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Author Archives: Mike
Republican Voters More Focused On What They Wanted, Voted Down Ballot, Democrats Did Not
According to elections officials, over 80 million Americans voted for Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Vice ‑Presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris.
They also reported that 73 million turned out for the Trump/Pence ticket.
Both Biden and Trump managed to turn out more votes, if not voters, than any other candidates in presidential election history. The secret sauce in this, could be the loathing some harbor for Trump on the one hand, and on the other, the love others have for him, and his hate-filled crusade.
Another possibility, or in addition to that, maybe people will vote if you make it easy for them to do so. Trump and his Republican cohorts have been fighting tooth and nail across the country to make it difficult for all qualified Americans to vote.
Republican Legislatures in Pennsylvania, down through the Carolinas to Texas and places far beyond, have enacted laws that not only make it difficult for people to vote, but have demonstrably sought to limit the voting rights of tens of millions of Americans of color.
Those actions include but are not confined to closing down polling places in communities of color i.e. in African-American communities and close to Native-American reservations.
In Texas, the Republican Governor Gregg Abbot unashamedly removed all drop boxes except one in Houston, a city heavily populated with Black people. Removing the drop boxes was designed to make it exponentially more difficult for the state’s residents to drop off their ballots.
In what was a clear sign of how politics has made the American court system hardly distinguishable from raw racial, political mudwrestling, the Texas Republican Appeals court upheld Abbot’s disgusting and nauseating move to disenfranchise millions of voters.
As we seek to understand the message of the last elections, there is much to ponder. If 80 million people voted for Biden-Harris and the Democratic party, why on God’s green Earth would they not vote to remove the disgusting old curmudgeon Mitch McConnel as Senate Majority leader.
Everyone saw how McConnel obstructed President Obama’s agenda and, in the final analysis, how he created his own rule to block Judge Merrick Garland from receiving a hearing for placement on the highest court almost eleven months before the 2016 elections.
He then changed his own rules to place a right-wing reactionary in Amey Coney Barrett on the court in the month of the elections as Americans were already voting.
I don’t believe any facts about McConnel would have prevented his backwoods supporters in Kentucky from re-electing him as their senator.
It is their right to elect whomever they wish to represent them. We expected that more enlightened and educated people across the country would vote to remove him from senate leadership.
How could Democrats and Independents who saw the last four years of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnel’s treachery vote to remove Donald Trump but keep Mitch McConnel while reducing the power of Nancy Pelosi?
It makes absolutely no sense!
Sure, there is a tiny sliver of a chance that somehow, voters in Georgia could hand the senate leadership to Charles Schumer, but that is a long-shot, in a state that is still a Republican stronghold.
Even if all the forces of runoff elections were to smile on the Democrats come January, it still does not negate the fact that the November vote made no sense.
Why would Democratic and Independent voters not show the same loathing they felt for Trump and his faux Christian sidekick Mike Pence, to House and Senate Republican leaders who have enabled him over the last four years.
Why would they vote to empower state Republicans in State after state?
The sad reality is that the Democratic voter base may not be as educated as we would like to believe. The numbers that voted tells one story.
Many people voted, but did they vote in an educated and informed way outside of their disdain for Donald Trump?
Making it easier for people to vote is one thing; getting people to make really informed decisions outside of raw passion is quite another.
The lesson I have gleaned from the elections are stark; they are not what I was hoping for, but failing new and scientific exit polling results emerging, I believe the Republicans focused on not just keeping Donald Trump in office; they wanted to ensure that Trump’s racist and divisive policies were solidified from county boards all the way through the statehouses and all branches of the Federal Government.
Seventy-three million of them wanted the racism that has characterized Donald Trump’s divisiveness and racism, to become the new normal in America. They turned out in unprecedented numbers to solidify those beliefs.
There are more Democrats and other voters in America, than those who cast votes for the worst person to occupy the presidency in my lifetime. The 2020 election results bore that out. They voted straight red down the ballot.
Democrats, on the other hand, turned out, and voted by mail, in unprecedented numbers; what they lacked, however, was the same fervor and focus of the racist Trump voters.
They ensured that they booted Donald Trump, but they ignored the other races. They paid no attention to the Senate, nor House, not their own local races.
That failure must be laid solely at the feet of Tom Perez and the Democratic National Committee.
Republicans cleaned up, by being more focused on what was important to them. It has always been that way; Democrats ignore races in their own communities; Republicans do not.
Republicans are Zealots, there are no Democratic legislatures or Governors in deep blue states.
That’s why Republicans control statehouses, governorships, and other elected positions even in deep blue states.
Democrats, and to whatever extent there are independent voters, better wise up real fast; the people who vote Republican have zero pauses about turning this 250-year-old experiment into a totalitarian dystopia for everyone except themselves.
Did you hear the elected officials in that party open their mouths to denounce the Russian-style propaganda that was unleashed on the American Democratic process over the last four years?
No?
Then let that be a lesson to you; the pull of privilege and racial superiority is greater to them than a free and fair society in which all have an equal shot.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Kelly Loeffler And The GOP Should Denounce Georgia’s Radical, Anti-Christian Socialist Senate Candidate
By Michael Harriot
Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s (R‑Ga.) incessant attacks on her Senate opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock, can all be condensed to Republican red-meat talking points: Radical ideology is dangerous. People who twist the word of God to further an extremist agenda should be condemned. Government handouts are terrible because America is not a socialist country; it is a democracy. Conservative principles, family values and hard work are what made this country great. Faith is good. Crime, bad. Freedom. Troops. Jesus.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Kelly Loeffler.
She’s absolutely right. A true Christian would never vote for a religious fanatic who preached an anti-American agenda. A real American would always honor the brave men and women who fight for our freedoms. The American dream should only come through hard work, so we should do away with this “victim mentality.” Instead of celebrating thugs, celebrities and people who use identity politics, we should be fostering a culture that honors citizens who achieved success by merit.
This is what the America-loving patriots in the GOP stand for. If the people in Georgia were actually conservative Christians, they would love anyone who embodied these values and hate anyone who didn’t.
A true patriot would love Raphael Warnock.
A real Republican would hate Kelly Loeffler.
Warnock versus the Welfare Queen
One of Georgia’s senate candidates was raised in the Christian tradition by a veteran who started his own business after serving our country. This American patriot found a way to escape poverty through education and faith in Jesus Christ. One candidate has an unimpeachable record of community service. One candidate has fought for religious freedom and lived a faith-filled, scandal-free life.
The Cruelty Is The Point Of Trump’s Approval Of Hanging And Firing Squads As Execution Methods
By Austin Sarat
The Trump administration on Friday dramatically expanded the federal government’s ability to carry out the death penalty and use archaic methods of execution that would prove to be a national embarrassment if used in Trump’s waning days as president.
At a time when every other constitutional democracy and many religious faiths have condemned capital punishment because of its cruel assault on human dignity, Trump and his cronies have again thumbed their noses at the world and at common decency.
The new rule is worded with deceptive simplicity: “Federal executions are to be carried out by lethal injection or by any other manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence was imposed.” Behind this bureaucratic prose hides a stark fact: In our supposedly civilized nation, the federal government now will be able to hang, electrocute, gas, or shoot individuals if it does not want to kill them by lethal injection
While lethal injection is by no means an execution panacea, Trump and his minions have embraced outdated ways of carrying out death sentences. They have revived them almost entirely for their symbolic value rather than their need to use them in the unlikely event something goes awry with the lethal injection protocol. But, practically speaking, nothing now stands in the way of the federal government’s plan to put people to death by a single dose of pentobarbital.
The Trump administration is cruelly taking advantage of the fact that this country’s 22 remaining death penalty states, because they have had real difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs, have kept older methods on the books as a last resort.
Today, nine Southern and border states prescribe death by electrocution as an alternative method of execution. Six states authorize execution by gas, and the firing squad is the alternative in three more. Remarkably, three states — Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington — still allow for death by hanging if lethal injection is unavailable or impractical.
What Will It Take For Jamaicans To Realize That This Death-spiral Of Violent Crime Isn’t Normal?
The General elections are behind us, both in Jamaica, and the United States. These two events generally consume a lot of our time, energy, and attention. As Jamaicans, wherever we are, we understand that the two countries are inextricably linked. So whether we live in Jamaica or the United States, we have a vested interest in both countries’ outcomes.
One critical issue that seems to have garnered total acceptance in Jamaica is the issue of violent murders.
The heinous killing of young women, older adults, and even children, now take on a quiet acceptance, and a general sense that we have now reached a point of no return; that nothing can be done about it.
For decades members of the JCF complained about the relationship between politicians and criminals. This writer has made a case for years, that the lines between politicians sitting in the people’s parliament and the shottas are indistinguishable in many cases.
In all fairness to the politicians, I believe that political affiliations with murderers may not be at the levels they were in times past. Still, the damage done to our society because of those affiliations not only remain with us today, they inform the crime statistics.
Notwithstanding, ignorance, and bravado on the part of the ruling class and the elites have kept Jamaica mired in the quicksand of violent crime.
The opinions that inform and guide new legislation come from foreign-funded rights groups and a litany of other misguided voices at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
The point of view of the actual first responders, police, and fire is not considered. Even if they were to be considered, there is a perception that many members of the police department harbor view sympathetic to the criminal class. Their views are fundamentally different from that of officers of the past.
I do not wish to impugn the integrity of the members of the JCF, but I believe if we are honest, we will admit that the JCF leaves a lot to be desired as it relates to integrity and professionalism.
In fact, many past members who reside abroad complain of bad experiences with officers on their return to the country.
I usually take those complaints with a grain of salt, cognizant that as former members, we may sometimes expect to be treated differently.
Law enforcement cannot be laid at the feet of the police alone. The police enforce statutes; it is up to legislators who are serious about doing something about this scourge, about finding courage, and passing legislation that puts an end to the wanton killings.
Clearly, the laws that exist are not strong enough to deter the mindless killers who take human life with reckless abandon.
On the rare occasion that offenders are arrested for the murders they commit, the liberal system works assiduously to return those offenders to the streets under the guise of human rights and to maintain the justice system’s efficacy.
Maintaining credibility and fairness in criminal justice cannot be overemphasized, but it cannot come at the expense of justice for the victims and survivors of intentional violent crime.
Sadly, Jamaica’s criminal justice system is built on a foundation that embraces criminal rights, and second chances with hardly a thought for the rights and suffering of crime victims.
Remarkably, the entire country, and the so-called leaders that live on the [4411] square miles of Jamaica are socialized into believing that violent murders that occur two doors down, are no big deal.…… [crime de every weh]sic.
As I pointed out a few articles ago, the cost of Jamaica’s high murder rate is doing incalculable harm to the country’s economy.
