Mississippi Voters To Decide On Medical Marijuana

If you have family and friends whom reside in Mississippi, the following will be of particular interest to you.

If not, it will still be of significant interest. We’ll explain why momentarily.

First, some background.

This year, Mississippians will have the opportunity to vote on whether, or not, they want to avail themselves, their loved ones, and friends, of the opportunity to use cannabis to treat the symptoms of their diseases.

The bill which would bring Medical Marijuana to Mississippi is called Initiative 65. The bill is fully written, and is not a mere hollow proposal. Establishing a complete infrastructure, Initiative 65 thoroughly lays out the plans by and through which cannabis would become available to medically qualifying Mississippians, including the regulatory agency and mechanism, the taxation structure, prescriptive authority, distributive network, farming and production facilities, product safety testing mandates, and more.

Mississippi, like some other states, has a public initiative process by and through which citizens have the ability to facilitate legislative action outside of their legislature. It is a direct type of democratic involvement, which for them is ensconced in their State Constitution. The Mississippi Secretary of State’s website writes explicitly that, “The Mississippi initiative law affords voters an avenue for addressing important constitutional issues which the State Legislature does not.”

The site further references the qualifying conditions that must be met in order for any prospective measure to be placed on the ballot – and win – by stating that,

“for an initiative measure to be placed on the ballot, a minimum of 106,190 certified signatures must be gathered with at least 21,238 certified signatures from each of the five congressional districts as they existed in the year 2000. Signatures must be certified by county circuit clerks. A completed petition is filed with the Secretary of State’s Office, along with a $500 filing fee. Not only must an initiative receive a majority of the total votes cast for that particular initiative, it must also receive more than 40% of the total votes cast in that election.”

Suffice it to say, the state law establishes a very high standard which prospective initiative measures must meet in order for them to be placed on the ballot, and then to pass. Whereas in most other states, a simple majority is often all that’s required for any candidate or measure to win, or to pass, in Mississippi, that state’s Initiative Law requires that IN ADDITION TO meeting all other qualifying conditions, it must be voted upon by AT LEAST 40.1% of all voters/ballots cast.

For purposes of illustration – if there are 100 TOTAL voters/ballots cast in an election, and only 30 out of the 100 voters voted on the measure (called an “undervote,” a condition in which all voters do not bother to vote on a particular race or measure), and voted for it to pass, and the nay votes were -0- (zero), despite the 30-0 victory margin, it will NOT pass, because it did NOT “receive more than 40% of the total votes cast in that election.”

Again, despite the fact that more voters voted FOR the measure to pass, than voted against it (which in this example would be zero -0-), or did NOT vote upon it, the measure still would not be considered to have passed.

Enter Mississippians for Compassionate Care.

Comprised of 76 diverse individuals from a variety of backgrounds including Physicians, Nurse Practitioners and Professors, Registered Nurses, Republican and Democratic politicians, Party Executive Committee members, State Legislators, and Local Officials from both major parties, Ministers, retired Military Service members, Business Owners and Executives, District Attorneys, retired Law Enforcement Officers, and more, they are the members of the steering committee which are guiding the measure called Initiative 65 which, if approved by voters, would establish a Medical Marijuana Law in Mississippi.

Initiative 65 is a well-though-out bill, one which is thoroughly considered, and the bill for the prospective measure contains practically every aspect of consideration which would be involved in establishing an entire infrastructure for Medical Marijuana.

The bill MS Initiative 65 Proposed Measure may be read/downloaded here.

Enter the Mississippi State Legislature.

Over the years, in over 20 attempts, the state’s legislators quashed every effort to help the people, and not once did they ever

Size Matters: The Beginning Of America’s End Can Be Stopped

When in the history of our nation have you EVER heard of ANY President denigrating the FBI and other agencies of the United States government – for ANY reason whatsoever?

So, what’s the endgame for the far right?

Total anarchy & chaos, or are they actually going for an authoritarian state?

What’s the difference between “Big Government” and autocracy?

The derisive term “big government” is one used by anti-government anarchists, even though they’d NEVER call themselves that. But then again, White Supremacists don’t call themselves anti-Constitutional terrorists, either.

Frankly, I have long maintained that, contrary to the numerous assertions we’ve heard spouted, our government is NOT “too big,” but rather is TOO SMALL to be either effective, or efficient.

Think of it in restaurant terms.

Go to a 5-star Michelin restaurant, and you’d expect to find only one cook, and one wait staff… right?

OF COURSE NOT!

For such a fine dining experience, with a patronage seating of 100 or so (minus bar space), it would be REASONABLE to have AT LEAST 25, or likely even more, staff of all kinds – ranging from maître d’hôtel, to sous chef, to chef de cuisine, to line cooks, kitchen porters, to wait staff, to sommelier, to bus staff, dishwashers, and others – including bartenders, runners, housekeepers, and more.

The beginning of America’s decline began in earnest with Ronald Reagan, who, in his grandfatherly-like tones, and “aw, shucks” disarming humor, won American’s hearts, and their minds followed. That included Democrats who voted for him in almost unprecedented numbers over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter who introduced America to Energy Independence, Energy Conservation, Renewable Energy, and placed solar collectors/solar hot water heater panels atop the White House… which were promptly removed by the Reagan administration.

In his first Inaugural Address, “the Great Communicator,” as he was monikered, stated bluntly that “government is the problem.” It never occurred to anyone that if government was the problem, the obvious solution that problem is the elimination of it. And that’s precisely what he and the GOP set out to do. But it wouldn’t be called treason.

Of course, as a VERY skilled orator, having traveled across America on GE’s dime years earlier, he frequently gave talks that were very much sympathetic to BIG BUSINESS interests, all couched in patriotic language.

With his blessing, and encouragement, and the insidiousness of Newt Gingrich of Georgia as Speaker of the House, and their misguided fallacious “Contract With America” the GOP began to

Amy Coney Barrett And Radicalism – Religious & Political

Perhaps by now you’ve heard of the sad and tragic news out of France, that recently, Samuel Paty, a 47-year old male teacher was brutally decapitated by a radicalized 18-year old, Russian-born male Muslim student. Though one committed the heinous act, at least 10 students have been arrested for participation in the plot. The prime suspect is a Chechen refugee.

According to Reuters, the episode began when several Muslim parents were angered earlier this month after Paty taught a mandatory “moral and civil education” class on freedom of expression, and had shown to his pupils 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, which were originally published in a Danish newspaper before republication in Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical publication renown for their anti-establishment satire poking fun at the far right, and aspects of Catholicism, Judaism and Islam.

The Guardian reported that a parent of one of the students in Paty’s class had posted a response to an angry video complaining about the class. The respondent wrote: “I am a parent of a student at this college. The teacher just showed caricatures from Charlie Hebdo as part of a history lesson on freedom of expression. He asked the Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wished, out of respect … He was a great teacher. He tried to encourage the critical spirit of his students, always with respect and intelligence. This evening, I am sad, for my daughter, but also for teachers in France. Can we continue to teach without being afraid of being killed?”

The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo recently republished for a second time the same cartoons (also seen here) the day before the beginning of a French trial of

Judging Amy: Is Amy Coney Barrett A Right-Wing Radical?

With the nomination and practical acceptance of Amy Coney Barrett being ramrodded through roughshod by the Republicans, it’s almost a practical assurance that the Judge from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will fill the seat vacated by the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It’s worth noting that the Federal Judicial Center “the research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States Government,” notates her history (to date) as being a “nominated to the bench as Judge, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was by POTUS Donald J. Trump on May 8, 2017, to a seat vacated by John Daniel Tinder. She was confirmed by the Senate on October 31, 2017, and received commission on November 2, 2017.”

So if she’s approved to be a Justice on the Supreme Court, it will have been done in less time than it took for her original nomination to be confirmed to the Federal judiciary – 5 months 24 days, versus 3 weeks 3 days/24 calendar days (to date), and counting.

Amy Coney Barrett at investiture to the Federal bench, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Proceeding therefrom, it now appears that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will no longer be tilting at windmills, but instead, will be significantly tilting toward the far right side of the political spectrum – the right-wing nut job side.

So, given that Judge Barrett, whom for one year clerked for late Justice Antonin Scalia, well-known for his interpretive style on the court – which he called “originalism,” and “textualism” – we can expect more nonsensical rulings in the 40+ years to come, the time for which she could reasonably be expected to rule.

