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

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

RESPONSES

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

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

THEN THERE IS THE POLICE UNION

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

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

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/
SEE LINK ABOVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Contributor Conrad Tucker.

Mineral Pyrite, aka Fool’s Gold, is a chem­i­cal found in Iron and known for its bril­liant lus­ter. It was fre­quent­ly mis­tak­en for gold by min­ers dur­ing the California Gold Rush ((1848 – 1855). Fast for­ward to 2016, when a bom­bas­tic and charis­mat­ic New York real estate devel­op­er declared his can­di­da­cy for President of the United States to replace the then 44^th President, Barack Obama. By now, you must know that the can­di­date was no oth­er than Donald Trump. By then end of this piece, you will under­stand why I pref­aced this arti­cle about Mineral Pyrite and cor­re­lates it to one of the biggest con­men in American history.

Racism

The day Trump announced that he was run­ning for office, nobody took him seri­ous­ly or gave him a remote chance of becom­ing the 45^th President of the great­est coun­try on earth. To begin his cam­paign, he attacked Mexicans and brand­ed them as crim­i­nals and rapists, and accused Mexico of not send­ing their best, but rather the worst among them. Trump con­tin­ued his racist tirades against America’s south­ern neigh­bor and promised to build a wall that Mexico would pay for to keep its nation­als from get­ting into the coun­try ille­gal­ly. He then called for a ban on all Muslims from enter­ing the USA.

The Justice Department charged Trump in the 1980s for not rent­ing his prop­er­ty to black peo­ple, a case he sub­se­quent­ly set­tled. He also took out a full-page ad in a local New York news­pa­per accus­ing the inno­cent five black men of the rape and mur­der of a female in Central Park, the media dubbed the case the Central Park Five. Since becom­ing President, Trump made many racists remarks, espe­cial­ly against minor­i­ty women, some of whom are in con­gress. Yesterday, he called Sen. Kamala Harris, the Vice Presidential Candidate on the Democratic tick­et, a mon­ster. During last week’s debate against Joe Biden, he refused to con­demn white suprema­cy and told The Proud Boys — one of his rightwing groups, prone to vio­lence to “stand by and stand back.” In 2017, he called white suprema­cists “very fine peo­ple,” after one of them use a car to mow down and killed a young woman who was protest­ing against them in Virginia. Yet, he took the oath of office to pro­tect the peo­ple of America, but only to fan the flames of racism and divi­sion with his racist rhetoric.

Who remem­bers the birther scan­dal he per­pe­trat­ed to dimin­ish and dis­re­spect the legit­i­mate President of the United States because he is black.

Wealth

Trump pro­mot­ed him­self as a self-made bil­lion­aire and par­layed that into a suc­cess­ful TV real­i­ty show, which ran for many years. Many peo­ple admired him as the flashy and wealthy real estate devel­op­er with an affin­i­ty for blonde hair Eastern European women. However, many did not pay atten­tion to the many bank­rupt­cies filed by his com­pa­nies. Most notable among his bank­rupt­cy fil­ings are a casi­no, air­lines, and the dis­graced Trump University. Who bank­rupts a casi­no; isn’t a casi­no sup­posed to be a cash cow?

The New York Times (NYT) recent­ly ran a piece expos­ing Trump’s dirty secret regard­ing tax eva­sion and tax avoid­ance. Many Americans were furi­ous to found out that Trump only paid $750.00 in Federal Income Tax for 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, peo­ple who make less than six-fig­ure in earn­ings paid more than ten times the amount the President paid. The Times sto­ry also found out that the con­man is in a moun­tain of debt, up to the tune of 421 mil­lion dol­lars. The lender of this enor­mous sum of mon­ey is unan­i­mous, which has become a cause for con­cern to Americans that the President is com­pro­mised. It is an open secret that Trump is not a bil­lion­aire as he por­trayed him­self to be. The sto­ry in the NYT stat­ed that he has bor­rowed against his real estate assets and rumored that he owed anoth­er one hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars on Trump Tower, which could fore­close as ear­ly next year. And the paper also report­ed that all of his busi­ness­es, espe­cial­ly his golf cours­es, are los­ing money.

By all accounts, Trump, the oppor­tunist, ran for the pres­i­den­cy, not because he wants to help the American peo­ple but to raise his pro­file, which will enable him to make mon­ey to pay off the moun­tain of debt he is own­ing. Trump does­n’t care about the American peo­ple; he only cares about him­self, and more impor­tant­ly, his image. In essence, he sees it as anoth­er way to build wealth that he will inevitably lose, based on his his­to­ry. To sim­ply put, Trump is as broke as a church mouse. That is the main rea­son why he is hell-bent on not releas­ing his tax returns.

Empty Promises

What is astound­ing is the fact that so many peo­ple believe this inept, incom­pe­tent buf­foon, who is noth­ing but an abject fail­ure. He riled up his Obama haters with inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric and then fed it like raw meat them, and they devoured every ounce of it. Remember how he promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obama Care, with 26 days left in his pres­i­den­cy, he has not deliv­ered on his emp­ty promise. I ear­li­er allud­ed to the “wall,” the big, pow­er­ful wall that he was going to build, and Mexico would pay for it. Where is it? Another emp­ty promise fed to his acolytes.

Handling of Covid-19

Trump con­tin­ues to lie to the American peo­ple about his han­dling of the dead­ly virus. His fail­ure to act when told about it has cost tens of thou­sands of Americans their lives, with mil­lions more infect­ed and the unem­ploy­ment rate hov­er­ing around 14% ear­li­er this year. Remember, dur­ing the height of the first wave of the virus, how he pro­mot­ed Hydroxychloroquine as a ther­a­peu­tic to treat the virus? He did this against the advice of the doc­tors that com­prised his task force and oth­er promi­nent epi­demi­ol­o­gists. And, as you know, he is infect­ed with the virus, and none of the med­i­cines he got was Hydroxychloroquine. What does that tell you about this man? That he is truth­ful to Americans? That he cares about them? That he has their best inter­est at heart? The answers are no. Trump cares only about Trump, and the fools who sup­port him are obliv­i­ous to his dis­hon­esty and deceit. I pity them.

He is Fake

But those are the char­ac­ter­is­tic of an ego­ma­ni­ac con­man, who has a vast fol­low­ing of like-mind­ed racists, who believe and preach the same doc­trine as the President. Trump likes to label the media as fake, but he is per­haps the biggest fake that coun­try has seen. Sensible Americans know who this con artist is, and the polls are show­ing that he will be washed away by a tsuna­mi of Democratic voters.

Now, the empire has no clothes, and like Mineral Pyrite, he too is no gold.

One of the things I am always mind­ful of as a Christian, even when I am at the height of an anger spell, (yes I do get angry, I am not a saint), is to try to always keep one foot on the ground. Always seek­ing to be hum­ble. It is dif­fi­cult to main­tain humil­i­ty when you have that fiery tem­per, that low tol­er­ance for BS.
I am am not about to judge any­one else, I am sim­ply self-cri­tiquing and admit­ting to my imperfections.
It is with that mind­set that I always try not to judge the motives of oth­ers, or to begin to decide whose actions are not Christ-like, while I am every day, trapped in a vicious strug­gle myself, to stay out of Hades.

I have watched Mike Pence’s career over the years, I under­stand just how dif­fi­cult it must be for a per­son of means and pow­er to remain true to their faith. I believe there is prece­dent for that in Matthew 19:21 when a rich young ruler asked Yeshua, “what should I do to be saved”/ Yeshua told him, “If you want to be per­fect, go and sell all your pos­ses­sions and give the mon­ey to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.”
The young man went away sad, because accord­ing to the scrip­tures, he had great wealth, so nat­u­ral­ly, Yeshua’s answer would not res­onate well with him.
Mike Pence, the for­mer Indiana Congressman, and Governor turned Vice President comes straight from the fun­da­men­tal­ist cloth.
Don’t be fooled by the seem­ing pious, holi­er than though exte­ri­or, behind that thin façade of decep­tion, lies a cal­cu­la­tive method­i­cal plot­ter who waits for Donald Trump to be removed from office so that he will have default­ed into the most pow­er­ful office in the world.

On that basis, we already see that the pious soft-spo­ken Mike Pence would sell his soul for pow­er, from as far back as 2016. Donald Trump chose Mike Pence to be his run­ning mate in order to snag the white Christian fun­da­men­tal­ist vote. (Not to be con­fused with the Christian vote).
We all knew who Donald Trump was, cer­tain­ly, New Yorkers did, oth­ers could have found out if they cared to know any­thing about the can­di­date to whom they would be entrust­ing the nuclear codes.
In fair­ness to Mike Pence, he should not be demo­nized for accept­ing the num­ber two spot on Trump’s tick­et. What Mike Pence must cer­tain­ly be held account­able for, is sit­ting in a debate with Senator Kamala Harris and lying to the nation about Donald Trump’s record on issue after issue.
The fact that Mike Pence is far less dra­mat­ic than his blus­ter­ing idiot of a boss, does not mean that he is any less duplic­i­tous, decep­tive, or is any less mendacious.

My late Grandfather always told me “you can hide from a thief, but you can nev­er hide from a liar”, Mike Pence exem­pli­fies every bit of what Donald Trump rep­re­sents, It is the very same stinky s**t that attract­ed the fly to his head dur­ing the debate with Kamala Harris. You can always trust God’s crea­tures to keep it real.
Evil comes in many forms, Pence who pre­tends to be so moral that he refus­es to be in a room with a woman who is not his wife, had no prob­lem sit­ting there, and lying through his teeth, know­ing full well that every claim he made was laced with lies.
Tragically, fakes and frauds are all around, and as is evi­denced in Pence, they are in posi­tions of pow­er. It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that not all that says “Lord, Lord” shall enter.

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 the dream of most Jamaicans to see our coun­try become a first-rate coun­try with ade­quate infra­struc­ture so that the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it can thrive.
Yesterday I was sad­dened at the com­ments of a friend who is a loy­al Jamaican rear­ing to bring his skill set to work for the Jamaican peo­ple. This broth­er stayed home and has been will­ing to con­tin­ue to inno­vate for the good of the country.
In a social media post, he lament­ed the cor­rup­tion, and dare I say, the inep­ti­tude of *Government*, to see to the needs of Jamaican inno­va­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tech indus­try. (the term *gov­ern­ment* is used par­ty neutral)
I point­ed out to my friend that now that oth­er nations are focused on tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments for their peo­ple, all across our tiny nation, there is a tremen­dous need for roads, where roads exist they are crater-filled.

The Government boasts about build­ing bridges, nev­er­the­less, in a sit­u­a­tion in which a bridge is erect­ed it is done for show, for the now, it is not con­struct­ed like an edi­fice that will stand the test of time, much less accom­mo­date the needs of an ever explod­ing population.
In the case of the bridge in this arti­cle shown above, there is a con­ver­sa­tion to be had, that there was none there before, but build­ing it should not be about brag­ging rights, it ought to be about putting in place a struc­ture that will be there for anoth­er hun­dred years, long after we are gone.

How can a gov­ern­ment focus on the needs of tech­nol­o­gy when it lacks the vision, com­mit­ment, and where­with­al to see to the most basic infra­struc­tur­al needs of the nation.
Roadways, bridges, water sup­ply, elec­tric­i­ty, schools, hos­pi­tals, fire sta­tions, pris­ons, police sta­tions, and yes, broad­band, that is the role of the gov­ern­ment, to put in place and main­tain those infra­struc­tures so that the peo­ple can innovate.
The tax­es derived from inno­va­tion if han­dled prop­er­ly, will be more than enough to main­tain those infrastructures.
Which brings me to the new toll road increases.
Jamaica should not be in a posi­tion that required for­eign­ers to come to Jamaica to build roads that Jamaicans should be build­ing and main­tain­ing themselves.
Decades of cor­rup­tion and theft of tax-pay­ers resources by the two polit­i­cal par­ties, result­ed in the door flung wide open for the Chinese to Waltz right in and dan­gle shiny new roads. Of course, with it, they need­ed to extract their pound of flesh, so away went prime Jamaican prop­er­ty dirt cheap, and that was just the begin­ning of it.

The cost of dri­ving on the new roads are so astro­nom­i­cal, that many motorists are forced to stay off them. So des­per­ate was the Government of the day when they nego­ti­at­ed with the oper­a­tors of the new Highway 2000, that they basi­cal­ly gave in to what­ev­er they want­ed. Those are the things devel­op­ing nations are forced to do when they nego­ti­ate from posi­tions of weak­ness. Those are the things cor­rupt devel­op­ing nations do when they squan­der and steal their peo­ple’s scarce resources.
It is under­stand­able that because of Jamaica’s ever depre­ci­at­ing dol­lar, costs will go up, which is a major chal­lenge for who­ev­er forms the government.
Notwithstanding, the gov­ern­ment must find ways to ease the bur­den from the poor peo­ple who are find­ing the crush­ing weight of the cost of liv­ing far too much to bear.
Already the pub­lic util­i­ty com­pa­ny does as it pleas­es with elec­tric­i­ty rates, there are hotels in our coun­try that the aver­age Jamaican will nev­er be able to sleep in, beach­es they can­not afford to enjoy in their own coun­try, and roads they can­not dri­ve on.
The devel­op­ment of a nation must include the peo­ple, it can­not be that we have a coun­try in which the natives are like sec­ond class cit­i­zens in their own country.

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.

Over the last cou­ple of years, I have come to a con­clu­sion that may not find favor with many peo­ple. To hell with con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, I do not believe there are any unde­cid­ed vot­ers in America.
Now, this the­o­ry may just piss off the peo­ple who believe in focus groups, even more so, those who par­tic­i­pate in them.
Here is the (cow manure), peo­ple who sit in those focus groups love the atten­tion of the spot­light on them.
How could any per­son who lived through the last three and a half years not know what side they are on? The con­trast could not be clear­er. If you say you are unde­cid­ed, you are either an idiot or a damn liar.
If you insist that you are unde­cid­ed you are say­ing so to get on tele­vi­sion. I learned a long time ago, that there is hard­ly any­thing Americans will not do to see their mugs on television.

Make no mis­take about it, the American elec­torate is high­ly polar­ized. Let us assume that it may have been more polar­ized at some pre­vi­ous time in the nation’s his­to­ry, after all the coun­try endured a civ­il war. Nevertheless, it seems that the wedge issues that sep­a­rate the two polit­i­cal camps are so diver­gent that each is hard­ened with no room for a meet­ing of the minds, much less to have a group of unde­cid­ed poten­tial vot­ers to be swayed one way or the other.
As I have said on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, the American elec­torate is cer­tain­ly far from sophis­ti­cat­ed, ——Donald Trump is in the White House. But the obsti­na­cy of the elec­torate runs immea­sur­ably deep­er than just a bad pres­i­den­tial pick.
The dis­con­nect is evi­dent on issues like health-care, immi­gra­tion, on social issues, vot­ers con­sis­tent­ly vot­ing against their best inter­est, empow­er­ing the very rich and pow­er­ful, at their own expense.

Business Insider report­ed; Only one New England state, Maine, makes the bot­tom 15, of the poor­est states in the Union.
While states in Appalachia, the South, and the Midwest tend to dom­i­nate. The states with the low­est incomes tend to be clus­tered togeth­er geo­graph­i­cal­ly, and it shows just how unequal­ly wealth is dis­trib­uted across the US.
I say it has pret­ty much noth­ing to do with wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion and every­thing to do with the way they vote.
If it was about wealth dis­tri­b­u­tion how does one explain that free slave labor was used for hun­dreds of years to enrich the south, yet today most of those very same states are among the poor­est in the union?
Additionally, States like California, Washington state, Oregon, Colorado, are nowhere near where the south­ern states are in terms of wealth, not to men­tion the New England states.

The fif­teen poor­est states by medi­an income, start­ing from worst to best. Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, *New Mexico*, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Nevada Missouri. Do you know what all of these states have in com­mon, with the excep­tion of New Mexico?
They have been run by Republicans for decades, and true to form, start­ing with the poor­est, Mississippi, the poor­est are the red­dest of red states.
It should come as no sur­prise that wher­ev­er the most hard­ened Republican vot­ers live and con­gre­gate, when asked about Donald Trump’s crimes and abus­es they blind­ly swat away the accu­sa­tions of his infi­deli­ty, tax eva­sion, lies, incom­pe­tence, mis­han­dling of COVID-19, abuse of Federal agen­cies, mon­e­tiz­ing the pres­i­den­cy, fraud­u­lent foun­da­tion, and the cor­nu­copia of oth­er crimes and abus­es he com­mits, not to men­tion his atro­cious fail­ure as the nation’s chief executive.
On the oth­er hand, they can­not artic­u­late a sin­gle intel­li­gent or cogent rea­son for their servile def­er­ence to a man who many his­to­ri­ans and experts con­clude, may actu­al­ly be the least intel­li­gent per­son ever to occu­py the office of president.
Instead, they recite lies they heard on FOX mis­in­for­ma­tion Television or on talk radio from some shriek­ing wild eye con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist racist loon.

If you are some­one who (a) want to raise a fam­i­ly, send your kids to school, live and work in a coun­try that is not torn apart by racial strife, and (b) if you have no prob­lem with all of the oth­er 320 mil­lion cit­i­zens of the coun­try hav­ing equal access to the oppor­tu­ni­ties that you have, then there is no way that you could sup­port what has been hap­pen­ing over the last 3 ¹⁄₂ years.
The unde­ni­able truth about his cult-fol­low­ing, is that they are will­ing to pre­tend that they do not see what Donald Trump is doing, as long as he con­tin­ues to hate the peo­ple they hate, and to use the bull­horn of the pres­i­den­cy to advance racial divi­sions and white supremacy.
They are will­ing to live with him, despite hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly pos­tured and pon­tif­i­cat­ed about being supe­ri­or based on reli­gious and fam­i­ly values.
They rather believe a lie.….….….

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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.

During the 2016 Election cam­paign, all of the polls showed Hillary Clinton beat­ing Donald Trump by a wide mar­gin, or at the very least, beat­ing Trump in all of the states she need­ed to win.
The states she need­ed were the states President Obama had won twice, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, Florida, New Mexico Colorado, New Mexico, In addi­tion to the Northeastern and west­ern states.
She was required to defend the so-called blue wall.
Still to this day almost four years lat­er, not a sin­gle polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, pun­dit or poll­ster has explained what the hell hap­pened on elec­tion night 2016.
Was polling out­dat­ed as a barom­e­ter of under­stand­ing vot­er sen­ti­ment? Or did polling sim­ply set­tle in as to what they real­ly are, [snap­shots of moments in time]? Or did some­thing sin­is­ter hap­pen that can only be explained by the intel­li­gence agencies?
It has been remark­able to hear media types opine that maybe peo­ple sim­ply lied to poll­sters, or maybe poll­sters over-sam­pled Democratic voters.
If either of those nar­ra­tives is true then the entire dis­ci­pline of polling as a sort of qua­si-sci­ence is now dead.

During the 2016 Election, my wife and her mom, and two of our sons were on the way to South Carolina, we decid­ed that we would dri­ve down. I decid­ed to avoid the DC traf­fic so I took the long way along Route 81 down through the Pennsylvania back­coun­try, a lit­tle way through West Virginia, and I was shocked at what I saw.
Literally, every yard was lit­tered with trump signs.….….. People stick polit­i­cal signs on curb­sides, at stop­lights on entry and egress points to and from Highways, etc, that’s par for the course.
When they place them in their yards or allow some­one else to do so that means they have a devo­tion or at least intend to vote for that candidate.
Look, I will always be skep­ti­cal of the fact that Trump won the elec­tion in three states, ‑Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin by less than 70,000 votes.
If you ask me, it just seems much too sur­gi­cal to me to be accept­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly when Hillary Clinton won the raw total by over three mil­lion votes. It just seems a tad bit too sur­gi­cal, a tad bit too pre­cise right down the mid­dle of that blue wall.
But then again those yard signs, right?

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

I real­ly had a fun­ny feel­ing from as ear­ly as August of 2016 that Hillary Clinton was going to be toast. For the entire month of August 2016. For the entire month of August 2016, Secretary Clinton did not do a sin­gle large cam­paign event. At the time I wrote that she was throw­ing the elec­tion. Donald Trump hav­ing evis­cer­at­ed all of his pri­ma­ry oppo­nents, was putting the large Trump embla­zoned plane at every air­port hangar he could and was draw­ing humungous crowds.
Even though the elec­tions were for Hillary Clinton to lose, she went ahead like Al Gore did before her in 2000, and gave the elec­tion to the Republicans.
Actions have con­se­quences, inac­tion some­times has even more dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences. And so elec­tions mat­ters, before this is all done, even though the American vot­ers turned out and gave Democrats the plu­ral­i­ty of their votes in 2000,& 2016 Democrats allowed them­selves to be rail­road­ed and now the Country is in dire straits as it faces the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of a sec­ond Trump term in office, hav­ing appoint­ed three Supreme Court Justices and placed over 200 of the Federal Appeals bench.
Potentially even before the elec­tions are through, there will be a 6 – 3 Republican major­i­ty on the high­est court, plac­ing in jeop­ardy all of the pro­gres­sive gains that have been made arguably since the 1960s.

Elections are not always won on who is right on the issues, they are not about who has the bet­ter poli­cies, if that was so Donald Trump would not be sit­ting inside that old house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue watch­ing FOX and rage tweet­ing. That hon­or would have been Hillary Clinton’s.
Much of what elec­tions are about is press­ing the flesh, being there, peo­ple tend to acquaint that with car­ing, instead of bla­tant vote pan­der­ing. Polls car­ried out before the George Bush pres­i­den­cy, revealed that some vot­ers said they would vote for Bush because he seemed like some­one they could have a beer with.
The sad real­i­ty is that their chance of hav­ing a beer with Bush was less than being struck by light­ning twice, but they vot­ed for him based on those perceptions.
Which begs the ques­tion of why would peo­ple who worked hard to make a liv­ing all their lives would find com­mon cause with a life-long draft-dodg­ing con-artiste who lived 50 floors up into the Manhattan skies in a gaudy, gild­ed penthouse?
He pre­tend­ed to share their pain and that’s all they cared about. Not all of those peo­ple are racists, but Trump knew the issues that they cared about, as I explained in the linked arti­cle above, he exploit­ed those con­cerns to the max­i­mum and has solid­i­fied his sup­port with that base of sup­port, to the point he need not wor­ry about their vote, even though he may not have deliv­ered on his promis­es to them.
He con­tin­ued to speak to those wedge issues they care about, the supreme court,(on that he has deliv­ered), Immigration, and a range of oth­er issues. He hates the same peo­ple many of them hate, and now they hate the peo­ple he hates.
It is a cult fol­low­ing that has only hard­ened since 2016, that will not be deterred by any news that may sur­face about Donald Trump. One such Guy said he went to a Trump ral­ly and based on where he was stand­ing he could not hear what Trump was say­ing but he so loved Trump he clapped sim­ply because they were clap­ping. Such is the lev­el of feal­ty and loy­al­ty that they have for him.

The first of what should have been a debate end­ed with Donald Trump telling the [proud boys] white suprema­cists group to “STANDBACK AND STAND BY”. It was not a debate, it was an embar­rass­ing dis­play of bul­ly­ing and out of con­trol behav­ior by Trump, not only could Trump not say he would abide by the elec­tion results, he called on white suprema­cists groups to stand by.
Years ago I wrote that American was flirt­ing with anoth­er civ­il war.…… My God, I nev­er thought that I would live long enough to hear an American pres­i­dent call on a Militia to stand by to fight if he lost the elections.

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

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Was any­one sur­prised at the rev­e­la­tions by the New York Times, that Donald Trump paid $0 in tax­es in 10 of 15 years, or that he only paid $740 in fed­er­al tax­es in 2016 the year he was run­ning for president?
According to the report, Trump paid $750 in fed­er­al income tax, by that mea­sure, he would have to have earned $17,900 in order to pay that pal­try amount.
This leaves us with three assump­tions, (a) either Trump is real­ly nowhere as rich as he would like the world to believe, [by virtue of his tax pay­ments] (b) Trump is guilty of lying on the returns he does file, and there­fore guilty of defraud­ing the gov­ern­ment of much-need­ed rev­enue, & © the oth­er nov­el idea is that both of the two for­mer sce­nar­ios are true, and prob­a­bly the most plau­si­ble of the three
If I was a bet­ting man I would wager that Donald Trump, the life­long con-artist is lying about his wealth, has lied to avoid pay­ing his fair share of tax­es, lied in 2016 when con­front­ed by Hillary Clinton that he paid no tax­es, and is lying now with the worn-out malarky that he is under audit and there­fore can­not release his returns.
There is no truth to the idea that giv­en a sit­u­a­tion in which he is being audit­ed he would be pre­clud­ed from divulging his tax returns.
This has already been debunked by the IRS, even though the agency is con­strained from say­ing whether any American, includ­ing Trump, is under their audit micro­scope or not.

It makes a lot of sense now to some, [it made sense to this writer in 2016], that despite the ban­ter, when Hillary Clinton accused him of not pay­ing any fed­er­al income tax, he chimed in, “that’s because I’m smart”, that Hillary had nailed it.
Don the Con was not pay­ing any taxes.
Donald Trump’s entire life was one of lies and dis­tor­tions, a trust fund baby who was pushed by his father to be what he was not cut out for.
He cre­at­ed an image in New York, bur­nished and facil­i­tat­ed by New York Media.….The gold­en boy of suc­cess, tall, blond, the all-American sym­bol of suc­cess, the draft-dodg­ing Trump was allowed to main­tain a lie, all but­tressed by the media.
Donald Trump, who for all intents and pur­pos­es may have nev­er earned a degree, nev­er ran a suc­cess­ful busi­ness, was able to pass as a sym­bol of American suc­cess, and not the pam­pered, racist, con artist, that he tru­ly is.
Donald Trump conned his way into the most pow­er­ful office in the world, has access to the world’s most lethal nuclear arse­nal, and poten­tial­ly places the American Democracy in a per­ilous posi­tion from which it may nev­er recover.
For his life of lies, there can be noth­ing but recog­ni­tion for Trump, he has shown the world that a man devoid of hon­or, morals, con­science, or con­vic­tion can lie his way through life and acquire the great­est prize, the American presidency.

That may speak vol­umes about Donald Trump, but the real tragedy is what it says about the syco­phants who wor­ship at his feet, even as he express­es dis­gust, at the mere thought of hav­ing to shake their hands.
It’s real­ly not too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why Donald Trump can­not, and will not say he will accept the out­come of the upcom­ing elec­tions in my estimation.
Trump’s gam­bit to use the pres­i­den­cy to save him­self may be back­fir­ing. By some reports that we have not val­i­dat­ed, Donald Trump holds $421 mil­lion in debt, much of which becomes due in the next four years, addi­tion­al­ly, he may owe the IRS $100 mil­lion accord­ing to the Huffington Post.
The fact that he will not say that he will con­cede if he los­es in November may speak to his fear of impris­on­ment. He was alleged­ly named by the Southern District of New York, an unin­dict­ed co-con­spir­a­tor with his for­mer lawyer and fix­er Michael Cohen with whom he is now estranged. Cohen was impris­oned and is still under the con­trol of the state’s cor­rec­tion­al juris­dic­tion and control.

Donald Trump is seem­ing­ly will­ing to do any­thing to hold on to the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy. He is deter­mined to ride out what he obvi­ous­ly believes is the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on any charges that may be pend­ing, ‑await­ing his exit from office.
One more rea­son for the jus­tice depart­ment pol­i­cy not to indict a sit­ting pres­i­dent should be dis­card­ed. The idea that a sit­ting pres­i­dent should not be indict­ed because it dis­tracts them from being pres­i­dent, does sev­er­al things, not the least of which is to (a) embold­en pres­i­dents to com­mit crimes, and (b) sets pres­i­dents above the laws.
Based on his finan­cial and poten­tial legal woes Trump may be pre­pared to burn the whole house down in order to save himself.
The thing to watch is whether those poten­tial charges may be made to dis­ap­pear by William Barr. If Barr inter­feres with those pro­ceed­ings he should be pros­e­cut­ed along with Trump.
A cor­nered man is a dan­ger­ous man, a man with the codes to the most lethal nuclear arse­nal .…well.…..

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.

One scan­dal was gen­er­al­ly enough to doom a pri­ma­ry or gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­da­cy, ren­der­ing that can­di­date a side­line spec­ta­tor for the remain­der of his life.

Senator Gary Hart
The Democratic sen­a­tor from Colorado “was as close to a lock for the nom­i­na­tion — and like­ly the pres­i­den­cy — as any chal­lenger of the mod­ern era” in the 1988 election,.
But sus­pi­cions of Hart’s mar­i­tal infi­deli­ty and an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Miami Herald led to the media fren­zy. Hart with­drew from the race. A few months lat­er, he re-entered the cam­paign to “let the peo­ple decide.” But after three months, he quit again.

Spiro Agnew
Richard Nixon’s first vice pres­i­dent became the sec­ond in American his­to­ry to resign after accu­sa­tions of tax eva­sion and bribery. Despite declar­ing in September 1973 that he “will not resign if indict­ed,” Agnew resigned in October in exchange for a plea bar­gain that kept him out of jail.

John Edwards
The Senator from North Carolina was a ris­ing star in Democratic Party after run­ning on John Kerry’s pres­i­den­tial tick­et in 2004. During his pres­i­den­tial run four years lat­er, Edwards faced tabloid alle­ga­tions of an extra­mar­i­tal affair with Rielle Hunter, a film­mak­er hired to work on his cam­paign. He lat­er admit­ted that the alle­ga­tions were true and that he fathered a child with Hunter. Three years lat­er, Edwards faced a fed­er­al grand jury on charges of using cam­paign mon­ey to hide his affair. He was acquit­ted on one count and received a mis­tri­al on the others.

The list of can­di­dates who have been dam­aged by scan­dals is long and varied.
That is all gone now, there is a gen­er­al feel­ing of res­ig­na­tion, a feel­ing of being over­whelmed by the dai­ly scan­dals. It is as if lies have become truth and that even where the lies are so pro­nounced they can­not be denied, peo­ple cre­ate alter­na­tive truths, rather than face and call out the lies.
But the lies are only a small part of it. The crimes, and the acts that would have got­ten pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents kicked out of office.

Kids locked in cages, Unidentified Federal offi­cers beat­ing law­ful pro­test­ers so Julius Caesar could have a pho­to-op. Over 200,000 Americans dead as a result of COVID-19, all while cae­sar lied and conspired
War on Health care. Abuse of cit­i­zen’s rights. Assault on the envi­ron­ment. Rolling back civ­il and vot­ing rights. Destroying what cred­i­bil­i­ty Federal agen­cies had pri­or. Beaking from International treaties. Breaking from International com­mit­ments while dis­re­spect­ing old friends and hug­ging up mon­strous dictators.
Yea .…. you got the picture.

There is no hon­or among thieves, but once upon a time, not long ago, the thieves would shroud their lack of hon­or by wash­ing off the blood, then hid­ing their hands under their long white robes .……Some even wore hoods, now they wear suits.
They have learned that there is no need to side­step the lies that dis­hon­or them. Who cares about hon­or when I get to be the world’s num­ber one golf caddie?
Truth is what you say it is boss.
It is a con­stant bar­rage of scan­dals, an out­ra­geous abuse of pow­er, lies, decep­tions, and egre­gious assaults. Not just on our bod­ies but on our men­tal state of mind, it is designed to wear us down until we lose the will to care.
It is the strat­e­gy of com­mu­nists & Fascists alike.

It is as old as Communism; A con­cept advo­cat­ing class war and lead­ing to a soci­ety in which all prop­er­ty is pub­licly owned and each per­son works and is paid accord­ing to their abil­i­ties and needs.
As old as Fascism. (Britannica​.com) explains Fascism; Some see it as an extreme form of con­ser­vatism inspired by a 19^th-cen­tu­ry back­lash against the ideals of the Enlightenment. Others find fas­cism deeply irra­tional, where­as oth­ers are impressed with the ratio­nal­i­ty with which it served the mate­r­i­al inter­ests of its supporters.

Regardless of the angle from which you view this slow tick­ing time bomb, one thing is cer­tain what­ev­er you thought about the American Democracy was wrong.
Whatever you thought when you heard peo­ple talk about patri­o­tism and pride in their coun­try, you were wrong. Today the American Democratic exper­i­ment is not at a cross­roads as John Kasich allud­ed. The American exper­i­ment is tee­ter­ing on the brink of the precipice, threat­en­ing at any moment to top­ple over into the dark abyss of totalitarianism.
This time the Senate will not save Rome from Ceasar, the Senate and Ceasar are one.
Rest in peace John McCain.…..

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

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As an observ­er of the American polit­i­cal process, and my love for writ­ing, over the years I have sought to high­light what I per­ceive to be a wide dis­par­i­ty of effec­tive­ness between the two polit­i­cal par­ties, the Democratic, and Republican Parties.
Over the years I have con­sis­tent­ly writ­ten that the Republican par­ty is a full-blown cult that talks rule of law, patri­o­tism, and fis­cal con­ser­vatism, but that those issues, to the extent they may be con­sid­ered virtues, only apply when Democrats are in power.
The last Democratic President Barack Obama was lam­bast­ed mer­ci­less­ly of run­ning up the nation­al debt, and accused of sad­dling chil­dren yet unborn with debts they did not incur.
The fact of the mat­ter is that Obama slowed the uptick of the nation­al debt and reduced the deficit.
The hyp­o­crit­i­cal Republicans had no prob­lem when Ronald Reagan,& both Bushes were run­ning up both the deficit and the nation­al debt, not to men­tion what now pass­es for a pres­i­dent is doing, large­ly with ill-advised tax cuts and for­eign wars.
On the oth­er hand, the Democratic par­ty brags a lot less about the rule of law, patri­o­tism, & fis­cal con­ser­vatism, but would ben­e­fit from an audit between the per­for­mance on those issues between itself and the Republican party.

What is obvi­ous between the two par­ties, is that the Republican par­ty has become mas­ters of effec­tive mes­sag­ing, albeit that it’s mes­sag­ing is intrin­si­cal­ly devoid of facts, has become more racist, devoid of moral­i­ty, and has all but become unin­ter­est­ed in the American demo­c­ra­t­ic experiment.
It is safe to say that the Republican par­ty has a sin­gu­lar focus nowa­days. That focus is to use every tool in the tool-box, and where nec­es­sary, bring tools from out­side the tool-box, in order to main­tain a sol­id white suprema­cist con­trol of the country.
Those of you who are still stuck in won­der­ment at the silence on the one hand, and on the oth­er, the bel­li­cose defense of a hos­tile for­eign pow­er Russia, by Republicans, must under­stand the lengths to which Republicans will go to remain in pow­er and main­tain white supremacy.
The Democratic par­ty gets out-hus­tled, out­ma­neu­vered, and out-strate­gized at every lev­el. Even, when they are in con­trol of the exec­u­tive branch of the gov­ern­ment, Republicans are ful­ly able to stop the broad­er will of the major­i­ty of American vot­ers who con­tin­ue to elect Democratic pres­i­dents, only to be thwart­ed by the fire­wall to Democracy knows as the Electoral College.

The lack­lus­ter per­for­mance of Democrats, in response to the scorched earth strate­gies employed by Republicans, has now ful­ly placed the coun­try in a crit­i­cal posi­tion. A ten­u­ous posi­tion that far exceeds the cross­roads for­mer Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich envis­aged when he came out in sup­port of Democratic Presidential can­di­date Joe Biden sev­er­al weeks ago.
The pass­ing of Associate Supreme Court lib­er­al Icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg has shown that when it comes to observ­ing pro­to­cols and rules, the Republican par­ty has no inter­est in observ­ing any.
That includes the pro­to­cols they them­selves put in place in order to thwart President Obama’s nom­i­nee Merrick Garland from a seat on the high court.
With ten months left in Obama’s term, Antonin Scalia passed, giv­ing the pres­i­dent the con­sti­tu­tion­al right and duty to appoint a replace­ment to the court. He did, but Mitch McConnell the Senate major­i­ty leader, told the pres­i­dent that he would not even meet with judge Garland, much less to sched­ule hear­ings toward his appoint­ment to the high­est court.
McConnell lat­er gloated;

Now that the exec­u­tive in the white house is a Republican, and the shoe is on the oth­er foot, the very same Mitch McConnell wants to change the pro­to­col back. Never mind that this time around, there is just over forty [days] to the gen­er­al elec­tions, not ten months.
Immediately after the pass­ing of Justice Ginsberg, Mitch McConnell issued a state­ment, “President Trump’s nom­i­nee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate”.
Never in my life­time have I seen a more shame­less and craven politi­cian wield pow­er with such unabashed greed and dis­re­gard for his­to­ry as Mitch McConnell has.
It is an arro­gant abuse of pow­er that can­not, and [must not] be allowed to pre­vail, con­sid­er­ing the stakes. The Supreme court already has what many con­sid­er one ille­git­i­mate mem­ber, in the per­son of Brett Kavanaugh, who filled the seat that Judge Merrick Garland would have filled.
There is already a Conservative major­i­ty on the nation’s high­est court. If Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are allowed to ram a right-wing judge down the col­lec­tive throat of the nation, it would give the so-called con­ser­v­a­tives a 6 – 3 super­ma­jor­i­ty on the high­est court. That is in addi­tion not to the over two hun­dred judges that Trump has stacked on the Federal Appeals court.
At risk is, Reproductive rights. Health care & dis­abil­i­ty issues. Workers’ Anti-Discrimination and oth­er Rights. Civil Rights. Consumers and Corporations rights. The Environment. Immigration. Police Misconduct. Criminal Justice. Other Abuse of Authority. Voting Rights. Roe Vs Wade. Civil Rights. And even the abil­i­ty of Americans to protest against the gov­ern­ment when they feel aggriev­ed, a con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee that William Barr the Attorney General, and some Judges like Amey Coney Barrett do not believe in.
Not hold­ing any real cards to play, Democrats can refuse to meet with any nom­i­nee that Trump puts for­ward to fill Justice Ginsberg’s seat. That will not stop the nom­i­nee from being rammed down the throats of Democrats and the American peo­ple, but it would add anoth­er lev­el of ille­git­i­ma­cy to that nom­i­nee in the process of advice and consent.
If the Democrats are suc­cess­ful in defeat­ing Trump this November and retak­ing the Senate, they would be well with­in their rights to pack the court with sev­er­al jus­tices of their choos­ing, and putting the fil­li­buster back in place, that requires a major­i­ty of 60 votes.
The Senate clo­ture rule required 60 mem­bers to end debate on most top­ics and move to a vote.

It does appear that for all intents and pur­pos­es, that the Democratic par­ty tries to do the right thing from time to time, while the Republican par­ty does what it feels is good for its interest.
But doing the right thing is not enough any­more when the adver­sary is engaged con­tin­u­al­ly in a scorched earth strat­e­gy that observes no rules and adheres to no norms.
In the year 2000, Al Gore the Democratic vice pres­i­dent was elect­ed pres­i­dent by the pop­u­lar vote, nonethe­less, because of the Electoral col­lege, George Bush was allowed to become President, thwart­ing the wish­es of the sev­er­al mil­lions more vot­ers, who chose Gore to be their President.
George Bush’s pres­i­den­cy over the eight years it exist­ed, was an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter that the coun­try is still pay­ing for almost twelve years later.
Again in 2016, Hillary Clinton, for­mer Secretary of state and United States Senator, won the pop­u­lar vote by a mar­gin of over three mil­lion votes. Despite her his­toric win, again the Republican nom­i­nee Donald Trump, was inau­gu­rat­ed as the 45^th pres­i­dent of the United States.
As we have seen, Trump’s pres­i­den­cy has been an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter for the issues high­light­ed in the pre­vi­ous paragraph.
The fore­gone, how­ev­er, is far from the gist of the extent to which Republicans have out­hus­tled Democrats on the issues.

The two cas­es in which the will of the peo­ple has been usurped by the archa­ic elec­toral col­lege is hard­ly the total­i­ty of it. At cen­ter stage, is the oth­er issue of two United States sen­a­tors per state, that allows the state of Wyoming with a pop­u­la­tion of about 580,000 res­i­dents to can­cel out the will of 39 mil­lion California res­i­dents in that state with its 40 mil­lion res­i­dents, or New York with its rough­ly 20 mil­lion residents.
American Territories may be more lib­er­al than the main­land, but Terrorists are non-vot­ing. The major­i­ty of states with small pop­u­la­tions ben­e­fits from the two Senators rule are most­ly Lilly-white states that vote straight Republican.
Wyoming. Alaska. North & South Dakota. Montana. Maine. Idaho. West Virginia. Nebraska. Even in states that are run by Democrats in which this trend exists, it still fur­thers the cause and val­ues of white sub­ur­ban and rur­al res­i­dents over that of urban dwellers as well as res­i­dents in heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed states.
All things con­sid­ered, America for decades has been a coun­try in which the views of the minor­i­ty has super­seded and can­celed out those of the majority.
It is a task to which the Democratic par­ty has fall­en woe­ful­ly short, time and again, out­hus­tled, out­paced, and outmaneuvered.
The incom­pe­tence and lack of vision on the part of the Democratic par­ty have twice enabled two upstart move­ments, (that of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein) to siphon away votes from the par­ty, allow­ing for George Bush and Donald Trump to enter the white house, result­ing in tremen­dous harm to the coun­try, and much pain to the poor­est Americans.

As the coun­try faces arguably this its most crit­i­cal test this elec­tion cycle, it may be the last oppor­tu­ni­ty for vot­ers to save this democ­ra­cy, to the extent that it has func­tioned as such.
The Democratic par­ty nom­i­nat­ed prob­a­bly the least durable, least appeal­ing can­di­date ever to rep­re­sent the par­ty at the pres­i­den­tial lev­el, at least in my life­time. The polit­i­cal junkie I that I am, means that I ful­ly remem­ber John Kerry’s, Michael Dukakis’, and even Walter Mondale’s los­ing bids, not to men­tion the lack­lus­ter Al Gore and Hillary Clinton campaigns.
None of those elec­tion cycles could rea­son­ably be billed as exis­ten­tial for the old order, this one is.
Donald Trump is said to have won the pre­vi­ous­ly Democratic States of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by a grand total of just over 70,000 votes.
His vic­to­ry in the Electoral College came down to three states he won by the small­est num­ber of votes: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. … (44292 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22748 votes), Michigan by 0.2 points.
Yet we are told that Residents in the State of Michigan are won­der­ing where they can find a Biden cam­paign office in their state.
The real­i­ty we are told is that there is none.
On the oth­er hand, one would have to be brain-dead not to pause and won­der at the small num­ber of votes that decid­ed the elec­tions in 2016, and the three states in which that sup­posed vic­to­ry was alleged to have been derived from.
The American exper­i­ment is slip­ping decid­ed­ly into autoc­ra­cy right in front of our very eyes.

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

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A Latino, is char­ac­ter­ized as a per­son of Latin American ori­gin or descent, espe­cial­ly a man or boy.
Latinas, of course, is the female ver­sion of Latino.
Hispanic refers to per­sons, cul­tures, or coun­tries relat­ed to the Spanish lan­guage, Spanish cul­ture, Spanish peo­ple, or Spain in general.
I am not try­ing to teach a class on Latin or Hispanic cul­ture, Lord knows I am woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate to that task.
I am mere­ly try­ing to under­stand myself, the nuances of the dif­fer­ent peo­ple who fall under those umbrel­las, main­ly because they are pret­ty decid­ed about how they are addressed.
I thought it impor­tant to under­stand some of these nuances as I try to write this blog. I want­ed a lit­tle bit of clar­i­ty about the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences of the peo­ple in order not to offend.

Every race in the United States is quick to get on the defen­sive when ques­tions are asked about their prac­tices and habits, espe­cial­ly when it comes to vot­ing habits.
The first thing that comes up is, ‘we are not a mono­lith”, and cor­rect­ly so, each and every indi­vid­ual is entire­ly dif­fer­ent than the oth­er, much less a whole race of people.
But I want­ed to under­stand why Spanish speak­ing Americans would vote for the Republican par­ty at all, giv­en that the par­ty is inher­ent­ly hos­tile to immi­grants, and even worse has become a white suprema­cist party.
Worse yet, I want­ed to under­stand why after Donald Trump came down the esca­la­tor in his gaudy Manhattan tow­er, and declared that Mexicans are rapists, mur­der­ers, etc, any per­son of Hispanic, or Latino ances­try would vote for him?
In 2016 even after he had insult­ed Mexicans, Donald Trump was still able to get 28% of the Hispanic vote, even though Hillary Clinton won 66% of that demo­graph­ic’s vote, she fell below President Barack Obama who gar­nered 71% to be re-elect­ed in 2012.

Donald Trump was able to do bet­ter than Mitt Romney did, despite the insults, dem­a­goguery, and xeno­pho­bia he start­ed and main­tained dur­ing his 2016 cam­paign. And so I want­ed to take a look at what moves peo­ple to walk into a vot­ing booth and cast a vote for a per­son who would whole­sale dis­par­age an entire peo­ple with a broad brush?
I have thought about this dynam­ic quite a bit, and truth­ful­ly, I have some­times suc­cumbed to intel­lec­tu­al indo­lence with the assump­tions I make about this group, which pre­vi­ous­ly puts me in the same cat­e­go­ry as Donald Trump’s broad-brush strat­e­gy. For that, I apologize.
Some experts argue that Hispanics and Latinos are high­ly reli­gious peo­ple who lean Republican in part because that par­ty talks a good game about God, and country.
I under­stand how that could be the case, but before we get to the liv­ing in America thing, and be able to prac­tice their reli­gion, there is the lit­tle issue of their immi­gra­tion status.
The Republican par­ty would glad­ly throw ever Hispanic immi­grant out of the coun­try if they could. They have gone as far as to deport Hispanic American cit­i­zens, in their haste to get them out of the country.
Why is that you ask?
Hispanics now make up 16.7% of the pop­u­la­tion, rough­ly about 52 mil­lion peo­ple. They are the fastest-grow­ing eth­nic group in the country.
That is cause for alarm for Republicans, and frankly, for white peo­ple in gen­er­al, which is basi­cal­ly what the Republican par­ty is today, a Lilly white par­ty of right-wingers.

In his 2006 book, Mexico recap­tur­ing U.S. lands? unre­pen­tant right-wing big­ot, Patrick Buchanan wrote; Will the American Southwest become a giant Kosovo, a part of the nation sep­a­rat­ed from the rest by lan­guage, eth­nic­i­ty, his­to­ry, and cul­ture, to be reab­sorbed in all but name by Mexico from whom we took these lands in the time of Jackson and Polk? Chicano chau­vin­ists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demog­ra­phy and cul­ture what their ances­tors lost through war. High among the [costs of immi­gra­tion] is the appear­ance among us of dis­eases that nev­er before afflict­ed us and the sud­den reap­pear­ance of con­ta­gious dis­eases that researchers and doc­tors had erad­i­cat­ed long ago. Malaria, polio, hepati­tis, tuber­cu­lo­sis, and such rar­i­ties of the Third World as dengue fever, Chagas’ Disease, and lep­rosy are sur­fac­ing here… Bedbugs have invad­ed the United States for the first time in 50 years, with 28 states report­ing recent infestations.
You sim­ply can­not make these things up. Before there was Donald Trump there was Patrick Buchanan. I guess there are no dis­eases in America, or worse, small­pox and oth­er dis­eases that Europeans brought to America, not to men­tion the mind­less vio­lence which took count­less lives and in some cas­es dec­i­mat­ed entire native tribes, do not count to these big­ots but we move on.

So, if we look at the whole notion of these peo­ple’s fideli­ty to reli­gion, I con­tend we have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of why they ignore real-life slights and abus­es to still side with their abusers.
It fol­lows the same pat­tern of some blacks who still sup­port the Republican Party along reli­gious lines, even though the par­ty could not be any more hos­tile to Blacks than they are today.
In fact, white evan­gel­i­cals too, suf­fer through pover­ty and want, while sup­port­ing a Republican par­ty that gives tax breaks to the rich, while ignor­ing their plight.
In Florida, Cuban-Americans are for­ev­er spooked by their expe­ri­ences with com­mu­nism, even those who are sec­ond and third-gen­er­a­tion Americans, still cling to the Republican par­ty because that Party is loud­er with its hatred for Communism and Socialism.
The Republican par­ty has been mas­ters of dem­a­goguery, while the Democrats are con­cerned with sim­ply doing the right thing. People believe the lies unfor­tu­nate­ly, those beliefs have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for every­one else.

Hispanics are cer­tain­ly not nat­ur­al allies of African-Americans. Having suf­fered through slav­ery Jim Crow and the con­tin­ued insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism in America, Blacks are wary of a Republican par­ty that con­tin­ues to demon­strate ani­mus toward them.
Even though the Democratic par­ty is far from per­fect, Black Americans are aligned to the Democratic par­ty in large part because of Republican ani­mus. This is so even though there are parts of the Democratic plat­form that does not line up with Black interest.
Conscientious Black vot­ers can­not in good con­science sup­port the Republican par­ty, which is now a white suprema­cist par­ty. Black vot­ers are also not a mono­lith, younger Black vot­ers are more open to Homosexual rights, Transgender rights, old­er Religious Blacks are more con­ser­v­a­tive on those issues.
As the Hispanic pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to grow in leap and bounds, and as many Hispanic vot­ers throw their sup­port behind the Republican Party, the inter­est of Black vot­ers is caught in the crosshairs.

Black vot­ers now form the most reli­able sup­port base of the Democratic par­ty. It is from the sol­id 80+ per­centile of sup­port that the Democratic par­ty enjoys that it can build out a win­ning strat­e­gy nationwide.
Joe Biden’s dead and buried Presidential cam­paign was exhumed in South Carolina, put in the recov­ery room, and giv­en a sec­ond life. That was large­ly African-Americans,(more so women) turn­ing out to give life to Joe Biden.
A bur­geon­ing Hispanic pop­u­la­tion that sees itself as a kind of swing demo­graph­ic, is inher­ent­ly anti­thet­i­cal to African-American interest.
In States like Florida and California for exam­ple, Latin com­mu­ni­ties do not see them­selves as a part of the strug­gles that Blacks face.
In some cas­es, they even step out in sup­port of the police, against the inter­est of aggriev­ed Black cit­i­zens. I have reluc­tant­ly con­clud­ed on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, that Hispanics do see them­selves as a kind of (whites-in wait­ing). With Blacks at the bot­tom of the lad­der, Hispanic tend to not want to tie their for­tunes to African-Americans, despite their large­ly black skin, they appear to be fol­low­ing the lead of the Irish and Italians who were dis­crim­i­nat­ed against when they first arrived, but who even­tu­al­ly were assim­i­lat­ed into the American con­struct of whiteness.

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

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The elec­tions are over and peo­ple should be set­tling back into their rou­tines, what­ev­er those rou­tines are.
There are a few issues that I would like to briefly touch on, but I want to do so with­in the con­text of where our coun­try stands as a bud­ding democ­ra­cy today, as against where the trend­lines seem to be head­ing. It is impor­tant that we speak to these issues that con­tin­ue to stand out, despite our fail­ures, we have much to be proud of.

Our coun­try gained its inde­pen­dence in 1962, a mere 58-years ago. Some, includ­ing myself, argue that we are not a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic and free nation, since we still pledge our loy­al­ties to a for­eign monarch.
The fact that we still pledge alle­giance to a for­eign pow­er, is not a func­tion of any­thing that pow­er has done, but a func­tion of our own refusal to shed the resid­ual ves­tiges of slav­ery and colo­nial­ist domination.
The nar­ra­tive the PNP has been push­ing that the JLP won the elec­tion through vote-buy­ing must be seen through the prism that the PNP still has not fig­ured out that vot­ers have reject­ed the Party on almost every instance that it con­test­ed a seat since 2016. Voters in 2020 sent the par­ty an even stronger mes­sage, that what­ev­er it is sell­ing they are not buying.
If the PNP con­tin­ues to make excus­es for its loss­es, it must pre­pare to con­tin­ue to lose, it is as sim­ple as that.
On the oth­er hand, charges of vote-buy­ing are seri­ous, if and when they occur, it should be stamped out.
The thing that makes the People’s National Party look pathet­ic and whiny, is that both polit­i­cal par­ties have engaged in vote-buy­ing through­out our brief inde­pen­dent history.
The PNP may have been out­done this cycle because it may have had less mon­ey to dole out, but to pro­fess shock and indig­na­tion at the prac­tice, is the high­est lev­el of sanc­ti­mo­nious hypocrisy on the part of the PNP, and worse, it smacks of being a sore loser.
As repug­nant as the prac­tice of vote-buy­ing is, we should exam­ine it with­in the frame­work of where we are com­ing from, dead bod­ies, bal­lot box­es stuffed with fraud­u­lent bal­lots, and elec­tion vio­lence that forces vot­ers away from the process.
Yes, I detest it as much as you do, but rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing we are mak­ing progress.

Our fledg­ling Democracy has much to be proud of. After the sec­ond world war, America insti­tut­ed what is known as the Marshall plan.
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. pro­gram pro­vid­ing aid to Western Europe fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of World War II. It was enact­ed in 1948 and pro­vid­ed more than $15 bil­lion to help finance rebuild­ing efforts on the con­ti­nent. The brain­child of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, for whom it was named, it was craft­ed as a four-year plan to recon­struct cities, indus­tries, and infra­struc­ture heav­i­ly dam­aged dur­ing the war and to remove trade bar­ri­ers between European neigh­bors — as well as fos­ter com­merce between those coun­tries and the United States.
In addi­tion to eco­nom­ic rede­vel­op­ment, one of the stat­ed goals of the Marshall Plan was to halt the spread of com­mu­nism on the European con­ti­nent. (History​.com)
The United Nations, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization are only two of the pow­er­house orga­ni­za­tions that were stood up after the sec­ond world war ended.
As a con­se­quence of these two insti­tu­tions, the world has not been plunged into anoth­er world con­fla­gra­tion. The first world war began in 1914 and end­ed in 1918, by 1939, a mere 21-years lat­er, the world was once again plunged in anoth­er world­wide conflict.
The sec­ond world war end­ed in 1945, it has been 75-years since then, because of the two afore­named insti­tu­tions, the world has not found itself in anoth­er world­wide conflict.

Nevertheless, both insti­tu­tions have come under repeat­ed attacks by Donald Trump, all with an intent to weak­en both insti­tu­tions. His rea­sons for doing so are any­body’s guess, as they are for the American Intelligence ser­vices to fig­ure out for the American people.
The rest of the world looked to the United States as the nation that was a bea­con of sta­bil­i­ty. As a con­se­quence, the world trades in the American cur­ren­cy, indi­vid­u­als and nations bank in America, by bank­ing in America, they are bank­ing on America remain­ing a free and open soci­ety, in which they can con­tin­ue to invest and be reward­ed, not just with returns on their invest­ments, but with the knowl­edge that their mon­ey will not be con­fis­cat­ed by some tin-pan dictator.
Whether that will remain true if Donald Trump man­ages to remain in the white house after the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, is any­one’s guess.
As America’s lead­er­ship in the world wanes, the world looks on in hor­ror, Jamaica’s free and fair elections,(though flawed and imper­fect) are a source of pride, for which all Jamaicans should be proud wher­ev­er they are.
There was no trans­fer of pow­er as the rul­ing par­ty retained pow­er in Jamaica, nev­er­the­less, the fact that the los­ing People’s National Party con­ced­ed imme­di­ate­ly, is to the cred­it of Opposition leader Dr. Peter Phillips.

Two defin­ing issues plagued the rul­ing JLP dur­ing its first term for which there can be no excus­es going forward.
CRIME: It can­not be that the new admin­is­tra­tion intends to use that same play­book of Zones Of Special Operations,(ZOSO’s) & States Of Emergencies, (SOE’s) as a crime reduc­tion strat­e­gy. It has been clear­ly estab­lished to the Prime Minister, his admin­is­tra­tion, and the coun­try, at least by this writer, that at the very best they are mere­ly stop-gap mea­sures, a type of crime pre­ven­tion tourni­quet, that is designed to get you to real crime pre­ven­tion and reduc­tion measures.
Taking away the rights and free­dom of entire com­mu­ni­ties to move about with­out gov­ern­men­tal restric­tions, sup­pos­ed­ly to keep them safe, is old, tired, worn out, and most of all, unconstitutional.
It does not work, it dis­pers­es crime-pro­duc­ers to once more peace­ful neighborhoods.

CORRUPTION: I pre­vi­ous­ly accused Prime Minister Andrew Holness of hav­ing reneged on his promise to end cor­rup­tion. I stat­ed that in his 2016 inau­gur­al, he pledged to ensure that there was no cor­rup­tion in his gov­ern­ment. At the time, the JLP formed the gov­ern­ment with a sin­gle-seat majority.
Between that time and the last gen­er­al elec­tions, the rul­ing JLP won two oth­er seats, giv­ing the rul­ing par­ty a more com­fort­able major­i­ty with which to govern.
I take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to apol­o­gize to the Prime Minister, he did not address cor­rup­tion in that inau­gur­al address. Having gone back and combed through his address, I real­ized that nary a word was uttered about corruption…
Having heard the Prime Minister’s address after his par­ty was returned to pow­er with one of the strongest major­i­ty in our nation’s his­to­ry, I now under­stand why he did not speak to cor­rup­tion in 2016.

Theft, graft, and cor­rup­tion are a part of the Jamaican polit­i­cal land­scape as white-rice & cur­ried-goat is to nine-night. it is a part of both polit­i­cal par­ties. It is arguably a part of the rea­son there is such high vot­er apa­thy in our country.
Pushing too hard against one mem­ber sus­pect­ed of engag­ing in cor­rupt prac­tices, could have result­ed in that mem­ber cross­ing the aisle to the PNP, effec­tive­ly flip­ping con­trol of the gov­ern­ment in the ear­ly stages of 2016.
After all, I can­not recall how many times Carl Samuda one JLP mem­ber has crossed the aisle from JLP to PNP and back to the JLP?
None of those issues remain today. The Prime Minister and his par­ty will be called upon to face the elec­torate again, “time flies,” my won­der­ful grand­fa­ther used to say. Next time there will be no excus­es for allow­ing the scarce resources of the Jamaican peo­ple to line the filthy pock­ets of cor­rupt politi­cians, with­out ensur­ing that they are pop­u­lat­ing a prison cell for their efforts.
Neither will the coun­try be tol­er­ant of the increas­ing annu­al mur­der rate, facil­i­tat­ed by stop-gap mea­sures, and a lack of tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude to get the job done.

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

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Well, there are no sur­pris­es here, the Jamaica Labor par­ty has won the gen­er­al elec­tions. [Duh] Days ago I wrote explain­ing why the elec­tions were the JLP’s to lose. I will not relit­i­gate those points suf­fic­ing to say that it did not require a sooth­say­er to see that (a) the JLP had per­formed admirably in some areas and (b) that younger Jamaicans are far less cultish than old­er Jamaicans.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​s​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​d​y​n​a​s​t​i​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​g​o​o​d​-​f​o​r​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​cy/
I am par­tic­u­lar­ly enthused by that regard­less of who wins these days. Despite the many chal­lenges that our coun­try faces, I am still a firm believ­er in the young peo­ple who con­tin­ue to show matu­ri­ty on polit­i­cal issues, includ­ing not allow­ing any­one to use them to kill polit­i­cal opponents.
I would like to com­mend for­mer police offi­cer Newton Amos who vowed to send Robert Pickersgill a long time PNP MP for the North West St Catherine con­stituen­cy into retire­ment and have seem­ing­ly done just that. Amos, I believe may have been the first for­mer police offi­cer to enter rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics since the for­mer Assistant com­mis­sion­er Owen Stephenson did for the JLP decades ago.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​o​l​d​-​p​n​p​-​s​a​m​e​-​o​l​d​-​p​r​o​m​i​s​e​s​-​l​i​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​c​o​ns/

I will not gloat about this mon­u­men­tal thrash­ing that the PNP was giv­en on Thursday, September 3^rd, much of what I believed would be the undo­ing of the People’s National Party(PNP) I have already said in pre­vi­ous articles.
Sufficing to say, though the gov­ern­ing (JLP) Jamaica Labor Party is far from per­fect and there are some destruc­tive­ly arro­gant mem­bers in that par­ty who should not be there, the Prime Minister and some of his min­is­ters had per­formed cred­i­bly well enough get a sec­ond term.
Delroy Chuch should have lost his seat, he does not belong in the par­ty of Bustamante, he is a Socialist who wants to turn crim­i­nals back onto the streets as soon as they are arrested.
It was good to see that despite the land­slide win, Kent Phillip Gammon was not elect­ed to Gordon House. He is an extreme­ly arro­gant per­son that should nev­er be allowed in parliament.

PNP STILL DOESN’T GET IT

Now I would offer a brief syn­op­sis of a post mortem that I believe the People’s National Party would be well advised to fol­low. If I under­stand my Jamaican peo­ple cor­rect­ly, espe­cial­ly some of those who got indoc­tri­nat­ed at the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to, they will sim­ply dou­ble down on stupid.
So be it.
(1) You can say what you want about the younger gen­er­a­tion but I have always had much respect and love for the younger gen­er­a­tion, they are far from per­fect but at least they learned that killing their neigh­bors over pol­i­tics is inher­ent­ly stupid.
Okay, so they kill their neigh­bor over anoth­er thing so what the hell are you talk­ing about Mike?
Well, we sim­ply have to get to the root of the oth­er rea­sons and address them and they will stop killing for those rea­sons, but for now, we are talk­ing about polit­i­cal killings.

(2) The PNP believes it’s own non­sen­si­cal press: *Jumeka a PNP kun­try* The above map begs to differ.
Jamaicans do not want to go back to the 1970s. I wrote months ago that I found it star­tling after their loss in 2016, the PNP still clung to the old appendages of the 1970s, Beret-wear­ing, clenched-fists, refer­ring to each oth­er as *com­rades*, and worse exhum­ing Michael Manley’s ghost to talk about the 1970s.
In a trag­ic case of Déjà vu, the PNP harkened back to its so-called glo­ry days, and the elec­torate hand­ed them an iden­ti­cal ass-whop­ping as the one they gave to them in 1980.

(3) What non­sense, I wrote, Michael Manley’s com­plet­ed a raft of social ini­tia­tives, as a nation we are for­ev­er indebt­ed to him for his vision and fore­sight in his fight and con­tri­bu­tion to the cause of social jus­tice in our coun­try. But by and large Micahel Manley’s eight-year tenure between 1972 & 1980 was a dis­as­ter for our coun­try’s econ­o­my and the Jamaican peo­ple made it clear they were hav­ing no more of it. Michael Manley was boot­ed from office in a 51 to 9 seat drub­bing in the then 60 seat leg­is­la­ture by the JLP, under the lead­er­ship of Edward Seaga.
In a weird way, the social media strat­e­gy seemed to be cen­tered on Manley’s past pop­ulism, of course, Peter Phillips the par­ty’s leader has the charm and charis­ma of a rock, so I kin­da under­stood the need to gen­er­ate some excite­ment. But Michael Manley has been dead since 1997.

Voters are smarter today in what they expect to see hap­pen by their elect­ed offi­cials. You can not send Damion Crawford out days before elec­tion day to promise free col­lege tuition. You can’t declare days before the elec­tions that you are going to pay peo­ple’s elec­tric­i­ty bills and expect to be tak­en seriously.
The Jamaican vot­ers know that all of those things must be paid for. A gov­ern­ment can­not give free­bies away to cit­i­zens and we still main­tain a coun­try. No longer will the decep­tion and the lies fool vot­ers any­more. Finally, Jamaicans are free-spir­it­ed peo­ple. We do not want ide­ol­o­gy, we do not like ide­ol­o­gy. As long as the PNP con­tin­ues to act as an out­dat­ed Latin-American Marxist-Communist Party, it will be out­side look­ing into Jamaica-house like the rest of us.

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.

In the year 2,000, with all of the non­sense that was float­ing around that all com­put­ers would crash, air­planes would drop from the sky, and for all intents and pur­pos­es, an end to the world as we knew it, there were nation­al elec­tions between Al Gore rep­re­sent­ing the Democratic par­ty and George W Bush of the Republican party.
Al Gore was the for­mer Vice President who has just served eight years in the Bill Clinton admin­is­tra­tion, he was hop­ing to be elect­ed pres­i­dent as a con­se­quence of all of the great things that occurred on their watch.
The inter­net came on stream for many Americans, Silicone val­ley had cre­at­ed tens of mil­lions of jobs, with that came more mil­lion­aires than at any oth­er time in the nation’s history.

Additionally, the coun­try was not entan­gled in any major wars over­seas. In a sense, the Clinton Presidency, (though many will dis­agree on cer­tain specifics), was a peri­od of peace and pros­per­i­ty for the coun­try. If of course, you are able to set aside the dis­gust­ing chap­ter of Republican pres­i­den­tial harass­ment that con­tin­ued unabat­ed for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s Presidency.
That is not to say that Clinton did noth­ing wrong inso­far as Monica Lewinsky was con­cerned, but all of that pales in com­par­i­son to what is hap­pen­ing in the white house today.

George W Bush was a Texas Governor, the son of for­mer Republican one-term pres­i­dent, & Ronald Reagan’s Vice President Herbert Walker Bush.
It was an elec­tion tai­lor-made for Al Gore to eas­i­ly win, the coun­try was expe­ri­enc­ing a peri­od of pros­per­i­ty and there were no major over­seas wars.
Sure, Republicans in the con­gress under Newt Gingrich’s lead­er­ship had made life hell for Bill Clinton, but none of that could have rubbed off on Al Gore who had con­duct­ed him­self with pre­ci­sion-like deco­rum and statesmanship.
So why did it come down to Florida on elec­tion night of 2,000? Al Gore had done more than enough to dis­tance him­self from Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scan­dal, he had even gone so far as to proclaim,*“I am my own man”*, in an effort to estab­lish him­self as an inde­pen­dent enti­ty, free from what­ev­er neg­a­tive that could be attached to Bill Clinton his for­mer boss.

At the time, I per­son­al­ly thought Gore’s strat­e­gy was the exact oppo­site of what he need­ed to do. I believed he need­ed to hug Bill Clinton as tight­ly as pos­si­ble and talk about the great things they had accom­plished togeth­er for the country.
I also thought that Gore should have gone after the Republicans with a scorched earth attack for their use of Kenneth Star, in what was an unprece­dent­ed abuse of the *inde­pen­dent coun­sel *process.
The new Democratic par­ty nev­er seem to be able to use the gifts that Republicans give to them to win elec­tions. So in 2,000, it came down to Florida, a state which had a Republican Governor, Jeb Bush who was the younger broth­er of George Bush, the man he was up against for the pres­i­den­cy of the United States.

Al Gore went the oth­er direc­tion, in the process, cre­at­ing as much space as he thought was need­ed to put dis­tance between him­self, and the still wild­ly pop­u­lar Democratic President Bill Clinton.….…..until it became clear that his strat­e­gy was not work­ing. By the time Al Gore began embrac­ing Bill Clinton and Clinton was asked to appear at cam­paign events, the horse was already through the gate.
According to Gallup Clinton’s approval rat­ings soared to 76% after the Senate reject­ed arti­cles of impeach­ment against the pres­i­dent. By the time Clinton left office, he was still at an admirable 62% approval rat­ing and was the first pres­i­dent to demit office with such high approval since Harry Truman.

The Atlantic’s Ena Alvarado-Esteller, David A. Graham, and Amy Weiss-Meyer wrote: By the end of the night, Gore held a lead over Bush in the nation­al pop­u­lar vote, which he would nev­er lose, but the con­test in the Electoral College was tight, and it all came down to Florida. The elec­tion, both cam­paigns under­stood, was far from over.
Leading up to the elec­tion, polls had indi­cat­ed that the race between Bush and Gore would be close, with an espe­cial­ly slim mar­gin in sev­er­al key states. Potentially affect­ing the out­come were two oth­er can­di­dates: Ralph Nader, of the left-wing Green Party, and Pat Buchanan, of the right-wing Reform Party On Election Day, a num­ber of coun­ties in Florida report­ed prob­lems. A con­fus­ing bal­lot — the so-called but­ter­fly bal­lot — in Palm Beach County prompt­ed thou­sands of vot­ers to cast their bal­lot unwit­ting­ly for Buchanan. Ballots in Duval County also caused con­fu­sion; some 22,000 votes there were dis­qual­i­fied because vot­ers chose more than one can­di­date. The punch-card appa­ra­tus used else­where in the state some­times failed to punch out a hole com­plete­ly, mean­ing that the machine would not record a bal­lot choice. (The Atlantic)

David Boies (Gore lawyer): I was in a sports bar across the street from the Governor’s Inn, in Tallahassee. I had been in the office and had spo­ken to Vice President Gore. We were all very hap­py. The votes were being count­ed. He was steadi­ly gain­ing on Governor Bush. My work was essen­tial­ly done, and I was going home. They had all these tele­vi­sion screens, and a crawler came across that said the Supreme Court had issued an order stop­ping the vote count. My ini­tial reac­tion was that this had to be a mis­take. There had not been an oppor­tu­ni­ty to brief or argue the case. There were sub­stan­tial issues as to whether there was real­ly a fed­er­al ques­tion involved. The Supreme Court had nev­er inter­vened in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to affect the count­ing of the votes in a state. (The Atlantic).
Oral argu­ments before the U.S. Supreme Court took place on Monday, December 11. The hasti­ly writ­ten opin­ions, which added up to a 5 – 4 rever­sal of the Florida court, were made pub­lic at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, December 12.
Even sup­port­ers of the out­come acknowl­edged that the deci­sion did not reflect the Court at its best. In a dis­sent, Justice John Paul Stevens famous­ly wrote: “Although we may nev­er know with com­plete cer­tain­ty the iden­ti­ty of the win­ner of this year’s Presidential elec­tion, the iden­ti­ty of the los­er is per­fect­ly clear. It is the Nation’s con­fi­dence in the judge as an impar­tial guardian of the rule of law.” On Wednesday, December 13, Al Gore con­ced­ed defeat.
Oh, how prophet­ic have John Paul Steven’s words turned out to be since then, in the many jaw-drop­ping deci­sion the supreme court has made since them, includ­ing Citizens United & Shelby County Alabama vs Holder.

This essence of this arti­cle nev­er­the­less is not to high­light the dam­age that the supreme court con­tin­ue to do to American democ­ra­cy. Though George Bush was ele­vat­ed to the pres­i­den­cy under the dark­est cloud of sus­pi­cion, by 2004 after the events of September 11^th, 2001 all of the anger was gone.
George Bush had gained the pres­i­den­cy under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances, aid­ed by Republican oper­a­tives in the Florida machin­ery and Republican tools on the nation’s high­est court.
Despite that and Bush’s ensu­ing incom­pe­tence at the job, the events of September 11^th were enough for George Bush to be re-elect­ed as a wartime president.
By the time Bush left office in 2,000, he had the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being one of the worst pres­i­dents ever. He had the nation engaged in two major wars.
An arguable legal incur­sion into Afghanistan, where the American mil­i­tary is still stuck today almost twen­ty years lat­er and an ille­gal war waged in Iraq, that should sub­ject the American Government to war crimes in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Of course, the United States is not sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion of the International world court it was instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing and using to jus­ti­fy­ing the tri­al and incar­cer­a­tion of sup­posed German war criminals.
The United States set itself up above International laws. Today the US Secretary of state Mike Pompeo wants to use his pow­ers to lev­el sanc­tions against offi­cials of the world court, for sup­pos­ed­ly try­ing to bring America under the juris­dic­tion of the inter­na­tion­al tribunal.
It is a dis­grace­ful case of hypocrisy and abuse of pow­er by the United States under Donald Trump.

Fast for­ward to 2016 and Donald Trump was the Republican stan­dard-bear­er hav­ing van­quished all of his par­ty’s oth­er candidates.
Hillary Clinton won that elec­tion by over three mil­lion votes(3,000,000.00+), yet because of the con­vo­lut­ed process known as the Electoral College, and arguable, sig­nif­i­cant help from the Russian Government, as con­firmed by the United States Intelligence Agencies, Donald Trump, a colos­sal­ly igno­rant show­man, was giv­en the presidency.
From day one of the announce­ment that Trump would be the 45^th pres­i­dent of the United States there were protests and demon­stra­tions against it. People had legit­i­mate rea­sons to con­clude that Trump was a Putin stooge.
We are in 2020, and there is a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion due come November.

Donald Trump’s fail­ings and dis­re­gard for American laws are far too many to men­tion. Yet Joe Biden is mere­ly a few per­cent­age points ahead of Trump in the so-called bat­tle­ground states.
What does it say about the vot­ing pub­lic’s intel­lect, or does par­ty trump country?
If this was an elec­torate with Christian val­ues as they pro­claim to be, there is no way that a tax-cheat, who failed at every busi­ness, who divorced his first wife because she was­n’t young any­more, who had unpro­tect­ed sex with a hook­er after his present wife had just giv­en birth to their son.
This is a man who ran a false char­i­ty that bilked peo­ple so that he could pur­chase over­priced por­traits of him­self. A man who dis­miss­es women as thrash and talks about *grab­bing them by the pussy*[sic].
His list of fail­ings is com­pound­ed by the dam­age done to America’s alliances abroad, and his tram­pling on the nation’s laws.
In addi­tion to that, he sat by and declared that COVID-19 would sim­ply dis­ap­pear. Today we are close to 200, 000 Americans-dead from the pan­dem­ic, and almost five mil­lion test­ings positive.

A man who denounces Muslim as evil but declares mur­der­ous white supremacists,*fine people*.
Because of the high rate of infec­tion and the con­tin­u­ing spread of COVID-19, Donald Trump has done every­thing in his pow­er to slow down test­ing for the virus.
Children of peo­ple seek­ing refuge are still ware­housed in mam­moth Federal facil­i­ties where they are locked in cages, away from their parents.
He has all but destroyed the burn­ing hot econ­o­my President Barack Obama gave to him in January of 2017. This seems to fit the recur­ring theme for Republicans. Their poli­cies of giv­ing tax cuts to their rich con­trib­u­tors, while bur­den­ing the poor with pay­ing for it, has basi­cal­ly destroyed the American mid­dle-class and cre­at­ed an ever-increas­ing gap between rich and poor.
Democrats get vot­ed in to fix the mess, then the vot­ers turn right around and put the destruc­tive Republicans back into office.
What does this say about the electorate?

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.

Jamaicans go to the polls on Thursday morn­ing to choose the polit­i­cal par­ty that will lead the coun­try for the next five years.
Jamaica’s par­lia­men­tary sys­tem is close­ly sim­i­lar to its old colo­nial mas­ter’s sys­tem, vot­ers in des­ig­nat­ed con­stituen­cies chose a mem­ber of par­lia­ment from the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), the People’s National Party (PNP), or from the oth­er periph­er­al dis­or­ga­nized par­ties that say they are in the run­nings, none of which has been able to secure a seat in the nation’s 63 seat legislature.
Depending on the par­ty that wins the most seats in the leg­is­la­ture, that par­ty is asked by the (Governor-General) the Queen’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, to form the next Government.
Don’t look at me, I have noth­ing to do with Jamaica’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue main­tain­ing a cost­ly Governor-General, or worse, hav­ing the Queen of England, as a tit­u­lar head of our Government.
Stockholm syn­drome? Your guess is as good as mine.

On the bal­lot, tomor­row is a range of issues that plague Jamaica, as they plague oth­er larg­er more pow­er­ful nations. Crime and vio­lence. Poverty. COVID-19, and a host of social prob­lems that will always be a part of the polit­i­cal and social landscape.
I believe that objec­tive­ly, the present Administration of the JLP led by the Young Andrew Holness has done a some­what admirable job. At the same time, I want to quick­ly jux­ta­pose the Prime Minister and his Government’s per­for­mance with a slew of fail­ings that should nev­er have occurred.
For exam­ple the slew of cor­rup­tion scan­dals than came to define the par­ty that mem­bers of his cab­i­net and oth­ers with­in the par­ty engaged in.
None of this should have hap­pened, and it is not good enough to say, “the PNP did it too’. Either you are bet­ter and a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive, or you are not.

I still believe this is an elec­tion for the JLP to lose. The nation’s COVID response under the Prime Minister and Health Minister Christopher Tufton has been one of the most for­ward-lean­ing any­where in the world.
That the infec­tion rate is on the rise in the coun­try, can­not cred­i­bly be laid at the feet of the Government, it belongs square­ly in the col­umn of the law­less­ness that has char­ac­ter­ized far too many of the Jamaican people.
This admin­is­tra­tion, like past PNP admin­is­tra­tions, has not done a cred­i­ble job of get­ting to the root of the gangs, and by exten­sion, the gang-vio­lence that emanates from that fail­ure. This ulti­mate­ly dri­ves the mur­der rate and oth­er vio­lent and brazen crimes in our country.
If the JLP los­es this elec­tion tomor­row night, [which I doubt it will] its post mortem exam­i­na­tion will not reflect that it is because Peter Phillips and the PNP promised Jamaicans to pay every­one’s light bill, at a time when his par­ty can hard­ly keep the lights on at par­ty head­quar­ters. Nor will it be from the litany of lies they have told in order to be once again giv­en the reins of pow­er, nei­ther will it be that they promised all things free to all people.
It most assured­ly is the Government’s mar­gin­al­iz­ing of the police. The cor­rup­tion that plagued the admin­is­tra­tion and the increas­ing lev­els of mur­ders that con­tin­ue to go unsolved.

This elec­tion is crit­i­cal for the two par­ties, if the JLP los­es the elec­tion it will solid­i­fy the nar­ra­tive that some of the more rad­i­cal ele­ments on the PNP’s far left has used for a cou­ple of decades now. That nar­ra­tive says that the JLP is a filler par­ty that is vot­ed in, only when the peo­ple are tired of the PNP and needs a break.
The gen­er­al idea is that the Jamaican peo­ple do not trust to give the JLP more than one term in office.
This nar­ra­tive start­ed after the JLP’s Edward Seaga called a snap elec­tion in 1983, a mere three years after tak­ing office in 1980.
In the 1980 elec­tions, Seaga & the JLP swept into pow­er on a 51 – 9 seat major­i­ty. At the time the leg­is­la­ture had a total of (60) seats as opposed to the six­ty-three (63) that exists today. The PNP did not con­test the snap elec­tions of 1983, it chose not to, because it knew it would be humil­i­at­ed once again at the polls.
Instead, it chose to label the JLP a bogus Government. Slander, and hyper­bole over fideli­ty to duty.

Nevertheless, by 1988 the very same Michael Manley who was swept out of office on a tsuna­mi of dis­sent, was back in office when all of the votes were count­ed.….… or more like when the bal­lot box stuff­ing was over in the pletho­ra of PNP gar­risons across the coun­try, in which there are gen­er­al­ly tens of thou­sands more votes cast for the PNP, than there were peo­ple liv­ing in the constituencies.
Such is Jamaican pol­i­tics, both par­ties have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly engaged in these prac­tices, the PNP has always been much bet­ter at it.
Michael Manley stayed on as Prime Minister until he was forced to demit office before his term end­ed due to ill-health. His then Deputy Percival James Patterson took over and the demise and destruc­tion of our coun­try were complete.
Despite Patterson, Portia Simpson Miller, and the PNP’s inep­ti­tude, gross cor­rup­tion, and incom­pre­hen­si­ble incom­pe­tence and graft, the JLP was only returned to office in 2007.
The JLP’s Bruce Golding formed the new JLP admin­is­tra­tion but Golding was forced to him­self demit office over the Christopher Duddus scan­dal known more as the Mannat Phelps and Phillips scandal.

A young Andrew Holness took over as Prime Minister after Golding left, and he sought to get his own man­date but it was not to be.….. at least not yet. The peo­ple soured on Golding’s han­dling of the Mannat Phelps and Phillips scan­dal, and so they turned to the dis­joint­ed, out of ideas PNP, and an even more hope­less Portia Simpson Miller, whose claim to fame is pop­ulism and longevi­ty in her par­ty and noth­ing more.
On the 5^th of January 2012, Portia Simpson Miller was sworn in as Prime Minister of Jamaica defeat­ing Andrew Holness, who was forced to start over and cul­ti­vate and cre­ate his own bona fides. Simpson miller her­self had tak­en over as Prime Minister from P J Patterson on the 30^th of March 2005, she was defeat­ed at the polls by the Bruce Golding led JLP.
Nevertheless, by March 3^rd of 2016, Andrew Michael Holness was once again the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
Not since Edward Seaga led the JLP to a resound­ing vic­to­ry at the polls in 1980, have the JLP been elect­ed to two con­sec­u­tive terms in office.
If Andrew Holness can pull off a win tomor­row that mon­key will for­ev­er be off the back of the JLP.
If he los­es, it will be because of the scan­dals that occurred on his watch and that’s it.
If on the oth­er hand, the PNP’s Peter Phillips fails to lead his par­ty to a vic­to­ry, he will be the only leader of the PNP in its his­to­ry not to have been elect­ed Prime Minister, assum­ing that he real­izes that it is his time to go and allow younger lead­ers to develop.

This arti­cle has been updat­ed to more accu­rate­ly speak to Dr. Phillip’s role as par­ty leader.

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.