Socialism, as a polit­i­cal con­struct, has been a fail­ure across the Globe, save and except for the Scandinavian region of Europe that prac­tices a kind of pseu­do-social­ism in their almost homoge­nous­ly white societies.
The social­ism that they prac­tice, guar­an­tees every­one a com­fort­able stan­dard of liv­ing, with the under­stand­ing that they pay a much high­er rate of taxation.
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.
It is note­wor­thy, that those soci­eties were already inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy nations, some of which had con­quered parts of Africa and plun­dered its resources. So their soci­eties were already well estab­lished, infra­struc­tural­ly and otherwise.
In Jamaica’s case, the coun­try can hard­ly find resources to pay its work­ers after debt ser­vic­ing, much less to put in place last­ing infrastructure.

Speaking about the dam­age done to the roads as a result of trop­i­cal storm Zeta, Prime Minister Holness told Parliament on Tuesday night that the funds being real­lo­cat­ed to repair road­ways are not addi­tion­al fund­ing “as we have already gone through the sec­ond sup­ple­men­tary esti­mates and, there­fore, there is no addi­tion­al fund­ing for the government’s response.
This is now about each min­istry, each min­is­ter, each per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, going through their bud­get, line item by line item, to see what it is that we can real­lo­cate, and this will be super­vised by the Ministry of Finance,” Holness told legislators.

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.

By Mark Joseph Stern.
As the Senate was vot­ing to ele­vate Amy Coney Barrett to a life­time posi­tion on the Supreme Court on Monday night, the imme­di­ate stakes for the entire coun­try were made sud­den­ly clear by a crit­i­cal elec­tion rul­ing from the court she now joins. On Monday night, Justice Brett Kavanaugh released a rad­i­cal and brazen­ly par­ti­san opin­ion that dashed any hopes he, as the Supreme Court’s new medi­an jus­tice, might slow-walk the court’s impend­ing con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion, while also threat­en­ing the integri­ty of next week’s elec­tion. In an 18-page lec­ture, the jus­tice cast doubt on the legit­i­ma­cy of many mail bal­lots and endorsed the most sin­is­ter com­po­nent of Bush v. Gore. America’s new medi­an jus­tice is not a friend to democ­ra­cy, and we may pay the price for Barrett’s con­fir­ma­tion in just eight days.

Monday’s order from the Supreme Court blocked a fed­er­al judge’s order that had tweaked Wisconsin’s vot­ing laws in light of the pan­dem­ic. The judge direct­ed elec­tion offi­cials to count bal­lots that were post­marked by Election Day but received by Nov. 9, find­ing that the unprece­dent­ed demand for mail bal­lots com­bined with Postal Service delays could dis­en­fran­chise up to 100,000 vot­ers. An appeals court blocked his deci­sion on Oct. 8, and on Monday, SCOTUS kept it on hold by a 5 – 3 vote. The court offered no major­i­ty opin­ion, but Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh all wrote con­cur­rences. Justice Elena Kagan penned a tren­chant dis­sent joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Kavanaugh’s opin­ion is the most notable of the bunch because he is the new medi­an jus­tice and the opin­ion is frankly ter­ri­fy­ing. In one pas­sage, Kavanaugh attempt­ed to defend the Wisconsin law dis­qual­i­fy­ing bal­lots received after Election Day. He point­ed out that “most States” share this pol­i­cy, explaining:Those States want to avoid the chaos and sus­pi­cions of impro­pri­ety that can ensue if thou­sands of absen­tee bal­lots flow in after elec­tion day and poten­tial­ly flip the results of an elec­tion. And those States also want to be able to defin­i­tive­ly announce the results of the elec­tion on elec­tion night, or as soon as pos­si­ble thereafter.

Read more below;

https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​1​0​/​b​r​e​t​t​-​k​a​v​a​n​a​u​g​h​-​m​a​i​l​-​b​a​l​l​o​t​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​f​r​a​u​d​.​h​tml

Donald Trump told Police to abuse the peo­ple they are arrest­ing, in a speech deliv­ered on New York’s Long Island in 2017.
Talking to a bunch of cheer­ing cops, he said Quote; When you guys put some­body in the car, and you’re pro­tect­ing their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump said, mim­ing an offi­cer’s phys­i­cal motion shield­ing a suspect’s head to keep it from bump­ing against the squad car.
“Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed some­body — don’t hit their head,” Trump con­tin­ued. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”
The cops cheered even more rau­cous­ly, on being told that the new Administration sanc­tions police vio­lence and out­right sup­ports it.
Since then, regard­less of the heinous nature of the crime that police offi­cers com­mit against cit­i­zens, Donald Trump does not like,(Black cit­i­zens); rather than con­demn their crimes, he talks about uphold­ing law and order.
We are all con­ver­sant of the law and order code-speak; it has been used along with states’ rights, as a cud­gel to blud­geon those who speak out against state-spon­sored vio­lence against dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ties, à la the Black and Native American communities.

