economic news, national news

Vote ‘no’ and take the dough

I should direct these comments to the Republicans who comprise the Texas congressional delegation.

All of ’em, to a person, voted “no” on President Biden’s infrastructure proposal and on the $1.7 trillion package billed as Build Back Better.

Some of them have issued harsh policy statements criticizing Biden as well as their Democratic colleagues, calling them “socialists” and “spendthrift” liberals who don’t give a damn about the national debt.

Ah, yes. But … will they say “no” when the government starts parceling the money to their states or congressional districts? Hardly!

Indeed, I fully expect some of them to actually use these improvements as grist for their re-election efforts in 2022 and beyond. Will they realize or recognize the hypocrisy of that message? Not even, man!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump

I’m out, once again

So help me Almighty God in heaven, I am going to make yet another stab at turning my back on the antics and blathering of the most recent former president of the United States.

It has been hard to keep earlier pledges to do so. I mean, the guy keeps making news. He keeps roiling the waters. He keeps telling The Big Lie, which I have tried every way I know how to refute; I am exhausted trying to tell y’all the truth, which is The Big Lie is what it is and that the 2020 election was not “stolen” by “extensive voter fraud.”

The imbecile who got elected POTUS in 2016 just won’t let it die. Indeed, as he yaps and yammers about running for the highest office in 2024 he keeps bringing up the past. He has no future vision. I mean, holy sh**, he doesn’t have any vision of any kind that is worth discussing.

What do I go from here? Where do any of us go?

I am going to try once more to put this clown away. Put him in the Dumpster where his hideous legacy already is housed. The guy had no business being elected POTUS in the first place. He got precisely what he deserved when President Biden drummed his sorry oversized a** out of office in 2020.

He is a carnival barker. He is a fraud. He well might get indicted for criminal acts before too long; that, right there, might be cause to make make comment.

The rest of it? I’m out … I hope.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Hoffa’s remains found? Maybe?

Forty-six years ago some mobsters kidnapped Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa and took him somewhere to kill him.

His remains never have been found. Until now. Maybe.

Someone reportedly found a barrel with human remains under a New Jersey bridge. The remains will be taken somewhere for careful forensic examination and evaluation.

James Hoffa remains might have been found 46 years later (msn.com)

It’s been so long since Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975 and there have been so many conspiracies floated about where he ended up that it well might be that the conspiracies won’t die any time soon. There even have been sick jokes tossed out there; some of them, I admit, have actually made me laugh out loud.

However, Hoffa’s family surely needs some closure to this drama. I decline to call it a “tragedy,” because Jimmy Hoffa was not a sympathetic character. He was a bad dude who hung out with other bad dudes.

However, I am hoping this supposed discovery provides an ending.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

GOP takeover doesn’t necessarily doom Democrats

As I watch the political landscape take shape heading into the 2022 midterm election, I cannot help but think of what happened in 2010.

What’s that, you ask? Here’s what happened.

President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and got to work repairing the economic free-fall that was occurring while getting Congress to approve the Affordable Care Act.

Congress spent a ton of money to fix the economy and it approved the ACA by a narrow margin. The 2010 midterm election loomed. Republicans were loaded for bear. They delivered what Obama said was a “shellacking” by taking control of the House of Representatives.

President Obama wasn’t disheartened. He ran for re-election in 2012 and with the wind blowing in his face, he defeated Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin.

Obama’s approval rating wasn’t ever all that great. Yet he served two successful terms as POTUS.

Now comes President Biden facing the wrath of voters. The GOP might be poised to deliver another pounding to the president and his party next year. Does that mean the end of the Biden presidency? Does it deliver a mortal wound to his agenda? Does it set the stage for a Republican victory in 2024? No, no and no!

I will hold out hope that the GOP in its current configuration — the party has turned into a cabal of cultists — will turn off enough voters to forestall any more coup attempts such as the one launched by the most recent Republican POTUS.

Let us hope for the best … shall we?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

VPOTUS fighting back

Vice President Kamala Harris has been for years an inviting target for right-wing pundits and politicians.

So it comes as no surprise to yours truly that she now is being separated from the rest of the Biden administration and singled out for criticism that she is “underutilized,” that her office is in disarray and is dysfunctional and that President Biden is ignoring her best advice.

Hmm. Do you think perhaps there is some rumbling and grumbling out there that she might become the Democrats’ next best hope for the presidency? That perhaps she might seek to succeed President Biden if the incumbent decides to leave office after a single term?

Harris is answering the critics. She contends that all the tittering and chatter is just that and that she is a functioning member of the Biden team.

I get that some of the reporting on alleged discontent comes from mainstream media outlets, such as CNN and Politico. The reporting does feed, though, into the right-wing distortion machine that inflates any negative-sounding report into something unrecognizable.

President Biden has said he intends to run for re-election next time. I dislike the word “intend,” as it leaves too much for room for someone to change his or her mind. If he does, then my hope would be that he wins re-election in 2024.

If not, I believe the president has a fully capable partner in Vice President Harris. If only she could stop the rumor mill from grinding her to pieces.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Littering needs strict punishment

LAKE TAWAKONI STATE PARK, Texas — We trudged along a trail beside a true Texas treasure and found a single piece of litter.

