Author Archives: Mike

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Judge Denies Greg And Travis McMichael Bond In Ahmaud Arbery Murder Case After 2‑Day Hearing

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By Zack Linly

Greg and Travis McMichael, two of three men involved in the Feb. 23 pur­suit and shoot­ing death of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick in Glynn County, Ga., tried to get released on bond. But Friday, after two days of hear­ings, a judge denied their request, accord­ing to the New York Times.

During a Thursday hear­ing, defense attor­neys for the McMichaels argued that these men are cit­i­zens who serve their com­mu­ni­ty and not racist lynch­ers of a Black man who was out jog­ging in their neighborhood.

Fox 40 reports that the McMichaels’ plea for free­dom was heard by Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley. Aside from bond, their lawyers request­ed that Judge Walmsley reject two of the counts against them, includ­ing mal­ice murder.

From Fox 40:

Travis McMichael’s attor­neys, Robert Rubin and Jason Sheffield, wrote in court doc­u­ments request­ing bond that he lives with his par­ents, has a 3‑year-old son and doesn’t have a pass­port. They cit­ed his past ser­vice as a U.S. Coast Guard machine tech­ni­cian as proof of his character.

Gregory McMichael, 64, is a retired inves­ti­ga­tor for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit dis­trict attorney’s office and a for­mer Glynn County police offi­cer. His lawyers said in a legal fil­ing that they plan to present evi­dence in court to show why he should be freed on bond.

The McMichaels’ attor­neys are also ask­ing the judge to reject the indictment’s mal­ice mur­der charge, say­ing it was writ­ten in a way that improp­er­ly “charges two crimes in one count.” They made a sim­i­lar argu­ment for toss­ing out a charge of crim­i­nal attempt to com­mit false imprisonment.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, the third defen­dant in the case,was pre­vi­ous­ly denied bond but will also appear­ing before a judge to try again.

The McMichaels, as well as a third man, William Bryan, are charged with mul­ti­ple felonies includ­ing mur­der after they chased Arbery down, repeat­ed­ly blocked him from run­ning out of the sub­di­vi­sion and pos­si­bly hit him with one of the trucks pur­su­ing him before Travis shot with a shot­gun, accord­ing to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations which took over the case in May.

“I believe Mr. Arbery was being pur­sued, and he ran till he couldn’t run any­more, and it was turn his back to a man with a shot­gun or fight with his bare hands against the man with the shot­gun,” GBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richard Dial said in June, CNN reports. “He chose to fight. I believe Mr. Arbery’s deci­sion was to just try to get away, and when he felt like he could not escape he chose to fight.

According to the Daily News, ear­ly dur­ing the hear­ing, Walmsley denied a motion by defense attor­neys to block pros­e­cu­tors from using racist Facebook posts shared between the defen­dants and oth­ers as evi­dence that the McMichaels should not be grant­ed bond.

In fact, while pros­e­cu­tor Jesse Evans was ques­tion­ing friends and fam­i­ly of Travis—all of whom appear to believe he’s a won­der­ful man and not a mur­der­ous racist — one friend, Zachary Langford, was asked about a text he received from Travis in November 2019 in which they dis­cussed Travis “shoot­ing a crack­head coon with gold teeth.” Langford — I shit you not — claimed Travis was “refer­ring to a rac­coon.” The wit­ness admit­ted that he respond­ed say­ing the “rac­coon” need­ed Newport cigarettes.

From the Associated Press:

Defense attor­neys for both McMichaels have denied any racist motives in the shoot­ing. Right after the Feb. 23 shoot­ing, Gregory McMichael told police that he and his son armed them­selves and got in a pick­up truck to pur­sue Arbery because they sus­pect­ed he was a burglar.

“These men are proud of what they have done,” Arbery’s moth­er, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told the judge as she asked him to deny them bond. “They want to go home because they think in their self­ish minds that they are the good guys.”

Prosecutors say Arbery was mere­ly jog­ging when the McMichaels pur­sued him. Their defense attor­neys insist­ed in court Thursday that’s not true.

“We have sub­stan­tial evi­dence that, on the day in ques­tion, Mr. Arbery was not a jog­ger,” said Robert Rubin, one of Travis McMichael’s attor­neys. “He was there for nefar­i­ous purposes.”

Rubin gave no evi­dence in court that Arbery was doing any­thing wrong the day he was shot.

Walmsley decid­ed to adjourn court Thursday evening with­out mak­ing a rul­ing on bond for the defen­dants because there was still more evi­dence to be pre­sent­ed, AP reports.

On day two of the hear­ing, which began Friday morn­ing, Walmsley denied the McMichaels bond. NPR reports that the racist texts sent by Travis as well as Langford’s lame-ass expla­na­tion of them might have been a fac­tor in the denial of bond. As far as Greg McMichael goes, Walmsley appeared to believe he may have used his past career in law enforce­ment to influ­ence the case.

From NPR:

In deny­ing bond, Walmsley cit­ed con­cern with the con­sis­ten­cy of the tes­ti­mo­ny among the dif­fer­ent wit­ness­es who spoke for Travis McMichael. He also specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed con­cern with one witness’s expla­na­tion for an alle­ga­tion of bias.

Though Walmsley did not elab­o­rate, on Thursday pros­e­cu­tors also read aloud racist mes­sages that McMichael exchanged with one of the wit­ness­es, Zachary Langford. In one mes­sage, McMichael used a slur for Black people.

After review­ing the mes­sages, Langford tes­ti­fied that McMichael “was refer­ring to a rac­coon, I believe.”
This sto­ry first appeared in the (https://​www​.the​root​.com

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Despite Losing In 2016, In By Elections & Receiving An Ass Whooping In 2020 PNP Still Clueless

Here is a brief obser­va­tion of the PNP.
Socialism, as a polit­i­cal con­struct, has been a fail­ure across the Globe, save and except for the Scandinavian region of Europe that prac­tice a kind of pseu­do-social­ism in their almost homoge­nous­ly white societies.
The social­ism that they prac­tice, guar­an­tees every­one a rather com­fort­able stan­dard of liv­ing if they pay a much high­er rate of taxation.
of note is the fact that those soci­eties were pre­vi­ous­ly inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy nations, some of which had con­quered parts of Africa and plun­dered its resources.
Note: the social­ism they prac­tice is not the ide­o­log­i­cal, beret-wear­ing fist thrust­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary style social­ism that the PNP con­tin­ues to offer to the Jamaican people.

The drub­bing the PNP suf­fered at the polls over the last two elec­tion cycles, along with the loss­es they sus­tained in the by-elec­tions, would be a wake-up call to a seri­ous polit­i­cal par­ty that under­stands polling data and trends.
Unfortunately, the par­ty fails to see that the younger gen­er­a­tion is more inter­est­ed in a mar­ket econ­o­my that allows them to shine on their own.
Young peo­ple see how oth­er mil­len­ni­als and gen­er­a­tion Xers are liv­ing in oth­er coun­tries and they want that lifestyle.….…
They do not want a polit­i­cal par­ty that is offer­ing them free­bies that they know it can­not deliv­er anyway.

Jamaicans do not want Socialism/​Communism, China, Russia, and most of the Eastern European nations that had sub­scribed to that polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy have moved their economies away from that failed con­struct since the fall of the Soviet Union.
It is shock­ing that in 2020 almost three decades since Michael Manley took Jamaica down the rab­bit hole of Democratic Socialism, that these washed up idiots are still expect­ing Jamaicans to vote for them and their failed ide­ol­o­gy that peo­ple all around the world have long eschew, except for China, Cuba, North Korea, and Belarus to a cer­tain extent.

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

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JCF Must Do A Through Investigation To Determine How This Officer Was Killed And By Whom..

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The killing of a police Constable Kirkland Plummer last Saturday night in the parish of Clarendon has left more ques­tions than answers; in the mean­time, the grue­some killing has gen­er­at­ed much gum-flap­ping in the reg­u­lar cir­cles that gen­er­al­ly pro­duces more heat than light, and leaves us with no clear­er pic­ture of what occurred or why they occur.
Obviously, the Police Department is still not clear as to the [why], even though they may have already estab­lished the what, where, when, and how, and have report­ed that there are five sus­pects in custody.
Unfortunately, though com­mend­able, hav­ing five sus­pects in cus­tody means lit­tle if inves­ti­ga­tors can­not find cred­i­ble evi­dence out­side eye­wit­ness account­ing, when the Jamaican court sys­tem’s pos­ture is considered.

(Constable Kirkland Plummer)

Calls to sources have not shed much light on why Constable Plummer was at a par­ty that was for all intents and pur­pos­es sup­posed to be in con­tra­ven­tion of the Disaster Risk Management Act. Neither were we able to estab­lish whether he was mere­ly respond­ing on his own to the sounds of loud explo­sions at the event as the police reported.
At this time, and with­out the ben­e­fit of more detailed infor­ma­tion forth­com­ing from the police, we are left to mere­ly spec­u­late about the sequence of events that led this young offi­cer to lose his life.
As I pre­pared to speak to this killing, I ran across the Jamaica Observer Editorial page’s com­ments on Constable Kirkland Plummer’s killing and was dis­gust­ed at their head­line; [We can’t remain silent in the face of sav­agery].
For decades now, these pub­li­ca­tions have been will­ing and glee­ful par­tic­i­pants and cheer­lead­ers in the break­down of our rule of law and the poi­son­ing of our pop­u­lar culture.

So please spare me the croc­o­dile tears. After decades of plow­ing, fer­til­iz­ing, water­ing, and tend­ing to the seeds you have sown, don’t feign shock at the fruits you are har­vest­ing? The media has been vir­u­lent anti-police agi­ta­tors in all its forms; it has shaped and fos­tered a cul­ture that glo­ri­fies gang­ster­ism with no respect for the rule of law, or those who enforce the laws.
For its part, the JCF has con­sis­tent­ly failed to live up to its oath of office, essen­tial­ly giv­ing its ene­mies ammu­ni­tion with which to defeat it.
Like every­one else, [this observ­er] watch­es and waits, to hear a full and com­pre­hen­sive account­ing from the Police pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as to the cir­cum­stances that caused a young offi­cer to get sav­age­ly cut down in such a das­tard­ly manner.

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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. 
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.

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Black Entrepreneur Creates App To Help Film Police Brutality And Alert Family Members

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Meet James A. Samuel, Jr., founder, and CEO of a new app called ANJEL Tech, allows users to begin live stream­ing imme­di­ate­ly and trans­mit­ting footage to their fam­i­ly mem­bers when they are in any dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. The app, devel­oped by a DC-based Black-owned com­pa­ny, appeals to the African American com­mu­ni­ty because of what has been hap­pen­ing across the nation regard­ing police bru­tal­i­ty. However, the app can also be used to alert loved ones of oth­er per­son­al safe­ty issues such as domes­tic abuse, elder­ly abuse, etc.

James has over 30 years of fed­er­al expe­ri­ence work­ing for the U.S. Department of Defense. He has worked as an engi­neer, an F‑15 fight­er pilot, and an Intelligence Analyst. He says that he came up with the idea to devel­op the app to help pre­vent and min­i­mize per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty secu­ri­ty issues that often plague urban communities.
The ANJEL Tech app is cloud-based and geospa­tial­ly-enabled. James com­ments, “My team and I ulti­mate­ly cre­at­ed this app to help Black moms pro­tect and save their kids’ lives, and help more Black chil­dren live and grow into adult­hood and meet those expect­ed life mile­stones such as school grad­u­a­tion, mar­riage, family/​chil­dren, career, home­own­er­ship, etc.”

James says that the app was cre­at­ed in response to the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, and what makes the app so unique is that users can eas­i­ly live-stream what’s hap­pen­ing, imme­di­ate­ly noti­fy fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends of their loca­tion on a map (via text and email), and cre­ate a secure record of the inci­dent for future account­abil­i­ty pur­pos­es. All of this occurs in real-time via the app.

The ANJEL Tech app can be down­loaded now in the iOS App Store and soon avail­able in the Google Play store.

This sto­ry first appeared @bn.co.m

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Rapacious, Mendicant Doing Irreparable Damage To The Republic.

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It is hard to see the log­ic of Donald Trump’s infan­tile approach to the elec­tion results.
Is there no one that can tell him that even if he got every­thing he is demand­ing, he would still lose?
His demands for recounts by hand, he and his mind­less syco­phants coerced their zom­bies to give false affi­davits, the despi­ca­bly lies about dead peo­ple vot­ing. Whatever oth­er lies they can con­coct, he still lost the elections.
We knew that Donald Trump was a patho­log­i­cal liar. He lied about Barack Obama’s place of birth, lied about his wealth, lied that Mexicans are rapists and gang mem­bers, lied about the crowd size at his pathet­ic inau­gu­ra­tion in 2016.
There is noth­ing sacro­sanct that Trump will not dis­hon­or; he is a nar­cis­sis­tic, patho­log­i­cal mis­cre­ant. He is not only a liar, but he is a fraud and a cheat; he is an amoral, immoral crea­ture that cares about no one but himself.
This is the dan­ger­ous crea­ture that has been in charge of the gov­ern­ment since January 20th, 2016; this is the crea­ture that 71 mil­lion peo­ple turned out and vot­ed for.

Is there any won­der that even as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sur­passed 270 elec­toral votes, and is on track to win 306 elec­toral votes, Mitch McConnell, the head of the Republicans in the Senate, and the leader of the Republicans in the House Kevin McCarthy, has not stepped for­ward to say “we need to stop this and rec­og­nize that the American peo­ple have spoken?”
The Head of the General Services Administration has refused to sign off on giv­ing access to the Biden tran­si­tion team. This is crit­i­cal as there are funds avail­able to the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion to pay staff and take care of oth­er expenses.
There are reports that Trump has ordered that no one in the Republican par­ty refer to President-elect Joe Biden as, .….. well President-elect.
Mike Pompeo is alleged to have mes­sages at the State Department from for­eign lead­ers to the President-elect, but they have not been turned over to the President-elect.
Trump has ordered his staff to go ahead and pre­pare a bud­get to sub­mit to Congress, even though on January 20th, 2021, he will not be president.

Mike Pompeo, his sec­re­tary of state, told reporters who asked him about the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er, that there will be a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er to Donald Trump for a sec­ond term.
For his part, William Barr, has ordered US Attorneys to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute all vot­er fraud cas­es. This is a dra­mat­ic depar­ture from tradition.
In the rare instance that there have been alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud, those inves­ti­ga­tions have been han­dled by the states in which they occur. The last real case of vot­er fraud was by Republicans in the State of North Carolina.
Ironically, the Pennsylvania postal work­er on whose affi­davit Lindsay Graham launched a fusil­lade of alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud, and on which Barr ordered inves­ti­ga­tions, has report­ed­ly recant­ed his story.
Let us all hope that this will not be the end of it but that he will be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest extent of the law.

On Election night 2016, Former first lady, for­mer US Senator, and for­mer Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Donald Trump and con­ced­ed the election.
Eight days lat­er, on November 11th, of 2016, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, invit­ed Donald Trump over to the white house to show him the ropes. “I want to empha­size to you, Mr. President-elect, that we now are going to want to do every­thing we can to help you suc­ceed because if you suc­ceed, then the coun­try suc­ceeds.”[Barack Obama]
Donald Trump is what he is.….The Republicans in the House and Senate, the Governor’s Mansions, and the local Legislatures are all stand­ing by and watch Donald Trump destroy the Republic.

