By Arya Hodjat

Lindsey Boylan, a for­mer aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, says she resigned in 2018 after he forcibly kissed her dur­ing a meeting.

Boylan — who is run­ning for Manhattan Borough President — had pre­vi­ous­ly accused Cuomo of repeat­ed harass­ment, but she didn’t offer many details until she pub­lished a Medium post on Wednesday.

“My boss soon informed me that the Governor had a ‘crush’ on me,” Boylan wrote. “It was an uncom­fort­able but all-too-famil­iar feel­ing: the strug­gle to be tak­en seri­ous­ly by a pow­er­ful man who tied my worth to my body and my appearance.”

Boylan alleged that Cuomo had com­pared her to a for­mer girl­friend, and asked her to play strip pok­er. “Telling my truth isn’t about seek­ing revenge. I was proud to work in the Cuomo Administration. For so long I had looked up to the Governor. But his abu­sive behav­ior needs to stop,” she wrote.

The alle­ga­tions come at a moment of polit­i­cal per­il for the long­time gov­er­nor, once a lib­er­al dar­ling for his Emmy-win­ning TV hits at the begin­ning of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. He’s under fire for his han­dling of COVID-19 in nurs­ing homes and cloud­ed by alle­ga­tions of bul­ly­ing and strong-arm­ing leg­is­la­tors, while a bipar­ti­san group of state law­mak­ers are seek­ing to curb his emer­gency powers.

According to Boylan, the kiss occurred “after a one-on-one brief­ing with the Governor to update him on eco­nom­ic and infra­struc­ture projects.”

“We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue. As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips,” she wrote.

After the kiss, Boylan said, she walked by the desk of a fel­low Cuomo staffer, Stephanie Benton. Boylan’s Medium post also includ­ed a 2016 screen­shot, pur­port­ed­ly from Benton, stat­ing that the gov­er­nor want­ed Boylan to know she “could be sis­ters” with alleged Cuomo ex Lisa Shields, “except you’re the bet­ter-look­ing sis­ter,” the screen­shot read.

Story con­tin­ues here https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​f​o​r​m​e​r​-​c​u​o​m​o​-​a​i​d​e​-​s​a​y​s​-​s​h​e​-​1​6​4​8​2​9​1​4​8​.​h​tml

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats are work­ing like hell to save the American Democracy. Still, it will be a tall order because one of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties does not believe in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.
The last Democrat to occu­py the pres­i­den­cy, Barack Obama, spoke to the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of truth a few years ago.
Speaking to Comedian and Talk show host David Letterman Obama said:
“One of the biggest chal­lenges we have to our democ­ra­cy is the degree to which we don’t share a com­mon base­line of facts,” Obama said. “What the Russians exploit­ed, but it was already here, is we are oper­at­ing in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion uni­vers­es. If you watch Fox News, you are liv­ing on a dif­fer­ent plan­et than you are if you lis­ten to NPR.”
“At a cer­tain point,” he con­tin­ued, “You just live in a bub­ble, and I think that’s why our pol­i­tics are so polar­ized right now.”

The tri­al of Donald Trump will begin in the United States Senate on February 9^th, 2021; it is prob­a­bly a safe bet to opine that Donald Trump will not be held account­able because out of a pos­si­ble 50 Republican Senators, the Country will not find 17 to stand by the oaths to pro­tect the Constitution from ene­mies for­eign and domes­tic. And so the vast major­i­ty of them will push a lie, .…. a lie that has no mer­it, a lie that has been debunked by legal schol­ars from both sides of the polit­i­cal spectrum.
That lie is that the sen­ate has no con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to try a pri­vate cit­i­zen. The pri­vate cit­i­zen being Donald Trump.
They will turn their eyes from the fact, the truth, the irrefutable real­i­ty that Donald Trump is no ordi­nary cit­i­zen, but a failed pres­i­dent retired by the American voters.
Donald Trump [was] impeached a sec­ond time for incit­ing a mob of insur­rec­tion­ists to storm the US Capitol on January 6^th, hop­ing that he would be giv­en a sec­ond term after they over­turned the elec­tion of Joe Biden.
Impeachment arti­cles [were] filed while trump was in office. Then Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell delayed the tri­al by using a straw­man argu­ment that he would be unable to recon­vene the Senate, which was on recess.

So even though Trump was impeached as a sit­ting pres­i­dent, and even though his tri­al would have con­vened and prob­a­bly con­clud­ed while he was in office but for McConnell’s gam­bit, Republicans are still per­pet­u­at­ing the lie that a pres­i­dent who out of office can­not be impeached.
If that lie is allowed to stand, pres­i­dents will for­ev­er be allowed to com­mit all kinds of egre­gious crimes at the end of their terms, and there will be no mech­a­nism to hold them accountable.
If those trai­tors to their oaths are allowed to have their way through those lies, any future pres­i­dent who los­es an elec­tion can ginn up his/​her sup­port­ers to attack the Legislative branch of the Government and over­turn the elec­tions on his/​her behalf.
This is lit­er­al­ly the real­i­ty; it is exact­ly what’s at stake; it ought to gal­va­nize Republicans and Democrats alike in a band of pro­tec­tion against the American Democracy. Only that Republicans in the US House and Senate have signed over their feal­ty to [one man] who has demon­strat­ed that he has the abil­i­ty to ral­ly sup­port around the cause of white supremacy.

One out­raged writer con­tends, “no amount of evi­dence will con­vince these frauds to extri­cate their lips from Trump’s ass. ” In ref­er­ence to Senate Republicans.
It must be remem­bered that Republican US Senators who will vote against the Constitutionality of impeach­ing Donald Trump on a fraud­u­lent process argu­ment and who will vote not to con­vict on the mer­its of the case, will for­ev­er be attached to a failed pres­i­dent who sought to end 240 plus years of con­sti­tu­tion­al democracy.
They will for­ev­er be stuck with the stench of that treach­ery; they will for­ev­er wear the scar­let let­ter “T” for trai­tor, all in servile def­er­ence to a con-artist.
What aris­es from these real­i­ties is the sem­i­nal ques­tion of what is at stake for the white suprema­cist par­ty that the Republicans have final­ly mor­phed into.

