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[your-greekblogger]

Yes, it was genocide

Yes, it was genocide

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Joe Biden never has struck me as a politician willing to blaze many new trails. Still, as president of the United States, Biden has made a declaration that seemed to scare off every one of his predecessors for the past century. No U.S. president, Democrat or Republican, has been willing to categorize the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of Armenians as an act…

[your-greekblogger]

Mourning painful loss while honoring a glorious legacy

Mourning painful loss while honoring a glorious legacy

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com My heart is shattered. An anticipated phone call came this morning, but hearing the news that our family had expected didn’t make it any easier. My cousin died this morning of cancer that she had battled ferociously for a quarter century. Her name was Becky Phillips Olson; she was the second child to the younger of my mother’s two brothers. I want to…

[your-greekblogger]

Did he say that? Really?

Did he say that? Really?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Complete candor requires us to realize that we didn’t think a U.S. senator was a certifiable nut job when he took office. Still, Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has provided ample evidence that he might need to be committed. Johnson has been a COVID denier since the pandemic broke out. Now he says that there is “no reason” for Americans to get…

[your-greekblogger]

Bad move in Greenville

Bad move in Greenville

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Allow me this bit of unsolicited advice to educators everywhere: Do not engage in “jokes” that seem to mirror hideous news events. So it is, then, that a Greenville Independent School District teacher has resigned after being suspended over a picture of her placing her foot on the back of a Lamar Elementary School student’s neck. Sound familiar? Yep,…

[your-greekblogger]

Waiting on a probe

Waiting on a probe

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com The nation endured an insurrection on Jan. 6. The Department of Justice has charged more than 400 people involved in the riot that sought to overturn the results from the 2020 presidential election. DOJ expects the count to reach 500. The riot resulted in the second impeachment of a president, the death of a police officer and four others, injuries to…

[your-greekblogger]

Show us the fraud, GOP pols!

Show us the fraud, GOP pols!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Tom Cruise yelled famously in the film “Jerry Maguire” to “Show me the money!” In that spirit, I am inclined to yell out to Republican politicians intent on perpetuating the Big Lie about the 2020 election: Show me the vote fraud! GOP pols in states all across the nation keep pitching for “voter reforms” they contend will protect the electoral process…

[your-greekblogger]

Sen. Kennedy gets an earful

Sen. Kennedy gets an earful

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, might have thought he could get away with hurling a rhetorical fastball at a noted voting rights activist. He asked Stacey Abrams of Georgia to explain to him what in that state’s new voting restriction law is “racist.” Abrams, a Democratic activist who happens to be African-American, fired back. DAMN! GOP…

[your-greekblogger]

Human rights returns!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com President Biden has laid the law down on a dictator with whom this nation is bonded through a military alliance. Biden and Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan have talked. The president told Erdogan that he considers the Ottoman Empire’s extermination of millions of Armenians to be an act of genocide. He intends as well to bring it up when the men meet in…

[your-greekblogger]

Gov. Jenner? Ugghhh!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com So help me I don’t know why I am even taking time to offer a comment on this … but here goes. Caitlyn Jenner — formerly known around the world as Bruce Jenner — is running for governor of California. Caitlynn Jenner wants to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s the target of a recall election. What in the world does Caitlynn bring to this contest, other…

[your-greekblogger]

Who will cheer this POTUS?

Who will cheer this POTUS?

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images) By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Presidential speeches to joint congressional sessions have devolved over many years into partisan events. Presidents of one party stand before senators and House members and deliver lines designed to draw applause. The way it usually plays out is that lawmakers from the president’s party stand and cheer while…

[your-greekblogger]

What will AG find?

What will AG find?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com My curiosity is killing me. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced a Justice Department investigation into the Minneapolis, Minn., police practices. Garland wants to get to the bottom of policies that resulted in George Floyd’s death a year ago when former cop Derek Chauvin suffocated him while arresting Floyd on a charge of passing…

[your-greekblogger]

Biden keeps going big

Biden keeps going big

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com President Biden isn’t wasting a moment of time in pushing hard for an agenda he hopes will transform the nation and perhaps the world. I welcome the president’s intensity. He went hard in declaring his intention to get 100 million COVID vaccines into Americans during his first 100 days in office. He has doubled that goal by…

[your-greekblogger]

Silence is deafening

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Donald Trump’s silence in the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict has been deafening. Yet I almost can hear what the former president might have told those sitting around him when he got the news along with the rest of the nation. I sense that he believes Chauvin got hosed by the jurors who convicted him of murdering George Floyd on that…

[your-greekblogger]

Anti-Asian hate crimes?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com I am a bit confused. The U.S. Senate has just approved, in a stunning 94-1 vote, a bill that makes crimes against Asian-Americans a hate crime. Now, to be clear I do not condone hate crimes of any form. What confuses me is why Congress feels the need to enact a bill that seeks to protect a single group of Americans. If crimes are directed at…

[your-greekblogger]

Earth is even more fragile

Earth is even more fragile

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com Astronaut Bill Anders pointed his camera out the window of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968 and captured this never before seen image. The astronauts aboard the first manned lunar mission then read from the Book of Genesis and wished us good tidings on “the Good Earth.” This picture is worth looking at once again as the world celebrates Earth Day.…

[your-greekblogger]

One surprise from this session

One surprise from this session

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com If one were to press me for a response to a certain question, I would say that the Texas Legislature’s biggest surprise this session has been the absence of a bathroom bill similar to one that went down in flames in 2017. For those who might not recall, here’s a brief recap: The 2017 Legislature considered a bill pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that…

[your-greekblogger]

Hey, it's Earth Day!

Hey, it’s Earth Day!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com We celebrate this day every year. We say the right things. We actually try to do the right things. And yet … Our precious, precarious planet continues to be threatened by policies and behavior that places it in dire peril. What’s going on? Earth Day is meant to bring the world’s attention to the only planet on which human beings can inhabit. Why don’t…