Remarkably when­ev­er the issue of cor­rup­tion comes up for debate in Jamaica the con­ver­sa­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly defaults to the police.

One would have to divest one­self of real­i­ty to fall into the trap both polit­i­cal par­ties cre­at­ed in our coun­try, in order to believe that the police depart­ment is the ground zero of cor­rup­tion on the Island.
As opposed to the fac­tu­al real­i­ty that the two polit­i­cal par­ties are pop­u­lat­ed with thieves, liars and alleged­ly even those who pay to have oth­er Jamaicans murdered.
Every ratio­nal per­son knows that shit does not flow upstream.

This is the rea­son that com­ments attrib­uted to Zachery Phillips, the deputy chief assis­tant US attor­ney for the District of Colorado are spot on. Phillips who is assigned to the Organised Crime Drug Task Force,is in Jamaica to address an Anti-Corruption Round-table organ­ised by the US Embassy and the University of the West Indies’ Department of Government.

Asked about Police cor­rup­tion on the Island by local media, Phillips a for­mer cop and now attor­ney said “Our soci­ety as a whole has to say ‘hey, we appre­ci­ate you as a police offi­cer, but you don’t get spe­cial treat­ment because you’re a police offi­cer’.”
“I go back to my days as a police offi­cer… the free cof­fee, the free meal, that was accept­ed ²⁵⁄₃₀ years ago,” he said. “Now it’s not accept­ed, it’s reject­ed, so it has to be a change in men­tal­i­ty, not just with the police, but with all of soci­ety.”

The ques­tion though not out­right inane, still demon­strat­ed the myopic con­text in which jour­nal­ist and oth­er ele­ments of the wider soci­ety view cor­rup­tion in a nar­row prism.
The round-table is sup­posed to be about cor­rup­tion. I take that to mean “cor­rup­tion”, not just police corruption.
Surely the Americans are ful­ly aware of the deep cor­rup­tion which exist in the Jamaican soci­ety as it does the American society.
What they won’t do is scape­goat their law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty as both polit­i­cal par­ties on the Island have done, result­ing ulti­mate­ly in a chasm between that com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic they serve.

What the ques­tion­er cer­tain­ly did not antic­i­pate was that Zachary “Zak” Phillips, Drug Task Force Deputy Chief, is still a law-enforce­ment offi­cer who is also a for­mer cop would not be exco­ri­at­ing law-enforcement.
The endem­ic cul­ture of cor­rup­tion in the con­tracts awards process and oth­er Jamaican Government expen­di­tures are well know and documented.
To date, despite the lit­er­al pil­fer­ing of untold bil­lions of dol­lars and oth­er despi­ca­ble acts of cor­rup­tion by both polit­i­cal par­ties in and out of pow­er, not a sin­gle politi­cian has been jailed since the late JAG Smith.

The brain dead media, too lazy and com­plic­it to tack­le the cor­rup­tion in Government is quite com­fort­able to con­tin­ue with the decep­tion that cor­rup­tion is con­fined to the police.
The inep­ti­tude and cor­rup­tion of the Barney Fyffe police depart­ment was cre­at­ed by both the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labor Party as insur­ance against jail being a real­i­ty for them and their cronies.

This sim­ple fact has seem­ing­ly elud­ed what exists as media on the Island.

Have you ever won­dered why crime in Jamaica con­tin­ue to get worse ? Look no fur­ther than this piece of crap.

Justice Minister Delroy Chuck has laud­ed the efforts by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), towards a reduc­tion in fatal shoot­ings involv­ing mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. The jus­tice min­is­ter was speak­ing at the recent­ly held National Integrity Action/​Office of the Chief Justice 5^th Parish Court Judges train­ing sem­i­nar at the Jewel Dunn’s River Resort in St Ann. Chuck’s obser­va­tion comes against the back­ground of the recent­ly released Amnesty International report on unlaw­ful police homi­cide in Jamaica. According to Chuck, the jus­tice sec­tor can­not ignore the Amnesty report as it paints a poor pic­ture of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

“Irrespective of where or to whom we want to ascribe blame, we all fig­ure bad­ly as deci­sion mak­ers, inves­ti­ga­tors, pros­e­cu­tors and judges,” said Chuck. At the same time, Chuck said that Jamaicans do not under­es­ti­mate the per­ils faced by law enforce­ment offi­cers in the exe­cu­tion of their duties. “Jamaica has some vio­lent crim­i­nals who are pre­pared to take on the secu­ri­ty forces. Yet we can­not yield to unlaw­ful and exces­sive con­duct,” he said. Chuck assert­ed that the estab­lish­ment of INDECOM was intend­ed to bring Jamaica in com­pli­ance with var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al legal stan­dards, which, togeth­er, con­sti­tute an inter­na­tion­al frame­work of fun­da­men­tal safe­guards to pro­tect against abus­es. He added that the reduc­tion seen in fatal shoot­ings by the police must be applaud­ed, as last year police shoot­ing fell below the 100 mark for the first time in decades. “The pub­lic can have con­fi­dence in the pres­ence of an inde­pen­dent over­sight body, with suf­fi­cient teeth to dis­cour­age mis­be­hav­iour and human rights abuse by agents of the State,” Chuck said. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​J​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​m​i​n​i​s​t​e​r​-​l​a​u​d​s​-​I​N​D​E​COM

I’m reminded of a an elephant sitting on one end of a see-saw and a mouse on the other, Sure Police have stopped engaging the brutish criminals in our country , that necessarily translates into less lethal police encounters. What this ignoramus misses is the exponential increase in killings by those brutish criminals who are left alive to kill at will. No one care about the death of the innocent as long as international standards are met. The funny thing is that in those other nations in which those standards are met they don’t allow nothing of the sort. Can anyone say the Philippines? The president of that nation gets it, criticize his methods all you want but he is resolute. I never ever liked this guy he is an insufferable jackass.….

Imagine that this guy who should never be allowed anywhere near national security of justice gets to parade in front of the world as some paragon of virtue , looking out for truth rights and justice, when he has more in common with the murdering scums he is protecting than our brave law enforcement officers.
Is there any wonder this this ass-wipe is on the side of INDECOM and not on the side of innocent dead Jamaicans?
How long will it be before this guy gets a visit which reminds him of what poor unprotected Jamaicans are facing ?

On September 3^rd 2007 Portia Simpson Miller was defeated in general elections held in Jamaica . She lost to Orette Bruce Golding of the Jamaica Labor Party , It was a slim victory but one the (JLP) relished after been in the political wilderness for ¹⁴¹⁄₂ years under the leadership of Edward Seaga, whom the people decided they did not want to elect to the highest office again.

However by Thursday December 29^th 2011 Portia and the PNP deliv­ered a crush­ing 41 – 22-seat shel­lack­ing to the Labor Party. Once again send­ing the JLP into polit­i­cal hibernation.
According to an autop­sy report com­mis­sioned by the JLP leader Andrew Holness after the loss, the JLP lost because among oth­er things , it was unpre­pared and most of all, it was vot­ed out because of the Christopher (duddus)Coke mat­ter which Bruce Golding mis­han­dled mightily.
The Party could have saved that mon­ey any per­son on the cor­ner could have told them that.
Portia Simpson Miller was back in Jamaica House!

Holness a smart young leader took his shel­lack­ing and went on a mis­sion to lis­ten to the peo­ple, hear their griev­ances and for­mu­late pol­i­cy posi­tions for his party.
Albeit that we would believe that the esteemed Leader of the JLP would lis­ten to advice from us, but he did exact­ly what we said was need­ed in light of the par­ty’s sig­nif­i­cant loss.
During my life­time I have seen the incred­i­ble smarts of the Jamaican peo­ple up close , even when they lack the basic abil­i­ty to read or write, they are gen­er­al­ly nobody’s fool.
Politicians dis­re­spect them to their detri­ment and peril.

Disrespectful and arro­gant are two of the most obvi­ous char­ac­ter­is­tics which may read­i­ly be found in our nation’s polit­i­cal lead­ers . So it was no sur­prise that Portia Simpson Miller would mis­read the resolve and intent of the vot­ers when they sent her back to Jamaica House on my birth­day December 29^th 2011.
Having been giv­en more time in Jamaica House than their oppo­nent the JLP since 1962 ‚the PNP devel­oped a sense of enti­tle­ment and even con­tempt for the electorate.
The par­ty start­ed believ­ing it’s own sil­ly rhetoric “jume­ka a pnp kun­try”

The peo­ple’s repu­di­a­tion of the JLP in 2011 I thought was exact­ly cor­rect. As some­one who believes the JLP is the less­er of two evils I want­ed that par­ty to win but I felt the peo­ple act­ed appro­pri­ate­ly when they sent the par­ty packing.
I thought that Andrew Holness and the par­ty should go out and earn the trust of the peo­ple. I thought it would be good for the par­ty to rebuild rather than pro­ceed from the hand-off Golding had done to Holness.
The love and trust of the Jamaican peo­ple was out there to be had, the par­ty and it’s lead­er­ship would have to earn it, and right­ly so.

The fact that the PNP found itself back in pow­er after December 29^th 2011 was a sur­prise to many, but none more so than the PNP itself, which was still jad­ed and out of ideas after been in office for an unprece­dent­ed unbro­ken 14 ¹⁄₂ years.
Not rec­og­niz­ing that it’s re-elec­tion had noth­ing to do with it’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er qual­i­ty ser­vices, but was a smack-down of an errant JLP, the PNP unwit­ting­ly believed it had a man­date to rule, not serve.

Portia took on the mantra of a Monarch.
In addi­tion to been gross­ly incom­pe­tent as a leader she decid­ed she would not answer any ques­tions from the press.
I may be wrong in char­ac­ter­iz­ing her actions as monar­chis­tic as a mat­ter of fact, the British Royal fam­i­ly have made them­selves quite avail­able to the media in recent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly after Diana Spencer mar­ried into that fam­i­ly and enlight­ened them somewhat.
Queen Elizabeth even offered to pay tax­es years ago after the British pub­lic became agi­tat­ed with the amount of tax­pay­ers funds being chan­neled into main­tain­ing the monarchy.
The Queen, an astute sur­vivor quick­ly decid­ed her roy­al house­hold would pay taxes.
That bril­liant move qui­et­ed the dis­sent and the monar­chy sur­vived anoth­er day.
Oh for the pow­er of adaptability.

Not a quick study Portia for her part told the media she would not be talk­ing her­self out of office, an obvi­ous dig at her pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Golding who had a week­ly radio radio call in pro­gram from Jamaica house, in which peo­ple were allowed to call in and talk issues with the Prime Minister.
That was a ground break­ing ini­tia­tive , thanks to Golding’s for­ward think­ing on that issue.
Facing a litany of unre­solved cor­rup­tion scan­dals, some from it’s pre­vi­ous tenure in office, oth­ers new , Mrs Simpson Miller either refused to speak to the press, or told them to go ask the PNP.

Facing anoth­er nation­al elec­tion in 2016 Mr’s Miller com­mit­ted the car­di­nal sin, she attached con­di­tions before she would attend­ed tele­vised debates with the JLP’s Andrew Holness.
She stu­pid­ly demand­ed that Holness pub­licly apol­o­gize for say­ing she was a con-artiste , she even threat­ened legal action against the the oppo­si­tion leader nev­er mind that she was the per­son who referred to his eco­nom­ic plan as a con plan.
The fact of the mat­ter was that Miller and her par­ty had no answers to the nations prob­lems, and they were many. So they arro­gant­ly expect­ed to dis­re­spect the vot­ers by obfus­cat­ing and dodg­ing under flim­sy con­coct­ed guises.
Essentially say­ing I’m not account­able, I don’t have to tell you what my plans are , just go out and give us anoth­er five year term.
What arrogance ?
As the head of the PNP ‚Portia Simpson Miller placed her­self above the rule of law , above account­abil­i­ty, above answer­ing to anyone.
If there is a process where you are required to debate your oppo­nent you shut up and turn up for the debate.
A polit­i­cal debate is a job interview>
You refuse to show up you don’t get hired.
Portia did not receive that memo…Peter Phillips did not mind either he sim­ply kept stok­ing the fire about the size of Andrew Holness’ house. Despite know­ing full well it was polit­i­cal sui­cide. He want­ed Simpson Miller to con­tin­ue mak­ing an ass of her­self so he could step out of her shadow.
In fact, how could Peter Phillips not har­bor some grudge against Portia? He cer­tain­ly did not chal­lenge her for lead­er­ship of the par­ty because he thought she was bet­ter able to lead the par­ty than he was.
Imagine he a PhD hav­ing to to live in the shad­ow of this.… this… this.……oh you know what I mean.

Those who dis­re­spect the vot­ers gen­er­al­ly get a sense of the peo­ples’s resolve soon­er or later.
For Simpson Miller it was sooner .
On February 25^th 2016 the vot­ers sent her and her par­ty packing .
The JLP did not sweep the elec­tions as the PNP had done the pre­vi­ous cycle, but win­ning 11 seats with­out los­ing a sin­gle seat it held, was pret­ty remarkable.
To add to their tone-deaf arro­gance Simpson Miller and the People’s National refused to under­stand the will of the peo­ple. They went on to dis­cred­it the elec­toral out­come argu­ing that it was on account of promis­es of tax-cuts Holness made pri­or to the elections.
Well what do you know?
What a nov­el con­cept, the Jamaican peo­ple actu­al­ly vot­ing for a par­ty which offered to make them keep some more of their hard earned mon­ey , as against a litany of cor­rup­tion scan­dals and tax hikes.

Listen to the Leader of the Opposition here and form your own opinions.

The par­ty then went ahead and reaf­firmed Portia Simpson Miller as its leader , demon­strat­ing that it did not give a rat’s ass about what the vot­ers were say­ing about Miller’s lead­er­ship , or ;lack thereof.
Being who she is, she went onto a stage in the St Ann con­stituen­cy of Member of Parliament Lisa Hanna and threat­ened vio­lence against her own sup­port­ers in the parish who voiced their dis­ap­proval of some of the can­di­dates the par­ty was foist­ing on them.
The Jamaican peo­ple are not stand­ing for that kind of dis­re­spect from politi­cians any­more, again Portia mis­read her own strengths.
After a while peo­ple are going to be able to see bull­shit for what it is.
The American elec­torate elect­ed a man who open­ly dis­re­spect­ed every­one he could . He refused to release his tax returns so the pub­lic could make informed deci­sions about his suit­abil­i­ty for the presidency.
Not so in Jamaica the peo­ple made it clear that until the PNP learn respect and humil­i­ty they will be on the out­side look­ing in.
On Monday November 28^th vot­ers across the Island sent the PNP and Portia Simpson Miller anoth­er strong mes­sage that they will not stand for any threats or acts of intimidation .
They deliv­ered anoth­er shellacking .

My hunch tells me lead­ers like Paul Burke and oth­ers will still find rea­son to dis­cred­it the out­come of the elec­tions, blam­ing every­one but themselves.
That works for Holness and the Jamaican peo­ple quite well.
People are tired of the vira­go style gar­ri­son pol­i­tics which has char­ac­ter­ized our pop cul­ture, they want change. In the age of infor­ma­tion peo­ple are look­ing in real time at what oth­er peo­ple in oth­er coun­tries are doing, how they are progressing.
They are not going to con­tin­ue to allow the regres­sive style pol­i­tics which Simpson Miller represents.
Whether she goes home is up to her and her party.
The gov­ern­ing JLP must find ways to cap­i­tal­ize on the obsti­na­cy of this shell of a par­ty by deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty respect­ful ser­vice to the peo­ple, mak­ing Jamaica all she was des­tined to be.

Today Jamaicans get to chose rep­re­sen­ta­tives to han­dle their busi­ness at the local level.
Frankly I nev­er quite under­stood the need for parish Councillors , what with the size of the country.
The coun­try is small enough that mem­bers of par­lia­ment should have no rea­son not to be total­ly in touch with the peo­ple . A coun­try of 4411 square miles and a 63 mem­ber leg­is­la­ture why does the coun­try need all of these paid positions?
Anyway !!!

These local Government elec­tions are a ref­er­en­dum of sorts on both the PNP and the rul­ing JLP.
The Labor par­ty which now forms the gov­ern­ment has fol­lowed through on some of it’s cam­paign promis­es since tak­ing office. The econ­o­my seem to be on the right course accord­ing to the Island’s pri­ma­ry lender, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The econ­o­my is also expe­ri­enc­ing a slight uptick in eco­nom­ic growth over the ane­mic growth-rate which has char­ac­ter­ized the PNP’s tenure at the helm.
Additionally the PNP is still stuck in post elec­tion shock, unable to grasp that the peo­ple have deliv­ered a com­pre­hen­sive repu­di­a­tion of their stew­ard­ship despite the slen­der JLP major­i­ty in the Legislature. It is no easy feat to pick up eleven seats with­out los­ing a sin­gle one giv­en the Islands hor­ri­ble gar­ri­son cul­ture which is dom­i­nat­ed by the PNP.
Since tak­ing office how­ev­er the JLP has done noth­ing out­side pay­ing lip ser­vice to crime. As a result mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes have con­tin­ued to increase on it’s watch. In one week 55 Jamaicans were report­ed killed, as egre­gious as those num­bers are there is lit­tle rea­son to believe that the num­ber may not actu­al­ly be high­er as some mur­ders are not report­ed to authorities.
In this medi­um we have con­sis­tent­ly argued that at a bare min­i­mum crime dras­ti­cal­ly reduces stan­dards of liv­ing and worse case traps the major­i­ty in a vis­cous cycle of mor­tal poverty.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​3​6​864 – 2/

ANY ECONOMIC RECOVERY MUST BEGIN WITH SUFFOCATING THE CRIME MONSTER…

I have been sound­ing the alarm to both polit­i­cal par­ties for years, mak­ing the case that there can be no real pros­per­i­ty or true eco­nom­ic gain unless the crime mon­ster is suffocated.
I wrote about this before the new JLP Administration took office, hop­ing to head off a sense of lethar­gy on the issue.
Since tak­ing office the JLP has con­tin­ued on it’s mer­ry way , con­duct­ing busi­ness as if the threat crime pos­es is a fig­ment of our imag­i­na­tion and not the exis­ten­tial threat that it is.
At least until now.
We now hear the Minister of National Security telling the Nation that quote “there can be no social and eco­nom­ic growth in Jamaica with­out a reduc­tion in crime”.
What a nov­el con­cept. Wonder where that idea came from?
To begin with, despite hav­ing said he turned down the National Security Portfolio offer Montague’s selec­tion demon­strat­ed that Holness and the hier­ar­chy of the JLP sim­ply intend­ed to punt the ball up the field and put it’s defen­sive team on the field.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​m​o​n​t​a​g​u​e​s​-​a​p​p​o​i​n​t​m​e​n​t​-​s​a​y​-​a​d​m​i​n​i​s​t​r​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​s​e​r​i​o​u​s​n​e​s​s​-​c​r​i​me/

WHAT DOES MONTAGUE’S APPOINTMENT SAY ABOUT ADMINISTRATION’S SERIOUSNESS ABOUT CRIME….

This writer did no more believe that a botanist was going to pos­sess the req­ui­site skills and knowl­edge to make the impor­tant deci­sions on crime than a fire­man would be able to per­form brain surgery.
Nevertheless both his appoint­ment and his ini­tial refusal did offer a win­dow into the thought process of Holness and the JLP.
They fun­da­men­tal­ly do not under­stand the seri­ous con­se­quences crime have on soci­ety. As such they want­ed to main­tain a stale­mate of sorts on crime , not ruf­fle any feath­ers but get what they pri­or­i­tize done.
What the JLP is dis­cov­er­ing now is that things do not work that way.
It’s iron­ic that Holness’ age and where he was edu­cat­ed has shaped his under­stand­ing of crime , more so than the polit­i­cal par­ty he leads does.
The JLP was the par­ty of Hugh Lawson Shearer, the take no pris­on­ers on crime Prime Minister, who under­stood more than any oth­er per­son to enter pol­i­tics on the Island that crime can­not be tolerated.
Andrew Holness a prod­uct of his time and a grad­u­ate of the UWI sim­ply lack the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing he needs to have.
Its a sil­ly and igno­rant posi­tion tak­en by the Island’s so-called edu­cat­ed, that the nation can sim­ply go on pre­tend­ing that crime has no impact.
Andrew Holness is as a much a vic­tim of that mis­tak­en lib­er­al brain­wash­ing as any other.
Whether he is afraid of the inevitable con­dem­na­tion deci­sive action will bring or he is ter­ri­fied of los­ing the next General elec­tion is any­one’s guess.
What is evi­dent is that pay­ing lip ser­vice to Fidel Castro a tow­er­ing fig­ure on order and the deliv­ery of ser­vice , while cow­er­ing in a cor­ner away from the killings will not improve the lot of our country.

It is expect­ed that the PNP will do noth­ing on crime, the par­ty thrives on crime , chaos and corruption.
Without gar­risons and crim­i­nal gangs the PNP is irrel­e­vant. The brazen threats issued by that par­ty’s leader in St Ann recent­ly against her own sup­port­ers is indeed quid pro quo that the PNP is a par­ty of crim­i­nals , for crim­i­nals, with no inten­tion of changing.
The PNP needs the crim­i­nal gangs to main­tain it’s pow­er-base, in return it gives them cover.
The JLP must gath­er the courage to move the Island away from this vis­cous cycle.

After threat­en­ing to bring mer­ce­nar­ies to the St Ann con­stituen­cy of Lisa Hanna , the People’s National Party President Portia Simpson Miller is report­ed­ly sor­ry for her caus­tic and vio­lence induc­ing tirade.

The PNP’s leader was speak­ing to sup­port­ers in the St Ann South Eastern con­stituen­cy when she was heck­led by some in the crowd. At issue we learned, is a feud which has been sim­mer­ing between the Member of Parliament Lisa Hanna and some parish Councillors with­in the party.
Miller did not take kind­ly to being heck­led, she threat­ened to return to the con­stituen­cy with people.
In her tirade Miller bragged about the strength of her con­stituen­cy and threat­ened to bring peo­ple back to deal with her errant supporters.

Those with knowl­edge of Jamaican pol­i­tics know that Miller’s St Andrew south west­ern con­stituen­cy is one of the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly depressed com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try. The only strength Miller could have been allud­ing to in light of those facts would be the strength of arms of the mer­ce­nar­ies with­ing that polit­i­cal enclave.
It is all the more rea­son that her threats must be viewed with the due seri­ous­ness it deserves.
Neither south east st Ann, the PNP nor our coun­try belong to this rabid vira­go. It is past time that some­one stand up to this half-baked idiot and tell her “get the hell out of here and go sit some­place you are irrelevant”

So now we are to believe that this intem­per­ate vile out­burst from this old dis­gust­ing woman is some­thing she regrets accord­ing to the polit­i­cal ombuds­man Donna Parchment Brown.
Parchment-Brown report­ed that after the howls of con­dem­na­tion which came down on Miller ‚she admit­ted she could have con­duct­ed her­self differently.
Oh really?
Nothing short of an all out pub­lic mea cul­pa will be accept­able. The Island is awash in blood what it does not need is those who pro­port to lead insti­gat­ing and threat­en­ing more violence.
If after over sev­en decades on this plan­et she does­n’t know how to behave (1)what right does she have offer­ing her­self up for lead­er­ship”. And(2) why would any sane per­son fol­low this despi­ca­ble per­son­’s leadership.

For those who don’t know Portia it’s easy to brush her threats aside .
Those of us who know what she brings to the table under­stand that when she makes these threats she has the pow­er to deliv­er on them.
This vile woman is not a part of the solu­tion to Jamaica’s prob­lem she per­son­i­fies the problem.
On the occa­sion that Andrew Holness took over the lead­er­ship of the Labor Party from Bruce Golding he invit­ed Miller to walk the gar­risons (the island’s depressed zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions) as a sign of good­will aimed at defus­ing polit­i­cal tensions.
Miller refused !!!!

After the events of 2010 the secu­ri­ty forces need­ed addi­tion­al autho­riza­tion to go after the Island’s mur­der­ing urban ter­ror­ists . That autho­riza­tion would have come in the form of an exten­sion to the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency pow­ers they were afford­ed by the then Labor par­ty admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding.
To a man, Simpson Miller and the PNP object­ed to the grant­i­ng of addi­tion­al pow­ers to the secu­ri­ty forces under the trans­par­ent guise that they may vio­late the rights of citizens.
The real rea­son for their obstruc­tion was that Miller and the PNP could ill-afford to have their intri­cate net­work of polit­i­cal gar­ri­son com­mu­ni­ties which are the bul­wark of the par­ty’s stran­gle­hold on pow­er disrupted.

This is not a slip of the tongue by Portia Simpson Miller , it is the essence of who she is.
She is a ghet­to thug who cap­i­tal­izes on the igno­rance of those stu­pid enough to be enthralled by her lies and protes­ta­tions of love.
In local Government elec­tions held on the Island in 1988 a bunch of PNP thugs from Arnett Gardens and the con­stituen­cy of Simpson Miller arrived at the all-age school on White Hall avenue to ille­gal­ly remove bal­lot boxes.
They were all dressed in red PNP T‑shirts two to a motor­cy­cle and spilling out of motorcars .
Unfortunately for them on their arrival there were four no bull­shit cops stand­ing at the gate, your’s tru­ly being one of them.
This did not sit well with the wannabe gang­sters so they called Portia Simpson Miller who arrived a short while lat­er with even more sim­i­lar­ly clad brain-dead supporters.

For our part we had a plan which they weren’t privy to, we had unmarked cars with more cops a hair trig­ger dis­tance away.
On arrival Portia accused us of intim­i­dat­ing her supporters.
Fancy that, a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment accus­ing the police of intim­i­dat­ing a bunch of hooli­gans who had no busi­ness on the premis­es much less in the polling sta­tion. A bunch of thugs who came for the sole pur­pose of steal­ing bal­lot box­es and a view toward dis­rupt­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.
Being a cop who did not give a shit who any­one was, I told her nei­ther her sup­port­ers nor her was going to be allowed into the polling sta­tion because she had no law­ful busi­ness there . She decid­ed that she would try her luck, by ver­bal­ly assault­ing con­sta­ble Francis a mem­ber of our quartet.

I blast­ed her which sur­prised her and ignit­ed the ire of her sup­port­ers. I told her she was a fuck­ing dis­grace and total­ly unfit to hold polit­i­cal office. I told her one move toward my offi­cer and she would be arrest­ed forthwith!!!
Those who know me know that meant in hand­cuffs in the back of the car , no spe­cial treatment.
As I recount this sto­ry I remem­ber Carl Samuda was­n’t too hap­py either when I ear­li­er that same day told him he could not be on the premises,however he was more contrite.
Carl Samuda would lat­er con­spire with one deputy Commissioner Ebanks to have me removed from Constant Spring. A few days lat­er word got around and the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty learned that I was trans­ferred and all hell broke loose.
No traf­fic was able to pass the Constant Spring Police Station to Manor Park until the mas­sive crowd received assur­ances from the Commissioner of Police that I was being sent back immediately.
That’s how good the Jamaican peo­ple are.

Jamaican politi­cians are not used to police offi­cers telling them what they can or can­not do.
Throughout my abbre­vi­at­ed career oth­er politi­cians who came across me found out that as long as I was on scene the law was sacro­sanct not them.
Ryan Peralto learned that les­son on Tower street and Edmund Bartlett so too found that out in Back Bush.
I am was not def­er­en­tial to any­one, the law was the law. No one was above the law !

Simpson Miller the leader of the mass of orange-clad thugs was not so hap­py about being told no, so she com­menced to lit­er­al­ly roll in the street, bawl­ing that her sup­port­ers were being harassed.
I knew she was darn stu­pid but that encounter solid­i­fied that belief that day . I was nev­er sure what she intend­ed to gain from rolling and balling on the dirty street of White Hall Avenue.
Nevertheless she con­tin­ued mak­ing a spec­ta­cle of her­self amidst the howls and exple­tives of her mob who encour­aged her to just walk through the gate.
Despite the brava­do, they under­stood quite clear­ly that the Uzi and M16 assault weapons slung across our chests were not there for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es by any means.
A few min­utes lat­er Arnett Gardens strong­man George Phang arrived and pulled Portia aside, he then lit into the hooli­gans, ask­ing them if them came up to White Hall avenue to lose their lives .
Portia then came over to us and apol­o­gized for her behavior.
To the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion at the time she had respon­si­bil­i­ty for Youth and Sports.
She asked if she could give each of the four of us a hug, and she apol­o­gized some more.
She is apol­o­giz­ing once again over two and a half decades lat­er. only because this time social media called her out .
So too did she apol­o­gize that sun­ny day on White Hall Avenue, because four police offi­cers told her in no uncer­tain terms she would be arrest­ed if she opened her mouth in disrespect.
On that occa­sion she apol­o­gized because a polit­i­cal Don who knew the streets encour­aged her to apol­o­gize . This time it was large­ly social media outrage.
In the end Portia is still the same ret­ro­grade Portia. A malig­nant tumor sti­fling the growth , devel­op­ment, and advance­ment of the Island’s peo­ple. A dinosaur whose time has long passed , yet she still strive for relevance.
A Sub-Saharan type strong/​woman if you will .
A blight .….….….….….….……

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. (Ashes cold dawg sleep in de.) A dog will sleep in ashes because it’s cold.
(Old Jamaican proverb)..

Contrary to the per­verse gib­ber­ish you hear about how to deal with crim­i­nals from know-it-all Jamaicans, there is only one real way to com­bat and con­tain crime on the Island, that is to use a heavy hand­ed approach.
let me just head of the lib­er­al crim­i­nal lov­ing bull­shit comments !!!
A heavy hand­ed approach will invari­ably lead to some hurt feel­ings Simply put, some peo­ple will be incon­ve­nienced as the forces of law and order take the streets back from the maraud­ing bands of killers which now con­trol the nations streets and by-ways.
If done in an intel­li­gent and pre­ci­sion-like way, it will be a min­i­mal trade-off for those incon­ve­nienced, as against what exist in the coun­try today.
Delivering a heavy-hand­ed knock out blow to crim­i­nals and pro­tect­ing the civ­il rights of inno­cents are not com­pet­ing interest .
However it requires a non-cor­rupt police force and a deter­mined pop­u­la­tion which has decid­ed that enough is enough.
The prob­lem in all of this is that the longer the gov­ern­ment remain impo­tent and shell-shocked on this exis­ten­tial issue, the worse it gets, the more dif­fi­cult it will be to cau­ter­ize, the longer the heal­ing process will be, if at all.

Sometimes Someone Has To Get Blood On Their Hands In Order To Stop The Bleeding…

I swear I will have a scream­ing fit and pull my hair out if I hear anoth­er stu­pid com­par­i­son between Jamaica and Scandinavia.
To com­pare Jamaica’s crime sit­u­a­tion with coun­tries like Finland , Switzerland, or any oth­er coun­try of that region is to com­pare Jamaica’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion to that of Singapore.
Both com­par­isons ignore or gloss­es over fun­da­men­tal basic facts which dif­fer­en­ti­ates these nations while jump­ing to their per­ceived suc­cess­es. Jamaicans are quick to point to Singapore’s eco­nom­ic mod­el while they con­ve­nient­ly ignore that small nations posi­tions on the rule of law.
They nev­er men­tion that deal­ing in drugs brings the death penalty.
They nev­er men­tion that a sim­ple act of lit­ter­ing will invari­ably result in a pub­lic flogging.
I am not argu­ing for that kind of puni­tive envi­ron­ment by a long shot. It does how­ev­er bear men­tion­ing that the Jamaican mod­el, which is the exact oppo­site of the Singaporean mod­el is not sus­tain­able for a demo­c­ra­t­ic society.

Jamaicans have always been a free­dom lov­ing people .

The strug­gles of the Maroons against British Colonial tyran­ny is tes­ta­ment to that fact.
What we have not man­aged to rec­on­cile in the years since the peace­ful six­ties and today is that the world has changed, we must change or be swal­lowed up by the process of change.
The Zebra and the Wildebeest trav­el across the African Serengeti . Though ani­mals, they fun­da­men­tal­ly under­stand the con­cept of safe­ty in numbers.
Traveling togeth­er does not guar­an­tee that no Zebras will get eat­en by the Lions or oth­er preda­tors lying in wait .
But the horns and hooves of the Wildebeest does offer a cer­tain degree of pro­tec­tion from their enemies.
Weak and care­less Wildebeest and Zebras are guar­an­teed to end up on some preda­tors plate but the strat­e­gy of both groups does guar­an­tee the sur­vival of both specie .
Outside the cru­el and vicious assault of humans of course.

Many years ago while I was a young offi­cer attached to the Constant Spring CIB my work appeared to have ticked off a cer­tain mem­ber of one fam­i­ly of crim­i­nals who hailed from the Grant’s Pen com­mu­ni­ty. This was pre-Grant’s Pen Police sta­tion era.
In the late eight­ies to ear­ly nineties there was no need for anoth­er police facil­i­ty at Grants Pen . We made sure crim­i­nals under­stood who were in charge.
Anyway , word got to me that a cer­tain ele­ment said he was going to kill me. Yes, the streets coop­er­at­ed with us, we made sure of it.
I did not pass the infor­ma­tion up the line to the bloat­ed incom­pe­tent bureaucracy.
I did not cow­er in fear.
Neither did I ask the com­mis­sion­er to issue bul­letins on my behalf.
I was a police offi­cer , you threat­en my life, I’m com­ing after you and I did not need an entourage to get you.

That same night myself and one went to find my would be mur­der­er . Yup we knew where to find him, we always knew where they could be found. How else would we con­tain crim­i­nals if we did not know where they slept and copulated?
He was sit­ting under a street­light in the Grant’s Pen gul­ly , wear­ing only a pair of cut-off pants and no shirt. By the time he saw us it was too late he was frozen in place .
As he stood there trem­bling, piss ran down his legs and snaked it’s way in the dirt mean­der­ing along the dried dusty path­way, like the lazy Rio-Cobre river .
Through the inco­her­ent bab­ble com­ing from his stut­ter­ing lips I man­aged to hear him say peo­ple want­ed him dead, that why they were telling lies on him.
Never mind that I did not accuse him of anything.
The knowl­edge that even among his peers his words weren’t pri­vate was enough deter­rent . We left him stand­ing there, a bro­ken piece of scum in the stench of his own urine .
There was no need to touch him , he under­stood clear­ly, he had no hid­ing place .

Today Cops cow­er in fear as their lead­ers issue bul­letins about threat levels.
Politicians go on pho­to-ops as if every­thing is kosher, while oth­ers threat­en to bring armed mer­ce­nar­ies to deal with affil­i­ates who do not tow par­ty lines.
In the mean­time the dead bod­ies pile up in Spanish Town and across the Island to Montego Bay.
Of course the coun­try has no need for brand named cops who knew the killers and where they may be found !
The Island need­ed a more edu­cat­ed crop of polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect cops, cops who could speak prop­er English with degrees.
More women dressed in smart skirts and nice­ly pol­ished shoes , caps cocked to the side .
The offi­cers dressed in white shirts and their kha­ki skirts look­ing dap­per , no util­i­ty belts with gun, hand­cuffs or baton.
Why would they need those tools of the trade, they are com­man­ders , who needs hand­cuffs ‚not cops. Why have guns and night­sticks when they have degrees and friends in high places to push them up the ladder?
Remember gazetted offi­cers are not police officers[sic] Most nev­er effect­ed an arrest , nev­er brought a crim­i­nal charge against a crim­i­nal . But they hold lofty posi­tions from which they utter direc­tives and press releas­es. It’s a total joke and an absolute waste of tax­pay­ers resources.
Where are the returns on investment?

When A Known Gangster Can Return From Prison Abroad To Continue As Usual It Means The Government Is Incompetent .…..

How could Tesha Miller return from prison in the United States to take com­mand of a polit­i­cal­ly affil­i­at­ed crim­i­nal mur­der-for-hire and extor­tion gang with a com­pe­tent police force?
How did oth­ers like Bulbie Bennett and oth­ers do it?
They did it the same way an incom­pe­tent cor­rupt police force and a gov­ern­ment of crim­i­nals, allowed Anthony Brown George Flash and oth­er cop-killers to leave the coun­try and stay away for years and then return with­out consequence.

That is why the leader of the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion can stand on a stage bereft of ideas and intel­li­gence yet full of con­fi­dence that the urban ter­ror­ists she con­trols in her gar­ri­son con­stituen­cy is enough to strike fear in any­one who dare cross her.
It is why the Prime Minister and Government have no clue what to do , nei­ther do they have the courage to say they are help­less as the Island slips deep­er and deep­er into the abyss of mur­der and mayhem.

This is the Island where Carolyn Gomes , Terrence Williams, Horace Levy and a band of oth­er crim­i­nal cod­dling elit­ist leech­es dic­tate pub­lic pol­i­cy on crime.
Has any­one ever heard any mem­ber of their fam­i­lies get­ting killed or raped?
I rest my case.
This is Jamaica .….…..

Is there any won­der that this old crus­tacean can­not eschew vio­lence and the gar­ri­son cul­ture she helped to cre­ate in the country?
Set every­thing else aside this old vira­go is 71 years old .
Lets just set aside that she is semi-lit­er­ate, lets even set aside that she is out of touch. What about the fact that she is an old has-been , why should the nation con­tin­ue to cut this old degen­er­ate some slack in light of the seri­ous epi­dem­ic of vio­lence and mur­der in the country?
How does any­one account for this despi­ca­ble out­burst from this old virago ?
This per­son who has epit­o­mized and rep­re­sent­ed the worst of Jamaica, at age 71 still stand as a bul­wark of resis­tance to change and a bet­ter way for the Jamaican peo­ple, regur­gi­tat­ing the same old vio­lent rhetoric as if our coun­try belong to her and her band of mercenaries .

Jamaicans must decide whether or not they want to con­tin­ue on this path of vio­lence and antag­o­nis­tic behav­ior , fed and nur­tured by peo­ple who should long have been forced into retire­ment whether they like it or not.
This kind of talk fools no one , con­trary to the nuanced gib­ber­ish com­ing from Miller’s min­ion Paul Burke.
Burke would not know the dif­fer­ence if it hit him in the face.
After wal­low­ing and liv­ing in shit it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to smell the shit. On that basis Paul Burke’s expla­na­tion of Portia Simpson Miller’s igno­rant vira­go rant, should be dis­card­ed along with Simpson Miller, a rel­ic of what ails our country..
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that an entire nation would allow a semi-lit­er­ate has-been, (or more like a nev­er was) like Miller to hold an entire nation hostage through threats and intimidation.
This nation must stand up and stare down the likes of Miller who would seek to con­trol state pow­er through bul­ly­ing and threats .
That time has passed.

PEOPLE’S National Party (PNP) General Secretary Paul Burke is speak­ing out in defence of par­ty leader Portia Simpson Miller, say­ing bit­ing and sug­ges­tive remarks she made at a recent meet­ing in St Ann South Eastern have been tak­en out of context.

In an audio clip of the speech, which has been mak­ing the rounds on social media over the past two days, Simpson Miller can be heard chid­ing dis­sent­ing Comrades at the meet­ing which was held last week Wednesday in Claremont, and warn­ing them that “this is one woman who nev­er run from a fight with any­one yet”.

“I rep­re­sent one of the strongest con­stituen­cies in Jamaica; don’t play with me, I don’t play games. I work hard for this move­ment from 1974 ‘til now, nuh boy, nuh gyal can’t talk to me… I will come back here for anoth­er meet­ing and I know who I will bring,” Simpson Miller is heard say­ing, appar­ent­ly mak­ing ref­er­ence to her St Andrew South Western constituency.

The PNP leader’s remarks came after some Comrades expressed their dis­ap­proval of can­di­dates who had been nom­i­nat­ed to rep­re­sent the par­ty in the November 28 local gov­ern­ment elec­tion. A num­ber of Jamaicans on social media and radio talk shows have deemed the remarks as threat­en­ing because of remark that she doesn’t and will not allow any­one to dis­re­spect her. But, yes­ter­day, Burke said Simpson Miller has done noth­ing wrong

“As part of a pro­gramme of meet­ings, the par­ty pres­i­dent went to South East St Ann and toured the divi­sions and at a spot meet­ing, which goes against the party’s polit­i­cal code of con­duct, indi­vid­u­als were dis­turb­ing the meet­ing,” Burke told theJamaica Observer in a tele­phone inter­view yes­ter­day. “When she said, ‘I’m not afraid of any­one,’ it meant that she is not intim­i­dat­ed by the noise or the mis­con­duct of those per­sons and I under­stand that less than 40 per­sons, were there and per­sons are going around try­ing to con­fuse PNP sup­port­ers that for­mer PNP sup­port­ers nom­i­nat­ed are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the PNP,” he continued.

In ref­er­ence to Simpson Miller’s state­ment that she she knows who she will bring on her return to the con­stituen­cy, Burke said the par­ty leader was mak­ing ref­er­ence to a team of can­vassers to con­duct sur­veys as their were peo­ple caus­ing mis­chief in the divi­sion. “In the con­text of the pre­sen­ta­tion, in the con­text of her char­ac­ter, in the con­text of her rep­u­ta­tion, nobody could believe that she was ini­ti­at­ing any threat of vio­lence,” Burke insist­ed. He said that the par­ty leader was sim­ply call­ing for polit­i­cal action to be tak­en and that her state­ment is being mis­rep­re­sent­ed by many. “… I received a mix of both [views]; some peo­ple have heard it on the media and don’t under­stand in what con­text what was hap­pen­ing and have been alarmed. I haven’t heard any cas­es of over­re­ac­tion or calls for any dam­age con­trol pro­gramme. The speech has been trun­cat­ed… and it can be a cause for con­cern,” Burke stated.

As it relates to the how the par­ty will han­dle the grow­ing divi­sions in St Ann South Eastern, which is rep­re­sent­ed by Member of Parliament Lisa Hanna, Burke said there is noth­ing the par­ty can do if mem­bers choose to run as inde­pen­dent can­di­dates. He, how­ev­er, said that the par­ty is work­ing to ensure that sup­port­ers are clear on who are the offi­cial PNP can­di­dates for the divi­sions as there can be no “inde­pen­dent PNP can­di­dates”. “… So the PNP has four can­di­dates in South East St Ann, all duly select­ed and nom­i­nat­ed as PNP can­di­dates. [They are] Ian Bell for the Beecher Town Division; Lydia Richards for the Benstonton Division, Lloyd Garrick for the Moneague Division; and in the Claremont divi­sion, Lambert Weir,” Burke out­lined. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​B​u​r​k​e​-​d​e​f​e​n​d​s​-​P​o​r​t​i​a​_​8​0​949

President Barack Obama kicked off his last offi­cial over­seas trip in Greece on Tuesday say­ing he does­n’t bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for Donald Trump, whose unortho­dox elec­tion vic­to­ry has left for­eign lead­ers skit­tish about the next administration.

Obama, when asked by NBC News about whether he feels respon­si­ble for the elec­tion of Trump — seen as a ref­er­en­dum on his last eight years in office — the pres­i­dent told reporters: “I still don’t feel respon­si­ble for what the pres­i­dent-elect says or does. But I do feel a respon­si­bil­i­ty as pres­i­dent of the United States to make sure that I facil­i­tate a good tran­si­tion and I present to him, as well as the American peo­ple, my best thinking.”

Related: Trump’s and Obama’s Views on Globalization Reflect Broader Gap

Obama acknowl­edged that the GOP nom­i­nee’s win was a way for Americans to “shake things up.” His poli­cies on glob­al­iza­tion and increas­ing inter­na­tion­al rela­tions run counter to Trump, who pep­pered his lan­guage on the cam­paign trail with “America first” rhetoric.

In a speech over the sum­mer, Trump crit­i­cized a “lead­er­ship class that wor­ships glob­al­ism over Americanism.”

Obama on Tuesday said pres­i­den­tial elec­tions can turn on a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing can­di­date per­son­al­i­ties as well as a cam­paign’s effec­tive­ness, and Trump’s rhetoric “tapped into that par­tic­u­lar strain with­in the Republican Party” to win over vot­ers. Read more here : http://​www​.nbc​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​w​o​r​l​d​/​o​b​a​m​a​-​i​-​s​t​i​l​l​-​d​o​n​-​t​-​f​e​e​l​-​r​e​s​p​o​n​s​i​b​l​e​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​s​-​w​i​n​-​n​6​8​4​0​0​1​?​c​i​d​=​p​a​r​-​t​w​i​t​t​e​r​-​f​e​e​d​_​2​0​1​6​1​1​1​5​&​u​t​m​_​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​=​b​u​f​f​e​r​a​c​0​6​4​&​u​t​m​_​m​e​d​i​u​m​=​s​o​c​i​a​l​&​u​t​m​_​s​o​u​r​c​e​=​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​.​c​o​m​&​u​t​m​_​c​a​m​p​a​i​g​n​=​b​u​f​fer

NEW YORK/​WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) — An archi­tect of anti-immi­gra­tion efforts who says he is advis­ing President-elect Donald Trump said the new admin­is­tra­tion could push ahead rapid­ly on con­struc­tion of a U.S.-Mexico bor­der wall with­out seek­ing imme­di­ate con­gres­sion­al approval.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is report­ed­ly being con­sid­ered for the post of attor­ney gen­er­al, said in an inter­view that Trump’s pol­i­cy advis­ers had also dis­cussed draft­ing a pro­pos­al for his con­sid­er­a­tion to rein­state a reg­istry for immi­grants from Muslim countries.

Kobach, who media reports say is a key mem­ber of Trump’s tran­si­tion team, said he had par­tic­i­pat­ed in reg­u­lar con­fer­ence calls with about a dozen Trump immi­gra­tion advis­ers for the past two to three months.

Trump’s tran­si­tion team did not respond to requests for con­fir­ma­tion of Kobach’s role. The pres­i­dent-elect has not com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing any spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions from advi­so­ry groups.

Trump, who scored an upset vic­to­ry last week over Democrat Hillary Clinton, made build­ing a wall on the U.S.-Mexico bor­der a cen­tral issue of his cam­paign and has pledged to step up immi­gra­tion enforce­ment against the country’s 11 mil­lion undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. He has also said he sup­ports “extreme vet­ting” of Muslims enter­ing the United States as a nation­al secu­ri­ty measure.

Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immi­gra­tion group had dis­cussed draft­ing exec­u­tive orders for the president-elect’s review “so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running.”

To imple­ment Trump’s call for “extreme vet­ting” of some Muslim immi­grants, Kobach said the immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy group could rec­om­mend the rein­state­ment of a nation­al reg­istry of immi­grants and vis­i­tors who enter the United States on visas from coun­tries where extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions are active.

Kobach helped design the pro­gram, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serv­ing in Republican President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants.

Under NSEERS, peo­ple from coun­tries deemed “high­er risk” were required to under­go inter­ro­ga­tions and fin­ger­print­ing on enter­ing the United States. Some non-cit­i­zen male U.S. res­i­dents over the age of 16 from coun­tries with active mil­i­tant threats were required to reg­is­ter in per­son at gov­ern­ment offices and peri­od­i­cal­ly check in.

NSEERS was aban­doned in 2011 after it was deemed redun­dant by the Department of Homeland Security and crit­i­cized by civ­il rights groups for unfair­ly tar­get­ing immi­grants from Muslim- major­i­ty nations.

Kobach said the immi­gra­tion advis­ers were also look­ing at how the Homeland Security Department could move rapid­ly on bor­der wall con­struc­tion with­out approval from Congress by reap­pro­pri­at­ing exist­ing funds in the cur­rent bud­get. He acknowl­edged “that future fis­cal years will require addi­tion­al appropriations.”

Congress, which is con­trolled by Trump’s fel­low Republicans, could object to redi­rect­ing DHS funds des­ig­nat­ed for oth­er pur­pos­es. Read more here : http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​r​e​p​o​r​t​e​d​-​t​r​u​m​p​-​i​m​m​i​g​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​d​v​i​s​o​r​-​s​a​y​s​-​h​e​s​-​d​r​a​f​t​i​n​g​-​p​l​a​n​-​f​o​r​-​m​u​s​l​i​m​-​r​e​g​i​s​t​r​y​_​u​s​_​5​8​2​c​5​9​b​d​e​4​b​0​1​d​8​a​0​1​4​b​6​328

It ‘s ironic that people who did not go out to vote for Hillary Clinton, or against Donald Trump, now have the nerve to pretend they are surprised that Donald Trump will be the next president.

There is no such thing as your vote don’t count.
The elec­tion was a bina­ry choice between Hillary Clinton and a fas­cist dem­a­gogue named Donald Trump. The idea that one would vote for Jill Stein , Ron Johnson, Evan McMullin or write in a can­di­date who had no chance of win­ning was the essence of van­i­ty and stupidity.
Who were they hurting?

Remarkably peo­ple indulge in those van­i­ty endeav­ors as if they are send­ing a mes­sage to some­one, I was nev­er quite sure who was sup­posed to get that mes­sage. Now We the entire world is stuck with the con­se­quences of this train-wreck.
Two peo­ple were seri­ous­ly shocked about the elec­tion results last tuesday.
Hillary Clinton was told by pun­dits, plau­dits and poll­sters that she was win­ning, such was their screw-up that Clinton seem­ing­ly nev­er mulled over the thought in her head ” what if I don’t win”?
I always tried mulling things over in my head when I am fac­ing sit­u­a­tions which may result in ways out­side what I would like, it helps me to deal with disappointment.

Donald Trump despite the con­sis­tent brava­do was shocked that he won !
In fact it may rea­son­ably be argued that he want­ed to lose bad­ly . He said and did things which would have sunk pre­vi­ous can­di­dates . He refused to do things oth­er can­di­dates did for the vet­ting process , none of it mat­tered the vot­ers want­ed “Barabbas”.
The raw racist, misog­y­nis­tic, xeno­pho­bic, Islamophobic offen­sive mes­sage which char­ac­ter­ized his cam­paign gained so much trac­tion that his fol­low­ers would not allow him to lose.
Finally some­one had the balls to say the things white America was told is no longer accept­able since the sign­ing of the civ­il rights act in the 60’s.
This silent white major­i­ty was mad as hell and they were going to sup­port this man who speak their lan­guage. Everything and every­one else be damned , they need­ed to take back their coun­try and make America white[sic], my bad, great again .
Everyone else be damned.

The look on Trump’s his face as he sat in the Oval office with President Barack Obama fac­ing the media gag­gle said it all. “How did I get myself into this, how the hell do I get out of this s***t”.
Donald Trump’s run for the white house was like noth­ing we have ever seen before. In the past can­di­dates made sure they crossed all the T’s ‚dot­ted all the I’s .
After all, pre­vi­ous cam­paigns have been job inter­views between can­di­dates and their boss­es the vot­ers. The racial tem­per­a­ture at Trump’s ral­lies was the fault of no one oth­er than Donald Trump .
Here was a man run­ning for pres­i­dent of the United States , leader of the free world, yet he was devoid of com­mon decen­cy and basic respect for those unlike him, or dis­agrees with him.
He open­ly and con­sis­tent­ly berat­ed and derid­ed the media which was there to report to the peo­ple , label­ing them despi­ca­ble , crooked and against him. He encour­aged open hos­til­i­ty toward even female reporters. He told his igno­rant cow­ard­ly sup­port­ers to attack protesters,to which they were hap­py to oblige the bully.
He sur­round­ed him­self with oth­er bul­ly­ing racist dem­a­gogues like him­self, Rudolph Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Steven Bannon, Chris Christie, and a long list of oth­ers who believe their views are the only views wor­thy of respect.
He admired and praised the likes of Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin , and Kim Jong-un.
He berat­ed and dem­a­gogues respect­ed world lead­ers like Angela Merkel and our own President as weak and feck­less as he bad mouthed alliances like NATO and the non pro­lif­er­a­tion treaties, argu­ing that maybe coun­tries like Japan and South Korea should have their own nuclear arsenals.
He wants the American Press muz­zled , he crit­i­cis­es the elec­tions process as fixed against him , of course now that he has won there are no more cries that the elec­tions are rigged.
All of this with­out both­er­ing to go through the laun­dry list of indi­vid­u­als he disrespected.

Presidents have the pow­er and abil­i­ty to destroy the world .Effectively eras­ing mankind from the face of the plan­et . Hence it was always thought that a lev­el head­ed per­son , one who can remain calm under pres­sure, would prob­a­bly be best suit­ed to have such awe­some pow­er. Presidents have the high­est lev­el of Intelligence access , more than any­one else out­side the mosts senior intel­li­gence officials.
So how does a man get to be President while refus­ing to sub­mit to the require­ments which was a must for pre­vi­ous candidates?
How does the per­son seek­ing the job say to the poten­tial employ­er, I will not give you my resume?
I will not sub­mit to any of the require­ments which will help you decide whether I am qual­i­fied or even suit­ed for the job, you have to take my word for it?

That’s what Trump did and it worked for him .
The rules which pre­vi­ous­ly applied did not apply to Donald Trump.
Independent mem­ber of the Irish Taoiseach TD Mick Barry, said “Tuesday’s elec­tion result will see a “racist, sex­ist, big­ot­ed bil­lion­aire in the White House” and upbraid­ed leader Enda Kenny — as well as the lead­ers of Fianna Fail and Sinn Féin — for con­grat­u­lat­ing the future president.
“You are not offer­ing those con­grat­u­la­tions in my name and you are not offer­ing those con­grat­u­la­tions in the name of AAA/​PPP,” said Mr Barry. “I am sure there will be a lot of peo­ple out there who will sec­ond my emo­tions in rela­tion to that”. “I remind the Taoiseach that this is a man who has spo­ken of 11 mil­lion depor­ta­tions from the United States over the next peri­od of time.”

In the mean­time demon­stra­tions have bro­ken out across American cities as thou­sands of peo­ple demon­strate against a man they believe is total­ly unfit to hold the office of the Presidency.
Young lati­no chil­dren are being bul­lied and intim­i­dat­ed in school by white stu­dents. Muslim women are being attacked in the streets by alleged Trump sup­port­ers, and not to be out­done the usu­al cow­ards are out spray-paint­ing offen­sive racist graf­fi­ti on build­ings and pri­vate property.
At the University of Vermont, stu­dents found a Donald Trump cam­paign sign paint­ed with a swasti­ka three doors down from the cam­pus Hillel.

In San Marcos, Texas, Texas State University police are try­ing to deter­mine who is respon­si­ble for a series of omi­nous, threat­en­ing fliers post­ed around cam­pus. “Now that our man Trump is elect­ed and Republicans own both the Senate and the House – time to orga­nize tar & feath­er vig­i­lante squads and go arrest and tor­ture those deviant uni­ver­si­ty lead­ers spout­ing off all this diver­si­ty garbage,” one of the fliers read.
In Minnesota, offi­cials at Maple Grove Senior High launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the racist graf­fi­ti which was wide­ly shared on twitter.
In California, San Jose State University said a woman lost her bal­ance and choked when a man attempt­ed to rip her head­scarf away.
The best Trump could come up with was a tweet ques­tion the first amend­ment right of demonstrators.

The nation sure­ly got it’s Barabbas . He alone can fix everything.
Interesting times ahead.

A group of young peo­ple in the city of Poughkeepsie today, march­ing east along Main streets voic­ing their dis­plea­sure at the elec­tion of Donald Trump.

Democrats can convince themselves that FBI Director Comey’s letter was the cause of their defeat or they can look at the newly drawn Donald Trump political map and see quite clearly where they fell down.

Rules Which Disqualified Previous Presidential Candidates Out The Door….

Like many peo­ple, I too am dis­ap­point­ed with the result of the elec­tions, yet I do not see the elec­tion of Donald Trump to the Presidency quite the same way oth­ers are react­ing to his his­toric win.
When the final votes are count­ed it may very well show that more peo­ple vot­ed for Hillary Clinton than vot­ed for Donald Trump. Even if she ends up los­ing the pop­u­lar vote by a small mar­gin it is impor­tant to look at the way Donald Trump carved out a path to 270 elec­toral votes and beyond when lit­er­al­ly all of the polling showed him hav­ing next to no path to secur­ing an elec­toral victory.

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

JOBS AND SECURITY

We can’t all look at the peo­ple who vot­ed for Trump in Pennsylvanian, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and say these are all racist peo­ple who decid­ed to sim­ply elect a racist can­di­date to the pres­i­den­cy with­out appear­ing silly.
These very same peo­ple elect­ed a black man they had hard­ly heard of to the very same job, not once but twice.
It was­n’t like these were sim­ply repub­li­can vot­ers who had abstained from vot­ing in the last two cycles in which Obama won.
In coun­ty after coun­ty Obama car­ried in 2008 and in 2012 with­in these states, vot­ers decid­ed­ly vot­ed for Donald Trump for President over Hillary Clinton.

Amidst the inces­sant chat­ter about strat­e­gy and paths to 270 elec­toral votes, or lack there­of, Trump’s sur­ro­gates point­ed to their can­di­date’s mes­sage about bad trade deals, the fact that they were ner­vous about glob­al­iza­tion and what that has meant to the rust belt.
Many of those peo­ple saw their jobs dis­ap­pear over­seas as a result of glob­al­iza­tion. When Trump talks about build­ing a wall to keep immi­grants out that res­onate with them. Even though for the most part immi­grants com­ing into the United States may not actu­al­ly be tak­ing jobs from this cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple, they are still offend­ed that jobs they believe should have been here, were shipped to peo­ple like those peo­ple over­seas.[sic]
So even though the United States has had lit­er­al­ly the most gen­er­ous immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy of any nation for decades, these vot­ers now saw immi­gra­tion in the con­text of what is caus­ing the prob­lems and anx­i­eties they are expe­ri­enc­ing in their lives at the moment.

Guess what, Donald Trump under­stood all of those anx­i­eties, fears, and con­cerns. He ran a cam­paign that spoke to those concerns.
That he was coarse, crass, craven, and despi­ca­ble did not mat­ter to them. They felt that once he was elect­ed he would have peo­ple around him to get the job done. What they found in Donald Trump was some­one who under­stood that they did not need to have grad­u­ate degrees. They want­ed a can­di­date who under­stood that they need­ed jobs.
Yes, these white work­ing-class peo­ple do not care about col­lege degrees they want­ed to have good-pay­ing fac­to­ry jobs, min­ing jobs, jobs in the ener­gy busi­ness. Jobs which they could get dirty doing, jobs which allows them to send their chil­dren to schools so they may earn degrees and be all they can be.
The age of these peo­ple tells the whole sto­ry, old­er, non-col­lege-edu­cat­ed work­ing people.
Boots, jeans plaid shirts, and hat they want­ed to con­tin­ue their lives, dri­ving around in their old rugged pick­up trucks doing what they have always done, mak­ing a living.
No, they are not all racist, big­ot­ed peo­ple. That is easy to say, these very same peo­ple elect­ed Barack Obama, not once but twice.
These are the peo­ple who came out to vote. These are the peo­ple who turned polling on its head today.
They did not want to tell any­one they were vot­ing for Trump for fear they would be labeled big­ot­ed racists.
They spoke with their votes.

President Barack Obama will leave office with an approval rat­ing at unprece­dent­ed lev­els for a two-term pres­i­dent. He is extreme­ly pop­u­lar, the econ­o­my has come roar­ing back from the brink of col­lapse. The auto indus­try has nev­er been stronger, thanks to his lead­er­ship. The stock mar­kets are at unprece­dent­ed lev­els. The hous­ing mar­kets have improved marked­ly to the point there are hous­ing short­ages in many states. The nation has had it’s longest peri­od of job growth since the sec­ond world war, over 15 mil­lion jobs cre­at­ed. Over 20 mil­lion more peo­ple have access to health insurance.
The pres­i­den­t’s list of accom­plish­ments is long and impressive.
The Presidency was Hillary Clinton’s to lose.
And lose it she did!
The rest of the coun­try sees these accom­plish­ments, those real­i­ties are reflect­ed in the President’s approval rat­ings. But these peo­ple in the rough and tum­ble rust belt areas of Pennsylvanian, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and oth­ers do not care any­thing about that.
They see an ever-increas­ing glob­al­ized world in which there are no more guar­an­tees. They are fear­ful and afraid, Trump knew he could cap­i­tal­ize on those fears.
He knew they would not care about any of his transgressions.
He said so!
He knew that his mes­sage had so much res­o­nance that it did not mat­ter that he had no expe­ri­ence politically.
Was thrice mar­ried. Filed mul­ti­ple busi­ness bank­rupt­cies. Enabled nation­al­ists, and vile racists. Refused to make pub­lic his tax returns. Had failed at numer­ous busi­ness­es. Had objec­ti­fied women. Demonized Immigrants, Muslims, Blacks Latinos, a gold-star fam­i­ly, legit­i­mate American heroes, and every­one who dis­agreed with him.

None of that mat­tered to them they want­ed to over­turn the apple cart and over­turn it they did.
That Secretary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and their legions of poll­sters and experts could have missed this is astounding.
That Secretary Clinton and her team could be unmind­ful of shoring up the blue wall that Senator and President Barack Obama had cre­at­ed is polit­i­cal incompetence.
From Secretary Clinton’s choice of a cam­paign team to tak­ing lit­er­al­ly the month of August off, valu­able time which could have been spent talk­ing to those vot­ers who had twice elect­ed Barack Obama was shock­ing to me and I wrote about that.
That she did not sit in din­ers and cof­fee shops explain­ing that after President Obama had done so much to restore the econ­o­my she would be work­ing on their issues is malpractice.
She had a tem­plate to fol­low she saw the crowds which flocked to Bernie Sanders. Don’t change what works sim­ply secure what Obama had created.
On that score, she fell short and she has no one to blame but herself.

“Looks like Trump got his wall after all. A wall of beautiful voters.

Friday marked the end of ear­ly vot­ing in the bat­tle­ground state of Nevada, and the final returns brought decid­ed­ly good news for Democratic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Hillary Clinton.

Registered Democrats turned out in force in Nevada’s largest coun­ties, pro­vid­ing Clinton a crit­i­cal boost in a state where polling aggre­gates show the for­mer sec­re­tary of state and GOP nom­i­nee Donald Trump with­in a few points of one anoth­er. Over 57,000 votes were cast in pop­u­lous Clark County, a sin­gle-day record that pro­pelled Democrats to a statewide bal­lot edge on par with results at the same point in 2012, when President Barack Obama won Nevada by near­ly 7 points.

Turnout was strong through­out the day, and elec­tion offi­cials pledged to keep polling places open as long as there were vot­ers in line. At 9pm, hun­dreds were still wait­ing to vote at a Mexican super­mar­ket in Las Vegas. “Looks like Trump got his wall after all. A wall of beau­ti­ful vot­ers,” wrote Yvanna Cancela of the local Culinary Union, which has played a key role in Democrats’ get-out-the-vote oper­a­tions this year. That union also rep­re­sents the work­ers who recent­ly vot­ed to orga­nize Trump International hotel on the Vegas strip.
http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​n​e​v​a​d​a​-​e​a​r​l​y​-​v​o​t​e​_​u​s​_​5​8​1​d​5​e​3​9​e​4​b​0​e​8​0​b​0​2​c​a​4​3d0

Amidst the noise about voter fraud coming from the demagogue representing the Republican Party and his minions , it is important to note that probably the biggest fraud being perpetrated on voters is voter suppression.

In North Carolina a state which Donald Trump must win to have a chance at win­ning the white house, on Saturday vot­ers stood in line for hours to cast their votes.
Saturday is the last of ear­ly vot­ing days before the elec­tions on November 8^th.
CNN’s Gary Tuchman inter­viewed peo­ple stand­ing in a line which snaked around build­ings with no end in sight. In Nevada on Friday the lines were nev­er end­ing as vot­ers stood in the sti­fling heat to cast their votes. One com­men­ta­tor said it was out­ra­geous and worse than a banana republic.
Does any­one believe there is a legit­i­mate rea­son for peo­ple to stand in line for hours to vote except that those in author­i­ty does not want them to vote?
That is vot­er suppression!!!!
In a state run by a Republican leg­is­la­ture and repub­li­can Governor Pat McCrory there has been a sus­tained attempts to dras­ti­cal­ly dis­al­low minor­i­ty vot­ers the right to vote. These action includes less­en­ing of days vot­ers can vote ear­ly, dras­ti­cal­ly less vot­ing places and purg­ing the names of black vot­ers from vot­ers lists.
In response to a law­suit filed by the state’s NAACP U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs slammed an ongo­ing North Carolinian vot­er purge dur­ing a dra­mat­ic Wednesday hear­ing, telling coun­ty attor­neys that she was “hor­ri­fied” by the “insane” process by which vot­ers could be removed from the rolls with­out their knowl­edge. “It almost looks like a cat­tle call, the way peo­ple are being purged,” Biggs said. “This sounds like some­thing that was put togeth­er in 1901,” when the state used Jim Crow laws to pre­vent black cit­i­zens from cast­ing a ballot.

According to the web­site Slate​.com Biggs called a hear­ing after the NAACP sued sev­er­al North Carolina coun­ties for purg­ing near­ly 6,700 vot­ers — most of them black Democrats — from the rolls. These purges were legal under a state law that per­mits any per­son to revoke any oth­er person’s vot­ing rights. The process is sim­ple: An indi­vid­ual gath­ers mail that was returned as unde­liv­er­able, then chal­lenges the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion of res­i­dents at those address­es. If those vot­ers do not appear at a coun­ty board of elec­tions or return a nota­rized form, their vot­ing rights are nullified.

Let’s see this for what it is , the Republican Party has not made it a secret that it’s goal is to sup­press black votes. Trumps lack­eys detail how they intend to do it open­ly . Last cycle elect­ed offi­cials in the state of Pennsylvania detailed how they intend­ed to sup­press the vote and deliv­er the elec­tions to Mitt Romney in a state which has been more and more Democratic over the last sev­er­al cycles.
When peo­ple turn out to vote Democrats win .
Placing bar­ri­ers in the way of black peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to exer­cise their right to vote guar­an­tees wins for republicans.

So the ridicu­lous noise you hear com­ing from the polit­i­cal right is mere­ly a dis­trac­tion designed to fool you into believ­ing that there are peo­ple actu­al­ly going into polling sta­tions at the per­il of being arrest­ed to cast votes for Democrats.
Ironically the last two idiots who tried to do that were actu­al­ly Trump’s sup­port­ers and they were prompt­ly busted.
The idea behind the con­stant noise about elec­tion rig­ging is a dis­trac­tion so you won’t see what they are doing in actu­al­ly rig­ging the vote in favor of the Republicans.
In state after state Federal courts are now order­ing that vot­ers who had their names purged from vot­ers lists must have their names restored so they may vote.
There is a giant sleigh of hand by Republicans in play, because Republicans refuse to face the glar­ing fact that the face of the coun­try is chang­ing fast.

Voter sup­pres­sion meth­ods being employed, the demo­niz­ing of Immigrants. The idea of mak­ing America great again. not want­i­ng to be polit­i­cal cor­rect. (you know they still want to call you “nig­ger” to your face with­out con­se­quence). Taking their coun­try back.
All of this is about the brown­ing of America and a Republican par­ty which went all in with it’s core of white vot­ers who want to go back to a time than nev­er was.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly amus­ing that the likes of Ben Carson who par­rot the not want­i­ng to be polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect nar­ra­tive, miss­es the idea why Republicans do not want to be polit­i­cal­ly correct.
The Republican par­ty made a pact with the dev­il when it allowed those who hat­ed the idea of blacks being giv­en their God giv­en rights to free­dom equal­i­ty and jus­tice a home.
It nev­er repu­di­at­ed the neo con­ser­v­a­tive view­point which advo­cates an America which is dom­i­nat­ed by white men. It did not repu­di­ate the Tea-par­ty. It did not repu­di­ate the Alt-Right . It allowed the igno­rant ram­blings of a bare­ly semi-lit­er­ate Sarah Palin to become main­stream pol­i­cy decisions.
On November 8^th the par­ty will once again lose the biggest polit­i­cal prize- the Presidency to a vast­ly unpop­u­lar woman. She will become the 45^th President of the United States , yes a woman , fol­low­ing the nation’s first African-American President. She will win despite her extreme­ly low approval rat­ings because the nation has moved on from the divi­sive pol­i­tics of the right and a repub­li­can par­ty which still clings to the notion that America is a coun­try of white men , for white men and by white men.…
The Party will con­tin­ue to splin­ter as it tena­cious­ly cling to poli­cies that have long ago been repudiated.

Decorated by Michael S. Smith for the Obamas, the White House’s private quarters are as worldly and relaxed as the family that calls them home.

Considering the epochal achieve­ments of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion — the Affordable Care Act, the legal­iza­tion of same-sex mar­riage, the Recovery Act, the Paris Agreement on cli­mate change, and so much more — it seems triv­ial to append a foot­note that reads, “The President and First Lady have a pret­ty chic din­ing room, too.” But the fact is, they do. And for any­one who appre­ci­ates the pow­er of design, Michelle and Barack Obama’s emen­da­tions to the White House speak vol­umes about the sea change in American cul­ture the two have cham­pi­oned for the past eight years. Adorned with an unprece­dent­ed array of 20^th- and 21^st-cen­tu­ry art­works, their pri­vate quar­ters remain an oasis of civil­i­ty and, yes, refined taste in a polit­i­cal are­na so often bereft of both.

“Because of Michael Smith, the pri­vate res­i­dence of the White House has not only reflect­ed our taste but also upheld the proud his­to­ry of this build­ing. Above all, it has tru­ly felt like a home for our fam­i­ly,” says Mrs. Obama in praise of the Los Angeles – based dec­o­ra­tor, who has col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with the First Family dur­ing their tenure in Washington, D.C. Smith returns the com­pli­ment by describ­ing his work as a response to the First Lady’s pro­gres­sive spir­it: “Mrs. Obama often talks about bring­ing new voic­es into the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion, and that idea informed many of the deci­sions we made,” he says. “We select­ed artists and design­ers who would nev­er have appeared in the White House before.”
See sto­ry here: http://​www​.archi​tec​turaldigest​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​o​b​a​m​a​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​?​m​b​i​d​=​s​y​n​d​_​h​u​f​f​p​o​h​ome

It’s incredible the world we live in today.
Information is readily at our fingertips, the wonders of modern technology has far exceeded our wildest imaginations of what could have been possible even a decade ago.
Two little baby boys born joined at the head were separated by Doctors at the Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.
Thanks to the wonders of modern science.
Yet we live in a world where good is sold as evil, and lies are repeated with such frequency and conviction that to some the truth does not matter anymore, as long as their points of view wins the day.

As the American peo­ple pre­pare to elect the Nation’s 45^th President, vot­ers are torn between two can­di­dates for President whom they say are the worse the nation have even had to chose from in their lifetime.
I am unsure whether the resume of the two can­di­dates bears that out or whether a thir­ty year smear cam­paign has cre­at­ed a bogey­man on one side and a gen­uine creep on the oth­er. One thing is cer­tain what we hear about rigged elec­tions is exact­ly the oppo­site of what exist in America today.

According to Justin Levitt, a pro­fes­sor at the Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and an expert in con­sti­tu­tion­al law and the law of democ­ra­cy, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion and redis­trict­ing. I’ve been track­ing alle­ga­tions of fraud for years now, includ­ing the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on vot­er ID, I looked at every sin­gle alle­ga­tion put before the Court. And since then, I’ve been fol­low­ing reports wher­ev­er they crop up. [New evi­dence that vot­er ID laws ‘skew democ­ra­cy’ in favor of white Republicans] To be clear, I’m not just talk­ing about pros­e­cu­tions. I track any spe­cif­ic, cred­i­ble alle­ga­tion that some­one may have pre­tend­ed to be some­one else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix. So far, I’ve found about 31 dif­fer­ent inci­dents (some of which involve mul­ti­ple bal­lots) since 2000, any­where in the coun­try. To put this in per­spec­tive, the 31 inci­dents below come in the con­text of gen­er­al, pri­ma­ry, spe­cial, and munic­i­pal elec­tions from 2000 through 2014. In gen­er­al and pri­ma­ry elec­tions alone, more than 1 bil­lion bal­lots were cast in that peri­od. Some of these 31 inci­dents have been thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed (includ­ing some pros­e­cu­tions). But many have not. Based on how oth­er claims have turned out, I’d bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked: A prob­lem with match­ing peo­ple from one big com­put­er list to anoth­er, or a data entry error, or con­fu­sion between two dif­fer­ent peo­ple with the same name, or some­one sign­ing in on the wrong line of a poll book.

This is just one Professor who have done yeo­man’s work in dig­ging deep­er into the swamp to deter­mine whether there is any truth in what Donald Trump and his sur­ro­gates are say­ing .
The sit­ting sec­re­tary of state of the state of Ohio, a repub­li­can, a state which has a repub­li­can Governor , just yes­ter­day said there is no vot­er fraud and the elec­tions can­not and will not be rigged.
Republican after Republican have come out against the notion that the elec­tions will be rigged, or that there is wide­spread vot­er fraud across the country.

The fun­da­men­tal thing about the American democ­ra­cy is that it prides itself on the fair­ness of the process and the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er which suc­ceeds each election.
What does it say about a poten­tial can­di­date for President who would insti­gate his fol­low­ers into believ­ing that some­how the process which has 50 dif­fer­ent elec­tions on elec­tion day is some­how rigged?
This is a coun­try which fought a civ­il-war . It is a coun­try with a lot of racial and oth­er divi­sions, . Candidates of both polit­i­cal par­ties of the past have always been mag­nan­i­mous even when there were doubts as there was in 2000.
In that instance Al Gore was extreme­ly gra­cious to George W Bush even though he had won the pop­u­lar vote and been declared the win­ner before the US Supreme Court stopped the vote and gave the elec­tion to Bush.
If ever there was a case to be made that the results were arrived at dis­hon­est­ly that was it yet Gore con­ced­ed defeat and went his way.
So why are Donald Trump and his sur­ro­gates say­ing this when it is clear there is absolute­ly no truth to what they are saying?
There are rum­blings that Donald Trump is try­ing to break the Republican par­ty into two groups . One group which com­pris­es the estab­lish­ment cen­ter-right of the par­ty and the oth­er, the Alt Right crowd inspired by (Breitbart​.com) Steven Bannon , the likes of Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and oth­er noise­mak­ers on talk radio who prop­a­gate hatred and separation.

The goal it seem, is to break-away a size­able chunk of the most hard-core sup­port­ers of the Republican Party and bring them to a Trump type media con­glom­er­ate where they may have a true home to spread their hatred. Much like in the FOX net­work vein.
Either way the dis­graced alleged sex­u­alul har­rasers , Roger Ailes and Donald Trump have a home along­side Steven Bannon to make mon­ey from the igno­rance of their followers.
Checkmate Donald Trump.
The Republican par­ty is the par­ty which over the years have tak­en extreme steps to lim­it vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion . In States like Texas, North and South Carolina and through­out the mid­west, Republican Legislatures have tak­en steps to make vot­ing more dif­fi­cult. Last cycle even in Pennsylvania the Republican sec­re­tary of state con­ced­ed that the idea was to keep Obama’s sup­port­ers away from the polls which he thought was a good way to guar­an­tee a win for the nom­i­nee Mitt Romney.
In Florida just last week a Federal judge over­ruled gov­er­nor Rick Scott and extend­ed vot­er reg­is­tra­tion after Scott sought to cut off vot­er reg­is­tra­tion early.

Evol Graham .…

Trump as of October.

I don’t watch Pat Robertson, but maybe he has a point. I mean I should prob­a­bly tell my girls that it’s okay to be con­sid­ered a raw piece of meat rather than an indi­vid­ual. That if you “feel” that you have more to give soci­ety, ignore that you will not be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Trump should be pres­i­dent, because he has proven he knows eco­nom­ics (https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi­ness/e­con­o­my/trumps-tax-mys­tery-points-toward-the-deal­ings-around-his-rst-bankruptcies/​2016/​10/​03/​6e217ba4-8975 – 11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html), deals with oth­ers well like NBC (http://​vari​ety​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​tv/news/n­bc-don­ald-trump-immi­grants-1201530568/) and hav­ing the sup­port of key repub­li­cans (http://​www​.usato​day​.com/sto­ry/news/2016/10/11/­elect­ed-repub­li­cans-not-sup­port­ing-don­ald-trump-pres­i­dent-con­gress-gov­er­nors/91913668/), knows ener­gy (http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ener­gy-plan-2016 – 10), and that the world lead­ers will respect him like Putin (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oc­t/11/vladimir-putins-mas­ter-plan-a-russ­ian-century/​) and great rela­tion­ships with the mid­dle east (http://​www​.politi​co​.eu/arti­cle/­bil­lion­aire-sau­di-prince-to-don­ald-trump-drop-out/​).

A thought regard­ing perspective

After read­ing an arti­cle from the Financial Times enti­tled, “Britain after Brexit: Lionel Barber’s lec­ture in Tokyo.” One thinks not only about the report­ing, but I begin to think about my on actions in the world. I am not a philoso­pher, a priest, a teacher, or a title hold­er in an indus­try; one can­not ini­tial­ly have an opin­ion that mat­ters unless you have a mea­sure, by soci­etal stan­dards, of that suc­cess. Even your fam­i­ly will love you because of blood but even then may not respect you unless you have reached some lev­el of “suc­cess.” This arti­cle speaks to an event that in the short-sight­ed reac­tions to fear of the unknown have caused the par­tic­i­pants to have for­got­ten what and how the past 100 years has shaped the cur­rent, and how the sim­ple can dam­age the future. The quick with­out a plan is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. If you notice it is not the “high­ly-edu­cat­ed” nor the devout­ly spir­i­tu­al who fes­ter and yell about the neg­a­tives in the news, but those who do not get atten­tion to one’s self who cry out to be heard. It is nar­cis­sism that dri­ves the ani­mos­i­ty between peo­ple’s ratio­nal thought and makes them dic­tate their morals which caus­ing “news­wor­thi­ness” of their actions against oth­ers. Only 60 to 70 years ago the issues then repeat today and have dri­ven peo­ple to act at their worst. What one needs to ask now is how do we remind our­selves of the past so we don’t keep reliv­ing those same events in the next 5 minutes?

Bibliography

Barber, L. (2016) Britain after Brexit: Lionel Barber’s lec­ture in Tokyo. Available at: https://​lnkd​.in/​e​n​-​f​ZRM (Accessed: 16 October 2016).

The pic­ture doesn’t look any rosier for Democrats in the imme­di­ate future. In 2018, the par­ty will already be defend­ing five Senate seats in his­tor­i­cal­ly red states, as well as anoth­er six in states that backed Republicans in 2010. They will also have to defend any House seats they gain this fall. In August 2015, Obama dis­cussed at length his feel­ings on a sys­tem that he sug­gest­ed was rigged to favor Republicans. : http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​1​0​/​1​8​/​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​-​o​b​a​m​a​s​-​a​m​b​i​t​i​o​u​s​-​p​o​s​t​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​-​p​l​a​n​-​t​o​-​a​i​d​e​-​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​s​-​e​r​i​c​-​h​o​l​d​e​r​-​n​a​m​e​d​-​c​h​a​i​r​-​o​f​-​n​e​w​-​n​a​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​r​e​d​i​s​t​r​i​c​t​i​n​g​-​e​f​f​o​rt/