Tag Archives: POTUS

crime news

‘Retribution’ POTUS? Eek!

Well, I thought I could ride out a third campaign for the White House by the guy who used to live there without commenting on it.

But … I cannot let this notion go.

The 45th president said this to a small gathering at the Conservative Action Political Conference: “I am your warrior, I am your justice, I am your retribution.”

Your retribution?

Well, that’s what the world can expect to hear from the disgraced, twice-impeached former POTUS as he seeks to slither his way back to power.

Retribution? Against what and/or whom? I am going to presume he means the myriad investigators who are examining whether to indict the ex-POTUS on a number of felony crimes. The Fulton County, Ga., district attorney is looking into allegations that the former president sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The Manhattan, N.Y., DA is looking into that hush money payment to the porn star to keep her quiet about a relationship that the ex-president said didn’t occur.

Then we have the special counsel hired by the attorney general who is trying to determine whether to indict the ex-POTUS for inciting the 1/6 insurrection and whether he broke the law when he spirited classified documents from the White House.

Is this what could await us if hell freezes over and this idiot returns to the White House?

It won’t happen. Of that I remain confident.

This moron’s blathering at CPAC, before a handful of fellow extremists, is worth a note only because — after all — he once sat in the Oval Office and once made decisions on behalf of this nation.

Remember when he told the Republican National Convention in 2016 that “I, alone, can fix” what is wrong with the country?

This individual remains as delusional as ever!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Jimmy Carter: a wonderful life

Tributes have been pouring in to President Jimmy Carter’s home in Plains, Ga., after the announcement that he is entering hospice care.

I am fully aware of what that likely means, but I want to offer this brief tribute to a man who’s led perhaps the most extraordinary life imaginable. Furthermore, I will not presume he is headed for the Great Beyond … at least not just yet.

He has beaten cancer already. You’ll recall when he seemed to offer a heartfelt goodbye to this world when he announced he had the killer disease. Then he beat it into remission. That was in 2015.

Jimmy Carter did not, contrary to what many have said about him since his landslide loss in 1980, serve a “failed presidency.” It was nothing of the sort. He forged a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt; he negotiated the transfer of the Panama Canal to the country it splits in two; and, yes, he got our hostages out of Iran safely, albeit on the day Ronald Reagan took the presidential oath of office in 1981.

Carter didn’t sulk after losing to Reagan.

Instead, this man of deep and abiding Christian faith formed the Carter Center in 1982, dedicating its work to the pursuit of world peace; that work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

And then, of course, he became involved with Habitat for Humanity, building homes for needy people around the world.

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served as a submariner, entered politics in Georgia and then, in 1976, announced, “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president.” He defeated President Gerald Ford that year and even after a bitter battle, the two men became the best of friends.

Jimmy Carter is a great man who has lived an astonishingly full life. More importantly, so many around him — and far beyond — have been enriched by the fullness of this man’s time on Earth.

Yes, we can speculate on what the future might hold for the nation’s 39th president. I won’t dwell at this moment on what may lie ahead. I just want to honor this good man’s character and thank him for serving his country — and the world — with honor and dignity.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Does he deserve a full sendoff?

A member of my family today posed a question I’ve not yet heard anyone else ask out loud.

“Do you think,” my family member asked, “that if Joe Biden is still around whether he would grant Donald Trump a full state funeral in case Trump were to die while Biden is in office?”

I don’t need to ask for a show of hands, but I’d bet real American money that more than one of us has given that question some thought.

I am one American who has thought it … but never said it publicly.

Suppose that the former president is not yet indicted, or tried or convicted of a crime before he keels over. Does he deserve a state funeral, the kind given, for example, to former President George H.W. Bush? If he does, who should show up? Who would pay their respects to the 45th POTUS?

To be sure, I would not be one of them. Trump still seems to command a substantial enough following to attract a large crowd of admirers to whatever funeral is arranged.

Does he lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda? Does the current president order flags lowered to half-staff? Does any dignitary whom Trump hasn’t insulted, vilified or defamed dare speak on his behalf? Do Americans take any salute to Trump seriously?

You see, these are the kinds of things that rattle around in my noggin these days as I watch the drama play out into whether the Justice Department or local district attorneys are going to indict the ex-POTUS and then put him on trial for multiple crimes.

One of them happens to be inciting an insurrection against the very government he took an oath to “defend and protect.”

Absent an indictment and a conviction, though, Trump is entitled to the legal presumption of innocence, which I suppose determines whether he would get a presidential sendoff that some would say he deserves.

The floor is now open for discussion.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Not a bad start for POTUS

Ron Klain has stepped down as White House chief of staff, turning the keys to the West Wing over to Jeff Zeist.

I watched Klain’s goodbye speech to the staff — and to President Biden — this week and was stunned at what Klain said the administration has been able to accomplish in just two years of the president’s (hopefully) first term in office.

He cited the infrastructure bill, climate change legislation, inflation reduction legislation, managing our involvement in Europe’s largest ground war since World War II, reducing the national budget deficit … and on and on.

Well, here’s the video of Klain’s speech. Let him tell the story.

Watch Ron Klain’s full speech as he steps down as White House chief of staff – YouTube

It’s no tall tale, though. I stand with President Biden as he continues to govern with a sense of compassion and idealism that too often gets trampled by the rough and tumble of D.C. politics.

Thanks for your service, Ron Klain. Don’t go too deeply into hiding, in case the president needs to call you for some advice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Trump: Constitution hater

crime news

Trump gets pounded … again!

OK, this time the body blow comes from a three-judge panel comprising all Republican-appointed federal judges who have ruled against Donald J. Trump’s effort to fight the U.S. government’s prosecution of crimes that the ex-POTUS allegedly committed.

