As the United States enters the final nine weeks of its presidential election campaigning, some of the issues front and center are National security , Immigration and the Economy.
Within each of those subject areas are significant debates about how to best improve the lives and security of Americans.

There is much mis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the polit­i­cal right with­out the appro­pri­ate lev­els of push­back from Democrats, con­sid­er­ing that it was under President George W Bush and the lead­er­ship of Dick Cheney that America got entan­gled in a war in Iraq many will agree should nev­er have been waged.

Out of that entan­gle­ment arose Al Qaeda and the most recent ter­ror­ist group ISIL.
It bears men­tion­ing that what is being con­sid­ered a colos­sal fail­ure of for­eign pol­i­cy lead­er­ship by the Obama Administration, is relent­less drone war­fare on ISIL the group Obama inher­it­ed , a draw-down of American troops from Iraq, as was agreed to and signed by President George W Bush. Significant sta­bi­liza­tion of Afghanistan as can be expect­ed , and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. 

In addi­tion to that there is the lit­tle issue of no new wars start­ed by this sit­ting pres­i­dent, a fact which seem to get lost in the blan­ket litany of lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion which seem to be the new normal.
This fol­lows what we have seen over the pre­vi­ous two elec­tion cycles , repub­li­cans would adopt talk­ing points which every­one knows are lies and they would flood the air­waves with sur­ro­gates who like robots, repeat the lies, com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to fact check­ers or jour­nal­ists who push back with the facts.
This is the new Republican par­ty, a par­ty of liars, the par­ty of Donald Trump.
One would have thought that truth and hon­or would be the guid­ing prin­ci­ples which would inspire the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers? Not so if the Republican par­ty gets it way. It’s win at all cost .
This sup­posed peri­od of rel­a­tive calm and lack of out­right con­flict which is being mis­in­ter­pret­ed as a fail­ure will most cer­tain­ly be looked back at with long­ing and a sense of nostalgia.

The Immigration debates are legit­i­mate but must be viewed with­in the con­text of Republican intran­si­gence on the issue, and all oth­er issues. Not just against pres­i­dent Obama but against the last Republican President George W Bush . Republicans refusal to address the issue may have impact­ed the can­di­da­cy of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich for president.
Additionally senior repub­li­can lead­ers like John McCain have been forced to run away from find­ing a fix for immi­gra­tion, even though they are quite aware that it is an issue which needs urgent attention.

Republicans have cor­rect­ly tak­en the posi­tion that ille­gal immi­gra­tion is seri­ous and must be addressed. Unfortunately they have offered no mean­ing­ful solu­tions out­side dra­con­ian break­ing up of fam­i­lies and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al tac­tics which are anti­thet­i­cal to the stat­ed val­ues of America.
They argue that once the south­ern bor­ders are secured, then the ques­tion of the mil­lions of undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple will be addressed.
In the same breath they say there will be no path to cit­i­zen­ship for these mil­lions of peo­ple. Some have gone even fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that chil­dren born to undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple should not be afford­ed auto­mat­ic American cit­i­zen­ship, and those who already are, should have their cit­i­zen­ship revoked. !!!

The shock­ing impli­ca­tions of this, were it ever to become real­i­ty is that there would be tens of mil­lions, and an ever increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple who are effec­tive­ly an under­class of sec­ond class serfs who are unable to vote, or active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the only coun­try many of them have ever known.
The unfore­seen impli­ca­tions of those actions are stun­ning, and can only be viewed as reck­less­ly short­sight­ed and dangerous .
One has to look no fur­ther than France and the way North Africans are ghet­toized and mar­gin­al­ized then extrap­o­late from that how America could be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed should those demands become law.

Which begs the ques­tion . Are the Republicans blind to the con­se­quences of the demands they make?
If not what are the dri­ving forces behind their demands?
Before we delve into the rea­sons it must be under­stood that our cur­rent pres­i­dent has deport­ed more peo­ple than any pres­i­dent in mod­ern history.
It bears men­tion­ing that he has also hired more bor­der guards than any oth­er president.
And prob­a­bly more impor­tant­ly accord­ing to experts, the num­ber of peo­ple seek­ing to come through the nation’s south­ern bor­der is almost negligible.
I high­light­ed the term south­ern bor­der because Republicans have made no men­tion about any­one com­ing into the coun­try ille­gal­ly through the north­ern bor­der with Canada. Neither is there any men­tion of Israelis, Chinese, Russians or any Europeans for that mat­ter who come and sim­ply stay.
In fact some Republicans have open­ly said those are the peo­ple they want.
When those com­ments are jux­ta­posed with their argu­ments that Latino Immigrants vote demo­c­ra­t­ic the dri­ving force behind the heat­ed immi­gra­tion bat­tle becomes clear.
It is polit­i­cal but more than that it goes straight to the brown­ing of America .
It is the heart of Donald Trump’s can­di­da­cy and the rise of the Nativist dog­ma which has dom­i­nat­ed this elec­tion cycle.

My final thought is on the econ­o­my which is still claw­ing it’s way back from the rav­ages of the Bush presidency.
No it’s not perfect !
When was it ever perfect?
Imagine if Republicans had set par­ti­san and Racial atti­tudes aside on the night President Barack Obama was being inau­gu­rat­ed. Imagine if on that very night they gath­ered in that DC Restaurant to dis­cuss sab­o­tag­ing his pres­i­den­cy, they were gath­ered to dis­cuss ways of work­ing with the pres­i­dent for the good of the American people.
Imagine if Mitch McConnell’s sole pur­pose was not ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing the pres­i­dent a one term president.
Imagine if the America peo­ple liv­ing in some of the most depressed red states had shunned the divi­sive rhetoric of a blovi­at­ing come­di­an who want­ed the pres­i­dent to fail.
When a pres­i­dent fail don’t we all fail? Why would we bet against our­selves for polit­i­cal and racial rea­sons? It makes no sense.
Imagine if Republicans had not ded­i­cat­ed the almost eight years of the Obama Presidency to blan­ket obstructionism.
Imagine if they had passed a Transportation bill which would have cer­tain­ly seen Main street reg­is­ter­ing mon­u­men­tal gains as Wall street has .
Despite all of the sub­ver­sion and obstruc­tion Obama is enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, more pop­u­lar than Ronald Reagan was at this time in his pres­i­den­cy. History will judge Obama one of the great­est pres­i­dents and he did it with no Republican help.
They talk enor­mous­ly about Reagan , but Tip O’neill worked with Ronald Reagan> Even Newt Gingrich worked with Bill Clinton. What will be John Boehner and Mitch McConnell’s story?

Political par­ties are run by peo­ple . People are immoral, cor­rupt self-serv­ing and arro­gant . As such it’s not out of the ordi­nary to see polit­i­cal par­ties go through seri­ous tran­si­tions . In some cas­es becom­ing relics of their for­mer selves, until they get the mes­sage vot­ers want them to get, that it can­not be busi­ness as usual.

The Republican par­ty in the United States would prob­a­bly be a region­al par­ty were it not for the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tice of ger­ry­man­der­ing . A prac­tice which cre­ates grotesque­ly shaped dis­tricts to keep them with­ing the par­ty in con­trol of the leg­isla­tive branch.

In my native Jamaica the Jamaica Labor Party has gone through it’s own learn­ing cure, a curve of it’s own cre­ation , made pos­si­ble by arro­gance, self­ish­ness ‚elit­ism and infighting .
As such the peo­ple grav­i­tat­ed to what they viewed as their least worse choice, the PNP. Through it all, the JLP con­tin­ued on a self destruc­tive path which allowed the PNP to hold pow­er for an unprece­dent­ed 14 ¹⁄₂ years unbro­ken tenure in office.
Yes there was vote buy­ing, yes there were oth­er meth­ods used by the PNP to keep power.
Nevertheless none of that mat­ters when the Jamaican peo­ple make up their minds that they want a cer­tain par­ty out of office, as we wit­nessed in the last nation­al elections.
In that unbro­ken peri­od of time in office Percival James Patterson, Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller and com­pa­ny not only wrecked the Island’s econ­o­my , they ush­ered in a pop­u­lar cul­ture which places no val­ue on human life, A gen­er­a­tion which large­ly eschews moral­i­ty. A gen­er­a­tion which has com­plete­ly rede­fined what it meant to be Jamaican.
In the process the PNP, it’s lead­er­ship and dyed-in-the-wool sup­port­ers took on the mantra Jumeka a pnp kun­try , and actu­al­ly believed it.

The PNP took our coun­try from the pearl of the Caribbean to the pari­ah of the region. Our peo­ple are ridiculed and shunned across the region and beyond. Our coun­ty which oth­er Caribbean natives pri­vate­ly claimed as their own is now pub­licly cas­ti­gat­ed and disrespected.
Through it all I prayed and hoped for two things, the rebirth of the con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty Alexander Bustamante cre­at­ed and the total destruc­tion of the can­cer we know as the PNP.

I believe I may be the only Jamaican not in a quandary about the tur­moil with­in Norman Manley’s par­ty today.
Why ?
Because I have con­sis­tent­ly prayed and argued for the demise of that polit­i­cal par­ty. As such I can­not be dis­mayed that my prayers are being answered.
I look at the PNP as a stu­dent of his­to­ry. I con­sis­tent­ly remind myself that Bustamante a found­ing mem­ber of the PNP left it and formed the JLP , rec­og­niz­ing that the par­ty he helped to form was becom­ing too rad­i­cal for his liking.
If the par­ty was too rad­i­cal then imag­ine now..
When we look at Jamaica and how she could have been posi­tioned on the glob­al stage today , what with the indomitable spir­it of our peo­ple , our entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it , our intel­li­gence, we could be the nation the world point to, as it points to Israel today, minus the oppres­sive occu­py­ing boots on the neck of anyone.

Despite this, in areas where the PNP has not sti­fled our coun­try , eg, ath­let­ics, our ath­letes have con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed what a tiny nation can accom­plish when they are allowed to soar and the cor­ro­sive cor­rupt­ing influ­ences of pol­i­tics have not infect­ed their abilities.
No nation even remote­ly close to our size and pop­u­la­tion have accom­plished what our ath­letes have, even up to the Rio Olympics.
Our young stu­dents con­tin­ue to defy con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, tear­ing down men­tal bar­ri­ers as they demon­strate the pow­er of the mind academically.
Juxtapose that with the areas where pol­i­tics have dom­i­nat­ed and we can see who the true ene­mies of the Jamaican peo­ple are.

Our dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to be tremen­dous sources of growth, devel­op­ment and sup­port, not just for their respec­tive adopt­ed coun­tries but for Jamaica land we love as well.
To my fel­low Jamaicans I humbly sug­gest, let Rome burn. If you can, give them some gaso­line , give them some matches.
It’s time the mem­bers of the PNP and it’s lead­er­ship be remind­ed that Jamaica is our coun­try, not PNP not JLP , it’s our country.
Not their pri­vate pig­gy bank to be plun­dered . Not for them to sell off to the high­est bid­der. Not for them to use to fat­ten their pock­ets and our peo­ple are cer­tain­ly not there for them to hold in contempt.

(1)“For the first time I saw hum­ble­ness”[sic]
(2)“He sound­ed script­ed but I still believe it was from the heart”

Couple of quotes from parish­ioners from the Detroit church Donald Trump vis­it­ed on Saturday. We cer­tain­ly are a peo­ple of vary­ing opin­ions and beliefs , not sure how he could be per­ceived as script­ed while being gen­uine and from the heart but I digress.

Look we are a for­giv­ing peo­ple, we are a lov­ing peo­ple, we are a peo­ple pre­dis­posed to giv­ing peo­ple the ben­e­fit of the doubt even when they haven’t earned it.
Sometimes to a fault…

Trust is earned, you do not get to spend sev­en decades dis­parag­ing and dis­crim­i­nat­ing against me and then show up talk­ing about many peo­ple don’t know Lincoln was a repub­li­can because you want their vote.

Then again that may very well be just me, that may be attrib­ut­able to that fierce and indomitable Jamaican spir­it , that Ashanti blood which cours­es through my veins.

You go to a black church talk­ing about “some peo­ple don’t know that Lincoln was a repub­li­can” , when did Trump learn this.
Don’t come to us talk­ing about Lincoln as if black folk should be eter­nal­ly grate­ful to the repub­li­can par­ty because he signed the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion, he did so because he was forced to.
Lincoln need­ed bod­ies for the war effort​.Lincoln need­ed to keep the French from get­ting involved in the war to pro­tect their ter­ri­to­ry of Louisiana.The eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion accom­plish­es both goals tac­ti­cal­ly for Lincoln
Secondly this repub­li­can par­ty has­n’t been the par­ty of Lincoln since the 1968 sign­ing of the civ­il rights act.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised said one parish­ioner who heard Trump in Detroit Saturday” it was like it was a new Donald Trump ” .
Ha ha ha ..I real­ly don’t mean to laugh.
As a kid grow­ing up in rur­al Jamaica we loved to throw rocks and every­thing we could find at the numer­ous chameleons that graced the trees we loved to climb. We sim­ply called them green lizards. Back then we thought they were mad at us when we threw rocks at them. As we got old­er we learned they changed from that beau­ti­ful green to make them­selves less con­spic­u­ous when they face danger.

So even though it was the very same rep­tile it was able to change itself to suit what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion it was in .
That is vin­tage Donald Trump.

Trump the rel­a­tive­ly sane-look­ing wannabe pres­i­dent try­ing to appear pres­i­den­tial stand­ing next to Mexican pres­i­dent Enrique Pena Nieto was expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent than the much dark­er Trump who threw out red meat to a rav­en­ous right-wing crowd in Arizona after leav­ing his meet­ing with Pena Nieto.

So of course the Donald Trump who have Blacks sum­mar­i­ly kicked out of his events, would be dif­fer­ent than the Trump who turned up in Detroit on Saturday to change his appear­ance with white voters.
What the hell, why not use these props to his advan­tage , to get his point across to his real tar­get audience.
Hey , he may even get a few of the negroid props to vote for him , why not, a vote is a vote right, noth­ing wrong with using one stone to kill two birds?

SELF LOATHING.…

It’s not an over­ly bril­liant strat­e­gy , nei­ther is it a sil­ly strat­e­gy . It is a strat­e­gy which could actu­al­ly work under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, but for it’s trans­par­ent nature.
It could absolute­ly have worked had Trump not had such a sor­did his­to­ry of racist bigotry.
Trump will get a few black votes , not many . Much the same way he will get some Hispanic votes despite his caus­tic bar­rage of hate­ful rhetoric against their entire race.
Because there are Mexican immi­grants who refer to Mexicans as “Illegals”, one went as far as to say the Mexicans must be stopped or “soon there will be a taco truck on every corner”.

Wow !!!
You absolute­ly can­not make that kind of stuff up.
There will always be the likes of Marco Gutierrez, and of course the black apos­tate who parades as a pas­tor, Mark Burns the fire-breath­ing liar who ped­dles reli­gion, his lips drip­ping with perdition .
Lied about serv­ing in the Army National Reserve. (Served in his state nation­al reserve). Said he over­stat­ed his accom­plish­ments. No Mark you speak often about not being polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, so let me help you with this non-polit­i­cal assess­ment, you did not over­state your accomplishments.
You straight out lied and that makes you a damn lying fraud.
Lied about com­plet­ing a bach­e­lors of sci­ence degree from North Greenville University.
Lied about being a fra­ter­nal mem­ber of Kappa Alpha Psi. Lies, lies, lies, yet you pur­port to be a man of God, no you are a fraud and a charlatan.

When exposed in a lie by a black CNN Anchor Victor Blackwell the huck­ster said he did it so he would be tak­en seriously!
No fake pas­tor, the path to respectabil­i­ty begins with respect,truthfulness, hon­or, let­ting your word be your bond.
You weren’t seek­ing to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, you were seek­ing hype, you were seek­ing atten­tion and not the kind of atten­tion you should have craved . The atten­tion of God Almighty.
But Burns was not done , he accused Blackwell and CNN of try­ing to , get this , “I thought we were doing a pro­file, and all of a sud­den you’re here to try to destroy my char­ac­ter,”
Did this lying bas­tard just say “char­ac­ter”?
No faux-pas­tor Burns the inter­view­er was sim­ply doing his job, he can­not destroy that which does not exist.
You did that to your­self when you decide to fake a resume’.

How appro­pri­ate that this lying huck­ster would be aligned to anoth­er huck­ster try­ing to con his way into the Presidency?
Notice in his tweet how he couched him­self in the word of the lord to pull the wool over the eyes of those who sit and lis­ten to him in tweet below.

I’M SO THANKFUL FOR A GOD WHO LOOKS BEYOND OUR FAULTS AND MEETS OUR NEEDS..I LOVE YOU ALL.

Lying decep­tive bastard.

Word of unsolicited advice and maybe a question to and for the African-American community, the Latino-community and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, what made you think a Leopard would change it’s spot?

What is it about the record of Donald Trump that made you want to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt? I’m not about to re-lit­i­gate Trump’s record of big­otry , xeno­pho­bia, misog­y­ny, divi­sive­ness, and fascism.
In today’s world a sim­ple google search is enough to shine a light on pret­ty much any subject.

I am at pains in my efforts to find a ratio­nale for Black Americans sup­posed desire to have Donald J Trump meet with them . To begin with Donald Trump had no use for blacks through­out his sev­en decades on the plan­et. In fact he did not have any use for blacks even up to through the repub­li­can pri­maries. Black were sum­mar­i­ly expelled by his goons, a black man was suck­er punched by an old trail­er trash , and of course the white police attacked the vic­tim. A young black woman was phys­i­cal­ly and ver­bal­ly assault­ed and kicked out to Trump’s glee­ful cheering,.
“Knock the hell out of them will you,I love the old days , in the old days they would have been out­ta here on a stretcher” .
More con­se­quen­tial, his attempts to dele­git­imize the Nation’s first African-American pres­i­dent, sug­gest­ing that the pres­i­dent was not born in the United States, a demand to see the pres­i­den­t’s birth cer­tifi­cate , which is the equiv­a­lent of the show me your paper rules of years gone by.
The fact is that this tanned buf­foon is an unmit­i­gat­ed racist bigot.

So what about this his­to­ry that say to American Blacks , maybe we should care about this buffoon?
I mean this is a guy who spent $85​.ooo to dem­a­gogue and defame 5 young black and Latino youths ages 14 – 15 who were wrong­ly arrest­ed by NYPD cops and con­vict­ed of rape in 1989. The youths were con­vict­ed , thanks to Trump’s full page ads in local papers call­ing for the death penal­ty for the juve­niles, the poi­soned jury pool returned a guilty ver­dict result­ing in a 13 year incar­cer­a­tion before they were even­tu­al­ly exonerated.
Trumps unequiv­o­cal sup­port for police, regard­less of their abuse of the laws today was the same for the cops who framed the five juve­niles in 1989.
Donald J Trump the land­lord refused to rent to black ten­ants, those are facts.

In light of his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Mexicans as rapists and mur­der­ers, what was it about those state­ments which endeared Trump to the sup­posed Hispanic advi­so­ry coun­cil, before they were shamed into quitting ?
What bet­ter way to judge some­one than the words they utter ?
I’m remind­ed about this lit­tle gem.…

The scor­pi­on want­ed to hitch a ride across the riv­er begged the frog for a ride.
The frog adamant­ly refused cit­ing the dead­ly con­se­quences of the scor­pi­on’s sting.
The scor­pi­on asked ‚why would I sting you when you are giv­ing me a ride?
The frog relented .
Mid-stream the scor­pi­on struck .
The frog feel­ing the life drain­ing from him asked, why did you, you promised not to?
The scor­pi­on replied , I am a scor­pi­on that’s what I do..

What did Enrique Peña Nieto expect to gain from hav­ing Trump in Mexico city ? We are now hear­ing that the invite by Enrique Peña Nieto was just cur­so­ry and not real­ly intend­ed for Trump to take up, it was along the line of come vis­it with us and speak to us , get to know us before dis­re­spect­ing us kind of invite.
The same invite was extend­ed to for­mer sec­re­tary of state Hillary Clinton.
Clinton under­stands pro­to­col, clin­ton has not dis­par­aged Mexicans, Clinton has a life­time of meet­ing with world lead­ers, she under­stood the invite was diplo­mat­ic cour­tesy, kin­da like a neigh­bor say­ing we should get togeth­er some­time. You know you are not going to their house , they know they aren’t com­ing to your house, but it’s some­thing to say.

Not to Trump and his cam­paign, they saw mileage , much like his attempts to extract mileage from the clue­less Black Pastors who pros­ti­tute the gospel, their dig­ni­ty and their con­gre­ga­tions all for a chance to gain some spot­light and a chance to see their stu­pid faces on television.

Trump has no use for nei­ther Black nor Latino vot­ers . He is using the Black church as he has the Hispanic advi­so­ry coun­cil, as he has used Enrique Peña Nieto to show white peo­ple with con­science that the alle­ga­tions of racism against him are unfound­ed. That is the strat­e­gy of the new­ly appoint­ed Kellyanne Conway.
You don’t have to speak to them, speak at them and over their heads to our tar­get audi­ence which must turn out in record num­bers if we are to win.
The prob­lem for Enrique Peña Nieto whose approval rat­ings are in the tank, is that he missed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to embar­rass the blovi­at­ing bigot.
He erred egre­gious­ly in ele­vat­ing Trump to an equal, giv­ing Trump that plat­form ele­vat­ed him to states­man­ship Trump has earned but des­per­ate­ly craves. However Enrique Peña Nieto could have made lemon­ade from the lemon he dealt him­self. He could have stood up for Mexico and the Mexican peo­ple by high­light­ing the mutu­al ben­e­fits which exist between his nation and the United States.
He could have chid­ed Trump for being a unin­formed big­ot , he choked , as a result Trump emerged from that vis­it as the vic­tor , leav­ing Enrique Peña Nieto to flail away using his twit­ter account,. He had a chance to crush Trump and he did not , advan­tage Trump.

Donald Trump is Donald Trump he will not change a damn thing about who he is, as such the Hispanic and Black man­nequins who allow them­selves to be used as props to dress up the pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions of a big­ot should feel shame.
The prob­lem is that the need to rub shoul­ders with mas­sa may “TRUMP” sense for these blacks and his­pan­ic props.

During the last nation­al elec­tion cycle the People’s National Party’s (PNP) lead­er­ship refused to engage in debates with the then Opposition Jamaica Labor Party (JLP).
In what has now been revealed to be a shock­ing case of irony, the log­ic for the PNP’s refusal, was that the then leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister Andrew Holness, had com­pared the then Prime Minister, now oppo­si­tion leader Portia Simpson Miller to a con artist.
I will get back to the irony later.

Manley’s Son Joseph :“Holness House Vulgar And Over-sized”: Confirms Envy.…

Within that irony was anoth­er irony, it was Simpson Miller who first labeled Holiness’s tax cut plan a con-job.
If Holness’s plan was a con-job, by infer­ence it could rea­son­ably be con­strued that the archi­tect Holness was being labeled a con-artist. Yet Miller refused to engage in debates with Holness, she fur­ther threat­ened legal action through one of the ambu­lance chasers who parade as con­sti­tu­tion­al experts.

It was on that flim­sy excuse that the then Prime Minister thumbed her nose at the nation’s 2.8 mil­lion peo­ple by refus­ing to tell them what plans she had for them going for­ward in tele­vised debates. Clearly Simpson Miller and her han­dlers mis­cal­cu­lat­ed in their belief that they would have been reward­ed with a new man­date after refus­ing to answer any pol­i­cy ques­tions dur­ing their term in office.

Holness’s House A Product Of Envy Manley Sowed.….

More shock­ing than the refusal to debate, was the par­ty’s curi­ous fix­a­tion with a house under con­struc­tion which is the prop­er­ty of the then oppo­si­tion leader Andrew Holness.
In order to have the issue of his finances out of the way so he could con­cen­trate on the task of win­ning the elec­tion, Holness was forced to reveal the sources of fund­ing for the pala­tial man­sion he had under construction.

Even after reveal­ing his fund­ing sources, the PNP kept up the attack on Holness, in a way which could only be defined in plain Jamaican col­lo­qui­al ver­nac­u­lar as “bad mind and grudge­ful” . The gen­er­al infer­ence from the line of attack was that there was some­thing unto­ward, some­thing nefar­i­ous , some­thing uneth­i­cal, some­thing crim­i­nal even, about the Holness’s abil­i­ty to afford a home of that size.

THE IRONY

It has now become crys­tal clear that the fix­a­tion with Holness’s house, was to cov­er up the mas­sive cor­rup­tion and graft which was hap­pen­ing in their own party.
It was a ruse designed to deflect atten­tion from where the nation’s atten­tion ought to have been focused.
This writer has con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the cor­rup­tion which has defined the PNP and yes the JLP .
However as I have said con­sis­tent­ly, the lev­el of cor­rup­tion with­in the PNP has demon­stra­bly been con­sis­tent with sub-Saharan African and tin-pin South American klep­to­ma­ni­ac regimes .

This may be defined by the many scan­dals under it’s lead­er­ship, scan­dals high­light­ed by the con­trac­tor gen­er­al’s depart­ment. The TRAFIGURA scan­dal. Cuban light bulb scan­dal. Iran sug­ar deal. OUTAMENI. Refusal to decon­struct gar­risons. Using tax-pay­ers mon­ey as their own. and the shame­ful and dis­gust­ing abus­es of pow­er which are not seen in any oth­er nation in the hemi­sphere. This has had con­se­quen­tial neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for Jamaicans in the way they are treat­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly in the CARICOM region.
http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​8​3​1​/​c​h​i​n​e​s​e​-​e​m​b​a​s​s​y​-​s​h​o​c​k​e​d​-​a​l​l​e​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​c​o​n​t​r​a​c​t​o​r​s​-​p​a​i​d​-​p​n​p​-​b​r​i​bes

It is no sur­prise then that this scan­dal of pay-for-play involv­ing Chinese Contractors oper­at­ing on the Island has now come to the fore.
What per­son who knows about Jamaica is sur­prised by this?
The fact that the Chinese are alleged to have been forced to pay extor­tion mon­ey is not only shock­ing , it is criminal.
This is TRAFIGURA 2.0 on steroids.
It is impor­tant that even though the Dutch Company TRAFIGURA could not give mon­ey to a polit­i­cal par­ty of a for­eign coun­try accord­ing to Dutch laws , it was done any­way and the PNP took that money.

Yes that mon­ey was returned, but only after the Dutch Government launched it’s own probe to deter­mine whether TRAFIGURA had bro­ken Dutch laws. To date no pub­lic offi­cial with­in the PNP has been held account­able for those crimes.
To date there has been no expose’ , no clar­i­ty, no res­o­lu­tion in a case which was clear­ly a crim­i­nal accep­tance of mon­ey by the PNP from a for­eign enti­ty with which it was doing state business.
There was no ambi­gu­i­ty, it was graft. It was cor­rup­tion. It was crim­i­nal. Yet like all of the oth­er atro­cious crimes com­mit­ted by PNP func­tionar­ies ‚no one has been held account­able , no one has paid for those crimes.

It is instruc­tive that the leader of the oppo­si­tion feign igno­rance of the specifics of the trans­ac­tions even as her par­ty is engulfed in the tsuna­mi of charge and counter charge of graft-tak­ing not from out­side but from fac­tions with her own party.
She may be igno­rant in gen­er­al but not about this issue.
If ever there was a need for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor , this is it. We will not see a spe­cial­ly impan­eled enti­ty with pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pow­ers how­ev­er, there is no mileage to be extract­ed by Miller as she thought was avail­able from the fraud­u­lent Tivoli inquiry.

In the same breath that Miller feigns igno­rance of the graft alle­ga­tions she is high­ly crit­i­cal of par­ty mem­bers who have leaked the scan­dal to the public.
It is absolute­ly shock­ing yet total­ly under­stand­able that this woman, who has built her­self a career as defend­er of the poor, the same woman who pre­sent­ed a fraud­u­lent finan­cial dis­clo­sure to the coun­try, would want to cov­er up this scandal.

Where is Portia Simpson-Miller’s sense of Nationalism, where is her sense of lead­er­ship, where is her sense of duty to our coun­try over her loy­al­ty to party?
Whether or not mon­ey was paid to spe­cif­ic high­ly placed PNP Ministers of the then Government and was not hand­ed over to the par­ty is hard­ly the issue here.
Even if the mon­ey was intend­ed for the par­ty , there is some­thing rad­i­cal­ly wrong with a for­eign enti­ty giv­ing mon­ey to any polit­i­cal par­ty or the other.
In fact Chinese Authorities have stri­dent­ly main­tained that Chinese laws are suf­fi­cient­ly clear . That they express­ly pro­hib­it Chinese com­pa­nies from donat­ing to any for­eign polit­i­cal parties.
Cash alters elec­tions , large infu­sions of cash alters elec­tions in fun­da­men­tal ways. . If the cash was giv­en as bribes, then it is far worse far more com­plex. On the face of it it is crim­i­nal for Government offi­cials to accept bribes ‚peri­od. To accept bribes from for­eign agents is far more consequential.

It is impor­tant now, that the present Government take the nec­es­sary steps to con­vene an appro­pri­ate inves­ti­ga­tion into what tran­spired, . It can­not be left up to the inept police and the show-boat­ing Director of Public Prosecution.
It can­not be left up to Simpson Miller’s so-called integri­ty com­mis­sion to fig­ure this one out.
It can­not be left up to a spe­cial fox to make sure that the oth­er fox­es do not eat the chick­en. It can­not be that these pub­lic ser­vants break the laws with such dar­ing and brazen dis­re­gard and not be held accountable.
The present Government can no more talk about cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal col­lu­sion in pol­i­tics if it fail to act , it is no longer in oppo­si­tion , it has the pow­er to act and it must act.

It’s elec­tion cam­paign sea­son in the United States and the talk about immi­gra­tion as a cam­paign issue seem to only be on the polit­i­cal right.
The Democratic nom­i­nee for President Hillary Clinton has thus far remained quite on the issue and cor­rect­ly so in my estimation.

On Wednesday the Republican nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent Donald Trump head­ed to Mexico to gain cred­i­bil­i­ty with white sub­ur­ban vot­ers who are not sup­port­ing his candidacy.
This is part of a des­per­ate strat­e­gy of flail­ing away at cer­tain groups in ways which are con­de­scend­ing and dis­re­spect­ful even as he claim to want their vote.
( You’re liv­ing in pover­ty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 per­cent of your youth is unem­ployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”)
Just the type of con­de­scend­ing shit one needs when con­sid­er­ing who to vote for. Well let me not be hasty, many blacks have actu­al­ly swal­lowed these over­tures at the same time they swal­lowed their dig­ni­ty, pride and self-worth.
It’s impor­tant to note that the fish whom have most dis­cernibly swal­lowed Trump vile words, drip­ping with perdition,are the impos­tors who fleece the gullible and the vul­ner­a­ble in the Black church­es on Sunday mornings.
Isn’t it remark­able how game rec­og­nizes game?
One con-man rec­og­niz­ing the con-game of the black apos­tates who pros­ti­tute and pimp the word of God on the altar of finan­cial gain and world­ly prosperity.

Lets get some­thing straight which the main stream media will not tell you, Donald Trump has not gone to Mexico because he cares about Mexicans.

(“When Mexico sends its peo­ple, they’re not send­ing their best. They’re not send­ing you. They’re not send­ing you. They’re send­ing peo­ple that have lots of prob­lems, and they’re bring­ing those prob­lems with us. They’re bring­ing drugs. They’re bring­ing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good peo­ple.”)..

Trump sees peo­ple of col­or the same way his white une­d­u­cat­ed, so-called mid­dle class blue col­lar peo­ple does.
His response to police vio­lence against peo­ple of col­or is the same as theirs .

Much of his sup­port comes from the nether reach­es of the most Nativist realm.
His record deal­ing with black and brown peo­ple is unequiv­o­cal in it’s disdain .
He can­not hide from it , that is why it’s impor­tant to under­stand that his sup­port­ers and black and brown peo­ple could nev­er exist in the same space.

The pri­ma­ry argu­ment of the black-bird-brained sell­outs is that Donald Trump told them at his Trump tow­er meet­ing that he intends to empow­er the black com­mu­ni­ty by rebuild­ing inner cities.
Okay, so there is so much we can talk about when some­one makes such a vague statement .
In the first instance the vast major­i­ty of suc­cess­ful black peo­ple do not live in inner city ghet­tos . The mas­sive hous­ing projects which house so many poor inner city res­i­dents are reser­va­tions of a dif­fer­ent name.

The Church Lady Exclusive: Did. Dr. Michael Freeman Orchestrate the Ousting of Pastor Joel Peebles from Jericho City of Praise?

Blacks hard­ly own these pub­lic hous­es, in many cas­es the term urban renew­al com­ing from white peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly some­one with a back­ground in real estate and con like Donald Trump means gentrification.
In which case they will be worse off than when the urban renew­al started.
Ask the black peo­ple who lived in down­town Brooklyn and parts of Harlem how those renewals worked out for them.
Don’t get me wrong it is great when cities are revived, but in the con­text of poor blacks it is cold com­fort when they can­not afford a place to live.

Trumps eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, if one does exist, is no dif­fer­ent than that of Reagan, Bush, and Bush. It is sim­ply tax cuts for the rich­est peo­ple and a wish that some of their crumbs will fall from their tables to feed the rest of us.
Secondly the con­cept that Trump will be able to bring jobs back into the coun­try is the biggest lie of all.
Trump him­self makes his tacky ties and shirts in Asia and lit­er­al­ly every­thing else in which he has a fidu­cia­ry interest.

If these black-skinned sell­outs want to be tak­en seri­ous­ly they must encour­age Trump not to talk the talk but walk the walk. Lets see Donald Trump return those man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs to the coun­try first.
It is impor­tant to note that even as these sell­outs do their darnedest to sell their gullible con­gre­ga­tions back into slav­ery , one of Donald Trump’s most stri­dent sup­port­er New Jersey’s repub­li­can gov­er­nor Chris Christie just vetoed a bill which would have seen the min­i­mum wage in that state increased from $8 to $15 by 2021.
That increase would have been over a five year peri­od.… and he vetoed it !!!!

Those peo­ple who con­tin­ue to believe that Trump or any­one else for that mat­ter will return jobs which have gone over­seas are more stu­pid that we thought, they prob­a­bly deserve a pres­i­dent Trump.
Producing goods at American min­i­mum wage would see prices go up expo­nen­tial­ly for those prod­ucts. It would men small­er prof­its for com­pa­nies which man­u­fac­ture their goods over­seas and that is not about to happen.
American con­sumers could not afford to pur­chase these goods which would mean mas­sive con­trac­tion of the American econ­o­my and mas­sive job loss in the end.
And thats just the begin­ning of the down­side of such a move in the glob­al space in which we now operate.

Every American President since Ronald Reagan except Barack Obasma has tried to fur­ther enrich the rich­est among us, it would be a major depar­ture for a self-styled bil­lion­aire to betray his finan­cial class by get­ting them to cut their prof­its and return pro­duc­tion to America on the one hand while his own pol­i­cy wants to give them more tax-cuts and breaks to keep more of their money.
Donald J Trump is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

As the web­site thinkprogress​.com sees it .
In its sim­plest form, the pros­per­i­ty gospel is an American Christian move­ment that teach­es fol­low­ers they can become rich though the art of pos­i­tive think­ing — and, more impor­tant­ly, cut­ting large checks to their church and pas­tor. The con­tro­ver­sial the­ol­o­gy has long been crit­i­cized by pro­gres­sive and con­ser­v­a­tive Christian lead­ers alike, espe­cial­ly the spend­ing habits it encour­ages among min­is­ters who uphold it, such as when Creflo Dollar (his actu­al name) of College Park, Georgia, asked his con­stituents to help him buy a pri­vate jet.

The Bible did say each and every chris­t­ian will have to work out their own sal­va­tion. Left to these mon­ey grub­bing apos­tates we will be back into slav­ery in no time.

President Rodrigo Duterte has repeat­ed­ly and pub­licly crit­i­cized the United States, specif­i­cal­ly on the killing of unarmed black peo­ple by police.

During a press con­fer­ence on Sunday, Duterte sug­gest­ed that his coun­try should “sep­a­rate from the United Nations,” because the U.N. “could not con­trol America” or Russia and because the inter­na­tion­al body could not stop the killing of peo­ple in places like Syria.

“Why are you Americans killing black peo­ple there, shoot­ing them down when they are already on the ground? Answer that ques­tion,” he demand­ed. “Because even if it’s only one or two or three it’s still human rights vio­la­tion, god­damn – you tell that to that American there.”

See Also: Mass shoot­ing of 6 black peo­ple hap­pened last week, but no whites, no ‘ter­ror­ists’ – no story?

The press con­fer­ence took place after two United Nations human rights experts crit­i­cized Duterte for his hard­line drug cam­paign in which hun­dreds of peo­ple have died in extra­ju­di­cial killings of drug sus­pects since he was elect­ed last May.

Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said that Duterte was known as a “plain speak­ing” politi­cians but said that “with regard to us look­ing or turn­ing a blind eye to human rights abus­es or pos­si­ble human rights abus­es in the Philippines, I can assure you that that’s not the case.” http://​the​grio​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​0​8​/​2​7​/​p​h​i​l​i​p​p​i​n​e​s​-​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​t​-​s​l​a​m​s​-​u​s​-​f​o​r​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​e​o​p​le/