Data do not support the misguided prevailing perception that violent crime is a by-product of poverty. Conversely, the Jamaican people’s increasing impoverishment is largely attributable to the nation’s high homicide rate.
The blatant support of initiatives beneficial to criminals by Justice Minister Delroy Chuck and others has emboldened criminals and has been a boon to criminal defense lawyers.
The police stumble along as if it is a credible law enforcement agency, the commissioner of police continues to receive a pass, and the government and opposition float by unaccountable.
In the meantime, the bodies continue to turn up, and the nation continues to pretend that the carnage is normal.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Trump Is On A Death Row Killing Spree: Bill Barr Now Wants To Bring Back Firing Squads
Donald Trump is poised to set a grim record for overseeing the most executions during a presidential transition.
The Trump administration is rushing to execute an unprecedented number of people before President-elect Joe Biden, an opponent of the death penalty, takes office on January 20.
Unless he grants requests for commutations, President Trump will leave office having set a grim record for overseeing the most executions of federal prisoners during a presidential transition period in U.S. history, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The Trump administration has already executed eight people by lethal injection since July, when the federal government resumed executions after a 17-year hiatus.
On Friday, one day after carrying out the first federal execution under a “lame duck” president in 131 years, the Department of Justice announced its intention to execute three more people incarcerated at the Terre Haute federal prison in Indiana. This brings the total number of people scheduled to be executed before Trump leaves office to five, including Lisa Montgomery, a survivor of extreme sexual violence who suffers from mental illness and would be the first woman to be executed on the federal level in nearly six decades.
“We’re really in the middle of an unprecedented execution spree,” said Allison Cohen, a spokesperson for the anti-death penalty group Death Penalty Action, in an interview.
The last time a federal execution was carried out under a “lame duck” president was in 1889, after President Grover Cleveland lost his first bid at reelection, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. The seven executions carried out by the Trump administration in the four-month period leading up to the November elections outnumber those carried out by any presidential administration over the past 78 years. At the same time, states are on pace to perform the fewest number of executions in nearly four decades.
Cohen said the federal executions already carried out since July “line up perfectly” with the campaign season, allowing the Trump campaign to boast about the president’s supposed “law and order” credentials. A regulation proposed by the Trump administration on Wednesday would allow the federal government to execute people by methods besides lethal injection — including by firing squad, according to Death Penalty Action.
“From what we can tell, this has been just another way for Trump to break a record and have something to email his followers,” Cohen said.
While a majority of Americans prefer life sentences in prison to the death penalty, 58 percent of Republicans still support killing incarcerated people, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. Meanwhile, a growing number of advocates are pushing for an end to both the death penalty and life-without-parole sentences, which they call “death by incarceration.”
Biden has said he opposes the death penalty and will work to end capital punishment on the federal level, as well as provide incentives for the 28 states that still allow the death penalty to change their laws, according to Cohen. The Trump administration, Cohen said, appears to be pushing to execute people before Biden has a chance to reverse decisions made by the Department of Justice or grant them commutations — which would spare the prisoners’ lives, but would not absolve them of guilt or free them from prison.
Of all the current death row cases, Montgomery’s has gained the most attention as she is the first woman to face a federal execution in decades. Before her incarceration, Montgomery was traumatized by years of horrific sexual violence and abuse and developed severe mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder with psychotic features and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to advocates and her sister, Diane Mattingly.
Read the remainder of the story here: https://www.salon.com/2020/11/27/trump-is-on-a-death-row-killing-spree-bill-barr-now-wants-to-bring-back-firing-squads_partner/
Crime Drives Poverty, Not Necessarily The Other Way Around…
Police Commissioner Antony Anderson’s meeting with entertainers and industry members is commendable, even though continual educational outreach has been, and still is long overdue. Nevertheless, better late than never.
It cannot be overemphasized that crime has some of its roots anchored in a lack of education. Therefore, the police must continue to reach out to the larger population in its mission to lower crime, and explain the cost of non-support for their efforts to keep the country safe. This is particularly important because there is no meaningful government education strategy aimed at ultimately reducing violent crimes.
The fight against violent crime must be waged with a multi-pronged approach. It must include enforcement through intelligence-driven, strategic targeting of crime producers. It must include decapitating criminal gangs with surgical precision.
To get there, the police must also focus on executing the same level of strategic targeting of influential members of inner-city communities to bring them into the fold.
For too long, underserved inner-city communities have been incubators for violence producers; this must come to an end. Policing cannot be all about big guns and raids; integral to crime reduction is the need to have confidants within all communities. Even as Jamaica edges ever so slowly away from traditional modes of policing and former methods of crime-solving, the need for community engagement is invaluable to the ultimate goal of crime reduction.
Anderson’s meeting must be seen as an indication that he has now realized that entertainers are hugely responsible for shaping popular culture. As such, getting them to act responsibly with their creative-content is crucial to reorienting the next generation of would-be gang members and leaders.
Many entertainers are mindful that crime is not necessarily a by-product of poverty, as the country’s so-called intelligentsia has sought to convince us for decades.
According to a local reporting from inside the meeting, the vibrant discussion got in/tense when veteran entertainment consultant Clyde McKenzie suggested a strong correlation between crime and poverty.
However, Agent Sasco quickly debunked that theory by pointing out that “there is a tendency to marry violence and poverty; that’s not true.” He instead indicated that the genesis of violence goes beyond poverty.
I am glad that someone had the character to debunk that myth; over the years, I have consistently pointed out that there are countries with greater poverty than Jamaica, that have exponentially less crime than Jamaica does.
