Tag Archives: The Big Lie

media news

It’s all about accountability

The Fox Propaganda Channel did not have to apologize for fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election.

Dominion Voting Systems, which sued Fox for $1.6 billion, got precisely what it wanted and needed when Fox surrendered and agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement.

It received accountability from Fox.

Through all the pre-trial filings Fox had been handed defeat after defeat. The judge hearing the case had, in effect, already delivered the goods against Fox. The judge had determined that Fox lied to the public about the 2020 election. Therefore, the network did not need to issue a public apology to Dominion.

As I look back just a couple of days to the settlement, it is clear why Fox tossed in the towel. The company’s ownership did not want to expose its on-air personalities to rugged questioning from Dominion’s legal team about what they knew and believed when they kept repeating The Big Lie on air.

We had heard already about emails and other correspondence from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo about what they thought of Donald Trump and his assertions about “widespread voter fraud.”

Did Dominion deserve an apology? No. It would have been nice, I suppose, to get one from Fox. In the grand scheme, Dominion got all that it wanted: proof of accountability from the Fox Propaganda Network.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, legal news, national news, political news

No need to ‘restore’ voter integrity

I have to say this as loudly and clearly as I possibly can say anything: The American electoral process is clean, fair and its integrity does not need to be “restored.”

Once again — ad nauseum — we hear adherents of the former Big Liar in Chief suggest that there is something fundamentally broken within the electoral system.

There isn’t. The system ain’t broke. The excuse mounted that declares “widespread vote fraud” is the result of one man losing the 2020 presidential election by 7 million ballots. He has succeeded in planting sufficient doubt in the gullible skulls of his cult followers about the integrity of the most recent presidential balloting.

Court after court, expert after expert all have determined that the loser’s assertion of widespread voter fraud is, in itself, fraudulent. The only theft of the election results has been the work of the loser’s attempt to toss out legitimate election returns.

Having taken a swing or two at the critics of the electoral system, I want to assert that the system isn’t perfect. Then again, it’s never been absolutely free of the occasional effort by someone, somewhere to cast an illegal ballot. Hey, it goes with the territory.

There have been reported isolated incidents of phony votes cast since, oh let’s see, the beginning of the Republic!

But to hear Republican politicians these days, you’d think the entire system is corrupt. That it’s crooked. That the integrity of the system is so compromised that it puts our national government in dire peril.

Only one problem has existed with this hysteria: No one has proven a word of it!

The midterm election is coming on quickly. There will be some election deniers on the ballot in several states. They will continue to promote The Big Lie as they try to persuade voters to send them to public office. The midterm election will be as clean and relatively corruption-free as the 2020 election turned out to be.

I just have heard all I can stand to hear from those who proclaim to seek a “restoration” of our electoral integrity. There is not a damn thing to restore.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, media news, national news, political news

What? Cheney will dump GOP?

“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he’s not the nominee … And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican.”

Let’s ponder for a moment who made that statement.

It comes from Liz Cheney, the senior Republican on the House select 1/6 committee. She has been a Republican her entire adult life. Her dad is former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a Republican’s Republican if ever there was one.

She has declared at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin that if Donald J. Trump is the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, she will cease belonging to the party to which she has devoted her entire public life.

In one way that stuns me, given what I know about Cheney’s GOP credentials. In another way, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Wyoming voters cast her aside in August’s GOP primary. She sought another term as Wyoming’s lone member of the U.S. House. GOP primary voters said, in effect, forget about it, Liz; we don’t want you in the party. We censured you because you aren’t loyal to Trump.

According to the Texas Tribune: Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trump’s legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.

And she is all of that. Cheney also believes in the rule of law, in the oath she and Trump both took to “defend and protect” the Constitution.

Frankly — despite the fact that she represents an ideology that I dislike and my belief that Trump won’t be nominated in 2024 — I happen to be proud of Rep. Liz Cheney for standing firm on behalf of the truth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Cheney to become GOP martyr

As a general rule I dislike attaching the word “martyr” to run-of-the-mill politicians, even when they do extraordinary things.

Liz Cheney is one of those pols who also happens to be doing something that in an earlier era wouldn’t merit the kind of praise she is about to receive from this blog.

The Wyoming Republican congresswoman is standing tall for the rule of law. She is calling a former GOP president precisely what he is: an existential threat to the nation’s representative democracy.

Cheney is likely to pay a grievous political price soon in the Wyoming Republican primary. She appears slated to lose her primary fight for a fourth term in the U.S. House.

‘She knows it wasn’t stolen’: Liz Cheney challenges Republican primary rival over false Trump election claims (msn.com)

And why? Because Wyoming Republican voters have swallowed the swill offered by the former Liar in Chief. Donald Trump’s Big Lie has gained traction among the gullible voters who appear to be the most dedicated among the GOP faithful.

Liz Cheney said this week that Republicans cannot possibly be faithful to both the Constitution and to Donald Trump. Of the two, which is more essential? Hmm. Let me think. I’ll go with the Constitution.

As we have learned during the House hearings on the insurrection — which Cheney has been a key principal — Trump doesn’t give a rat’s a** about the Constitution. His loyalty belongs only to himself and he has demanded it of those who worked for him in public life.

