It seems to me that W.E.B. DuBois’s state­ment, “Either America will destroy igno­rance or igno­rance will destroy the United States,” takes on more res­o­nance today than at any oth­er time since he made that statement.
What does it say about the coun­try’s state when the wife of the most senior mem­ber of the Supreme court is a major play­er in the dis­in­for­ma­tion QAnnon con­spir­a­cy movement?
At the bare min­i­mum, it pos­es a seri­ous con­flict of inter­est that Ginny Thomas would be a major play­er in right-wing caus­es, some of which are so out of the main­stream they ought to be under Federal eyeballs.
It bears men­tion­ing that Clarence Thomas, an unapolo­getic right-wing judge, in his three decades on the Supreme Court, has ruled con­sis­tent­ly in sup­port of Republican causes.
Regardless of a Judge’s pol­i­tics, it is hard to rec­on­cile that a judge would be as par­ti­san as Clarence Thomas has been. Even the much-vaunt­ed and idol­ized Antonin Scalia, the stan­dard of right-wing jurispru­dence, at times vot­ed with the most lib­er­al wing of the court. Not so with the insuf­fer­able Clarence Thomas.
Among some of the most eye­brow-rais­ing things that Clarence Thomas has done has been the dis­sent­ing & con­cur­ring opin­ions he has writ­ten and joined.

• He dis­sent­ed when the court inval­i­dat­ed the con­vic­tion of a black man tried six times for the same crime by the same pros­e­cu­tor with juries that were either all white or near­ly all white.
• He called for over­turn­ing Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 land­mark deci­sion requir­ing that crim­i­nal defen­dants, too poor to pay for a lawyer, be pro­vid­ed an attor­ney paid for by the government.
• In anoth­er first, he called for over­turn­ing the 1964 land­mark free­dom-of-the-press deci­sion New York Times v. Sullivan, which set in place stan­dards to make it more dif­fi­cult for pub­lic fig­ures to sue for libel with­out proof that false­hoods were know­ing­ly published.

According to (npr​.org), Clarence Thomas’s dis­sent­ing opin­ion on that land­mark deci­sion was not joined by a sin­gle mem­ber of the 9‑member court, but that it lined up con­ve­nient­ly with the world­view of Donald Trump.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia did not have such a purist view (NPR posit­ed); unlike Thomas, he did believe in prece­dent. As he famous­ly put it, “I am an orig­i­nal­ist, but I’m not a nut.”

“God bless each of you,’ Ginni Thomas wrote in a Facebook post to sup­port the attempt­ed takeover of the Capitol.
In one post, she shared “LOVE” to the MAGA crowd, offer­ing sup­port and sug­gest­ing oth­ers tune in to the riot. In anoth­er Facebook sta­tus, she stat­ed, in most­ly all caps, “God bless each of you stand­ing up or pray­ing!”This is not her first time in the spot­light for sup­port­ing racism. ( theGrio) report­ed Mrs. Thomas request­ed the may­or of Clifton, Virginia, to remove a Black Lives Matter ban­ner in the town. Would you please remove the BLM sign from Clifton?” Thomas wrote to Holloway accord­ing to (theGrio). “As lead­ers of this com­mu­ni­ty, you should be smarter than pro­mot­ing such a group as this, who uses race to foment chaos to desta­bi­lize the nation.”

But Clarence and Ginny Thomas’s con­flicts of inter­est are only the tip of the ice­berg when it comes to what the polit­i­cal right is allowed to get away with, even while pon­tif­i­cat­ing about the fideli­ty of pub­lic bod­ies and institutions.
Economic con­ser­vatism and fideli­ty to the con­sti­tu­tion are only impor­tant when Republicans are out of office.
As soon as Joe Biden won the 2020 elec­tion, it struck me that Republicans would return to the tired old fis­cal con­ser­vatism argu­ments to harass the new Administration.
They found their man in West Virginia to dilute the Democratic pow­er in the Senate; that man is Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin has not flinched from play­ing ball in servi­tude to Mitch McConnell and the right-wing agen­da, declar­ing oppo­si­tion to the Biden eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus’s size, a view in direct oppo­si­tion to his own Governor’s, and declar­ing his oppo­si­tion to a key Biden nom­i­nee to head the Office Of Management & Budget.
That is not all; anoth­er clear sign that Manchin does not sup­port the Democratic agen­da is his pub­lic oppo­si­tion to elim­i­nat­ing the Fillibuster.
Manchin told CNN that he would oppose his par­ty’s effort to get rid of the fil­i­buster, a stall tac­tic fre­quent­ly used by the Senate’s minor­i­ty par­ty, requir­ing 60 votes in the cham­ber to over­come. “That’s bull­shit,” Manchin said.
When asked about the Democratic push to elim­i­nate the fil­i­buster, he not­ed that he opposed the Democratic effort in 2013 to elim­i­nate the fil­i­buster on most pres­i­den­tial nominees.
This means that to get the most basic aspect of his agen­da passed, Biden will have to seek buy-in from Republicans, usu­al­ly Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, or Lisa Murkowski, even on his cab­i­net nom­i­nees, essen­tial­ly ren­der­ing the idea that a pres­i­dent is enti­tled to his cab­i­net moot.
Who needs Republicans when there are Democrats like Joe Manchin?

It did not take long, with over half a mil­lion dead as a result of Donald Trump’s neg­li­gence and com­plic­i­ty for COVID-19, unem­ploy­ment claims sky­rock­et­ing, and peo­ple in seri­ous need of relief, Republicans en-masse has a seri­ous prob­lem with the Joe Biden $1.9 Trillion COVID relief plan, but had no prob­lem with Donald Trump’s $2.3 Trillion give­away to the rich­est 1% who did not need for it.
To add insult to injury, Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, is against the pack­age’s size and con­tent while his Republican Governor is lob­by­ing for the bil­l’s pas­sage that would vast­ly ben­e­fit res­i­dents of that state.
Additionally, Manchin is opposed to Joe Biden’s choice to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, because of sup­posed mean tweets she made as pres­i­dent of the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic establishment.
It is laugh­able that Manchin wants to be a power­bro­ker in the 50 – 50 sen­ate; he choos­es the pres­i­den­t’s cab­i­net pick and a woman of col­or, no less, as the hill on which he wants to take a stand. The hyp­ocrite did not utter a sin­gle syl­la­ble in oppo­si­tion to Donald Trump’s tweets that dis­par­aged and demeaned every per­son who did not bow down to him.
Both Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine have indi­cat­ed that nei­ther of them will be sup­port­ing Tanden’s nomination.

As if by some strange comedic joke by the Universe, Josh Hawley and Raphael Cruz are mem­bers of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary com­mit­tee is this week attend­ing to the nom­i­na­tion of pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s nom­i­nee for Attorney General of the United States.
To hear Josh Hawley and Raphael Cruz, the Senate point men for Trump’s big lie, “stop the steal,’ ask ques­tions of Merrick Garland when they both should be locked away in Federal jail cells await­ing tri­al for sedi­tious activ­i­ties, has been just too much for me to stomach.
In a nation of laws, nei­ther Josh Hawley nor Raphael Cruz would have the oppor­tu­ni­ty, much less the temer­i­ty, to ask Judge Garland ques­tions on the issues of fideli­ty to law and the con­sti­tu­tion. Hawley and Cruz are co-con­spir­a­tors, in my hum­ble view, but the laws in America only work against the poor and pow­er­less, and so they get to sit in judg­ment of peo­ple with char­ac­ter. I almost said the framers must be turn­ing in their graves, then I stopped myself.….their behav­ior was noth­ing to brag about either, so there is that.
And so we laugh at the spec­ta­cle of the crim­i­nals ques­tion­ing the judge, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, putting into the record a let­ter sup­pos­ed­ly writ­ten to him by some right-wing hack, detail­ing how the Trump insur­rec­tion crowd was peace­ful and friend­ly until they were pro­voked and assault­ed by the capi­tol police.
The American peo­ple vot­ed in extra­or­di­nary num­bers to repu­di­ate Donald Trump, his hate­ful & racist poli­cies; true to form as they did in President Obama’s first term, Democrats are fail­ing to force­ful­ly apply the same strength and for­ti­tude Republicans employ when they are in power.
The steps Republicans are tak­ing to make vot­ing expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult across mul­ti­ple states are designed to negate the con­se­quences of whites becom­ing a minor­i­ty by 2045. If Democrats con­tin­ue to allow this to hap­pen, America will sink into despo­tism, the next strong­man to occu­py the White House (Josh Hawley), or whomev­er already has a blue­print on what to do to get there.
In the end, preser­va­tion of white pow­er in white men’s hands is what all this is about, that includes what Ginny Thomas and her hus­band are doing, to what Joe Manchin is doing in stop­ping peo­ple of col­or from hold­ing pow­er­ful posi­tions in the American government.
It is time to restore a key ele­ment of the Voting Rights Act, stalled in the con­gress to hon­or civ­il rights icon John Lewis.
Democrats have no excuse not to move this leg­is­la­tion to a vote imme­di­ate­ly; let the nation see which Republican vote against it, then use the results against them in 2022.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Tiger Woods is in surgery after suf­fer­ing “mul­ti­ple leg injuries” in a car crash in Los Angeles, California.

The LA County Sheriff’s Department said that it “respond­ed to a sin­gle-vehi­cle rollover” acci­dent in which the “vehi­cle sus­tained major damage”.

American Woods, 45, had to be “extri­cat­ed from the wreck” by fire­fight­ers and paramedics.

Woods’ agent Mark Steinberg said: “He is cur­rent­ly in surgery and we thank you for your pri­va­cy and support.”(BBCSPORTS)

A state­ment from the LA County Sheriff’s Department said it respond­ed to the crash “on the bor­der of Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes” on Tuesday morn­ing local time.
It added: “Mr Woods was extri­cat­ed from the wreck with the ‘jaws of life’ by Los Angeles County fire­fight­ers and para­medics, then trans­port­ed to a local hos­pi­tal by ambu­lance for his injuries.”
The LA County Fire Department said:“Units dis­patched at 07:22 and found a sin­gle-vehi­cle rollover. One adult male was assist­ed out of the vehi­cle and trans­port­ed to a local area hos­pi­tal in seri­ous con­di­tion. World num­ber three Justin Thomas is one of Woods’ best friends on the tour and expressed con­cern for his com­pa­tri­ot. “I’m sick to my stom­ach,” Thomas said. “You know, it hurts to see one of your… clos­est friends get in an acci­dent. “Man, I just hope he’s all right. Just wor­ry for his kids, you know. I’m sure they’re strug­gling.” A state­ment from PGA Tour com­mis­sion­er Jay Monahan said: “We are await­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion when he comes out of surgery. “On behalf of the PGA Tour and our play­ers, Tiger is in our prayers and will have our full sup­port as he recovers.”

Woods was involved in a car crash in November 2009 which even­tu­al­ly led to admis­sions of infi­deli­ty and the break­down of his mar­riage. He then took a break from golf but returned short­ly after­ward. Following five wins in 2013, Woods start­ed just 24 events in the next four years because of chron­ic back pain and mul­ti­ple surg­eries. In 2017 Woods was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of dri­ving under the influ­ence when he was found asleep at the wheel of his car. He lat­er plead­ed guilty to reck­less dri­ving. He had five pre­scrip­tion drugs in his sys­tem as he recov­ered from the spinal fusion surgery that ulti­mate­ly gave him a sec­ond golf­ing career. Woods end­ed an 11-year wait for a major title when he won the Masters at Augusta in 2019.
He joint­ly holds the record for most PGA Tour wins at 82 with Sam Snead and is three behind Jack Nicklaus’ mark of 18 major titles. Woods recent­ly said he had hoped to play in this year’s Masters in April after hav­ing a fifth back surgery in January. 

He end­ed 2019 sixth in golf’s world rank­ings but is now 50^th. BBC golf cor­re­spon­dent Iain Carter told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Tiger Woods has had this extra­or­di­nary life which has had such mas­sive highs on the golf course but some extra­or­di­nary lows in his per­son­al life. “This is now a very seri­ous sit­u­a­tion for his career. “He was on American tele­vi­sion on Sunday. A lot of observers were con­cerned at how hes­i­tant he was about the nature of the progress that was being made in terms of his recov­ery and whether or not he would be fit for the Masters. “All thoughts of that now go com­plete­ly out of the win­dow and are no longer a priority.”

We talk about this often, the peo­ple who vote for the Republican par­ty, in the red states, despite the lies the par­ty tells them, despite the votes they take against their voter’s interests.
Voters in red states con­tin­ue to vote for the par­ty, which gives tax breaks to the rich­est Americans but refus­es to give them the most basic relief when they need it.
Republican lead­er­ship in Texas turned their backs on fed­er­al mon­ey that would expand Medicaid in the state ben­e­fit­ing mil­lions of peo­ple unable to get health care.
Texas is now under severe cold weath­er; peo­ple are dying from cold, car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing, and strug­gling to find clean drink­ing water. Fires rage while fire depart­ments revert to archa­ic truck­ing of water to try to put out blazes because the water in the hydrants is frozen solid.
Why has Texas a state that talks about seced­ing in such des­per­ate shape? Texas Republicans are wed­ded to the oil indus­try, which is basi­cal­ly their bosses.
Powerful oil boss­es do not want fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors telling them that they must adopt com­mon-sense guide­lines, so they refused to be attached to the nation­al grid. The grid failed, and now there is no backup.

Despite their suf­fer­ing, come elec­tion time, vot­ers in Texas will once again vote for the plu­to­crats who con­tin­ue to demon­strate to them that they do not matter.
And while we are on the sub­ject, what about the fraud­u­lent Raphael Cruz? Lying Raphael loves to grand­stand and talk about the con­sti­tu­tion. He loves to grand­stand about the love of coun­try and the American peo­ple, but its huck­ster was on a plane to Cancun as soon as a lit­tle hard time arrived.
When the lying fraud was spot­ted in Cancun relax­ing, he high­tailed it back to Texas and threw his daugh­ter on the bus, claim­ing that he took the voca­tion because of her. What a fraud.

The remark­able thing, is that the New York Times obtained text mes­sages made by Raphael’s wife, Heid Cruz, pro­mot­ing the trip. According to the Huffington Post, the report con­tra­dict­ed Cruz’s flim­sy claim that he was mere­ly grant­i­ng his daugh­ters’ wish for a vaca­tion with their friends and was accom­pa­ny­ing them when the fam­i­ly jet­ted off to Cancun this week. He lat­er con­ced­ed he had planned to stay through the week­end, but Heidi Cruz’s mes­sages to pals seemed to indi­cate a grander getaway. 
“Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” Cruz, a man­ag­ing direc­tor at Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs, wrote in a group text. “We may go to Cancún.” She men­tioned a Wednesday after­noon depar­ture and a Sunday return from a stay at the posh Ritz-Carlton on the beach, where she said she has lodged “many times,” accord­ing to The Times.

No one begrudges any­one a vaca­tion, but Raphael Cruz is not only a pub­lic ser­vant; he is a self-pro­mot­ing grandiose per­fec­tion­ist, who pre­tends to love the coun­try more than oth­er Americans. His respon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple across the state of Texas who vot­ed him into office, and who deserve rep­re­sen­ta­tion at this crit­i­cal junc­ture, deserved more than what that self-aggran­diz­ing fraud gave. When the chips were down, he ran away to the com­forts of a five-star vaca­tion spot leav­ing his peo­ple to fend for themselves.
Imagine the hoopla that blovi­at­ing idiot would have cre­at­ed if a high-lev­el Democratic politi­cian from that state had done the same thing?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

His name was Ewart Beckford but to the tens of thou­sands of us who grew up on his toast­ing, no one knew who Ewart Beckford was, to us he was Daddy Roy, or U‑Roy.
The art of toast­ing began with DJs talk­ing over the record play­ing on the sound sys­tems, today we know the toast­er as Disc Jockeys (DJs).
To young dance hall goers like myself, Daddy Roy was the best of the best, the crème de la crème of dance­hall disc jockeys.

I will leave the com­ments to those who knew him inti­mate­ly, suf­fic­ing to say that his music was the sound­track to many of our lives.
He will for­ev­er be rec­og­nized as one of the great­est of Jamaica’s musi­cal pio­neers. He is irre­place­able and will be sad­ly missed.

Yesterday I teased out a prelude to what I would be writing about today; I took the liberty to posit that Donald J Trump will not be competing for the presidency again, even though he will continue to pretend to be a major player in the Republican party in the future.

Separate and apart from the poten­tial legal entan­gle­ment that Donald Trump may be fac­ing in Georgia and New York, there is still a lot we don’t know that may come out of the jus­tice depart­ment after a new DOJ head is sworn in and all the evi­dence that William Barr sup­pressed is looked at with a crit­i­cal eye.
From all indi­ca­tions, Trump’s prop­er­ties are not doing well finan­cial­ly; in fact, some reports indi­cate some of his prop­er­ties are bleed­ing cash pro­fuse­ly. Many of the sweet deals that Trump had, for exam­ple, with New York City, have dried up as the de Blasio Administration has stopped doing busi­ness with Trump.
Trump will find it dif­fi­cult to find banks will­ing to do busi­ness with him going for­ward, and those that did are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to extri­cate them­selves from him.
In the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars that will become due in the next year or two, Trump has mas­sive loans. Those loans were per­son­al­ly guar­an­teed. Donald Trump is no longer in office, and so Banks will be less hes­i­tant about going after him and his prop­er­ties to retrieve their money.

Soon enough, there will be an avalanche of law­suits fac­ing Trump, and he will find him­self fend­ing them off left, right, and cen­ter. The Fulton County District Attorney had indi­cat­ed that she had opened a probe to deter­mine whether Donald Trump broke Georgia’s elec­tion laws when he called the Secretary of State demand­ing that he find him the votes he need­ed to over­turn the results in that state and declare him the winner.
In New York, Trump is under probe for poten­tial tax law vio­la­tions; there are alle­ga­tions that Donald Trump inflat­ed his assets’ val­ue to secure bet­ter loans.
Additionally, Trump faces poten­tial felony charges for the insur­rec­tion he insti­gat­ed on January 6^th. He also faces legal jeop­ardy for defama­tion for his lying attacks on the Dominion, the mak­er of vot­ing machines used only in one coun­ty in California.

Conventional wis­dom would sug­gest that Trump would like­ly seek elec­tive office to get the pow­er posi­tion back to ward off some of the legal chal­lenges he faces. However, it was the same ele­va­tion to the pow­er posi­tion that exposed him to all of the legal woes he now faces.
The poten­tial chal­lenges he faces may have had some­thing to do with his refusal to relin­quish pow­er after los­ing the 2020 elections.
It was always my view that he want­ed to remain in office at all costs, hop­ing that most of those legal obsta­cles would dis­ap­pear based on the statute of lim­i­ta­tions laws. Donald Trump, the [win­ner] (sic), man­aged to lose the pres­i­den­cy, the US House & the US Senate, all in the space of a four-year term. As evi­denced in his sen­ate floor dia­tribe after he vot­ed to acquit him of his crimes, Mitch McConnell’s pal­pa­ble anger at him speaks volumes.
The idea that Donald Trump is a win­ner is a real­i­ty only to those with their heads buried deep in the sands of unreality.
The num­ber one ques­tion for Trump is whether to run and not make it fur­ther than the Republican pri­maries and be round­ly repu­di­at­ed again?
For the Republican par­ty itself, the par­ty also has to self-exam­ine; Republican vot­ers are flee­ing the par­ty in droves, as report­ed by Republican offi­cials across the coun­try, includ­ing in crit­i­cal states for the Republicans like Georgia and Arizona.

Probably the most sig­nif­i­cant blow to Donald Trump is that he has been de-plat­formed by Twitter and Facebook. Twitter has per­ma­nent­ly banned him.
Without the abil­i­ty to sow dis­cord and dem­a­gog­ic lies using social media, Donald Trump is noth­ing. Trump was nev­er about any­thing sub­stan­tive; his entire life from child­hood to the present day has been one big lie. Without the estab­lished plat­forms from which to spout lies and hatred, Donald Trump is an insignif­i­cant troll that has been a colos­sal failure.
I believe that giv­en a few months, the bit­ter taste of Donald Trump will begin to fade from our col­lec­tive psy­che and none too soon.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

In my next arti­cle, I will explain why I believe Donald Trump will not run for the pres­i­den­cy ever again, putting to rest the fears Democrats and oth­ers har­bor that he could return to the pres­i­den­cy maybe as soon as 2024.

UPDATE

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​p​r​o​b​l​e​m​s​-​w​i​l​l​-​s​u​p​e​r​s​e​d​e​-​h​i​s​-​d​e​s​i​r​e​-​t​o​-​r​u​n​-​a​g​a​i​n​/​?​f​b​c​l​i​d​=​I​w​A​R​0​f​U​i​p​6​a​7​t​C​Y​D​y​t​O​v​7​E​M​0​-​0​M​K​7​y​c​l​V​J​p​P​U​Q​F​9​K​V​q​n​0​1​Y​s​3​h​P​o​Y​6​M​F​D​y​Stg

Republicans do not play by the rules of the game.
We have a nation, albeit a mighty coun­try, now in decline, because one polit­i­cal par­ty has tak­en the posi­tion that the prin­ci­ples on which the repub­lic was formed are no longer sus­tain­able in main­tain­ing white suprema­cy as a bedrock. Therefore it can­not and will not adhere to the estab­lished rules that have guid­ed the Republic for almost two and one-half centuries.
My friend made an excel­lent point today. “How can mem­bers of the Republican cau­cus advance the argu­ment that the sec­ond impeach­ment of Donald Trump was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, when the body itself answered that ques­tion in the affir­ma­tive, it is con­sti­tu­tion­al to try Donald Trump after he is out of office.
In prac­ti­cal terms, Donald Trump was impeached while he was in office. It was then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who refused to call the Senate back into ses­sion to hold the trial.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​-​i​s​-​d​r​i​v​e​n​-​b​y​-​h​a​t​r​e​d​-​o​f​-​m​u​l​t​i​c​u​l​t​u​r​a​l​i​sm/

It is the height of hypocrisy and lies that mem­bers of the Republican cau­cus would then turn around and make the fraud­u­lent argu­ment that Trump was out of office, and there­fore he is out­side the sen­ate’s scope. The vote on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of whether the tri­al could pro­ceed is now prece­dent for the ages.
Republicans can­not have their cake and eat it too.
Rules by which the coun­try oper­ates can­not only apply to Democrats while Republicans do as they please. Those kinds of games can­not be allowed to continue.
Mitch Mcconnell and his cau­cus pulled off the same fraud­u­lent stunt when they refused to give advice and con­sent to seat Judge Merrick Garland using rules they dredged up, then turned right around and dis­card­ed them, then fill two supreme court seats as a result of that act of deception.

https://mikebeckles.com/a‑race-war-evident-long-before-the-capitol-siege/

As soon as they had a Republican in the white house, those same rules were thrown out, and a Republican hack was seat­ed in one-quar­ter of the eight months, which was the length of time between when Obama nom­i­nat­ed Merrick Garland and the elec­tions of 2016.
It is time for the Democratic Party to start play­ing hardball.
If the Democratic Party refus­es to stand up for the major­i­ty of the American peo­ple against this insur­gency of deceit and decep­tion by a white minor­i­ty, it will find itself fac­ing the prospect of an insur­gent par­ty emerg­ing on its left flank.
A seri­ous look at the Republican Senators who vot­ed to let Donald Trump off the hook a sec­ond time, reveals that because of the two US sen­a­tors per state rule, the major­i­ty of the American peo­ple are being gov­erned and ruled by the white minor­i­ty in fly­over country.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​-​d​o​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​h​o​l​d​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​t​o​-​r​a​n​s​o​m​-​t​h​e​y​-​n​e​e​d​-​h​i​m​-​t​o​-​g​a​l​v​a​n​i​z​e​-​h​a​t​e​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

Let there be no mis­take about what’s at stake here; the dark dis­in­for­ma­tion and lies that have cloud­ed America in the five years since Donald Trump ful­ly emerged on the polit­i­cal scene were designed specif­i­cal­ly to wage war on truth to strength­en America’s racist past.
From the moment that Donald Trump and his wife start­ed the birther cam­paign against Candidate Obama in 2008, along with the oth­er bot­tom-feed­ing crus­taceans in the Republican par­ty, to the video pre­sen­ta­tions by his lawyers in his sec­ond impeach­ment tri­al, the visu­al mes­sag­ing and ver­bal tropes were decid­ed­ly anti-black and pro-white supremacy.
One notable thing that became evi­dent long before Donald Trump was elect­ed President was the emer­gence of new peo­ple into the polit­i­cal process.
The main­stream media report­ed this phe­nom­e­non; pun­dits could not decide what it would mean for the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cycle.
As the process dragged on, it became clear­er that those peo­ple were flock­ing to Donald Trump’s cam­paign ral­lies; in many instances, while Hillary Clinton was absent from the cam­paign trail, Trump was every­where he could land his jet with the word Trump embla­zoned across it, there he would have large rau­cous, racist ral­lies, where he would juice them up with incen­di­ary rhetoric then encour­age them to beat up peo­ple that did not look like them, or oppos­es their point of view.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​s​-​s​e​c​o​n​d​-​i​m​p​e​a​c​h​m​e​n​t​-​a​n​o​t​h​e​r​-​i​t​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​o​f​-​h​a​r​m​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​w​i​l​l​-​i​n​f​l​i​c​t​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​n​a​t​i​on/

Those peo­ple were white, old­er, large­ly work­ing-class, bear­ing a whole litany of griev­ances. They talked about edu­ca­tion and sci­ence as if they were things to be shunned. They talked about racist account­abil­i­ty as peo­ple speak­ing their minds.
Trump’s out­ward­ly vul­gar racism did not cause them to recoil; it gal­va­nized them into a cult, that even the unin­tel­li­gent Trump knew he could manip­u­late in what­ev­er way he chooses.
Trump then bragged that he could shoot some­one on [fifth avenue] and not lose a sin­gle vote. That arro­gance would cause Donald Trump to com­mit yet untold crimes against the coun­try and untold indi­vid­u­als. It would lead him to the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being the only pres­i­dent to be impeached twice. (nev­er mind in a sin­gle term).
The vot­er base Trump quick­ly put togeth­er with his inflam­ma­to­ry racist, xeno­pho­bic, anti-immi­grant rhetoric was old­er; many admit­ted to reporters that they had not vot­ed in years before Trump’s emergence.
Trump’s mes­sage of mak­ing America great again was not new; it was one that Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates as far back as Richard Nixon had used in their cam­paigns. But com­ing from Donald Trump it took on new mean­ing, Donald Trump did and said every­thing to cause them to believe he was the first white pres­i­dent, the most open­ly racist per­son to ever seek the presidency.
That was no easy task, most of the men who had pre­vi­ous­ly been pres­i­dent, Democrats, and Republicans alike, lit­er­al­ly became President because they were vile racists.
Outside of that, Trump’s rhetoric was wag­ing trade wars on China, ban­ning Muslims, law, and order, and oth­er caus­tic issues were, in fact, the cod­ed lan­guage of white supremacy.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​-​a​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​c​y​-​w​h​e​r​e​-​u​n​-​i​n​d​i​c​t​e​d​-​c​o​-​c​o​n​s​p​i​r​a​t​o​r​s​-​s​e​r​v​e​-​a​s​-​j​u​r​o​rs/

Polling those peo­ple result­ed in results that were far from what was real­ly hap­pen­ing at the time. Clinton led in the polls, but Trump sup­port­ers lied, and their lies skewed polling results. Despite the evi­dence of Trump’s misog­y­ny, they turned their heads away and laughed it off as, quote; “a noth­ing burger.”
Right-wing Christian Conservative preach­ers who pre­vi­ous­ly stood in pompous unright­eous judg­ment over every­thing President Obama stood for, were all of a sud­den servile sup­pli­cants to a phi­lan­der­ing racist pussy-grab­ber who had unpro­tect­ed sex with a pros­ti­tute while his wife was home with the young child she had just giv­en birth to.
Suddenly, the racist apos­tates, Hagee, Graham, Robertson, and the oth­er right-wing heretics, were all in with the New York con-man who was going to save America.
But it was the yard signs which gave it away for me. Driving from New York through the back­roads of route 81 down to South Carolina. All through (Hicksville) Trump yard signs lit­tered lit­er­al­ly every yard.
Yard signs are prob­a­bly the least sci­en­tif­ic of mea­sure­ments to get a feel for the peo­ple’s pulse, but are prob­a­bly the most effec­tive at cap­tur­ing pub­lic sen­ti­ment. People do not have signs they dis­agree with on their prop­er­ty; it sim­ply does­n’t happen.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​b​u​s​e​-​o​f​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​-​g​r​a​h​a​m​-​h​i​t​-​w​i​t​h​-​f​o​r​m​a​l​-​e​t​h​i​c​s​-​c​o​m​p​l​a​i​n​t​-​a​m​i​d​-​a​l​l​e​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​o​f​-​e​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​-​m​e​d​d​l​i​ng/

The final vote in the sec­ond sen­ate tri­al of Donald Trump, 57 – 43, was not enough to con­vict and pre­vent him from hold­ing pub­lic office ever again; it fell 10 short of the two-thirds needed.
The 43 Republican sen­a­tors who vot­ed not to con­vict Trump are part of the lead­er­ship rep­re­sent­ing 38% of America. The 57 who vot­ed to con­vict him rep­re­sents 61% of the coun­try experts tell us. The Majority who want­ed Donald Trump to be held account­able lost to the white minor­i­ty who live in small rur­al states. That white minor­i­ty has a dis­pro­por­tion­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the United States senate.
As a free­lance writer, I have point­ed to this dis­par­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in America due to two US sen­a­tors’ sys­tem per state. That dis­parate sys­tem allows the views and demands of 38% of the pop­u­la­tion to take prece­dent over the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of voters.
Winning pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are a heavy lift for Democrats; the par­ty won the pop­u­lar vote in every Presidential elec­tion since 2000. Speaking of the 2000 elec­tions, Democrats won the pop­u­lar vote but lost the elec­toral col­lege vote to George Bush, (with the help of a Republican supreme court).
Hillary Clinton gar­nered more than five mil­lion more votes than Trump, still, she lost the pres­i­den­cy due to a sys­tem designed to drown out the voic­es of the mass­es to the ben­e­fit of the few.
It required that Biden get more than 7‑million more votes than Donald Trump received in 2016 to gar­ner the same amount of elec­toral col­lege votes Trump did.
Those dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ties tilt the play­ing field heav­i­ly in favor of Republicans. Despite those legs up, Republicans con­tin­ue to attack the demo­c­ra­t­ic process with wave after wave of vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics aimed specif­i­cal­ly at wip­ing out the black vote.
Donald Trump and his syco­phants like to brag that 70-mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed for him, they say no oth­er sit­ting Republican pres­i­dent could get that many votes, as if 80 plus mil­lion peo­ple did not vote to repu­di­ate him.
Nothing turned out Trump vot­ers more than the issue of remov­ing con­fed­er­ate stat­ues from pub­lic spaces, hold­ing racists account­able, end­ing police killings of racial minorities.
Those are the things that gal­va­nized them, not Trump, Donald Trump only offered a bul­ly pul­pit for those ideas.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​w​i​l​l​-​n​o​t​-​f​i​n​d​-​1​7​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​-​s​e​n​a​t​o​r​s​-​t​o​-​p​r​o​t​e​c​t​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​n​s​t​i​t​u​t​i​o​n​-​f​r​o​m​-​e​n​e​m​i​e​s​-​f​o​r​e​i​g​n​-​a​n​d​-​d​o​m​e​s​t​ic/

Every Republican mem­ber of the United States House and Senate knew exact­ly what Donald Trump was try­ing to do from he start­ed label­ing the Press, ‘ene­my of the state’. They knew what he was up to before he was elect­ed when asked if he would con­cede if he lost the 2016 elec­tions, and he replied he would have to see.
They knew what he was up to after he was elect­ed and was run­ning for reelec­tion and was asked the same ques­tion, and he respond­ed that if he did not win, it meant that the elec­tions were rigged.
They knew what he was doing when he start­ed bad mouthing the elec­tions before they began.
When he start­ed attack­ing ear­ly vot­ing, when he attacked mail-in vot­ing. When he attacked the “bal­lots,” When he placed Dejoy over the postal ser­vice and start­ed dis­man­tling the infra­struc­ture to slow down mail deliv­ery, they all knew what he was doing when he built a moun­tain of lies to deflect from his hatred, racism, and crimes.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​b​a​r​e​l​y​-​d​o​d​g​e​d​-​a​-​b​u​l​l​e​t​-​n​e​x​t​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​h​e​-​t​r​a​i​t​o​r​s​-​w​i​l​l​-​n​o​t​-​f​a​il/

They were aware of what he was doing when he decap­i­tat­ed the Defense depart­ment. They knew what he was doing when he placed hacks in pow­er posi­tions even after he had lost the 2020 elec­tions. They knew what he was doing when he called elec­tion offi­cials and demand­ed that they find him votes to over­turn the cer­ti­fied results. They were aware of his plans when he cre­at­ed doubt about the vote count in large­ly black cities and coun­ties. They were com­plic­it when he left Mar‑a Lago before Christmas to return to the White House. They knew what was up when he packed the courts from ear­ly in his pres­i­den­cy. They were aware of his plans when William Barr left the DOJ. They knew damn well what his plans were when he par­doned Michael Flynn and oth­er crim­i­nals and had Flynn advis­ing him to declare mar­tial law to steal the elec­tions.
They saw him juice up the lunatic mob with lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion. They saw him direct the mob at the con­gress with the expressed intent of decap­i­tat­ing the Legislative branch and his own vice pres­i­dent.
More than all, they heard Mike Pompeo repeat­ed­ly told jour­nal­ists that Trump would be inau­gu­rat­ed for a sec­ond term, even after the elec­tions were decid­ed. What did Mike Pompeo know, and when did he know it?
Every one of them knew that Trump intend­ed to over­throw the American gov­ern­ment sys­tem to make him­self king. Not a sin­gle one of them lift­ed a fin­ger to stop it.
They did not do any­thing to stop him because it served the ends of white suprema­cy, a cause to which all of the Republicans are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

After the Japanese attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deliv­ered a speech to the nation,” this is a day that will live in infamy,” Rosevelt boomed.
On February 9^th, 2021, the United States Senate answered a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Can a pres­i­dent be impeached and tried after leav­ing office?
The answer to that ques­tion has been resound­ing­ly answered by that body, “yes.”
In a [bipar­ti­san] vote, the Senate vot­ed 56 to 44 to, make it clear that a pres­i­dent may be tried by the sen­ate even after he leaves office.
This day will be ref­er­enced for hun­dreds of years to come, should this democ­ra­cy sur­vive this inces­sant Republican assault.
The nation is almost assured sur­vival. Democracy, not so much if what we are wit­ness­ing is allowed to take hold.

