Tag Archives: rigged election

International news, national news, political news

Where’s the outrage?

The 45th POTUS has remained stunningly silent on the “rigged election” that occurred the other day in Russia, which elected his pal Vladimir Putin to another term as president/strongman/despot/thug/goon.

And yet the former Moron in Chief continues to rail against the phony allegation that the 2020 election in this country was “stolen” from him. It wasn’t.

Putin is despot for life in Russia, a title to which his American pal aspires, or so it appears.

He “won” the election in Russia against virtually zero opposition, which is how they do things in the formerly democratic Russian Federation. It is reverting to the ways of old, to the ways of the evil empire it replaced in 1991.

Are we hearing anything in protest from the presumed Republican presidential nominee or from his shrinking gaggle of cult followers?

Hah! Not even …

national news, political news

GOP ‘fixer’ emerges as prime threat

Tim Michels has emerged as the No. 1 enemy of the nation’s democratic process. He is a dangerous man who needs to lose his effort to become Wisconsin’s next governor.

Michels is running against Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. He said something this week that — no matter how you parse it — presents an existential threat to our democracy.

Michels has declared that if he wins the election next Tuesday, that Republicans will “never again lose an election” in Wisconsin.

Think for just a moment — if you can resist the urge to throw something heavy through a large window — about what Michels is suggesting. From my perch, Michels has said he would “fix” future elections to ensure that GOP candidates emerge winners. Every single time! That’s what he said.

How does he do such a thing? By rigging elections! By tossing out votes cast for candidates he opposes! This is the very thing that the Big Liar in Chief — Donald J. Trump — said (without producing a lick of evidence) occurred in the 2020 presidential election.

Tim Michels now wants to follow Trump’s lead over the cliff by pledging to ensure that Republicans never lose an election ever again in Wisconsin.

Does anyone out there see the utter irony in this kind of chicanery? I cannot remember a major-party candidate for public office ever pledging to rig elections. Until now.

I get that it involves only one of our 50 states. However, it reveals a mindset prevalent within the ranks of a once-great political party … which has been hijacked and co-opted by those who present a serious threat to the democratic process that once was immune from such attacks.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Vote theft = profound irony

The irony of what we are learning through dribs and drabs of Donald John Trump’s culpability in the 1/6 insurrection is just too profound to ignore.

What have we learned? That Trump actually sought to “overturn” the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to his own words. That he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to disallow Electoral College votes that went to Joe Biden while Pence was presiding over the electoral vote certification on 1/6. That he allegedly met with White House staff prior to the riot to plot how he could “legally” call for the seizure of voting machines.

The best part is that we have a clear recording of Trump demanding that Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, “find” 11,780 votes to swing the state from Biden’s corner to Trump’s. Voter theft? There it is!

And now think of this: Donald Trump’s Big Lie, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him was being played out in real time by the then-president’s own effort to steal the election from the Biden, who won it fairly, squarely and legally.

Voter fraud? Vote theft? Trump alleges falsely that President Joe Biden’s team stole the election, all the while conspiring to do the same thing himself!

Wow, man!

The House 1/6 select committee is ramping up its probe into what occurred on that horrifying day. It is summoning key White House aides, including at least one member of Trump’s family — elder daughter Ivanka — to testify to what they knew and when they knew it. My creaky old bones are telling me that there could be some criminal indictments hurled by the committee in due course.

If so, then no one should be exempt. I shall repeat: No one should be exempt from the quest for the truth. That would include the man who masqueraded for four years as our head of state and commander in chief … the guy who sought to pilfer the election from the guy who won it honestly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Fake news, now it’s rigged elections

Just as he did by accusing the media and others of peddling “fake news,” Donald Trump is engaging in another form  of irony by insisting the 2020 election was “rigged.”

The 45th POTUS was the master of peddling fake news. He kept up the lie about President Obama’s birth and whether he was qualified to run for the presidency. He talked about losing all those “friends” during the 9/11 attack but there is no record of him attending a single funeral for a victim of the terrorist attack.

And yet he keeps accusing others of telling fake news? Amazing.

Now he is trying to “rig” an election that was in no way on Earth “rigged” to elect Joe Biden as president. He asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to swing the state that Biden won to his own column.

Rigged election?

To think that there are Americans walking among us who actually believe this crap. Amazing!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news

Who seeks to ‘rig’ election?

Oh, how I want to take the findings of an audit in Arizona seriously.

It’s hard when the audit of the 2020 presidential election in that state is done by an outfit with no experience conducting such an audit. They were brought in to find fraud that didn’t exist.

Now we hear from Cyber Ninjas that the Maricopa County, Ariz., returns were legitimate and that Joe Biden won that state’s electoral votes while winning the presidency.

Which brings me to this point, which is that the 45th POTUS keeps yammering about the 2020 election being “rigged.” It wasn’t. The Cyber Ninjas finding illustrates it nicely. The only “rigging” being done is by the 45th POTUS who keeps yapping about vote fraud. He is trying to overturn a legitimate election that he lost by more than 7 million ballots.

It all points to yet another irony of this individual’s brief stint as POTUS. He bellowed about “fake news” while pulling fake news out of his rear end almost daily. Now he is hollering about a rigged election while seeking to rig it all by himself.

How does anyone on this good Earth possibly take this clown seriously?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

A ‘rigged’ election?

Wait for it.

Republicans who will get their heads handed to them in California have begun reciting another version of The Big Lie.

They want to boot Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom out of office. They’re having an election tonight. Newsom will keep his hold on the governorship.