Data shows in real dollars and cents, how crime drives Jamaicans deeper and deeper into poverty year over year. Not poverty driving crime as some would have you believe, but crime driving poverty.
In 2013 Professor Anthony Clayton of the University of the West Indies, in a report prepared for the Ministry of National Security, called [A New Approach National Security Policy for Jamaica]; said, for example, that the direct medical cost of injuries due to interpersonal violence accounted for nearly 12% of Jamaica’s total health expenditure in 2006, while productivity losses due to interpersonal violence-related injuries accounted for approximately 4% of Jamaica’s GDP. If the latter is added to the estimate of security costs, then the combined total is 7.1% of Jamaica’s GDP.”
Commissioner Anderson’s approach may be a hail mary, considering the crime statistics facing the country. Nevertheless, the country must support his initiative to engage all sectors in this fight to return sanity to a country that uses violence and threats of violence as its only conflict resolution tool.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Look For The Fascists To Rise Up And Start Criticizing The New Incoming Administration
Now that Donald Trump is on his way out the door and a real president is slated to take office, look for the lying hypocrites in the Republican party to start yapping like rabid dogs, picking away at everything that the new administration attempts do.
Not a single one of them had the balls or character to open their pie holes as Donald Trump hammered away at the columns of the Republic, but they will be out second-guessing and blocking at every turn.
Already the mongrel behavior is underway, enter the president-elect’s announced choices for his cabinet, a cabinet that does not yet exist, because he will not be president for roughly another two months. However, that did not stop the anti-democracy zombies from raising their heads; Marco Rubio, the little dimwit from Florida, tweeted out that Biden’s picks were; quote“polite and orderly caretakers of American decline.”
You know this fool had nothing to say when this was the best he could come up with; what does that even mean? What does that even mean when the last four years are considered/Where was this squirrelly little fool over the last four years?
I mean, can you believe this? Rubio was too chicken shit petrified of Donald Trump to speak, but now the little Cuban has gotten his voice?
Rubio, who hates himself for being Hispanic, and his cohort in Texas Raphael, who goes around using the name [Ted], to try to fool people into believing he is white, is just as repulsive as Rubio in the fealty to the con artiste occupant of the white house. What pathetic little b*****s?
Then there is Tom Cotton from Arkansas, another one who sees himself as presidential timber. He responded to Biden’s picks as “panda huggers who will only reinforce Biden’s instincts to go soft on China.”
Where was this racist fool when Trump was going soft on Russia and North Korea and Saudia Arabia’s Prince Ben Salman for having Jamal Khashoggi cut into little pieces?
This is the same racist fool who said US founders viewed slavery as a “necessary evil upon which the union was built.” That clumsy blunder revealed Cotton’s pathetic soul, who he really is, if anyone did not already know.
This is the same Tom Cotton who told a local Arkansas newspaper that he rejects the idea that America was a systemically racist country to its core.
I guess the KKK chapters, and the white militias operating in the backwoods of his state and all across America are boys scouts chapters. Cotton then lied that he wasn’t defending slavery.
Cotton introduced the Saving American History Act, aimed at stopping funding for 1619, an initiative which bases US history teaching around the first arrivals of slave ships in the US in August of that year.
In a new York Oped, Tom Cotton excoriated peaceful demonstrations that sprung up after George Floyd was murdered, characterizing them as an orgy of violence and backed Donald Trump’s threat to use Federal Troops to quell peaceful demonstrations.
Cotton’s article was widely criticized, and more than 800 Times employees signed a letter denouncing its publication, saying it contained misinformation.
The newspaper later apologized, saying the piece fell below its editorial standards. Opinion editor James Bennet resigned as a result. These are the people jockeying to be the next Donald Trump.
There is no longer a Republican party; what exists in its place is a racist, fascist party, that does not believe in Democracy. A party that should no longer be trusted with the reins of governance.
Look for the Republicans to suddenly find their voices and start criticizing everything that the new administration does, never mind that they have all been silent over the last four years.
Donald Trump set out to single-handedly destroy two and a half centuries of a Democratic experiment; not a damn one of them had the character to stand up and defend America.
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Mike Beckles is a former police Detective corporal, businessman, freelance writer,
he is a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog chatt-a-box.com.
He’s also a contributor to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs free of charge, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest podcast, all free to you, of course.
Dianne Feinstein To Step Away From Senate Judiciary Committee Leadership Role After Barrett Hearings
This could not come too soon. Clearly, some of the Democrats in leadership positions are a little better than corporate Republicans. They get elected in blue states where large amounts of minorities vote overwhelmingly for them.
Despite that loyalty shown to them and the Democratic party, these elected officials have precious little in common with their constituents.
On the one hand, they are incredibly weak, feckless, and afraid to stand up to the Republicans who hate the migrant community. On the other, they are chummy with the Republicans even when they act in ways that are incontrovertibly in opposition to Democratic principles.
Dianne Feinstein is one such Democrat whose time has come and gone. Not only should she step away from the Judiciary Committee, but she should also make way for a younger Senator from the great state of California who is more in tune with the younger generation and their needs.
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Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) announced Monday that she would not seek a Senate Judiciary Committee position in the new Congress.
Feinstein’s tenure as the ranking member has been fraught with complaints by Democrats for refusing to challenge Republicans in the committee about President Donald Trump’s recent Supreme Court appointee. Once the hearing had finished, Feinstein thanked committee chair Sen. Lindsey Graham (R‑SC), saying, “This has been one of the best Senate hearings I have participated in.”