Sure he spoke out about the killing of George Floyd; who did­n’t? Those who did not speak out against George Floyd’s killing are self-iden­ti­fied as unwor­thy of my time or yours.
It was­n’t the first time that Donald Trump had indi­cat­ed to police that it was okay to abuse peo­ple, some of whom were even stu­pid enough to vote for him. (speak­ing of the so-called new­ly woke blacks, who are will­ing to shuck and jive their way back into slav­ery because some rap­per received a nice tax cut and tells them to).
African-American women, old and young, are the back­bone of the Democratic par­ty, and for good rea­son; the real­i­ty is that the Republican par­ty has been very hos­tile to African-Americans since President Lyndon Johnson signed the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts into law.
Doctor King famous­ly said he might have inte­grat­ed his peo­ple into a burn­ing build­ing; he spoke of white atti­tudes in gen­er­al when it comes to full cit­i­zen­ship with all of its respon­si­bil­i­ties and rights.
He lament­ed that white Americans were appalled at the beat­ing that peace­ful demon­stra­tors suf­fered at police’s hands-on bloody Sunday.
Still, when it came time for them to stand up and sup­port leg­is­la­tion to stop it, they backed away.
It is now 2020, and the entire world saw George Floyd, mur­dered, lit­er­al­ly on tele­vi­sion; they have seen the police killing of count­less oth­er African Americans, and sure, mil­lions turned out to reg­is­ter their out­rage, but when it comes time to insti­tute mean­ing full change to end the mad­ness of police act­ing out­side the laws, white Republicans en masse, and many Democrats backed away from tak­ing action.
Even the Democratic Presidential can­di­date claims that he does not want to defund the police. Which means that he does not under­stand what defund the police means, or has­n’t both­ered to care to know, although he owes his polit­i­cal sur­vival to African-Americans.
Defunding the police means using parts of the incred­i­bly bloat­ed police bud­gets to change the sys­tems that breed crime in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. It means pro­vid­ing the same ser­vices to black com­mu­ni­ties than white com­mu­ni­ties take for granted.
It means end­ing the mass mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police depart­ments. When you give a man a ham­mer, every­thing he sees becomes a nail.

Trump is rumored to be doing well in the polls among younger African-American men. One Polling firm Rasmussen, report­ed that 46% of young black men sup­port Donald Trump.
Many of these men have nev­er been able to make good deci­sions for them­selves, so I total­ly under­stand how they could sup­port a con-artiste like Trump. The very same Trump who was sued by the gov­ern­ment and penal­ized for not rent­ing to Blacks.
Yes, the very same Trump who took out full-page ads call­ing for the death penal­ty for the so-called cen­tral park five. That same Donald Trump, who still insists that they are guilty after indis­putable evi­dence of their inno­cence, has been unearthed.
The same man who called every black per­son he hates low IQ, and berates them with all kinds of pejo­ra­tives that his lit­tle low-IQ brain can con­jure up.
The same Donald Trump who berates black ath­letes who kneel against police bru­tal­i­ty, label­ing them “sons of bitches.”
So grant­ed that there’s one scin­til­la of truth in that polling, what is the basis for that support?
Is it Stockholm syn­drome? It could be, but I doubt it.

Here is what it is. You may won­der at my dis­dain at some of the recent­ly *woke* black peo­ple who are all over social media try­ing to influ­ence oth­ers when they them­selves haven’t both­ered to acquaint them­selves ful­ly with the facts, or before try­ing to become influencers.
An old Jamaica say­ing, is that one fool makes many.” I am not refer­ring to any­one as fools; I am sim­ply try­ing to show how one unwit­ting per­son can dis­sem­i­nate false infor­ma­tion and how dan­ger­ous its con­se­quences can be on the gullible and unin­formed. Much of that seems to be hap­pen­ing on social media plat­forms. In fact, many of those shar­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion are unwit­ting pawns who copy and share false infor­ma­tion they did not even both­er to verify.
On the oth­er hand, a lot of younger African-American men who have suf­fered at the hands of police abuse, who have been vic­tim­ized by the sys­tem are being told that Joe Biden is the author of the 90s crime bill that result­ed in mass-incar­cer­a­tion of many of them and mem­bers of their families.
Biden has owned his part in the crime Bill; nev­er­the­less, the entire Congressional Black Caucus called for the crime bill, Black Clergy called for the Crime Bill.
Joe Biden is no more respon­si­ble for the crime bill than he is for police using the crime bill to exact vengeance on an entire race of people.
Neither is he respon­si­ble for the preda­to­ry young black men who are lit­er­al­ly killing their own kind as if they want to exter­mi­nate their own race.

Oh, by the way, if you are mad that some­one refers to mur­der­ers who kill six of one wom­an’s sons in gang feuds, or shoots up a park, killing black chil­dren as super-preda­tors, you are part of the problem.
They are super preda­tors who deserve to have the prison placed on top of their sor­ry asses.
Don’t ever con­flate the immoral pol­i­cy of mass-incar­cer­a­tion with super preda­to­ry mur­der­ers, who hap­pen to be black.
These are two dif­fer­ent issues.
If you are mad that Senator Kamala Harris, as a pros­e­cu­tor vig­or­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed vio­lent felons, some of who hap­pened to be black, you are a part of the prob­lem; you and Trump belong togeth­er, so go vote for him.
The History of the two polit­i­cal par­ties and Blacks in America has been mixed.
Abraham Lincoln did sign the Emancipation Declaration through the 13^th Amendment. Still, he signed a flawed doc­u­ment that allows slav­ery to con­tin­ue to this day if an enslaved per­son com­mits a felony and is convicted.
How shame­ful is it that the world’s old­est Democracy would con­tin­ue to hold onto such despi­ca­ble relics attached to its own Constitution?
Abraham Lincoln had no moral con­vic­tion about end­ing slav­ery. To Lincoln, end­ing slav­ery was a means to an end.
To the recent­ly woke who con­tin­ues to tout the Republican par­ty on that basis that it was a Republican who freed the slaves, Lincoln’s let­ter to New York Publisher Horace Greely.

Hon. Horace Greely: Executive Mansion,
Dear Sir Washington, August 22, 1862.

I have just read yours of the 19^th. addressed to myself 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 per­cept­able 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 any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save 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 there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I do not agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to 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. What I do about slav­ery, and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when­ev­er I shall 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 every where could be free. Yours,

A. LINCOLN

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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.

It is remark­able to me that the dog in the fight with the most to lose is the dog that does­n’t want to participate.
Before I tell you what I am yap­ping about (more dog humor).….. No dis­re­spect to my dog Bud.
Let us back up a bit to the fight that African-Americans waged just to earn the right to vote.
The 15^th Amendment to the US con­sti­tu­tion grant­ed African-Americans the right to vote. “Slavery is not abol­ished until the Black man has the bal­lot,” Frederick Douglass famous­ly said in May 1865, a month after the Union vic­to­ry at Appomattox.

After Abraham Lincoln was assas­si­nat­ed it was up to President Andrew Johnson to recon­struct the Union.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was a Unionist from Tennesse who was a strong state rights believer.
For those of you not pay­ing atten­tion, state rights are cod­ed lan­guage for allow­ing states to do with black peo­ple what they want­ed. (It is a term used still today by Republicans when they want laws that dis­crim­i­nate against African-Americas). Republicans like Ronald Reagan, Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and most today in the US House and Senate are ardent state’s rights advocates.
Because of Andrew Johnson’s atti­tude to the over four mil­lion new­ly freed African-Americans, the nation embarked at a blis­ter­ing pace, to enact anti-black laws, that were lat­er known as the [black codes].

In Early 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill, which aimed to build on the 13^th Amendment and give Black Americans the rights of cit­i­zens, Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress over­rode his veto, mark­ing the first time in the nation’s his­to­ry that major leg­is­la­tion became law over a pres­i­den­tial veto.
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).
Even though Blacks vot­ed in num­bers and were see­ing them­selves rep­re­sent­ed in the Federal Government, local or state pow­er large­ly remained in white hands, much the way it is today. Black offi­cials faced the con­stant threat of intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence, often at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan or oth­er white suprema­cist groups.
Today the Black vote is under con­stant threat from the Republican party.

Because the 15^th Amendment left it up to states to decide the spe­cif­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions for suf­frage. Southern state leg­is­la­tures used such qual­i­fi­ca­tions — includ­ing lit­er­a­cy tests, poll tax­es, and oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices — to dis­en­fran­chise a major­i­ty of Black vot­ers in the decades fol­low­ing Reconstruction. (says History​.com).
Those dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices were exem­pli­fied in the igno­ble statutes in the south­ern states known as Jim Crowe laws.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools restau­rants and oth­er pub­lic places but did not address vot­ing rights.
In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll tax­es (which the 24^th Amendment had elim­i­nat­ed for fed­er­al elec­tions in 1964) were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for state and local elec­tions as well. (his​to​ry​.com).
As a con­se­quence of these hard-fought-for gains, black vot­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion con­tin­ued to grow.
In 2012, Black vot­er turnout exceed­ed that of white vot­ers for the first time in his­to­ry, as 66.6 per­cent of eli­gi­ble Black vot­ers turned out to help reelect Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American pres­i­dent.

Are you ready for this?
[One year lat­er], In 2013, the Republican major­i­ty on the United States Supreme Court struck down a key pro­vi­sion of the Voting Rights Act, rul­ing 5 – 4 in Shelby v. Holder that it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to require states with a his­to­ry of vot­er dis­crim­i­na­tion to seek fed­er­al approval before chang­ing their elec­tion laws.
The courts insult­ing rea­son­ing for its trans­par­ent attempt to roll back vot­ing rights, was that the racism that exist­ed that neces­si­tat­ed the law does not exist anymore.
Immediately after the deci­sion was hand­ed down, states under Republican rule, embarked on a scorched earth strat­e­gy to lim­it vot­ing rights, if not to exis­ten­tial­ly threat­en it completely.
In a rul­ing in one North Carolina law that was struck down by a fed­er­al judge, the judge remarked in his rul­ing that the law went after African-Americans with sur­gi­cal precision.

The state was not done, it appealed the rul­ing to the supreme court, the supreme court would have been bet­ter served by hear­ing the case and destroy­ing it on its demer­its, instead of doing so, the high court refused to hear the case which effec­tive­ly default­ed the case to the appel­late court’s decision.
African-Americans yearn­ing to catch a break was weary that the Republican high court would reverse the appeals court deci­sion, thank­ful­ly it decid­ed against hear­ing it.
Had the Republican major­i­ty on the Supreme Court left the vot­ing rights Act where it was, by adher­ing to the prin­ci­ple of (stare deci­sis), or let the deci­sion stand, there would be no need to deny hear­ing a mali­cious case of vot­er sup­pres­sion, the case sim­ply would not have pro­gressed that far.

It will for­ev­er be unknown how many Black peo­ple lost their lives, lynched, their prop­er­ties destroyed, los­ing their jobs, suf­fer­ing grave indig­ni­ties sim­ply because they want­ed to exer­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to exer­cise their suffrage.
And while we are at it, let us not for­get the con­sci­en­tious white peo­ple who sac­ri­ficed and even died pro­tect­ing the rights of Black peo­ple to sim­ply vote.
Like every­thing else that every­one takes for grant­ed, African-American patri­ots of the past have had to fight like hell to earn and secure the right to vote.
Exercising the right to vote is the great­est tool that the aver­age per­son has, it allows for self-deter­mi­na­tion and autonomy.
Of course not, there will nev­er be a can­di­date or raft of can­di­dates that total­ly embod­ies all of the things we would like to see done.
However, his­to­ry, like the present, is our best guide to help us deter­mine how that vote is exer­cised. Voting is not a trans­ac­tion­al endeavor.
The idea that a can­di­date must offer stuff for your vote is an insult to those who have bled and died so that you can have that right. While many of you pon­tif­i­cate about not get­ting any­thing for your vote, here is a clue, how about get­ting up off your rear ends and go find a job, then go vote?

I have heard so much about the right to vote con­tex­tu­al­ized in trans­ac­tion­al terms, that I am fed up with this so-called woke cul­ture. A lit­tle bit of knowl­edge is cer­tain­ly dangerous.
Before you try to influ­ence oth­ers, please brush up on your American history.
Freedom is not a one-off affair, every gen­er­a­tion must work like hell to pro­tect the free­doms that many of us take for granted.
In this elec­tion cycle, some skin-folks [with a lit­tle mon­ey] are pledg­ing feal­ty to the sta­tus quo, because of an extra zero in your bank account from an immoral tax cut for the wealthy. It is impor­tant that the rest of us under­stand that we are not Fifty cents, Ice cube, or Kanye West.
Those unlearned rap­pers are yet to learn their his­to­ry, and so they do not under­stand the rea­sons that they are where they are today. For the rest of us, under­stand­ing what’s at stake this cycle is critical.
Don’t ever for one moment believe that you can­not end up right back on the cot­ton plantations.

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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.

Starting to smell the smoke from what may be the burn­ing house that Donald Trump built, Nebraska US Senator Ben Sasse con­ve­nient­ly issued a scathing rebuke of Trumpism in a tele­con­fer­ence recently.
If you were liv­ing on Mars and you recent­ly came to earth and saw the train-wreck that is Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, at least as far as Republican pres­i­den­cies go. Then you heard Ben Sasse’s state­ments; you would be moved to declar­ing Ben Sasse a damn nation­al hero.
On the oth­er hand, if you lived here on good old plan­et earth, and focused on the fact that(a) Ben Sasse has vot­ed in lock-step with Donald Trump’s agen­da 86.7% of the time accord­ing to fivethir​tyeight​.com, (b) that Sasse had no prob­lem with Trump’s out­ra­geous actions over the last three years, includ­ing declar­ing that white Supremacists who mur­dered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville Virginia were “won­der­ful peo­ple,” © that Ben Sasse only saw fit to crit­i­cize Donald Trump in this man­ner because he sees polling that may mean that Donald Trump will be a one-term pres­i­dent, and more impor­tant­ly that Republicans may actu­al­ly lose the Senate.
A Democracy is only as good as its lead­ers and peo­ple’s adher­ence to estab­lished rules and pro­to­cols. As far as the actions of the Republican par­ty are con­cerned, America has long crossed that Rubicon, into anoth­er form of government.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​y​-​i​s​-​b​e​n​-​s​a​s​s​i​n​g​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​n​ow/

As I point­ed out in a pre­vi­ous article(linked above), Ben Sasse has shown that he is noth­ing but a cheap polit­i­cal hus­tler, who is read­ing the tea leaves and hop­ing to dis­tin­guish him­self from oth­er Republicans to run for pres­i­dent 2024.
In 2016 President Barack Obama nom­i­nat­ed Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat vacat­ed by right-wing Republican asso­ciate Justice Antonin Scalia.
It is the Constitutional duty of the sit­ting President to nom­i­nate judges for vacant Federal judge­ships, includ­ing the Supreme Court.
The con­sti­tu­tion­al duty of the United States Senate is to give advice and con­sent to the President’s nominee.
In that process, through hear­ings and thor­ough exam­i­na­tion of the indi­vid­ual judge’s record and char­ac­ter, the sen­ate then votes one way or the oth­er, to con­firm or not to con­firm the pres­i­den­t’s choice.
There is noth­ing in the Constitution that allows the United States Senate to make up a rule which says that ten months before an elec­tion, the Senate will not act on the pres­i­den­t’s pick to fill a supreme court vacancy.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate major­i­ty leader, cre­at­ed that rule in 2016. Judge Merrick Garland was not grant­ed a hear­ing by a sin­gle Republican United States Senator, includ­ing Ben Sasse, much less a vote, up or down.
Yet the Republicans turned right around and rammed through Amey Coney Barrett after lib­er­al icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s pass­ing, a 180 degree turn from a pol­i­cy they cre­at­ed just over four years ago.
More impor­tant­ly, it must be not­ed that Judge Garland was not the only Judge blocked from mov­ing up the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry. Mitch McConnel blocked well over a hun­dred and sev­en­ty oth­er judges President Obama put for­ward for advance­ment in the Federal judiciary.
Mitch McConnel lat­er bragged that the great­est high­light of his polit­i­cal career was when he looked in President Obama’s eyes and told him that he would not be allow­ing his nom­i­na­tion to pro­ceed to the Supreme Court.
Mitch McConnel did the kind of thing that hap­pens in banana republics, not in the so-called world’s old­est democracy.

Using raw polit­i­cal pow­er to accom­plish nar­row polit­i­cal ends is the antithe­sis of what a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation is.
Republicans have made it clear that they have all but aban­doned their pompous cha­rade on patri­o­tism and Democracy. They have used to pon­tif­i­cate on and even launch wars as recent­ly as in this twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry under George W Bush.
Dramatically chang­ing vot­ing demo­graph­ics and it’s alien­at­ing poli­cies have caused Republicans to ditch their for­mer lying posture.
They are now des­per­ate­ly engaged in pack­ing the Federal courts with flunkies and lack­eys, loy­al to the Republican par­ty, and white suprema­cy as an ide­o­log­i­cal foundation.
Through vot­er sup­pres­sion, ger­ry­man­der­ing, and oth­er anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic tac­tics, they have sys­tem­i­cal­ly launched scorched earth tac­tics to cre­ate a judi­cia­ry that will give them what they will not be able to accom­plish legislatively.
Their dear leader at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue allud­ed to that theory.

Now, Ben Sasse, the his­to­ri­an, wants to issue a civics les­son on the Constitution, which he tried to do Monday as he tried to add legit­i­ma­cy to the stink of the Amey Coney Barrett hearing.
“If we can back up and do a lit­tle bit of eighth-grade civics, I think it would ben­e­fit us and ben­e­fit the watch­ing coun­try and espe­cial­ly watch­ing eighth-grade civics class­es,”
This sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrite then went on to attack Democrats, charg­ing them with play­ing pol­i­tics. This is the same Ben Sasse that did not believe that Judge Garland should be seat­ed when there was a Democratic President in the White House, but who now wants to give a lec­ture on what he sees as pol­i­tick­ing by Democrats who chose to boy­cott the com­mit­tee vote.
But that was­n’t all; Sasse went on to crit­i­cize Democrats over his very own inse­cu­ri­ties, that they will engage in court pack­ing after the elec­tion should they win the sen­ate and white house.
The irony is that Ben Sasse was engaged in the straight­for­ward act of court-pack­ing, he was berat­ing the Democrats for. He was pro­ject­ing onto them, that they will do in return, when Republicans had done when they retrieve the reins of power.
It is the most das­tard­ly act of hypocrisy imag­in­able, but this guy is a repub­li­can, so there is that.….…
The sad real­i­ty in all of this fias­co, is that the Democrats are weak; they will ignore this grave trav­es­ty that the Republicans have per­pe­trat­ed on the nation, and they will ignore the will of the peo­ple who sup­port them should they win in two weeks.
Rather than imme­di­ate­ly nom­i­nate and place FOUR JUSTICES ON the supreme court to com­pen­sate for the dis­hon­esty that placed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and now Amey Coney Barrett on the nation’s high­est court.
That is what’s at stake this cycle, not just remov­ing a wannabe amoral dic­ta­tor, but shut­ting down hyp­ocrites like Ben Sasse.

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.

Miami cop turned up at a police sta­tion in full uni­form, with a gun and a mask with the words “TRUMP no more bullshit.”
Can some­one point me to the good cops that every­one keeps talk­ing about?

Daniel Ubeda, in full uni­form with badge and gun wear­ing his Trump mask inside of the polling loca­tion in the gov­ern­ment center.This is city-fund­ed vot­er intim­i­da­tion. Ubeda should be sus­pend­ed imme­di­ate­ly. (Tweeted Miami Democratic Party offi­cial Steve Simeonidis.
According to the Miami New-Times, Simeonidis pho­tographed the offi­cer, whom he iden­ti­fied as Daniel Ubeda, at the Government Center in down­town Miami, and tweet­ed the image short­ly thereafter.
“What he did was tax­pay­er-fund­ed intim­i­da­tion,” Simeonidis tells New Times. “Any rea­son­able per­son would be unnerved to see a man with a gun, a badge, and a Trump mask walk­ing right by them as they’re cast­ing their bal­lots.”

RESPONSES

Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez a Republican tweet­ed out ‚I have spo­ken to Chief Colina and we agree that the officer’s behav­ior is unac­cept­able. This was a vio­la­tion of depart­men­tal pol­i­cy. He is under inves­ti­ga­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures will be taken.

Dozens of peo­ple, includ­ing Miami-Dade vot­ers, respond­ed to Simeonidis’ tweet with outrage.
“Unacceptable… There should be no polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing as part of our offi­cers’ uni­forms,” city com­mis­sion­er Ken Russell tweet­ed.
In an inter­view with WIOD-AM (610) radio host Brian Mudd at 11:35 this morn­ing, City of Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina said the depart­ment was aware of the inci­dent and would take “appro­pri­ate action.”
Obviously, this is a vio­la­tion of our pol­i­cy,” Colina told Mudd. “You’re not sup­posed to be cam­paign­ing for any­one [while] in uniform.”

THEN THERE IS THE POLICE UNION

Tommy Reyes, pres­i­dent of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), said in a state­ment that the union is also aware of the photo.
“We would like to remind every­one, police offi­cers also have First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution as well as the right to vote in uni­form pur­suant to Florida State Law,” Reyes said in an FOP press release. “We would also like to state that the National FOP has endorsed President Donald Trump’s re-elec­tion.”

Do you recall over the last four years, every­one and their uncle ask­ing the ques­tion, “what the hell hap­pened to the Republicans”, in the face of Donald Trump’s crimes? (Senators, Congressmen &women)
Of course, you do… Some peo­ple say they are scared that Trump’s cult of sup­port will turn against them and shoo them out of office once he starts to bul­ly them on Twitter.
I agree that he is a colos­sal bul­ly, there is no deny­ing that, the sup­port he enjoys is not the kind of soft sup­port that oth­er politi­cians would enjoy, his sup­port­ers are all in.
So we are forced to scratch a lit­tle deep­er to under­stand the cult fol­low­ing that embold­ened Donald Trump to say he could shoot some­one on Fifth Avenue and he would­n’t lose a sin­gle sup­port­er. (We’ll come back to this point)
Me, I have ideas that may be more sin­is­ter. I believe that the Russians have dirt on all of these clowns and so they are forced to toe the Trump line.

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SEE LINK ABOVE

It is remark­able what inter­nal polling can do fif­teen days before a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. I mean, being the cal­cu­la­tive self-serv­ing tac­ti­cians that they are, a cou­ple of Republican Senators have begun to find their voic­es by try­ing to cre­ate an impres­sion that they were always inde­pen­dent thinkers who nev­er fol­lowed on their knees behind Trump like servile domes­ti­cat­ed dogs.
Two days ago I wrote about the cal­cu­la­tive attempt of Nebraska US Senator Ben Sasse, in an insult to our intel­li­gence, when he tried to berate Donald Trump to rough­ly 17,000 of his con­stituents, in a teleconference.
Sure Senator Sasse, that kind of thing will nev­er get out, you only said it to the equiv­a­lent of a mid-sized town.
And now Texas Republican US sen­a­tor John Cornyn, who is in a tougher than expect­ed fight to retain his seat, has kin­da-sor­ta, come out with a mealy-mouthed bunch of lies, in an effort to try and wash some of the stench­es of Donald Trump from off him.

Slate report­ed that in a meet­ing Cornyn was asked whether he and oth­er mem­bers of the Republican Party didn’t regret fail­ing to push Trump more on cer­tain issues“?
I think what we found is that we’re not going to change President Trump. He is who he is,” Cornyn said. “You either love him or hate him, and there’s not much in-between”. What I tried to do is not get into pub­lic con­fronta­tions and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usu­al­ly don’t end too well.”
The report indi­cat­ed that Cornyn insist­ed that he was opposed to tak­ing mon­ey from the defense bud­get to build por­tions of the bor­der wall, claim­ing he is “very much a defense hawk.”
But, as the Dallas Morning News points out, Cornyn repeat­ed­ly defend­ed the move pub­licly. In February, for exam­ple, he said Trump real­ly had no oth­er choice. “I believe bor­der secu­ri­ty is part of nation­al secu­ri­ty. So I sup­port the efforts to accom­plish that secure bor­der,” Cornyn told reporters on Feb. 20. “The president’s left with a bad hand and has to play the best hand he can.” Cornyn’s Democratic chal­lenger, MJ Hegar, sent a tweet point­ing out this dis­crep­an­cy: “Either John Cornyn’s a cow­ard — or he’s a liar.”
No, it is not a bina­ry choice… John Cornyn is both, and then some.
John Cornyn is see­ing the same exter­nal polling that most Americans are see­ing, addi­tion­al­ly, John Cornyn, like Ben Sasse, is also see­ing the hand­writ­ing on the wall, they have access to inter­nal polling for their party.
Ben Sasse said it, he said Trump is lead­ing the par­ty into a “blood­bath”, [sic].

Not a sin­gle one of these Republican US Senators hon­ored their oaths over the last three years plus of the Trump régime. They stood by in lock­step with Donald Trump as he walked all over the Constitution, the laws, and the rights of peo­ple he hated.
Not a sin­gle Republican Senator had the matu­ri­ty that the founders expect­ed them to exhib­it in the upper cham­ber. It is because the founders expect­ed Senators to be more rea­soned, less par­ti­san, more delib­er­a­tive, that they are giv­en six-year terms, as opposed to the two-year term of the more ram­bunc­tious mem­bers of the house.
Without con­sid­er­ing that Donald Trump will be like a flash in the pan, gone even­tu­al­ly, despite the evi­dence they all-togeth­er vot­ed to keep Trump in office, with the excep­tion of Mitt Romney.
Not a sin­gle oth­er Republican Senator stepped up to defend the Constitution as Republican Senators did to Richard Nixon.
Making the argu­ment that they do not like the things Trump does is malarky, Trump com­mit­ted remov­able offens­es for which he was just­ly impeached.
Republicans dis­hon­ored their oaths to the con­sti­tu­tion when they decid­ed not to remove the men­ace that is the Trump régime, all out of rank polit­i­cal opportunism.