It was a beer bottle.

My wife picked it up and we tossed in a nearby Dumpster … which brings me to the point of this brief blog post.

The Dumpster was within easy walking distance of where the dipsh** had walked. Moreover, the bottle was about, oh, 10 or 12 feet off the trail, which tells me the idiot who left it there flung it where I would presume he thought no one would see it.

My wife and I are huge fans of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and the state parks it administers for us. We enjoy our state parks system, which we consider to be one of the high points of a state government that quite often gets battered with criticism over bonehead policies.

We have no qualms about the state parks and in infuriates to the maximum degree when we see evidence of others abusing the parks in the manner we discovered when we picked up the beer bottle left behind by the nimrod who walked along the trail.

I think an appropriate sentence for anyone littering in that fashion ought to be a four-figure fine and a life sentence of community service … preferably working on a cleanup crew at our state parks.

Yeah, that’s harsh. It’s just how I feel.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Shut up, Matt Gaetz!

Leave it to a Florida flamethrower congressman to inject himself into a story that doesn’t deserve to be politicized any more than it already has become.

Matt Gaetz, a Republican (of course!), says his office is open to hiring Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old on trial in Kenosha, Wisc., for shooting two men to death during a protest over Black Lives Matter, as a congressional intern if he is acquitted of charges filed against him.

This clown Gaetz just continues to infuriate me. Never mind that he’s been associated with individuals connected with sex trafficking involving underage girls, but … well, that’s another story.

Now this?

Shut the hell up, Matt. You just pi** me off!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national security

Party of ‘truth’?

1 Comment

Chris Christie might run for president in 2024. He also has written a book on how he believes the Republican Party, of which he is a member, can redeem itself.

The former New Jersey governor says the GOP must become “the party of truth.” And the “party of solutions.” He has written a book that explains why he believes what he does.

Wow! How can I plow through this.

The once-Grand Old Party has become the party of lies, deception, conspiracy theories. How it reverts itself, or squirms out of the grip of the 45th POTUS is beyond me. Yet that is what Chris Christie wants to see happen.

Good luck, governor, with that tall task.

Donald Trump has so perverted the party, it might take a generation or three to get itself back on track. The biggest obstacle to that occurring happens to be that most Republicans have bought into the Big Lie that Trump has been telling about the 2020 election, that it was “stolen” from him through “widespread voter fraud.” Umm, no. It wasn’t stolen.

I wish Gov. Christie well on his effort. I don’t plan to switch allegiances if he succeeds. I just want the GOP to rid itself of the cult following that has developed with POTUS 45. I want there to be two viable political parties arguing policy, philosophy and what is good for the nation we all love.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Beto vs. Abbott shaping up

Oh, my … forgive me for referring to former West Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke by just his first name in this headline, which in reality is a nickname. It just sounds cool.

Still, he and the man he hopes to defeat in 2022 are serious men. My hope is that O’Rourke and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott don’t tack too far to the left or right as they seek to curry favor with most Texas voters.

I have declared myself to be a “good government progressive,” which I intend to mean that I am not opposed to compromise if it produces sound legislation and law.

Abbott has veered to the far right since the start of the 2021 Legislature. I dislike his right-wing views. O’Rourke has appealed to the far left since losing a U.S. Senate race by just a little in 2018 and then flamed out in a 2020 bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. To be candid, I am not comfortable with the progressives’ agenda.

I am not sure that most Texans are comfortable with far left or far right politics. There is out here, in the words of the late Colin Powell, a “vast middle ground.” I hope O’Rourke and Abbott find themselves arguing for that middle-of-the-road avenue.

As the Dallas Morning News noted in its editorial today, the state will be better off for it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Curious juxtaposition on guns

A headline in the Texas Tribune had me scratchin’ my noggin.

It asked: Beto O’Rourke went after assault rifles in his run for president. Will that hurt him with gun-loving Texans?

Well, that poses a quandary, don’t you think? Of course it does! But here’s the deal as I see it. I consider myself to be a “gun-loving Texan.” I own a couple of rifles, both of which are keepsakes given to me when I was a boy by my father. One of them is a single-shot .22-caliber rifle; the other is a 30.06 that carries a five-round magazine.

Neither of them is an assault weapon. I love my guns, even though I rarely shoot them.

Back to the Tribune’s question: I fear that O’Rourke’s statement about assault weapons is going to hurt him among many Texans who profess to love their guns, but who in reality love owning — or love the prospect of owning — weapons designed to kill human beings in rapid fashion on a battlefield.

The question came to O’Rourke during a 2020 Democratic primary presidential debate. He had said “hell yes!” he wanted to take people’s assault rifles. I did not in that moment believe he intended to send agents to my home and confiscate my two cherished rifles.

The crazy crowd among us no doubt is going to interpret O’Rourke’s statement in 2020 as a clarion call to disarm us all. You can bet your last bandolier that Gov. Greg Abbott is going to play on that fear as he seeks to paint O’Rourke as a commie sympathizer intent on destroying the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

Will Beto O’Rourke’s stance on guns hurt him in 2022’s Texas governor race? | The Texas Tribune

Let’s get ready for a rough campaign.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience