national news

Trump elevates our awareness

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let us be clear headed and focused now on what we must do as a nation.

We have elected a new president and vice president of the United States. Today we witnessed in real time as the Electoral College certified the victory earned by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Normally, this day would have come and gone and no one would have noticed.

Except that this year, thanks to the shenanigans launched by the man Biden defeated — Donald J. Trump — this constitutional duty came into sharp focus. You know what? That’s a good thing! It is good that Americans who take this process for granted now understand with a good bit more clarity how the framers set up this democratic system of ours.

I detest the shenanigans that Trump has sought to pull off. There has been a significant upside, though, if you consider that Americans are paying a good bit more attention to the democratic process.

Let me be clear on this point, too: The Electoral College actually worked damn well, unlike what happened in 2016 when Trump won the electoral vote majority while losing the actual vote to Hillary Clinton. This year, the president-elect’s Electoral College majority and his actual vote majority seem to mirror each other. I won’t call his victory a “landslide,” even though he rang up the same electoral vote total that Trump did four years ago. His victory, though, is significant.

We watched it play out. We paid attention to it. Under normal conditions, we wouldn’t have celebrated this certification the way many of us are doing. There ain’t anything normal about Donald Trump, which he has demonstrated repeatedly since the moment he became a politician.

So you see? Trump’s antics have produced something constructive: an appreciation of our great democratic process!

national news

It’s over, Donald … Donald?

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Cue the Fat Lady.

She’s the one who sings when the party — or in this case,  the fight to hold onto power — is over.

The Electoral College today cast more than enough votes to elect Joe Biden as the nation’s next president. As I write this brief post, Hawaii has yet to meet, but that state’s four electoral votes will go to the president-elect.

What now for the current president? He says he’ll keep mounting legal challenges. Well, there ain’t any left.

Oh, then there’s this: Attorney General William Barr, about five minutes after President-elect Biden secured enough votes to be elected by the Electoral College, turned his resignation. He’s quitting effective Dec. 23. I am sure he will have a wonderful, joyous Christmas.

I am going to listen for the faint tunes of the Fat Lady. She’s singing in anticipation of the next president taking office.

Oh, yes … she sounds so sweet to me.

national news

Petulance becomes even more petty

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The longer Donald Trump continues his futile, feckless and reckless attack on the American democratic process the more petty he becomes.

The president of the United States is shrinking before our eyes.

The Electoral College voted today and certified Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president of the United States. Trump, meanwhile, is tweeting messages about how he has just begun to fight.

For what? For an office that is now officially out of reach?

The U.S. Constitution lays it out there. It is spelled out in the written word. The Electoral College determines who sits in president’s office. It won’t be Donald Trump after Jan. 20.

So the defeated president might continue to bluster and blather about alleged election thievery. It didn’t happen. Deep down in his gut Trump knows it, too.

It’s the  uncertainty of what might await him once he no longer is shielded by the trappings of immense power that seems to be driving this petty petulance.

It’s over, Mr. POTUS. Pack your bags and hit the road … for keeps.

national news

Biden transition needs to function on all cylinders

1 Comment
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Oh, to be a fly on whatever walls surrounding the meetings that President-elect Biden is conducting as he prepares to become the next president.

The transition has begun officially. It was late getting started. Donald Trump, who lost the election to Joe Biden, dug in for too long after we learned that we had a new president waiting in the wings.

Then came the order from the General Services Administration, the agency that runs the transition: Start turning the wheels, the GSA said … undoubtedly on orders from Donald Trump.

I am heartened somewhat — but not totally — by the knowledge that President-elect Biden is a man of the Senate, that he knows how government works, that he has an enormous network of contacts throughout the legislative and executive branches of government.

Biden comes to the presidency being able to speak fluently in the language that bureaucrats speak to each other. There appears to be little on-the-job training for the new president. He served 36 years in the Senate, eight as vice president. He knows the ropes.

Contrast that with the absence of any exposure to government that Donald Trump brought to the job he inherited when he was elected in 2016. It showed from the get-go.

I do not expect the new president to make the kind of monumental hiring mistakes that Trump made. I could be wrong, of course. Indeed, I am wrong way more than I am right.

On this matter … I’ll stick with my assessment of the new president.

national news

These lawmakers need to be sanctioned

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This isn’t likely to happen, but it damn near should happen.

The 126 Republicans who joined a hideous lawsuit that sought to throw out the votes of millions of Americans in this year’s presidential election should be sanctioned.

A censure? Impeachment? A public scolding?

They signed a legal brief that joined a suit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who said the votes in four states that went for Joe Biden were cast illegally. He said the states changed their election rules in violation of the Constitution.

Paxton, a Republican (of course!) got 16 other state attorneys general to join the suit. Then came the brief signed by the members of Congress. Twelve of them are from Texas.

Congressional Democrats quite naturally are outraged that these individuals would seek to subvert the Constitution. That they would seek to undermine the electoral process. That they would deliberately and with malice seek to violate their oaths of office.

The Supreme Court threw out Paxton’s lawsuit. It was silent on the action of the members of Congress who agreed with the embattled AG’s complaint. I understand SCOTUS’s silence on that matter.

However, many of us out here in Flyover Country won’t remain silent. I certainly won’t.

These individuals — including the House’s top two leading GOP members, minority leader Kevin McCarthy and minority whip Steve Scalise — have richly earned whatever sanction that is available to the congressional leadership that can punish them.

They no longer represent the Republican Party. They are now members of the Donald Trump Party, even though they took an oath to defend the nation … not suck up to a president.

They sicken me.

medical news

‘Hoax’ crowd tests my compassion

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Try as I do to maintain my sense of compassion and empathy for those who become stricken by a killer virus, there are those on the fringes of our political spectrum to test it to the extreme.

For example …

I have seen a congressman-elect declare that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax. He called it a “phony pandemic.” He was without a mask while bellowing the BS in front of a rally crowd. Rep.-elect Bob Good spoke to a pro-Donald Trump rally and declared the pandemic that has killed nearly 300,000 Americans and sickened millions of others isn’t real. It’s a phony sickness.

Just as egregious is that the crowd cheered this dipsh**’s rant.

Oh, my.

I have resisted the temptation to cheer when some folks become stricken by the virus. I won’t say here and now that I want Bob Good to become sick. I told readers of this blog that I wished Donald and Melania Trump a quick and full recovery when they tested positive for the virus; I wish the same for others within Trump’s inner circle.

However, when nimrods like Rep.-elect Good yammer the trash he did this weekend, they test my fairly deep reservoir of good will that enables me to wish political foes good health.

We have been listening for months on end the gut- and heart-wrenching stories of nurses and doctors who watch their patients die alone. Their grief is as visceral as it gets. Many of them are leaving the profession they love. Why? Because they no longer can cope with the heartbreak they suffer multiple times each day.

Then we hear from the likes of a congressman-elect who calls all this suffering a “phony” issue. I am left to deal initially with my rage at what they say. Then I must ask: How can anyone possibly take those who are elected to represent the public interest seriously when they utter such absolute nonsense?

Despicable.

Sports news

Las Vegas Raiders? Please …

(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I once was a huge, fervent, zealous fan of professional football.

Not so much these days. My favorite football team in the old days was an American Football League team that became a National Football League outfit: the Oakland Raiders.

I loved the Raiders back in the day, when Darryl “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica was their quarterback; when Ben Davidson was terrorizing opposing teams’ QBs; when Fred Biletnikoff ran perfect pass routes.

Then the Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles. My loyalty to them subsided, but only a little bit. They eventually would find their way back to the East Bay, playing once again in Oakland.

I am watching the Raiders today on TV. Only these days they call Las Vegas home.

The Las Vegas Raiders?

Arrggghhh!

