Hmm…So now the facts are start­ing to seep out. Donald Trump may have had nuclear secrets at his House/​club Mara Lago, where peo­ple pay to rub shoul­ders with the for­mer liar-in-chief.
All of the right-wing Republican anar­chists Jim Jordon, the insignif­i­cant Newt Gingrich who no one remem­bers, Kevin McCarthy, the two Cubans Liddle Marco Rubio, Raphael Cruz, and the oth­er anti-American despots who want to turn America into a trump-ruled author­i­tar­i­an banana repub­lic have filth on their faces.
But that’s okay; these peo­ple are used to hav­ing filth on their faces. They are lying morons unde­serv­ing of respect. How could any­one respect Marco Rubio, who said the cir­cum­spect Barack Obama had no class? President Obama’s crime was that he invit­ed the rap­per ‘Common’ to the White House.
Marco Rubio, how­ev­er, sees noth­ing wrong with Donald Trump, a total freak of nature and one of the most despi­ca­ble crea­tures ever to walk this earth.
But this brief is not about these deplorable it is about the chess=playing head of the Justice Department, who addressed the nation on Thursday and said he made a motion to the Court to release the con­tents of the search warrant.
Donald Trump has a copy of that war­rant, knows what the DOJ was search­ing for, knows what they took, and knows that he was sub­poe­naed to hand over the prop­er­ty of the American Government but failed to do so. Donald Trump allowed his min­ions to embar­rass them­selves on his behalf even though he knew that the DOJ was in the right.
It is impor­tant to under­stand the dan­ger posed by the right-wing Republicans’ utter­ances, calls for civ­il war, calls for killing FBI Agents, calls to destroy the FBI, calls to arrest FBI agents, calls to shoot FBI agents, calls to defund the FBI, calls to stock up on weapons and ammu­ni­tion, calls to sleep well because tomor­row is war.
It is what occurred on January 5^th, 2021, 2.0. on that occa­sion, lives were lost, and nei­ther Trump nor his min­ions were held accountable.

It hap­pened on Thursday when one nut-job Ricky Schiffer, approached the FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and fired a nail gun at the build­ing… Police lat­er killed Ricky Schiffer after he fired an AR15 weapon at them.
Donald Trump knew that the Agents at his estate were there legit­i­mate­ly. Yet, he allowed his bootlick­ers, Rubio, Cruz, Ron Johnson, his per­son­al water­boy Kevin McCarthy, and oth­ers to dis­grace themselves.
They will feel no shame as more infor­ma­tion comes out; they will change the nar­ra­tive to anoth­er lie and say he declas­si­fied what­ev­er doc­u­ments he had.
That, too, will be proven a lie.

.

.

.

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

I don’t believe that despite their flaws and imper­fec­tions, the Department Of Justice(DOJ) and even a Federal Judge would all autho­rize the search of the home of a for­mer President of The United States.
Now, I do not see what the ker­fuf­fle is all about. The for­mer pres­i­dent is not a title; a for­mer pres­i­dent is an aver­age cit­i­zen. Even if the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion ‘for­mer pres­i­dent’ was a title, it should not exclude the hold­er from being treat­ed like any oth­er citizen.
I do not under­stand the notion that a can­di­date run­ning for pres­i­dent should not be inves­ti­gat­ed or indict­ed, a sit­ting pres­i­dent should not be inves­ti­gat­ed or indict­ed, and a for­mer pres­i­dent should not be inves­ti­gat­ed or indictment.
If those things are true, then any crim­i­nal intend­ing to avoid pros­e­cu­tion need only announce a run for the pres­i­den­cy, and they are imme­di­ate­ly shield­ed from accountability.

These clowns must know that Trump has a copy of the war­rant, yet they placed them­selves out there act­ing like total Jackasses to please Trump. If a Federal judge unseals the war­rant, every­one will know exact­ly what Donald Trump already knows.

The idea of the United States as a free and inde­pen­dent nation was premised on the idea that free peo­ple did not want to answer to an oppres­sive British monarch. The War of Independence was fought because free men decid­ed enough was enough from a tyrant, King George, and would not capit­u­late to tyranny.
How then does the Republican Party explain its embrace of a man who is the equiv­a­lent of a tyran­ni­cal, cor­rupt mod­ern-day King who believes he has the right to rule by decree and not be sub­ject­ed to the rule of law?
I ask this of the Republicans who are express­ing dis­gust and out­rage. Those who are ask­ing ques­tions and demand­ing the DOJ step for­ward, those who are threat­en­ing.…. speak­ing of Kevin McCarthy, who has­n’t even won a major­i­ty in con­gress yet. And those like the peren­ni­al bootlick­ing morons like Marco Rubio and Raphael Cruz, the two Cubans who are des­per­ate to be accept­ed into the American con­struct of whiteness.
Marco Rubio, Raphael Cruz, and oth­ers absolute­ly love to invoke the term ‘banana repub­lic to describe poor devel­op­ing nations. Here is the thing to these two min­strels of the total clown, the def­i­n­i­tion of a banana republic.
Derogatory: A polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble coun­try with an econ­o­my dom­i­nat­ed by for­eign inter­est, usu­al­ly depen­dent on one export, such as bananas.
Hmmm, I don’t know, Eses, two out of three ain’t that bad; care­ful what you wish for.

The right-wing anti-democ­ra­cy Republican cult fol­low­ing of Donald Trump all know quite well that the actions of the DOJ and FBI are above board and by the book.
They also know that their sup­port­ers are low-infor­ma­tion, FOX-indoc­tri­nat­ed fools, and so the howls of con­dem­na­tion of the legit­i­mate actions of the DOJ are designed not just for an audi­ence of one, Donald Trump, but aimed at those idi­ot­ic low-infor­ma­tion vot­ers who vote their pink skins.
In an unprece­dent­ed response to the blow­back from the law­less repub­li­cans, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a state­ment on Thursday.

• Attorney General Merrick Garland said The Justice Department asked a judge to unseal a search war­rant used by the FBI to raid the Florida home of for­mer President Donald Trump three days earlier.
• “I per­son­al­ly approved the deci­sion to seek a search war­rant in this mat­ter,” Garland said.
  Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department asked a fed­er­al judge Thursday to unseal a search war­rant that FBI agents used to raid the Florida home of for­mer President Donald Trump three days ear­li­er. The Trump war­rant, which his lawyers already have, will include an affi­davit detail­ing to the judge who signed the war­rant the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the search of his home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.It also will include details about what crime or crimes fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cials sus­pect were com­mit­ted and have a list of items seized in Monday’s raid.

  “The depart­ment does not take such a deci­sion light­ly,” The Attorney General said. “Where pos­si­ble, it is stan­dard prac­tice to seek less intru­sive means as an alter­na­tive to a search and to nar­row­ly scope any search that is undertaken.”

  Garland also con­demned what he called “recent unfound­ed attacks on the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the FBI and Justice Department agents and pros­e­cu­tors” in con­nec­tion with the search and relat­ed investigation.

  “I will not stand by silent­ly when their integri­ty is unfair­ly attacked,”

.

.

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

Donald Trump attend­ed New York Attorney General Letisha James’ Manhattan offices and did what any cow­ard with some­thing to hide would do under the cir­cum­stances, invoke the 5^th.
Admittedly, invok­ing the 5^th amend­ment right to remain silent is pro­vid­ed for in the US con­sti­tu­tion. Additionally, it [does not] infer that the per­son invok­ing their 5^th amend­ment right to remain silent is guilty of a crime, far from it.
The 5^th amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion was designed to pro­tect the inno­cent from self-incrimination.
But that is in crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. Donald Trump was not at Tish James’ offices in a crim­i­nal mat­ter; he was there in rela­tion to civ­il pro­ceed­ings being inves­ti­gat­ed by the New York Attorney General.
Unfortunately for Donald Trump and his min­ions who argue that he had every right to clam up, the bar in civ­il cas­es as it per­tains to rea­son­able doubt is low­er than in crim­i­nal proceedings.
Now, full dis­clo­sure, I am not a lawyer; nev­er­the­less, in civ­il lit­i­ga­tions, a witness’s invo­ca­tion of the Fifth Amendment may give rise to an adverse infer­ence “when inde­pen­dent evi­dence exists of the fact to which the par­ty refus­es to answer.”
In oth­er words, as long as there is evi­dence of cul­pa­bil­i­ty inde­pen­dent of what the respon­dent would answer to, tak­ing the 5^th essen­tial­ly is looked at as evi­dence of guilt.

Nevertheless, some are more guilty than oth­ers and have more to hide. So tak­ing the fifth for those indi­vid­u­als takes on a dif­fer­ent mean­ing. I can­not open my mouth because I will be found out, caught like a fish on a hook, even though I repeat­ed­ly said only the guilty take the 5^th..
While debat­ing Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump declared that Clinton’s staff took the 5^th because they were guilty.
He blast­ed the 5^th amend­ment repeat­ed­ly, declar­ing that only the Mafia (Mob) takes the 5^th. But don’t take it from me; hear it from the creep­’s own trap.
Anyway!!! Democrats are hope­less­ly hor­ri­ble at mes­sag­ing. Lacking in grasp­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Lacking in rec­og­niz­ing open­ings. Lacking in cohe­sion. Lacking in the abil­i­ty to seize oppor­tu­ni­ties. Lacking in rec­og­niz­ing that the oth­er par­ty is play­ing chess while it plays check­ers. Who will mobi­lize the mass­es of the American peo­ple who do not sub­scribe to Fascism? Most of the vot­ers in 2020 vot­ed for the Democrats, yet no one knows who or what the Democrats are. Even the Democratic pres­i­dent and Senators talk about the Democrats must do this, must do that. If they are not the Democrats, who is? Now, do you under­stand why the Republicans keep get­ting their way despite being a minor­i­ty party?

On the oth­er hand, the minor­i­ty par­ty sticks to their guns, fig­u­ra­tive­ly and literally.
Remember when Barack Obama was demo­nized for say­ing they cling to Bibles and guns? No, how about when Hillary said they were deplorable?
No?
You real­ly need to pay atten­tion; pol­i­tics affects every aspect of your life.
The Fascist Republicans invoked more than the 5^th; they pur­chased most of the over 400 mil­lion guns in the hands of cit­i­zens of the United States and are now call­ing for civ­il war.
But what about law and order? Weren’t they sup­posed to be the law-and-order par­ty? What hap­pened? Oh, I see they are only for law and order when it per­tains to every­one else, not to them.
Got it!
The Republican par­ty and its Racist, Xenophobic, Islamaphobic, Homophobic, and Transphobic lead­ers and sup­port­ers all under­stand the mis­sion; they act and speak as a monolith.
Every one of his sup­port­ers under­stands the assign­ment. They know that, like most of them, Donald Trump is an absolute dunce; nev­er­the­less, he has the abil­i­ty to mobi­lize the mass­es and win a gen­er­al elec­tion. This effec­tive­ly places white suprema­cy square­ly in the white house, appro­pri­ate­ly named, and in every fed­er­al agency, includ­ing the fed­er­al judiciary.

LOOK AT THE PROPAGANDIST LANGUAGE HE USES, LANGUAGE DESIGNED TO DELIBERATELY INCITE; ON THIS, HE IS A GENIUS.

After the FBI raid on his estate in Florida, here is what he said. I doubt seri­ous­ly that he has the abil­i­ty to put this state­ment togeth­er. Still, the bel­li­cos­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to use words to incite and prop­a­gate alter­na­tive facts seem like, at the very least, he dic­tat­ed it.
I cor­rect­ed some of the punc­tu­a­tion and high­light­ed the areas that I ask you to con­sid­er in red. I did not alter or change the text. He is a mas­ter manip­u­la­tor, the likes of whom we have not seen in our life­time. He is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to Democracy and the prin­ci­ples of Democracy that have guid­ed the world order after the sec­ond world war end­ed in 1945.

HIS STATEMENT

These are dark times for our Nation, as my beau­ti­ful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is cur­rent­ly under siege, raid­ed, and occu­pied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever hap­pened to a President of the United States before. After work­ing and coop­er­at­ing with the rel­e­vant Government agen­cies, this unan­nounced raid on my home was not nec­es­sary or appro­pri­ate. It is pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, the weaponiza­tion of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who des­per­ate­ly don’t want me to run for President in 2024, espe­cial­ly based on recent polls, and who will like­wise do any­thing to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcom­ing Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in bro­ken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those coun­tries, cor­rupt at a lev­el not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the dif­fer­ence between this and Watergate, where oper­a­tives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45^th President of the United States.

The polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now ful­ly debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more; it just nev­er ends. It is polit­i­cal tar­get­ing at the high­est level!

Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E‑mails AFTER they were sub­poe­naed by Congress. Absolutely noth­ing has hap­pened to hold her account­able. She even took antique fur­ni­ture and oth­er items from the White House.

I stood up to America’s bureau­crat­ic cor­rup­tion. I restored pow­er to the peo­ple and tru­ly deliv­ered for our Country like we have nev­er seen before. The estab­lish­ment hat­ed it. Now, as they watch my endorsed can­di­dates win big vic­to­ries and see my dom­i­nance in all polls, they are try­ing to stop me and the Republican Party once more. The law­less­ness, polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.

I will con­tin­ue to fight for the Great American People! (Donald Trump)

Might I remind you as you assim­i­late what he said and con­sid­er the high­light­ed parts of his state­ment that you process it against the back­ground that Donald Trump broke a num­ber of laws as pres­i­dent, from the emol­u­ments clause to incit­ing a mob to attack and over­throw the con­sti­tut­ed order of the United States to remain in pow­er after he lost the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elections.
No pres­i­dent in our life­time has come remote­ly close to being this law­less. The sup­port that Senate, House, and oth­er Republicans give to this real­ly dan­ger­ous threat to American democ­ra­cy high­lights the grave dan­ger of ever allow­ing this polit­i­cal par­ty and Donald Trump polit­i­cal pow­er ever again.

.

.

.

.This sto­ry was updat­ed from it’s orig­i­nal publication.

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

(Wah nu ded nu dash I weh)
What in the name of? .….what are you talk­ing about, Mike? Relax .… it’s an old Jamaican proverb, mean­ing if a thing is not dead, do not throw it out.
I should have learned that les­son grow­ing up, but I was con­front­ed on two sep­a­rate occa­sions to nev­er give up on peo­ple no mat­ter how we dis­like how they operate.
The first instance is Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the sole House mem­ber from Wyoming, and her stance on her oath to the US constitution.
Liz Cheney would be one of the last Republicans I would have expect­ed to stand up to Donald Trump’s elec­tion lies; if any Republican were so bold, I would have expect­ed New York Republican like .…..let me see, an upstate repub­li­can like Elise Stefanik. Yea .…why not? It would be safer to win reelec­tion in new york, right?

After all, Liz Cheney is the daugh­ter of Dick Cheney, George Bush’s for­mer Vice President, and Liz was the num­ber three in the Republican House lead­er­ship, so why would she buck the trend to stand up to a lying con-man who has the Republican par­ty and half the coun­try eat­ing out of his tiny grub­by hands? Fidelity to her oath!!!
Liz Cheney had a lot to lose; as we have seen, she has already lost a lot and will lose even more before this is over.
The Wyoming Republican Party cen­sured her; she lost her lead­er­ship job to… you guessed it, Elise Stefanik the upstate New York Congresswoman who is will­ing and ready to do any­thing to attain pow­er, basi­cal­ly any­thing lying con artist Donald Trump wants. Liz Cheney was pri­maried for her seat, the sole house seat in the entire State, and at the moment, polls show her pri­ma­ry oppo­nent lead­ing her by 22-points.
Liz Cheney took an oath, and she is stand­ing by that oath; she is not the only Republican who has done that. I lift my cap to Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger for stand­ing for what is right, but this is about Liz Cheney right now, and I am not wear­ing a hat, so there is that.
Adam Kinzinger has always sound­ed so rea­son­able that he could eas­i­ly pass for a Democrat or Independent. In fact, Kinzinger is indeed a con­ser­v­a­tive Republican, but his par­ty is so far to the right even his posi­tion appears reasonable.

And then the above, in the Nation’s 246-year his­to­ry, no per­son has been a greater dan­ger to American Democracy than .……Let me let him tell it.
Dick Cheney, whom many on the left and in the cen­ter brand­ed a war crim­i­nal for the lies he told that led up to the Iraq inva­sion, result­ing in the death of hun­dreds of thousands.
Many argue that Dick Cheney has no stand­ing to make such an asser­tion as if every­thing they say about him can’t be true and his state­ments above true as well. After all, even a bro­ken Clock is right twice each day.
In a con­ver­sa­tion with a wise con­fi­dant today, he told me the teller’s char­ac­ter does not taint the truth.
Yes, I am sur­prised that of all of the Dynastic fam­i­lies in the United States, it is the Cheneys that are stand­ing up to defend American democ­ra­cy from a lying trai­tor who has used racism to poi­son the well so much so that even if he decides against run­ning for the pres­i­den­cy in 2024 the tox­i­c­i­ty in the stream is enough to upend democ­ra­cy as we know it.
I learned that every­one is redeemable.…..(Wah nu ded nu dash I weh).

.

.

.

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

Joe Manchin, the *Democratic* US Senator from West Virginia, has been the bane of his par­ty’s agen­da even though he is from one of the poor­est states in the union, one that would ben­e­fit from pres­i­dent Biden’s build back bet­ter agenda.
Joe Manchin opposed the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da at every turn, includ­ing his attempts to seri­ous­ly attack glob­al warming.
Understandably Joe Manchin comes from a state that relies heav­i­ly on coal; notwith­stand­ing, Joe Manchin is the largest recip­i­ent of fos­sil fuel mon­ey in Congress.
Despite being elect­ed to do the busi­ness of the American peo­ple, Joe Manchin and the state of West Virginia have held Biden’s agen­da hostage as he and Arizona Democratic US Senator Kyrsten Sinema hog the nation­al stage for their own agendas.
No one elect­ed Manchin or Sinema pres­i­dent of the United States. Still, the peo­ple who did are forced to watch help­less­ly as two wolves in sheep­’s cloth­ing thwart the will of tens of mil­lions of Americans who vot­ed to elect a Democratic majority.

Biden’s 1.7 Trillion-build-back bet­ter plan was scrapped by Manchin, who took full advan­tage of the Senate’s 50 – 50 split to flex his muscle.
The sur­pris­ing Compromise reached between Manchin and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer is an expo­nen­tial­ly scaled-back ver­sion of the ini­tial bill pro­posed by the president.
The 700 bil­lion dol­lar deal agreed to rep­re­sents less than half of what Biden pro­posed, and even so, the Democrats are extreme­ly wary that this is not guar­an­teed to reach Biden’s desk for his signature.

Democrats are still forced to walk a tightrope of antic­i­pa­tion as Kirsten Sinnema has been play­ing coy and dodg­ing reporter’s ques­tions about whether she intends to sup­port her par­ty and the American peo­ple with a yes vote.
The anger from Republicans toward Joe Manchin is laugh­able, except that this is no laugh­ing mat­ter. The deal rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant advances in the fight to stop cli­mate change and low­er the price of pre­scrip­tion drugs for Americans.
Even as they crit­i­cized a Democrat for sup­port­ing a Democratic ini­tia­tive, Republicans were busy fist bump­ing each oth­er after block­ing a bill that would aid Veterans.
“Joe has been tak­en to the clean­ers.”
“They sucked Republican votes up like a Hoover Deluxe and then got their votes [on CHIPS] and then, bam, announced this new tax increase,” said Sen. John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, on Fox & Friends on Thursday morn­ing. “We look like a bunch of — well, I’m not going to say what we look like.”
Oh, Oh, wait… I have a few adjec­tives to describe what you all look like. I’ll say it, I’ll say it.….…
Oh, sheesh, nev­er mind, they say I’m too straight­for­ward and raw.

.

.

.

If it seems like wrong is win­ning, that right is being drowned out, or even that only good peo­ple are dying, you may not be too off base in your thinking.
Whether or not you believe abor­tion is right or wrong is hard­ly the issue, but when a group of 5 unelect­ed bureau­crats decides to take away rights that peo­ple had for almost half a cen­tu­ry, one gets to think­ing, ‘who gave them that right?
I thought the court was sup­posed to inter­pret the laws.
Am I wrong in think­ing that the court has no author­i­ty to give or take away the rights of citizens?
Whether you or I agree, the American Supreme court is now in the busi­ness of tak­ing away the rights that two gen­er­a­tions of Americans were born into. If that does not scare you, I have no idea what will.
Below, President Barack Obama chid­ed the court for over­turn­ing prece­dent and open­ing the door for spe­cial inter­est mon­ey to flood the elec­tions process. Samuel Alito had the gall to sit there and mouth the words ‘not true.” Every word the pres­i­dent said about that cit­i­zens unit­ed rul­ing was valid.

As I try to unpack this dilem­ma for you, it is vital to under­stand what the major­i­ty of Americans who do not sup­port the anti-Democracy Republican par­ty are up against. 

It is also impor­tant that we flush out why the Republican par­ty gave up on Democracy and have now become a full-fledged author­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal move­ment.
Five of those six Republicans on the high court vot­ed to over­turn (prece­dent on prece­dent) when they over­turned Roe Versus Wade; when ques­tioned dur­ing their con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings, at least three of those dis­hon­est liars said they would respect stare deci­sis, let the deci­sion stand, a foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple in jurisprudence.
But those liars, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett, lied to get on the high­est court. They knew that they had no inten­tion of hon­or­ing what they told Senators.
All three of the afore­men­tioned liars have one thing in com­mon; they were all placed on the court by Donald Trump, a patho­log­i­cal liar, a cheat, and an ene­my of American Democracy.
The oth­er two clowns Clarence Tom-Ass, and Samuel Alito were both placed on the court by the Bush pres­i­den­tial dynasty of Herbert Walker Bush and his goof­ball son George W Bush respec­tive­ly, the 41^st and 43^rd pres­i­dents of the United States. 

The five who lied and cheat­ed their way onto the court were nom­i­nat­ed to the court by two of three pres­i­dents who gained office by the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry elec­toral col­lege despite not being elect­ed by the major­i­ty of the American people.
Let it sink in that Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barret ascend­ed to the court by a one-term pres­i­dent, Donald Trump who lost the pop­u­lar vote, was impeached twice in his sin­gle term, and launched an attack on con­gress after he lost reelec­tion to stay in power.
Alito was appoint­ed by Bush 43^rd, a pres­i­dent many said was a war crim­i­nal. Clarence Tom-Ass, appoint­ed by Bush 41, was dogged with alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings. In its wis­dom of advice and con­sent, the United States Senate con­firmed him to the high­est court despite those allegations.
The same alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al impro­pri­ety dogged Brett Kavanaugh dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings. Still, the reac­tionary Republican-held Senate again con­firmed a judge under a cloud of sex­u­al impro­pri­ety alle­ga­tions onto the high­est court.
The world got to see Samuel Alito’s arro­gance and polit­i­cal cleav­ings then, and the world is see­ing the arro­gance of Alito today as he is no longer constrained.
The 6 – 3 Republican major­i­ty on the court has not only giv­en the likes of Tom-Ass, Alito, and oth­ers the pow­er to reshape America, they are pret­ty uncon­cerned about how they flaunt their pow­er, even overseas.

Alito is so proud of his role in the destruc­tion of Roe that he is not con­tent to rev­el in the vic­to­ry right-wing reac­tionar­ies have sought for 49 years; he went to Rome, where he chas­tised world lead­ers for dar­ing to com­ment on what he and his cohorts did.
Speaking from Rome at an event host­ed by Notre Dame Law School, Alito said the abor­tion rights case prompt­ed “a few sec­ond thoughts” on his belief that American judges have no busi­ness cri­tiquing oth­er coun­tries’ court rulings.
I had the hon­or this term of writ­ing, I think, the only Supreme Court deci­sion in the his­to­ry of that insti­tu­tion that has been lam­bast­ed by a whole string of for­eign lead­ers,” he said, paus­ing for laugh­ter from the audi­ence, “who felt per­fect­ly fine com­ment­ing on American law.” “One of these was for­mer [British] Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price,” Alito said mock­ing­ly, prompt­ing more laughs. He threw in a legal joke: “Post hoc ergo propter hoc, right?”

Johnson had called the deci­sion a “back­ward step.” He recent­ly stepped down over an unre­lat­ed string of scandals.
“But oth­ers are still in office,” Alito con­tin­ued. “President [Emmanuel] Macron and Prime Minister Trudeau, I believe, are two.” Canada’s Justin Trudeau called the deci­sion “hor­rif­ic,” and the French leader released a state­ment express­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with Americans “whose free­doms have today been com­pro­mised by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“What real­ly wound­ed me, what real­ly wound­ed me, was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to com­pare the deci­sion whose name may not be spo­ken with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said. Chuckles and groans could be heard across the audi­ence. (As report­ed by HuffPost).
Samuel Alito is in his ele­ment, and so are the oth­er Trump appointees on the court, but I hope you weren’t sur­prised that this is happening.
You sim­ply can­not get clean wine from dirty bot­tles. The deci­sion to over­turn Roe was not about whether or not the deci­sion was con­sti­tu­tion­al. The rad­i­cal repub­li­can major­i­ty that con­trols the court is as uneth­i­cal, unprin­ci­pled, and immoral as the peo­ple who appoint­ed them and the Senators who vot­ed to con­firm them.
These are the prod­ucts of the Federalist Society that rais­es the likes of Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney-Barrett, and oth­ers to main­tain white suprema­cy and Christian fun­da­men­tal­ism in America.

.

.

.