Progressives felt it legitimized a process that flew in the face of the GOP-imposed rule that no president could appoint a Supreme Court Justice in the final year of his or her presidency. It was a rule Republicans invented after former Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. But even after inventing the rule, Republicans refused to play by it, appointing Amy Coney Barrett after the death of legendary Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D‑IL) is next in line for the chairmanship.
The 87-year-old California Democrat is one of few on the committee who never attended law school.
(Originated from Rawstory)
Despite His Lies, Deceit, And Cruelty They Turned Out To Re-elect The Naked Emperor
Donald Trump is not the brightest bulb in the shed, far from it.…. but he is not that dumb to believe that he won the election that he lost handily. Donald Trump holds the belief that somehow he was wronged in 2016 when the Democrats questioned his win. In fact, Donald Trump believes that the past four years has been one continuous question mark against his presidency.
In brief, that is exactly why he decided to cast doubt on the Biden win, and he will continue to smear the presidency of Joe Biden with every bit of energy in his body.
Donald Trump is a small man in a big man’s body; in his small mind, he believes his actions after the elections was his way of getting back at the Democrats.
The jury s still out, and will still be out, on what harm Trump’s actions will have on the nation going forward.
But how were the Democrats supposed to act when thirteen Intelligence Agencies said that the Russians interfered in the elections on Trump’s behalf, and Donald Trump said he didn’t believe them.
How were people supposed to feel after the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was in the oval office with Trump, and only Russian media right after he took office and fired Jim Comey, the FBI Director?
Not only was Trump hamming it up with the Russians, but he also berated the former FBI Director to them. It was a shocking display of unpatriotism to the average observer; here was an American president berating his own countryman, a previously highly placed public servant to foreigners.
I shed no tears for Jim Comey; for all, we know Comey may have helped to give us Donald Trump when he decided to reopen investigations in October of 2016 in Hillary Clinton’s e‑mails.
James Comey reopened an investigation and made damaging public statements after he concluded that there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the former Secretary, in the fraudulent e‑mail scandal dredged up by Jim Jordon of Ohio and Trey Goudy of South Carolina.
James Comey should have made no statements against Hillary Clinton. If he had no evidence to prosecute her on, he had no right to make comments against her. His actions were prejudicial and extremely harmful to Secretary Clinton and her campaign.
James Comey vastly overstepped his bound, and he should never be entrusted with any government position ever again.
Since he took office, Donald Trump’s actions have been nothing, if not deferential and almost servile to the interest of Russia and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s despotic totalitarian leader. He left the Paris climate accord, disrespected Nato leaders, but praised Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, Kim Jung Un, and other despots.
Most shockingly, Donald Trump says he sees no reason why Russia would interfere in the 2016 election. His comments came during a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Donald Trump’s decision to seek to dig up dirt on then the still undeclared presidential candidate Joe Biden in Ukraine got him impeached; the irony in that is that not only did it get him impeached, but it also drew Biden into the fray, and Biden beat his ass by a wide margin on November 3rd.
More than the damage Trump’s actions have had on him; personally, his actions jeopardized America’s strategic long-term interest in Ukraine when he decided to withhold desperately needed military aid that was needed to keep an aggressive Russian leader and his military at bay.
The average American may never know the full extent of Donald Trump’s treachery against the United States, but I believe that the intelligence services are well aware of his actions.
For those reasons, Trump’s vindictive [little stunt] in holding up the Biden transition and seeking to cast doubt on the elections’ validity is to be condemned.
Donald Trump never cared about the country; to him, the country was only as good as long as he could milk it for whatever he could. The jury is still out on whether he really wanted to be president, but once he won, and tasted real power, he was smitten. He did not care enough about America if it meant that he would not be allowed to disregard the democratic norms that have existed for over two and a half centuries by remaining in office.
If he cannot stay in office, he will burn the whole damn thing down.
The sad reality is that 73 million people were willing to suspend reality and pretend that the naked king was fully clothed in imaginary finery.
Despite all his lies and extreme cruelty they ignored them and pretended not to care. White so-called evangelicals see this grifter as the second coming of Jesus Christ; some even said their God sent him.
A lying grifter who cheated on his wife with a prostitute, while his wife was at home having just given birth, a man who bragged about violating the privacy rights of young and vulnerable women in his pageants.
A degenerate who bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia, locked children in jails, celebrates white supremacists, is willing to veto a defense spending bill, because it has in it, language that would remove confederate general’s names from US military bases, castigates black women as low IQ, and labels black men sons of bitches.
Donald Trump is the pain from the disease that eats away at the underbelly of America. He was at least smart enough to realize that there was a vein of hatred, resentment, and grievance on which to run. He knew that if he lied about his wealth, there were enough racist whites who would believe him; why not? They believed they were superior to the enslaved black people during slavery, even though they themselves were enslaved, albeit under a different designation (bondsmen).
He knew if he said he was against abortions, he would get the sanctimonious hypocrites who call themselves evangelicals. Their only concern in life is to stop babies from being aborted, but God forbid that the mother asks for some food to feed the rapist’s baby she is forced to bring to term, and all of a sudden, that’s a bridge too far.
Trump knew enough about their hatred for Blacks, so all he had to do was play up his white supremacist bona fides and he would have a cult following. Sure, Trump is a despicable racist, but his brazen play at white supremacy is designed to solidify and hold the ignorant racist evangelical right-wing nutters that gravitate to him.
Despite everything, he did over the last four years, rather than step back from his lies, cruelty, and deceit, they turned out in even larger numbers and tried to re-elect the buffoon of a naked emperor.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Trump Reckless Campaign Events Were Super Spreaders Now The Chickens Are Coming Home To Roost…
The media fails the American people; even as television networks and cable channels do 24-hour about the COVID-19 virus, it is not appropriately informing the country that Donald Trump’s reckless and selfish Presidential rallies were, in fact, super-spreading events.
HERE IS A LIST OF SOME OF THE NOTABLES WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED WITH THE COVID-19 VIRUS.
- Hope Hicks, a counselor to Donald Trump, tested positive for the coronavirus. Stephen Miller. Jalen Drummond. Admiral Charles Ray. Jayna McCarran. An unnamed White House Valet. Chad Gilmartin. Kayleigh Mcenany. Utah Senator Mike Lee. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Caroline Leavitt. Bill Stepien. North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis. Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway. Chris Christie. John Jenkins. Nicholas Luna.
Donald Trump knowingly carried out a campaign as if there was no pandemic, he was warned about the dangers long before the nation knew how dangerous the virus would be.
As now President-elect Joe Biden campaigned virtually, Trump mocked him for campaigning from his basement. His band of sycophants ignored the warnings, decided against wearing face masks, and went about life as their moronic leader said they should.
Each and every person who attended those events made themselves potential victims as well as spreaders of the virus.
Trump’s incredibly reckless and selfish disdain for science will resonate long after he is removed from office.
More and more people will die.….even as he has lost but still selfishly works to subvert the process, leading to more and more deaths.….And the Republican nation is deathly silent, deathly acquiescent as he wrecks the Republic and tens of thousands die.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
How Many Billions Will Blacks Blow Outside Our Communities This Holiday Season?
I have long harbored the belief that the true racial harmony many Americans long for will be best realized when all ethnic groups’ economic advancement is realized.
How do we attain economic independence in a country where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening by the day? We will get to that in due course, but in the meantime, it is important to consider that the respect that those at the bottom crave, will not be gained by begging for it, demanding it, demonstrating for it; it has to be earned.
Being at the bottom of the economic ladder, African-Americans have the most to gain by changing how we handle whatever economic resources we possess.
Yet, for some strange reason, more than any other racial group, we seem to have set a course toward the total and complete economic empowerment of everyone but ourselves.
Last Year the black community spent somewhere between 1.1 & 1.3 trillion dollars on consumer goods and services; hardly any money was spent supporting black businesses.
And so I believe that as long as black people continue to spend a few bucks in black hairdressing salons and barbershops, then dress up in clothes with Italian designer names, to go out to eat at Italian, Chinese, and other people’s restaurants, then spend the night in hotels, none of which is owned by us, we will forever be at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Money is power; we can pretend all we want that we can placate others by being servile and amiable, but the truth is that money is what matters in this country.
I am not making a case for a capitalistic approach to everything we do.
What I am alluding to is the distinct reality that when we have none of the amenities to sustain life, when we have to go outside our community to purchase the goods and services we require, we will forever be at the mercy of the people to whom we continue to give our money.
If we are stuck begging people to let us eat at their restaurants, instead of owning and patronizing our own, no one will take us seriously.
If we continue to spend every cent we earn in department stores and on websites buying Italian designer clothes and accessories, even though( we set fashion trends), we will forever be marketed to, for our money. At the same time, we receive no respect for our contribution to their growth.
As long as we continue to drink expensive champagne manufactured by people who say they did not create it for us, when we make work boots fashionable and expensive, and spend our last dollar on expensive gaming machines, games, and other paraphernalia, we will continue to be a well-lubricated conduit for money, preciously little of which will stick to our community.
Last year according to the Organization of American History, the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM), Los Angeles chapter, tweeted: “We’re dreaming of a #BlackXmas.” For the second year, the movement leveraged black buying power — now over one trillion dollars — and the Christmas holiday to challenge white capitalism and supremacy, the principal causes of racial and economic inequalities and state-sanctioned violence against black people. African Americans were urged to withhold their dollars from “white corporations” and instead “donate to Black-led organizations that are building new, liberatory structures in our communities…in the names of your loved ones as their [holiday] gifts.” If shoppers wanted to partake in the holiday shopping ritual, they were encouraged to purchase from black-owned retailers.
https://mikebeckles.com/black-dollar-flee-but-to-where/
There are many more startups today than when I started writing on this issue; I wish them well. Nevertheless, though the idea of more startups is incredibly exciting to watch, I wonder whether many are being done extemporaneously and without the requisite financial backing necessary to withstand the growing pains?
I am particularly hopeful at the prospect that online businesses have of surviving, if they can afford to weather the storm of exorbitant web-hosting fees, tech support, and the host of other challenges that comes with online marketing, not the least of which are stiff and voluminous competition.
The fact that consumers do not know the color of black site owners/operators may be a net positive for those business owners in the long run.
My fervent hope is that more and more African-Americans will begin to embrace the idea that black business ownership is tied to our financial empowerment.
It is a simple concept that goes like this; when we get busy in our own lives, running our restaurants, banks, barbershops, hair salons, hotels, realty companies, construction companies, tax processing firms, movie-making companies„ television networks, people will see what we are doing, and they will come a‑knocking.
