Panhandle, harp continually on phony allegations regarding President Biden’s mental acuity.

But … I won’t go there.

I was taught all about leveling fair criticism long ago as a much younger editorialist. This critical reluctance on my part falls into the category of remaining fair.

Hey, if the other side is going to engage in the same behavior that I did, then who in the world am I to criticize ’em? I’ll keep my powder dry for the issues that matter.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Congressman: top-tier boor

Ronny Jackson has a bottomless pit from which he draws his boorishness and his uncanny ability to make an utter ass of himself.

The two-term congressman from the Texas Panhandle — a former White House physician to two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — says President Biden’s doc is engaging in a “cover-up” of Biden’s actual health.

Jackson said — yet once again — that Biden must take a cognitive exam to prove he is mentally fit to run the nation. President Biden recently underwent a physical exam and was deemed fit and able to govern.

That ain’t good enough for the Republican fire-breather, Jackson. He continues to diagnose the president from a great distance, having never seen his medical history or providing a shred of evidence to back up the defamatory comments he makes about the commander in chief.

I just wish Ronny Jackson would shut his pie hole. That won’t happen. I just have to get this demand off my chest.

I also want to admonish my former Texas Panhandle neighbors and friends — many of whom voted for this dipsh** — for the mistake they made in sending him to Congress.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com