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

Donald Trump is a poi­son that has fil­tered down­stream, poi­son­ing the water for all future gen­er­a­tions. Those of you who argued that America is improv­ing, I direct you to Dr. Martin Luther King’s state­ments warn­ing against what he char­ac­ter­ized then as the “tran­quil drug of gradualism.”
We have wit­nessed what Donald Trump and his acolytes did after he lost the 2020 elec­tions; still, Trump and his cronies are walk­ing around as if noth­ing happened.
In fact, Trump recent­ly said in a speech in Washington DC on Tuesday, July 26^th, that he would purge the gov­ern­ment of peo­ple who would uphold their oaths to the con­sti­tu­tion should he be reelect­ed to the pres­i­den­cy in 2024.
Donald Trump is walk­ing around free because, con­trary to what they tell you, there are two sep­a­rate jus­tice sys­tems in America.
In the mean­time, inno­cent peo­ple of col­or are being gunned down in their cars and on the streets for a bro­ken tail­light by police, who are empow­ered as a form of Gestapo by the Supreme court.
Trump has already stacked the judi­cia­ry with right-wing reac­tionar­ies and has moles oper­at­ing at every lev­el of the state and fed­er­al systems.

Trump and his coup plan­ners would have long been in prison in a coun­try of laws. Americans arro­gant­ly refer to oth­er coun­tries as banana republics; who is the banana repub­lic now?
When we talk about cor­rup­tion and poi­son, Americans once revered and respect­ed the jus­tice sys­tem. I believe the sys­tem is rea­son­ably okay, except that many play­ers are bad peo­ple. Hence, peo­ple of col­or have far less rea­son to be hope­ful about receiv­ing jus­tice from the sys­tem that has nev­er worked for them than their white counterparts.
As bad as the sys­tem has been, it is now clear that it has got­ten expo­nen­tial­ly worse after four years of the most cor­rupt pres­i­den­cy in the nation’s history.
It is no easy feat to be char­ac­ter­ized as the most cor­rupt pres­i­den­cy, America has had some real­ly bad pres­i­den­cies, yet Donald Trump found a way to be the worst.

And so, the courts are now pop­u­lat­ed with hyper-par­ti­sans who do not care that they are per­ceived as par­ti­sans. Samuel Alito and Clarence Tom-ass cer­tain­ly do not care.
Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barrett cer­tain­ly do not care that they are seen as bla­tant liars who point­ed­ly told Senators at their con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings that Roe Versus Wade was set­tled law (prece­dent on prece­dent); their words.
They then over­turned that almost half a cen­tu­ry old prece­dent on prece­dent and did not care what any­one thought of them or the court they were destroying.
It may be impos­si­ble to find a pres­i­dent who has appoint­ed more judges to the Federal judi­cia­ry than Donald Trump has in a sin­gle term.
When con­sid­er­ing those judges, we must con­sid­er that Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote to Hillary Clinton, is a sin­gle-term pres­i­dent, twice impeached, who orches­trat­ed a coup against his own coun­try after los­ing the elec­tions.
Now a Trump-appoint­ed judge is mak­ing a fur­ther mock­ery of the jus­tice sys­tem in Steve Bannon’s con­tempt of Congress con­vic­tion case. A fed­er­al judge on Wednesday declined a request to acquit Donald Trump’s for­mer pres­i­den­tial advis­er Steve Bannon on two con­tempt charges for defy­ing a sub­poe­na from a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the 2021 Capitol attack, but he left open the door to con­sid­er dis­miss­ing the charges instead.

A jury on Friday found Bannon, 68, guilty of two mis­de­meanor counts for refus­ing to pro­vide tes­ti­mo­ny or doc­u­ments to the House of Representatives select com­mit­tee as it scru­ti­nizes the Jan. 6, 2021, ram­page by Trump’s supporters.
In Wednesday’s rul­ing, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said Bannon’s last-ditch request for the court to acquit him of the charges lacked mer­it. “The court con­cludes that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed in the government’s case was suf­fi­cient to sus­tain a con­vic­tion,” Nichols wrote. However, the judge said he still wants both par­ties to pro­vide addi­tion­al legal briefs before he can rule on Bannon’s sec­ond request that Nichols dis­miss the charges.

.

.

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

I learned some valu­able lessons on a recent Central American Nation of Panama trip.
Iguanas ran about like they owned the place. Panama city is a mod­ern bustling metrop­o­lis like any west­ern city. The peo­ple are warm and wel­com­ing. Whatever you do, nev­er cut down a tree with­out first receiv­ing per­mis­sion. Not every issue requires armed police to sort through prob­lems, among others.

My first les­son began before our Copa Airline flight lift­ed from the tar­mac at JFK inter­na­tion­al air­port. Immediately across from my row 22 seat, two women pas­sen­gers got into a heat­ed exchange about what I had no idea; they were speak­ing rapid­ly in Spanish. A teenage boy occu­pied the win­dow seat.
I could pick up a few words from the back and forth of the rapid exchange and pieced togeth­er the remain­der to form my own con­clu­sion there­after. The woman in the aisle seat clos­est to my seat, also an aisle seat, was a lit­tle on the large side; the oth­er lady with whom she beefed was squished between her and the teenage boy on the large side seat­ed in the win­dow seat.

The tiny woman in the mid­dle was small in stature only, she was not about to cow­er in fear from the big girl, and she let her know about it. I sur­mised then that her dis­com­fi­ture was from the hefty isle lady’s inces­sant move­ment, as she had bumped me a cou­ple of times with­out even an acknowl­edg­ment from her that she had bumped into someone.
Regarding her bump­ing me, I thought it was par for the course when you flew coach class and did not get a win­dow seat. I was a tiny bit unhap­py, but I was good.

There was no esca­la­tion, and no heav­i­ly armed police called on board the flight. There was no puni­tive action tak­en against either woman.

A mov­ing shot at some of the mag­nif­i­cent build­ings that adorn down­town Panama City 

Unfortunately, the dis­agree­ment got so heat­ed that it caught the flight atten­dants’ atten­tion. I thought both women would be removed by armed police from the flight and whis­pered my thoughts to my wife.
The two atten­dants calm­ly asked the big girl to move to anoth­er seat which she did oblig­ing­ly, then they duti­ful­ly brought water to both ladies and calm­ly talked them down, and every­thing became calm.
The atten­dants spoke flu­ent Spanish, so I assumed they were Panamanian citizens.
There was no esca­la­tion, and no heav­i­ly armed police called on board the flight. There was no puni­tive action tak­en against either woman; a small con­tain­er of water for them both and two calm pro­fes­sion­als were all it took to restore calm.

Based on the suc­cess of these tran­sits and oth­ers involv­ing sim­i­lar­ly-sized ships, the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) in May 2021 for­mal­ly increased the max­i­mum length and beam for ships pass­ing through the water­way to 1,215 feet long 168.14 feet wide. The pre­vi­ous max­i­mums were 1,205 feet and 161 feet, respectively.

The canal is the main source of trade by con­nect­ing the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean; this is a short and cheap tran­sit route for ships in charge of trans­port­ing goods. In addi­tion, it is con­sid­ered an impor­tant rea­son for the amount of traf­fic it has, which increas­es dai­ly, such as the trans­port of oil, food, and indus­tri­al ele­ments, among oth­ers that are of great impor­tance for the world’s mar­itime trade. ( Source; Wyzant​.com).

Panama city is a mod­ern bustling metrop­o­lis like any west­ern city, but there are also strict rules we were told by our guide, that took us on tour to a vil­lage of one of Panama’s indige­nous tribes, which still live as they have for hun­dreds of years.

We got to the tribe by boat.
For exam­ple, we learned that the unau­tho­rized cut­ting of trees could get one land­ed in prison for up to four years.
Panama depends heav­i­ly on its annu­al rain­fall; there­fore, the trees, forests, and jun­gles are crit­i­cal to its survival.

According to the FAO (2015), of Panama’s 7.4 mil­lion hectares (ha) of land area, 4.6 mil­lion ha are cov­ered with forests^1,2 (about 62%).³ Panama’s pri­ma­ry⁴ and sec­ondary forests are among the bio­log­i­cal­ly rich­est trop­i­cal forests world­wide due to the country’s topo­graph­ic and cli­mat­ic diversity. 

These forests form part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for migrat­ing bird species between North and South America⁵. Panama’s Darien region, which bor­ders Colombia, con­tains over 41% of the country’s mature nat­ur­al forests⁶. This area is not only one of the most bio­log­i­cal­ly diverse regions on Earth but also home to sev­er­al indige­nous groups⁷. Most of Panama’s tim­ber pro­duc­tion orig­i­nates east of Panama City in the Darien region.^{8 https://​forestle​gal​i​ty​.org/​r​i​s​k​-​t​o​o​l​/​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​/​p​a​n​ama.}

Jay, our guide, was lib­er­al with his time; I thank him for answer­ing all of our questions.

We were treat­ed to a dance by the women and chil­dren before we left the vil­lage. We said good­bye to the indige­nous peo­ple and their vil­lage and ulti­mate­ly to Panama. Still, one thing is cer­tain, giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, we will be back in that lush green country.
We are grate­ful to Jay, our tour guide, and the Panamanian peo­ple who treat­ed us kind­ly; we are indebt­ed to you for your graciousness.

.

.

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

A court con­sumed with raw polit­i­cal pow­er that cares noth­ing about stare deci­sis or the law.

Have you ever seen a spool of thread or a ball of yarn get so tan­gled up that try­ing to untan­gle it becomes futile, so much so that you throw it into the garbage?
Doesn’t it seem like that’s where America is head­ed with its fifty states with fifty dif­fer­ent laws com­pet­ing against fed­er­al laws and gov­er­nors from red states refus­ing to accede to fed­er­al man­dates from the fed­er­al exec­u­tive because the guy in the white house is not of their par­ty? All the while call­ing itself the United States of America.
There is noth­ing unit­ed about America right now; the coun­try has an ille­git­i­mate supreme court that has zero legit­i­ma­cy in its make­up, a court that, as a mat­ter of raw pow­er, elim­i­nat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion, rec­og­nized a Second Amendment right to car­ry guns out­side the home, made it hard­er to address cli­mate change and expand­ed the role of reli­gion in pub­lic life. The New York Times Adam Liptak, on July 1, 2022, wrote; By one stan­dard mea­sure­ment used by polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, the term that end­ed on Thursday was the most con­ser­v­a­tive since 1931. “Every year since John Roberts became chief jus­tice, the court’s results at the end of the term have been less con­ser­v­a­tive than many court watch­ers feared they would be at the term’s out­set,” said David Cole, the nation­al legal direc­tor of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This time, the doom­say­ers got it exact­ly right, as the court trad­ed cau­tion for raw pow­er.” That can only be the con­se­quence of the three jus­tices Donald Trump named to the court, par­tic­u­lar­ly of his appoint­ment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court after the death in 2020 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The momen­tous and earth-shat­ter­ing deci­sions of this rad­i­cal right-wing court this term is only a small har­bin­ger of things to come as the court’s next term will decide the fate of affir­ma­tive action in high­er edu­ca­tion, how to inter­pret the Voting Rights Act in the con­text of redis­trict­ing and whether a web design­er has a First Amendment right to refuse to work on projects involv­ing same-sex wed­dings. The jus­tices agreed to hear one more block­buster that could rad­i­cal­ly reshape American elec­tions on the pow­er of state leg­is­la­tures to set vot­ing rules. If the past is pro­logue, and in this case, it is, these deci­sions will effec­tive­ly send America cat­a­pult­ing back into the dark ages.
The progress of America is now stopped, and a full rever­sal of rights that gen­er­a­tions of Americans have enjoyed are now in effect by six right-wing frauds, five of whom were appoint­ed by two ille­git­i­mate Republican pres­i­dents, Goerge W Bush and Donald Trump, both of whom lost the pop­u­lar vote in 2000, and 2016 respec­tive­ly but became pres­i­dent because of the equal­ly fraud­u­lent elec­toral col­lege process that selects the American President.

If you thought that was all, you are sore­ly mis­tak­en as state leg­is­la­tures dom­i­nat­ed by rad­i­cal repub­li­cans are busy pass­ing anti-vot­ing rights laws, laws that would crim­i­nal­ize any woman who seeks abor­tion ser­vices in states that still offer them, and even laws that make it a crim­i­nal offense to film police in the exe­cu­tion of their duties.
In Arizona, Republican Governor Doug Ducey recent­ly signed a bill into law that makes it a mis­de­meanor to film police from clos­er than eight (8) feet. This is Fascism, plain and sim­ple. This writer wrote a while back that this would be the way for­ward for Americans try­ing to hold the fas­cist state actors accountable.
This was fore­see­able as the cops all embarked on the same lie and began to par­rot the same talk­ing points, you are divid­ing my atten­tion from what I am doing”. At scene after scene, they par­rot­ted the same lie. I warned that their unions told them to say it and that laws would be passed based on that lie. The first amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is now out the door in Arizona. It will be copied and past­ed to all states run by repub­li­cans and even blue states because police unions have huge clout and long pock­ets to fund fascism.
Weren’t it for a brave young woman with a cell phone, Derek Chauvin would still be a police offi­cer ter­ror­iz­ing and killing inno­cent people?
Republicans like Ducey and the bil­l’s spon­sor, Republican rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Kavanagh know this, which is why they wrote and signed that bill into law. It is designed to stop aggriev­ed cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly black peo­ple, from shin­ing a light on the state death squads that oper­ate under the col­or of law.
Kavanagh admit­ted that cops com­plained to him that peo­ple fol­lowed them around and filmed them; the cops lied that peo­ple filmed them from with­in one to two feet. That is a lie as police force peo­ple film­ing to stay long dis­tances away, often so far away they can­not see or hear what is hap­pen­ing. It is on those lies that this leg­is­la­tion became law in Arizona.

The unde­ni­able truth is that the court that was designed to pro­tect the con­sti­tu­tion is now the great­est threat to the Democratic process.
* The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) that race-based seg­re­ga­tion was legal, a deci­sion that was not over­turned for more than 50 years. In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of seg­re­ga­tion so long as it was sep­a­rate but equal.

* Lochner v. New York (over­ruled by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish) In Lochner v. New York (1905), the court ruled the law inter­fered with employ­er-employ­ee con­tracts and was gov­ern­ment over­reach, as well as a vio­la­tion of the 14^th Amendment’s Due Process Clause Until 1937, the rule was the law of the land. Courts adhered to the prece­dent, strik­ing down sim­i­lar labor cases.
*Bowers v. Hardwick (over­ruled by Lawrence v. Texas).

Michael Hardwick was arrest­ed by a police offi­cer in Georgia in 1982 for sodomy and sued, chal­leng­ing the state’s law and nam­ing then-Attorney General Michael J. Bowers in this suit. The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that there was no con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion of sodomy, and states could out­law homo­sex­u­al inter­course. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the court reversed the deci­sion entire­ly. In a 6 – 3 rul­ing, jus­tices ruled for John Lawrence, who had been con­vict­ed under a sodomy law. The court said mak­ing it a crime for two men to have sex vio­lat­ed the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The deci­sion would also pave the way toward the land­mark 2015 rul­ing of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legal­ized same-sex mar­riage in the U.S.

* Wolf v. Colorado (over­ruled by Mapp v. Ohio)

In the 1949 case. Wolf vs. Colorado, Julius A. Wolf, Charles H. Fulton, and Betty Fulton were charged with con­spir­a­cy to per­form an abor­tion. Wolf chal­lenged the evi­dence used against him, argu­ing it was seized ille­gal­ly and in vio­la­tion of his Fourth Amendment right. The court, how­ev­er, said ille­gal­ly obtained evi­dence did not have to be exclud­ed from court by default. Years lat­er, Mapp v. Ohio (1961) saw anoth­er stun­ning rever­sal from Supreme Court prece­dent. In that case, jus­tices ruled in favor of Dollree Mapp, who was con­vict­ed of pos­sess­ing obscene mate­ri­als dur­ing an ille­gal police search of her home for a sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tion into a miss­ing fugitive.

*Pace v. Alabama (over­ruled by Loving v. Virginia

Pace V. Alabama (1882) con­cerned Tony Pace, an African American man, and Mary Cox, a white woman, who were charged with adul­tery and for­ni­ca­tion in Alabama under a law that severe­ly pun­ished inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ships. Pace took a legal chal­lenge to the Supreme Court, argu­ing it vio­lat­ed the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Justices ruled that Alabama’s law was not in con­flict with the Constitution, despite more severe pun­ish­ments levied against African-Americans in vio­la­tion. In Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court reversed that rul­ing in anoth­er case — near­ly 100 years lat­er. Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a White man, were arrest­ed in Virginia and sen­tenced to a year in jail for vio­lat­ing a law ban­ning inter-racial mar­riages. Loving chal­lenged the statute, argu­ing it was a vio­la­tion of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed. “Under our Constitution, the free­dom to mar­ry, or not mar­ry, a per­son of anoth­er race resides with the indi­vid­ual and can­not be infringed by the State,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the major­i­ty opinion.

The supreme court has made mon­u­men­tal­ly hor­ri­ble deci­sions that have neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed the lives of ordi­nary Americans in ways yet to be ful­ly understood.
The court con­tin­ue to rule and over­rule set­tled laws that should have remained, instead choos­ing to ignore stare deci­sis, let the deci­sion stand. Here are a few oth­er examples.

1. Roe v. Wade (1973)
2. Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977)
3. Baker v. Nelson (1972)
4. Lochner v. New York (1905) and Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923)
5. Chisholm v. Georgia (1793)
6. Adler v. Board of Education (1952)
7. Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)
8. Pace v. Alabama (1883)
9. Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (1990)
10. Oregon v. Mitchell (1970)
11. Wolf v. Colorado (1949)
12. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
13. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

.

.

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

Donald Trump is anti­thet­i­cal to what a nation that says it is a nation of laws is. Notice that I did not say ‘a leader that is anti­thet­i­cal’ because Donald Trump is not a leader by any mea­sure. On any pos­i­tive-o-meter, Donald Trump ticks a neg­a­tive. Morals, decen­cy, hon­esty, lov­ing, car­ing, law-abid­ing, patri­ot­ic, intel­li­gence, edu­cat­ed, con­scious, con­sci­en­tious, empa­thet­ic, on and on, the guy strikes out on every sin­gle one.
So what is Trump’s pull on the Republican par­ty and the 40 per­cent or so of the coun­try mes­mer­ized by him and all of the neg­a­tive quan­ti­ties that he would score on my positive-o-meter?
He can tap into many Americans’ deep-seat­ed hatred, and big­otry that oth­ers would rather lie does not exist.
Donald J Trump did not cre­ate racism and big­otry in America; being a grifter, Trump only cap­i­tal­ized on it. Don’t for one moment think that I am sup­port­ive of the guy; as far as I am con­cerned, this guy belongs in jail, nev­er to see the light of day again. He is a trai­tor, in my view, who betrayed the peace and order of the coun­try that was gra­cious enough or stu­pid enough to hand him the reins of pow­er and one of the world’s most dev­as­tat­ing nuclear arse­nal and mil­i­tary might.
In ret­ro­spect, there was noth­ing gra­cious about giv­ing a total­ly incom­pe­tent fool such awe­some pow­ers, but that is a con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er time.

The main­stream media employ talk­ing-heads who con­tin­ue to miss the point in their com­men­tary on what they char­ac­ter­ized as Trump’s hold on the Republican party.
So let me ask this ques­tion of the talk­ing heads, ‘what would have hap­pened if all of the elect­ed Republican offi­cials were hon­est patri­ots who said the 2020 elec­tions were free and fair and that Trump lost?
What would Trump do? he would have been on the out­side bark­ing like the car­ni­val bark­er Barack Obama labeled him.
No, he would be unable to mar­shall oppos­ing can­di­dates to defeat a coa­lesced Republican par­ty that stood for decen­cy, hon­or, and patri­o­tism over racism, pow­er, and graft.
Donald Trump could only cap­i­tal­ize on what was already there, a deeply racist under­bel­ly of big­otry that was always just beneath the sur­face; big­otry the left still refus­es to acknowl­edge out­right and one the right vehe­ment­ly denies.
Trump is no patri­ot, and nei­ther are the Republican elect­ed offi­cials nor the peo­ple who sup­port them. Trump col­lud­ed with Russia to influ­ence his vic­to­ry in 2016. Trump was not shy about sab­o­tag­ing Ukraine to ben­e­fit Vladimir Putin; nei­ther did he con­sid­er the con­se­quences of cre­at­ing a rift with­in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to ben­e­fit his spon­sor in the Kremlin. 

So let us dis­pense with the lies and the nuances when we talk about the peo­ple who vote Republican. They are not patri­ots by any met­ric; they side with a man and a polit­i­cal par­ty that sides with America’s mor­tal enemies.
No, they are [not] good peo­ple- peo­ple who would betray their own coun­try are [not] good people.
People who hate their own fel­low cit­i­zens are [not] good. People who would rather upend 246 years of Democratic gov­er­nance because they believe that the plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety that America has become should not exist are not patri­ots; they are racists; they are [not] good people.
People who reflex­ive­ly sup­port every puni­tive mea­sure, includ­ing the death of their own fel­low cit­i­zens, are [not] good.
Let us dis­pense with the pleas­antries; these are evil peo­ple who want to mur­der inno­cent peo­ple because they have a dif­fer­ent skin color.

Despite warn­ings from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) about the rise of neo-nazi groups in the United States, espe­cial­ly after Barack Obama was elect­ed pres­i­dent, noth­ing has been done about it.
In fact, those right-wing groups have become the unof­fi­cial mil­i­tary arm of the Republican par­ty-peo­ple Donald Trump told to ‘stand back and stand by.’
Writing for the New York Times in 2020, Jennifer Steinhauer said, Emboldened by President Trump’s cam­paign plat­form of law and order, mili­tia groups have bol­stered their strength before Election Day by attract­ing mil­i­tary vet­er­ans who bring weapons and tac­ti­cal skills viewed as impor­tant to the orga­ni­za­tions. The role of vet­er­ans in the new­ly pro­lif­er­at­ing mili­tia groups — which some­times are steeped in racism and oth­er times steeped sim­ply in antigov­ern­ment zealotry — has increased over the last decade, said a dozen experts on law enforce­ment, domes­tic ter­ror­ism, and extrem­ist groups.
Although only a small frac­tion of the nation’s 20 mil­lion vet­er­ans join mili­tia groups, experts in domes­tic ter­ror­ism and law enforce­ment ana­lysts esti­mate that vet­er­ans and active-duty mil­i­tary mem­bers may now make up at least 25 per­cent of mili­tia ros­ters. These experts esti­mate that there are some 15,000 to 20,000 active mili­tia mem­bers in around 300 groups.

Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Light Foot Militia, Civilian Defence Force, American Contingency, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, Boogaloo Bois, and People’s Rights are just a few of the more well-known right-wing ter­ror groups of hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands oper­at­ing under the radar in the United States. It is dif­fi­cult to get a full read on these right-wing groups because the author­i­ties have [not] been as proac­tive as they should be in bring­ing down these groups for obvi­ous reasons.
These groups, though not oper­at­ing mono­lith­i­cal­ly, share the same over­ar­ch­ing phi­los­o­phy: an America that is a white eth­nos­tate. They have, by default, become a mil­i­tary wing of the Republican Party that no longer feigns patri­o­tism and wraps itself in the stars and stripes; but a par­ty will­ing to gain and hold pow­er by what­ev­er means necessary.
Republican lead­ers like South Carolina’s US Senator Lindsay Graham con­cedes that the Republican par­ty can no longer con­test elec­tions fair­ly as they would nev­er win anoth­er election.
It is not just about win­ning elec­tions; the idea is main­tain­ing Republican con­trol over the coun­try through minor­i­ty rule. America is already in the throes of white minor­i­ty rule due to the ridicu­lous idea of two Senators per state, a dys­func­tion­al Senate, and the elec­toral col­lege that put George Bush and Donald Trump in the white house even though they both lost the pop­u­lar vote. Nowhere in the civ­i­lized world is the los­er of an elec­tion reward­ed with the job of leader except in the United States. Both George Bush and Donald Trump are Republicans. If this ridicu­lous­ly fraud­u­lent sys­tem did not ben­e­fit the Republican par­ty, they would have long called out their mili­tias; there would be no stand back and stand by.

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

Like and share these articles

The idea that the par­ty in pow­er in the White House los­es pow­er dur­ing off-year elec­tions is not some­thing ordained by God. It isn’t some­thing cod­i­fied in the Constitution; it is a func­tion of what vot­ers do or does­n’t do. Not only did Republicans gain seats after September 11^th, 2001, but George Bush won a sec­ond term in 2004.
The events of 2001 were seri­ous, and there can be no deny­ing the effects of the loss­es of pre­cious human life dur­ing that tumul­tuous event. Nevertheless, the events of January 6^th, 2021, and the seri­ous nature of Donald Trump and his repub­li­can cronies’ attempts to orches­trate and exe­cute a coup’d etat in America must rate right up there with the former.
Yet, we are faced with an American elec­torate that is poised to return the Republican par­ty to power.

Having gaso­line and open flames in the same vicin­i­ty is tempt­ing the laws of psy­chics; even­tu­al­ly, there will be an explo­sion. In a coun­try filled with racial and oth­er hatred and awash with weapons, the inevitable vio­lence was only to be expected.
The mass shoot­ings are too numer­ous to men­tion, let alone the shoot­ings in which one or two per­sons are vic­tim­ized. Those who want unen­cum­bered access to unlim­it­ed sup­plies of high-pow­ered weapons capa­ble of killing dozens of peo­ple in mere sec­onds argue that the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees them the right to have those weapons.

The con­sti­tu­tion gives them to cov­er even though they care lit­tle about the oth­er rights guar­an­teed by the same constitution.
But their apoc­a­lyp­tic beliefs have noth­ing to do with rights and every­thing to do with their fears that Black & Brown peo­ple are get­ting too many rights. They need to keep the unfair advan­tages they have always enjoyed in American soci­ety. They believe guns guar­an­tee those advantages.