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

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Medical Cannabis: Things You Should Know

Cannabis which is also pop­u­lar­ly known as mar­i­jua­na has always been a very con­tro­ver­sial top­ic of debate. Although the world is slow­ly accept­ing the ben­e­fits of cannabis, it remains ille­gal in many countries.

Speaking of cannabis, there are two types. One is med­ical cannabis and the sec­ond is meant for recre­ation­al use. But in this post, we are going to dis­cuss only med­ical cannabis. If you wish to know more details about cannabis, then you can log into smok​ingth​ings​.com.

What is med­ical cannabis?

Medical cannabis is also derived from the mar­i­jua­na plant. The chem­i­cals present in med­ical mar­i­jua­na are often­times used to treat var­i­ous dis­eases and conditions.
Medical cannabis is the same as recre­ation­al cannabis. The only dif­fer­ence is that med­ical cannabis con­tains few­er lev­els of THC, the sub­stance that gets you high. There have been sev­er­al stud­ies on med­ical cannabis. Some have found pos­i­tive results in using med­ical cannabis.

What are the health ben­e­fits of med­ical cannabis?

Medical cannabis has been used to:

Relieve pain

One of the major and most com­mon health ben­e­fits of using cannabis is that it helps relieves pain. People suf­fer­ing from arthri­tis or chron­ic pain can find med­ical cannabis to be help­ful. In some cas­es, med­ical cannabis has been found to help replace the use of anti-inflam­ma­to­ry drugs such as ibupro­fen, which can have many unwant­ed side effects.

Help treat neu­ro­log­i­cal disorders

Cannabis is also found to help treat neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders like anx­i­ety, epilep­sy, Parkinson’s dis­ease, and post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. It is known to affect the lim­bic sys­tem and this is why many doc­tors pre­scribe med­ical mar­i­jua­na for the treat­ment of neu­ro­log­i­cal problems.

Treat can­cer

Researchers at India’s Amity University have com­piled lit­er­a­ture on the effects of cannabi­noids on dif­fer­ent can­cer types.

Cannabis is often­times used to treat the symp­toms of chemother­a­py side effects, shows poten­tial in lim­it­ing the growth of can­cer cells and even kill can­cer cells in cer­tain cases.

According to the researchers:

“THC and CBD exhib­it effec­tive anal­gesic, anx­i­olyt­ic, and appetite-stim­u­lat­ing effect on patients suf­fer­ing from cancer.”

Help Alleviate anx­i­ety and depression

People suf­fer­ing from depres­sion and anx­i­ety can also ben­e­fit them­selves from the use of cannabis. However, to get effec­tive results, it needs to be con­sumed in a con­trolled and prop­er way. Visit https://​amuse​.com/​c​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​/​l​o​s​-​a​n​g​e​l​e​s​/​c​o​n​c​e​n​t​r​a​tes and get more details.

Help lose weight

There is some evi­dence tying the use of cannabis to low­er body weight. Experts have sev­er­al the­o­ries regard­ing why cannabis has been linked to low­er risks of obe­si­ty. Among them are: Lower stress – peo­ple are more like­ly to binge eat when feel­ing stressed. Better sleep – poor sleep has been linked to weight gain. Increased metab­o­lism – cannabis inter­acts with cannabi­noid recep­tor 1 , which plays a role in metab­o­lism and food intake.

This arti­cle orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​0​8​/​m​e​d​i​c​a​l​-​c​a​n​n​a​b​i​s​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​y​o​u​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​k​n​ow/

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Donald Trump Is Attempting To Pull Off A Coup And Republicans Are Enabling Him…

The American peo­ple have long dis­played a pen­chant for play­ing foot­sie with the Republican par­ty and its crim­i­nal prac­ti­tion­ers, fun­da­men­tal­ly allow­ing them to get away with break­ing laws, breach­ing pro­to­cols, and engag­ing in total­i­tar­i­an tendencies.
On August 8, 1974, faced with the dis­tinct prospect of being impeached and removed from office, Republican President Richard Millhouse Nixon resigned the presidency.
Richard Nixon orches­trat­ed and autho­rized the break-in and bug­ging of the Democratic Campaign Headquarters in the Watergate build­ing in Washington DC.
Congress had also accused Nixon of obstruc­tion of jus­tice dur­ing the Watergate scan­dal, which kicked off in 1972.

Gerald and Betty Ford with the President and First Lady Pat Nixon after President Nixon nom­i­nat­ed Ford to be vice pres­i­dent, October 13, 1973

Many writ­ers have sought to put a light touch on Gerald Ford’s par­don of Richard Nixon. Others praise Republicans who are alleged to have told Nixon that the gig is up, and that he should resign.
On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned then plead­ed no con­test to tax eva­sion and mon­ey laun­der­ing charges. He was accused of tak­ing bribes of $29,500.
Gerald Ford, the Senate Minority leader, was rec­om­mend­ed to Richard Nixon to fill the vacant vice-pres­i­den­tial spot.
On December 6, 1973, the House con­firmed Ford by a vote of 387 to 35. After the House’s con­fir­ma­tion vote, Ford took the oath of office as Vice President of the United States.[w]

Nixon him­self was forced to fol­low his Vice President Spiro Agnew out of office when his crimes caught up to him and forced him to leave office pre­ma­ture­ly, but not before he worked out a devi­ous plan to avoid jail, by hav­ing Gerald ford par­don him for his crimes. This trade­off allowed him to return home to California and live out his life with­out any fear of spend­ing time in prison.
Ford jus­ti­fied his deci­sion by claim­ing that a long, drawn-out tri­al would have fur­ther polar­ized the nation.
Any ordi­nary Americans who orga­nized and orches­trat­ed the com­mis­sion of felonies, would cer­tain­ly have expect­ed to spend long stretch­es of time in prison for those crimes.
Not so for Republican crim­i­nal pres­i­dents; some peo­ple are more equal than others.
The Ford par­don of Richard Nixon was sold by Ford him­self and oth­ers to reunite the coun­try. The sad fact is that Gerald Ford, the first and only per­son to occu­py both the office of vice pres­i­dent and President with­out being vot­ed in by the peo­ple, engaged in a duplic­i­tous process that allowed a cal­cu­la­tive felon to walk away with­out hav­ing to pay for his crimes.

Republican President, and now a near deity, Ronald Reagan lied to the American peo­ple. He went around Congress and sup­plied aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua fight­ing against Cuban-backed Sandinistas.
Democrats passed the Boland Amendment, which restrict­ed CIA and Department of Defense oper­a­tions in Nicaragua specif­i­cal­ly; in 1984, a strength­ened Boland Amendment made sup­port almost impos­si­ble. A deter­mined, unyield­ing Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, “I want you to do what­ev­er you have to do to help these peo­ple keep body and soul togeth­er.” What fol­lowed would alter the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion of the pres­i­dent dra­mat­i­cal­ly. How “Iran” and “Contra” came to be said in the same breath result­ed from com­pli­cat­ed covert activ­i­ties, all car­ried out, the play­ers said, in the name of democ­ra­cy. (American Experience).
Where else have we heard those talk­ing points under Republican pres­i­dents? Oh.…… that would also be under pres­i­dent George W Bush, who arrived in the pres­i­den­cy after los­ing the pop­u­lar vote and would have lost Florida had the Supreme court allowed the vote count to pro­ceed. Bush used those same talk­ing points as he sought an excuse to launch an ille­gal war against Iraq’s sov­er­eign nation.

In the end, Reagan kin­da-sor­ta con­ced­ed that he had not told the truth in a con­vo­lut­ed expla­na­tion that made no sense, even as he denied full knowl­edge of the illic­it arms sale to Iran, after which the mon­ey was fun­neled to the Contras to con­tin­ue Reagan’s war.
Ronald Reagan was not held account­able for his actions.
The New York Times wrote; As a lieu­tenant colonel in the Marines and aide with the National Security Council at the Reagan White House, Mr. North oper­at­ed at the cen­ter of the affair and became its most cel­e­brat­ed fig­ure. He act­ed as the Reagan Administration’s covert inter­me­di­ary to the Contras after Congress cut off aid in 1984 and was instru­men­tal in car­ry­ing out the secret weapons sales to Iran in 1985 and 1986.

