In local pol­i­tics, right here in our neigh­bor­hood many in the Democratic machin­ery, act as Republicans and vote with Republicans on some of the most con­tro­ver­sial issues includ­ing the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar jail com­plex right here on Hamilton street in the city of Poughkeepsie.
Local Democratic Council rep­re­sen­ta­tives say the bond was approved to build the jail with­out the req­ui­site envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies and the effect the com­plex will have on the local environment.

Here in the city of Poughkeepsie, it is only a three- minute dri­ve across the mid-Hudson bridge and you are in Ulster County, a coun­ty which is laud­ed as one of the most lib­er­al coun­ties in the entire Country.
Yet the sor­did sto­ries of and the unend­ing tales of racial pro­fil­ing, and the ille­gal search­ing of peo­ple of col­or vehi­cles by the Ulster County’s Sheriff’s office, The State Police and the Town of Lloyd’s police are far too many to be ignored.

In this Article, our friends at the Nation talks about the Democratic Sherriff of Ulster coun­ty and how the race is shap­ing up in this one of the most lib­er­al coun­ties in the age of Trump.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…

Some say Ulster County’s long­time sher­iff sees him­self as “above the law” — but pri­ma­ry vot­ers have a chance to show him otherwise.

In the Hudson Valley, a dis­tinct­ly Trump-like Democrat is fac­ing an unex­pect­ed pri­ma­ry chal­lenge in a key local race — one that’s most­ly flown under the nation­al radar.

At a can­di­dates’ forum in Woodstock last week, Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum, who is seek­ing his fourth term in office, raised eye­brows when he told the crowd, “It’s out there that I’m a racist, and that the sheriff’s office is racist. Am I get­ting sued by four black offi­cers? Yes. But let me tell you this: They’re suing me for not get­ting pro­mot­ed. Two out of the four nev­er even took a pro­mo­tion­al exam. The third one took the exam and failed. The fourth per­son took the exam, and passed, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was arrest­ed for steal­ing from the sheriff’s office. So that makes me a racist and I don’t under­stand it.”

He added: “As far as the oth­er law­suits against me, we’ve won every one of them.” (A female cor­rec­tions offi­cer who sued the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office in fed­er­al court for on-the-job harass­ment was award­ed a large set­tle­ment in 2014.)

Norman James, who retired from the sheriff’s office in April after 30 years work­ing at the Ulster County jail, is one of the plain­tiffs in the case Van Blarcum men­tioned in Woodstock (there are five in total, and two are no longer with the depart­ment). He said he and the oth­ers are suing the sheriff’s office in fed­er­al court for sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion against the department’s small num­ber of black cor­rec­tions officers.

“The white offi­cers get a lot bet­ter treat­ment than the black offi­cers do,” said James. “If you’re a black offi­cer and you com­mit some sort of infrac­tion, you’re dealt with much more harsh­ly by the admin­is­tra­tion than if you’re white. If you’re white, you may get a 30-day sus­pen­sion, but it’s eas­i­ly for­giv­en and for­got­ten and you’re still able to advance. You also get eas­i­er job assignments.”

“There’s an old-boy net­work,” he said, “and it’s all white.” Van Blarcum didn’t respond to an inter­view request.

ames told me about a white offi­cer who threw a glass at a woman in a bar, caus­ing a facial injury that required 150 stitch­es. He faced a 30-day sus­pen­sion and then went on with his career. The black cop who was “arrest­ed for steal­ing from the sheriff’s office” was a vet­er­an with a clean record who ran out of gas one night and filled up his per­son­al vehi­cle with the department’s gas. He offered to pay resti­tu­tion. According to James, that inci­dent occurred 15 years ago, and that offi­cer has been repeat­ed­ly passed over for pro­mo­tions ever since. “Twenty-two years on the job, and he’s still work­ing on the hous­ing units like a rook­ie,” he said.

“I have no inter­est in pro­mo­tions,” said Tyrone Brodhead, a 19-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment and anoth­er plain­tiff in the suit. “My issue is that I’m con­stant­ly being accused of bring­ing in con­tra­band and sub­ject­ed to inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tions. I’m sub­ject­ed to lock­er search­es, vehi­cle search­es, and per­son­al search­es. They’ve nev­er sub­stan­ti­at­ed any of these charges, but I’ve been labeled a drug dealer.”

“I’ve been on the coun­ty­wide swat team, but I’ve been held back from oper­a­tions when­ev­er they involve nar­cotics,” Brodhead observed. “I’ve nev­er been involved in drugs, I don’t use drugs, and there’s no rea­son for this oth­er than the col­or of my skin. It’s a hos­tile work environment.”

The attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cers didn’t respond to an inter­view request by press time.

In 2014, Van Blarcum ran unop­posed for his third term in office. He was reelect­ed eas­i­ly, tak­ing 90 per­cent of the vote. According to the Times Herald Record, Van Blarcum’s vote total in the coun­ty that year exceed­ed that of both the Democratic and Republican guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­dates combined.

But in May, as sev­er­al oth­er local incum­bents sailed to easy vic­to­ries at the Ulster County Democratic nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tion, Van Blarcum faced an upris­ing among local Democratic offi­cials and activists. He report­ed­ly left the venue before his bid for the nom­i­na­tion was reject­ed by a lop­sided, 85 per­cent to 15 per­cent margin.

What shift­ed in the inter­ven­ing years? Andrew Zink, pres­i­dent of the Ulster County Young Democrats, said, “The elec­tion of Donald Trump changed the equa­tion.” (Local Democrats were furi­ous when Van Blarcum and sev­er­al of his deputies appeared in a pho­to-op with the pres­i­dent in the Oval Office.) “Trump’s elec­tion woke peo­ple up,” said Zink. “Trump made us look at these local issues and eval­u­ate our local elect­ed offi­cials and ask our­selves, ‘is this what we want?’ And when the Democratic vot­ers of Ulster County looked at that ques­tion in that race, they said, ‘no, we don’t want our own Donald Trump.’”

Since his last, easy reelec­tion in 2014, Van Blarcum has made a series of head­lines, some going nation­al, that alien­at­ed restive Democrats. Local activists said Van Blarcum’s ten­den­cy to use his office to ampli­fy hard-right mes­sages became intol­er­a­ble after the 2016 election.

In the days fol­low­ing a 2015 mass shoot­ing that left 14 peo­ple dead in San Bernardino, California, Van Blarcum urged coun­ty res­i­dents with gun per­mits to car­ry firearms at all times. The appeal was post­ed on his office’s offi­cial Facebook page. The fol­low­ing year, he trashedlocal “sanc­tu­ary city” ordi­nances, and said that his deputies, who, accord­ing to Van Blarcum, have long coop­er­at­ed with the fed­er­al Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, wouldn’t change the way they did busi­ness. Shortly before his last elec­tion, he’d angered gun safe­ty advo­cates by urg­ing his deputies to “use dis­cre­tion” when con­sid­er­ing charges against peo­ple who vio­lat­ed the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act, a gun-con­trol pack­age that New York state passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

“The sheriff’s made it very clear that he’s above the law,” said Dan Torres, a New Paltz City Councilor and a fierce crit­ic of Van Blarcum. “He’s done that by cam­paign­ing with coun­ty resources, thumb­ing his nose at com­mu­ni­ties that want to pro­tect their immi­grants, mak­ing wild state­ments about guns, and then get­ting the coun­try sued mul­ti­ple times because of his actions. He’s a wingnut with a real dis­re­gard for the US Constitution.”

Van Blarcum’s Democratic chal­lenger, Juan Figueroa, said that it was the sheriff’s deci­sion to weigh in — again, on the Ulster County Sheriff’s offi­cial Facebook page — on NFL play­ers tak­ing a knee to protest racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing that first drew his inter­est in the race. The post, which echoed tweets about the issue from Donald Trump, claimed that the play­ers had “show[ed] an utter lack of patri­o­tism and total dis­re­spect for our vet­er­ans — liv­ing and dead — and every­thing that they put their lives on the line for!” It called for Ulster County res­i­dents to “boy­cott all foot­ball tele­casts [and] refrain from attend­ing or view­ing any NFL games.… let the NFL play to emp­ty stadiums.”

Figueroa, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, said the post was part of a “pat­tern of that sort of behav­ior” that “just shows [that Van Blarcum] has been in office a lit­tle too long and doesn’t real­ize what his job is sup­posed to be. When you use your office for some­thing like that, you’re abus­ing your office. The sher­iff is elect­ed by the peo­ple, and he’s sup­posed to rep­re­sent all of the people.”

Figueroa was also incensed by Van Blarcum’s prac­tice of con­duct­ing “sus­pi­cion­less war­rant checks” on peo­ple enter­ing the local social-ser­vices office, a prac­tice that was only dis­con­tin­ued after then – New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent coun­ty offi­cials a let­ter clar­i­fy­ing that the pol­i­cy was dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and “in vio­la­tion of civ­il rights law.” Story orig­i­nat­ed here( https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​h​o​w​-​o​n​e​-​o​f​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​i​e​s​t​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​g​o​t​-​a​-​s​u​r​p​r​i​s​i​n​g​-​c​h​a​l​l​e​n​g​er/

Since this sto­ry was pub­lished: Van Blarcum was defeat­ed­ly in an over­whelm­ing repu­di­a­tion by the vot­ers who chose Figueroa by a land­slide 80% to 20% drubbing.

This is how the New York Times saw it sev­en­teen years ago.

There is a strange dichoto­my hap­pen­ing in the Democratic Party about the course the par­ty should take in it’s response to Donald Trump’s pres­i­den­cy and the shock­ing intran­si­gence of Republicans in the face of the assault on the nation’s Institutions and norms. On the one hand, there is the tried and failed strat­e­gy which says: do not say or do any­thing which will gar­ner any back­lash, regard­less of what Republicans do we should main­tain the great­est degree of deco­rum and nor­mal­cy.
That strat­e­gy has not worked, yet the estab­lish­ment wing of the par­ty is hell-bent on con­tin­u­ing on that path from which the major­i­ty of it’s younger vot­ers have long veered.

The strat­e­gy which I have per­son­al­ly labeled the Republican-lite strat­e­gy has been dis­as­trous for the par­ty on sev­er­al fronts.
The par­ty has absorbed mon­u­men­tal loss­es in Governor’s races over the life of this approach, even in deep blue states like New York, New Jersy, Connecticut, Massachutes and oth­ers. (It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that there are hard­ly ever any statewide office­hold­ers in Red states)
Additionally, Senate and House seats, as well as offices all the way to dog-catch­er have been swal­lowed up in Republican Tsunami-like avalanche of wins.….…and gerrymandering.

Equally as con­se­quen­tial is the alacrity with which the Democratic par­ty has cho­sen to jet­ti­son it’s most artic­u­late lead­ers at the slight­est oppor­tu­ni­ty. Just ask Former Senator Al Franken how that feels.
The Republican par­ty has in the high­est office the most despi­ca­ble per­son prob­a­bly ever to hold that office and yet the Democratic par­ty seem­ing­ly is mind­less­ly focused on being nice.

Noted Presidential Historian and Author, Jon Meecham not­ed that the aber­ra­tion which is the Trump Presidency is a back­lash to the Obama pres­i­den­cy. Yet Meecham argues that twen­ty years from today Americans will live in Barack Obama’s America rather than in Donald Trump’s America.
Meecham believes that what is hap­pen­ing is the last gasp of the Strom Thurmond, Richard Nixon, Pat Buchanan vision of America.

I hope Meecham is right, yet I hard­ly believe that.….that can ever become a real­i­ty if the Democratic Party con­tin­ue to fail so mis­er­ably even at the most basic of its respon­si­bil­i­ties.
It is an open secret that mil­lions of Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers did not turn up to vote for Secretary Hillary Clinton. As con­se­quen­tial as that has been and will con­tin­ue to be for America it is impor­tant to under­stand the cir­cum­stances which allowed for a 74-year-old pre­vi­ous­ly unknown Socialist Vermont US Senator to split the Democratic vote.

As I tried to artic­u­late on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, rather than see the answers in the prob­lem the Democratic par­ty con­tin­ues to dou­ble down on the very same Republican-lite approach­es.
Party elites brushed aside the earth­shat­ter­ing win of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14^th District over Joseph Crowley the estab­lish­ment long­time can­di­date, label­ing it as a sign of not here the par­ty is going but a sign of where the Bronx is going.

The sev­er­al oth­er wins in which the Democrat who pre­vailed in their respec­tive pri­maries did not fit the tra­di­tion­al clean-cut white guy mold has done lit­tle to awak­en the Democratic par­ty to the real­i­ty that maybe.….. just maybe, grass­roots Democratic vot­ers want clear lines of demar­ca­tion between the two polit­i­cal parties.

The rise of Stacy Abrams in Georgia, Ben Jealous in Maryland and Andrew Gillium in Florida and final­ly yes­ter­day, the win by African-American City Council mem­ber Ayanna Pressley In Boston Massachutes, are also clear signs that Democratic vot­ers are not con­tent with the sta­tus quo.

Pressly’s defeat of ten term Democratic US rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael Capuano all but guar­an­teed her­self a seat in the US House of Representatives, there is no Republican vying for that seat.
This is momen­tous on sev­er­al lev­els not the least of which is that Ayanna Pressley will become the very first African-American woman to rep­re­sent her state in the US Congress.

I hope for the sake of the United States and indeed the World that there will be a blue wave come November 6^th. There are lit­er­al­ly tens of mil­lions of peo­ple feel­ing the same way, wait­ing for that day to exhale.
But what if when the votes are count­ed Republicans still con­trol the House and Senate, still con­trol the Governor’s man­sions they did and even picked up a few?
And oh, please don’t for­get that Donald Trump will still be President.
Then what?

Does any­one believe that a Democratic Party led by Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi is going to save the Republic? Charles Schumer’s only inter­est is that Donald Trump is stick­ing it to the Palestinians and being the water boy of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Look, it comes as no sur­prise to me that Schumer the leader in the Senate, is mere­ly a pat­sy, a shad­ow of for­mer Democratic lead­ers like Harry Reid or even Tom Daschle.

Schumer is no more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly bound to the prin­ci­ples of Democratic ortho­doxy that Joeseph Leiberman was. Leiberman the Democratic Senator from Conneciticut was the Vice Presidential run­ning mate of Former Clinton Vice President Al Gore who was seek­ing his first term as pres­i­dent in 2,000.
No soon­er had Gore lost the electionLeibermen began to hedge his bets and sided with the George Bush White House.
By the time Barack Obama emerged as the Presidential can­di­date for the Democratic par­ty against the now deceased Senator John McCain of Arizona in 2008, Joe Leiberman had all but left the Democratic Party and had changed his par­ty affil­i­a­tion to Independent. A total betray­al to the Democratic vot­ers of the state of Connecticut who had elect­ed him more than once.

It came as no sur­prise that Leiberman who had been a life­long Democrat pri­or, would not sup­port the first African-American to have a real shot at the pres­i­den­cy, a mere eight years after he him­self was on a Democratic tick­et for vice pres­i­dent of the United States.
The fact of the mat­ter is that for the likes of Leiberman and Schumer total feal­ty to the state of Israel in a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and ulti­mate­ly a President of the United States trumps every­thing else, includ­ing giv­ing the lead­er­ship required to Democratic vot­ers they posi­tioned them­selves to lead.

In an age when Republicans have turned into Right-wing fas­cists, Democrats con­tin­ue to act Republican-lite, Progressives are cry­ing out for lead­er­ship. There is present­ly no leader in the Democratic par­ty with clout except Barack Obama. He will not be run­ning for any elect­ed office ever again.
If estab­lish­ment Democrats con­tin­ue to make the same mis­takes of tip­py-toe­ing around what’s hap­pen­ing, unable to har­ness the pow­er of the resis­tance, Donald Trump and his far-right par­ty led by the rene­gades in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate will con­tin­ue to pack the courts and change the face of America into the white eth­nos­tate they so des­per­ate­ly dream of.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

Back when President Barack Obama had black hair (L) with Sen. John McCain (R‑AZ) dur­ing a meet­ing with a bipar­ti­san group of Senators and mem­bers of Congress in the State Dining Room at the White House June 25, 2009, in Washington, D.C. Obama host­ed the bipar­ti­san group of Senate and House mem­bers to begin a dia­logue on immi­gra­tion with the hope of start­ing the debate lat­er this year​.Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)

I’m of the con­tention that we should gen­er­al­ly be judged or even rat­ed as humans by the best — and not worst — thing we’ve ever done. So I have no prob­lems with the recent­ly deceased Senator from Arizona, John McCain, a flawed, fal­li­ble white man from America, being assessed honestly.

But frankly, I’m hav­ing the biggest kiki over McCain giv­ing President Petty Bonespurs a great big fat fin­ger from the grave.

In life, McCain noto­ri­ous­ly left his sick bed to help cast the death knell for the repeal of Obamacare; he also chose not to pan­der to his racist base when some ques­tioned Obama’s alle­giance to America. In this writer’s mind, that lev­els out his choice of Sarah Palin as his run­ning mate, and vot­ing against mak­ing Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth­day a nation­al hol­i­day in his first term in Congress. In gen­er­al, and despite his polit­i­cal par­ty, McCain has, for the most part, act­ed with decen­cy and integri­ty, attrib­ut­es all but ghost from today’s Capitol Hill.

In that vein, CBS News reports that McCain request­ed that for­mer Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush deliv­er eulo­gies at his funer­al. McCain died on Saturday at age 81.

Former President Obama, who defeat­ed the six-term Senator in 2008 pres­i­den­tial race, issued a state­ment short­ly after McCain’s death say­ing that he and his for­mer rival shared “ a fideli­ty to some­thing high­er.” Obama continues:

We saw our polit­i­cal bat­tles, even, as a priv­i­lege, some­thing noble, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve as stew­ards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world. We saw this coun­try as a place where any­thing is pos­si­ble – and cit­i­zen­ship as our patri­ot­ic oblig­a­tion to ensure it for­ev­er remains that way.

Few of us have been test­ed the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt. Michelle and I send our most heart­felt con­do­lences to Cindy and their family.”

George W. Bush, who defeat­ed McCain for the GOP nom­i­na­tion in 2000, issued a state­ment also, hail­ing McCain as “a man of deep con­vic­tion and a patri­ot of the high­est order.”

Former pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter said: “John McCain was a man of hon­or, a true patri­ot in the best sense of the word. Americans will be for­ev­er grate­ful for his hero­ic mil­i­tary ser­vice and for his stead­fast integri­ty as a mem­ber of the United States Senate. Rosalynn and I extend our sin­cere con­do­lences to Senator McCain’s fam­i­ly and to the peo­ple of Arizona whom he rep­re­sent­ed so forth­right­ly for so many years.”

The New York Times reports that McCain’s body will lie in state in both the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix and Capitol Rotunda in DC, receive a full dress ser­vice at the Washington National Cathedral and will be buried at Annapolis.

Donald Trump, McCain’s some­times bit­ter rival, was not invit­ed to McCain’s funer­al, accord­ing to reports. Under pre­vi­ous­ly announced plans, Vice President Mike Pence will attend instead.

In hav­ing at least two — and prob­a­bly all liv­ing — pres­i­dents besides the sit­ting one, at his funer­al, McCain remains “the maverick.”
https://​www​.the​root​.com/​j​o​h​n​-​m​c​c​a​i​n​-​r​e​q​u​e​s​t​s​-​f​o​r​m​e​r​-​r​i​v​a​l​s​-​b​a​r​a​c​k​-​o​b​a​m​a​-​g​e​o​r​g​-​1​8​2​8​6​1​0​386

The reports start­ed trick­ling in to online forums and local news, start­ing in 2017. From Reddit to The Kansas City Star, Washington to New York, the sto­ries all fol­lowed rough­ly the same pat­tern: Bank of America sent a cus­tomer a notice demand­ing details about their cit­i­zen­ship — and if they refused to answer, their accounts were prompt­ly frozen.

Outside the United States, this is a nor­mal prac­tice. Dozens of coun­tries have agreed to the Common Reporting Standard aimed at com­bat­ing tax eva­sion, and began col­lect­ing cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion as part of that effort in 2017.

But state­side, these reports have raised fears that banks could, at least the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, help the author­i­ties iden­ti­fy and tar­get immi­grants. In the UK the bank­ing indus­try has already been charged with col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on for­eign­ers as part of a big­ger plan to cre­ate a “hos­tile envi­ron­ment” for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. Immigrants and advo­cates wor­ry the United States could be next.

Bank of America explained that it was required to ask the ques­tion to com­ply with Treasury reg­u­la­tions. It’s true that American finan­cial insti­tu­tions must mon­i­tor their accounts for signs of mon­ey laun­der­ing, and com­ply with the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Iran, Cuba, and Syria. Under a sep­a­rate law, for­eign banks must col­lect cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion from Americans, osten­si­bly in order to track down poten­tial tax-dodgers.

But domes­ti­cal­ly, they are not required to col­lect cus­tomer cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion. In fact, Social Security num­bers aren’t even required to open an account. Shortly after Donald Trump’s elec­tion, in December 2016, a senior coun­sel for the American Bankers Association said that “banks don’t track whether or not some­one is legal­ly in the U.S.”

Paulina Gonzalez, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the finan­cial inclu­sion non­prof­it California Reinvestment Coalition, sug­gests that Bank of America’s pol­i­cy “rais­es ques­tions about the role banks will play in Trump’s America.” Writing in The Hill, Gonzalez spec­u­lates that “some banks are more than will­ing to car­ry out Trump’s agen­da of cre­at­ing a sys­tem where immi­grants have few­er eco­nom­ic rights than others.”

The American Bankers Association declined to com­ment on spe­cif­ic insti­tu­tions’ poli­cies, but said that “strict reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments” aimed at deter­ring illic­it activ­i­ties jus­ti­fy requests for per­son­al infor­ma­tion. “Banks of all sizes are required to col­lect a range of infor­ma­tion about their cus­tomers to com­ply with the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and ‘Know Your Customer’ stan­dards,” says spokesper­son Blair Bernstein. “Since ⁹⁄₁₁, these strict reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments have steadi­ly expanded.”

Bank of America spokesper­son Christopher Feeney says the com­pa­ny does not ask for any actu­al proof of cit­i­zen­ship — just a customer’s word — and that it does not share that infor­ma­tion with any gov­ern­ment enti­ties. It insists that this pol­i­cy is not enforced selec­tive­ly with regard to what the gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers “high­er-risk cus­tomers.” Eventually, every sin­gle one of the bank’s cus­tomers will be asked for their cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion, Feeney says.

“This type of out­reach is noth­ing new — we’ve asked the cit­i­zen­ship ques­tion for many years, near­ly a decade,” says Feeney. “Citizenship sta­tus is not con­sid­ered when it comes to estab­lish­ing bank accounts and cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus is not shared with any oth­er par­ty.” Immigration author­i­ties or oth­er gov­ern­ment enti­ties would require a court order to obtain it.

Still, even if the pol­i­cy isn’t new, selec­tive, or unique to Bank of America, its clum­sy appli­ca­tion at a crit­i­cal moment con­tributes to an atmos­phere of dread for nonci­t­i­zens in Trump’s America. What’s more, it com­pounds the long-stand­ing prob­lem of finan­cial exclu­sion. While the result of banks’ col­lect­ing cit­i­zen­ship infor­ma­tion is less imme­di­ate­ly fright­en­ing than the prospect of depor­ta­tion, cit­i­zen­ship data give banks more infor­ma­tion with which to assess a customer’s creditworthiness.

In the United States immi­grants make up a sig­nif­i­cant share of poten­tial bor­row­ers and account-hold­ers. There are more than 13 mil­lion per­ma­nent res­i­dents with green cards, 2 mil­lion work­ers in the coun­try on visas, and an esti­mat­ed 11 mil­lion res­i­dents who are undoc­u­ment­ed. Denying bank­ing ser­vices to this large pop­u­la­tion — and miss­ing out on all those fees and deposits — is not a great way of max­i­miz­ing profits.

But immi­grants are not a pro­tect­ed class under fair-lend­ing laws, and face legal dis­crim­i­na­tion from finan­cial insti­tu­tions as a mat­ter of course. While finan­cial insti­tu­tions can­not dis­crim­i­nate based on “nation­al ori­gin,” they are free to dis­crim­i­nate based on immi­gra­tion sta­tus. Asking for a customer’s cit­i­zen­ship helps them do that.

Legal sta­tus isn’t an unrea­son­able fac­tor for any lender to take under con­sid­er­a­tion when look­ing to lim­it their risk. If some­one is like­ly to leave the coun­try on short notice, it can affect their abil­i­ty to pay back a loan, which, in turn, can jus­ti­fy requir­ing larg­er down pay­ments on mort­gages, high­er inter­est rates on per­son­al loans, or denials of those lines of cred­it entire­ly. Policies requir­ing clients to reveal their cit­i­zen­ship thus for­mal­ize prac­tices that pre­vi­ous­ly might have been casu­al­ly or selec­tive­ly applied.

Currently, nonci­t­i­zens are able to access tra­di­tion­al loans only at the dis­cre­tion of indi­vid­ual lenders, some of which adver­tise spe­cial advis­ers and prod­ucts for immi­grant cus­tomers, and some of which deny cer­tain ser­vices to cer­tain class­es of immigrants.

A pend­ing class-action law­suit filed with the US District Court of Northern California against Wells Fargo claims that the bank refused to accept appli­ca­tions for stu­dent loans and cred­it cards from DACA recip­i­ents, which plain­tiffs claim is a form of ille­gal dis­crim­i­na­tion under California con­sumer-pro­tec­tion law, as well as a fed­er­al civ­il-rights law orig­i­nal­ly draft­ed to pro­tect eman­ci­pat­ed slave “aliens.”

Wells Fargo doesn’t deny dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Dreamers, but con­tends that it is allowed to, because immi­gra­tion sta­tus isn’t a pro­tect­ed class. In its defense, Wells Fargo specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed President Trump’s com­ments that he would end DACA as proof that those cus­tomers were espe­cial­ly risky — after all, with depor­ta­tion loom­ing, how would the bank pos­si­bly recoup their debts?

Still, by the num­bers, immi­grants prove to be good bank cus­tomers. Since receiv­ing Social Security num­bers, tens of thou­sands of DACA recip­i­ents have tak­en out stu­dent loans and cred­it cards, and bought cars and homes — even though their mort­gages can come with high­er inter­est rates, as they’re hard­er to sell on the sec­ondary-debt mar­ket. There’s lit­tle data avail­able spe­cif­ic to nonci­t­i­zen immi­grant loans — but when immi­grants are able to become cit­i­zens, home­own­er­ship rates jump.

What’s more, fed­er­al immi­gra­tion poli­cies end up chang­ing the way banks eval­u­ate risk. The more the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment cracks down on immi­gra­tion, the more immi­grants can be jus­ti­fi­ably treat­ed as risky cus­tomers under exist­ing con­sumer-pro­tec­tion laws, and denied the same finan­cial rights as their cit­i­zen neighbors.

Asking for cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus pro­vokes anoth­er, more imme­di­ate effect: fear.

Some of the under­banked avoid tra­di­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions because of a lack of trust. They aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly forced into the more expen­sive alter­na­tive finan­cial-ser­vices mar­ket — they often just feel it’s their best, safest option. This Article was fist pub­lished here. https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​w​h​y​-​i​s​-​b​a​n​k​-​o​f​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​a​s​k​i​n​g​-​c​l​i​e​n​t​s​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​t​h​e​i​r​-​c​i​t​i​z​e​n​s​h​ip/

Writer’s block a few friends asked me?
Nah, I replied!
There is just so much going on that a sense of numb­ness has come over me. Not numb­ness which is equiv­a­lent to a sur­ren­der, just a kind of, “where do we begin in all of this”?

Is that what was intend­ed by the dai­ly bar­rage of real­ly bad stuff which just seems to come at us inces­sant­ly, is it part of a long game or is it just the result of a deranged, imbe­cil­ic, lunatic?
Is it hard to tell right?
Political lead­ers come and go, some are well-inten­tioned, oth­ers not so much. Nevertheless, there has always been a kind of con­sen­sus that each and every per­son who steps for­ward to offer him or her­self for ser­vice has some sort of appeal and may pro­duce some degree of good to some peo­ple depend­ing on who you ask?

Who is served by rolling back envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards which gov­ern mass pol­lu­tion of the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat?
Is any­one that dense to is Obama derange­ment syn­drome that real that any­one in their right mind would be blind to this?
After we destroy the plan­et and stack up zeroes on the bal­ance sheets, what then?
Is this what the space force is all about?

Why lie to low infor­ma­tion peo­ple that there is some­thing called clean-cole?
I mean, who is stu­pid enough to believe there is actu­al­ly some­thing called clean cole any­way? Who is daft to the extent that they believe coal is com­ing back?

Coal production up in southern West Virginia, down nationwidehttp://​www​.reg​is​ter​-her​ald​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​c​o​a​l​-​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​u​p​-​i​n​-​s​o​u​t​h​e​r​n​-​w​e​s​t​-​v​i​r​g​i​n​i​a​-​d​o​w​n​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​w​i​d​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​_​6​5​2​6​7​f​8​f​-​d​6​a​2​-​5​c​d​4​-​b​7​2​2​-​d​5​c​c​4​4​5​0​3​4​0​e​.​h​tml

Donal Trump will be in Charleston, West Virginia, for a polit­i­cal ral­ly on Tuesday to tout his admin­is­tra­tion’s pro­pos­al to give states the right to set their own emis­sions stan­dards for coal-fueled pow­er plants.
This is essen­tial­ly a roll­back of President Obama’s efforts to com­bat cli­mate change.
Additionally, the EPA the agency tasked with pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, on Tuesday for­mal­ly unveiled the details of its new plan to devolve reg­u­la­tion of coal-fired pow­er plants back to the states, one that is expect­ed to give a boost to the coal indus­try and increase car­bon emis­sions nationwide.

According to the web­site (https://​qz​.com/​1​1​9​1​7​8​5​/​e​v​e​n​-​c​o​a​l​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​-​k​n​o​w​s​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​c​a​n​t​-​s​a​v​e​-​it/)

Promising to bring coal jobs back and repeal­ing envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions at the nation­al lev­el is only harm­ful to these com­mu­ni­ties, because it gives them a sense of false hope and it would set them back,” said Sanya Carley, a pro­fes­sor of ener­gy pol­i­cy at Indiana University and lead author of a new study that exam­ines how Appalachians are cop­ing with coal’s decline.

SOURCE: PLAZAK Coal min­ing jobs.

One would imag­ine that the peo­ple who have stakes in mega-cor­po­ra­tions would be clear-eyed about this lit­tle plan­et on which we all have to live.
I have long stopped ask­ing “just how much mon­ey is enough”, instead I have con­clud­ed instead, that the amoral rapa­cious­ness of the mega-rich is well rep­re­sent­ed in the present occu­pant of the white house.
That greed will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for our plan­et, even if the harm was to end today. In the mean­time, the rest of us will have to suf­fer the con­se­quences as the sloven glut­tons gouge them­selves at the trough at our expense.

As a child raised in what we like to char­ac­ter­ize as a Christian home we were led to believe that there was a holi­ness to the land of Israel. Christians today are still rev­er­en­tial to Israel as a spe­cial place sanc­tioned by God.
Pastors like John Hagee preach about a com­ing Armageddon in which the forces of good and evil will meet and Israel will defeat the forces of evil arrayed against her.
Hagee him­self would be advised to stay away from that bat­tle based on his own philosophy.

As a Christian myself I had a hard time rec­on­cil­ing the nar­ra­tive of the west­ern Christian Church, includ­ing the white evan­gel­i­cals who demon­strate an undy­ing feal­ty to Israel.
So I start­ed dig­ging with a view to find­ing out for myself what was it about Israel which makes it so near and dear to America. You know out­side of the fact that the state of Israel nev­er exist­ed before 1948.

It also struck me that the peo­ple who pop­u­lat­ed the Palestinian’s land were actu­al­ly white Europeans flee­ing Hitler’s rage.
Never mind that as far as Judaism is con­cerned, the prac­ti­tion­ers of that faith does not believe that Jesus, the dark-skinned Nazarene was the son of God. In fact, so angry were the Jews with Yeshua that they offered him up to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor for exe­cu­tion, once they real­ized he was­n’t going to lead them into a war to top­ple the Roman occupiers.

But let us not get caught up in the weeds about Jews in the Bible at the time of Jesus Christ, because con­trary to what you hear now, Hebrew-Jews and Gentiles lived side by side in Palestine for thou­sands of years before Jesus Christ arrived, much less just 70-years ago when the Americans and Brits con­fis­cat­ed huge swaths of land from the Palestinians and gave it to white peo­ple who adopt­ed the ide­ol­o­gy (Zionism) which is essen­tial­ly a move­ment which pur­ports to ensure the safe­ty of those prac­tic­ing the Jewish faith.
Zionism, Jewish nation­al­ist move­ment that has had as its goal the cre­ation and sup­port of a Jewish nation­al state in Palestine.
Zionism is priv­i­leg­ing one group of peo­ple (Israelis) over anoth­er the(Palestinians.
By that very mea­sure the very essence of a Zionist state of Israel is by it’s own def­i­n­i­tion, an apartheid state.

The cre­ation of the state of Israel and the strate­gic place­ment of the so-called Jewish state, can­not be ful­ly under­stood unless its geo­graph­ic-place­ment, arma­ment, and main­te­nance are viewed against the strate­gic vital inter­ests of the west­ern world.
On the table for dis­cus­sion is the ques­tion of a dif­fer­ent set of rules for Israel than that which obtains for oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly African nations.

The strat­e­gy of label­ing any­one who crit­i­cizes Israel’s crimes, “anti-Semitic” also has its roots in the pre­ferred nation sta­tus bestowed upon her by America. It is a strat­e­gy designed to take full advan­tage of the empa­thy derived from the Holocaust by silenc­ing any­one who dares to speak out against Israel’s crimes against humanity.
A strat­e­gy which insu­lates and inoc­u­lates the apartheid state regard­less of its myr­i­ad trans­gres­sions of inter­na­tion­al law.
If you believe the con­cept of a pie-in-the-sky white God who has favorites, then it is easy to ignore the mass slaugh­ter of Palestinian civil­ians by Isreali defense force soldiers.
It is easy to ignore chil­dren picked off like flies while sol­diers of one of the best trained, best-equipped mil­i­tary in the world hoops it up like they are shoot­ing at inan­i­mate objects, not human beings.

As long as you are com­fort­able with the blan­ket state­ments that every Palestinian mur­dered are ter­ror­ists then you are good because their lives were already deval­ued by the Apartheid state and its supporters.
But if you are not a star­ry-eyed Christian brain­washed by those who enslaved our ances­tors, you will read­i­ly appre­ci­ate that a God who is tout­ed to be “just”, could under no cir­cum­stances have (cho­sen peo­ple).

You could under no cir­cum­stances believe that-that God signs off on the wan­ton and reck­less mur­der of inno­cent men, women, and chil­dren with the ratio­nal­iza­tion that they posed an exis­ten­tial threat to the state of Israel.
But the lead­ers of the Apartheid state is no longer try­ing to con­vince the entire world it is wrong and they are right.
They are engaged in sys­tem­at­ic harass­ment and deten­tion of some peo­ple who enter the apartheid state and may have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed dis­sent­ing opin­ions on whether we should all agree it is not okay to have snipers killing unarmed protest­ing men women and children.

Peter Beinart, a lead­ing Jewish-American jour­nal­ist, was detained for ques­tion­ing at the Ben-Gurion International Airport while enter­ing Israel. According to Haaretz​.com Beinart who is him­self of Jewish her­itage and a well-known journalist.
Beinart has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict for years. He has pub­licly expressed sup­port for boy­cotting prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured in Israeli set­tle­ments in the West Bank. His ques­tion­ing this week­end, he report­ed, did­n’t focus on that issue, but includ­ed a broad list of ques­tions about his polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and his ties to groups in Israel that oppose the set­tle­ments and the poli­cies of the cur­rent right-wing gov­ern­ment in Jerusalem.

The coun­try’s right-wing prime min­is­ter Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a half-heart­ed apol­o­gy to Beinart but the dam­age was already done. Clearly, Shin Bet the Israeli secu­ri­ty ser­vice felt suf­fi­cient­ly empow­ered to harass peo­ple who have dif­fer­ent views than they do.
In a state­ment released to the press, Netanyahu said that he “heard of Mr. Beinart’s ques­tion­ing at Ben Gurion air­port and imme­di­ate­ly spoke with Israel’s secu­ri­ty forces to inquire how this hap­pened. He was told it was an admin­is­tra­tive mis­take. Israel is an open soci­ety which wel­comes all – crit­ics and sup­port­ers alike.
Keep in mind that this very same Netanyahu has brand­ed African Jews and oth­er immi­grants to the state of Israel “inter­lop­ers”.
Netanyahu and oth­ers in his right-wing gov­ern­ment insist if they allow Africans to stay they will change the char­ac­ter of the Jewish state.
Never mind that by 2019 Israel is expect­ed to receive $3.3 bil­lion in American aid much of that, mon­ey comes from the tax­es of African Americans people.

According to Haaretz, Beinart’s inter­ro­ga­tion is the lat­est in a series of inci­dents at Israel’s bor­der entry and exit points that involved polit­i­cal ques­tion­ing of Jewish Americans..
Jewish American phil­an­thropist who donat­ed mil­lions to Israeli hos­pi­tals and schools was inter­ro­gat­ed because secu­ri­ty at Ben Gurion found a book­let about Palestine in his suit­case. Last week, two left-wing Jewish American activists were detained for three hours at the bor­der cross­ing between Israel and Egypt. One of the activists, Simone Zimmerman- who is one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Jewish anti-occu­pa­tion IfNotNow- claimed she was inter­ro­gat­ed about her polit­i­cal opin­ions.

How long will the world ignore Israel’s crime and spe­cial treat­ment made pos­si­ble by America’s sup­port and arma­ment, while oth­er Nations are inces­sant­ly maligned and forced to bear bru­tal sanctions?
Why International laws are not applic­a­ble to Israel is a ques­tion the world will have to con­front soon­er or later.

The polit­i­cal par­ties which emerged out of the Colonial era in Africa the Caribbean, South and Latin America all but squan­dered the oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish their respec­tive nations on the sol­id foot­ings of demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly trans­par­ent governance.
Instead, those who fought in the actu­al lib­er­a­tion wars across those geo­graph­ic areas and even those in the Caribbean who led the post­colo­nial strug­gles chose to devel­op patron­age sys­tems to ben­e­fit them­selves and those who sup­port them.

Political lead­ers and by exten­sion their polit­i­cal par­ties devel­oped a sense of own­er­ship for their respec­tive coun­tries even 50 years and more after those lib­er­a­tion strug­gles ended.
The pre­vail­ing sense is that those who did not live through and par­tic­i­pate in those strug­gles have no right to polit­i­cal power.

Nowhere is this sense of enti­tle­ment more evi­dent in my esti­ma­tion and the resul­tant dam­age it has caused more trans­par­ent­ly mea­sur­able, than in Zimbabwe which two Mondays ago held nation­al elections.
President Robert Mugabe’s rul­ing ZANU-PF par­ty has basi­cal­ly ruled Zimbabwe since white minor­i­ty rule end­ed in 1980.
until he was oust­ed from pow­er by the mil­i­tary last November.

Emmerson Mnangagwa a 75-year-old for­mer lieu­tenant of Mugabe and a vet­er­an of the mil­i­tary-installed him­self as inter­im pres­i­dent and a new elec­tion was called. Unfortunately, the removal of Mugabe did noth­ing to dis­man­tle the intri­cate ves­tiges of ZANU-PF which have been insti­tut­ed under Mugabe’s rule.

Mugabe a for­mer school teacher turned rev­o­lu­tion­ary in Ian Smith’s minor­i­ty-ruled Rhodesia rose to lead Zimbabwe after white minor­i­ty rule was dis­man­tled and elec­tions were held in 1980. Mugabe, like many rev­o­lu­tion­ary lead­ers who fought white oppres­sion and col­o­niza­tion, did not escape unscathed. After mak­ing anti-gov­ern­ment com­ments, he was con­vict­ed of sedi­tion and impris­oned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, estab­lished his lead­er­ship of ZANU and over­saw ZANU’s role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fight­ing Ian Smith’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly white government.[wiki]

He reluc­tant­ly took part in the peace nego­ti­a­tions bro­kered by the United Kingdom that result­ed in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agree­ment dis­man­tled white minor­i­ty rule and result­ed in the 1980 gen­er­al elec­tion, at which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to vic­to­ry. Mugabe’s admin­is­tra­tion expand­ed health care and edu­ca­tion and — despite his Marxist rhetoric and pro­fessed desire for a social­ist soci­ety—adhered large­ly to main­stream, con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nom­ic policies.

Some of Mugabe’s poli­cies, most notably his land reform poli­cies which appro­pri­at­ed lands held by whites and gave them to blacks angered tra­di­tion­al pow­ers like the United States. The resul­tant eco­nom­ic sanc­tions were soon to fol­low, help­ing to make life dif­fi­cult for Zimbabweans.

Fidel Castro led Cuba in its own lib­er­a­tion strug­gle against Fulgencio Batista a cor­rupt dic­ta­tor who allowed the Island Nation to become a hedo­nis­tic den for gang­sters large­ly sup­port­ed by the United States. After top­pling Batista in January 1^st, 1959 Castro, in turn, led Cuba down the road of com­mu­nist dictatorship.
Fifty-eight years lat­er despite the death of Fidel Castro Cuba remains immersed in a vice­like grip of dic­ta­tor­ship, still super­vised by some­one named Castro.

Zimbabweans had a chance to vote for a new direc­tion, [or so we thought ] for the very first time since 1980. The oppo­si­tion MDC Alliance led by forty-year-old Nelson Chamisa offered that chance to Zimbabweans.
It is incon­ceiv­able to imag­ine that despite the report­ed peace­ful nature of the vote on elec­tion day that the peo­ple went into the vot­ing booths and again vot­ed for ZANU-PF for anoth­er five years to the tune of a two-thirds major­i­ty in the legislature.

It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble the lev­el of greed and hunger for pow­er which dri­ves these peo­ple to the extent that they are inca­pable of putting coun­try of their most base instincts.
Our own Jamaica is no different.
All to often in both polit­i­cal par­ties we see black lead­er­ship treat­ing state pow­er as their own per­son­al fief­doms to be passed down to their children.

The nation of Zimbabwe was done a ter­ri­ble dis­ser­vice last week by ZANY-PF and all of the agen­cies of state includ­ing the Military , Police and (ZEC) the Zimbabwe elec­toral com­mis­sion. The ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of the peo­ple cer­tain­ly was not on the side of ZANU-PF. The peo­ple vot­ed for change but what they received were bul­lets and a clev­er­ly dis­guised Coup d’état

After assum­ing office sev­er­al months ago, the for­mer deputy President of the ZANU par­ty Emmerson Mnangagwa seeks legit­i­ma­cy from new elec­tions held July 30^th, and sanc­tions put in place by some west­ern pow­ers in response to Mugabe’s land reform poli­cies in that country.

Mnangagwa came into pow­er last November after divi­sions in the ZANU-PF par­ty caused mas­sive upheaval. Weeks of polit­i­cal chaos led for­mer President Robert Mugabe to resign after 37 years in office.
The results of the elec­tions may not be known for days yet even though the leader of the

On the oth­er side of the coin the head of the largest oppo­si­tion par­ty, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party,40-year-old Nelson Chamisa has tweet­ed that he has already won the elec­tions, though the Zimbabwe Election Commission(ZEC) has not announced a win­ner and has cau­tioned can­di­dates in the elec­tions not to make any announce­ments until (ZEC) has cer­ti­fied the elec­tion results.

The next three days should be a tense wait as Zimbwebians hun­gry for a dif­fer­ent approach wait to see whether their vote will tru­ly reflect their inten­tions when they entered the polling booths.
Let’s hear what young Nelson Camisa has to say about his vision for Zimbabwe post-Robert Mugabe.

Polls have closed in Zimbabwe’s his­toric elec­tion, the first since the fall of long­time leader Robert Mugabe.

Stanley Hall in Makokoba, Bulawayo, has a snaking queue but vot­ers wait­ing patient­ly. Presiding offi­cer says Makokoba has a lot of elder­ly vot­ers who need assis­tance, hence delays #ZimbabweDecides #ElectionsZW pic​.twit​ter​.com/​V​t​9​3​t​N​z​FPo

— ZimLive (@zimlive) July 30, 2018

Polls have closed in Zimbabwe’s his­toric elec­tion, the first since the fall of long­time leader Robert Mugabe.

Millions have vot­ed, turnout was high and the day was free of the vio­lence that marked pre­vi­ous elections.The 75-year-old President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a for­mer Mugabe con­fi­dante, is in a close race with main oppo­si­tion leader Nelson Chamisa.

The 40-year-old Chamisa has called the elec­tion a choice between Zimbabwe’s past and future​.Final elec­tion results are expect­ed with­in five days.

The ele­va­tion of Donald Trump to the American pres­i­den­cy has demon­strat­ed just how quick­ly the estab­lished norms we have come to take for grant­ed can disappear.

President Obama, a man tru­ly con­ver­sant of the weight he car­ried as the first non-white pres­i­dent com­port­ed him­self with immac­u­late fideli­ty and class.
Additionally, his wife Michelle and their two daugh­ters, com­plet­ed the mod­el fam­i­ly image many are now look­ing back on with great nos­tal­gic emotionalism.

Barack Obama’s most griev­ous sin even after two bruis­ing cam­paign sea­sons and eight (8) years in the white house, was his wear­ing of the now infa­mous tan suit which Republican cultists harangued and cas­ti­gat­ed him for, with the medi­a’s full acquiescence.
You may also remem­ber how mad the right-wing nut-jobs were? Their non­sen­si­cal argu­ments were that it was­n’t suit­ably pres­i­den­tial, or some cocka­mamie rea­son they came up with for hat­ing it.
It was a sign to ISIS that the American pres­i­dent was­n’t tough,that he want­ed to go to a fundrais­er , Long Island Republican con­gress­man Peter King declared.

Obama’s sar­to­r­i­al depar­ture from the ho-hum of the tra­di­tion­al blue suit was all it took to get the igno­rant racist right all ginned up.
True to form, the racist right nev­er both­ered to read up on history(not that it mat­ters what col­or suit some­one wears, it’s their own damn business).
They group-think, and are prone to fol­low­ing the igno­rant­ly agen­da-dri­ven fringe ele­ments, like [rats behind the pied piper of Hamlin].

The truth of the mat­ter is that oth­er pres­i­dents had donned tanned suits before President Obama did, includ­ing Ronald Reagan the tit­u­lar deity of the polit­i­cal right.
As the nation grap­ples with the avalanche of mad­den­ing events today, it is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish what Republicans were hand-wring­ing about only three years ago.

The Press is under assault, dai­ly there are tweets from the pres­i­den­cy lam­bast­ing the free press. Refugees seek­ing Asylum are sep­a­rat­ed from their chil­dren and deport­ed with­out their chil­dren. People liv­ing in the United States for decades are sum­mar­i­ly round­ed up and locked up as well as deport­ed for minor infrac­tions com­mit­ted decades earlier.

Members of the press are barred from press brief­in­gs for ask­ing ques­tions they are duty bound to ask.
People of col­or are being gunned down in the streets by racist whites in police uni­forms. States purge mil­lions from vot­ers lists with­out con­se­quence, while unnec­es­sary trade wars cre­ate pan­ic and fear.
And yes, prices are begin­ning to rise as a result, even as farm­ers begin to see the results of these reck­less un-nec­es­sary poli­cies and ques­tion the votes they casted.
As the sky seems to be falling, those who did not vote for this look to Special coun­sel Robert Muller a (Republican) to save them, even as Trump’s col­lab­o­ra­tors in the Republican-con­trolled House file arti­cles of impeach­ment against Rod Rosenstein for refus­ing to hand over evi­dence to them which are part of an ongo­ing crim­i­nal and coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence investigations.

Nations which fought along­side America are now side­lined, while old foes are giv­en cre­dence and def­er­ence. Meetings between exec­u­tives of the American Government and oth­er nations, even hos­tile pow­ers, are held in pri­vate, with no doc­u­men­ta­tion of what was said and it gets worse.
The [régime], sor­ry I meant the admin­is­tra­tion, now decrees, it will no longer have read­outs of con­ver­sa­tions Trump has with for­eign leaders.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this would not be tol­er­at­ed by the world’s old­est democ­ra­cy, so whats dif­fer­ent this time?
Whats dif­fer­ent, is a sys­tem­at­ic and con­cert­ed assault on insti­tu­tions and sen­si­bil­i­ties, so exas­per­at­ing and over­whelm­ing, that we sim­ply tune them out.
Ladies and gen­tle­men that is how democ­ra­cies die. “[Remember what you hear and see hap­pen­ing is not what is real­ly hap­pen­ing”][sic].

There are remark­able events which become indeli­ble mark­ers for us in our lives. Those events, some trag­ic, some con­se­quen­tial, all serve to remind us of our past and guides us in the future.

[The-sup­posed] moon land­ing. The day President John F Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed. The day Dr. Martin Luther King was assas­si­nat­ed. The day Bobby Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed. The Day Ronald Reagan was shot. The day they knocked the Twin Towers down. The day we wit­nessed the Trump Helsinki sum­mit with Russian despot Vladimir Putin.

Regardless of what hap­pens from here on in, those of us who watched the high­lights, whether we know it or not, are wit­ness­es to a mon­u­men­tal event in mod­ern his­to­ry the full extent of which we may or may nev­er ever ful­ly be told.

IN RESPONSE TO DONALD TRUMPS HELSINKI SUMMIT WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN

“Today’s press con­fer­ence in Helsinki was one of the most dis­grace­ful per­for­mances by an American pres­i­dent in mem­o­ry. The dam­age inflict­ed by President Trump’s naiveté, ego­tism, false equiv­a­lence, and sym­pa­thy for auto­crats is dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late. But it is clear that the sum­mit in Helsinki was a trag­ic mistake.

“President Trump proved not only unable but unwill­ing to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speak­ing from the same script as the pres­i­dent made a con­scious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair ques­tions of a free press and to grant Putin an uncon­test­ed plat­form to spew pro­pa­gan­da and lies to the world.

“It is tempt­ing to describe the press con­fer­ence as a pathet­ic rout – as an illus­tra­tion of the per­ils of under-prepa­ra­tion and inex­pe­ri­ence. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politi­cian. These were the delib­er­ate choic­es of a pres­i­dent who seems deter­mined to real­ize his delu­sions of a warm rela­tion­ship with Putin’s régime with­out any regard for the true nature of his rule, his vio­lent dis­re­gard for the sov­er­eign­ty of his neigh­bors, his com­plic­i­ty in the slaugh­ter of the Syrian peo­ple, his vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al treaties, and his assault on demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions through­out the world.

“Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bom­bas­tic and errat­ic con­duct towards our clos­est friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press con­fer­ence marks a recent low point in the his­to­ry of the American Presidency. That the pres­i­dent was attend­ed in Helsinki by a team of com­pe­tent and patri­ot­ic advi­sors makes his blun­ders and capit­u­la­tions all the more painful and inexplicable.

“No pri­or pres­i­dent has ever abased him­self more abject­ly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adver­sary; but speak­ing for America to the world, our pres­i­dent failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a repub­lic of free peo­ple ded­i­cat­ed to the cause of lib­er­ty at home and abroad. American pres­i­dents must be the cham­pi­ons of that cause if it is to suc­ceed. Americans are wait­ing and hop­ing for President Trump to embrace that sacred respon­si­bil­i­ty. One can only hope they are not wait­ing total­ly in vain.”

“My peo­ple came to me,[Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coates came to me, some oth­ers, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any rea­son why it would be”
[Donald Trump]

wa

In a reveal­ing and con­se­quen­tial arti­cle (CNN​.com) report on a lit­tle fact which just elude us as Donald Trump announced DC insid­er Brett Kavanaugh to fill the supreme court seat made vacant by the retire­ment of Anthony Kennedy.
Since the Supreme Court first con­vened in 1790, 113 jus­tices have served on the bench.

In the 228-year his­to­ry of the Supreme Court, only 5.3% of jus­tices have been women or minorities.
That, of course, is if you buy into the idea that Clarence Thomas the black tool of the right wing actu­al­ly sees him­self as a minority.

DID YOU KNOW THAT IN THE HISTORY OF THE FBI THE BUREAU HAS NEVER HAD A DEMOCRAT AS DIRECTOR?

In January of this year

RON ELVING writ­ing for (NPR​.org)