The idea that the sec­ond amend­ment guar­an­tees make it impos­si­ble to rein in gun own­er­ship in the United States is laugh­able. The sec­ond amend­ment was rat­i­fied in 1791; James Madison pro­posed the amend­ment to allow for the cre­ation of civil­ian forces that could coun­ter­act a tyran­ni­cal fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Bear in mind that at the time, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary war was not yet fought to free the new America from the tyran­ni­cal shack­les of Britain’s King George.
The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, secured the United States of America’s inde­pen­dence from Great Britain. Fighting began on April 19, 1775.
America had no stand­ing army, so, under­stand­ably, farm­ers, black­smiths, and every­one need­ed to have weapons to defend the new colonies.
It was not a stand­ing American army that defeat­ed the British; there was­n’t one. It was the every­man that did.
Neither Madison nor any oth­er framer could have fore­seen that there would be weapons in the hands of Americans 231 years lat­er that were killing oth­er Americans at the rate of dozens in a sin­gle burst.

Let us not kid our­selves into accept­ing the lie that because the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees the right to bear arms, the gov­ern­ment can have no con­trol over the types of weapons mem­bers of the pub­lic has.
The United States has the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary force in the his­to­ry of our plan­et; addi­tion­al­ly, there are rough­ly 18,000 police depart­ments across the nation.
Each state has its own nation­al guard; let us not pre­tend that we need all American cit­i­zens to have weapons to defend America. Those insist­ing that there can be no change to America’s gun laws intend to fight a dif­fer­ent war, not one in which they will be forced to defend an ene­my from with­out. They are stock­ing up on those weapons to kill their fel­low Americans.
A con­sti­tu­tion­al right is not an absolute right that guar­an­tees us to do as we please.

The first amend­ment guar­an­tees free­dom of speech, but before the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of free speech, there was the God-giv­en right to free speech. Yet the American gov­ern­ment had no prob­lem say­ing to American cit­i­zens, “you are not allowed to shout bomb on an air­plane; you are not allowed to shout fire in a crowd­ed theater”.
Realistically, the gov­ern­ment has no com­punc­tion about tak­ing away the rights of American cit­i­zens, but God for­bid that it would reg­u­late gun ownership.
None of this is about the right to bear arms as guar­an­teed by the sec­ond amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion; in the mean­time, young and old, black and white, and every­one in between is mere vic­tims in waiting…
Instead of reg­u­lat­ing guns and dis­al­low­ing 18-year-olds and every­one else from buy­ing dan­ger­ous weapons they hire more police. Police can­not stop the car­nage they show up after the fact, so there is that.

America’s worst school shootings

America’s worst school shootings 

.

.

.

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

Just so you do not miss the mes­sage here, there are six guys total, four are stand­ing around two are work­ing. Is there any won­der our tax­es are so damn high?

On Thursday morn­ing, inno­cent air trav­el­ers at the Island’s two inter­na­tion­al air­ports found them­selves thrust into the same sit­u­a­tion Americans found them­selves in dur­ing the 1981 (PATCO) strike.
One vis­i­tor to the Island caught up in the indus­tri­al action told one pub­li­ca­tion the following;

The strike has “left a bad taste” in my mouth.
“I under­stand why they went on strike, but not on my time. This is my first time in Jamaica, and we had a beau­ti­ful time. We were even plan­ning on com­ing back in September, but I do not want to come back here.”
“My hus­band is sched­uled for major surgery on Monday, so we came here to relax. Now we have to sit here in the air­port. This is crazy. We real­ly had a good time… but I do not want this to hap­pen to me again, so I am not com­ing back.”
The col­lec­tive eco­nom­ic con­se­quence to Jamaica from these acts is impos­si­ble to cal­cu­late in the long run, suf­fic­ing to say that as Jamaica con­tin­ues to strug­gle, we ignore these seri­ous breech­es to our peril.
One of the things that I have per­son­al­ly preached since I start­ed this blog over a decade ago is that Jamaicans demand a new set of laws and cod­i­fy some laws to pro­tect the country.
The actions and threats of the Jamaica Air Traffic Controllers Association (JATCA)  and the Union rep­re­sent­ing the Water com­mis­sion work­ers are both reck­less and reprehensible.
Sure, the gov­ern­ment [must] exer­cise greater con­sid­er­a­tion and respect about the way it responds to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, and work­ers must be mind­ful of the finan­cial con­straints under which the gov­ern­ment is operating.
Therefore, it is crit­i­cal for the coun­try’s good that talks with pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are con­duct­ed with the great­est degree of alacrity, respect, and seriousness.
The case in Jamaica of dry taps and strand­ed air trav­el­ers will not be met with Reaganesque resolve; the coun­try’s polit­i­cal lead­ers them­selves are inca­pable of under­stand­ing the cumu­la­tive cost and effect of these actions.

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

I am not sure if it is apa­thy, but it seems that there is a sense of res­ig­na­tion in America that the coun­try as it has been known in mod­ern times is past and unavoid­ably head­ing for a deep dark place.
I have not done a poll, nor have I trav­eled the coun­try and asked peo­ple along the length and breadth of the coun­try how come they are not out­raged at what Donald Trump and the Republican Party are doing to the country?
But one can feel it; one can feel that peo­ple on the polit­i­cal right want the coun­try to go back to pre-1865 when Blacks slaved on plan­ta­tions and were treat­ed worse than ani­mals. We have all heard the catch­phras­es, ‘make America great again,’ “take back America,” make America great again-again, an insane pre­sup­po­si­tion that America was great dur­ing Trump’s four years in office.
On the polit­i­cal left, peo­ple feel a sense of despair at their par­ty’s inabil­i­ty and some­times unwill­ing­ness to stand up to the Republicans even when they are in power.
That despair is not with­out mer­it; after all, the Democratic par­ty has failed to stand up for the major­i­ty of the vot­ers in this coun­try who elect­ed them to office.

President Barack Obama nom­i­nat­ed Merrick Garland to fill the space vacat­ed by the deceased Antonin Scalia, a right-wing ide­o­logue. Senate Majority Leader at the time, Kentucky Republican US Senator Mitch McConnell, blocked Garland from the court almost a full year before the 2016 pres­i­den­tial election.
Mitch McConnell cre­at­ed a rule that had no con­sti­tu­tion­al basis-that rule is that the vot­ers should decide who the next supreme court jus­tice should be.
“The American peo­ple should have a voice in the selec­tion of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacan­cy should not be filled until we have a new pres­i­dent,” McConnell said.
Democrats bowed to the pop­py-cock Mitch McConnell created.
Hillary Clinton would win the pop­u­lar vote by over 2.9 mil­lion votes. Still, the elec­toral col­lege sys­tem, which ensures white rule, gave Donald J Trump an immoral and cor­rupt mon­ster, the presidency.
Trump would appoint Neil Gorsuch, a right-wing ide­o­logue, to the court.
The immoral seat filler Donald Trump who lost the pop­u­lar vote by almost three mil­lion votes would go on to fill two more seats, that of Anthony Kennedy, which he filled with Brett Kavanaugh, anoth­er right-wing ide­o­logue who was accused of improp­er sex­u­al con­duct and the seat occu­pied by Ruth Bader Ginsberg who should have long retired allow­ing Obama to chose her suc­ces­sor but decid­ed to stay until she died in office. So much for the noto­ri­ous RBG; her actions were self­ish and devoid of consideration.
Immediately after the news hit the air­waves that Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed, Mitch McConnell announced that Donald Trump would fill her seat.
Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016; Neil Gorsuch was con­firmed Friday, 422 days lat­er, the longest vacan­cy in the 9‑member court’s history.
Amey Coney Barrett was con­firmed to the court just days before the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Mitch McConnell over­turned Mitch McConnell’s rule. No Democratic uS Senator vot­ed for her in a straight par­ty-line vote. It was the first time since the mid-1800s that a Supreme Court nom­i­nee had not received any votes from the oppos­ing par­ty. The final vote was 52 – 48. Can you say illegitimate?