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

In an arti­cle pub­lished today, I laid out how Republicans can purge them­selves of Donald Trump if they wish to.
I did so because I want­ed thinkers who are not polit­i­cal junkies like I am to under­stand bet­ter the ram­i­fi­ca­tions and nuances of how pol­i­tics work out­side of what the pun­dits tell you.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​-​d​o​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​h​o​l​d​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​t​o​-​r​a​n​s​o​m​-​t​h​e​y​-​n​e​e​d​-​h​i​m​-​t​o​-​g​a​l​v​a​n​i​z​e​-​h​a​t​e​-​i​n​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

The strat­e­gy I out­lined is designed to inform, not change the way Republican US Senators view their oblig­a­tions to the Constitution. They will not be swayed from nar­row par­ti­san­ship enough to be both­ered by pesky minu­tia like fideli­ty to the constitution.
Not when they can offer feal­ty, def­er­ence, rev­er­ence, and slav­ish devo­tion to Donald Trump.
If the smug look on Lindsay Graham’s stu­pid face, the nau­sea one feels at watch­ing the snivel­ing lit­tle Marco Rubio defend Trump, or the total loathing one feels at watch­ing the idi­ot­ic Rand Paul try to jus­ti­fy Trump’s trea­son are any­thing to go by, one should expect noth­ing after the tri­al, but anoth­er iter­a­tion of Trump hold­ing up a news­pa­per head­lined, “Trump acquit­ted.”

Only three [pres­i­dents were ever impeached, of the 46 men who have held the office. One guy thought that his acquit­tal was a license to go on a crime spree. Democratic House pros­e­cu­tors said acquit­ting Trump would lead to a Trump crime spree, they were right. Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins retort­ed,” Trump had learned his les­son,” there goes Collins’s rep­u­ta­tion, to the extent she had any left.
Collins’s state­ment was an admis­sion that Trump was guilty, but Republicans do not believe that Republican Senators should con­vict a Republican president.
So yeah, “we know he is guilty, but we believe that in this case impeach­ment is the pun­ish­ment; there is no need for any oth­er remedy.”
Only that Trump learned no les­son; he saw his acquit­tal as a license to com­mit more crimes, and com­mit more crimes he did.

(1) Andrew Jackson, the 17^th President of the United States (1865−1869), an old-fash­ioned south­ern Jacksonian Democrat of pro­nounced states’ rights views. Johnson replaced the assas­si­nat­ed Abraham Lincoln. His lenient Reconstruction poli­cies toward the South embit­tered the Radical Republicans in Congress and led to his polit­i­cal down­fall and his impeach­ment, though he was acquitted.

(2) Richard Nixon would have been impeached, and poten­tial­ly con­vict­ed for his role in the Watergate scan­dal. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

(3) William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton, 42^nd President of the United States. In 1998, as a result of per­son­al indis­cre­tions with a young woman White House intern, Clinton was the sec­ond U.S. pres­i­dent to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against him.
This was a sham impeach­ment that nev­er should have happened.

(4) Donald John Trump impeached for with­hold­ing aid to Ukraine to get polit­i­cal dirt on Joe Biden, whom he believed would be a for­mi­da­ble oppo­nent against him. The Republican Senate acquit­ted him despite the moun­tain of cred­i­ble evidence.
Nevertheless, Trump was sound­ly beat­en by Joe Biden in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions held in 2020.
This impeach­ment should have result­ed in the con­vic­tion of Donald Trump and his expul­sion from the presidency.

(5) Donald John Trump was impeached a sec­ond time for “incite­ment of insur­rec­tion” one week after the January 6 riots. Donald Trump should have been kicked out of the pres­i­den­cy the first time he was impeached, was spared by a Republican-con­trolled Senate that places feal­ty to the most cor­rupt man ever to occu­py the pres­i­den­cy, and per­haps the most cor­rupt to ever hold polit­i­cal office in the United States, over their oblig­a­tions to the constitution.
Senate Republicans will not con­vict this crim­i­nal; it will be just one more iter­a­tion of the dam­age this Republican par­ty is will­ing to inflict on the American nation.
Another Criminal Republican President, Richard Nixon, who orches­trat­ed a felony break-in of the Democratic Campaign Headquarters and stole doc­u­ments to fur­ther his ends, resigned before being kicked out of the presidency.
A few Republican Senators told Richard Nixon that it was time to leave because the votes were there to remove him.
Sounds famil­iar? It seems that the pat­tern of Republican pres­i­dents com­mit­ting felonies to win elec­tions is noth­ing new; nev­er­the­less, back then, a few of them had the char­ac­ter to remem­ber their oaths. The Russian col­lu­sion that has not been ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ed was one more attempt by Republicans to com­mit crimes to win the presidency.
Even to Nixon, (tricky Dick), who infa­mous­ly remarked, “I am no crook,” the stain of being impeached and con­vict­ed was not some­thing he craved.
It is almost a guar­an­tee that the shame­less, char­ac­ter­less, Donald Trump will find a way to spin the shame of impeach­ment, not once but twice, into a thing of honor.
And like the hap­less fol­low­ers of the naked Emperor, the Republicans in the Senate & House will trot behind him pre­tend­ing not to see the shame of the naked King.
What losers!!!

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

Donald Trump’s sup­posed hold on the repub­li­can par­ty is only as strong as long as he remains a viable can­di­date to run for office again as a pres­i­den­tial candidate.
It makes sense that as the Republican pres­i­dent who was able to turn out the most votes ever, Republican office­hold­ers would be ter­ri­fied of his abil­i­ty to run his own lack­eys to the right of them. Nevertheless, that the­o­ry bears some examining.
Sure an argu­ment can be made about his abil­i­ty to play king­mak­er still, even if he is con­vict­ed and is ren­dered unable to hold fed­er­al office ever again.
That idea pre­sup­pos­es that Trump ever did any­thing unless he can grift from it. It is a stretch to believe that Donald Trump would extend him­self in any effort that would not include the perks of liv­ing in the white house, fly­ing air force one, and enjoy­ing the trap­pings of pow­er the pres­i­den­cy affords.
It is almost a sure­ty that Donald Trump would have no inter­est in pol­i­tics out­side of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of enrich­ing him­self.
Here’s a nov­el idea; Senate Republicans can rid them­selves of him once and for all if every Republican Senator votes to con­vict Trump in the upcom­ing sen­ate trials.

It is alleged that some of them were opposed to what he was doing to the coun­try while he was in the white house. I did not believe any of that argu­ment put forth by the main­stream media.
Donald Trump com­mit­ted crimes against the coun­try when he decid­ed to use aid to Ukraine to lever­age oppo­si­tion research data on Joe Biden.
Republican Senators saw the full extent of Trump’s crimes, not just in the Ukraine mat­ter but in the still undis­closed Russian col­lu­sion matter.
Republican Senators knew the extent of Trump’s crimes, and if they did not, they did not deserve to be in the posi­tions of pow­er they are.
They had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to uphold the oaths they took to uphold the Constitution. They did not, only Senator Mitt Romney of Utah vot­ed to con­vict the clear­ly crim­i­nal Donald Trump, they all chose polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy over their oblig­a­tions to the constitution.

What’s the harm to Republicans if Senators respect their oaths to the Constitution and vote to con­vict a pres­i­dent that tried to over­throw the gov­ern­ment and install him­self pres­i­dent for life?
Are Republican vot­ers going to pri­ma­ry all 50 sen­a­tors? Is that what the servile US Republican Senator from South Carolina means will destroy the par­ty if they push Donald Trump out?
Yes, that is the fear; they fear that Donald Trump would encour­age his MAGA army not to sup­port elect­ed offi­cials who do not bow down to him, there­by split­ting the Republican par­ty apart.
And so folks like Lindsay Graham would rather sup­port a despot­ic lying sedi­tion­ist that cede pow­er to the oth­er par­ty while his par­ty rebuilds free from the stench of Trump.
Even if Trump had enough clout to man­age a pri­ma­ry against the Republican sen­a­tors fac­ing the elec­torate in 22, there is zero evi­dence that the lack­eys he sup­ports could mount a cred­i­ble chal­lenge to those sen­a­tors anyway.

Donald Trump’s name would be in those elec­tions, hav­ing backed those right-wing alter­na­tives even though his name would not be on the bal­lots, and so, if and when they fail, it would be Trump who fails, again. It will be the final death blow to the lie being per­pet­u­at­ed about his sup­posed stran­gle­hold on the party.
Donald Trump lost the house, the sen­ate, the white house; let us not for­get that he could not save Loffler and Perdue in Georgia, a for­mer­ly ruby-red state, even though he cam­paigned for them.
All in all, Donald Trump is a los­er who could not make it, so he faked it, and now the world sees him for the big fat los­er he is.
Republican Senators can do two things right in the upcom­ing impeach­ment trials.
♦ Vote to con­vict a crim­i­nal who stirred up race hatred in the coun­try, incit­ed trai­tors to the coun­try to over­throw the Government on his behalf, result­ing in police offi­cers’ death.
♦ Vote to con­vict, there­by ensur­ing that he can no longer hold Federal office ever again, remov­ing what­ev­er hold he may have on the party.
♦ Or for­ev­er be iden­ti­fied as sup­port­ers of QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, lies, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and being the par­ty that sup­port­ed and val­i­dat­ed an attempt to over­throw the American democracy.
In this sec­ond impeach­ment tri­al, Republican Senators have a sec­ond oppor­tu­ni­ty to get it right, once and for all, they have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a clear and unequiv­o­cal mes­sage to Donald Trump and his insur­rec­tion­ist sup­port­ers, take back their par­ty, of for­ev­er bear the stain and the stench for pos­ter­i­ty, as the men and women who sup­port­ed Donald Trump’s attacks on America.
Republicans in the House have already demon­strat­ed that they are ful­ly a QAnon cau­cus. The Senate’s vote on Trump’s sec­ond impeach­ment will con­firm for the world that the Republican par­ty is ful­ly the QAnon polit­i­cal party.
It fol­lows that this par­ty should nev­er be trust­ed with polit­i­cal pow­er, ever again.

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

Hyperpartisanship is not a thing, only in Jamaica. In the pow­er­ful United States, it is per­va­sive, the sound you hear is the suck­ing sounds of the last dol­lars being sucked from the pock­ets of the mid­dle-class, into the accounts of the oli­garchs at the very top.
It hap­pens so fast these days, that after only a mat­ter of a few years, Jeff Bezos is able to step down from the day to day run­ning of pow­er­house mar­ket­place Amazon, and yes, Jeff Bezos is worth a stag­ger­ing $191.8B.
In America, the vast major­i­ty of poor whites vote against their inter­est, against health care, against pro­grams that direct­ly ben­e­fit them…just so that the peo­ple at the very bot­tom, the peo­ple they despise, do not have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb out of the dan­ger­ous quick­sand of poverty.
It comes as no sur­prise that the poor­est states are states that vote Republican.
According to (Politifact)Census data also show that 9 of the 10 states with the low­est medi­an house­hold income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. Nine (9) of the 10 states with the low­est medi­an fam­i­ly income were Red: Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
The only Blue state on each list: New Mexico.

By the way, 9 of the 10 states with the high­est per-per­son income vot­ed Blue in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial race: Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Washington. The only Red state on the list: Alaska. Whether you look at per-per­son, house­hold, or fam­i­ly income, nine out of the ten poor­est states vot­ed Republican in the last four pres­i­den­tial elections.
According to the data com­ing from Politifact, it is clear that many white vot­ers go into the vot­ing booths and cast bal­lots against their finan­cial interests.
In many of those states, vot­ers vote repub­li­can straight-tick­et for decades, regard­less of the regres­sive poli­cies put for­ward by Republicans, i.e., trick­le-down eco­nom­ics, what Herbert Walker Bush famous­ly labeled voodoo eco­nom­ics.
Voters in those states are not vot­ing for their eco­nom­ic inter­ests as the main­stream media has tried to fool us into believ­ing for decades. They are vot­ing for their whiteness.
That group was labeled ‘white work­ing-class,’ for a while vac­il­lat­ed between the two polit­i­cal par­ties, and they were tout­ed as a group of vot­ers who had eco­nom­ic anxieties.
Barack Obama’s Presidency peeled back the scab to the raw nature of their racism. Even as they ben­e­fit­ted from the Affordable care Act Obama cham­pi­oned, many of those genius­es were inter­viewed and record­ed telling the press they did not want Obama-care; they want­ed to keep their afford­able care act.
Yup, genius.

In my native Jamaica, hyper-par­ti­san­ship is not about race; but, about deeply entrenched polar­ized ideas about what Government should be, much like the Republicans and Democrats.
Blinkered par­ti­san­ship allows polit­i­cal par­ties of both sides to get away with incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion because their sup­port­ers engage in what-about-ism in defense of their par­ty to the detri­ment of the greater good.
Jamaicans have come a long way from the days of mur­der­ing each oth­er and burn­ing their prop­er­ty over polit­i­cal differences.
As a small fledg­ling democ­ra­cy, Jamaicans deserve much praise, not just for fol­low­ing a path toward Democracy since the Manley flir­ta­tion with auto­crat­ic rule in the 1970s, in which he all but locked up the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and declared a state of nation­al emergency.
To its cred­it, the PNP has not attempt­ed to go down that path since Jamaicans showed Manley that they would not stand for that kind of gov­er­nance, in an embar­rass­ing drub­bing at the polls in 1980.
Ever the for­giv­ing peo­ple, Jamaicans gave Manley a sec­ond chance in 88; he nev­er attempt­ed that exper­i­ment again. ill­ness forced Michael Manley from the polit­i­cal stage and his deputy Percival James Patterson took over.
After Manley left, the par­ty retained con­trol for an unprece­dent­ed 22-years. A peri­od of unprece­dent­ed dis­as­ter for Jamaica, both on the eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty fronts.
Nevertheless, the PNP nev­er again attempt­ed auto­crat­ic rule. The Achilles heels of the PNP have since been klep­toc­ra­cy, cor­rup­tion & incompetence.

As tiny Jamaica matures and begins to be a bea­con for elec­toral integri­ty, her pow­er­ful neigh­bor to the north has been hav­ing grave chal­lenges with the con­cept of Democratic gov­er­nance. The idea of a small gov­ern­ment-run by ‘we the peo­ple’ is no longer sacro­sanct to one of the two polit­i­cal parties.
It is not the two polit­i­cal par­ties behind the prob­lems in the United States. Despite its faults and short­com­ings, the Democratic par­ty has held true to the prin­ci­ples of demo­c­ra­t­ic governance.
The Republican par­ty jet­ti­soned what­ev­er ide­al­is­tic prin­ci­ples of Democracy it may have har­bored, out of fear that it will not be able to com­pete nation­al­ly in short order.
The prob­lem for the repub­li­can par­ty, dat­ing back to the Nixon era, and maybe even beyond, is that it allowed itself to become the par­ty of white nationalists.
A cred­i­ble argu­ment can be made that the Republican par­ty ceased being the so-called par­ty of Lincoln, (what­ev­er that means), from as far back as the sign­ing of the land­mark 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1965 vot­ing Rights Act that followed.
White Nationalists, not want­i­ng auton­o­my for Black peo­ple, ran away from the Democratic par­ty of then-pres­i­dent Lyndon Baines Johnson and sought refuge with the Republicans.
Some peo­ple argue that the Republican par­ty could stop being the racists’ par­ty, as if the par­ty is sep­a­rate from the peo­ple in it.
What would change the par­a­digm is the for­ma­tion of a third polit­i­cal par­ty. The thing that has now prompt­ed pan­ic among Republicans and has result­ed in scores of vot­er-sup­pres­sion bills emerg­ing in Republican-run Legislatures around the coun­try, is that even with the racist-in chief on the bal­lot in 2020, and even after unprece­dent­ed num­bers of votes for the Republican par­ty, they still lost the pop­u­lar and the elec­toral col­lege vote.
Without the elec­toral col­lege, the Republican par­ty would have been a dead par­ty for well over two decades.

The intrin­sic nature of white­ness and what it rep­re­sents in the American body politic has pre­vent­ed the Republican par­ty from chang­ing course. I find it laugh­able that left-wing tele­vi­sion talk­ing heads con­tin­ue to wring their hands in despair, and won­der when the Republican par­ty will turn and become a big-tent par­ty rep­re­sent­ing every­one in America.
The par­ty long purged mod­er­ates, (RINOS) Republicans in name only, leav­ing a hard-core cadre of white supremacists.
They now oper­ate as the Republican par­ty, but it is for all intents and pur­pos­es, the par­ty of Donald Trump and, by exten­sion, the Q Anon par­ty.
An Elephant can­not cease being an Elephant; it is what it is, so the coun­try is forced to deal with what is now the Q‑Anon par­ty, one that does not believe in Democracy or fair play.
The make­up of the insur­rec­tion­ist crowd that attacked the Capitol build­ing on January 6^th, is a tes­ta­ment to that fact.
In that crowd of anti-democ­ra­cy racists, were busi­ness peo­ple, real estate agents, cops, sol­diers, lawyers, doc­tors, and a who is who of the American society.
What that com­bustible crowd that attacked the Capitol build­ing on January 6^th had in com­mon, was the sin­gu­lar defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic called white­ness. A sense of enti­tle­ment that they own America, that they have the God-giv­en right to deter­mine the direc­tion the coun­try takes, regard­less of the wish­es of the majority.

It is a tox­ic arro­gance from the first white set­tlers who came and mur­dered every­one in sight, took what they wanted.
All these hun­dreds of years lat­er, these nean­derthal mis­cre­ants still believe that they and they alone have a right to where they stand. Never mind the mas­sacre of the native peo­ples. Never mind the enslave­ment of African peo­ple, some of whom they came and saw. Never mind the per­pet­u­al crimes against human­i­ty they per­pe­trat­ed on every­one that was­n’t pale and devoid of melanin. Still today, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe that they have a right to the land they stole, and all that’s in it.
Even with the unfair advan­tages, Republicans enjoy (a) two United States Senators per state that dis­en­fran­chis­es tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, except rough­ly 18 mil­lion. (b) an elec­toral col­lege that ignores the direct will of the peo­ple, and gives them the pow­er to poten­tial­ly cor­rupt par­ty offi­cials, ©, grotesque­ly ger­ry­man­dered con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts that chose their vot­ers, rather than vot­ers choos­ing their elect­ed representatives,(d) bla­tant vot­er sup­pres­sion, laws, and prac­tices. Republicans can only win elec­tions when they cheat.
It fol­lows that the Trump strat­e­gy of pro­ject­ing onto the Democrats what he pulled out all the stops to achieve, cheat­ing.….. found favor with this group of dis­hon­est, insuf­fer­able people…
They are in the minor­i­ty; their sup­port­ers are some of the wealth­i­est peo­ple on the plan­et, and some are just dumb racists. Their cause is despi­ca­ble and unjust, but unless every stake­hold­er, every vot­er ful­ly real­izes what’s at stake and get up and vote, Democracy in America will be some­thing chil­dren read about on what­ev­er they will be read­ing from a hun­dred years from now.
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.Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

If estab­lish­ment Democrats in the Senate and House think that the Republican Party has a prob­lem with its right flank, they should fool around with this slim major­i­ty the American peo­ple gave them; their left flank will poten­tial­ly be worse.
Newly mint­ed Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer the New York Democrat, has been talk­ing tough, even though he has the slimmest of majori­ties imag­in­able and must bring his entire cau­cus along to get any­thing done, even with the bud­get maneu­ver known as reconciliation.
Democrats are not known for push­ing through the agen­da they are elect­ed to pass. They waste valu­able time nego­ti­at­ing with Republicans to pur­sue bipar­ti­san­ship, some­thing Republicans do not seek when they hold pow­er. Republicans do not nego­ti­ate in good faith, and on that basis, Democrats ought not to waste time chas­ing bi-par­ti­san­ship sole­ly for the sake of optics. They gen­er­al­ly pre­tend to nego­ti­ate, then walk away with­out sup­port­ing the very ideas they once advanced.
MSNC’s Rachael Maddow spent a great deal of her Programs on Monday evening, February 2^nd, ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing this very point.

I have no idea whether or not Schumer is spooked at the prospect of an AOC run to his left; there have been rum­blings to that effect. I doubt that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is inter­est­ed in risk­ing her seat after just one full term to chal­lenge Schumer. Still, it does not hurt to have Schumer get­ting up off his back­side because of the heat on his left flank.
Across the State of New York, pro­gres­sives have won seats in the House, no estab­lish­ment, go along to get along Democrat should feel safe in just occu­py­ing space in the House or Senate.
Progressives have won in oth­er states, in Georgia. Republican Senator David Perdue, labeled Jon Ossoff, a com­mu­nist. In Missouri, Cori Bush,  a Black Lives Matter activist, won a seat in Missouri’s first dis­trict. Bush beat long­time Democrat Lacy Clay, in the pri­maries and was suc­cess­ful in the gen­er­al as well.

Establishment Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus are not sup­port­ive of the younger upstarts who lurk on their left heels. The CBC has thrown its sup­port behind estab­lish­ment can­di­dates to ward of chal­lenges to them. Cori Bush’s sec­ond chal­lenge to Clay, who lit­er­al­ly hand­ed the Missouri first dis­trict seat by his father, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant and anoth­er eye-open­er for the estab­lish­ment, some of who posit­ed that Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez’s win was a fluke.
The con­gress­woman who just won re-elec­tion, unseat­ed long­time estab­lish­ment, Congressman Joseph Crowley. Another New York pro­gres­sive, Jamaal Bowman, also won a seat in the Congress after defeat­ing long­time Democratic Representative Elliot Engel in the Democratic primaries.
But it’s not just in New York that young upstarts have been win­ning, Cori Bush was the first Black woman to rep­re­sent her state in the Congress.
In Colorado, Joe Neguse, anoth­er African-American, won Colorado’s 2^nd Congressional District, encom­pass­ing Boulder, Fort Collins, Summit, and Eagle Counties.
Joe Neguse is the first African-American to rep­re­sent his state.
The issue for estab­lish­ment Democrats, is that while they con­tin­ue to chase con­sen­sus with a Republican Party that is not inter­est­ed in Democracy, much less gov­ern­ing for all of the American peo­ple, their base has no inter­est in doing so.
The frac­ture that con­tin­ues to sep­a­rate sane fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives like Republican Adam Kinzinger of Illinois 16^th Congressional District and the rest of the par­ty rep­re­sent­ed by the likes of Ohio’s Jim Jordon, will even­tu­al­ly come to the doors of estab­lish­ment Democrats.

At the moment, it seems to the estab­lish­ment in the Democratic par­ty that they are insu­lat­ed from an insur­gency by the young upstarts. They should think long and hard whether they rep­re­sent their con­stituents’ wish­es who want rapid solu­tions to America’s polic­ing prob­lem, Criminal Justice, min­i­mum wage, health care, and wealth disparities.
If they fail to do what they are sent to do, they will find them­selves back in the posi­tion they seem to rel­ish, on the out­side of pow­er, play­ing victims.
Republicans not only use the pow­er they steal through ger­ry­man­der­ing, vot­er sup­pres­sion, purg­ing vot­ers lists, and oth­er tac­tics, they abuse their powers.
Democrats must learn to use pow­er wise­ly and decisively.
Only when Democrats use the pow­ers they have to ram through their agen­da will Republicans come to the table to nego­ti­ate in good faith. Republicans have mas­tered the art of stalling when they are not in con­trol. They pre­tend to want con­sen­sus, and Democrats have fall­en for it time and again.
It is for the rea­sons that Bernie Sanders received such over­whelm­ing sup­port in two gen­er­al elec­tion cycles. It is what result­ed in the elec­tion of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the oth­er mem­bers of the squad.
It will con­tin­ue to esca­late, as younger more pro­gres­sives move to pri­ma­ry entrenched estab­lish­ment fig­ures dis­con­nect­ed from their sup­port­ers’ core.

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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

Republicans rail against what they call the can­cel culture.…..of course, their oppo­si­tion to (what the rest of us call account­abil­i­ty), is all about not being able to abuse and use deroga­to­ry lan­guage against peo­ple they believe to be less than.
Interestingly, Republicans don’t have a lick of a prob­lem when Democrats get can­celed. Ooops, I meant to say when peo­ple are held accountable.
It was­n’t too long ago that they were glee­ful that the very effec­tive Comedian turned US Senator Al Franken was run out of Washington because there was a list of sex­u­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior with mul­ti­ple women.
I’m not here to defend Al Franken, and I don’t know whether or not he was guilty as accused; what we know is that he was nev­er arrest­ed, charged, or con­vict­ed of any­thing. And so that begs the idea of inno­cent until proven guilty.

Al Franken was thrown to the wolves by his own col­leagues, led by New York’s junior US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who want­ed to run for pres­i­dent on a plat­form of stand­ing up for women.
In all, there were com­plaints from eight dif­fer­ent women against mis­ter Franken; Democrats raised against him because they want­ed to have clean hands. I guess they expect­ed that there would be reci­procity from Republicans.
I’m not sure what form that would have tak­en; Republicans do as they please, just like their white sup­port­ers act with impuni­ty, large­ly with­out consequence.
Can you imag­ine the FBI con­tem­plat­ing not pro­ceed­ing with crim­i­nal charges against sedi­tion­ists who invad­ed the nation’s Legislative citadel using the pre­text that pro­ceed­ing against them will clog up the courts?
When has the FBI or any oth­er police agency in America decid­ed not to go after black peo­ple who may have run afoul of the laws? Okay, I’m off-top­ic; let me get back to my thoughts.

Pushing Al Franken out did not make any sense, at least not to me. Al Franken was forced out in December of 2017. Donald Trump, who was accused of grop­ing and oth­er­wise vio­lat­ing expo­nen­tial­ly more women, was elect­ed pres­i­dent despite those alle­ga­tions and was sworn in as America’s 45^th pres­i­dent just under a year ear­li­er. But this is hard­ly about the despi­ca­ble pres­i­den­cy most ratio­nal and con­sci­en­tious peo­ple would soon­er forget.
It is about the stu­pid­i­ty of Democrats of purg­ing peo­ple from the par­ty who have not been con­vict­ed of any crimes. Simultaneously, the Republicans refuse to agree to impeach and bar Donald Trump from ever hold­ing Federal office ever again.
Trump com­mit­ted sedi­tion against the United States of America, yet only five Republican Senators would even hon­or their oaths to allow the case to be heard against that crim­i­nal. And just three weeks ear­li­er, they were all cow­er­ing in fear at the nean­derthal horde that tore the doors down look­ing to kill off Democratic lead­ers, and Mike Pence, in the US capi­tol building.

Then, there is this [karen], Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia 14^th dis­trict, a Qanon con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist who was recent­ly elect­ed to the US Congress. She advo­cates vio­lence against her Democratic coun­ter­parts. Suggested that putting a bul­let in the head of Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be a good idea. And a range of oth­er quotes that are not only dan­ger­ous but frightening.
The lying lit­tle twat, respond­ed that mul­ti­ple peo­ple man­aged her social media account. Essentially punt­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty to a face­less non-exis­tent person.
Look, I com­plete­ly get that run­ning a con­struc­tion busi­ness with her hus­band would require a social media team. Oh yeah, she is one impor­tant celebri­ty. But killing the US House speak­er, on your social media page, and you don’t know about it?
This twat want­ed to take a gun onto the US Congress floor, yes, and she walks around the met­al detect­ing devices erect­ed in the Capitol build­ing after the January 6^th insur­rec­tion, instead of through them as any law-abid­ing cit­i­zen would.

Here she is lit­er­al­ly threat­en­ing the Democratic cau­cus mem­bers while pre­tend­ing that she meant defeat­ing them at the bal­lot box. But she is not alone; the entire Republican cau­cus in the House is a fas­cist-white suprema­cist cau­cus, the Senate cau­cus is no better.
(Politico report­ed today that Rep. Jimmy Gomez wants Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene boot­ed from Congress. On Wednesday, the California Democrat announced that he planned to intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion to oust the con­spir­a­cy-the­o­ry-ped­dling Republican from Georgia after recent news reports revealed that Greene had pre­vi­ous­ly called for vio­lence against Democrats on social media. A two-thirds major­i­ty is required to expel a mem­ber from the House, mean­ing Gomez’s res­o­lu­tion is almost cer­tain to fail in a cham­ber where Democrats hold a razor-thin major­i­ty CNN on Tuesday unveiled exam­ples of Greene’s past social media activ­i­ty from as recent­ly as 2019 that appeared to endorse exe­cut­ing Democrats and fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cers. She was report­ed to have liked one com­ment that said “a bul­let to the head would be quick­er” to elim­i­nate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Taylor Greene has antag­o­nized her peers by flout­ing coro­n­avirus guide­lines and has gar­nered nation­al atten­tion for engag­ing in the QAnon con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. She has also denied the Parkland school shoot­ing, and was filmed spread­ing racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic com­ments, prompt­ing con­dem­na­tion from her own party.)
The Republican minor­i­ty leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, reward­ed Marjorie Taylor Greene with a seat on the edu­ca­tion committee.

There is more than just Marjorie Taylor Greene; there are more [Karens], these are the best of what is now the Republican par­ty. Lauren Boebert, was just elect­ed to the US Congress from Colorado, with a rap sheet as long as a cold win­ter night. Yup, it’s real­ly easy to guess at the qual­i­ty of the con­stituents who sent her to rep­re­sent them.
According to the very Conservative Rupert Murdoch New York Post, in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for dis­or­der­ly con­duct at a coun­try music fes­ti­val near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempt­ed to inter­fere in the arrest of minors bust­ed for under­age drink­ing and encour­aged the accused to run off. Boebert said the rev­el­ers had not been read their Miranda rights and that the arrest was ille­gal. Bowebertcontinued yelling and caus­ing the under­age drinkers to become unruly,” an arrest­ing offi­cer said in a state­ment at the time. “Lauren said mul­ti­ple times that she had friends at Fox News and that the ille­gal arrest would be nation­al news.” At the time, Boebert was run­ning Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colo. Colorado Newsline first report­ed the story.

Boebert sub­se­quent­ly missed two court appear­ances and was arrest­ed again in December 2015. The charge was dismissed.
A year lat­er, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with care­less dri­ving and oper­at­ing an unsafe vehi­cle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. A war­rant was issued for her arrest when she failed to show up for court a month lat­er. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ulti­mate­ly plead­ed guilty to the unsafe vehi­cle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs. The care­less dri­ving charge was dis­missed. The inci­dent was first report­ed by the Colorado Times Recorder. In September 2010, Boebert was arrest­ed after a neigh­bor, Michele Soet, accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attack­ing Soet’s dog. Soet’s dog nar­row­ly escaped injury after jump­ing into a van. The future leg­is­la­tor plead­ed guilty to a sin­gle count of “dog at large,” pay­ing a $75 fine.

Boebert’s future hus­band, Jayson, also had brush­es with law enforce­ment. In January 2004, he was arrest­ed after alleged­ly expos­ing his penis to two women at a bowl­ing alley, accord­ing to an arrest affi­davit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 and known as Lauren Opal Roberts) was also there. Jayson Boebert plead­ed guilty to pub­lic inde­cen­cy and lewd expo­sure, earn­ing him­self four days in jail and two years’ pro­ba­tion. In February 2004, he was booked on a domes­tic vio­lence charge, against Lauren Boebert. He “did unlaw­ful­ly strike, shove or kick … and sub­ject­ed her to phys­i­cal con­tact,” a spokesman for the Garfield asso­ciate coun­ty court clerk told The Post. They had been dat­ing at the time. Jayson Boebert ulti­mate­ly served sev­en days in jail. Colorado blog­ger Anne Landman first unearthed the busts. According to a police report, Lauren Boebert took her revenge in May 2004 dur­ing an alter­ca­tion with Jayson at his home in which she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence.
Well, there you have it, folks, a who’s who of white Christian virtue. A reg­u­lar rogue’s gallery of low-class trail­er trash is now dou­bling as Federal legislators.

By John Nichols

The Missouri senator is just as guilty as Trump. As the Senate gears up for the impeachment trial, some senators are beginning to look at Hawley too.

Were the irre­deemable task of mount­ing a defense for Donald Trump at his Senate impeach­ment tri­al to fall to me, I would sim­ply point to the pres­ence of Josh Hawley among the jurors. Then I would rest my case.
If Trump’s chief accom­plice in the incite­ment to insur­rec­tion on January 6 is allowed to con­tin­ue to serve in the cham­ber, the cyn­i­cal argu­ment would go, how can sen­a­tors seri­ous­ly argue that the 45^th pres­i­dent should be held to account?
Needless to say, I won’t be mak­ing that defense, or any oth­er, for Donald Trump. I couldn’t with a straight face rec­om­mend that the dis­graced for­mer pres­i­dent be let off the hook. They’ve got him on tape—and on Twitter — incit­ing the vio­lent mob that invad­ed the US Capitol in order to over­turn the results of the 2020 elec­tion. Trump’s guilty of the high crime with which he has been charged. He must be con­vict­ed by the Senate and barred from ever again occu­py­ing pub­lic office.
Yet the Hawley conun­drum remains. He is just as guilty as Trump, just as respon­si­ble for what hap­pened on January 6.“But for him it wouldn’t have hap­pened,” for­mer Missouri sen­a­tor John Danforth, a Republican who helped to launch his fel­low Missourian’s career, says of Hawley’s role in the Capitol inva­sion. “But for him the approval of the Electoral College votes would have been sim­ply a for­mal­i­ty. He made it into…a spe­cif­ic way to express the view that the elec­tion was stolen. He was responsible.”
Read the full sto­ry here; https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​e​x​p​e​l​-​j​o​s​h​-​h​a​w​l​e​y​-​i​n​s​u​r​r​e​c​t​i​on/

At the heart of the dis­con­nect between nor­mal peo­ple and the polit­i­cal right, unfor­tu­nate­ly includ­ing the so-called Christian con­ser­v­a­tives, is the lit­tle issue called ‘truth.’
It is tough to have dis­course, much less reach con­sen­sus, if the fun­da­men­tal guardrail called truth is removed, leav­ing an ever-mov­ing goal­post of lies and dis­in­for­ma­tion in its wake.
That is where America now finds itself. The stakes of hold­ing onto white suprema­cy and all the priv­i­leges it affords white peo­ple are so great that truth no longer matters.
They stare you in the face and pre­tend that the truth you just point­ed out is incon­se­quen­tial or does­n’t exist.
♦That Donald Trump is a pussy-grab­ber. ♦ That Donald Trump bragged about grab­bing women by the pussy♦ That Donald Trump is a ser­i­al phi­lan­der­er who had sex with hook­ers while his wife was home with their young baby♦ That Donald Trump is a vile racist♦ That Donald Trump is not a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man but an abject fail­ure♦ That Donald Trump does not care about their interest♦That Donald Trump barges in on naked young women and bragged about it♦ That Donald Trump is a crim­i­nal who does not care about their religion♦
On and on, they close their ears to the truth, cre­at­ing what Kelly AnnConway, Trump’s coun­selor, called alter­na­tive facts. A clear indi­ca­tion that as far as Donald Trump was con­cerned, ‘truth’ was out the door; real­i­ty was what they say it was.

Lies cre­ate anx­i­ety; it caus­es depres­sion when peo­ple can­not trust what their gov­ern­ment tells them. The sense of hope­less­ness many peo­ple expressed dur­ing the Trump régime has been pal­pa­ble. The break­down of com­mu­ni­ties along racial and polit­i­cal lines is direct­ly attrib­ut­able to Donald Trump and his acolytes inces­sant lies.
Donald Trump was not suc­cess­ful in destroy­ing the American Democratic exper­i­ment, but the peo­ple who sup­port him are still in pow­er. Trumpism is not dead; assum­ing that Trump’s depar­ture means the end of his insid­i­ous lies and the con­se­quences that emanate from them would be a big mistake.
It will be a heavy lift to remove the stain of Trump when there were a dozen mem­bers of the United States Senate who attached their names to a [lie] to over­turn the results of a ver­i­fi­able fair elec­tion, and by exten­sion, destroy­ing democracy.
Equally appalling is the two-thirds of the House Republican cau­cus who vio­lat­ed their oath to the con­sti­tu­tion and attached their names to the same lies to cur­ry favor with a patho­log­i­cal­ly men­da­cious wannabe strongman.
The stain of lies that now dri­ves the Republican par­ty is rather offen­sive to peo­ple who believe in truth’s morality.
Joni Ernst, the not-so-smart new­ly elect­ed US Senator from the state of Iowa, ignor­ing the truth of events on January 6^th, 2021, in response to Trump’s sec­ond impeach­ment, expressed con­cerns about the sen­ate try­ing crim­i­nal pres­i­dents after they leave office. Quote: So, in the future, can we impeach President Obama?
How damn disin­gen­u­ous is this so-called American Senator? First off, what crimes have President Obama com­mit­ted? Where is the equal pro­tec­tion under the law if pres­i­dents are allowed to break the laws and walk away scot-free?
Secondly, the US Congress did impeach Donald Trump before he left office, so is the nation sup­posed to walk away from a crim­i­nal pres­i­dent because Republicans all of a sud­den wants unity?
Where was the Republican uni­ty dur­ing Trump’s régime?

The stench of trump’s lega­cy will pre­vail long after trump; there is no unring­ing the bell, no get­ting back that sped arrow. Even if Democrats just deci­sion to impeach Trump a sec­ond time fails to win a con­vic­tion, which I believe it will, their cause will be no less just.
Republicans’ refusal to hon­or their oath will be only anoth­er exam­ple of the cor­ro­sive effects of lies. In this case, it will demon­strate that even though they cow­ered in fear at the prospect of los­ing their lives at the hands of Trump’s goons, they are so brain­washed, that they will vote to exon­er­ate the man who ordered the assault against them.
That is the pow­er of inces­sant lies and disinformation.

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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

On January 20^th, 2009, Barack Hussien Obama, the Democratic Presidential nom­i­nee, was inau­gu­rat­ed as the 44^th pres­i­dent of the United States of America. Barack Hussien Obama was the first African-American to attain the nation’s high­est exec­u­tive office.
January 2009, Michael Steele, a Republican DC lawyer, was appoint­ed chair­per­son of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Michael Steele just also hap­pened to be a black man. He was the first African-American to be appoint­ed to run the Republican National Committee.
Was the Steel appoint­ment pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal, or was it a well thought-out and strate­gic attempt to put a black face on what would be a no-holes-barred assault against the Obama Administration? You be the judge.
The back­lash against Obama’s pres­i­den­cy was an all-out assault that took on many facets, includ­ing (a) an intran­si­gent (no-cam­paign) by Republicans in the house and Senate who had decid­ed on oppos­ing every­thing the new pres­i­dent pro­posed, even if they had sup­port­ed those pro­pos­als in the past. On its face, the idea, was to make Obama a one-term pres­i­dent, as Mitch McConnell attest­ed, quote; “my only goal is to make Obama a one-term pres­i­dent.”
However, the broad­er goal was to ensure that there would be no leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment that could be attrib­uted to Obama.

(b) The T‑party’s rise was fund­ed by bil­lion­aire, reac­tionary, right-wing broth­ers, Charles and David Koch. The idea was to cre­ate the sense that the T‑party was a grass­roots upris­ing against the new­ly elect­ed pro­gres­sive pres­i­dent. The truth is that the move­ment was a racist cam­paign intend­ed to ensure that the new pres­i­dent would have no leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment for four years, after which he would be boot­ed from office as a fail­ure, an exper­i­ment nev­er to be tried again.
(c) An all-out cam­paign against the new pres­i­dent led by right-wing media, aimed at stir­ring up an insur­rec­tion, which it did; across the South and mid­west, the pres­i­den­t’s poli­cies were demo­nized as Socialist/​Communist.
Of course, those tropes have been used unspar­ing­ly by the regres­sive ele­ments in this coun­try when­ev­er they desire to smear some­one they do not like.
Two years after Obama took office, the dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign result­ed in the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. They had no fur­ther use for Michael Steele, he was replaced as head of the RNC by Rience Prebuis.

Today Michael Steele still sees him­self as a Republican even though his words are dia­met­ri­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than it was years ago. In fair­ness to Michael Steele, he was nev­er a flame throw­er, he came from the old guard, which boast­ed African-Americans like Colin Powell, all the way back to Mrtin Luther King junior.
Unfortunately for those Republicans, the par­ty left them by the way­side a long time ago, they just ignored the signs. I have con­sis­tent­ly out­lined in this medi­um why African-Americans can­not sup­port the Republican party.
Republicans want­ed a black face on the RNC after Obama won the pres­i­den­cy. The bile and vir­tri­ol that was unleashed against President Obama and his new admin­is­tra­tion was papered over with the wall­pa­per of a black man’s face.
I called out the racism then, I thought it was despi­ca­ble and cow­ard­ly that they would use Steele against Obama , but they did. As soon as they took the House they were done with Michael Steele, he was replaced.
It is now a decade since Michael Steel was used as a sledge­ham­mer against the first African-American pres­i­dent, Steele is a dif­fer­ent man now, his com­ments and analy­sis is more in line with main­stream thought, bal­anced, intel­li­gent, reasoned.
A decade lat­er the Republican par­ty does not play the hide behind the black guy anymore.

The Republican par­ty is now a Fascist orga­ni­za­tion that does not believe in democ­ra­cy. Over the last twelve years, aid­ed by Supreme Court’s Shelby County Alabama Vs. Holder deci­sion, they have employed every mea­sure pos­si­ble to over­turn the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.
Outrageous ger­ry­man­der­ing, archa­ic vot­er sup­pres­sion laws, vot­er intim­i­da­tion, acts intend­ed to pre­vent peo­ple from vot­ing, purg­ing vot­ers lists, Russian-style dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, and a raft of oth­er anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic steps designed to sup­press the black vote.
As revolt­ing as those actions are, they have demon­strat­ed that they will stop at noth­ing to gain and hold onto pow­er, even if it means destroy­ing the American democ­ra­cy. Even if it means throw­ing out mil­lions of votes cast by entire cities of large­ly African-American voters.
When that failed, they went fur­ther, they trease­nous­ly incit­ed a rab­ble to storm the capi­tol and do what­ev­er they will with the entire leg­isla­tive lead­er­ship of the nation.
If that action had suc­ced­ed, Donald Trump would have been pres­i­dent for as long as he want­ed and there would be no one to stop him.
American as we know it would have exist­ed no longer.

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Mike writes for thinkers.

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