The pur­suit of pow­er has long been the sole strat­e­gy of Republicans at all lev­els. They cre­ate farm insti­tu­tions that nur­ture and grow right-wing zealots whose loy­al­ty is to the Republican par­ty and its racist poli­cies, and not to the Democratic prin­ci­ples enshrined in the constitution.
Organizations like the Heritage Foundation are deter­mined to make the Supreme Court a far-right final arbiter that will turn the American clock back hun­dreds of years.
On the Supreme Court and the Federal appeals Bench, they have been a phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess at recre­at­ing the American Judiciary into an arm of the Republican Party.
Through uncon­scionable redis­trict­ing, they have ger­ry­man­dered Congressional Districts that allow Republican house mem­bers to choose their vot­ers, instead of vot­ers choos­ing them.
Through a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics, they have pre­vent­ed minori­ties and young peo­ple from exer­cis­ing the fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al right in any Democratic nation, that is the right to vote.
The Republican par­ty’s galling and rapa­cious attempts to grab and hold pow­er is an insult to the flag, the Constitution, and every­thing this exper­i­ment ever represented.

Years ago Roger Ailes pitched an idea to Rupert Murdoch a media tycoon. That idea was that there was about 60% of the media that was slant­ed to the left .……lib­er­al as they say.
He argued that despite those per­cent­ages, the peo­ple who received news from the major news orga­ni­za­tions, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, et al were scat­tered around those networks.
He argued that there was a sol­id 40% who want­ed some­thing else.
That 40% was the so-called con­ser­v­a­tives scat­tered across the country.
FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion was born, along with FOX, emerged a net­work of radio, and oth­er mis­in­for­ma­tion chan­nels that were ded­i­cat­ed to feed­ing the beast of racist right-wing fears and victimhood.
Donald Trump did not need to work toward earn­ing that 40% of the coun­try, it was sit­ting there wait­ing for the most caus­tic, most ven­omous nation­al­ist to take over, and that is exact­ly what he did.
One by one he anni­hi­lat­ed his oppo­nents in the 2016 pri­maries, not with pol­i­cy ideas, not with busi­ness ideas, but with insults, dem­a­goguery, lies, and slander.
They want­ed a can­di­date who hates who they hate, regard­less of his flaws, Donald Trump became President because that 40% vot­ed, Democrats and so-called Independents allowed Russian mis­in­for­ma­tion against Hillary Clinton to keep them from voting.
According to the FBI Director and a long line of oth­er nation­al secu­ri­ty experts, not only has Russian inter­fer­ence not stopped, oth­er state actors have joined in, plac­ing the American Elections in grave danger.
Not a sin­gle Republican United States Senator has put pol­i­tics or per­son­al con­sid­er­a­tions aside to stand up to Donald Trump, as such not a sin­gle one of them will be guilt­less when this is all over.

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.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse did not bite his tongue when he addressed a group of his con­stituents in a tele­phone town hall meet­ing recent­ly; please tell us how you feel, Ben.
Geez.…..
Other than the wishy-washy Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, the only oth­er US Senator who has ever dared to dis­agree with [wannabe strong­man Donald Trump] open­ly, has been [flaky Jeff Flake of Arizona], of course, he did what Trump want­ed, threw a few stones then ducked out before Trump could chop his head off.

Sasse respond­ed to ques­tions from con­stituents as to why he has open­ly crit­i­cized Donald Trump, a Republican President, for Republican polar­ized cultists, which is an almost unfor­giv­able sin.
In response, Ben Sasse told them Trump has “flirt­ed with white suprema­cists,” and “kiss­es dic­ta­tors’ butts, and mocks Christian evan­gel­i­cals in private.
I total­ly agree with Sasse on the two for­mer charges, but I am total­ly in agree­ment with Trump as it relates to Trump mock­ing Evangelicals.
White Christian Evangelicals are total idiots and hyp­ocrites to boot.
Sasse also crit­i­cized Trump’s han­dling of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and said Trump’s fam­i­ly had treat­ed the pres­i­den­cy “as a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. “I mean, he and I have a very dif­fer­ent for­eign pol­i­cy,” Sasse said. “It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies. It’s that we — the United States — reg­u­lar­ly sell out our allies under his leadership.”
Ouch!!!!
Sasse said he crit­i­cizes Trump for how he treats women and because Trump “spends like a drunk­en sailor,” say­ing he crit­i­cized Democratic President Barack Obama for over­spend­ing as well.

Millions of Americans have already vot­ed; in fact, as I am writ­ing this piece, more than 20 mil­lion have already cast their bal­lots, so think on this.
As California Congressman, and for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Eric Swalwell have point­ed out, Ben Sasse vot­ed to acquit Trump’s impeach­ment tri­al. His vot­ing record in the US Senate, has been lock­step in line with Donald Trump’s agen­da.
If you want to see whether Ben Sasse is doing this out of a strong moral con­vic­tion, rather than deeply rapa­cious per­son­al lust, watch to see if he will cast a vote against seat­ing Amey Coney Barrett on the United States Supreme Court.

Ben Sasse is a 48-years old Yale edu­cat­ed Republican Senator who is whip-smart. Ben Sasse wait­ed until the writ­ing is now on the wall that Trump may be implod­ing to release what he believes will be retriev­able evi­dence of his oppo­si­tion to Donald Trump’s corruption.
Evidence that he believes, will cleanse him of the putrid stench of his oth­er­wise servile syco­phancy to Trump’s agenda.
Ben Sasse has not object­ed to a sin­gle one of Trump’s crimes, not on his ille­gal Muslim ban, not on lock­ing chil­dren in cages, not on his breach­es of the emol­u­ments clause, not on his killing of Iranian General Solemani, not on his attempt to destroy NATO, not on his crazy trade war on China, not on divid­ing the coun­try along racial lines, not on cozy­ing up to white suprema­cists .…..until this outburst.
So what is it that caused Ben Sasse to speak out against Donald Trump’s crimes now?

Above all things else, Sasse is a shrewd­ly intel­li­gent younger man who sees him­self going places. There will be life after Donald Trump, and some­one will need to rise from the ash­es, regard­less of when that time comes…There will be a reck­on­ing for what this iter­a­tion of the Republican par­ty has done to the country.
Sasse wants to be the phoenix that ris­es from the ash­es to rep­re­sent the par­ty when that time comes, maybe as ear­ly as 2024.
Many wel­come Ben Sasse’s com­ments, includ­ing some Democrats, who are hap­py for any­thing that looks like bipar­ti­san oppo­si­tion to what Trump represents.
Not me.
Sasse point­ed out that Donald Trump’s actions will result in young peo­ple trend­ing away from the Republican par­ty nev­er to return. He laments that the[ young peo­ple will become life­long Democrats], not the harm that Trump is doing to the country.
For Ben Sasse, like oth­er Republicans who are not mem­bers of the Lincoln Project, it is all about polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy, and hold­ing raw power.
Like the oth­er Republicans, Ben Sasse is just anoth­er two-bit polit­i­cal hus­tler.

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. 

ARE YOU SHOCKED YET AT THIS IN YOUR FACE COURT PACKING, WHILE THEY LAMENT THAT BIDEN WILL BE PACKING THE COURTS IF HE WINS?
HOW COULD BIDEN NOT IMMEDIATELY PUT FOUR (4) ASSOCIATE JUSTICES ON THE COURT TO RIGHT THE WRONG THAT HAS BEEN GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, AND NOW AMEY CONEY BARRETT?

Here is your next supreme court jus­tice Amey Coney Barrett.
She was asked by a Democratic Senator if there were any cir­cum­stances under which the pres­i­dent could delay the pres­i­den­tial elections?
She did a round­about answer, that she would have to read the briefs in front of her, that she would have to con­sult with her law clerks, and basi­cal­ly con­fer­ence with her colleagues.
Donald Trump want­ed to set the elec­tions back, the only prob­lem is that he has no such pow­er. There was an elec­tion dur­ing the civ­il war and Lincoln had no pow­er to set the elec­tions back or to can­cel them.
The short answer to the ques­tion posed to the future asso­ciate jus­tice is that a pres­i­dent has zero pow­er to can­cel or post­pone the elections.
So there .…. What she did as a lack­ey for Trump was to bull­shit on the answer in order to get her­self on the court and to ingra­ti­ate her­self with her crim­i­nal spon­sor Donald Trump.

Asked if it is legal for teams of poll watch­ers to be allowed to stand around polling places and intim­i­date vot­ers wish­ing to cast their bal­lots, she refused to answer with a sim­ple no.
These are the polit­i­cal hatch­et wield­ers who are being rushed onto the high­est court that will nul­li­fy the will of the American peo­ple when they vote.
Republicans have found a way to push back the will of the major­i­ty of Americans who have vot­ed twice in the last 16-years for Democrats to be pres­i­dents and have seen their will sub­vert­ed by an archa­ic elec­toral col­lege law, in addi­tion to the two US Senators per state rule, that places the voic­es of white rur­al vot­ers over the tens of mil­lions more who live in cities and suburbs.
America is for all intents and pur­pos­es, a white minor­i­ty rule nation, where rur­al whites in small states set their agen­da for the nation over the will of the tens of mil­lions of vot­ers who live in large states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and many others.
So the 578,759 peo­ple liv­ing in the entire state of Wyoming, get to can­cel out the voic­es over thir­ty-nine mil­lion of the 40,000,000 peo­ple liv­ing in the state of California, or over twen­ty-nine mil­lion of the 30’000;000 liv­ing in New York.

So the repub­li­can strat­e­gy is to pack the courts with right-wing reac­tionary hatch­et-wield­ers who will sim­ply chop down estab­lished prece­dent as the court has already done with cit­i­zens unit­ed, as with Shelby coun­ty Alabama Vs Holder, as it does with stop­ping the cen­sus count on the demand of a crim­i­nal strong­man pre­tend­ing to be an American pres­i­dent.♠ Continue read­ing →