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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

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

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

What is med­ical cannabis?

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

What are the health ben­e­fits of med­ical cannabis?

Medical cannabis has been used to:

Relieve pain

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

Help treat neu­ro­log­i­cal disorders

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

Treat can­cer

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

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

According to the researchers:

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

Help Alleviate anx­i­ety and depression

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

Help lose weight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

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

Abraham Lincoln wrote:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

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

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

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

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*** ***. ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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

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

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

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

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

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

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

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

Commenter: “Nah, this ain’t it Buju”

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

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

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

Socialism, as a polit­i­cal con­struct, has been a fail­ure across the Globe, save and except for the Scandinavian region of Europe that prac­tices a kind of pseu­do-social­ism in their almost homoge­nous­ly white societies.
The social­ism that they prac­tice, guar­an­tees every­one a com­fort­able stan­dard of liv­ing, with the under­stand­ing that they pay a much high­er rate of taxation.
Note: the social­ism they prac­tice is not the ide­o­log­i­cal, beret-wear­ing fist thrust­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary style social­ism that the PNP con­tin­ues to offer to the Jamaican people.
It is note­wor­thy, that those soci­eties were already inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy nations, some of which had con­quered parts of Africa and plun­dered its resources. So their soci­eties were already well estab­lished, infra­struc­tural­ly and otherwise.
In Jamaica’s case, the coun­try can hard­ly find resources to pay its work­ers after debt ser­vic­ing, much less to put in place last­ing infrastructure.

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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

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

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

Read more below;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have just read yours of the 19^th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any state­ments, or assump­tions of fact, which I may know to be erro­neous, I do not, now and here, con­tro­vert them. If there be in it any infer­ences which I may believe to be false­ly drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be per­cept­able in it an impa­tient and dic­ta­to­r­i­al tone, I waive it in def­er­ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always sup­posed to be right.

As to the pol­i­cy I “seem to be pur­su­ing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

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

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

A. LINCOLN

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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

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

In Early 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill, which aimed to build on the 13^th Amendment and give Black Americans the rights of cit­i­zens, Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress over­rode his veto, mark­ing the first time in the nation’s his­to­ry that major leg­is­la­tion became law over a pres­i­den­tial veto.
In 1867 the peri­od when rad­i­cal recon­struc­tion began, Black Americans vot­ed in huge num­bers across the South, elect­ing a total of 22 Black men to serve in the U.S. Congress (two in the Senate).
Even though Blacks vot­ed in num­bers and were see­ing them­selves rep­re­sent­ed in the Federal Government, local or state pow­er large­ly remained in white hands, much the way it is today. Black offi­cials faced the con­stant threat of intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence, often at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan or oth­er white suprema­cist groups.
Today the Black vote is under con­stant threat from the Republican party.

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

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

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

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

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

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast, all free to you, of course.

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

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

RESPONSES

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

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

THEN THERE IS THE POLICE UNION

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