It is not a novel concept; it is what every other ethnic group in America is busy doing.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Police Federation Issues Statement On The Sudden Passing Of Police Sergeant
MESSAGE FROM: THE POLICE FEDERATION
Dear Colleagues,
The Central Committee of the Police Federation expresses our deepest and most sincere condolences to the family, colleagues, and friends of our brother, the late No.1392 Sergeant Prince McDonald, of the St. Catherine South Division (Old Harbour Police Station).
The late Sergeant McDonald passed today, Thursday, November 19, 2020, after hospitalized, suffering from a medical condition.
It is never easy losing a loved one, neither to console those who are hurting and mourning. We can only provide comfort, support, and prayers in times of bereavement. We will continue to pray for his relatives and colleagues at the Old Habour Police Station and trust that God will give them strength during this darkest hour. Once again, we express our sincere condolences. May his soul rest in eternal peace and light perpetually shine on him.
Sincerely,
Your Central Committee
Jamaica Police Federation»»»»»
This publication wishes to associate itself with the sentiments expressed by the Police Federation; We mourn with the family of Sergeant McDonald, the JCF family, and the entire country.
“Abuse Of Office”: Graham Hit With Formal Ethics Complaint Amid Allegations Of Election Meddling
This article originally appeared on Raw Story
Ethics experts asked the Senate Ethics Committee on Wednesday to look into Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone call last week with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, CNN reported.
The three experts — Walter Shaub, a former top ethics watchdog for the federal government, Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush’s administration, and Claire Finkelstein, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law — are asking the Senate to look into whether or not Graham made a suggestion that Raffensperger “disenfranchise Georgia voters by not counting votes lawfully cast for the office of president.”
The letter reflected, in part: “If these allegations are true, Senator Graham’s conduct constitutes an abuse of office and conduct unbecoming of a senator. For the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to suggest to a state Secretary of State that he refrain from counting lawful votes threatens the electoral process and damages representative democracy. The Senate Select Committee should investigate this matter and, if it finds Chairman Graham committed the alleged misconduct, seek an appropriate sanction or any other appropriate remedy.”
The letter continued, “Secretary Raffensperger’s allegation describes extreme misconduct and abuse of senatorial authority. This alleged attempt by Senator Graham to throw the election for President Trump after the fact by encouraging the very fraud he purports to be investigating threatens the fabric of our nation by undermining the very thing that makes it a republic, our elections. Even if the committee believes only Senator Graham’s account, his call to the state election official during an ongoing vote count amounts to misconduct. These alleged acts committed by Senator Graham bring discredit and dishonor upon the Senate and constitute conduct unbecoming of a United States Senator. Therefore, we urge the committee to open an investigation of Senator Graham at once and, if it finds the conduct occurred as alleged, take the strongest action within its authority to address misconduct by a member of the Senate.”
Read the letter here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20412472/ethics-complaint-senator-lindsey-o-graham2.pdf
Two Republican Yahoos Tried To Do Trump’s Bidding In Michigan…
President-elect Joe Biden leads by nearly 148,000 votes in Michigan; nevertheless, two Republican Yahoos who drank from the bitter cup of Donald Trump’s deceit, decided to hold the largest county in the state, [which includes Detroit], the heavily African-American stronghold hostage.
Monica Palmer & William Hartmann.
Monica Palmer and William Hartmann are the two Trump sycophants who make up the four-member panel of canvassers and two Democrats. The four had the responsibility to certify the vote in Wayne County, including the heavily African-American city of Detroit.
The two Democrats voted to certify the vote but not Palmer and Hartmann, who claimed that impropriety allegations made it impossible to certify the vote.
According to The Detroit News, the initial deadlock came after “absentee ballot poll books at 70% of Detroit’s 134 absentee counting boards were found to be out of balance without explanation. The mismatches varied anywhere from one to more than four votes.” But the Secretary of State said that wasn’t an indication of fraud.
After a zoom conference during which public officials and citizens made it clear that not certifying the vote would not be tolerated, Hartman and Palmer went back and voted to certify the vote.
It is remarkable the lengths that Republican bureaucrats are willing to go to demonstrate their loyalty to a lying, demagogue, instead of demonstrating fidelity to the United States Constitution.
However, no one should be surprised by this; over 71 million of them turned out to reelect the very same immoral and amoral creature.
If there is any good that can be salvaged after that reality check, it is the fact that almost 79 million stood up and said, “not on our watch.”
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
Cops Deserve Our Praise As They Continue To Work Under Terrible Conditions…
As violent crimes continue to escalate unabated, some factions of the media elites continue to call for greater pressure on our police officers and a greater degree of restraint on their ability to keep our country safe.
The Jamaica Gleaner Editorial board seems to have a greater vendetta against our police than INDECOM’s commissioner Terrence Williams did.
Terrence Williams is gone, but his enablers in the Glass Tower on North Street have not given up on their crusade against the police. In its November 15th Editorial, the Board continues to call for the Government to give INDECOM the power to arrest and prosecute cops, soldiers, and corrections officers accused of crimes or excessive force.
These new powers would mean that in addition to conducting its own investigations as part of its oversight functions, the agency would also have the power of arrest and, just for good measure, would also prosecute its own investigations.
Given that power, INDECOM would be able to go after police officers arbitrarily. It would be open season on the police as it was under Terrence Williams.
Terrence Williams went after police officers with the flimsiest of evidence manufactured in Jamaica’s supercharged political and criminal supporting inner-city communities.
Williams is no longer there, but the rancid and corrosive environment he created is still there.