The judges — two of whom were appointed by Trump himself — have tossed out the special master appointed to oversee the investigation into the theft of classified documents from the White House the end of Trump’s term as president.

Their ruling was as clear as it can possibly get. The special master has no authority to oversee such a probe, which belongs exclusively to the Department of Justice.

Is this strike three for The Donald?

It would seem so. The ex-president has run out of options on every level of these legal investigations into his conduct.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has named a special counsel to examine the 1/6 insurrection and the White House document-pilfering scandal. The special counsel, career prosecutor Jack Smith, is proceeding full bore. The House select committee examining the insurrection and Trump’s incitement of it is wrapping up its work.

If I were a betting man, I would wager that indictments are on the way.

Let there be justice!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Another whopper from The Donald

So … Donald Trump said that Kanye West brought the moronic anti-Semite, Holocaust denying, white supremacist with him to dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

And that he didn’t even know who Nick Fuentes is.

POTUS No. 45 expects us to believe that.

Quick reminder. Donald Trump has a Secret Service detail with him in Florida; it’s a perk provided former presidents. Does anyone on God’s Good Earth believe the Secret Service didn’t know who was traipsing through the door and that the agents on duty would not have told The Donald that one of ’em happened to be this moron?

As I have said many times, I do not believe a single word that flies out of Trump’s pie hole.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news

Trump’s place in history?

Is it too early to begin assessing Donald John Trump’s place in U.S. presidential history?

I don’t believe it is. I believe historians already are hard at work seeking to get their arms around an individual who won an election by securing enough Electoral College votes to defeat a highly qualified, eminently more sophisticated opponent in 2016.

He then began the lying campaign from the get-go, saying out loud he won by a “historic landslide,” which of course was nothing of the sort.

It got a whole lot worse from there.

In many respects, the Trump history is still being forged. Its final form will come when all the prosecutors are done examining whether he committed crimes while inciting the assault on our government, or when he took classified documents from the White House to his Florida estate, or whether he is guilty of tax fraud in the operation of his company, or whether he bullied Georgia election officials to “find” votes that would swing that state into his favor during the 2020 election.

Then again, even those myriad probes are enough to include in Trump’s legacy as a twice-impeached president of the United States.

I keep asking myself what Trump will do with his post-presidential life. Will there ever be a Trump museum and presidential library? Will he ever devote himself to any noble cause, or will he remain as fixated on his own aggrandizement as he was before he became a politician? How will this individual ever be involved with events that include his predecessors or his successors?

It might take a future generation of historians to craft an image of Donald Trump’s time at the pinnacle of political power that matches reality. The beginning chapters, though, surely can be drafted.

No matter what the cultists who adhere to what passes as doctrine in the mind of Donald Trump might say, the first draft will be anything but glorious.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Cruz to seek 3rd Senate term? Good, answer this one …

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Sen. Edward Rafael Cruz has declared he will seek a third term in the U.S. Senate.

Fine. He also says he also might run for president in 2024. In Texas, he can do that, run for two offices at the same time. Sen. Lyndon Johnson did it in 1960, running for re-election and for vice president; he won the VP post, so he had to vacate the Senate seat. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen did, too, in 1988, running for re-election and for VP; he lost the VP contest but was re-elected to the Senate, where he served for four more years before being tapped for treasury secretary by President Clinton.

What’s on tap for the Cruz Missile?

He needs to be held accountable for one act of idiocy. Why, Ted, did you seek to flee the state in February 2021 when hundreds of Texans were freezing to death in that killer winter storm? Don’t tell us your daughter talked you into jetting off to Cancun. It also doesn’t work that you came back to Texas only when you were outed by others who saw you getting on the outbound plane.

Let me be crystal clear: The Cruz Missile ain’t getting my support in 2024 … not for senator and damn sure not for POTUS.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Happy birthday, Mr. POTUS

Mr. President, I want to be among the millions of Americans who are wishing you a happy birthday.

So … today you are completing your 80th journey around the sun. I wish you many more such trips. Now, allow me to get to the point of this greeting.

You say you “intend” to seek re-election in 2024. I don’t read that as a definite “yes, I am a candidate for another four years as president.” You have said something about being a believer in “fate.” Hmm.

Allow me to ask you, as one who voted for you in 2020, to declare your candidacy sooner rather than later.

I get the “fate” part. I believe in fate, too, Mr. President and I also believe that fate occasionally gets in the way of the best-laid plans.

I also believe that you have done a good job as president and I want you to keep doing what you’ve done on my behalf. It hasn’t been a perfect term to be sure. Then again, no president in the history of this republic has governed perfectly. There have been mistakes among even the greatest of the great men who have been elected to this high and noble office.

I supported your election because I believed in 2020 that you represented a return to presidential norms that had been tossed aside by your immediate predecessor. I supported you because I believe that being a “career politician” is not an epithet, but that it is a signal of your commitment to public service. That, too, is something your immediate predecessor never experienced in his entire life preceding his fluke election as POTUS … and it showed during his term in office.

I also supported your election because of your demonstrated record of working with pols on both sides of the great divide and your vast knowledge of the complexities of government.

Your commitment to battling climate change, to seeking a better world that respects human rights, to seeking legislation that can end senseless gun violence, to repairing our infrastructure all are worthy of my continued support. I will support those efforts wholeheartedly.

I also will support your defense of our democratic process that you declared rightly during the midterm election to be “on the ballot.” Our nation cannot condone these attacks on the fundamental principles and tenets that make ours the greatest country on Earth.

Mr. President, I am in your corner.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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