Biden won the 2020 Presidential by almost 8 mil­lion votes over the los­er, one-term twice impeached Donald Trump. Trump would juice up a mas­sive nean­derthal horde of idiots using the lie that the elec­tions were stolen. For the first time in the nation’s his­to­ry, the halls of the con­gress were breached, des­e­crat­ed, and vandalized.
Some of the scum­bags defe­cat­ed on hall­way floors.
They assault­ed cops guard­ing the cap­i­tal and built a gal­lows to hang Mike Pence, Trump’s vice pres­i­dent, who did not do their bid­ding to declare the elec­tions for Trump. For the record, Pence had no such con­sti­tu­tion­al power.
Even though Mitch McConnell cre­at­ed a rule that had no con­sti­tu­tion­al basis and then upend­ed his own rule by putting Coney Barrett on the court, Joe Biden, who defeat­ed Donald Trump, and Democrats have failed to right Mitch McConnell’s wrongs by plac­ing at least four more jus­tices on the high­est court.
Despite the lies of Republicans and Donald Trump that the elec­tions were stolen, result­ing in the storm­ing of the Capitol, the major­i­ty of the coun­try seems to be stuck in a haze of do not care.
Republicans have coa­lesced around Trump’s lies; it has mor­phed into a deeply dan­ger­ous fas­cist, racist, xeno­pho­bic par­ty that hates peo­ple of col­or. On Tuesday, the United States Senate vot­ed to con­firm Lisa Cooke, the first Black woman to the Federal Reserve Board, and not a sin­gle Republican vot­ed for her confirmation.
We can­not brush aside these moments in his­to­ry with­out doc­u­ment­ing them.
On Wednesday, May 11^th, a day lat­er, Republicans killed a Senate vote that would cod­i­fy into law the right of women to make their own deci­sions as it per­tains to their repro­duc­tive rights.
The coun­try still awaits the June Roe V Wade deci­sion even as it stews in the juice of Samuel Alito’s dark-age draft opin­ion that would do away with the 49-year-old deci­sion that gave women the right to choose an abortion.

People have every right to feel apa­thet­ic toward the coun­try’s future; amidst it, all vio­lent crimes are on the increase, and as is to be expect­ed, the so-called experts have con­clud­ed peo­ple are frus­trat­ed hav­ing being locked up in their homes as a result of COVID-19.
I am cer­tain­ly not an expert, but the course of the nation may have some­thing to do with the tra­jec­to­ry of vio­lent crime.
Voters over­whelm­ing­ly elect­ed Joe Biden, President of the United States; no one can rea­son­ably argue that Democratic vot­ers did not vote. Donald Trump’s threat to the nation’s order was so great that Biden, a tepid and luke­warm can­di­date, gar­nered the most votes ever in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Including the pop­u­lar and dynam­ic Barack Obama.
No, they did not turn out because of Biden’s ener­gy or charis­ma; they turned out because they did [not] want anoth­er four years of Trump’s cor­rup­tion may­hem nor the threat he posed to world peace.
America is in deep decline; the prin­ci­ple of Democracy on which America has waged wars is being destroyed in America itself, not from out­side but from ene­mies within.
That ene­my is the Republican party.

A lead­ing Kremlin mouth­piece has warned that the West’s overt back­ing for Ukrainian attacks on Russian ter­ri­to­ry could lead not to Russia’s defeat but to the “total anni­hi­la­tion” of Ukraine.

The warn­ing from Margarita Simonyan, edi­tor-in-chief of the pro­pa­gan­da out­lets RT and Sputnik, came after fur­ther Ukrainian strikes overnight on the bor­der city of Belgorod, a key sup­ply cen­ter for Russian mil­i­tary forces in east­ern Ukraine

“Explosions and air defense sirens in Belgorod,” Simonyan wrote ear­ly Thursday in a mes­sage on Telegram. “The Anglo-Saxons pub­licly encour­age Ukraine to take their hos­til­i­ties into Russian ter­ri­to­ry. And they give them means to car­ry that plan out.

“What choice do you leave us, idiots? The total anni­hi­la­tion of what remains of Ukraine? A nuclear strike?”

In Putinist cir­cles the term “Anglo-Saxons” can be used as a bit of a catch-all for malign Western influ­ences, but there appeared to be lit­tle doubt that Simonyan’s mes­sage was refer­ring to Britain.

British defence min­is­ter James Heappey prompt­ed out­rage in Moscow ear­li­er this week when he said he thought it was “com­plete­ly legit­i­mate” for Ukrainian forces to strike against tar­gets in Russia and it was “not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prob­lem’” if they used weapons donat­ed by Britain.

The British mil­i­tary has active­ly trained Ukrainian forces since Russia annexed Crimea and sent spe­cial forces into east­ern Ukraine in 2014. The U.K. has also sup­plied large amounts of arms, includ­ing valu­able mobile anti-tank weapons.

In an inter­view with Times Radio, Heappey said: “Ukraine was a sov­er­eign coun­try that was liv­ing peace­ful­ly with­in its own­er bor­ders and then anoth­er coun­try decid­ed to vio­late those bor­ders and bring 130,000 troops across into their country.
Read the full sto­ry @ https://​www​.thedai​ly​beast​.com/​m​a​r​g​a​r​i​t​a​-​s​i​m​o​n​y​a​n​-​t​o​p​-​k​r​e​m​l​i​n​-​m​o​u​t​h​p​i​e​c​e​-​s​a​y​s​-​r​u​s​s​i​a​-​i​s​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​f​o​r​c​e​d​-​i​n​t​o​-​u​s​i​n​g​-​n​u​k​e​s​-​i​n​-​u​k​r​a​i​n​e​?​s​o​u​r​c​e​=​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​&​v​i​a​=​rss

Twitter’s top attor­ney and a key voice in deci­sions such as bar­ring President Donald Trump from the plat­form became emo­tion­al and cried in a meet­ing with employ­ees dis­cussing Elon Musk’s acqui­si­tion of the plat­form on Monday, Politico reported.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, pol­i­cy and trust, is said to have played a large role in con­tent mod­er­a­tion at Twitter. She also advised for­mer CEO Jack Dorsey and helped nego­ti­ate the deal between Musk and Twitter.

On Monday, Gadde met vir­tu­al­ly with employ­ees she super­vis­es in legal and pol­i­cy to dis­cuss the buy, Politico reported.

She “acknowl­edged that there are sig­nif­i­cant uncer­tain­ties about what the com­pa­ny will look like under Musk’s lead­er­ship,” the out­let wrote, cit­ing three peo­ple famil­iar with the meeting.

The peo­ple told Politico that Gadde cried while relay­ing con­cerns about changes to Twitter.

They also told the out­let that she said she was proud of the employ­ees, and that they should con­tin­ue to try to make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the company.

Former employ­ees have said that they don’t feel Musk’s ethos match­es the com­pa­ny’s val­ues (though Dorsey has embraced the buy).

“Any sense that an exo­dus is build­ing is cor­rect,” a for­mer Twitter employ­ee told Insider on Tuesday.

Employees asked about every­thing from poten­tial lay­offs to the reac­ti­va­tion of Trump’s Twitter account in an all-hands meet­ing on Monday, where CEO Parag Agrawal acknowl­edged that there was­n’t a ton of cer­tain­ty about the plat­for­m’s future.

Musk has remained bull­ish on free speech, tweet­ing on Tuesday that the plat­form should­n’t mod­er­ate any­thing that isn’t against the law.

Twitter’s poli­cies extend far beyond that, penal­iz­ing cer­tain con­tent that spreads coro­n­avirus-relat­ed mis­in­for­ma­tion, as well as var­i­ous types of hate speech.

The “free speech” con­cern is often cit­ed by con­ser­v­a­tives, who have cel­e­brat­edMusk’s buy and have long felt that Twitter dis­crim­i­nates against right-wing views, espe­cial­ly after it deplat­formed Trump.

Gadde was a dri­ver behind that deci­sion, CNN Business report­ed in 2021, as did oth­ers at the time it occurred.

The attor­ney’s job involves decid­ing when con­tent can be tak­en down, and she’s been referred to as Twitter’s “moral author­i­ty,” Politico reported.

“Vijaya is at the cross­roads of some of the most impor­tant pol­i­cy deci­sions the com­pa­ny is mak­ing and how it inter­acts with gov­ern­ments around the world,” Adam Bain, Twitter’s for­mer COO who worked with Gadde before he left in 2016, told CNN Business.

Gadde also posed the idea to Dorsey of ban­ning polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing on Twitter alto­geth­er, which hap­pened in 2019, Politico Magazine reported.

The out­let pro­filed her at length in 2020, dis­cussing how she became a light­ning rod for con­ser­v­a­tive crit­i­cism and dis­cussed her child­hood as an immi­grant from India in Beaumont, Texas. There, her father was once advised to seek the per­mis­sion of the local Ku Klux Klan to sell insur­ance door-to-door, Gadde said.

Experiences like this and oth­ers inspired her to become a lawyer, she added.

After her meet­ing on Monday, Gadde appeared to have cheered up employ­ees, some of whom tweet­ed about her after­ward, Politico reported.

“If you look up the word ‘inspir­ing’ in the dic­tio­nary you find a pic­ture of @vijaya,” tweet­ed Kennedy O’Brien, a pub­lic pol­i­cy asso­ciate at Twitter.

Twitter did not respond imme­di­ate­ly to a request for comment.

Read the orig­i­nal arti­cle on Business Insider