The Big Lie being resurrected by the GOP is that the result is “rigged.” It’s corrupt, they say. They are cutting their own throats by suggesting that the electoral process is not to be trusted.

I’ll be glad to sharpen the rhetorical blade for them.

The leading Republican who is challenging Newsom is radio blowhard Larry Elder. He won’t ascend to the governor’s office. Elder knows it. However, he is now offering the “rigged election” defense for the fact that Newsom’s campaign caught fire in recent days and appears poised to put down this ridiculous recall effort.

I have to say that the “rigged” allegation before any votes are counted does require a huge suspension of disbelief.

Except for this: The GOP out west has ripped a page right out of the playbook used by the disgraced, twice-impeached former POTUS.

Spoiler alert: The California election is not “rigged.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Class-action lawsuit possible?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If ever there could be a case for a class-action lawsuit against a high-profile public figure, I am beginning to think that elections officials throughout this great nation might have one.

The former Slanderer in Chief has defamed the reputations of county, state and local elections officials everywhere by insisting that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” that it was fraught with “widespread voter fraud” and that it was “stolen” from him.

Class-action suits usually are filed by large numbers of people or groups who contend they have been damaged by allegations made in public that defamed their character.

POTUS 45 has done all of that, and more, by suggesting the 2020 election didn’t really deliver the presidency to Joe Biden, that the former POTUS actually won in a “landslide.” Has he produced a scintilla, a shred, a sliver, a smidgen of proof for any of this? No! He just says these things and others believe him.

I do not believe anything that flies out of the liar’s pie hole.  Nor should anyone else … but they do, to their shame.

I have known too many dedicated elections officials in counties where I have worked over nearly 40 years in daily journalism. They all take their jobs seriously. They all take an oath to defend the Constitution and have followed that oath to the letter.

I realize I am not King of the World. For that matter, neither is the former POTUS who once declared that “I, alone, can fix” what is wrong with the nation. The stark truth is that he hasn’t fixed a damn thing. Just maybe there might be enough justice left in this world for local elections officials whose reputations have been damaged to take legal action against an individual who embodies political corruption in its lowest form.

national news

GOP wants to win by ‘not voting’?

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, how am I supposed to process this bit of idiocy?

Republicans want to hold onto their fragile U.S. Senate majority. Two GOP senators from Georgia — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — are engaging in runoffs set for Jan. 5. Perdue is running against Jon Ossoff; Loeffler is facing off against the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock.

What does the nation’s top Republican, Donald Trump, want Georgia voters to do? He wants them to boycott an election he says is “rigged.” Yes. That’s how he wants the Senate Republicans to retain their majority. Just stay home because you don’t want to participate in a “rigged election,” says Trump in an impassioned message to Georgia voters.

By all means, Georgia Republicans, don’t vote. Ossoff and Warnock can win, giving Democrats a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which means Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris could break ties votes.

Yep, Donald Trump is pitching an idiotic strategy.

national news

C’mon, senator … Biden is ‘president-elect’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dang, I was hoping U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn could avoid being sucked into the Republicans’ loony bin caucus when she joined that body in January 2019.

The Tennessee lawmaker, sadly, has swilled the nut job Kool-Aid by authorizing her staff to declare that her reference to Joe Biden as “president-elect” was a misspoken statement.

Good … grief, senator. The president-elect is going to take office in a couple of months. He will be the duly elected president of the United States. I daresay he will be even more “duly elected” than Donald Trump, the Sore Loser in Chief who lost to Biden. Indeed, as Trump yammers about how a “rigged election” put Biden in office, he ignores the actual rigging that occurred in 2016 when Russians conspired to assist The Donald into the White House.

As for Trump’s assertions about this year’s election, it’s crap, senator. It’s pure bullsh** that she and others of the GOP caucus have fomented by their continuing to sow doubt about the election.

There has been no evidence produced — zero! — that suggests “widespread” voter fraud. Still, the GOP lunatics keep enabling Trump to sow doubt and undermine our democratic process.

Sen. Blackburn, sadly, is one of them.

Give it up, Marsha.

national news

Biden’s unity pitch hits roadblock … from Trump!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I always knew that President-elect Biden’s promise to unify the country after four years of Donald Trump’s tenure as president would be a heavy lift.

What I didn’t know,  until just recently, was that Trump himself would be piling on the weights to make that effort even more difficult.

Donald Trump keeps insisting that Biden’s victory is the result of a “rigged election.” It is no such thing. The problem for the president-elect, though, is that so many millions of Trumpkins have bought into the clap trap that Trump is offering, not to mention the vast majority of Republican members of both congressional chambers.

Therefore, you have a situation with a Democrat– that being Biden — scoring a significant vote-count and Electoral College victory over the Republican incumbent, but with Trump’s “base” of sycophantic voters and politicians buying into the phony charge of “widespread election fraud.”

Call me a cynic, but Donald Trump has zero interest in uniting the country. He has not a scintilla of care for the damage he is doing by fomenting yet another lie. He blathers about “fake news media” endorsing Biden while at the same time offering his own fake news by suggesting voter fraud where none exists.

I have harbored some glimmer of hope that Trump eventually will concede in some fashion to the president-elect; my sense is that it won’t be a traditional concession … if it comes.

The longer this ridiculous game goes on, the harder it might get for Donald Trump to say publicly what the rest of us know already.

Which is that he has been drummed out of office!

I now worry about the worsening of the difficulty of the task of unification that awaits President Biden. What’s more, I am enraged that the future former president is putting his own narcissism in front of the nation’s future.

So help me, Hanna. Donald Trump is a dangerous man.