There needs to be a clear under­stand­ing of the facts; there are no dif­fer­ences between House and Senate Republicans and the white mili­tias and neo-nazis run­ning around hurt­ing peo­ple. The Republican par­ty is the proud boys; it is QAnon, it is every­thing the nation wit­nessed on January 6^th.
Some hold out hope that now that this non­sen­si­cal process con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion has been answered, maybe Republican sen­a­tors will be forced to look at the com­pelling evi­dence sup­port­ing a Trump conviction.
To the folks hold­ing out that hope, I ask, “why do you think we were forced to live through this fraud­u­lent ques­tion? Do you think for one moment that Republicans had any doubt that the sen­ate had the author­i­ty to try Donald Trump”?

Another Republican, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, joined five of his Republican col­leagues, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, & Ben Sasse, who vot­ed with all 50 Democratic Senators to over­ride the con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion of whether Trump may be tried by the sen­ate now that he is out of office.
Cassidy’s come to Jesus moment, as artic­u­lat­ed by him, seemed to have been cen­tered on the clar­i­ty of the case the house man­agers out­lined, instead of the non­sense idea that the sen­ate can­not try a pres­i­dent after he has demit­ted office.

No one should be fooled by that moment of clar­i­ty that Cassidy expe­ri­enced; it should nev­er be con­strued as a moment of awak­en­ing for Republicans.
In January, Rand Paul forced a Senate vote to declare the tri­al of Donald Trump uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. That vote failed, and so the case was allowed to pro­ceed. However, the record num­ber of Republican Senate votes declar­ing the poten­tial tri­al uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, is prob­a­bly the best met­ric of mea­sur­ing where today’s Republican par­ty is.
Mitch McConnell spoke out aggres­sive­ly against Donald Trump’s par­tic­i­pa­tion on the sen­ate floor; McConnell said Trump was respon­si­ble for incit­ing the insurrection.
On February 9^th Mitch McConnell vot­ed that the sen­ate tri­al of Donald Trump for incit­ing the insur­rec­tion was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. At least his vote said so.
House minor­i­ty leader Kevin McCarthy chas­tised Donald Trump for incit­ing the insur­rec­tion on the house floor; he lat­er jet­ted to Florida to lick Donald Trump’s boots and be pho­tographed with him.
Lyn Cheney, the #3 house Republican, was forced to endure a vote to retain her lead­er­ship role. Cheneys Crime was that she laid the blame for the insur­rec­tion square­ly at Trump’s feet.

Republican Senators have demon­strat­ed that they do not care about the Constitution. It has long been argued that the founders cre­at­ed the Senate to counter the more rash, impul­sive house members.
House mem­bers are allowed two-year terms; Senators have six-year terms.
The think­ing is that the six-year-term, in a way, insu­lates Senators from some polit­i­cal back­lash, kind of like how Federal judges get life­time tenure. Republicans under Mitch McConnell’s lead­er­ship have destroyed every­thing the Senate is sup­posed to rep­re­sent. They packed courts with dis­qual­i­fied hacks, cor­rupt­ed the exec­u­tive, and reduced the Senate to a disgrace.

In the end, the tox­i­c­i­ty Mitch McConnell cre­at­ed and orches­trat­ed will do more harm to America than any sin­gle American offi­cial has ever man­aged to inflict in the his­to­ry of the repub­lic. Yes, more than Joe McCarthy.

Please make no mis­take about it; a twice acquit­ted Donald Trump will unleash a move­ment that this gov­ern­ment sys­tem will not sur­vive. The self­ish and self-serv­ing nature of Republican Senators will be the unrav­el­ing and ulti­mate undo­ing of this great Republic.

On that note, House man­agers mak­ing the case against Donald Trump in front of the Senate should basi­cal­ly make the case to the American vot­ers. After all, mem­bers of the Republica cau­cus sit­ting in that cham­ber judg­ing Trump’s guilt or inno­cence are them­selves co-conspirators. 

Josh Hawley of Missouri, Raphael Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Okholoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennesse, Mike Braun of Indiana, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennesse, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, and two-thirds of House Republicans are all respon­si­ble for spread­ing and main­tain­ing the lie that the elec­tions were stolen from Trump.
They are essen­tial­ly unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tors, yet they are asked to sit as jurors to deter­mine whether Trump is guilty of incit­ing a rag­ing insur­rec­tion­ist mob to attack the Capitol.
These men and women sit­ting as jurors can­not be expect­ed to vote to con­vict Donald Trump; they agreed with every­thing that happened.

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.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.