Liz Cheney has pushed back against the ex-POTUS’s sociopathic tendency only by insisting that he follow the law.

That she would be punished for that is reprehensible in the extreme. Yet, polling data suggest at this moment that Liz Cheney is going to lose her primary battle to return to Congress.

It boggles my mind that anyone with half a noodle in their noggin could believe the liar who once masqueraded as president of the United States.

I fear that such a travesty is going to unfold and a congresswoman who is fighting for the truth will pay the price for such ignorance.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

What’s happening to GOP?

You may choose to believe or disbelieve what I am about to say; it matters not one bit to me, but I just feel the need to ask: What in the world is happening to the Republican Party.

I do not detest all Republicans. Some of my better friends belong to that political party. FYI, my actual “best friends,” and I don’t count many of them, do not belong to the once-great party. We are friends for reasons that have nothing to do with politics.

I count many Republicans among those with whom I have good relationships. They are healthy. Many of my GOP friends happen to be active politicians. Some of them are conservative pols. Others of them are more moderate. One of them, a Texas state senator from Amarillo, is leaving the Legislature at the end of the year and I consider Kel Seliger’s departure a huge loss for the party.

Which brings me to the point. The departure of so many moderate Republican pols suggests to me that the nut-job, fruitcake, Donald Trump cultists are seizing control of the party that once stood for limited government, fiscal responsibility, equal rights for all Americans has become a cabal of cult followers who adhere to the whims and machinations of an individual. You know about whom I am referring, right?

Moderate GOP pols are fleeing Congress. They are leaving state legislatures. My fear is that they are being replaced in these important offices by goofballs and nut jobs, slobbering QAnon followers and those who adhere to The Big Lie perpetuated by the Liar in Chief.

This is a dark time in American political history.

I am going to keep looking for the light.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Finally, the truth from a GOP senator

Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of North Dakota received a direct question Sunday on whether the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” or whether it was “stolen” from Donald J. Trump.

Here is what Rounds said:

“We looked — as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states.

“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.

“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward — and that’s the way we want to look at this — moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it’s going to take to win the presidency.

“And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let’s focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can — they can believe, and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.”

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds just admitted the 2020 election wasn’t rigged (msn.com)

Well … there you go. A Republican member of the U.S. Senate has told the truth about what most of us have known all along. It is that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020.

Now, may we just kill The Big Lie deader than dead?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden is still POTUS! Well …

2 Comments
(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The sun rose in the east this morning. I rolled out of the rack and got my day started per usual.

I glanced at the news and discovered that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is still president of the United States.

Who knew?

Well, it turns out that the My Pillow dude’s prediction that the 45th POTUS would be “reinstated” by day’s end on Friday the 13th didn’t come to pass. Indeed, the Internet has been full of jokes about the “re-inaugural parade” down Pennsylvania Avenue that didn’t take place. Friends and acquaintances have been asking, “Did I miss it?”

I would laugh all this off, blow it off as a sick joke (which it most certainly is) and not give it a second thought, except that too many lunatics among us actually bought into the crap pitched by My Pillow Guy, and the likes of POTUS 45 legal pal Sydney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — who’s been disallowed from practicing law in the city he once governed.

Of course, we also have the former Seditionist in Chief continuing to pitch The Big Lie about alleged electoral theft in the 2020 presidential election. Rather than accepting the notion that he was just a temporary occupant of the White House before losing the election, we are hearing about how the ex-Liar in Chief chose to employ astonishing methods to get government officials to overturn the results of the election.

But … he ain’t POTUS; he won’t ever hold the office again. Joe Biden remains on the job.

For that I am so very grateful.

national news

It’s still a huge lie

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am in no position to challenge the wisdom of remarks attributed to one of society’s wisest men.

What’s more, I happen to agree with Rick Warren, the famed preacher and counselor to presidents.

I might add that “a lie doesn’t become the truth no matter how many times you repeat it.” I refer, of course, to The Big Lie that’s become the stuff of right-wing liars who continue to foment the notion that our most recent presidential election was stolen from one candidate and handed to President Biden.

The Big Lie won’t die. It needs killin’, man. It is being fed from the peanut gallery by a former POTUS who cannot accept that he lost fairly, squarely and legally to a superior candidate. He didn’t have the grace, class or dignity to attend the winner’s presidential inaugural. He retreated to his glitzy resort and has begun plotting to undermine Republican candidates for public office who had the temerity to criticize his actions relating to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Rick Warren is right to suggest that a lie doesn’t become true even if a majority believes it. The good news, though, is that most Americans have not swilled The Big Lie poison, even though most of those who call themselves Republicans have signed on to the preposterous notion.

I also want to weigh in on the “evil” and “good” element of the quote that accompanies this blog post. It is that The Big Lie embodies the evil intent of the man who continues to give it life. I believe that POTUS 45 is full of evil motivation. For him to continue to suggest that thievery denied him re-election to the nation’s highest office is evil personified.

It is astonishing in the extreme that so many Americans have bought into The Big Lie, not because it has a ring of truth, but because it merely gives them a reason to concoct some pretext to be angry.

The Big Lie lives on in what passes for the hearts and minds of those who subscribe to a certain individual’s evil intent.