There is noth­ing remark­able or shock­ing about the Republican’s stance on Donald Trump tak­ing and keep­ing clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments and refus­ing to give them back.
There is noth­ing remark­able about their excite­ment that Biden’s peo­ple found clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at his prop­er­ties and noti­fied the nation­al archives and the FBI.
Finally, it is not sur­pris­ing that this was the open­ing Republicans were hop­ing for to cre­ate the false nar­ra­tive of what-about-ism.
Republicans have no inter­est in see­ing the gov­ern­ment work unless they are in charge. The inves­ti­ga­tion is the point in hear­ings that will come from this, as well as Hunter Biden’s lap­top and oth­er fish­ing expe­di­tions. This is the Biden administration’s Benghazi.
With Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, no one should be delud­ed about what the next two years will be about. McCarthy gushed about the results of the fraud­u­lent Benghazi hear­ings years ago, and he sees con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tions as a win­ning strat­e­gy for Republicans.
The Republicans who show up on FOX ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion’ net­works do not show up to debate events or make ratio­nal argu­ments of equiv­a­lence; they show up to build out pre-planned lies and disinformation.
No one should be under any illu­sions about their intent; they all know what they say are lies. The lies are a fea­ture, not a bug.

Conscientious Americans shocked by what Republicans are doing, vot­er-sup­pres­sion laws, book burn­ings, polit­i­cal vio­lence, xeno­pho­bia, bla­tant racism, and oth­er anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic actions should under­stand that this is only the beginning.
The Republican par­ty is no longer a par­ty that believes in Democracy. From as far back as the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and maybe even far­ther back, the par­ty real­ized it had become a minor­i­ty party.
But for the Electoral College, in 2000, there would have been no pres­i­dent George W Bush. Still, there is an elec­toral col­lege, so we nev­er got to see what pres­i­dent Al Gore could have accom­plished as the 43^rd President of the United States, despite receiv­ing 543 895 more votes than Bush.
Sixteen years lat­er, accord­ing to CNN, Senator Hillary Clinton would receive 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%) in a final vote tal­ly, yet lose the pres­i­den­cy to the rep­re­hen­si­ble nar­cis­sis­tic liar Donald Trump.
Convinced of his ille­git­i­ma­cy, Trump tweet­ed, “In addi­tion to win­ning the Electoral College in a land­slide, I won the pop­u­lar vote if you deduct the mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed ille­gal­ly.”
It was a lie, but lies were cen­tral to Donald Trump’s brand. His busi­ness­es, his per­sona, and every­thing about him was a lie. Nonetheless, Trump became an American icon despite it. His polit­i­cal cam­paign became a pos­si­bil­i­ty, launched arguably on the lie that President Barack Obama was born out­side the United States and, there­fore, illegitimate.
Pressed to pro­duce evi­dence to back up his claims, Trump lied that he had sent inves­ti­ga­tors to Hawaii, Obama’s birth­place, to find the evidence.….….which nev­er materialized.
Donald Trump chal­lenged the doc­u­ment when Obama pro­duced his long-form birth cer­tifi­cate refut­ing Trump’s lies.
Though Donald Trump was proven to be a lying char­la­tan and a despi­ca­bly self-serv­ing los­er, he would go on to win the Republican nom­i­na­tion and be elect­ed pres­i­dent in the elec­toral college.
Trump would be impeached twice by con­gress in his sin­gle term, a first-ever, but the Republican-con­trolled Senate failed to remove him for his high crimes and misdemeanors.
After los­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 2020, Donald Trump incit­ed an insur­rec­tion to storm Congress to stop the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vote, a first in the nation’s history.

Conventional wis­dom would dic­tate that the Republican par­ty would ditch Donald Trump and his lies and seek to rein­gra­ti­ate itself with the plu­ral­i­ty of American vot­ers, large­ly by embrac­ing a raft of ideas amenable to them.
No, the stakes for the Republicans were too impor­tant to try a big-tent approach; in fact, the Democrats are the big-tent, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, les­bians, gays, and workers.
Republicans dou­bled down on Trumpism; they would pass laws to make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for peo­ple of col­or to vote, make it a crime for women to have abor­tions, and launch a war against immi­grants of col­or com­ing into the country.
They have no care about Black or Brown abor­tions; the idea is to ensure that white women do not abort a sin­gle white baby, regard­less of the risk to the mother.
In 2019 Brookings​.edu report­ed that for the first time, non-Hispanic white res­i­dents now make up less than half (49.9%) of the nation’s under age 15 pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to new­ly released 2018 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
The report stat­ed this phe­nom­e­non, which is pro­ject­ed to con­tin­ue, empha­sizes the need for insti­tu­tions that focus on chil­dren and young fam­i­lies to proac­tive­ly accom­mo­date the inter­ests of more racial­ly diverse pop­u­la­tions, as the lat­ter will be key play­ers in the country’s demo­graph­ic and eco­nom­ic future.
These sta­tis­tics only bore out what many whites in the United States already lived in fear of for decades and maybe since the for­ma­tion of the Republic.
If you believe the land you stand on is your God-giv­en birthright, then you also believe you have the right to decide who gets to live on that land or who enjoys the fruits thereof.
The Republican par­ty had long become the par­ty of white men, and so the bat­tle lines have long been drawn for America.
If the Republicans can­not win at the bal­lot box, they do not have the issues; they do not have the num­bers, and even with vot­er sup­pres­sion laws and intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, they will try to do it by force.

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

Frustrated with pol­i­tics, a young man a few days ago told me he believes that polit­i­cal par­ties should be done away with.
Curious, out of the same frus­tra­tion he shared, I asked him what his solu­tion to polit­i­cal par­ties was. He believes indi­vid­ual can­di­dates should be vot­ed into office based on their beliefs and ideas with­out par­ty affiliations.
I was intrigued by the idea but quick­ly caught myself when I won­dered how 435 mem­bers in the US Congress and 100 Senators, all with dif­fer­ent plat­forms, oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent­ly, would work.
It would­n’t!
People are so fed up with politi­cians that they have decid­ed to try any­thing to get their busi­ness attend­ed to. In the United States, enough peo­ple turned out in 2016 to elect Donald J Trump President through the twist­ed elec­toral col­lege process.
Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote by over 7 mil­lion votes but still became pres­i­dent, some­thing George Bush had done in 2000.
By 2020 American vot­ers turned out in record num­bers to cor­rect their mon­u­men­tal error of elect­ing Trump, whose lega­cy will be one that will live in infamy.
See our open dis­cus­sion on polic­ing, crime, and pol­i­tics in the youtube anti-crime forum in link here https://​www​.face​book​.com/​m​i​k​e​.​b​e​c​k​l​e​s.9

The frus­tra­tions that peo­ple get from politi­cians are entire­ly under­stand­able. In tiny Jamaica, for instance, noth­ing gets done for the peo­ple with­out grand­stand­ing and posturing.
Take, for instance, the crit­i­cal issue of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform that is bad­ly need­ed if Jamaicans are gen­uine­ly to be able to gov­ern them­selves. After much push­ing and prod­ding from many quar­ters and reg­u­lar folks like this writer, the Governing par­ty announced that they had begun con­ver­sa­tions about unteth­er­ing the Island from Britain a year ago.
What that process entails, we do not know. Still, we could only guess that dis­cus­sions had begun around writ­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion or amend­ing the present one to give Jamaicans full agency over their own des­tiny, free and clear of for­mer colo­nial slavemasters.
I mean, this seems like a no-brain­er, right? Not so in Jamaica because sit­ting down in good faith and tak­ing a seri­ous look at what is out­dat­ed isn’t work­ing; it is too much to ask of the mem­bers of the two polit­i­cal par­ties that take turns gov­ern­ing the Island.
Trinidad and Tobago did it, Barbados did it, and though Jamaicans love to brag and chat a lot, Jamaicans can­not write a con­sti­tu­tion by the peo­ple for the peo­ple and of the peo­ple. Where is the lead­er­ship in the region that Jamaicans loved to talk about so much?
Other than mur­der­ing each oth­er as the largest English ‑speak­ing Island in the region, what are we lead­ing on? Even if Jamaica did every­thing right and became a repub­lic that gov­erns itself free from out­side dic­tates today, we would only be a fol­low­er behind Trinidad and Tobago and tiny Barbados. That ought to silence some unbri­dled mis­guid­ed brava­do, but it won’t.

We are now learn­ing that noth­ing sub­stan­tive has been done a full year after talks were sup­posed to com­mence between the two polit­i­cal par­ties. The Government blames the oppo­si­tion for fail­ing to nom­i­nate two of its mem­bers to sit on the Constitutional Reform Committee. * (high­ly irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior by the oppo­si­tion).
On the oth­er hand, the oppo­si­tion argues that the exec­u­tive and judi­cial branch­es of Government should be decol­o­nized togeth­er and expressed con­cerns on oth­er mat­ters, such as the review and pos­si­ble amend­ment of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedom.* (Great point by the oppo­si­tion, on the issue of com­plete decol­o­niza­tion. However, the oppo­si­tion can­not con­tin­ue to stand in the way of progress in our coun­try by con­stant­ly talk­ing about the rights and priv­i­leges we should afford the worst ele­ments amongst us)
Jamaica needs con­sti­tu­tion­al reform and a new path to self-gov­er­nance. One that is free from for­eign pow­ers’ dic­tates. The oppo­si­tion can­not demand, on the one hand, full de-annex­a­tion from Britain while show­ing that it is still up to its old ways of empow­er­ing crim­i­nals, couched in lan­guage of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms on the other.
Nevertheless, the oppo­si­tion is cor­rect in its asser­tion that quote;“On the main issue on the table, in terms of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, which is for Jamaica to move from being ruled with a head of state, if not gov­erned by a monarch based in the UK (United Kingdom), to hav­ing a Jamaican head of state – a pres­i­dent – that as part of that process, we don’t do it in a piece­meal way, but we com­plete our decol­o­niza­tion, achieve full sov­er­eign­ty and polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence by mov­ing away from the [King’s] Privy Council as our final court and acced­ing to the juris­dic­tion of the Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court.”

The gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion is unten­able. Quote: “We con­sid­er it unfor­tu­nate that the par­lia­men­tary Opposition is twin­ning acces­sion to the appel­late juris­dic­tion of the CCJ (Caribbean Court of Justice) to the move to abol­ish the con­sti­tu­tion­al monar­chy and estab­lish the repub­lic of Jamaica.”
In oth­er words, the gov­ern­ing par­ty wants to decou­ple Jamaica from Britain while main­tain­ing the UK Privy Council as the final court of appeals for Jamaicans.
How does that work? It makes ratio­nal sense that Jamaica move like oth­er small­er nations have already done to a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic in a ful­some way.
As a strong sup­port­er of con­sti­tu­tion­al reform, I under­stand that the Government may have con­cerns about the effi­ca­cy and char­ac­ter of the Caribbean Court of Justice as a final court of appeals.
Politics and ego have so tar­nished our own Jamaican judi­cia­ry that it makes per­fect sense that the gov­ern­ment, what­ev­er its imme­di­ate con­cerns are with a Caribbean court of jus­tice, have those concerns.
As I have repeat­ed­ly stat­ed, cor­rup­tion in the judi­cia­ry is not just about mon­ey chang­ing hands. It’s about improp­er­ly includ­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy in the inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws.
The gov­ern­ment has every right to be con­cerned about that, assum­ing it is a part of its con­cerns. The open left­ist ide­ol­o­gy spout­ed from the insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing in the Caribbean from which most judges come should be a grave con­cern for all Jamaicans. The same insti­tu­tions pro­vide the bulk of those jurists across the region.
With that said, much can be done to ensure that Judges adhere to prin­ci­ples through strict codes of ethics and conduct.
There are some judges in Jamaica who con­tin­ue to oper­ate like demigods, even though they are unelect­ed bureau­crats. This is true from the most senior judge down to the last mag­is­trate on the totem pole.
Jamaica can ful­ly de-annex from Britain while show­ing lead­er­ship in how judges are allowed to oper­ate, not as unac­count­able demigods but as answer­able pub­lic servants.
Judges who do not like to obey rules are free to go prac­tice law at the pri­vate bar.

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

There is a real-time dra­ma play­ing out in the United States House of Representatives on this sec­ond day of what should be the sec­ond day of the 118 Congress. Before any new Representatives can be sworn in, there is the lit­tle house­keep­ing for­mal­i­ty of elect­ing a house speaker.
Having won a small major­i­ty in that body, it fell to Republicans to elect a speak­er, and there­in lies the problem.

A can­di­date for speak­er must secure a min­i­mum of 218 votes to become speak­er of the house. Although Republicans won 222 seats in the 2022 midterms, Kevin McCarthy has not got­ten 217 of his col­leagues to elect him speaker.
On the right flank of Kevin McCarthy stands Twenty or so hard-right Republicans who have refused to budge from their nev­er-Kevin stance.
Until the writ­ing of this arti­cle and the fifth vote to elect a speak­er, Kevin McCarthy could only sit and look at the speak­er’s gav­el but could not grasp it.
On the oth­er side of the aisle, the Democrats have main­tained a unit­ed pos­ture, with every cau­cus mem­ber sup­port­ing Hakeem Jefferies, their new­ly mint­ed leader, for speak­er of the house.
Sadly for Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jefferies of the minor­i­ty par­ty has secured more votes than he has. Unfortunately for the American peo­ple, the speak­er is not elect­ed on the plu­ral­i­ty or who­ev­er gets the most votes, or Jefferies would have already been sit­ting in the speak­er’s chair. The speak­er must get a min­i­mum of 118 votes.
At the end of the fifth round of vot­ing, the unof­fi­cial count was.
McCarthy 201.
Jefferies 212.
Donalds. 20.
Others 0.
Present 1.
Enough to make Kevin McCarthy’s head itch.

This uncer­tain­ty in the US con­gress has­n’t hap­pened since 1923. According to NBC news, the last time a speak­er vote went to mul­ti­ple bal­lots was in 1923, when Speaker Frederick Gillett, R‑Mass., won re-elec­tion on the ninth ballot.
Kevin McCarthy has three options as the house con­tin­ues to vote, (a) hope his emis­saries can con­vince the hold­outs to stand down, (b) ask the Democrats to give him the votes he needs or © remove him­self from con­tention, a humil­i­at­ing prospect that is dif­fi­cult to imagine.
A uni­ty gov­ern­ment with the Democrats sole­ly to make McCarthy ful­fill his dream to become speak­er would seri­ous­ly frac­ture the Republican par­ty and have even more far-reach­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences for Mccarthy and his caucus. 

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

The Nixon drug wars have been fol­lowed up by every pres­i­dent, Republican, and Democrat, over­see­ing the impris­on­ment and depor­ta­tion of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, main­ly of col­or, for the use and sale of weed.
Today, there is less vit­ri­ol direct­ed at the mar­i­jua­na plant. Despite the relax­ation of the penal­ties for small­er quan­ti­ties of weed, the American gov­ern­ment is still stead­fast­ly opposed to relax­ing the rules around the pos­ses­sion and sale of mar­i­jua­na at the fed­er­al lev­el. Mass depor­ta­tion con­tin­ues for non-American cit­i­zens caught sell­ing even a $5.00 cig­ar on the one hand. At the same time, white entre­pre­neurs brag about the mil­lions they make sell­ing the same weed.
And that does­n’t con­sid­er the thou­sands already deport­ed and the God knows how many still lan­guish in pris­ons across the coun­try for sell­ing from a cig­ar to pounds of weed.
And while we are on the injus­tice, let us not for­get the untold num­ber of lives racist crim­i­nal police destroy each year by plant­i­ng the weed on them or tes­ti­fy­ing false­ly to wit­ness­ing sales of the product.
Below is a break­down from Disa​.com of how states have respond­ed to mar­i­jua­na use. 

Even though many states across the union have relaxed their laws allow­ing for the pos­ses­sion of small­er quan­ti­ties, their police forces con­tin­ue to allow their cops to abuse the rights of black cit­i­zens with ille­gal search­es of their per­sons and pos­ses­sions under the guise that they smell mar­i­jua­na on them or see shakes in their automobiles.
Realistically, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na was nev­er about the harm it could poten­tial­ly do to one’s health, prompt­ing gov­ern­ment action. It was one more tool in fur­ther­ance of the larg­er mass incar­cer­a­tion of Blacks in the country.
My inten­tion is not to pro­duce data sup­port­ing the hypocrisy of the war on mar­i­jua­na; that infor­ma­tion is avail­able for objec­tive, curi­ous peo­ple to see using a sim­ple google search.
Frankly, I have nev­er smoked weed; when­ev­er I say that peo­ple always gasp,’ how can you not, and you are from Jamaica’?
I still haven’t quite fig­ured out whether or not to dig­ni­fy that ques­tion with a response.
My posi­tion is nei­ther pro nor con on mar­i­jua­na; it has to do with the hypocrisy and injus­tice in the way the laws are enforced.

The American Government went out of its way to secure the release of Britney Griner, and I com­mend the Biden Administration for try­ing to secure the ath­lete’s release from a Russian prison. For one, the sen­tence imposed on miss Griner was over­ly exces­sive. The sen­tence had the stench of a polit­i­cal one than one for the illic­it pos­ses­sion of a weed bi-product.
But we should nev­er lose sight of the fact that Brittney Griner did break Russian law.….….…
While the American State Department was active­ly try­ing to secure the release of Brittney Griner from a Russian prison for pos­sess­ing weed bi-prod­ucts, cops across the United States con­tin­ued their assault against Black peo­ple through ille­gal fourth amend­ment assaults on their per­sons and their prop­er­ty in search of small quan­ti­ties of the very same weed.
This is the bipo­lar and non­sen­si­cal pol­i­cy of the United States Government that goes out of its way to secure the release of one American for break­ing the same laws Americans at home are being per­se­cut­ed and worse for breaking.
But as I said ear­li­er, it is not about law and order but mass incar­cer­a­tion here. That is why cocaine mixed with oth­er prod­ucts, which is large­ly used by Blacks, attracts expo­nen­tial­ly more severe penal­ties than pure cocaine favored by whites.

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

An 18-year-old col­lege stu­dent has been elect­ed to serve as may­or of a small east Arkansas city, becom­ing one of the youngest peo­ple to serve as a city’s top leader in the U.S.

Jaylen Smith, who is Black, was elect­ed may­or of Earle in Tuesday’s runoff elec­tion, win­ning 235 votes to Nemi Matthews’ 183, accord­ing to com­plete but unof­fi­cial results.

He’s among the youngest may­ors elect­ed in the United States and would be the youngest mem­ber of the African American Mayors Association. Phyllis Dickerson, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the asso­ci­a­tion, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the association’s cur­rent youngest mem­ber is Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who is 35.

Smith is among a hand­ful of peo­ple elect­ed may­or before turn­ing 20, includ­ing Michael Sessions, who was elect­ed may­or of Hillsdale, Michigan, in 2005 when he was 18; and John Tyler Hammons, who was elect­ed may­or of Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 2008 when he was 19.(AP)

I had the dis­tinct hon­or of return­ing to Jamaica again, this time as my adopt­ed coun­try, the United States, cel­e­brat­ed Thanks Giving. With me was my wife, Cheryl, as usu­al. This trip was by no means a joy­ful occa­sion as we returned to pay our last respects to my aunt Viola who tran­si­tioned recent­ly in the United States and will be laid to rest in her beloved Jamaica as per her wishes.
Aunt Viola, or as we called her ‘Auntie Kisses,’ was the sweet­est soul, the kind of per­son one would refer to in the local ver­nac­u­lar as ‘mi gud up, gud up aun­tie’.
May her soul rest in peace.
My wife is not Jamaican in the true sense of the word, but don’t tell her she isn’t, espe­cial­ly when there is much to be cel­e­brat­ed about our beau­ti­ful Island.
She is the penul­ti­mate child to her par­ents; her baby sis­ter Grace and her­self were both born in New York City, while her old­er sib­lings were born right here a yaad.
So I thought Port Royal would be a good place on Thanksgiving day; she would get to see where it all start­ed for me as a young police recruit in January 1982 when we board­ed that JCF truck for the Police Training School.

The entire Fort Charles facil­i­ty, includ­ing the premis­es that for­mer­ly housed the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s train­ing facil­i­ty and the Jamaica Coast Guard, is an impor­tant part of Jamaica’s his­to­ry. It is a his­to­ry that was gross­ly unkind to the enslaved Africans on the Island, which makes pre­serv­ing this bit of the past all the more impor­tant for the young peo­ple grow­ing up and for posterity.
Admittedly, my con­cern for the his­tor­i­cal sites on Port Royal is not only about pre­serv­ing the his­tor­i­cal rich­ness of the site but ful­ly exploit­ing every cent pos­si­ble from this attrac­tion as part of the brand-Jamaica package.
Imagine the pos­si­bil­i­ties if these facil­i­ties were to be upgrad­ed, pre­serv­ing the past and look­ing to the future. Tours, gift shops, restau­rants, things Jamaica, and many oth­er attrac­tions. This would go a long way in improv­ing the Island’s tourism prod­uct, con­sid­er­ing that cruise ships are actu­al­ly stop­ping by that old city.

There is much to see in Port Royal, a place rich in his­to­ry and burst­ing at the seams with pos­si­bil­i­ties. This clear blue sky in Port Royal, Jamaica, is unri­valed anywhere.….

This sign fails to men­tion the year of the earth­quake. For the record, the earth­quake hit Port Royal on the 7^th of June, 1692. No one both­ered to read the sign they cre­at­ed before erect­ing it.

Competent peo­ple are work­ing to tell the sto­ry of Port Royal. Imagine the employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties if there was a vision toward the future.

A view of parts of the Kingston har­bor over­look­ing the JCF’s port Royal precinct from the deck of a pop­u­lar eatery.

On the oth­er hand, the Bob Marley Foundation has done a won­der­ful job pre­serv­ing the Reggae icon’s legacy.

Let’s take a look at what we are allowed to photograph.

A side view.

I have always thought that a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, so I hope these images con­vey the sto­ry I aim to tell about the untapped poten­tial of our great country.

Then there is this trea­sure where I grew up in Bonnett District, north­east Saint Catherine. I wish I had a dol­lar for each time I went into this cave to col­lect water car­ried on my head dur­ing my childhood.

Do not come for me about the attire, (laugh) remem­ber I was attend­ing my aun­t’s funeral.

Many in the media are crow­ing about what they char­ac­ter­ize as a Democratic vic­to­ry last November 8^th at the polls. I do not under­stand how los­ing the house or the inabil­i­ty to win the sen­ate seats in Ohio and Wisconsin can be spun as a win.
Worse yet, I am still in shock after Donald Trump and his sup­port­ers attempt­ed a coup de tat; yet a third of the coun­try believes Trump did noth­ing wrong.
It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble that peo­ple who pre­vi­ous­ly self-brand­ed as patri­ots when they want­ed to un-Americanize oth­er peo­ple are sud­den­ly fine with the un-American idea of a leader who lost an elec­tion decid­ing he was­n’t going to hand over pow­er peaceably.

The net effect of the deci­sion of those vot­ers not to hold Republicans account­able for trea­son is that those same peo­ple are elect­ed to office and giv­en pow­er they do not deserve. And what exact­ly are the con­se­quences of that?
On Sunday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R‑Calif., vowed to remove Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Ilhan Omar from their con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees when Republicans retake con­trol in the new Congress. During an appear­ance on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” McCarthy told anchor Maria Bartiromo that he would keep the promise he made in January to remove Swalwell and Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee and Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. McCarthy said Swalwell’s asso­ci­a­tion with a Chinese spy, Schiff’s pro­mo­tion of the Steele dossier, and Omar’s crit­i­cism of Israel dis­qual­i­fy them from serv­ing on their respec­tive panels.

I said this before, and I reit­er­ate it here today, if think­ing peo­ple set aside what the cor­po­rate media feed them with its self-serv­ing agen­da, it is easy to see that the American vot­er is not what you are told.
Sophisticated, smart, and able to sort through the nuances of var­i­ous issues. All lies.
The American vot­er who would go into a vot­ing booth and cast a vote for a Republican can­di­date is none of the above. That vot­er is vot­ing on one issue and one issue only.…race.
If a vot­er is unmoved by what Donald Trump and his Republican cohorts did on January 6^th, 2021, that vot­er is a straight-up racist who is vot­ing only to retain white pow­er in America.
The vot­ers who vot­ed to elect Republican can­di­dates to the House and Senate on November 8^th, 2022, are exact­ly that, a pack of racist deplorable good-for-noth­ings… The main­stream media do not want to call them what they are, but Hillary Clinton got it right in 2016; they are deplorable.

The Republicans were elect­ed to the house due to insane ger­ry­man­dered dis­tricts across the coun­try, usu­al­ly under the direc­tion of Republican gov­er­nors and cement­ed by right-wing activists in the judi­cia­ry. The elec­tions were won in Florida, New York, California, and Wisconsin ger­ry­man­dered districts.
That aside, the vot­er had their chance to repu­di­ate the trea­so­nous repub­li­can par­ty, and they failed to do so. What does that say about peo­ple who would betray their coun­try, and side with politi­cians who cozy up to for­eign dictators?
The peo­ple who vot­ed to elect Republicans to the house and sen­ate deserve zero respect for their stu­pid­i­ty; let’s cut to the chase. These are not peo­ple who should have a vote.
All things con­sid­ered, the idea that vot­ers did not total­ly fol­low an inane tra­di­tion of giv­ing pow­er to the out-of-pow­er par­ty two years after a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is an extreme­ly low bar for that elec­torate. An intel­li­gent elec­torate would have rout­ed the Republicans to the extent the par­ty would dis­band or start from scratch.
(1) Joe Biden passed an infra­struc­ture pack­age. (2) The $1.9 tril­lion COVID relief deal. (3 Highest appoint­ment of fed­er­al judges since Reagan. (4) Halt on Federal Executions. (5) Commitment to Combating Climate Change (6) Support for Transgender Service Members. (7)Reduced unemployment.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion also effec­tive­ly took con­trol and end­ed the COVID scourge, hand­ed out bil­lions in Covid relief to cit­i­zens after the car­ni­val bark­er and his cronies played pol­i­tics with the pandemic.
Frankly, Joe Biden should have pri­or­i­tized Voting Rights over all of the above. Still, Republicans who do not want Black peo­ple to vote would not have sup­port­ed any mea­sure to enhance vot­ing rights.
The laws the trea­so­nous Republicans passed in sup­port of Trump’s lies had noth­ing to do with elec­tion integri­ty and every­thing to do with sub­vert­ing the vot­ing process of Blacks and oth­er minor­i­ty groups.
Unfortunately, some with­in the minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty have moved to the United States and aligned them­selves with the white nation­al­ist Fascist Republican par­ty to achieve a sem­blance of white acceptance.
This is what America has become because the media over­hyped a bare­ly lit­er­ate car­ni­val bark­ing, failed-at-every­thing nar­cis­sis­tic mon­grel to the high­est exec­u­tive office in the country.
May God help us all.….

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

This, when uninformed racist voters allow weak bootlicking empty suits that can be manipulated by anyone anywhere near power. If this amoral worthless empty suit is allowed to get away with this, what does he think will happen when Democrats retake the house anytime between January and the end of the presidential term in 2024?

This is Donald Trump’s worth­less water­boy Kevin Mccarthy, an emp­ty suit with­out morals or con­vic­tion. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R‑Calif., on Sunday vowed to remove Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and Ilhan Omar from their con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees when Republicans retake con­trol in the new Congress. During an appear­ance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” McCarthy told anchor Maria Bartiromo that he will keep the promise he made in January to remove Swalwell and Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee and Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. McCarthy said Swalwell’s asso­ci­a­tion with a Chinese spy, Schiff’s pro­mo­tion of the Steele dossier and Omar’s crit­i­cism of Israel dis­qual­i­fy them from serv­ing on their respec­tive panels.

“One thing I said from the very begin­ning, Eric Swalwell can­not get a secu­ri­ty clear­ance in the pub­lic sec­tor,” he said. “Why would we ever give him a secu­ri­ty clear­ance and the secrets to America? So I will not allow him to be on Intel.“But we’re also going to stand up to what’s hap­pen­ing, not just in the halls in Congress, but what’s hap­pen­ing to our high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions, the anti­semitism that’s going on on these cam­pus­es and oth­ers,” he added. “We will inves­ti­gate that as well and stop this to make sure that America does have the free­doms that we said we would keep, and we will stand up to it as we move forward.

McCarthy, who has been nom­i­nat­ed as speak­er by House Republicans, needs 218 votes when the entire cham­ber votes in January. Republicans are pro­ject­ed to hold any­where from 220 to 224 seats, cast­ing doubt on his chances of secur­ing enough votes.

Republican Reps. Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz and Matt Rosendale have said they will not vote for McCarthy. Yahoo news

It is dif­fi­cult to get a true han­dle on the motive for the dis­re­spect met­ed out to Member of Parliament Juliet Holness, who is also the wife of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
Some peo­ple booed Mrs. Holness in the crowd at a Jerk fes­ti­val she attend­ed in Miramar, Florida, last Sunday.
One local news­pa­per bemoaned the boo­ing, thus,‘Diaspora mem­bers embar­rassed by the boo­ing of Juliet Holness in Florida.’
Wanting to get a bet­ter han­dle on what may have been behind the boo­ing of Mrs. Holness by peo­ple in a crowd at a jerk fes­ti­val in the state of Desantis, I reached out to a few friends who actu­al­ly live in that most south­ern of south­ern states along with Donald Trump and the oth­er ‘deplorables’ Hillary Clinton warned us about in 2016.

Call after call, the response I received from sources was the same. This was the act of Jamaicans liv­ing abroad act­ing out at some­one from the par­ty they did not sup­port. I was­n’t sure whether or not there was some­thing more spe­cif­ic behind the con­cert­ed boo­ing which prompt­ed Mrs. Holness to brave­ly deliv­er her short address over the act of hooliganism.
Global Jamaica Diaspora Council mem­ber, Dr. Allan Cunningham, opined to a local publication
that it appears that peo­ple were vent­ing their frus­tra­tion over the coun­try’s direc­tion, espe­cial­ly regard­ing crime and cor­rup­tion, speak­ing of Jamaica.
Does any­one real­ly believe those peo­ple boo­ing the Prime min­is­ter’s wife were doing so because of cor­rup­tion or crime?
I think not. As one Floridian told me this morn­ing, Juliet Holness is one of the coun­try’s most ded­i­cat­ed and effec­tive polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and she did not deserve the disrespect.
I agree with my friend on both counts, and I cer­tain­ly do not believe that that ele­ment in the crowd was boo­ing about either crime or cor­rup­tion in Jamaica. To my mind, those ele­ments may be more about increas­ing crime and cor­rup­tion than end­ing it.
Jamaicans liv­ing in the United States and oth­er coun­tries are doing big things wor­thy of recog­ni­tion and emu­la­tion in Jamaica. Jamaicans who did not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty at home have moved to the United States and oth­er coun­tries and worked won­ders out of nothing.
Those are the peo­ple Jamaica’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives need to meet with to seek solu­tions. Nevertheless, as per usu­al. They meet with a few peo­ple in lit­tle cliques who shov­el them into sit­u­a­tions like Miramar, Florida, result­ing in that outcome.
An old Jamaican say­ing is quite apro­pos in this sit­u­a­tion: ” If yu nu gu anda fowl roos fowl caan shit pon yu”.

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

St Catherine South West Member of Parliament Everald Warmington was nev­er one to cow­er in fear or cov­er his mouth when he decid­ed to speak out. ‘Warmie’ seems even to rel­ish the con­tro­ver­sy his com­ments evoke.
In the house of Representatives, Warmington often takes on the role of enforcer, engag­ing in ver­bal spats with mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion party.

In 2016 Warmington called Lisa Hanna, the then min­is­ter of Youth and Culture, ‘Jezebel.’
Queen Jezebel was the daugh­ter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon, and the wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel pro­mot­ed the wor­ship of false gods in Israel, harassed and killed God’s prophets, and arranged for an inno­cent man to be false­ly charged and exe­cut­ed.
Hanna shot back, label­ing Warmington obnox­ious and misog­y­nis­tic’. Many Jamaicans chomped at the bit at the time, crit­i­ciz­ing Warmington as out­ra­geous and crass. It is hard to tell why Warmie likened Lisa Hanna to Jezebel, so I will leave the mind read­ing to those who are smarter than I am.
I would imag­ine that Warmington’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lisa Hanna had noth­ing to do with phys­i­cal appear­ances and may actu­al­ly be clos­er to the char­ac­ter of both fig­ures, but I do see some resemblance.
Okay, I am going to hell for that.

Over his career, the Jamaica Labor Party fire­brand has ruf­fled many feath­ers and has caused many con­tro­ver­sies, result­ing in much wag­ging of tongues. And, of course, even though we Jamaicans have no prob­lem with our coun­try being the mur­der cap­i­tal of the world, we get in a huff when any­one dares say any­thing dis­re­spect­ful about our polit­i­cal idols, par­tic­u­lar­ly if she is a for­mer beau­ty queen who is still a hottie.
Warmington may be a coarse loud­mouth, but Jamaicans should take a chill pill and look at how some par­lia­men­tar­i­ans do busi­ness in oth­er nations. In some cas­es, fights break out. Although I am not advo­cat­ing vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool, I would much rather that politi­cians run their mouths than have our coun­try go back to the past when vio­lence char­ac­ter­ized our polit­i­cal discourse.

The recent brouha­ha in which Warmington again finds him­self is a tem­pest in a teacup that is unwor­thy of the oxy­gen it consumes.
Speaking at a St Catherine North Eastern con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence recent­ly, Warmington told a gath­er­ing that Opposition Leader Mark Golding would nev­er become prime min­is­ter of Jamaica because of his skin color.

Warmington [correctly]asserted that the People’s National Party (PNP) used racial pol­i­tics against for­mer Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Edward Seaga; Warmington indi­cat­ed that it was fair game to take a sim­i­lar dig against Golding.
Okay, we can dis­cuss whether we should ren­der evil for evil. Maybe, just maybe, one may even say Warmington should be the big­ger per­son and not resort to the racist gut­ter pol­i­tics that the PNP engaged in against Edward Seaga for decades.

In fact, I vivid­ly recall Neville Martin record­ing a song that became a nation­al anthem for the PNP as it assault­ed Seaga sole­ly based on his skin color.

The most laugh­able thing about this tem­pest in a teacup non­sense is the clutch­ing of pearls by the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites like the ones in the Private sec­tor Organization of Jamaica who issued a state­ment declar­ing with faux shock, “we are dis­ap­point­ed with these racial­ly divi­sive comments,“These com­ments have no place in the Jamaican con­text now or in the past as it is total­ly incon­sis­tent with our mot­to ‘out of many one people.”
The polit­i­cal ombuds­man is also chim­ing in, not to men­tion the bozos in the peanut gallery.
Negroes pleeeeeeze!!!
Get your panties out of the bunch they are in. In fact, pull the wedges out of your col­lec­tive ass­es. Where was your unright­eous indig­na­tion for the decades that the People’s National Party func­tionar­ies engaged in a cam­paign of racial hatred and deri­sion against mis­ter Seaga for the entire­ty of his life?
Where were your anger and shock then?
Jamaica is a melt­ing pot of all peo­ple who are proud to be Jamaicans. We are a won­der­ful demo­c­ra­t­ic nation that, although imper­fect, is a lot bet­ter than many larg­er, more pow­er­ful nations on the issue of race. The PNP had no issue using race against Seaga, but now that some­one dare to equiv­o­cate, they are cry­ing foul. What total and adul­ter­at­ed bullshit.
We are not where we should be, but we have much to be proud of.
Our nation of just under three mil­lion peo­ple is approx­i­mate­ly 90% Black; despite such over­whelm­ing strength of num­bers, Jamaica is one of the best melt­ing pots on the plan­et racially.
Everald Warmington’s com­ments are absolute­ly noth­ing com­pared to what Mister Seaga expe­ri­enced through­out his entire polit­i­cal career.