I do not wish to speak for the police; they are quite capable of speaking for themselves; after all, the police department is chock-full of lawyers and others educated in various other disciplines. Nevertheless, with the two political parties that control our country, we have zero confidence that the intellectual foresight is there to foresee the existential harm that is being forced upon Jamaica by the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
It is for these very reasons that Jamaica must throw out its constitution that makes it a supplicant to Great Britain and, for the first time, set a course that is Jamaica for Jamaicans.
Neither of the countries that would lecture Jamaica on human rights allows anyone to dictate how to uphold their laws.
No one is advocating that police be given Carte Balche to violate the citizens’ rights they are sworn to protect. Still, we must be damn certain that when we try to apply pressure to the police, we are, to some degree, empowering criminals.
There are those in their ivory towers that are heavily invested in the status quo; they will have found ways to influence policy.…..
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.
The Gall Of American-based Rights Agency In Criticizing Jamaica Is Stunning…
One of the fatal flaws in Jamaica’s collective mentality is the continued desire to attach ourselves to the notion that all things foreign are better than that which we create ourselves.
But for a few exceptions, we know that when Jamaica had vibrant manufacturing and agri-sectors, our products were vastly superior and safer than many foreign foods and products.
We also have a distorted perception of Jamaica’s size and importance in the world, not to mention the precipitous state of Jamaica’s financial situation related to meeting its fiduciary obligations.
Nevertheless, the opinion shapers on the media editorial boards have continued to push hifalutin demands on the government, without the slightest consideration of the cost and consequences on our tiny Island.
For decades newspapers, television, and radio have been willing participants and cheerleaders in the degradation of our culture. They enable and facilitate the irresponsible dancehall culture that celebrates gun violence and [badmanism].
Murder lyrics are celebrated as art. Misogynistic lyrics are overlooked, even as physical and mental abuse of women and children continues to grow.
Violent reggae artistes are held up as icons and are even invited to the premier institution of higher learning as a kind of celebrity to be emulated, rather than a sick sociopath to be ostracized and shunned.
Nevertheless, the Observer is now hand-wringing as if it had nothing to do with this crassness that has changed our country exponentially for the worse. Spare me the crocodile tears, please.
Even as the Prime Minister has launched a [gofund me] account to help to offset the cost of flooding, these same charlatans in the editorial board bubbles they create for themselves, are calling for the Government to find resources to expand the scope of (INDECOM), the Independent Commission Of Investigations, that is tasked with investigating wrongdoing on the part of police officers, soldiers, and correctional officers.
It is as if these miscreants who influence decision-making in the country are unaware of the Island’s murder rate.
On November 15th, the Gleaner Editorial board demanded that the government speak to Justice Bryan Sykes’s report and INDECOM.
The demand came out of the recent questions posed to the Jamaican contingent at the United Nations in New York.
The questions posed to the Jamaican contingent and the response it gave in return, was nauseating and insulting.
The questions were presumptuous and preposterous, and the responses were that of a chastened child caught with its hand in the Cookie Jar.
I saw the report, and I wondered aloud whether or not Jamaican was a sovereign nation or a supplicant sycophant to outside bosses?
The idea that American-based Human Rights Agencies would have the temerity and gall to question any country about their human rights records is beyond stunning.
American police murder and otherwise brutalize people, particularly people of color, in ways that no police department in the western world would dare do.
That local media houses would be giving credence to these hypocrites is stunningly elitists and intellectually dishonest.
It is difficult for anyone to disagree that the police should not lock away the mentally ill.
It is also important to reconcile that when the police are called, and an offender is a person of unsound mind, the police have a duty to arrest, and remove the person from the streets for the public’s safety.
It is not up to the police to find places to house and care for the mentally ill they are forced to arrest. In a perfect world, the police should not have any interaction with the mentally disabled.
The most disturbing thing about the INDECOM act is that despite the harm that the law has done to crime-fighting on the Island, the forces that encourage, cheer-leads, and nurture the gun culture, (the media), wants to give more powers to INDECOM, to arrest and charge police officers themselves, then do its own prosecution.
Throughout its existence INDECOM, the agency has been unable to mount a decent investigation much less to prosecute its owns cases.
INDECOM was not authorized to prosecute its own investigations for good reasons and that is how it should remain.
Prosecution of criminal cases is within the remit of the Director Of Public Prosecutions and that is where it should remain.
The fact that no investigative agency in the western world does its own prosecution does not matter to these media houses that are becoming enemies of the state.
When an agency investigates, arrest, and prosecute, it opens up a can of corrupt worms; it does not matter to these enemies of the state.
The fact that the first Commissioner of INDECOM, Terrence Williams, used the then neophyte agency as a weapon to persecute police officers and, consequently, aided in the mass escalation of crime as police dropped their hands does not matter.
Terrence Williams was only to investigate, yet he craved arrest powers, and more than anything else he craved prosecutorial powers. Ask yourselves what is with the rapacious desire to arrest and prosecute, if the evidence of wrongdoing is solid?
Given the Islands’ precipitous perch on the ledge of becoming a failed state based on its violent crime statistics, the question arises as to whose interest is served when our police are further shackled. At the same time, dangerous criminals run free, killing and terrorizing whomever they please?
No American has either legal or moral authority to lecture any nation about human rights, considering America’ss history of police suppression of its own citizens of color; neither is Canada nor Britain.
It is time for the little gods in the peanut gallery to get a clue and stop aiding in our country’s destruction.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.
He’s contributed to several websites.
You may subscribe to his blogs, or subscribe to his Youtube channel @chatt-a-box, for the latest videos.