I cannot go there.

Then again, I’m still pi**ed that the Houston Oilers moved to Nashville, that the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore, that the Chicago Cardinals moved to St. Louis and then to Phoenix, that the San Diego Chargers moved to LA, and that the Baltimore Colts sneaked out of town in the middle of the night and relocated to Indianapolis. I know what you might be thinking: What about the Dallas Texans moving to Kansas City? I’ll give the Chiefs a pass on that one.

My favorite team of all time remains the Oakland Raiders. The Las Vegas Raiders are imposters.

national news

How will Trump react to the next nail in his political coffin?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the zillions of things I won’t miss when Donald Trump is no longer president is awaiting his reaction to matters involving his political future.

Example: The Electoral College is voting Monday on who will become the next president. Spoiler alert: It won’t be Donald Trump.

No, the Electoral College — as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution — will cast its pledged votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won the presidency on Nov. 3. Biden has rolled up a 7-million vote margin over Trump, winning 306 electoral votes.

The Electoral College, which comprises delegates from all the states, will certify the election Monday.

What does Trump do? How will he react when the Electoral College certifies what everyone on Planet Earth knows what occurred? That remains to be seen and heard. Trump has mounted more than 50 legal challenges. He has lost all but one of them. The latest defeat came when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sought to get the votes of four states overthrown.

Trump keeps tweeting that he’ll continue fighting to keep his job. He continues to insist the election was “rigged.” He produces no evidence of the scurrilous allegation.

The Electoral College certification would appear to be the final scene in the final act of this ghastly drama. Oh, how I hope that’s the case. However, we are dealing with a lunatic in the body of the man who has lost a presidential election.

Let us stay tuned.

media news

Criticism is sexist to the core

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sexism stinks as badly as racism, ageism or any form of prejudice that poisons the human spirit.

Sexism revealed itself in a pointless essay published in the Wall Street Journal that questions why Jill Biden, wife of the president-elect, keeps referring to herself as “Dr. Jill Biden.” The author of the screed, Joseph Epstein, said she should stop doing so, calling it “fraudulent.”

Umm. No. It isn’t. Good grief, dude.

Jill Biden earned a doctorate in education long ago. She has every right to call herself “Dr. Biden,” as does anyone who chooses to use the honorific title to her.

Just as a point of personal privilege, I don’t necessarily like tossing the term around for anyone and I routinely decline to use the term to describe “academic doctors”; I reserve the title to describe in initial references to medical doctors.

That said, any suggestion that a great newspaper such as the WSJ would publish such a hideous screed smacks of sexism.

Does anyone really believe the newspaper would have allowed such a thing to see print if it referred to a man who calls himself “Dr. So and So”?

Read the screed here.

Stupidity still festers.

legal news

GOP favors ‘judicial activism’?

2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There once was a time in this country when Republicans berated progressives/liberals for favoring what they referred to derisively  as “judicial activism.”

The GOP hated the notion of the courts rewriting laws, or “legislating from the bench.” Well, what in the name of juris prudence have we seen now in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court dismissal of a lawsuit brought to it by the Texas attorney general? We’re seeing and hearing Republicans blasting the court for, um, following the Constitution.

What the hell?

Texas AG Ken Paxton wanted the SCOTUS to order millions of votes cast in states that supported Joe Biden’s election as president tossed out. He was joined by 16 GOP state attorneys general; then we had more than 120 GOP members of Congress sign on to Paxton’s lunacy. They all wanted the high court to — yep, that’s right — take a judicially activist stance.

Up is now down. Right is wrong. Left is right and vice versa. Nothing makes sense. Not a damn thing!

This madness is being orchestrated by Donald Trump, the so-called Republican president who is masterminding this revolt against the democratic process. He lost an election and won’t accept the will of the American voters.

Traditional Republican politicians, if there are any of them left in public office, should be aghast, appalled and astounded at what has become of traditional Republican policy.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience