We solve prob­lems when all par­ties are will­ing to take intro­spec­tive looks and see where they can be bet­ter.
We will nev­er solve press­ing issues if par­ties go to their indi­vid­ual cor­ners con­vinced about their own self-right­eous­ness.
Nowadays we can scarce­ly have sub­stan­tive con­ver­sa­tions about an issue if there is pop­u­lar opin­ion sup­port­ing that par­tic­u­lar issue.
Popular sup­port for an issue now make that issue right,right is a num­bers game, and in Jamaica’s case, that pos­ture becomes ampli­fied a thou­sand-fold to the insane.

The com­ments by Minister Babsy Grange that [women should not pro­voke their men], speak­ing to the seri­ous issue of Domestic vio­lence, has drawn right­eous indig­na­tion from the hyped up pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als, who always seem to have their [draw­ers] in a bunch about every­thing. 
The Jamaican tra­di­tion is steeped in the [ad hominem] if the oth­er guy does not agree with your point of view then nat­u­ral­ly him [a edi­at].
Because of course, they and they alone have a monop­oly on what’s right.

Could min­is­ter Grange have been less inart­ful?
Of course, she could have been!
But that is hard­ly the point, the idea that every­one in the fam­i­ly needs to do their part is a net pos­i­tive, not a neg­a­tive.
Challenging bul­ly­ing abu­sive men not to beat the women in their lives does not negate the fact that women must also be chal­lenged to low­er the tem­per­a­ture as well.


Why is every­thing a zero-sum game, with only win­ners and losers?
Some of the great­est and most indeli­ble opin­ions are dis­sent­ing opin­ions which chal­lenges con­ven­tion­al wis­dom.
I do not assume to speak for Minister Grange, nev­er­the­less, speak­ing from my past pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tive, and I say this with­out equiv­o­ca­tion or fear of con­tra­dic­tion, that in many cas­es where there is domes­tic vio­lence in a rela­tion­ship women are the insti­ga­tors.
They become the vic­tims because more often than not they come out the worse for it.

Even if we set aside the sce­nar­ios in which women start what they can­not fin­ish, we would still be forced to deal with the unmit­i­gat­ed truth of women who are inher­ent­ly vio­lent.
How many peo­ple have women, stabbed with ice-picks and knives, shot, dis­fig­ured with acid, and blud­geoned with what­ev­er weapon they can get their hands on?
The fact that we are out­raged about weak, pathet­ic men who assault women should not blind our eyes to the abu­sive and dan­ger­ous women in our midst.
Violence com­mit­ted by women are less report­ed to author­i­ties because men are gen­er­al­ly ashamed to talk about domes­tic vio­lence for fear of soci­etal ridicule.
Even in court their cas­es are not tak­en seri­ous­ly and in many cas­es becomes the sub­ject of ridicule and laugh­ter by female judges.


I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a woman who was in the United States on a tem­po­rary work visa. She bragged to me just how dan­ger­ous she is.
She detailed how she used a rock to hit a man in his head almost killing him.
She talked about how she lied to him that she would help him with his hos­pi­tal bills until he was well enough to leave the hos­pi­tal.
She laughed that once she was con­vinced he would not go to the police she told him she was sor­ry he had­n’t died.
His trans­gres­sion?
Constantly try­ing to seduce her!
Let us talk about vio­lence in all its forms, includ­ing child abuse and ver­bal abuse. Let us stop pre­tend­ing that only our point of view mat­ters and that those with oppos­ing views are stu­pid.
Let us hear the oth­er sides of the con­ver­sa­tion and save every­one the self-right­eous indignation.

The year was 2008, there was an elec­tric dynamism in the air.
For many Americans, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of African her­itage, it was like Christmas in July.
No, African-Americans did not get the promised forty acres and a mule their ances­tors had been duplic­i­tous­ly promised and denied.
No, there would be no repa­ra­tions paid to them for the 373 years of slav­ery their ances­tors endured between 1492 and 1865.
It was some­thing less trans­ac­tion­al but a lot more moti­va­tion­al.
Contrary to the think­ing of most of those Americans, a black man was elect­ed President of the United States, break­ing what many believed was a shat­ter-proof ceil­ing that would out­last them all.

On Obama’s coat-tails rode a new Congress and a new Senate, all Democratic.
The new President entered 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a free hand to enact his agen­da, or so he and many of the peo­ple who vot­ed for the new pres­i­dent and Congress thought.
The Republicans had oth­er ideas for the first African-American pres­i­dent, in fact, Mitch McConnell said his pri­ma­ry goal was to make Obama a one-term pres­i­dent.
I have tried to play McConnel’s state­ment over and over in my head, I imag­ined I was a Democrat in McConnell’s shoes and inter­est­ing­ly I do not find it so hate­ful a state­ment for the senior Republican in the Senate to have made.
Of course, I would have want­ed a Republican President to be a one-term pres­i­dent.
While the new pres­i­dent was being sworn into office, how­ev­er, a band of Republicans with nefar­i­ous intent was hav­ing a secret din­ner at a pri­vate restau­rant in DC with one goal in mind.
[How to stop every­thing Obama attempt to do].
I labeled them [nefar­i­ous] because to those involved elec­tions had no con­se­quence.
To them, the will of the American peo­ple meant noth­ing when com­pared to their own agenda.

In a then new­ly pub­lished book, Robert Draper wrote that as President Obama was cel­e­brat­ing his inau­gu­ra­tion at var­i­ous balls, top Republican law­mak­ers and strate­gists were plot­ting how to derail his infant pres­i­den­cy.
Present at the din­ner were Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.).
The non-law­mak­ers present includ­ed Newt Gingrich, sev­er­al years removed from his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, and Frank Luntz was con­jur­ing up ways to sub­ma­rine Obama’s presidency.

In two short years, the Democratic major­i­ty in the house was gone and the major­i­ty in the Senate reduced to a razor-thin major­i­ty for the Democrats.
A well-fund­ed insur­gency cloaked under the dis­guise of grass­roots con­cerns would emerge in American pol­i­tics as a push­back to Obama’s rise.
The Tea-Party was born, nei­ther the Republican par­ty nor America would be the same again.
A resur­gent racism would be unleashed on the nation. We are yet to under­stand what it will all mean in the end.
The inevitable ques­tion then was what the hell just hap­pened?
The rea­son giv­en for the 2010 loss has been head spin­ning in num­ber and vari­a­tions, none of which I sub­scribe to.
Obama Continued point­less wars some argued.

Others claimed Democrats were out­flanked by com­pet­ing philoso­phies. Still, oth­ers say the Democrats lost sup­port from major cor­po­rate lob­bies and financiers.
Yadda, yad­da, yad­da.
The truth of the mat­ter is that Democrats did exact­ly what they are doing this cycle. They spent time bick­er­ing among them­selves about who were blue dog democ­rats as against who were lib­er­al democ­rats and much of what the new President could have accom­plished was shelved.

Fast for­ward to 2018, the Democrats are pow­er­less in the dog-house, lit­er­al­ly shut out of Government at every lev­el and has just been restored to some pow­er after win­ning the house.
The very first thing which comes out of the new cau­cus which has­n’t even been sworn into office yet is infight­ing about jet­ti­son­ing the leader who just led them back to the major­i­ty.

I don’t want to talk about Charles Schumer’s lack­lus­ter unin­spir­ing lead­er­ship in the Senate which actu­al­ly cost Democrats seats in that body.
No need to talk about Schumer giv­ing away the store to Mitch McConnell, allow­ing him to place more judges on the fed­er­al bench just so he and oth­er Democratic sen­a­tors could go home to cam­paign.

What I want to talk about is the utter stu­pid­i­ty of this Democratic par­ty and the new­ly elect­ed ones in par­tic­u­lar.
Former RNC chair­man Michael Steele admit­ted on nation­al tele­vi­sion that the rea­son his par­ty launched its attack on con­gress­woman Nancy Pelosi was her effectiveness.

Now, I did not need to hear that out of Michael Steele’s mouth.
If Republicans go after a Democrat it always is because of that Democrat’s effec­tive­ness. Ask Maxine Walters, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and oth­ers.
If this low­ly opin­ion writer can con­clude that Nancy Pelosi is a thorn in the paw of the Republican Lion, why would these new­ly-mint­ed elect­ed offi­cials not be able to under­stand it?
Why would these new­ly mint­ed elect­ed offi­cials vol­un­teer to be the [Androclus] who removes that thorn? [see Aesop fables]

There is much work to be done in this 116^th Congress, much more than any in a very long time. At issue is the need to work on leg­is­la­tion to strength­en the Affordable Care Act.
Voters chose health care as the num­ber one issue they vot­ed on in the recent­ly con­clud­ed midterm elec­tions. 
There is also the issue of the rule of law and the dire need to instill some over­sight of the exec­u­tive branch. 
If the Democrats are stu­pid enough to squan­der this oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to work doing what they were elect­ed to do and decide to spend time-fight­ing among them­selves they should be pre­pared to be back in the minor­i­ty come 2020.
In addi­tion to that, it is not a stretch to imag­ine that a frus­trat­ed, fed up and exas­per­at­ed elec­torate will re-elect Donald Trump to the pres­i­den­cy, leav­ing the Democrats cry­ing in their milk once again. 
 

World War I began in 1914, after the assas­si­na­tion of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and last­ed until 1918. During the con­flict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies and the hor­rors of trench war­fare, World War I saw unprece­dent­ed lev­els of car­nage and destruc­tion. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed vic­to­ry, more than 16 mil­lion peo­ple — sol­diers and civil­ians alike — were dead.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war‑i/world-war-i-history

Donald Trump the American President yes­ter­day left for France to com­mem­o­rate the end of world war one along with oth­er world lead­ers, includ­ing the French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and oth­ers.


However, Donald Trump on Saturday called off a trip to a World War I US mil­i­tary ceme­tery in France because of sup­posed bad weath­er, the White House said. After talks with French coun­ter­part Emmanuel Macron, Trump can­celed his vis­it to Belleau Wood bat­tle­field and ceme­tery 80 kilo­me­ters (50 miles) north­east of Paris because of “sched­ul­ing and logis­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties caused by the weath­er,” his admin­is­tra­tion said.
So we have inter­pret­ed that to mean that Trump did not want his hair to get wet, he would rather spend his time with Vladimir Putin, or both.
So we took it unto our­selves to show you what a real pres­i­dent does when he has impor­tant duties to per­form and there is a lit­tle rain.

In the mean­time, Nicholas Soames, a British politi­cian, and grand­son of Winston Churchill ripped Donald Trump on Saturday for can­cel­ing a ceme­tery vis­it in France due to bad weath­er.
“They died with their face to the foe and that pathet­ic inad­e­quate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weath­er to pay his respects to The Fallen,” Soames tweet­ed.
Trump and many mem­bers of his admin­is­tra­tion are in France this week­end to com­mem­o­rate Armistice Day. Nov. 11 marks 100 years since the end of World War I.
Former top Obama aide Ben Rhodes also called out Trump for not vis­it­ing the ceme­tery, say­ing that under the pre­vi­ous White House there was “always a rain option. Always.”

Soames, who is a mem­ber of Parliament for Mid Sussex, includ­ed a hash­tag say­ing Trump is “not fit to rep­re­sent his great country.”

Yesterday the cow­ard­ly lit­tle Cuban US Senator Marco Rubio stood up in front of his intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­lenged deplorable sup­port­ers and declared that Democrats are try­ing to steal the elec­tions in Broward County.
In addi­tion to the base­less claims he also fired off a tor­rent of base­less tweets mak­ing the same accu­sa­tions with­out pro­vid­ing any evi­dence. I guess he learn­ing the Trump tac­tics.
In one tweet Rubio claimed #Broward elec­tion super­vi­sors ongo­ing vio­la­tion of #flori­da law requir­ing time­ly report­ing isn’t just annoy­ing incom­pe­tence. It has opened the door for lawyers to come here & try to steal a sen­ate seat in the US Senate% Florida cab­i­net.


Now it does not mat­ter that the lit­tle twit did not both­er to offer one scin­til­la of evi­dence to back up his claims, he did it any­way and at the same time, Rick Scott who stands to ben­e­fit from being giv­en the con­test­ed Senate seat was on state TY @fox mis­in­for­ma­tion com­plain­ing about Democrats try­ing to steal the Senate seat.
And of course, as you might have expect­ed the Lying dis­hon­est crim­i­nal tweet­er in chief fired off tweets about the need to end the count and move on even though the absen­tee and mail-in bal­lots are yet to be counted. 

As the Governor of the state, Rick Scott also ordered a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion into the count­ing of the vote in Broward coun­try.
As you pon­der that it is impor­tant to under­stand that the thing which is caus­ing these incred­i­bly cor­rupt politi­cians to be com­plain­ing and ask­ing for inves­ti­ga­tions is that coun­ty offi­cials are count­ing the votes.

There is pre­cious lit­tle secret to the fact that I find Marco Rubio and Raphael Cruz the two Cuban frauds in the Senate rather offen­sive and dis­gust­ing.
Both of those weasel­ing lit­tle self-hat­ing Latinos have tried their lev­el best to dis­hon­or the process of immi­gra­tion even though both these frauds are first-gen­er­a­tion Americans of par­ents who left Cuba in search of bet­ter lives.


As despi­ca­ble as Raphael Cruz is I find Rubio no less revolt­ing from the time the lit­tle dweeb remarked that President Obama had no class for hav­ing black rap­pers at the white house.
The hyp­o­crit­i­cal lit­tle weasel has nonethe­less been death­ly silent in the face of Trump’s assault on the very foun­da­tions of the demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples of this coun­try.
The lev­els of graft and cor­rup­tion are unprece­dent­ed yet the despi­ca­ble lit­tle Rubio whom Trump derid­ed and berat­ed in 2016 has no smart ass com­ment now.

Those old enough to recall the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions will recall that Republicans had no prob­lem with the fact that their goons stormed the venue in the very same Broward coun­ty in which the votes were still being count­ed and tab­u­lat­ed and shut down the vote and declared George Bush the win­ner even though Al Gore was ahead in the count.
George Bush’s younger broth­er was gov­er­nor at the time.
You all remem­ber low ener­gy Jeb right[sic ]? 

What Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump want is to [end the vote count] and hand a Democratic Senate seat held by Senator Bill Nelson to Scott and the Governorship of the state to the clue­less mini-Trump Ron Desantis by end­ing the vote count.
The (dai­ly beast) Sam Stein tweet­ed. Marco Rubio could be work­ing behind the scenes and even in pub­lic to try to bring some order and trust to Florida recount, instead, he’s cho­sen to tweet. The usu­al­ly bril­liant Sam Stein must have for­got­ten that cor­rup­tion and decep­tion are all Republicans have left.

The midterms are now over and con­trary to what Trump and his acolytes tell you there was a blue wave against his régime.
When you take ger­ry­man­der­ing, bla­tant vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics and God knows what else Democratic vot­ers are forced to go through to cast a vote, it was a ter­rif­ic win for the Democratic par­ty and a chance for the nation to pull back from this two-year night­mare that is mak­ing us all sick.

As those of us who care about the coun­try, the rights of oth­ers, and the rule of law let out a sigh of relief that the imped­i­ments placed in the way of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process did not win out, Democrats still man­aged to win in excess of the 23 seats they need­ed to take back con­trol of the Congress even as the votes are still being tab­u­lat­ed in places like California.
According to experts, by the time the count­ing is done Democrats are expect­ed to have raked in some­where between 30 and 36 seats in the house.

Democrats lost a few seats they already had. In Missouri, Claire Mccaskill went down to defeat. So too did Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and before its all done so too may Bill Nelson in Florida.
In the mean­time, the race in Arizona to fill Jeff Flakes Senate seat is locked, too close to call between Sinema and Republican Martha McSally.
But Democrats also had some near miss­es as well In Florida, the race between Andrew Gillum and Desantis is still too close to call although Gillum sor­ta con­ced­ed.
That race is prob­a­bly going to result in a recount.


In Georgia the race is so close there may very well be a runoff between Stacy Abrams, the woman vying to be the nation’s first African-American Governor and the sec­re­tary of state Brian Kemp. Per Georgia’s law, if nei­ther can­di­date receives more than 50 per­cent of the votes a runoff is forced between the can­di­dates.
In Texas, Beto O’rourke fell short of defeat­ing incum­bent Raphael Cruz. Nevertheless, O’rourke may be poised for even big­ger and bet­ter things in the future if some in the pun­dit­ry class have their way.


Overall, Democrats still stand to gain more seats in the house and it should not go unno­ticed that Nevada’s Dean Heller who tied him­self to Trump went down in defeat to Democrat Jacky Rosen.
Additionally, sev­en new gov­er­nor­ships were added to the Dems total and well over 300 seats in state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try.
The leg­isla­tive wins in the state hous­es sound sig­nif­i­cant but in essence under President Obama Republicans took over almost two-thirds of the seats in state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try.


According to (the Atlantic​.com) 
Red-to-blue flips may be most sig­nif­i­cant in states such as North Carolina and Texas, where Republican leg­is­la­tors have redrawn con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts into Rorschach-test shapes that are often specif­i­cal­ly designed to lim­it the elec­toral influ­ence of racial minori­ties. They have also pushed vot­er-roll purges, vot­er-ID laws, and oth­er vot­ing restric­tions that make it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to vote, or for their bal­lot to be count­ed. These mea­sures also often tar­get racial minori­ties, thus sup­press­ing Democratic turnout.


So what does all of this mean for the Democrats chances going for­ward?
Before we answer that ques­tion it is crit­i­cal that we con­sid­er the impact the Trump sen­ate will have on the Federal judi­cia­ry for the future.
With Mitch McConnell as the leader in the SenateDemocrats lost the oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to fill the seat vacat­ed by the deceased Antonin Scalia.
Judge Garland lan­guished under appoint­ment for over a year as Mitch McConnell thwart­ed President Obama’s right to appoint and fill the seat. Garland was­n’t even grant­ed a meet­ing with Republican sen­a­tors. Those are the peo­ple who were large­ly reward­ed with anoth­er six-year term in the Senate yes­ter­day. 
Such is the state of log­i­cal rea­son­ing in the American elec­torate.


In the end, Trump rammed through Neil Gorsuch and of course Brett (I like beer) Kavanaugh. Two Supreme court appoint­ments in two years.
But that does not tell the full sto­ry about the forty-some­thing judges he is stack­ing on the fed­er­al bench at the low­er lev­els, num­bers of judges unprece­dent­ed by any oth­er pres­i­dent.
These white men will be mak­ing the call on jus­tice for the next forty to fifty years.

While you are scratch­ing your head try­ing to find the cords which bind Trump to his cult of [deplorables] look no fur­ther than the things he is doing.
Trump is only a symp­tom of a deep­er rot which exists in the coun­try.
Remember his “I could shoot some­one on 5^th avenue and I would­n’t lose any sup­port”?
Ya, he may not be the bright­est bulb in the room but that much he under­stood.
Contrary to what the pun­dit­ry class tell you about wages and oth­er crap, the fact of the mat­ter is that Trump hates the same peo­ple they hate, so essen­tial­ly when you stand with mouth agape at the things he says and does, won­der no more, he is mere­ly a bull­horn for the racist xeno­phobes which are in larg­er num­bers than many are wont to admit.

There is a stub­born racism that per­sists in America, par­tic­u­lar­ly in old­er whites who have lived insu­lar lives, they are gen­er­al­ly une­d­u­cat­ed and in many cas­es have not ven­tured out­side the coun­ties and states in which they were born much less ven­tur­ing to the coun­try.
Contrary to the star­ry-eyed sto­ries politi­cians tell when they are seek­ing their votes, many of these peo­ple are incred­i­bly small-mind­ed and xeno­pho­bic.
It is shock­ing to hear them talk about oth­er human beings who do not look like them.
And guess what, the prob­lem isn’t going away, the young ones are equal­ly as ven­omous, just more dan­ger­ous.


Which brings me to what we may expect to see going for­ward.

(1) The 2020 Race for pres­i­dent will begin in earnest, rest assured the var­i­ous can­di­dates on the left and maybe on the right are already mak­ing phone calls to line up donors, as well as to test the waters to test their fea­si­bil­i­ty for the 2020 race.

(2) let us get this straight, this econ­o­my will cer­tain­ly not be click­ing on all cylin­ders as it is now (thanks Obama) come 2020.
CNBC report­ed on July of this year that Investors are so ner­vous about a poten­tial reces­sion that they are prepar­ing for one.
A late-cycle rep­re­sents an econ­o­my that has been grow­ing, but is poised to fall into a reces­sion, amid tighter cred­it avail­abil­i­ty, low­er prof­it mar­gins, and tighter mon­e­tary policy.“We are no longer long, we are increas­ing­ly ner­vous about this,” Roelof Salomons, chief strate­gist at Kempen Capital Management, said.

(3) With no great econ­o­my to run on because Trump will have dam­aged the econ­o­my with his mis­guid­ed tar­iffs and an econ­o­my which has run its course, Trump will be forced to run on what he did in 2018, fear.
Trump knows quite well that there is still that con­stituen­cy I allud­ed to which is quite will­ing to over­look his flaws as long as he is will­ing to rein­force white suprema­cy.
He will sub­se­quent­ly be forced to depend more and more on that seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, a dimin­ished base it will be but what Trump has nonethe­less.

(4) If Trump fin­ish­es his first term with this new Democratic house and decides to run for reelec­tion, it will come down to who the Democrats nom­i­nate to be their stan­dard bear­er. A wound­ed Donald Trump, a Trump who quite pos­si­bly will be under impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings will not win re-election. 

This post has been updated

Just a day after los­ing the house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Democrats Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jefferson B Sessions.

Dear Mr. President,

At your request, I am sub­mit­ting my resignation.

Since the day I was hon­ored to be sworn in as Attorney General of the United States, I came to work at the Department of Justice every day deter­mined to do my duty and serve my coun­try. I have done so to the best of my abil­i­ty, work­ing to sup­port the fun­da­men­tal legal process­es that are the foun­da­tion of justice.

The team we assem­bled embraced your direc­tive to be a law and order Department of Justice. We pros­e­cut­ed the largest num­ber of vio­lent offend­ers and firearm defen­dants in our coun­try’s his­to­ry. We took transna­tion­al gangs that are bring­ing vio­lence and death across our bor­ders and pro­tect­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty. We did our part to restore immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. We tar­get­ed the opi­oid epi­dem­ic by pros­e­cut­ing doc­tors, phar­ma­cists, and any­one else who con­tributes to this cri­sis with new law enforce­ment tools and deter­mi­na­tion. And we have seen results. After two years of ris­ing vio­lent crime and homi­cides pri­or to this admin­is­tra­tion, those trends have reversed – thanks to the hard work of our pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment around the country. 

I am par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful to the fab­u­lous men and women in law enforce­ment all over this coun­try with whom I have served. I have had no greater hon­or than to serve along them. As I have said many times, they have my thanks and I will always have their backs.

More impor­tant­ly, in my time as Attorney General we have restored and upheld the rule of law – a glo­ri­ous tra­di­tion that each of us has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to safe­guard. We have oper­at­ed with integri­ty and have law­ful­ly and aggres­sive­ly advanced the pol­i­cy agen­da of this administration. 

I have been hon­ored to serve as Attorney General and have worked to imple­ment the law enforce­ment agen­da based on the rule of law that formed a cen­tral part of your cam­paign for the Presidency.

Thank you for the oppor­tu­ni­ty, Mr. President.

Sincerely,

Jefferson B. Sessions III

Attorney General

For the record, if you say ” At your request, I am sub­mit­ting my res­ig­na­tion”.you were ter­mi­nat­ed, fired.
We wait like every­one else to see what this means for this [democ­ra­cy].

How tired are you of hear­ing the phrase American-excep­tion­al­ism thrown around to deride oth­er nations?
What is this excep­tion­al­ism you ask? After all, this term has been thrown around by Liberals like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Conservatives like lying Ted Cruz and every­one in between.

So what is it?
The web­site [the​week​.com] a high­ly ranked site on Google seem to be the go-to author­i­ty on this ques­tion.
The site argues quote; “One does­n’t have to use the term to believe in the under­ly­ing con­cept. But the phrase has a his­to­ry that helps us to under­stand the cur­rent hyper­bol­ic use”.
Okay, I get that, but I nev­er latch onto any­thing except when I am con­vinced of its authen­tic­i­ty, so I’m going to need more meat on these bones.

Well the site did give more and for those of you who are inter­est­ed I will pro­vide a link to that site right here https://​the​week​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​6​5​4​5​0​8​/​w​h​a​t​-​e​x​a​c​t​l​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​e​x​c​e​p​t​i​o​n​a​l​ism
I need­ed a pre­cise expla­na­tion some­thing I can sink my teeth into and sure enough, here it is.


American excep­tion­al­ism the site argues; is not the same as say­ing the United States is “dif­fer­ent” from oth­er coun­tries. It does­n’t just mean that the U.S. is “unique.” Countries, like peo­ple, are all dif­fer­ent and unique, even if many share some under­ly­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics. Exceptionalism requires some­thing far more: a belief that the U.S. fol­lows a path of his­to­ry dif­fer­ent from the laws or norms that gov­ern oth­er coun­tries.

That’s the essence of American excep­tion­al­ism: The U.S. is not just a big­ger and more pow­er­ful coun­try — but an excep­tion. It is the bear­er of free­dom and lib­er­ty, and moral­ly supe­ri­or to some­thing called “Europe.” Never mind the dif­fer­ences with­in Europe or the fact that “the world” is big­ger than the U.S. and Europe. The “Europe” ver­sus “America” dichoto­my is the cru­cible in which American excep­tion­al­ist think­ing formed.

Okay, so let me dis­sect this a lit­tle, start­ing with, “the excep­tion­al­ism of America is not a sce­nario in which America is com­pared to the rest of the world, just Europe”.
Strange, con­sid­er­ing that America only has about five per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion at about 325,000.000 and Europe hov­ers at 742,848,889.
Funny that Asia the worlds most pop­u­lous con­ti­nent weren’t even con­sid­ered in this con­test of exceptionalism.

What’s more, the iden­ti­fy­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of this con­cept as far as the [week​.com] sees it is that it [America], is the bear­er of free­dom and lib­er­ty, and is moral­ly supe­ri­or to some­thing called “Europe.“
I don’t know where to begin with this, the Europeans, for the most part, were large­ly also involved in the pogrom vis­it­ed on the African peo­ples,
In fact, most European pow­ers at the time carved out pieces of the African Continent for their own exploita­tion.
But Europe had its come to Jesus moment and real­ized that own­ing oth­er human beings was not such a good idea long before America ever did.
In fact, it may be argued that many in America today are still uncon­vinced about the despi­ca­ble inhu­man­i­ty of that specter.
There is your excep­tion­al­ism, there is your moral superiority.

Any sys­tem which enslaves parts of its pop­u­la­tion, all while mur­der­ing, rap­ing, beat­ing and demor­al­iz­ing them and appro­pri­at­ing their his­to­ry, for hun­dreds of years design­ing laws which take their human­i­ty and their dig­ni­ty has some gall brag­ging about moral supe­ri­or­i­ty.
The idea that even as there are still entrenched forces hell-bent on pre­vent­ing oth­ers from vot­ing, and as long as they are hell-bent on dehu­man­iz­ing them by hav­ing their [race sol­diers] pose as police offi­cers, and as long as they gun down the inno­cent and are not held account­able then any claim of moral supe­ri­or­i­ty is mer­it­less braggadocio.

Exceptionalism is doing, not claim­ing that you are. If you have to say how excep­tion­al you are, maybe you aren’t.
America is any­thing but excep­tion­al, not just on the ridicu­lous claim of moral supe­ri­or­i­ty, but on how it treats its own cit­i­zens, (mass incar­cer­a­tion Prison Industrial com­plex. Voter sup­pres­sion. State-sanc­tioned killings. Persecuting immi­grants, while Americans walk into any coun­try and are treat­ed with love and respect). 
There is no excep­tion­al­ism in any of that, no moral supe­ri­or­i­ty.
Ask the peo­ple in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa who have been col­o­nized but are still unable to vote in American Presidential elec­tions.
Colonization with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion.
Moral supe­ri­or­i­ty? 
And don’t for­get that all of the peo­ple liv­ing in these places are black and brown peo­ple.
Wonder why they aren’t allowed to vote?

The Definition of [DEMOCRACY] accord­ing to @Merriam Webster is this; A gov­ern­ment in which the supreme pow­er is vest­ed in the peo­ple and exer­cised by them direct­ly or indi­rect­ly through a sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tion usu­al­ly involv­ing peri­od­i­cal­ly held free elec­tions. 
Govern­ment by the peo­ple espe­cial­ly: rule of the major­i­ty, Ha, we will talk about this par­tic­u­lar caveat lat­er.

Democracy, as a con­cept has faced chal­lenges by some who view it as a zero-sum game. They see it’s unsteady and irreg­u­lar progress as a sign that its fail­ings are a tes­ta­ment to it imprac­ti­cal­i­ty if not it’s lack of exis­tence.
In fact, many in parts of the world ruled by auto­crat­ic regimes have argued that Democracy does not and can­not work.

Writing for [quo​ra​.com] in an Article titled; Why do so many peo­ple say that democ­ra­cy won’t work for China, or that it only works for Western coun­tries, Christian Kober writes.
“Democracy requires sound insti­tu­tions and some fun­da­men­tal shared beliefs. If, for exam­ple, the mil­i­tary sees itself as ‘above the law’, democ­ra­cy will stand on very fee­ble feet.”

In an opin­ion piece titled [Columbia, proof that democ­ra­cy does­n’t work] writ­ten for the New York Times Martín Caparrós wrote;

“The mech­a­nism of rep­re­sen­ta­tion doesn’t work. Democracy is in trou­ble. And not only in Colombia, of course. Voting, to which so many aspired for so long, has become a bur­den or has been for­got­ten by so many. There are rea­sons for this, but there’s a fac­tor that con­founds all of them: Those who elect not to elect,  do so because they don’t think they are actu­al­ly elect­ing any­thing.
Then they wash their hands of the mat­ter and accept, for a while, being left out. But inevitably, lit­tle by lit­tle, they will start look­ing for ways in which they can exert influ­ence. From what we see, democ­ra­cy is not one of those ways”.

If the con­cept, as explained by @Merriam Webster is the pure expla­na­tion of the very con­cept to which we ought to sub­scribe when we think of democ­ra­cy the ques­tion then becomes, have we ever had democracy?

If the con­cept of Democracy is a Govern­ment by the peo­ple espe­cial­ly: rule of the major­i­ty, then it leaves pre­cious lit­tle to the imag­i­na­tion.
Ask Al Gore and Hillary Clinton whether they agree with the con­cept of a Democracy in which they both got expo­nen­tial­ly more votes than their oppo­nents and end­ed up being the los­er.
Ask the African-Americans who have strug­gled for the right to vote, being lynched, shot and seen their prop­er­ty burned to the ground sim­ply because they dared to want to exer­cise their right to vote

It is 2018 and all across the world’s old­est democracy[sic] in state after state, Georgia, Wisconsin, Texas, North Dakota and places in between forces opposed to the pure con­cept of a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation have erect­ed bar­ri­ers in the path of some vot­ers who would vote against the can­di­dates they sup­port.
In North Dakota, entire Indian Tribes liv­ing on reser­va­tions are being pre­vent­ed from vot­ing as a result of oner­ous and uncalled for state laws imposed by Republicans as a means of pre­vent­ing native tribes from voting.

A major vot­ing hur­dle for Native Americans in North Dakota used to be thought of as a kind of force of nature, sort of like grav­i­ty or sun­shine: Indian reser­va­tions didn’t have named, num­bered streets. And with­out these des­ig­na­tions on the trib­al IDs that Natives car­ry, they couldn’t vote in the state.
If you are a dyed in the wool believ­er in the con­cept of good over evil, right over might, and democ­ra­cy over dic­ta­tor­ship then you are imag­in­ing that the State Appellate court upheld the low­er court’s rul­ing which sided with the tribes.
You would also imag­ine that the United States Supreme Courts would side with the dis­en­fran­chised native tribes.
If you did any of that you would be wrong.

According to [inthe​se​times​.com] 
There was no way around the prob­lem. No res­i­den­tial address on trib­al IDs meant no bal­lot box access for Native peo­ple — unless they were will­ing to under­take pro­hib­i­tive­ly long and cost­ly dri­ves and oth­er hur­dles to get an alter­nate ID. “It is a vot­er-sup­pres­sion tech­nique North Dakota tar­gets at its Native pop­u­la­tion,” accus­es OJ Semans, the Rosebud Sioux co-direc­tor of Four Directions civ­il rights group.

If you took the path of prece­dent and con­sid­ered what has hap­pened to both the Native and African-American peo­ple in America and decid­ed that nei­ther the Appellate court nor the Supreme Court sided with the aggriev­ed par­ties you would be right.
There is the democ­ra­cy for you.

So a purist con­cept of Democracy may be best defined as a work in progress, maybe best defined by the Nation’s 44^th President Barack Obama ” We waged a Civil War. We over­came depres­sion. We’ve lurched from eras of great pro­gres­sive change to peri­ods of retrench­ment”.

We are in one of those ter­ri­ble peri­ods of retrench­ment, a dis­mal dark place when com­pared to Ronald Reagan’s myth­i­cal “shin­ing city on a hill”.
If we have not arrived at the place envi­sioned by the found­ing fathers where all peo­ple are treat­ed equal­ly, is there such a thing as democ­ra­cy yet?

“Government is insti­tut­ed for the com­mon good; for the pro­tec­tion, safe­ty, pros­per­i­ty and hap­pi­ness of the peo­ple; and not for the prof­it, hon­or, or pri­vate inter­est of any one man, fam­i­ly, or class of men.” 
― John Adams

By Travis Waldron

The élite media still can’t fig­ure out how to call right-wing author­i­tar­i­ans what they are. 

These are con­fus­ing times for the estab­lish­ment media. Fascism is on the hoof, and the lib­er­al order and its var­i­ous shib­bo­leths are under threat, among them the very notion of a free press. But how to get a han­dle on such a phe­nom­e­non? How does one report objec­tive­ly on the can­non being point­ed at one’s head?

One way would be to pre­tend that the can­non isn’t a can­non. That’s what we saw on Twitter Sunday night after Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democ­ra­cy, elect­ed a neo-fas­cist as its new pres­i­dent.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right con­gress­man, is by any rea­son­able def­i­n­i­tion an author­i­tar­i­an, a fas­cist and a poten­tial dic­ta­tor. He prais­es dic­ta­tor­ships and says the only prob­lem with pre­vi­ous dic­ta­tors is that they didn’t kill enough. He has called for killing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and said last week that he would “cleanse” Brazil of left­ists, who would have no choice but to “leave or go to jail.” He calls immi­grants “scum” and said mem­bers of Afro-Brazilian com­mu­ni­ties aren’t suit­able for pro-cre­ation, wants police to kill alleged crim­i­nals on sight and chose a run­ning mate who refus­es to rule out a return of mil­i­tary rule. His entire polit­i­cal career is built on vio­lent rhetoric aimed at Brazil’s most mar­gin­al­ized peo­ples.

These are all objec­tive­ly fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an, auto­crat­ic things to say, and Bolsonaro’s long his­to­ry of espous­ing such sen­ti­ment sug­gests they are a good bet to become the fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an, auto­crat­ic things he will do. 

And yet after the returns were in, the élite press, which we’re told is very com­mit­ted to objec­tiv­i­ty, start­ed hem­ming and haw­ing its way around the elec­tion of a pres­i­dent who would glad­ly shut­ter their oper­a­tions and throw them all in prison if he could. 

Bolsonaro is a “divi­sive pop­ulist,” The New York Times said, jam­ming a euphemism and a cat­e­go­ry error togeth­er, the lat­ter premised on the idea that pop­ulism is noth­ing more than a mat­ter of coarse rhetoric. (As with Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s “pop­ulist” ges­tures served main­ly to dis­tract from the sup­port he was con­sol­i­dat­ing among the reac­tionary fan­cy class­es.) Read more here: https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​j​a​i​r​-​b​o​l​s​o​n​a​r​o​-​b​r​a​z​i​l​-​e​l​e​c​t​i​o​n​-​m​e​d​i​a​_​u​s​_​5​b​d​7​6​9​f​4​e​4​b​0​7​4​2​7​6​1​0​a​3​6de

Trevor Noah offered a hilar­i­ous scheme to fight vot­er sup­pres­sion on “The Daily Show” Thursday. Sure, it might sound mad, but just hear him out.

“Every black per­son in America needs to reg­is­ter as a Republican,” he said.

Noah used the guber­na­to­r­i­al race in Georgia between Democrat Stacey Abrams, attempt­ing to become the first black woman elect­ed gov­er­nor, and Republican Brian Kemp as his jump­ing-off point.

Kemp hap­pens to be Georgia’s sec­re­tary of state in charge of the elec­tion. He report­ed­ly has tens of thou­sands of vot­er reg­is­tra­tions on hold ― most­ly for black voters.

So, Noah fig­ured a lit­tle trick­ery might be in order
https://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​t​r​e​v​o​r​-​n​o​a​h​-​s​c​h​e​m​e​-​v​o​t​e​r​-​s​u​p​p​r​e​s​s​i​o​n​_​u​s​_​5​b​c​9​9​e​6​f​e​4​b​0​d​3​8​b​5​8​7​6​e​1c6

The admin­is­tra­tion has sug­gest­ed it could charge ‘event man­age­ment’ costs for protests and close 80% of the sidewalks

Donald Trump has fre­quent­ly and false­ly crowed about the idea of so-called paid protesters, includ­ing most recent­ly the sex­u­al assault sur­vivors who con­front­ed sen­a­tors in the lead up to the Brett Kavanaugh con­fir­ma­tion. Now his admin­is­tra­tion may be try­ing to turn that con­cept on its head, by requir­ing cit­i­zens to pay to be able to protest, among oth­er affronts to the first amendment.

Under the pro­pos­al intro­duced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in August, the admin­is­tra­tion is look­ing to close 80% of the side­walks sur­round­ing the White House, and has sug­gest­ed that it could charge “event man­age­ment” costs, for demonstrations.

Currently the National Park Service is able to recoup costs for spe­cial events, but not spon­ta­neous protests like the ones that typ­i­cal­ly take place in Lafayette Park across from the White House. These charges could include the cost of erect­ing bar­ri­ers, clean­ing fees, repairs to grass, per­mit fees and the salaries of offi­cial per­son­nel on hand to mon­i­tor such demon­stra­tions, all tal­lied at the dis­cre­tion of the police.

Naturally, civ­il lib­er­ties groups con­sid­er the pro­pos­als an affront to the rights guar­an­teed under the first amend­ment. As the ACLU notes, such fees “could make mass protests like Martin Luther King Jr’s his­toric 1963 March on Washington and its ‘I have a dream’ speech too expen­sive to happen”.

During the Vietnam War the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment attempt­ed to impose sim­i­lar bar­ri­ers to cit­i­zens freely assem­bling in protest and were sued by the ACLU. In their rul­ing the courts reassert­ed the fact that “the use of parks for pub­lic assem­bly and air­ing of opin­ions is his­toric in our demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety, and one of its car­di­nal values”.

The White House side­walk, Lafayette Park, and the Ellipse were unique sites for the exer­cise of those rights, they ruled, and there­fore they could not “accord def­er­ence to an exec­u­tive approach to the use of the White House side­walk that is root­ed in a bias against expres­sive conduct…”

The National Park Service has attempt­ed to jus­ti­fy the pro­pos­al by point­ing out that large protests, like the Women’s March, over­tax their abil­i­ties, and place a heavy cost on the gov­ern­ment. One might argue when it comes to pre­serv­ing our right to protest no cost is too high.

The pub­lic has until 15 October to com­ment on the plans. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​8​/​o​c​t​/​1​2​/​t​r​u​m​p​-​a​d​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​l​a​n​s​-​c​r​a​c​k​d​o​w​n​-​o​n​-​p​r​o​t​e​s​t​s​-​o​u​t​s​i​d​e​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​use

You sim­ply can­not make this up.

Kanye West, with his bizarre White House meet­ing Thursday with Donald Trump, gave fresh proof that the line between celebri­ty and politi­cian is tru­ly no longer a thing.

West, sit­ting across from the Trump at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, went into a near­ly 10-minute speech, wear­ing Yeezy boots and his famous “Make America Great Again” hat.

Here are some of the wildest com­ments West made dur­ing his soliloquy:

1. “This is our pres­i­dent, he has to be the fresh­est, the fly­est, the fly­est planes, the best fac­to­ries and we have to make our core be in power.”

2. Trump “might not have expect­ed to have a crazy moth­er­fuck­er like Kanye West sup­port­ing him.”

3. West said he would poten­tial­ly run for pres­i­dent “only after 2024.”

4. “I love this guy.” [Followed up with a hug.]

5. “The prob­lem is ille­gal guns, ille­gal guns is the prob­lem. Not legal guns. We have the right to bear arms.”

6. “Let’s stop wor­ry­ing about the future, all we have is today. … Trump is on his hero’s jour­ney right now.”

7. “There was some­thing about when I put this hat on it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman, that’s my favorite super­hero, you made a Superman cape for me.”

8. “One of the moves I love that lib­er­als try to do ― a lib­er­al would try to con­trol a black per­son with the con­cept of racism because they know we are a very proud, emo­tion­al people.”

9. Talking about the Constitution’s 13^th Amendment, which for­bids slav­ery: “Why would you keep some­thing around that’s a trap door? If you’re build­ing a floor, the Constitution is the base of our indus­try, of our coun­try, of our com­pa­ny. Would you build a trap door that if you mess up and acci­den­tal­ly some­thing hap­pens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber? You got to remove all that trap door out of the relationship.”

10. “I think the way the uni­verse works is per­fect. We don’t have 13 floors, do we?”

11. “Time is a myth.”

12. “You are tast­ing a fine wine. It has com­plex notes to it.”

13. “My dad and my mom sep­a­rat­ed, so there was not a lot of male ener­gy in my home, and also I’m mar­ried to a fam­i­ly where, you know, there’s not a lot of male ener­gy. It’s beau­ti­ful though.”

14. “I love Hillary. I love every­one, but the cam­paign ‘I’m with her’ just didn’t make me feel — as a guy.”

Trump said at one point that West “can speak for me any time he wants. He’s a smart cook­ie. He gets it.”

When West was fin­ished speak­ing, Trump told the reporters around them: “I tell you what ― that was pret­ty impres­sive. That was quite something.”

West respond­ed: “It was from the soul. I just chan­neled it.”

Another wild thing that hap­pened is that the entire world learned that West’s iPhone pass­word is 000000. He typed it into his phone in front of live TV cameras.

White House press sec­re­tary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the meet­ing ear­li­er this week, say­ing that “West is com­ing to the White House to have lunch with President Trump and he will also meet with Jared Kushner. Topics of dis­cus­sions will include man­u­fac­tur­ing resur­gence in America, prison reform, how to pre­vent gang vio­lence, and what can be done to reduce vio­lence in Chicago.” 

Last month, West appeared on “Saturday Night Live” wear­ing the red MAGA hat and pro­mot­ing Trump. After the show end­ed, he treat­ed the stu­dio audi­ence to a pro-Trump, anti-Democrat rant that was booed and lat­er slammed by cast mem­ber Pete Davidson as“one of the worse things I’ve ever seen work­ing here.”

West, hus­band of real­i­ty TV star Kim Kardashian, has been extreme­ly vocal about his enthu­si­asm for the pres­i­dent, fre­quent­ly post­ing about Trump on social media.

Jenna Amatulli

Fifty-one forty-eight, (51−48 ) the final vote of the United States Senate led by Republicans.
The vote to ele­vate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was straight Party line with the excep­tion of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin vot­ing [Yea] with the Republicans and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski vot­ing no.
Pivotal to the process of Kavanaugh’s ascen­dan­cy was the hope that Maine’s wishy-washy, hand-wring­ing Republican Senator Susan Collins would be a poten­tial no.

From the off­set, those opposed to Kavanaugh hung their hats on two male sen­a­tors. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
Both men are staunch Conservatives who vote lock­step with their par­ty on issue after issue, both have had a luke­warm to a frigid rela­tion­ship with Donald Trump and both are not seek­ing re-elec­tion to the Senate.

The hope­fuls were of the opin­ion that both men were free to stand out and stand for some­thing, that some­thing being with Democrats in oppo­si­tion to the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion. 
Being uncon­strained from not hav­ing to face the rad­i­cal right-wing vot­ers in their respec­tive states, many were hope­ful that at least one of the two men, Jeff Flake would be a sav­ior in what they con­strued to be an exis­ten­tial fight for the soul of the supreme court and for America.

But more than Flake and Corker, women across the nation, uneasy about the prospect of Roe V Wade with a poten­tial Justice Kavanaugh on the high­est court, looked to Murkowski and Collins, two female US Senators whom they believed were ami­able or open to rea­son.

Throughout the tumul­tuous process, Susan Collins played Susan Collins to a “T” tak­ing both sides of the issue, say­ing that Dr. Ford deserves to be heard while at the time say­ing that Brett Kavanaugh gave her cer­tain assur­ances that Roe V Wade is set­tled law. 
The wishy-washy Maine US Senator was in her ele­ment, pre­tend­ing to care about wom­en’s issues while rev­el­ing in the idea that the eyes of the nation were on her.

Senator Murkowski kept how she would vote to her­self, many of her con­stituents flew down from Alaska to lob­by their sen­a­tor to vote against Brett Kavanaugh, as did many Maine vot­ers to lob­by Susan Collins.
Jeff Flake, seem­ing con­flict­ed as to how to vote, vot­ed to move the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion out of com­mit­tee, on con­di­tion that there was one final one-week of inves­ti­ga­tions by the FBI regard­ing the alle­ga­tions made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

But any­one with the slight­est idea of the way inves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed knew right away that that was a hoax.
There can be wide para­me­ters placed around how long an inves­ti­ga­tion [may] take, but to sug­gest that any mean­ing­ful fol­lowup inves­ti­ga­tion must begin and be con­clud­ed with­in a week is essen­tial­ly per­pet­u­at­ing a fraud on the coun­try.

Chris Coons, Delaware’s Democratic US Senator and friend of Jeff Flake believed every word of his friends cha­rade when he asked for a week more so that the FBI could check out the claims of Doctor Christine Blasey Ford.
Little did Coons know that Flake’s play was noth­ing more than a ploy to give cov­er to Republicans to cut off debate and force the vote to put Kavanaugh on the court.

Flake played right into Trump and Mitch McConnell’s hands. Trump would ulti­mate­ly lim­it the scope and reach of the Investigations while a trun­cat­ed report would give lever­age to Republicans who would then argue that the FBI had cleared Kavanaugh because there was noth­ing to Dr. Ford’s claims.
It was a ter­rif­ic sleigh of hand which gave the Democrats tem­po­rary respite but a ter­ri­ble heart­burn in the end.

Jeff Flake may or may not have pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions but his part in that plot was mas­ter­ful. He came off as a states­man who believed in process and pro­to­col but a clos­er look reveals his move was a cyn­i­cal ploy which ulti­mate­ly gave Republicans the cov­er they need­ed to close out debate on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion.

More women came out and accused Brett Kavanaugh of improp­er sex­u­al behav­ior, more cor­rob­o­rat­ing wit­ness­es emerged beg­ging the FBI to con­tact them. We have a sto­ry to tell they claimed.
Unfortunately, the FBI had no inter­est in their truths, no inter­est in what they had to say.
Kavanaugh, cried, lied, and threat­ened Democratic sen­a­tors and the nation. His tem­pera­ment was a clas­sic exam­ple of a bel­liger­ent drunk, but none of that gave Republicans pause. Instead, they dou­bled down on their nom­i­nee.
When the bat­tles are being waged around a wom­an’s right to chose, as they sure­ly will be, let it be remem­bered that Lisa Murkowski stood tall, the Republican men act­ed as Republican men do, Joe Manchin pro­tect­ed his ass over his coun­try, Jeff Flake was true to his name and Susan Collins gave the mid­dle fin­ger to women.


In the end, the FBI con­clud­ed a sham inves­ti­ga­tion which did not include an inter­view of nei­ther the accused or the accuser. We are told only nine peo­ple were inter­viewed and true to the prin­ci­ples of a state run by a strong­man the results of the sham inves­ti­ga­tions were not made pub­lic.
In fact, Senators had very lim­it­ed time to browse through the sin­gle copy of the report which was placed in a secure room in the bow­els of the Senate build­ing.

Mitch McConnell had pulled off a per­fect tri­fec­ta. (1) He had blocked most of President Obama’s Federal appoint­ments for the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry. (2) In an unprece­dent­ed move, he had blocked the ascent of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. President Obama a twice-elect­ed President had every right to appoint a replace­ment for the deceased par­ti­san Antonin Scalia and (3) McConnell had stolen the seat in which sits Neil Gorsuch, a staunch right-wing func­tionary appoint­ed by Donald Trump a pres­i­dent who has been named as an unin­dict­ed crim­i­nal co-con­spir­a­tor.


Today Saturday, October 6^th is the day the United States Senate ignored the alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct against Brett Kavanaugh and vot­ed to advance the nom­i­na­tion to make Brett Kavanaugh an asso­ciate jus­tice of the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114^th jus­tice in the his­to­ry of the court.
This day may be the day his­to­ri­ans look back on and say this was the day we lost America.
Or not.

The con­se­quences of this vote today will be last­ing on the American soci­ety.
In the end, the FBI direc­tor, Christopher Wray will raise his hand and he will tell the Congress that a fair inves­ti­ga­tion was done by his agents, and it will be a lie.
Donald Trump has cor­rod­ed lit­er­al­ly every pub­lic body in the coun­try.
One thing is cer­tain, how­ev­er, is the bla­tant dis­hon­esty and lack of process with which the Republicans han­dled this nom­i­na­tion.
Scared of poten­tial­ly los­ing the House and pos­si­bly the Senate they per­pet­u­at­ed a mon­u­men­tal fraud on the nation all in the name of pol­i­tics and the per­pet­u­a­tion of white suprema­cy.
Country be damned.
And that may very well be the end result of this fraud.

My *friend* [*used loose­ly] stopped by to see me yes­ter­day, I had not seen him in quite a while.
He has had some health issues, in fact, that was large­ly what we talked about. He told me his Doctors are sug­gest­ing a pace­mak­er to aug­ment the per­for­mance of his heart.
He lament­ed the fact that even if he was placed on a donor list he would like­ly die before he could receive a new heart.

He had been liv­ing a long time with a bad heart, it had been bad enough for his employ­ers to allow him to retire long before he was of the age to do so.
Additionally, he has been hav­ing mar­i­tal prob­lems, and to com­pound his woes, his only child a boy who just turned six­teen years old does not lis­ten to any­thing he says. These things he argues brings on an addi­tion­al lay­er of stress.

Wanting to take his mind off his prob­lems I asked so how do you think your pres­i­dent is doing?
It was small talk, just a fee­ble attempt to get his mind off what he is going through, at least for a minute or two.
My friend over the last sev­er­al years had also giv­en his life to Christ, [or so he says] and is now a devot­ed Seventh Day Adventist, * more to appease and change the atti­tude of his wife toward him, than any burn­ing reli­gious con­vic­tion he harbors*.

My com­ment was expect­ed to at least elic­it a snarl, a con­temp­tu­ous laugh at the prospect that he a black man born in England to Jamaican par­ents and a long-time immi­grant to the United States, would claim the present occu­pant of the White House as his president.
He quick­ly respond­ed, ” (mi vote fi him because mi wah him fi check de gay dem”!) my mouth fell open, this was news to me.

People are free to vote for whomev­er they chose, but wow! I was dumb­found­ed by his response.
And so my mind began to race. Ok, I get the idea that as a Christian he is opposed to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, but what about the peo­ple them­selves, you know hate the sin but love the sin­ner? I guess not, “mi neva like di way dem a gi di gay dem sta­tus”, he dou­bled down.
It seems that as far as con­tem­po­rary Christian ortho­doxy goes these days there are some sins which are far more egre­gious than oth­ers, but that is way above my pay grade to decide.

(1)Donald Trump bragged about grab­bing women by the pussy.
(2) Donald Trump bragged about walk­ing in on young women while they were in a state of undress.
(3) Donald Trump bragged about just kiss­ing beau­ti­ful women, he talks about his inabil­i­ty to restrain him­self but tells Billy Bush that whey you are a star they let you do get away with it.
(4) Donald Trump spent hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars smear­ing the cen­tral park five and nev­er apologized.

(5) Donald Trump refused to rent to peo­ple of col­or and lied about it.
(6) Donald Trump had unpro­tect­ed sex with a porn star while his wife was at home with their four-month-old baby.
(7) Donald Trump lied in order to dodge the draft.
(8) Donald Trump said that there were decent peo­ple on both sides in response to the racist tiki-torch march in Chorletsville.
(9) Donald Trump has been accused of laun­der­ing Russian dirty money.

(10) Donald Trump and his cam­paign have been accused of con­spir­ing with a hos­tile for­eign pow­er to rig the American elections.
(11) Donald Trump went to Puerto Rico and threw paper tow­els at the peo­ple after the ordeal of the hurricane.
(12) Donald Trump rips chil­dren from their par­ents, deport the par­ents and keep the babies locked in cages, defy­ing court orders in the process.
(13) Donald Trump led a birther smear cam­paign against the nations first African-American President, only stat­ing that Obama was an American cit­i­zen just before the elec­tions of 2016.
(14) Donald Trump hates Blacks, Mexicans. oth­er Hispanics, Muslims, and every­one not a white male.

This list just begins to scratch the sur­face of the degen­er­a­tive char­ac­ter of Donald Trump, but my friend’s ani­mus against “the gays” [sic] far out­weighed all of them.
This is the men­tal rot which has tak­en over the mind of peo­ple through the vehi­cle of reli­gious indoctrination.
Let me be clear, I will not pur­port to know what God wants except my read­ing and under­stand­ing of what the Bible says.
If that is our guide­book which it is, then its rather dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy such ani­mus on one hand, while show­ing such tol­er­ance for a long litany of trans­gres­sions on the other.
Remarkably, the views expressed by my friend has been the dom­i­nant view which has come out of Trump’s base of support.

Many experts more qual­i­fied to speak on this sub­ject, than I ever could be, have labeled this kind of think­ing a“cult fol­low­ing.”
The argu­ments of Trump’s cultists hard­ly makes sense, will­ful igno­rance maybe, I have no idea? Yet it seems strange to hear them say “yes I know he did these things but the econ­o­my is good.” (nev­er mind that the econ­o­my has been on an upward trend since 2009 under President Obama and has seen high­er growth num­bers than any­thing which has hap­pened under Trump so far}.

For oth­ers, it’s “yes but he is putting judges on the courts” “yes but we don’t like abor­tion” “yes but he is send­ing home those ille­gals.”
It’s an insane sense of blind igno­rance and alle­giance to a deviant nar­cis­sis­tic liar, shroud­ed in a cloak of reli­gious apostasy.
It is a new order which rede­fines and changes tra­di­tion­al ideas of Christian prin­ci­ples, replac­ing them with a more elas­tic inter­pre­ta­tion, which san­i­tizes what­ev­er Trump does as long as he fights against the peo­ple they hate.

The cult fol­low­ing is prob­a­bly less about Donald Trump and more about pow­er. Who has the pow­er to take on the things they want to fight against?
The brown­ing of America has ini­ti­at­ed a freak out among the white polit­i­cal right. They see the fore­casts, peo­ple of col­or will become a major­i­ty of the American work­ing class by 2032. This esti­mate, based on long-term labor force pro­jec­tions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and trends in col­lege com­ple­tion by race and eth­nic­i­ty, is 11 years soon­er than the Census Bureau pro­jec­tion for the over­all U.S. pop­u­la­tion, which becomes “major­i­ty-minor­i­ty” in 2043. According to the Economic Policy Institute.

So it is no acci­dent that even though Republican dar­ling, Ronald Reagan, grant­ed Amnesty to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, the word “Amnesty” is now tan­ta­mount to trea­son in Republican cir­cles. In fact, based on their recent love fest with Russia trea­son is no longer a prob­lem for them.
Trump is not the prob­lem as Obama right­ly said, he is mere­ly a symp­tom of a deep­er prob­lem. Trump under­stood that there was a dis­af­fect­ed por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion which feels itself under-rep­re­sent­ed in today’s politics.

The medi­a’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of them over the years has evolved sub­stan­tial­ly. During the Reagan years, they were called “Reagan Democrats”, since then they have been known as “white work­ing class blue col­lar work­ers”, “The tea par­ty,” and now they are “Trumper’s”.
The sin­gle thread which runs through these so-called dis­af­fect­ed peo­ple is vic­tim­hood. Experts say they are for­got­ten peo­ple who have found it hard to fit into the eco­nom­ic boom of the last sev­er­al decades.
I call [BS], the vast major­i­ty of them are Racist under­achiev­ers who want to blame oth­ers for their own per­son­al failings.

They are old­er and less edu­cat­ed(Trump famous­ly said I love the poor­ly edu­cat­ed). These peo­ple have become his base, their dis­af­fec­tion, sense of vic­tim­hood and hatred, is the fuel to his ascen­den­cy to the presidency.
By appeal­ing to their Racism and fear, Trump has used dem­a­gog­ic rhetoric to stir up the hatred which was already with­in them. The kind of racial hatred only a few still alive has seen in their lifetime.
These Trump sup­port­ers may not all be racist loafers, but they damn sure aren’t demon­strat­ing the vaunt­ed can-do American spir­it we’ve heard so much about.

To sug­gest that one is from a long line of Miners and as such Government has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure that coalmines stay open to facil­i­tate this gen­er­a­tion of min­ers is asinine.
If the world is evolv­ing from burn­ing dirty fos­sil fuels like oil, coal, and gas, to nuclear, wind and solar why would any intel­li­gent per­son refuse to adapt to the chang­ing times?

That is the essence of vic­tim­hood. Their atti­tude is that the times should stay still for them and if it does­n’t, those who have evolved through skills train­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic edu­ca­tion are either elit­ist if they are white, wor­thy of depor­ta­tion if they are peo­ple of color.
That is the ran­cid dis­af­fec­tion which runs through the entire Republican South, the Midwest and oth­er parts of the country.
In many instances, a look at the elec­toral map, [Republican in red], depicts where this mind­set is centered.
In these parts of the coun­try, there is more pover­ty despite the fact that they are heav­i­ly white and vote over­whelm­ing­ly Republican.

As a con­se­quence these peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly a drain on the Federal Government for goods and ser­vices, their states send less mon­ey to Washington than they receive.
Yet lis­ten­ing to them the peo­ple liv­ing in Democratic states are some­how depen­dent on the largess of the Government despite the facts, facts do not mat­ter to them.
Their sense of being left behind is not based on facts but on their own refusal to adapt to the chang­ing times.
And so they hitch their wag­ons to Donald Trump and here we are. A patho­log­i­cal lying nar­cis­sist is their sav­ior but wait he is bet­ter than “the gays”.[sic]
Right?

People are asked to speak at events for any num­ber of rea­sons. Usually, because they may have some­thing impor­tant to say or that they may rep­re­sent the orga­ni­za­tion in a good light, based on who they are and what they are like­ly to say.
From Presidents to recov­er­ing drug addicts, speak­ers of all kinds grace stages to deliv­er their mes­sage. Some are paid hand­some­ly, oth­ers not so much and even oth­ers noth­ing at all.
Shoot, even I have been asked a time or two to speak to a cou­ple of peo­ple, though I nev­er knew if any­one both­ered lis­ten­ing to any­thing I said.

And so I will nev­er ques­tion the moti­va­tion of the People’s National Party ‘s deci­sion to have Mr. Bakari Sellers as keynote speak­er on open­ing night at their 80^th annu­al par­ty conference.
No one should doubt the bona fides of the 33-year-old Mister Sellers. He is an accom­plished attor­ney, for­mer state leg­is­la­tor, a CNN ana­lyst and sits on the boards of sev­er­al com­pa­nies and organizations.

Naturally, a young up-and-com­er like mis­ter Sellers is an incred­i­ble draw for Organizations look­ing to deliv­er a mes­sage from some­one young influ­en­tial and even good look­ing who can poten­tial­ly attract young peo­ple to their cause.
It behooves those who would sum­mar­i­ly dis­miss Mr. Sellers as a know-noth­ing for­eign­er, to rethink that strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when one con­sid­er the res­o­nance the words of for­eign­ers gen­er­al­ly have with our ordi­nary folks.
A well-deliv­ered speech from some­one like Bakari Sellers, a young edu­cat­ed, accom­plished and per­son­able for­eign­er is hard to coun­te­nance with a lazy dismissal.

Members of the JLP, and fol­low­ers of the par­ty can ill-afford to make the mis­take of sim­ply dis­miss­ing, as an absur­di­ty, some­one like Mister Sellers can have on local politics.
I read today, Fabian Lewis’ bril­liant arti­cle in the local Observer in which he did a point by point rebut­tal on why Bakari Sellers would do bet­ter stick­ing to American politics.
In his arti­cle, Fabian Lewis did a mas­ter­ful artic­u­la­tion of the rea­sons he feels that Mister Sellers was either mis­led or bam­boo­zled by the PNP (my words).

1. Furniture scan­dal 2. Shell waiv­er scan­dal 3. Sandals Whitehouse scan­dal 4. Operations PRIDE scan­dal 5. Motor vehi­cle scan­dal 6. Finsac 7. Foreign exchange scan­dal 8. Trafigura scan­dal 9. Cuban light bulb scan­dal 10. National Housing Development Corporation scan­dal 11. Rollins land deal scan­dal 12. Sand min­ing 1 scan­dal 13. Sand min­ing 2 scan­dals 14. Montego Bay street peo­ple scan­dal 15. Zinc scan­dal 16. Telecoms scan­dal 17. Net-Serv scan­dal 18. Outameni scan­dal 19. Bad gas scan­dal 20. EWI Scandal.

There is real­ly no need to yell at Bakari Sellers, except to say that if the young mis­ter Sellers intends to have cred­i­bil­i­ty going for­ward, he must pay keen­er atten­tion to the caus­es to which he lends his voice. Not only will he be embar­rassed by fail­ing to do so, but his speech­es will undoubt­ed­ly come back to haunt his career.
Mister Sellers whom I’m sure is right back here in the United States, hav­ing col­lect­ed his speak­ing fees, did not do due dili­gence in ensur­ing that the his­to­ry of the polit­i­cal par­ty to which he was lend­ing his voice was not anti­thet­i­cal to his own worldview.

As a Democrat who sup­port­ed President Barack Obama, the only President in our life­time who has had two terms in office with­out a scan­dal, I do under­stand how Sellers would have ” cor­rup­tion” at the top of his con­cerns before deliv­er­ing a speech in a devel­op­ing Jamaica.
The only prob­lem is that Sellers deliv­ered that speech in front of the wrong audience.
Clearly, Mister Sellers had not done the prepa­ra­tion nec­es­sary. Had he scratched the sur­face, it is less like­ly he would have gone to a PNP ral­ly to speak out against cor­rup­tion against the still rel­a­tive­ly new JLP Administration.

The PNP has been a cesspool of cor­rup­tion since it’s incep­tion. It is stun­ning that the Dinasours who have illic­it­ly fat­tened them­selves at the expense of the poor Jamaican peo­ple, still sit in wait­ing to once again hold state pow­er. That they would have the temer­i­ty to talk about cor­rup­tion is absolute­ly Trumpian.

Let me be clear, how­ev­er, Prime Minister Holness is doing a ter­rif­ic job as Prime Minister, nev­er­the­less, the incre­men­tal gains he’s man­aged will be swept away in a Tsunami of dis­af­fec­tion if he does not ensure that the Government he heads exer­cis­es full fideli­ty to the inau­gur­al address he gave upon being sworn in as PM on the sec­ond occasion.
There can be no mis­take about what the Jamaican peo­ple expect when it comes to the judi­cious exe­cu­tion of poli­cies and the effec­tive and trans­par­ent process which ought to exist as it per­tains to state funds.
The Prime Minister as head of the Government and leader of his par­ty has a respon­si­bil­i­ty and indeed a duty to act with utmost alacrity and dis­patch to head off any neg­a­tive press which would emerge as it per­tains to cor­rup­tion in his government.
As a con­se­quence, where there is any sliv­er of evi­dence that there may be unto­ward behav­ior by any of his sub­or­di­nates they must imme­di­ate­ly be removed until an exhaus­tive inves­ti­ga­tion is done to ascer­tain the facts.
No mem­ber of Parliament or Minister has a right to be in any posi­tion of pow­er. Public ser­vice is an hon­or, no one is enti­tled to it.

In the same way that mis­ter Sellers did not ful­ly acquaint him­self with the facts before address­ing the PNP’s 80 annu­al con­fer­ences, so too have many Jamaicans, [many with­in the JLP], hitched their wag­ons to the American Republican Party. They do so with­out the ben­e­fit of a full appre­ci­a­tion of the ways in which the two major Political par­ties have crossed ide­o­log­i­cal paths after the 1964 civ­il rights act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.[https://​www​.loc​.gov/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​s​/​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​c​t​/​c​i​v​i​l​-​r​i​g​h​t​s​-​a​c​t​-​o​f​-​1​9​6​4​.​h​tml]

The sign­ing of the civ­il rights act was fol­lowed by a mass exo­dus of white male Americans from the Democratic par­ty, the par­ty of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to the Republican party.
 It was Nixon who devised and pur­sued what came to be called the Southern strat­e­gy. This was, in the admirably con­cise word­ing of Wikipedia, an appeal “to racism against African-Americans.” Nixon was hard­ly the first Republican to notice that Lyndon Johnson’s civ­il rights leg­is­la­tion had alien­at­ed whites both in the South and else­where — Johnson him­self had fore­cast that Southern whites would desert the Democratic Party[http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/nixon-bigger-crime-southern-strategy-article‑1.1891611]

The evo­lu­tion and jux­ta­po­si­tion of the two major par­ties and how the Democrats, the par­ty of the Dixiecrats and the Klan, came to be the par­ty of black Americans as a result of the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts is a good case study.
Sufficing to say that what­ev­er affin­i­ty blacks both in the United States and across the Globe may have had with the GOP, it must now be reex­am­ined against the back­drop of what that par­ty has become.
A far right-wing par­ty which ped­dles Racism, Xenophobia, Misogyny, Religous intol­er­ance, and hatred.

The roman­tic ideas some shared about the par­ty of Lincoln who freed the slaves must be tem­pered with the slave-own­ing Lincoln stat­ing ” If I could save the union with­out free­ing a sin­gle damn slave I would do it”.
The roman­tic ide­al­ism about Ronald Reagan’s hav­ing Seaga as his first head of state vis­i­tor to the White House and lat­er sign­ing an amnesty bill which gave legal sta­tus to undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants must be care­ful­ly scru­ti­nized against Reagan’s advance­ment of Nixon’s south­ern strategy.
Sometimes the roman­tic notions and ide­al­ism we have about a per­son or a coun­try is just that, roman­tic ide­al­ism. Before we hitch our wag­ons to some hors­es we bet­ter make damn sure we know where they will drag us.

Senate major­i­ty leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee chair­man Charles Grassley have repeat­ed­ly sig­naled that they are more inter­est­ed in seat­ing President Trump’s nom­i­nee on the Supreme Court than in per­form­ing their sworn duty to pro­vide advice and con­sent as part of a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances. But, as the con­fir­ma­tion process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been rocked by alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault and pro­found ques­tions about whether this nom­i­nee has been prop­er­ly vet­ted, McConnell and Grassley can no longer be allowed to reject the basic stan­dards for Senate con­sid­er­a­tion of Supreme Court picks.

It is now abun­dant­ly clear that, in their rush to con­firm an excep­tion­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial nom­i­nee, McConnell and Grassley dis­re­gard­ed their oaths of office and the man­dates of the Constitution. They shamed them­selves and the cham­ber they have occu­pied for most of their adult lives — McConnell since 1985, Grassley since 1981.

With just days to go before Thursday’s sched­uled vote by the Judiciary Committee on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion, McConnell and Grassley have been tripped up in their rush to posi­tion Trump’s man on the bench in time for the October term of the high court—and, of far more con­se­quence in McConnell’s fierce­ly par­ti­san cal­cu­lus, before November elec­tions that might upset dom­i­nance of the Senate by cor­po­rate-aligned Republicans.

California col­lege pro­fes­sor Christine Blasey Ford has alleged that Kavanaugh sex­u­al­ly assault­ed her more than three decades ago, when they were high-school stu­dents. She has told her sto­ry in a let­ter to California Senator Dianne Feinstein and a com­pelling inter­view with The Washington Post. She has pro­vid­ed details of a poly­graph test and ther­a­pist notes that cor­rob­o­rate her account.

Key Republican sen­a­tors, includ­ing Maine’s Susan Collins, who is con­sid­ered an essen­tial swing vote on court picks, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, a mem­ber of the Judiciary Committee, say fur­ther action on the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion should be delayed until Ford is giv­en a hear­ing. “If they push for­ward with­out any attempt with hear­ing what she’s had to say, I’m not com­fort­able vot­ing yes,” Flake said Sunday. “We need to hear from her. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.” Even White House coun­selor Kellyanne Conway says, “This woman should not be insult­ed and she should not be ignored.”

“Let me make very clear: I’ve spo­ken with the pres­i­dent, I’ve spo­ken with [South Carolina Senator Lindsey] Graham and oth­ers,” says Conway. “This woman will be heard. She’s going to… I think the Senate Judiciary Committee will decide how and through which forum.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have asked that Thursday’s planned vote on the nom­i­na­tion be put off until “seri­ous ques­tions about Judge Kavanaugh’s record, truth­ful­ness and char­ac­ter” can be “thor­ough­ly eval­u­at­ed and answered.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D‑RI) explains that this is about much more than a sim­ple time-out. “I admire the courage Ms. Ford has shown in com­ing for­ward with her sto­ry. This requires a pause, at a min­i­mum, in the unseem­ly, spe­cial-inter­est-fund­ed rush to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Court,” says Whitehouse, a vet­er­an pros­e­cu­tor and for­mer state attor­ney gen­er­al. “Kavanaugh’s blan­ket denial can­not be rec­on­ciled with her spe­cif­ic rec­ol­lec­tions, and the FBI needs time to take prop­er wit­ness state­ments. Lying to an FBI agent in a for­mal inter­view is a crime, and an impeach­able offense.”

If the Republicans insist on advanc­ing the nom­i­na­tion with­out a prop­er review by the FBI, the Judiciary Committee has to tem­per the excess­es of par­ti­san­ship that have so far been on dis­play in the approach of McConnell and Grassley to this process.

Ford must be afford­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tes­ti­fy to the full com­mit­tee in a for­mal ses­sion that is orga­nized with an eye toward pro­vid­ing her with a fair and respon­si­ble hear­ing. Kavanaugh should also be called to tes­ti­fy. Witnesses who can pro­vide addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and insight should be heard.

Fatima Goss Graves, the pres­i­dent and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, out­lines some basic stan­dards for how the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate, can pro­ceed: “Christine Blasey Ford nev­er asked to come for­ward and share her sto­ry about the sex­u­al vio­lence she says she expe­ri­enced at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh. She was dragged into the spot­light against her will. But now that Ford’s sto­ry is pub­lic, the Senate is oblig­at­ed to take these alle­ga­tions seri­ous­ly and give them the care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion they deserve — while pro­tect­ing the pri­vate cit­i­zen who many will now tar­get for per­son­al destruc­tion because she has named her expe­ri­ence. The Senate has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get it right this time and not repeat the wrongs that were done to Anita Hill in 1991. Anita Hill’s tes­ti­mo­ny and the wit­ness­ing of all who have come after her — espe­cial­ly over the past year — have made it indis­putable: sex­u­al harass­ment and sex­u­al vio­lence are behav­iors that must nev­er be excused or explained away. If the charges are true, Kavanaugh’s behav­ior makes clear that he is not fit for a seat on the Supreme Court, or any court.”

This must be seen as the point at which the Judiciary Committee begins the seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion that McConnell and Grassley thwart­ed with their hyper-politi­cized attempt to has­ten the process. Revelations regard­ing Kavanaugh that have emerged since the ini­tial Judiciary Committee ses­sions with the nom­i­nee must be reviewed. Christine Blasey Ford is pre­pared to tes­ti­fy, and sen­a­tors have a duty to con­sid­er that tes­ti­mo­ny. Emerging evi­dence that Kavanaugh has repeat­ed­ly lied to the com­mit­tee must also be con­sid­ered—in order to pro­vide con­text for his response to Ford’s account and, more broad­ly, to give sen­a­tors per­spec­tive when con­sid­er­ing a nom­i­na­tion that demands the over­sight McConnell and Grassley have tried to avoid. (Story orig­i­nat­ed here) https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​o​w​-​i​s​-​t​h​e​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​h​o​l​d​-​r​e​a​l​-​h​e​a​r​i​n​g​s​-​o​n​-​t​h​e​-​k​a​v​a​n​a​u​g​h​-​n​o​m​i​n​a​t​i​on/