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

In 2021 New York State had a pop­u­la­tion of 19.84 mil­lion. Nevertheless, when we think of our state’s pop­u­la­tion, we gen­er­al­ly round up to 20 mil­lion New Yorkers. New York’s pop­u­la­tion increased 6 out of the 11 years between 2010 and 2021. Its largest annu­al pop­u­la­tion increase was 3.6% between 2019 and 2020. The state’s largest decline was between 2020 and 2021, when the pop­u­la­tion dropped by 1.6%. Between 2010 and 2021, the state grew by an aver­age of 0.2% per year.
In the elec­tions held on November 8^th, some inter­est­ing data points emerged from the results.
The deci­sions of activist judges in New York hand­ed sev­er­al seats to Republicans. At the same time, new con­gres­sion­al dis­trict lines in Florida at Ron Desantis’ instruc­tions also net­ted sev­er­al seats for Republicans.
The take­away is that the uncon­scionable lines in Florida were allowed to stand, ben­e­fit­ing Republicans. In con­trast, the less aggres­sive lines in New York were thrown out, also ben­e­fit­ting Republicans.
The largest take­away is that the courts have become so overt­ly polit­i­cal that they can no longer be count­ed on as objec­tive, unbi­ased referees.

We gen­er­al­ly look at New York State as a reli­able blue state, but real­is­ti­cal­ly this was the state that elect­ed George Pataki for three terms. New York City elect­ed and reelect­ed Rudolph Guialian and Michael Bloomberg.
Even if we con­vince our­selves that the 8‑plus mil­lion cit­i­zens in New York City are a large enough buffer in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions against the rad­i­cal­ism in the sub­urbs and exurbs that elects Elise Stefanik and oth­ers, there is still the lit­tle issue of the num­ber of Democrats, usu­al­ly Blacks, who con­tin­ue to stream out of the state to the south.
Many peo­ple unfa­mil­iar with New York may see the state as a bas­tion of blue. But a lit­tle excur­sion out­side Manhattan to the Southerly tip of New York State, Staten Island, and Long Island may be in for an unpleas­ant surprise.
That does not include head­ing north of Westchester County, much less into Western New York, Buffalo, Syracuse, and oth­er towns where res­i­dents proud­ly fly con­fed­er­ate flags.
They fly those despi­ca­ble flags much clos­er to New York City, in Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess, much less in the north­ern and west­ern coun­ties where the lifestyle looks like that of Appalachia.

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

The Supreme Court vast­ly over­reached in its Dobbs deci­sion over­turn­ing Roe v Wade, which demon­strat­ed that the Courts could no longer be relied upon to be fair arbiters of jus­tice and rights.
The cor­rup­tion of Clarence Thomas, the arro­gance of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney Barrett, and the extreme hubris of Samuel Alito took away rights Americans enjoyed for almost five decades. The fin­ger­prints of New York’s appel­late court are all over the recent elec­tion results. The court threw out the lines Democrats drew. And it was a spe­cial mas­ter appoint­ed by a repub­li­can judge that redrew new con­gres­sion­al lines giv­ing Republicans four seats in our state they would not nor­mal­ly have won. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo bears some respon­si­bil­i­ty for that débâcle.
New York State will prob­a­bly deliv­er the state’s 29 elec­toral votes to Democratic Presidential can­di­dates for a few more cycles. Still, even that may change if Republican judges are allowed to mud­dy the water to aid Republicans.
Additionally, the state con­tin­ues to hem­or­rhage Democratic vot­ers to places like Georgia and North Carolina, help­ing to change elec­tion results in those states.
Democrats can play offense in places like Georgia and North Carolina while play­ing defense in states like New York if they are smart and proac­tive. Democrats have nev­er been known to be proac­tive on these flu­id trends, so the jury is out on whether they will even real­ize the need to be so.
Democrats [must] build fire­walls in the Democratic states of California, New York, Washington State, Oregon, New Jersey, etc. Republicans in Florida and Ohio have decid­ed that they want to sup­port the MAGA agen­da, and Democrats must build from the ground up in those states.
To do so, Black vot­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, must become more edu­cat­ed on the rea­son for vot­ing, then under­stand that the Republican Party is dan­ger­ous for their very existence.
This means that regard­less of how harm­less and friend­ly a Republican can­di­date seems, they are dan­ger­ous because they are Republicans.

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

This was no ordinary year. The Republicans, who were like dogs chasing a car on the issue of abortion, had finally caught the car.
And then, Whoops, what now!!!

Donald Trump deserves all the ridicule he gets and then some for the out­come of the past midterms, not that any­one should be shed­ding any tears for the Republicans. But Donald Trump is not sole­ly to be blamed for the débâ­cle of last Tuesday, November 8^th, 2022. Republicans had every oppor­tu­ni­ty to dump Donald Trump after he lost in 2020 elec­tions and refused to accept the will of the vot­ers, some­thing no oth­er pres­i­dent had done in the his­to­ry if the Republic.
Sure, Trump won more votes than any pre­vi­ous Republican pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, accord­ing to polling data; despite this, Trump lost the pop­u­lar vote, the elec­toral col­lege, and thus the pres­i­den­cy. Republicans were not offend­ed that he had lost them pow­er at all lev­els in the cat­a­stroph­ic four-years débâ­cle of a pres­i­den­cy that most Americans would soon­er for­get. They dou­bled down with a man who decid­ed that his inter­ests were more impor­tant than that of the entire nation, and so he launched an attack on the 246-year exper­i­ment we call democ­ra­cy to stay in power.
The Republicans bawl­ing in their milk did not care that Donald Trump stacked the Supreme Court and fed­er­al judi­cia­ry with right-wing func­tionar­ies that would help him unrav­el the nation as we know it and return America to the era when only white men were able to hold posi­tions of power.
They did not care that a walk with Trump meant the most un-American walk ever, unrav­el­ing our demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples replaced with auto­crat­ic rule by a nar­cis­sis­tic sociopath.

With a Senate head­ed by Mitch McConnell, the Electoral col­lege that sub­verts the direct will of the peo­ple, and two US Senators per state, Republicans were not just con­tent to assume pow­er illic­it­ly; they were excit­ed to con­sol­i­date said pow­er by fur­ther ger­ry­man­der­ing con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts into uncon­scionable lines that dilutes minor­i­ty vot­ing pow­er on the one hand and pass­ing laws that lim­it and pre­vents them from vot­ing on the other.
But the Republican par­ty that did all that failed to rec­og­nize that the issue of abor­tion would res­onate so deci­sive­ly with a seg­ment of the elec­torate they dis­count­ed, young women and the men who love them.
And so even as old racists came out in droves to igno­rant­ly cede the legit­i­ma­cy of Democratic rule on the altar of white suprema­cy, young vot­ers had some­thing to say, and they lined up and made their voic­es heard.
NPR report­ed that turnout was the high­est it had been in an off-year elec­tion in 30 years. Some esti­mates had young vot­ers break­ing 60 – 40 for the Democrats.
In 2016 I saw the old­er white peo­ple stand­ing in line to vote. I told my wife then that Hillary Clinton would have a hard time win­ning the elec­tion as I thought those weren’t her vot­ers but peo­ple who longed for a time past. Although Mrs. Clinton won the pop­u­lar vote by a sub­stan­tial mar­gin, those lines of vot­ers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania made all the dif­fer­ence in the elec­toral col­lege win for Donald Trump.
Conversely, the younger peo­ple stand­ing in lines this cycle seemed to rep­re­sent a dif­fer­ent mind­set. Again, I told my wife that I expect­ed the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors and pun­dits would again get it wrong.
I told her this elec­tion would turn out quite dif­fer­ent­ly than they expected.
It did!!!

As vot­ers went to the polls on November 8^th, the cow­ard­ly Democrats, skit­tish and ter­ri­fied, expect­ed to be anni­hi­lat­ed by the time the polls start­ed clos­ing at 9 pm east­ern stan­dard time. Of course, their skit­tish fears were ful­ly jus­ti­fied if the past is pro­logue. There was a mild-reces­sion that the media talk­ing heads had insti­gat­ed, gas prices were high, and President Joe Biden’s approval num­bers had dipped to 39%.
So added to the prece­dent that the sit­ting pres­i­den­t’s par­ty would lose seats in the first midterm elec­tions after he is elect­ed, there were bad head­winds that would, under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, result in a tsunam­ic land­slide vic­to­ry for the out-of-pow­er party.
But this was no ordi­nary year; the Republican par­ty, which act­ed like a dog chas­ing a car for almost five decades on the issue of abor­tion rights, had final­ly caught the car.
And then, ‘whoops,’ what do I do with it?
The quin­tet of right-wing reac­tionar­ies on the court, three of whom were proven liars, the worst pres­i­dent in his­to­ry installed, had tak­en it upon them­selves to take away rights Americans had enjoyed for almost five decades.
In a stun­ning dis­play of auto­crat­ic arro­gance, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amey Coney-Barrett, and Samuel Alito decid­ed that they and they alone had the right to decide how a woman uses her God-giv­en body.
Five bureau­crats took it upon them­selves to wipe out the rights women had enjoyed for almost fifty years.
Three of those bureau­crats, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney-Barrett, were appoint­ed by Donald Trump on the com­mand of the Federalist soci­ety. All three told the sen­ate they would respect and hon­or prece­dent if they were ele­vat­ed to the high­est court.
It was all a lie.……All three lied.…And so it was the great­est irony that the most pro­lif­ic liar ever to be elect­ed pres­i­dent appoint­ed patho­log­i­cal liars to the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry who would cre­ate the kind of dis­rup­tion that the Supreme Court cre­at­ed in the Dobbs deci­sion, a deci­sion that would save America from auto­crat­ic rule by the Republicans.
And so to chan­nel Bill Clinton’s long­time strate­gist James, the rag­ing Cajun, Carville, it’s the econ­o­my stupid.
Just not this time; this time, it was the Supreme Court stupid.

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

One of the things that offend me is to see politi­cians allowed into places of wor­ship to pan­der to our peo­ple for their votes.
Now, full dis­clo­sure, I have zero tol­er­ance for any­one who sup­ports the Republican par­ty, period.
As a Black man, I can­not find any­thing redemp­tive about [any] per­son who sup­ports the GOP, a par­ty that does not hide its dis­dain for peo­ple of col­or and blacks in particular.
On every issue that would ben­e­fit Black peo­ple, the Republican par­ty and those who run that racist cabal is opposed to those issues.
Voting rights: Republicans are opposed.
Reparations: Republicans are opposed.
Civil Rights: Republicans are opposed.
Protections from police abuse: Republicans are opposed.
Wage increas­es: Republicans are opposed.
Reformation of the Criminal Justice sys­tem: Republicans are opposed.
On and on, it is no acci­dent Republicans have no use for Black folks except for the few but-kiss­ing Negroes who would rather live on their knees than die on their feet.

I find it odd that when­ev­er those Republicans come beg­ging for votes, they nev­er men­tion that they rep­re­sent the Republican par­ty. They present them­selves as one of us.
Only that they aren’t.
It is not that peo­ple like Rob Rollison, the for­mer Town of Poughkeepsie cop, turned City of Poughkeepsie Mayor and now state sen­a­tor-elect, or Marc Molinaro, the for­mer Dutchess County exec­u­tive, are nec­es­sar­i­ly bad people.
It is that the poli­cies they sup­port are bad for Blacks, and that makes them unacceptable.
One of the non­sen­si­cal things I hear from some black folks reg­u­lar­ly is that they are not opposed to vot­ing for a Republican.
I’ve even heard some say they vot­ed for Rillison in the last may­oral elec­tion because they did not know the vibrant, young Black male can­di­date who ran as the Democrat chal­leng­ing Rob Rollison.
I’ve always con­tend­ed that Republicans do [not] elect Democrats to office. Why would Democrats elect Republicans to any office?
It is a sil­ly deci­sion that makes absolute­ly no sense. I wrote recent­ly about this silli­ness, which has seri­ous con­se­quences for the Democratic agen­da and the coun­try over­all. If a sit­ting Democratic US Senator dies in a blue state that has a Republican Givernor, that Republican Governor gets to appoint a Republican replace­ment (not a Democrat in line with the vot­ers’ wishes).
In that sce­nario, say as in the 50 – 50 sen­ate before the last elec­tions, Mitch McConnell would be back as major­i­ty leader, some­thing the American peo­ple did not vote for.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​p​a​t​r​i​c​k​-​l​e​a​h​y​-​i​s​-​8​2​-​a​n​d​-​n​o​t​-​w​e​l​l​-​i​f​-​l​e​a​h​y​-​d​i​e​s​-​m​i​t​c​h​-​m​c​c​o​n​n​e​l​l​-​i​s​-​s​e​n​a​t​e​-​m​a​j​o​r​i​t​y​-​l​e​a​d​er/.

Rob Rollison, a for­mer cop won the may­oral­ty in the city of Poughkeepsie, which is heav­i­ly African-American because far too many Blacks in the city do not even under­stand the impor­tance of par­tic­i­pat­ing in their own lives. Others are church folk who do not think for them­selves, and so they elect these Republicans to pow­er­ful offices who then mil­i­tate against their val­ues and interests.
Rolison pre­vi­ous­ly said changes need to be made to the state’s bail reform mea­sures, such as allow­ing judges to con­sid­er dan­ger­ous­ness, such as past court appear­ances, when decid­ing on bail. “Dangerousness” was a con­tentious issue dur­ing the craft­ing of the bail leg­is­la­tion. Advocates say judges can­not fair­ly decide on dan­ger­ous­ness because of implic­it bias and that pre­vi­ous court appear­ances can­not be relied on due to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices with­in law enforcement.
There is just one thing; there is absolute­ly no data sup­port­ing the claim that non-vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit minor offens­es and are no longer locked away in for-prof­it pris­ons and jails are respon­si­ble for the rise in vio­lent crimes.
Marc Molinaro is going to Washington and will have no more respon­si­bil­i­ty for my County or town; in a con­ver­sa­tion with him some time ago, he told me that I should sup­port him because my Pastor does.
I told Marc no one speaks for me.
Dutchess is a red coun­ty, but Blacks here should not give away their votes to peo­ple who do not share our values. 

These peo­ple do not share our values.

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

The results are not even yet con­clu­sive in the elec­tions of November 8^th, yet parts of the cor­rupt cor­po­rate media have already jumped off the Donald Trump train. They have attached them­selves to the Ron Desantis caboose.
One of the most destruc­tive media enti­ties in the United States is the Rupert Murdoch media empire which owns FOX. This dis­in­for­ma­tion net­work pass­es itself off as a news net­work but is an organ of pro­pa­gan­da, lies, and hatred.
Murdoch’s empire includes the Wall street jour­nal, which is a more palat­able appe­tiz­er because it is wrapped in glo­ri­fied pack­ag­ing that seems to make it more upper ech­e­lon. Still, once that pack­ag­ing is removed, the stench iden­ti­fies it as just anoth­er load of bovine manure.
Then there is the New York Post, a dishrag unwor­thy of men­tion but a dishrag nonethe­less that pol­lutes the bot­tom ech­e­lon of the lumpen that the Journal does not care to cater to.
In the heart of Gotham city resides all three sew­er rats, larg­er and more tox­ic than the super-sized rodents that roam the sub­ways and tun­nels beneath the bustling Gotham city.
Their place­ment in the heart of the largest and prob­a­bly most fabled city on the plan­et was no sur­prise; their Founder and own­er, Rupert Murdoch, knew exact­ly what he was doing. He want­ed to change America into his vision and, at the same time, make a shit load of mon­ey doing it. Tactically Murdoch suc­ceed­ed beyond his wildest dream.
Donald John Trump was elect­ed President of the United States in 2016, an ignominy that will have last­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences for America for gen­er­a­tions to come.

It was­n’t just Rupert Murdoch’s empire that cre­at­ed Donald Trump; it includ­ed all of the oth­er net­works that exist­ed before Murdoch’s for­ay into the sew­er swamp of new york media.
The cor­po­rate media, which has pre­cious lit­tle, if any, cred­i­bil­i­ty left, from the very begin­ning, cra­dled, nur­tured, cod­dled, and pro­mot­ed a young Donald Trump with­out doing any inves­tiga­tive work on a man who was a con artist who inher­it­ed hun­dreds of mil­lions from his father, blew it, and was run­ning a shell game on gullible banks and oth­er companies.
But the cor­po­rate new York media need­ed a gold­en-haired white male fig­ure to con­tin­ue the lie about white male inge­nu­ity, a Johnny Bravo char­ac­ter if you will.
The media need­ed a gold­en boy white American male char­ac­ter, so it chose a car­ni­val bark­ing emp­ty suit to pro­mote as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of American success.
Rupert Murdoch and those who helped to run his media empire knew the coun­try’s char­ac­ter, and they cor­rect­ly antic­i­pat­ed that a mes­sage of hatred, resent­ment, and lies would res­onate with the pop­u­la­tion seg­ment that nev­er fig­ured out how to mon­e­tize white priv­i­lege in ways oth­ers have.
The more that seg­ment saw the suc­cess sto­ries of immi­grants who, despite not hav­ing the ben­e­fit of white priv­i­lege, found a way to thrive in America, the angri­er and more bit­ter it became. The sto­ries of Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and count­less oth­ers ignite a fear that some­how they were los­ing some­thing they nev­er had or could law­ful­ly lay claim to.

Even after Donald Trump incit­ed a sedi­tious attack on the US capi­tol, the media con­tin­ued to treat Trump as a cred­i­ble fig­ure wor­thy of respect rather than what he is, a mis­er­able fail­ure, a trai­tor to the United States who in anoth­er nation would have been locked away for good or worse.
After Donald Trump refused to leave the stage after his 2020 one-term débâ­cle of a pres­i­den­cy end­ed, a pres­i­den­cy in which he was twice impeached and should have been removed from office, the media still stood by him. Even after Trump final­ly stepped aside so the new President could take office, he nev­er quit the stage.
His lies and con­tin­ued desire to be noticed caused the repub­li­cans two sen­ate seats in Georgia and, worse cost them the 2022 midterms in a [bigly] way they nev­er saw coming.
And now the Post, which was nev­er any­thing but a worth­less piece of a dirty dishrag, wants to jet­ti­son failed Donny, and who does it seek to foist on the American people?
Ron disingenuous!!!!
Ron Desantis is only 44 years old but is ten times worse than Donald Trump. He is a pompous Trump and Mussolini wrapped together.
This is the new leader the Murdoch machine and the rest of the media are pushing.
People beware.

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

Donald Trump faced unusu­al pub­lic attacks from across the Republican Party on Wednesday after a string of midterm loss­es by can­di­dates he had hand­picked and sup­port­ed, a dis­play of weak­ness as he pre­pared to announce a third pres­i­den­tial cam­paign as soon as next week.

As the sheer num­ber of missed Republican oppor­tu­ni­ties sank in, the rush to open­ly blame Trump was as imme­di­ate as it was surprising.

Conservative allies crit­i­cized Trump on social media and cable news, ques­tion­ing whether he should con­tin­ue as the party’s leader and point­ing to his tox­ic polit­i­cal brand as the com­mon thread woven through three con­sec­u­tive lack­lus­ter elec­tion cycles.

Trump was seen as large­ly to blame for the Republicans’ under­whelm­ing fin­ish in Tuesday’s elec­tions, as a num­ber of the can­di­dates he had endorsed in com­pet­i­tive races were defeat­ed — includ­ing nom­i­nees for gov­er­nor and Senate in Pennsylvania and for gov­er­nor of Michigan, New York and Wisconsin.

“Republicans have fol­lowed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,” David Urban, a long­time Trump advis­er with ties to Pennsylvania, said in an interview.

Former Rep. Peter King, R‑N.Y., who has long sup­port­ed Trump, said, “I strong­ly believe he should no longer be the face of the Republican Party,” adding that the par­ty “can’t become a per­son­al­i­ty cult.”

The cho­rus of crit­i­cism, which unfold­ed on Fox News and social media through­out the day, revealed Trump to be at his most vul­ner­a­ble point polit­i­cal­ly since the after­math of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Still, Trump has built a deep well of loy­al­ty with Republican vot­ers, and par­ty offi­cials cau­tioned that it was too soon to tell whether he would suf­fer any last­ing polit­i­cal dam­age beyond a flur­ry of bad head­lines, or whether a rival will emerge to chal­lenge him. Trump has built a career on out­last­ing polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy, and Trump aides insist­ed that any sug­ges­tion of weak­ness was a media confection.

“I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for pres­i­dent in 2024,” Rep. Elise Stefanik, R‑N.Y., said in a state­ment. “It is time for Republicans to unite around the most pop­u­lar Republican in America who has a proven track record of con­ser­v­a­tive governance.”

Sen.-elect J.D. Vance, R‑Ohio, an ear­ly choice of Trump, said he believed Trump would be the nom­i­nee if he runs. “Every year, the media writes Donald Trump’s polit­i­cal obit­u­ary. And every year, we’re quick­ly remind­ed that Trump remains the most pop­u­lar fig­ure in the Republican Party,” he said. And Rep. Jim Banks, R‑Ind., said he sup­port­ed Trump, who “trans­formed our party.”

Stefanik, Vance and Banks all pro­vid­ed state­ments after The New York Times sought com­ment from an aide to Trump.
Read the full sto­ry Here:https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​t​r​u​m​p​-​u​n​d​e​r​-​f​i​r​e​-​w​i​t​h​i​n​-​g​o​p​-​1​4​0​8​0​5​1​7​4​.​h​tml

I wrote two days ago that the hun­gry ingrates would turn out and vote against the Democratic par­ty, just to fol­low some inane cus­tom that the pres­i­dent and par­ty cho­sen a mere two years pri­or should be reined in by a con­gress run by the oppos­ing par­ty. https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​h​u​n​g​r​y​-​i​n​g​r​a​t​e​s​-​w​i​l​l​-​o​n​-​t​u​e​s​d​a​y​-​t​u​r​n​-​o​u​t​-​t​o​-​b​i​t​e​-​t​h​e​-​h​a​n​d​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​f​e​d​-​t​h​em/
I was right. Do I pre­fer where the coun­try is today based on what hap­pened yes­ter­day as opposed to what the talk­ing heads pro­ject­ed? You bet. But as a prag­mat­ic observ­er, it is dif­fi­cult for me to try to spin a loss as a win as the Democrats and pun­dit­ry class has been gid­di­ly doing.
I total­ly get that when you are start­ing as the Democrats did, believ­ing that Republicans were going to win upward of 50 seats in the house, retake the sen­ate and clean their clocks in gov­er­nor’s and local races, the mud­dy opaque results of November 8 can be spun as a win of sorts.

As I have said in this medi­um time and again, no one should lis­ten to the blovi­at­ing pun­dit­ry of the talk­ing heads that dom­i­nate cable chan­nels as they dis­cuss polling data that is prov­ing to be less and less reli­able with each pass­ing cycle.
Despite the vague­ness of pre-elec­tion polling and the froth­ing mouths of the tele­vi­sion talk­ing heads who, for months, talked the econ­o­my into a reces­sion even as American busi­ness­es added hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs each month to the work­force. And despite the same group run­ning their mouths about crime and gas prices, the vot­ers decid­ed that the impor­tant thing to them were the things impor­tant to them, not what the blovi­at­ing pun­dit­ry class said was important.
My dis­con­tent with the results notwith­stand­ing is not about the rights of vot­ers to make a dis­tinc­tion between the things they view as impor­tant to them indi­vid­u­al­ly but their feal­ty to prece­dent, which caused them to not route the Republican par­ty from any lead­er­ship posi­tions that the par­ty would need a com­plete reformation.

I believe what Donald Trump and the Republican par­ty did to the coun­try after Trump lost the elec­tions in 2020 was con­se­quen­tial enough for the elec­torate to say we have the final say; you will not get away with this.
The vot­ers had that oppor­tu­ni­ty to make that state­ment, and they failed, choos­ing their race, prece­dent, and feal­ty to a par­ty and a man over their patri­ot­ic duty to the nation.
I can­not in good con­science praise such a cow­ard­ly elec­torate when it failed to deliv­er a resound­ing state­ment in a sit­u­a­tion so con­se­quen­tial. A peo­ple can­not claim to love their coun­try when the foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples on which the same nation was built were attacked to demol­ish the very foun­da­tion of said prin­ci­ples and still cast a vote for the par­ty that attempt­ed such treason.
Whether one vote on issues is irrel­e­vant, we can say we look at can­di­dates indi­vid­u­al­ly. Still, if a can­di­date ran on the Republican tick­et, that can­di­date is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the trea­son that the repub­li­can par­ty and Donald Trump attempt­ed on January 6^th, 2021.
Therefore, any can­di­date for office on the Republican tick­et should be seen as an offense to the sen­si­bil­i­ties of all patri­ot­ic Americans. Regardless of our polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, there should be no tol­er­ance for any per­son who would pick up arms against their own coun­try, and it is time that we begin to deal with those peo­ple as the trai­tors they are.

The crimes that Donald Trump and the Republicans , com­mit­ted against the nation should have been a dis­qual­i­fi­er. It should have cre­at­ed an earth-shat­ter­ing tsuna­mi that swept Republicans from office from the Atlantic to the pacif­ic shore.
Added to Republican crimes was the total­i­tar­i­an pow­er play by the right-wing supreme court, whose last three addi­tions, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amey Coney Barrett, lied to sen­ate screen­ers before being ele­vat­ed to the court, then vot­ed to take away the rights Americans have enjoyed for 49 years.
The supreme court was intend­ed to safe­guard the rights of Americans, not remove rights the peo­ple enjoy. Instead, five unelect­ed right-wing bureau­crats gut­ted Roe in the Dobbs decision.
When the total­i­ty of the threat the nation faces from Donald Trump, the Republican par­ty, and its func­tionar­ies on the supreme court, the elec­tion results should have been a blue wave that destroyed the Republican par­ty this morning.
Not some opaque and mud­dy deci­sion that will give ammu­ni­tion to the ene­mies of democ­ra­cy to fur­ther divide the country.

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

The idea that some vot­ers would talk out of the side of their mouths about crime and infla­tion as the sem­i­nal issues for them going into the midterms is the high­est hypocrisy and ignorance.
For starters, their hero, the lying trai­tor Donald Trump caused the death of over half a mil­lion Americans because he decid­ed that deny­ing COVID-19 was a bet­ter strat­e­gy than address­ing the pan­dem­ic head-on.
Donald Trump’s crimes and incom­pe­tence caused vot­ers to kick him and his crim­i­nal cabal out of office, upon which they attempt­ed the nation’s first coup de tat.
The Democrats and Joe Biden brought the econ­o­my back from the brink, and though it was­n’t as dra­mat­ic as what Barack Obama was forced to con­tend with after the débâ­cle of George Bush’s 8 years. Still, the nation was in seri­ous per­il as tens of mil­lions of peo­ple were forced to stay home as the pan­dem­ic raged.
Joe Biden and the Democrats mailed out bil­lions in stim­u­lus checks to feed the hun­gry ingrates who will bite the hands that fed them on Tuesday.
Biden and the Democrats passed the infla­tion reduc­tion act that the fas­cist repub­li­cans opposed en masse. It was the right-wing reac­tionar­ies on the supreme court that over­turned 49 years of prece­dent on prece­dent in the Dobbs decision.
Rising infla­tion, includ­ing the price of gas which has trend­ed down­ward over the last sev­er­al weeks, is tied to Putin’s war in Ukraine and the war the fas­cist repub­li­cans would like to see Vladimir Putin win. The price of food increas­es may also be attrib­uted to grain dis­rup­tions due to Putin’s bar­bar­ic and ille­gal war on anoth­er sov­er­eign nation.
Even if one was to dis­re­gard every­thing pos­i­tive that the Democrats did, the events of January 6^th, 2021, should have been enough for an informed, intel­li­gent elec­torate to say, ‘you will not be allowed near pow­er any­time soon until all you trai­tors to America are weed­ed out and pun­ished for your crimes.
The real­i­ty is that, despite the intran­si­gence and crimes, the xeno­pho­bic, Islamaphobic, trans­pho­bic, homo­pho­bic, anti-semit­ic, and hate­ful lies and vit­ri­ol that Donald Trump and his cronies have poured out into the body politic poi­son­ing the entire coun­try, enough Americans will turn out and empow­er them because Trump and the Republican par­ty embod­ies their beliefs in white supremacy.
There is this quote attrib­uted to the late British wartime prime min­is­ter Winston Churchill, though some sources con­tend that it was first coined by an Israeli, Abba Eban, who was an Israeli politi­cian and diplo­mat who was on a diplo­mat­ic trip to Japan when he made the com­ments in 1967.
“Americans can always be count­ed on to do the right thing…after they have exhaust­ed all oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties”.
Regardless of who was first on record to make the state­ment, I think there is no time that this state­ment has been truer than at this par­tic­u­lar peri­od in American history.
Unfortunately, for America, when the full real­i­ty of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s fas­cism dawns on them, it will be because they vot­ed for it as the Germans vot­ed for it, cul­mi­nat­ing in the slaugh­ter of 3 mil­lion peo­ple of Jewish faith and the lives of 73 mil­lion as a result of Hitler’s war.
These are peo­ple who see the dan­ger in front of their faces yet turn away and claim that what is more impor­tant than a wom­an’s right to self-deter­mi­na­tion, vot­ing rights, the strength­en­ing of democ­ra­cy, say­ing no to auto­crat­ic rule, etc. is cheap food prices and tanks filled with cheap gas.
If that is what they are say­ing, as argued ad nau. se​.am by the cor­po­rate media, then America is on a slip­pery slope of no return.
The tragedy inher­ent in America’s slide into auto­crat­ic rule is that so many oth­er nations are teth­ered to her that it may drag them all under the deep dark waves of despo­tism from which there is no return.

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

If I am a vile racist who comes from a long line of racist igno­ra­mus­es, I want to hear that immi­grants are try­ing to steal my job, nev­er mind that I am not qual­i­fied for the job… I want to hear that Black peo­ple are behind the increase in vio­lent crime, nev­er mind that the most seri­ous crimes are mass killings being com­mit­ted by white men. I want to hear that a wom­an’s right to have auton­o­my over her own body belongs in the hands of white men because not only am I a vile racist, I am, at my core, an insuf­fer­able ignoramus.
Never mind that I will be return­ing to the days when I could­n’t vote and what­ev­er resources I inher­it­ed from my father would have to be admin­is­tered to by whomev­er I chose to be a hus­band. I could not buy prop­er­ty, get cer­tain jobs, or con­trol my own des­tiny; my hus­band would make those decisions.
Because the most impor­tant thing to me is the pale, washed-out col­or of my skin which I was brain­washed into believ­ing was a badge of superiority.

The Republican par­ty has seen the same data that oth­ers pay­ing atten­tion have seen; they have made the tac­ti­cal deci­sion not to adhere to the prin­ci­ples of a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety any longer because if they do they will no longer win nation­al elections.
The alter­nate strat­e­gy is to tear down the elec­toral process with lies of vot­er fraud which the peo­ple in para­graph one will read­i­ly gob­ble up as gospel.
The idea is to tear down the process and then cheat. Ultimately the results will only be gen­uine when they win. In 2020 Republicans were elect­ed all across the coun­try in red states and blue states, gov­er­nors, sen­a­tors, house mem­bers, state rep­re­sen­ta­tives, down to dog catch­ers, the elec­tion deniers had no prob­lem with the out­come of those elec­tions that favored them, but the results which dis­fa­vored Donald Trump meant that the elec­tions were rigged.
It fol­lows, there­fore, that if the elec­tions were rigged and cost Trump the white house, then all of those Republicans are ille­git­i­mate. Unfortunately, these sim­ple deduc­tions are not things the peo­ple in para­graph one can rea­son out for them­selves because it isn’t some­thing they want to believe.
Create as many obsta­cles as pos­si­ble to vot­ing in high-den­si­ty minor­i­ty areas and then make vot­ing easy in white areas.
Every one of the nean­derthals men­tioned in para­graph one under­stands the assign­ment, so they go out in droves and vote as if their lives depend on it. It is not their lives that depend on it .… it is their white priv­i­lege and power.

There is a mes­sag­ing prob­lem with the Democratic par­ty. It has no idea how to attack and keep attack­ing this right-wing Fascist Republican move­ment that has awak­ened the vilest crea­tures in para­graph oners.
The Democrats are not talk­ing about the great job they did with COVID-19 after Donald Trump played pol­i­tics with it, cost­ing the lives of over 500,000 peo­ple. They do not talk about the job they did pulling the nation back from eco­nom­ic col­lapse after they took over. They do not talk about the stim­u­lus checks they mailed out to Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, all of which Republicans in con­gress vot­ed against but took cred­it for once their con­stituents received those benefits.
Democrats are silent on the infla­tion reduc­tion Act they passed with­out Republican help, low­er gas prices, and fail to talk about the fact that on every issue, Republicans in the US House and Senate vot­ed against every mea­sure that would ben­e­fit the people.
Democrats fail to speak to the elec­torate in terms of under­stand­ing that issues affect prices. Issues like sup­ply chain still linger due to COVID-19 dis­rup­tions. Vladimir Putin, the repub­li­can leader in the Kremlin, launched Russia’s war on Ukraine, affect­ing the price of oil, grain, etc…”
There is no Democratic mes­sag­ing on the calami­ty that is occur­ring to women based on what the right-wing fas­cists on the supreme court have done to Roe V Wade.
In fact, the Democratic Party seem to think that the American elec­torate is a sophis­ti­cat­ed one that can see its good works and give them more time and seats to work on their behalf.

If that is the Democrat’s intent, it will lose and lose bad­ly because, con­trary to the hype, the elec­torate is not a sophis­ti­cat­ed one that can deci­pher the issues based on priority.
Even those that claim to be edu­cat­ed will place ris­ing prices over the need to pro­tect democ­ra­cy. I guess they are con­tent to have bel­lies filled with cheap food and cars filled with cheap gas in an auto­crat­ic nation in which they have no rights.
The American pop­u­la­tion fell for the lie fed to it by the cor­rupt cor­po­rate media that Trump changed the Republican par­ty into his cult, which is not true. The Republican par­ty has been a fas­cist par­ty in wait­ing for decades.
The par­ty nom­i­nat­ed Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan from California, and George W Bush from Texas; they have been hunt­ing for a Donald Trump.
They want­ed a loud car­ni­val bark­er that could ral­ly the faith­ful by ampli­fy­ing their hatred of every­one who does not look like them. Kevin McCarthy seemed not to have seen the memo when he laid the blame for January 6^th square­ly at Donald Trump’s feet before he recant­ed and ran to Florida to clean Trump’s shoes with his tongue.

And what is this I see about Hispanics trend­ing Republican? I hate to say I told you, but I did. I have always cau­tioned Black civ­il rights lead­ers [not to] keep talk­ing about black and brown peo­ple dur­ing their dis­course. I have nev­er heard Hispanic lead­ers talk about black and brown peo­ple except when they need to attach them­selves to Black peo­ple for support.
Hispanics, in gen­er­al, tend to believe they are whites in waiting.
As such, they [do not align with our values].
Two of the most caus­tic mem­bers of the Fascist Republican cabal are Marco Rubio and Raphael Cruz, and they would pro­vide good com­ic relief if the two weren’t so rep­re­hen­si­ble. By def­i­n­i­tion, Many Hispanics seem not to have a sense of who they are; they are eas­i­ly swayed, bought, and sold.
Despite the per­pet­u­al fights the Democratic par­ty has waged on their behalf against the most orga­nized and intran­si­gent Republican oppo­si­tion, more and more of these peo­ple are sup­port­ing the Republican par­ty than ever before.
It may be that, like the Irish and Italians, they too are await­ing their turn to be assim­i­lat­ed into the con­struct of American whiteness.
I mean, Senators Rubio and Cruz and Turrio from the proud boys cer­tain­ly seem to believe they have attained whiteness.

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