There is hard­ly a case to be made for the rule of law, as far as five of the last six Republicans to hold the office of the pres­i­den­cy is concerned.
Further research will show that none of them ful­ly respect­ed the law’s bound­aries, even though they and their sup­port­ers wrapped them­selves in the American flag and pon­tif­i­cat­ed about their love of country.
Today, America is at a cross­roads. Donald Trump was hand­i­ly defeat­ed at the polls on November 3rd; as of this arti­cle’s post­ing, he has refused to acknowl­edge that he lost, much less to con­cede to for­mer Vice President Joe Biden the president-elect.
In what may be viewed as a con­tin­u­a­tion of his Orwellian pres­i­den­cy, mem­bers of his inner cir­cle and the naked emper­or him­self, acts as if there were no elec­tions on the 3rd of November.
For their own rea­sons, not a sin­gle one of the self-serv­ing trai­tors to democ­ra­cy has the guts to shout out to the naked King, “your majesty, you are naked.”

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

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Now The Elections Are Over Lets Take Stock, Hispanics Interest May Not Line Up With Blacks…

According to Pew Research in the 2008 elec­tion cycle in which Junior Illinois US Senator Barack Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent, whites made up 76.3% of the record 131 mil­lion peo­ple who vot­ed, while blacks made up 12.1%, Hispanics 7.4%, and Asians 2.5%.
We do not have data for the 2020 cycle; votes are still being count­ed, (yes I do have a prob­lem with the length of time it takes for states to fin­ish count­ing, tab­u­lat­ing, and report­ing out vote totals after elec­tion day).
Since the coun­try has embarked on ear­ly vot­ing before Election day, it makes sense to dis­pense with the idea of elec­tion day, and embrace elec­tion week.
The longer it takes for the process to be com­plet­ed, the more it gave liars and pro­pa­gan­dists like Donald Trump to stir up anger, resent­ment, and poten­tial vio­lence in an already over­heat­ed environment.
The con­cept of an “elec­tion day” caus­es Americans to cor­rect­ly expect to have elec­tion results by the end of elec­tion day.
It is incon­ceiv­able that after the débâ­cle of 2000 in which the Supreme court took it upon itself to stop the vote count, dis­en­fran­chis­ing God only knows how many vot­ers, and hand­ing the pres­i­den­cy to goof-ball George W Bush, America is no fur­ther along in cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing effi­cient elec­tion machin­ery, that allows peo­ple to vote, and have their votes counted.

There will be no short­age of lessons to be learned after this cycle is com­plete, not the least of which is that (a) America is not a Democracy, (in a democ­ra­cy, the win­ner is the per­son or polit­i­cal par­ty that gets the most votes) (b) African-Americans must wake up to the real­i­ty that its inter­est is not the same as that of Hispanics or Latinos.
Hispanics/​Latinos are now the largest minor­i­ty group in the United States, dwarf­ing African-Americans that have had that hon­or for a very long time.
On the issue of social jus­tice, polic­ing, and a raft of issues, Hispanics have either been eeri­ly silent or have thrown their cap in the ring with white Republicans, regard­less of how they treat them.
Cubans in south Florida are prob­a­bly the most trig­gered of all Hispanic com­mu­ni­ties. Whisper the word com­mu­nist or social­ist, and they will jump over a cliff in terror.
It is unfair for me to crit­i­cize them. I have nev­er lived in Cuba, but truth be told, not many of them have either.
I will expand on this as time allows.
In the mean­time, as we exhale from the ten­sions of the last four years, let us not lose sight of the fact that as the Latino com­mu­ni­ty grows in size, their atti­tudes toward social jus­tice and oth­er issues may not line up with that of black folks.
The most obvi­ous sign of that is that many Latinos see them­selves as white, not that they have been accept­ed as such yet. Still, if Raphael Cruz’s name change to ‘Ted” is any­thing to do with it, they are cer­tain­ly look­ing for­ward to being assim­i­lat­ed as the Irish and Italians wait­ed and were assimilated.

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

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No, Republicans Do Not Care About Babies, They Care About Maintaining A White Majority…

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YouTube player

So here is the deal, the Trump night­mare pres­i­den­cy was made pos­si­ble because of racist poli­cies and ten­den­cies that have exist­ed in the GOP, for arguably hun­dreds of years.
Yes, the Democratic par­ty was the par­ty of the KKK, but please nev­er lose sight of the changes which occurred, which saw a Southern Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, sign two land­mark pieces of leg­is­la­tion, (a) the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and (b)the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law giv­ing African Americans auton­o­my and dignity.
Yes, Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment the Emancaptation Declaration into law, but Lincoln had no moral con­vic­tion about free­ing the slaves.
Evidence of that may be found in the link below.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​m​p​r​o​m​i​s​e​-​o​f​-​1​8​7​7​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​s​o​l​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​s​-​i​n​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​p​e​r​i​o​d​-​k​n​o​w​s​-​a​s​-​j​i​m​-​c​r​o​we/

Additionally, the 1877 com­pro­mise which saw Republican Rutherford B Hayes ascend to the Presidency was one of the most treach­er­ous acts ever embarked on in America.
Republicans gave every­thing away to the Democrats in the south, when they agreed that Hayes, who was los­ing the elec­tion, become the pres­i­dent if he removed US troops from the South.
Hayes removal of Federal troops from the South effec­tive­ly end­ed Reconstruction which was empow­er­ing Blacks and had result­ed in 22 black men get­ting elect­ed to the US House of Representatives and two to the US Senate.
Out of that treach­ery came Jim Crow.
Jim crow laws result­ed in an almost worse form of slav­ery for the recent­ly freed enslaved people.
Leapfrog to the present day.

Republican poli­cies are total­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the very exis­tence of African American’s.
What’s good for us they fight; what’s bad for us they support.
On police abuse, the envi­ron­ment, jobs, hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, and every oth­er area of our lives, Republicans fight against our interest.
The fight against abor­tion is a fight that Republicans cham­pi­on because white women do not have enough white babies.
Iowa Republican con­gress­man said; we can­not main­tain our civ­i­liza­tion with oth­er peo­ple’s babies”.
On the one hand, the fight to emp­ty out America of black and brown peo­ple and, on the oth­er hand, stop abor­tions is geared sole­ly on build­ing up whites numer­i­cal­ly to main­tain white suprema­cy and white hegemony.

No polit­i­cal par­ty can claim to rep­re­sent God by fight­ing against abor­tions on the one hand but fights vig­or­ous­ly to keep basic sus­te­nance out of the mouths of babies after they are born.
Most of the so-called white evan­gel­i­cals who claim that Donald Trump was sent by God will give every­thing they have to pro­tect a dog, but would do noth­ing to help a black baby or black per­son in need.
As Christians, many of us refuse to par­tic­i­pate in our lives, so we become vic­tims of our own disengagement.
Neither polit­i­cal par­ty is about God, but being about God is not what we say; it is about what we do.
What would Jesus do?
Feed the hun­gry, heal the sick, com­fort the wid­ow, vis­it the incarcerated.
No, nei­ther par­ty is Godly, but we must live with them, and as they are, we must choose the par­ty that is clos­er to those basic standards.

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

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Joe Biden 46th President Of The United States/​Kamala Harris First Woman VP & Black…

Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States, Kamala Harris will be the first woman elect­ed to the Vice Presidency.

Joe &Jill Biden

African-Americans con­tin­ue to pull America from the brink.
Continuing to believe in cre­at­ing a more per­fect Union.
My respect for Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and cities all across America.
Black America, you may take a bow, you stood up and showed out.
When you stand togeth­er, there is noth­ing you can’t do.

Kamala and hus­band Doug.

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Sixty Thousand (60,000) Votes Wasted On Kanye West…

One thing about Black People, you can mar­ket any­thing to us; yes, we can even have a world-renowned con artist who has a paper trail of proof of his hatred for us con­vince us that he intends to drop a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar project in the Black community.
Yup, that is gulli­bil­i­ty to the tenth pow­er, or just plain dumb if you ask me!
For those who fell for that three-card Monty, oh well, guess you vot­ed away your dig­ni­ty, and you still will not get that hand­out you were expect­ing to get.
I recall hav­ing said lis­ten to AOC, vote for some­one you can lob­by, nev­er for­get that you are a hat­ed minor­i­ty group liv­ing under the rule of a hos­tile, racist society.
You have no choice but to vote for the less­er of two evils.

Some of you even said you vot­ed for Trump because he gave you $1200; on top of the fact that you are worse than a three dol­lar whore, your lack of under­stand­ing of how your own coun­try’s pol­i­tics work is palpable.
Trump did not give you any­thing; for those of you who work and pay tax­es, they gave you back a few pen­nies of what they took from you.
The United States has done the least for its cit­i­zens of any west­ern nation due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For the rest of you who don’t work and pay tax­es, you should return my tax dol­lars; Trump did not give it to you the Congress gave you my money.

But while we are speak­ing about gulli­bil­i­ty and stu­pid­i­ty, let us throw in the[ woke social media war­riors] who con­vinced many as stu­pid as them­selves, not to vote for Joe Biden because he wrote the 90s crime bill, which they argue ensnared inno­cent black men.
As I said repeat­ed­ly, Biden was one of many leg­is­la­tors who worked on the crime bill in response to the black com­mu­ni­ty’s call to stop the wan­ton killings in .….….yes, the black community.
Black leg­is­la­tors, black cler­gy, and black cit­i­zens all asked for stronger laws to com­bat the gang-bangers who were ter­ror­iz­ing their communities.
They were right in call­ing for stronger laws with stiffer penal­ties, but let us nev­er conflate(a) crim­i­nals who ter­ror­ize and mur­der the inno­cent and (b) police mis­use of their pow­ers, which result in the mass incar­cer­a­tion of the innocent.

From what I heard from talk­ing to many peo­ple that I have come across, and some of the social media post­ings, it was all about “what can I get for my vote”? That, to me, was pathetic.
So it is no sur­prise to me that in a crit­i­cal elec­tion in which the American pro­jec­t’s future was on the line, 60,000 of you wast­ed your vote on a man who does­n’t know his head from his ass.
Kanye West, a pub­lic sup­port­er of Donald Trump, spec­u­lat­ed on social media that his appeals for votes among his fan base could end up hurt­ing for­mer Vice President Joe Biden’s (D) pres­i­den­tial run.
So here is a guy who sup­ports Trump, runs against Trump, siphon­ing votes by his own met­ric from Joe Biden, makes no sense, but he want­ed to be pres­i­dent, just not sure how the process works.….….
Money in the hands of fools.….….makes a lot more fools.

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

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COVID-19 Has Not Gone Away, Also On The Rise In Jamaica…

COVID-19 has cer­tain­ly not gone away, even though we may be near­ing our break­ing point with the restric­tions and dis­rup­tions it has placed on our lives.
Experts have said that if the entire world would observe social dis­tanc­ing guide­lines and wear a sim­ple mask, we would have our arms around this virus in less than six weeks.
It is chal­leng­ing to con­tain, when it has been politi­cized in the United States, and peo­ple look­ing to the coun­try that had shaped glob­al opin­ions on issues like this, and see peo­ple act­ing like this virus is nothing.
Or worse to hear its leader tell crowds on no mask-wear­ing syco­phants that quote, “we are round­ing the cor­ner.”
No, we are not round­ing the cor­ner, far from it.….. Infection rates have sky­rock­et­ed in Republican runs states, yes, as you imag­ined, the states in which peo­ple are not required to wear masks or observe social dis­tanc­ing guidelines.
In addi­tion to that, the great divider in chief goes around the coun­try and hold super spread­er events against the wish­es of Governors and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials in Democratic-con­trolled states.

According to the CDC’s dai­ly track­er, so far, 9,268,818 Americans have been infect­ed. There have been 588,208 new cas­es detect­ed in the last sev­en days, and 230,893 peo­ple have died from the virus.
In the UK, there is a new lock­down as COVID cas­es begin to spike again.
Over in Jamaica, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, yes­ter­day report­ed 126 new cas­es of COVID-19 dur­ing the last 24 hours, increas­ing the island’s tal­ly of cas­es to 9,257.
One addi­tion­al coro­n­avirus-relat­ed death was also record­ed – a 70-year-old woman from St Ann. The COVID-19 death toll for Jamaica now stands at 210.
The Ministry of Health and Wellness not­ed that of the 126 new cas­es of the virus, were 89 males and were 37 females with ages rang­ing from nine to 92 years.
The new cas­es bring to 4,289, the num­ber of active cas­es cur­rent­ly on the island, while recov­er­ies now stand at 4,637 fol­low­ing 20 addi­tion­al cases.(As report­ed by Jablogx​.com).

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This Is It, If You Don’t Vote Don’t Open Your Mouth To Complain…

This is it.
The issue or issues that are impor­tant to you are all on the bal­lot today.
For four years, more than half of the peo­ple in the United States have lived in a vir­tu­al fog of dis­be­lief, their lives sus­pend­ed in time while they wait for the moment that they will breathe again.
Many have admit­ted to feel­ings of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and even thoughts of suicide.
Never in their lives did they ever imag­ine that their coun­try, in which they have had so much pride all their lives, would be reduced to this lev­el of cor­rup­tion no one had ever seen before.

President Barack Obama spoke about the path that America usu­al­ly takes on its jour­ney to becom­ing, a more per­fect union, years ago, “two steps for­ward, one step back­ward, and two steps to the side’. Never a straight path forward.
And so, after the Obama Presidency, maybe the first in the his­to­ry of the nation to be scan­dal-free, it was only to be expect­ed that we would be where we have been over the last four years.
If you still haven’t vot­ed and are eli­gi­ble to vote, you will have no say in the out­come of any elec­tions; you will cer­tain­ly have no say when­ev­er this elec­tion is decided.

Yesterday an African-American man told me he does not get involved in white peo­ple’s busi­ness after I asked him if he already voted?
Dumbfounded, I asked him to explain how his vot­ing would be white peo­ple’s busi­ness? At the same time I was await­ing his answer, which seemed dif­fi­cult for him to artic­u­late, I was won­der­ing what if any­thing would I be able to say to a 66-year-old man, that would set off a light, in a brain that old?
Needless to say, as you already may have imag­ined, the answer he gave me was so con­vo­lut­ed that I real­ized that noth­ing that I could say would pen­e­trate that dense for­est of ignorance.
We know that no can­di­date or polit­i­cal par­ty is going to encap­su­late all of our needs and desires, but let us imag­ine vot­ing through the words of the young con­gress­woman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who bril­liant­ly said, “we are vot­ing for the peo­ple whom we are bet­ter able to lob­by.”
No, there are no per­fect can­di­dates or polit­i­cal par­ties. We live in an imper­fect world, with our imper­fect selves, we must use our brains rather than our emo­tions when we make decisions.
Organizing, vot­ing, and lob­by­ing, that’s the process.

For those not as lost as my 66-year old friend- You have a chance to let your voice be heard today.
Yes, I know that the Electoral College is archa­ic. I know that the Electoral col­lege makes it appear to you that your vote does not count, but it cer­tain­ly can­not be count­ed if you do not vote.
There is a rea­son that one polit­i­cal par­ty is fight­ing tooth and nail to pre­vent you from vot­ing; in fact, they are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to take it away from you.
If your vote did not mat­ter, ask your­selves, “Why are they work­ing so hard to take it away from me”?

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

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In The Compromise Of 1877 Republicans Sold Blacks Into The Period Knows As Jim Crowe.….

The Republican par­ty was formed in the 1850s, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, to oppose the expan­sion of slav­ery into what was char­ac­ter­ized as US Territories. More accu­rate account­ing, gives a date of March 20th, 1854.
For the record, US ter­ri­to­ries in this con­text mean oppos­ing the exten­sion of slav­ery into Western territories.
In addi­tion to the fact that the par­ty was formed to pre­vent the expan­sion of slav­ery into west­ern ter­ri­to­ries, after the Civil war, the Republican Party also fought to pro­tect African American’s rights, dur­ing the Civil War.
On sev­er­al occa­sions, this writer has detailed that even though the Nation’s 16th pres­i­dent, the Republican Abraham Lincoln, did sign the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, oth­er­wise known as the Emancipation Declaration, Lincoln had no com­punc­tion about leav­ing enslaved Blacks enslaved, if it suit­ed his purpose.
Abraham Lincoln made it clear to New York Newspaper pub­lish­er Horace Greely that his war (the civ­il war) was not about free­ing enslaved Blacks, but rather about pre­serv­ing the Union.

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours on the 19th. Addressed to me through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any state­ments, or assump­tions of fact, which I may know to be erro­neous, I do not, now and here, con­tro­vert them. If there be in it any infer­ences which I may believe to be false­ly drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be per­cep­ti­ble in it an impa­tient and dic­ta­to­r­i­al tone, I waive it in def­er­ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always sup­posed to be right.
As to the pol­i­cy, I “seem to be pur­su­ing,” as you say, I have not meant to leave any­one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would keep it the short­est way under the Constitution. The soon­er the nation­al author­i­ty can be restored, the near­er the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If some would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I’m afraid I have to dis­agree with them. If some would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I can’t entire­ly agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to keep the Union and not either save or destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone, I would also do that. I do about slav­ery and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help keep the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I think what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when­ev­er I believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor­rect errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stat­ed my pur­pose accord­ing to my view of offi­cial duty, and I intend no mod­i­fi­ca­tion of my oft-expressed per­son­al wish that all men every­where could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

We have dis­cussed Lincoln’s atti­tude towards the key ques­tion of slav­ery in this medi­um on sev­er­al occa­sions, most­ly to offer some per­spec­tive, to push back against [black or white], those who hold the view that some­how the Black com­mu­ni­ty owes to Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, a debt of grat­i­tude for the Emancipation proclamation.
We have also dis­cussed ad nau­se­am the dif­fer­ent stances adopt­ed by the two polit­i­cal par­ties after the civ­il war, includ­ing the two mon­u­men­tal pieces of leg­is­la­tion passed by the Democrats and signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, a south­ern Democrat from the state of Texas.
The two pieces of leg­is­la­tion I speak of are the July 2nd, 1964, sign­ing of the Civil Rights Act into law by Johnson, and the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law on August 6th, 1965 Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Even though some his­to­ri­ans have char­ac­ter­ized Johnson as crass and boor­ish, and even though it is alleged that Johnson was not spar­ing in his use of the “N” word, he stead­fast­ly believed that America would be a bet­ter place if all Americans had the same rights, and that includes the right to vote.

One event occurred in 1876. That may have been the event that changed how some blacks looked at the Republican par­ty that they had come to admire as the par­ty that “end­ed slav­ery,” albeit that the nos­tal­gia they har­bored may have been mis­placed to a cer­tain degree.
That event was the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion between Rutherford B Hayes the Republican nom­i­nee„ and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, the gov­er­nor of New York.
Tilden won the pop­u­lar vote by approx­i­mate­ly 250,000 votes. However, the Democratic and the Republican par­ties in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina each sent their own con­flict­ing bal­lot results to Washington. Because there were two sets of results from each state– with each party’s tal­ly declar­ing its own can­di­date to be the vic­tor – Congress appoint­ed a 15-mem­ber com­mis­sion to deter­mine the win­ner of each state’s elec­toral votes. (History​.com)
The com­mis­sion, which had a Republican major­i­ty, chose to award the dis­put­ed elec­toral votes to Hayes. Southern Democrats agreed to decide if the Republicans would recall the fed­er­al troops that were sup­port­ing Reconstruction. At the Southern Democrats’ urg­ing, the Republicans also agreed to appoint at least one Southerner to Hayes’ cab­i­net. When the com­mis­sion vot­ed to award all the con­test­ed elec­toral votes to Hayes, he tal­lied 185 elec­toral votes to Tilden’s 184. Hayes was declared the win­ner on March 2, 1877. He took the pres­i­den­tial oath of office in a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny at the White House the next day, a pub­lic inau­gu­ra­tion fol­lowed on March 5. Northern Democrats who were unhap­py with the out­come declared that Hayes had stolen the elec­tion. (History​.com)

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

Where have we heard that about the Republican Party before.….….….….……?
Southern Democrats agreed to decide if the Republicans would recall the fed­er­al troops that were sup­port­ing Reconstruction.
After the civ­il war, the peri­od of Reconstruction saw Southern Blacks being empow­ered, as I wrote in a pre­vi­ous article.
Linked above, in 1867, the peri­od when rad­i­cal recon­struc­tion began, Black Americans vot­ed in huge num­bers across the South, elect­ing a total of 22 Black men to serve in the U.S. Congress (two in the Senate).
Much of these gains were accom­plished because Federal troops were sta­tioned in the south to sup­port reconstruction.
Now, here is where the rub­ber met the road. Southern Democrats, the par­ty that sup­port­ed slav­ery at the time, were pre­pared to give Rutherford B Hayes the four years in a pres­i­den­tial term to remove fed­er­al troops from the region, there­by allow­ing them to install the igno­ble apartheid sys­tem. That peri­od became known as the Jim Crowe era.

In my esti­ma­tion, the Republican par­ty’s actions in sell­ing African-Americans to gain tem­po­rary pow­er were among the most extra­or­di­nary acts of treach­ery in human history.
By that design, which became known as the “Compromise of 1877″, The Republican par­ty vir­tu­al­ly sold the recent­ly freed black peo­ple, into an equal­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble peri­od of apartheid, that was to devel­op and take root, with the removal of fed­er­al troops from the south, called the Jim Crow era.
Within his first year in office, President Rutherford B Hayes with­drew fed­er­al troops from states still under occu­pa­tion. He made fed­er­al dol­lars avail­able for infra­struc­ture improve­ments in the South, and appoint­ed Southerners to influ­en­tial posts in high-lev­el gov­ern­ment positions.
While these actions sat­is­fied Southern Democrats, they antag­o­nized some mem­bers of his own party.
It was no secret that this peri­od that his­to­ri­ans record nos­tal­gi­cal­ly as nec­es­sary toward cement­ing the union, also revealed that many north­ern­ers sup­port­ed the south’s cause.
Still today, some of the most racists liv­ing in the United States, are not Southerners; they live in states in the North and Midwestern states.

The com­pro­mise of 1877, and the sign­ing of both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts may have some­thing to do with why the vast major­i­ty of Black Voters vote Democratic.
Yup, Lincoln did “free the slaves,” but once released from plan­ta­tions. Those peo­ple became free thinkers, which can­not be reversed.
They under­stood what Lincoln meant when he said; My para­mount objec­tive in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.
They also under­stood that the Republicans in 1877 sold them back into a form of slav­ery just as bad as when they had shack­les on their ankles.
Sure we have had real­ly stu­pid and dan­ger­ous pres­i­dents before; President Rutherford B Hayes, speak­ing of the tele­phone, said quote; “It’s a great inven­tion, but who would ever want to use one?’”

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

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Democratic Party Slow-walked It’s Supporters Into Voting By Mail, That May Be The Difference This Election Cycle…

It is now down to a sin­gle day before the world knows out­right or has an idea whether American Democracy is dead, or that the process of rebuild­ing trust in the Democratic process will begin on January 20th, 2020.

Donald Trump and his cohorts in Republican-run states have made no secret about doing all that they can to make sure that peo­ple that may vote against them do not get to vote.
That is not how democ­ra­cies work, but that memo has not got­ten to the likes of Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbot, who decreed that there should be only one bal­lot drop-box per county.
This includes the Democratic strong­hold of Harris County; it is the state’s largest coun­ty by pop­u­la­tion — one of the most pop­u­lous in the coun­try is a land­mass of 1777 square miles. Harris County must now reduce its 12 drop-off loca­tions down to one.
The State’s Republican supreme court upheld Abbot’s decision.

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Donald Trump knew that syco­phants like Abbot and oth­er Republicans, would allow him to destroy the American exper­i­ment because of their rapa­cious desire to main­tain polit­i­cal pow­er. He push­es the enve­lope so that peo­ple like Abbot and oth­ers will do the destruc­tion at the state lev­el. Simultaneously, the courts he has stacked with unqual­i­fied lack­eys will val­i­date their actions as constitutional.
It is not a the­o­ry; it is exact­ly what they are doing this cycle.
Not only has Donald Trump demo­nized the elec­toral process to cast doubt on it, but he also put Louis Dejoy, one of his lack­eys, and big donors, in charge of the postal ser­vice. Louis Dejoy imme­di­ate­ly set about to dis­rupt mail deliv­ery by remov­ing some oper­a­tional appa­ra­tus that are crit­i­cal com­po­nents that inex­orably slow down the mail.
Even after a court-ordered Dejoy to replace the com­po­nents that he removed, there is still no real sense as to whether (a) they have been replaced, or (b) even if they have been rein­stalled, if it will be in time to facil­i­tate smooth deliv­ery of the mail across the coun­try in a time­ly fash­ion to ensure that mail-in bal­lots arrived at states boards of elec­tions on time to be count­ed in this year’s pres­i­den­tial elections.

Throughout this elec­tion cycle, Donald Trump has demon­strat­ed that he is total­ly hell-bent on dis­rupt­ing the elec­tions in a bid to have the vote result­ing in a sec­ond term for himself.
The lev­el of cor­rup­tion, intim­i­da­tion, and cal­cu­la­tive maneu­ver­ing he has employed in his bid to affect the out­come of the elec­tions in his favor is like noth­ing we have seen before.
It is brazen, despot­ic, and unprece­dent­ed in its audac­i­ty. Shockingly, the whole world watch­es as Republicans are all in on help­ing Donald Trump to take down the word’s old­est democ­ra­cy, and why?
Donald Trump has giv­en them that which no Republican pres­i­dent in mod­ern times had, the abil­i­ty to dis­crim­i­nate against racial minori­ties with­out consequence.
Trump has now remade the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry in a sin­gle term, 1⁄3 of all the mem­bers on the Federal bench was put there by Donald Trump. That includes three on the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney Barrett.

Democrats, for their part, walked right into the trap Donald Trump laid for them. Not only has the Biden Campaign and the head of the DNC slow-walked Democratic vot­ers into vot­ing by mail, but they did so know­ing full well that Donald Trump was work­ing fever­ish­ly and assid­u­ous­ly to ensure that the postal ser­vice would be unable to deliv­er mail-in-bal­lots in time for them to be counted.
In some states, unless votes arrive by elec­tion day, even if they are post-marked as hav­ing being mailed before elec­tion day, they will be tossed out.
The Democratic insis­tence on walk­ing vot­ers into a burn­ing build­ing defies log­ic and com­mon sense. Biden, the Democratic nom­i­nee, has naive­ly insist­ed that he is run­ning his cam­paign the way he would gov­ern if he is elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States.
The fact that the Biden cam­paign and the DNC would encour­age Democratic vot­ers to vote by mail, know­ing all that Trump has been doing to ensure that bal­lots did not arrive in time to be count­ed is beyond insane.

There are myr­i­ad ways by which mailed-in bal­lots may be dis­qual­i­fied; with that in mind, it is hard to under­stand the Democratic strat­e­gy of con­tin­u­ing to encour­age vot­ers to vote by mail. Trump has already installed his judges at all lev­els of the Federal judi­cia­ry to car­ry out his strong­man wish­es, not to men­tion the par­ti­san Republican judges that already pop­u­lat­ed state courts, even in blue Democratic states like New York, and California.
People are stand­ing in line to vote for four-five, and even sev­en hours; on the oth­er hand, peo­ple are going about their busi­ness­es, wear­ing masks, or not, social­ly dis­tanced, or not, life is not back to what it was pre-COVID-19, but peo­ple are liv­ing their lives.
If peo­ple are get­ting on with their lives, there is no rea­son that they can­not stand in line to pick the next president.
Whatever neg­a­tive sce­nar­ios occur after Tuesday’s elec­tions-relat­ed to mail-in bal­lots, Biden and the DNC should blame no one but themselves.

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

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Trump Thugs Threaten & Intimidate Many Armed, No Arrests Made, Anti Racism Demonstrators Arrested Instead…

Trump car­a­van shuts down New York city’s white­stone bridge even as it had a police escort. It must be remem­bered that the New York Police Department (NYPD’s) Union that rep­re­sents Rank and file cops unan­i­mous­ly endorsed Donald Trump.
As you rec­on­cile that fact, it is impor­tant to process that with the fact that the NYPD arrest­ed ten peo­ple Sunday after­noon dur­ing an anti-Trump protest near High Line Park in Chelsea.

This was the Mario Cuomo bridge in New York on Sunday afternoon.

The harass­ing behav­ior is not only hap­pen­ing in New York City, where the Police Department has all but made itself a part of the Trump cam­paign and, and has waged a lit­er­al war on pro­tes­tors of Trump’s poli­cies and Police criminality.

Biden cam­paign bus encir­cled by dozens of Trump hood­lums, many armed with semi-auto­mat­ic weapons tried to force the bus off the road in Texas.

Democratic law­mak­ers were on board and plan­ning to speak at a since-can­celed event in the Austin sub­urb of Pflugerville. Austin City Councilor Sheryl Cole called it “a 1st for me.”
Please remem­ber that in the six­ties, black free­dom rid­ers were harassed, beat­en, and mur­dered in the very same south, in many cas­es with the aid of local police.

On local politi­cian, Rafael Anchía, accused “armed Trump trolls” of “harass­ing” the bus and “ramming vol­un­teer vehi­cles.” He also said Eric Trump had incit­ed “this vio­lence” on Facebook. Trump’s oth­er son, Don Jr., tweet­ed a video urg­ing Trumpers to appear at a Kamala Harris event in Texas: “Hey Laredo, Don Jr. here,” he said. “I heard you had an awe­some turnout for the Trump Train. It’d be great if you guys would all get togeth­er, head down to McAllen, and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train wel­come.” In sep­a­rate inci­dents, pro-Trump pro­test­ers have sur­round­ed a Joe Biden event in Minnesota, shout­ed at ear­ly vot­ers in Virginia, and threat­ened a reporter film­ing a pro-Trump ral­ly in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Read more Election 2020 sto­ries.) accord­ing to news​er​.com.

Cars attend­ing an Anti-Communist Caravan for Freedom and Democracy and in sup­port of Donald Trump, lined up to enter the Magic City Casinos park­ing lot at 450 NW 37 Avenue before start­ing the car­a­van route through sev­er­al Miami streets on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020.
Read more here: https://​www​.miami​her​ald​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​l​o​c​a​l​/​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​t​y​/​m​i​a​m​i​-​d​a​d​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​2​4​6​3​8​2​8​3​0​.​h​t​m​l​#​s​t​o​r​y​l​i​n​k​=​cpy.

It is remark­able to rec­on­cile that despite the many instances of Trump’s thugs threat­en­ing Biden sup­port­ers, there has not been a sin­gle arrest report­ed from these encounters.
Juxtapose that with the shock­ing vio­lence that police Departments all across the coun­try inflict on peace­ful pro­tes­tors against police vio­lence and Trump’s racist policies.
Many peace­ful demon­stra­tors have been killed by police, oth­ers have lost their eyes, and even more, have been bru­tal­ized and arrest­ed sim­ply for exer­cis­ing their right to peace­ably protest.

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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 mike​beck​les​.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.

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At This Stage Defeating Trump Is A Matter Of Life And Death.…

It is remark­able how two per­sons or two groups of peo­ple can look at a sin­gle object or issue and come up with com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent assess­ments. I guess the dif­fer­ences with which peo­ple see objects and issues, makes for more sub­stan­tive con­ver­sa­tions, and ulti­mate­ly bet­ter outcomes.
But what do we do when the dis­agree­ment on the issues, at least for some, is not anchored in real­i­ty any­more? How do we have good out­comes when the dis­agree­ment that some peo­ple reg­is­ter is geared at mud­dy­ing the water, and cre­at­ing an Orwellian dystopia that sat­is­fies the out­comes they desire.
I first expe­ri­enced that unre­al­i­ty in deal­ing with my own father. The eldest of sev­en chil­dren, my father and I only con­nect­ed in my ear­ly adult­hood. [Sid], as I referred to him, was to me, a father in name only. I had long learned to for­give him for who he has or has­n’t been, much the same way that I have learned to for­give my moth­er as well; I am one of those for­tu­nate kids not to have been raised by my bio­log­i­cal par­ents. Thank you, Lord.
Don’t ask; it isn’t straightforward.
My dad would look at the moon and try to con­vince you that it is green; no amount of facts would change his mind. At times I thought he want­ed to be con­trar­i­an to be different.……The way his life turned out has not argued well for his con­trar­i­an stances.

You may won­der where I am going with this ram­bling, and you would be right in being impa­tient, so that I will get right to it. Having lived in the United States for almost three decades, it is aston­ish­ing to see how truth has been replaced with lies, and a gen­er­al sense of exhaus­tion has tak­en over.
In less than four years, the coun­try’s mood has changed from hope­ful opti­mism to dark fore­bod­ing and deep fear.
Even with the dis­tinct knowl­edge that dark­ness does not extin­guish the light, it is remark­ably dif­fi­cult to under­stand how Donald Trump’s lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion have dam­aged America and the American psy­che in just four short years.
There is so much rid­ing on this elec­tion that peo­ple opposed to Trump are hav­ing sleep­less nights.
Some peo­ple have con­fid­ed in me that they are unable to sleep at night, that they can hard­ly eat out of fear that he will win reelection.
These are American cit­i­zens, not immi­grant chil­dren locked in cages, or their par­ents who have been deport­ed, sim­ply for dar­ing to seek asylum.
These are peo­ple who have lost their loved ones to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with­out being able to give them a part­ing hug or say good­bye. They are Americans who have wit­nessed an occu­pant of the White House tell police it is okay to bru­tal­ize cit­i­zens and see them in turn into a ver­i­ta­ble bru­tal invad­ing army as a consequence.
They are dis­gust­ed at hear­ing a pres­i­dent refer to racist white suprema­cists as “won­der­ful” peo­ple.”
They have seen the shock­ing attack on the very foun­da­tions of the rule of law, from a pres­i­dent that is not just law­less but con­temp­tu­ous of the rule of law.

They have wit­nessed a Republican par­ty purged of rea­son­able and ratio­nal actors, bow down to Donald Trump, and have become aiders and abet­tors in the destruc­tion of the Republic.
They have watched their Justice Department tak­en over by a hyper-par­ti­san in the form of William Barr, who has inter­fered in Department cas­es and has lied and dis­tort­ed real­i­ty in ser­vice to Donald Trump, rather than in serv­ing the American people.
They have also seen a chief exec­u­tive who has bro­ken laws as he sees fit. He has used the pres­i­den­cy to enrich him­self and his fam­i­ly. He has placed his sup­port­ers at risk of death, just so that he can sat­is­fy his nar­cis­sis­tic lust for ado­ra­tion, at ral­ly after ral­ly after rally…
It is incred­i­ble to imag­ine that any per­son occu­py­ing the nation’s high­est office could be so dan­ger­ous and inher­ent­ly bent on destruction.
I would be lying if I said that I was not deeply dis­turbed myself hav­ing seen the United States under sev­er­al Presidents, good and bad, from the late Herbert Walker Bush, to the White House’s present occupant.
There has nev­er been an elec­tion in my life­time that not only the pres­i­den­cy and down-bal­lot offices are on the bal­lot, but Democracy itself is on the ballot.
One of the most astound­ing occur­rences that must be record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty, is the will­ing­ness of Republicans to burn down the repub­lic to pre­side over the ashes.
What hap­pened to the Republicans, you ask.
They have seen the data that many peo­ple have seen, America is chang­ing; they do not like what they see in the racial demographics.
Immigration and Abortion fights are all about the chang­ing dynam­ics occur­ring in the coun­try. Republicans are pre­pared to burn the house down rather than allow oth­ers to live in it equally.
The lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion that has tak­en over the coun­try have been too much. Defeating Donald Trump is now a mat­ter of life and death.

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

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Buju Lambasted For Comments On Mask Wearing

Banton voiced his opin­ion on masked wear­ing via videos he shared on Instagram yesterday.

In the first video he post­ed, the enter­tain­er said: “Wi waan done wid dis mask wear­ing bulls**t inna Jamaica. Who fi dead aguh dead and who nah dead haf­fi juss live. Wi tired a you intel­lec­tu­al fools try­ing to tell us how to live our lives. You are so smart why you haven’t found the cure for can­cer?” Banton also appeared to accuse per­sons in posi­tions of pow­er of caus­ing the mass­es to be in abject fear and of dri­ving peo­ple into pover­ty saying:
“What have you done for all those who you have laid off and mek dem busi­ness close ear­ly? Jamaican peo­ple need to wake up….Mi nah wear nuh mask…Mask nuh mek fi man.”

His utter­ances prompt­ed vary­ing reac­tions from the pub­lic but the major­i­ty per­sons who com­ment­ed on his video appeared to take issue with his stance.
One user com­ment­ed: “Fool dem tek ppl fah but who have eyes mek dem see and who have ears mek dem hear…words of wisdom.
Commenter: “Bwoy Buju mi love yuh to bits but mi nuh agree with you on this… now go out yuh mask on before any­thing hap­pen to you…

Commenter: “Sorry Buju, my mom had COVID, I CANT SAY NOH MASK, IT MAY NOT SAVE LIVES, BUT IT HELP, PPL PLEASE WEAR UNNU MASK 😷 IT HELP SAVE LIVES..UNNU DONT @ MI PLS..”
Commenter: “I’ve lost fam­i­ly to Covid so the whole “who ah guh dead, ah guh dead” just lost all of my respect. I guess Buju doesn’t wear a seat­belt either. This is unhelp­ful and ill informed”

Commenter: “Nah, this ain’t it Buju”

Commenter: “This is igno­rant. I’m in NYC and 8 of my peo­ple are DEAD from COVID-19 between March & May. I was there. It’s real. It’s a hor­ri­ble way to die. It’s passed through droplets. Wear you f***ing masks!!”

Commenter: “😳 buju I love you but I don’t agree with what you are say­ing 🤔 who mask make for this is crazy talking.”

This arti­cle first appeared in the linked site below. Please check them out for more Jamaican cen­tric stories.
https://​jablogz​.com/​2​0​2​0​/​1​0​/​b​u​j​u​-​l​a​m​b​a​s​t​e​d​-​f​o​r​-​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​-​o​n​-​m​a​s​k​-​w​e​a​r​i​ng/