Just like Neil Gorsuch’s infamous “Frozen Trucker” case.

And just so you’ll know – not that you would know – there’s a rather telling, and disturbing side of Judge A.C. Barrett’s judicial perspective, and interpretive style.

Case in point to illustrate: Kanter v Barr – a case in which she dissented involving a man who pleaded guilty to one count of a Federal Felony – mail fraud involving Medicare.

In the court’s ruling – an “en banc” decision, involving three judges – they wrote that:

Wrongful Death Lawsuit Awaits Alabama

Scottie Alton Johnson, a 45-year old Alabama resident, and ward of the state’s prison system, died from complications from COVID-19 on August 1, 2020, according to autopsy results.

Records show that on July 31, authorities took him to a hospital nearest the Bullock Correctional Facility which is located in Union Springs, in Bullock County. Though authorities did not specify, Bullock County Hospital at 104 Bullock Drive, Union Springs, Alabama is less than 3 miles straight down the road, West from the prison.

He died August 1.

At the time of his admission to hospital, he was not thought to be infected with the novel coronavirus, and a COVID-19 test conducted upon his admission resulted negative.

A full autopsy was performed, and the Alabama Department of Corrections stated

Alabama Proves To America Racism IS Alive And Well

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are happening in the former “slave states” in the Deep South?

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are practically all created by Republicans?

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are being given the thumbs-up by a largely Republican Supreme Court?

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propublica.org

Why Do Non-White Georgia Voters Have to Wait in Line for Hours? Their Numbers Have Soared, and Their Polling Places Have Dwindled.

by Stephen Fowler, Georgia Public Broadcasting
Oct. 17, 2020
5 a.m. EDT

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Congress works for you. Learn how to be a better boss with the User’s Guide to Democracy, a series of personalized emails about what your representatives actually do.

This article is co-published by ProPublica, Georgia Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.

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Kathy spotted the long line of voters as she pulled into the Christian City Welcome Center about 3:30 p.m., ready to cast her ballot in the June 9 primary election.

Hundreds of people were waiting in the heat and rain outside the lush, tree-lined complex in Union City, an Atlanta suburb with 22,400 residents, nearly 88% of them Black. She briefly considered not casting a ballot at all, but decided to stay.

By the time she got inside more than five hours later, the polls had officially closed and the electronic scanners were shut down. Poll workers told her she’d have to cast a provisional ballot, but they promised that her vote would be counted.

“I’m now angry again, I’m frustrated again, and now I have an added emotion, which is anxiety,” said Kathy, a human services worker, recalling her emotions at the time. She asked that her full name not be used because she fears repercussions from speaking out. “I’m wondering if my ballot is going to count.”

By the time the last voter finally got inside the welcome center to cast a ballot, it was the next day, June 10.

The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: The number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in non-White neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day. The pruning of polling places started long before the pandemic, which has discouraged people from voting in person.

In Georgia, considered a battleground state for control of the White House and U.S. Senate, the difficulty of voting in Black communities like Union City could possibly tip the results on Nov. 3. With massive turnout expected, lines could be even longer than they were for the primary, despite a rise in mail-in voting and Georgians already turning out by the hundreds of thousands to cast ballots early.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision in 2013 eliminated key federal oversight of election decisions in states with histories of discrimination, Georgia’s voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million people, yet polling locations have been cut statewide by nearly 10%, according to an analysis of state and local records by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica. Much of the growth has been fueled by younger, non-White voters, especially in nine metro Atlanta counties, where four out of five new voters were non-White, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

The metro Atlanta area has been hit particularly hard. The nine counties — Fulton, Gwinnett, Forsyth, DeKalb, Cobb, Hall, Cherokee, Henry and Clayton — have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38% of the polling places, according to the analysis.

As a result, the average number of voters packed into each polling location in those counties grew by nearly 40%, from about 2,600 in 2012 to more than 3,600 per polling place as of Oct. 9, the analysis shows. In addition,

Your Crazy Uncle… is Trump

“You’re the President — you’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever!”

–– Savannah Guthrie, NBC News’ TODAY co-anchor and Chief Legal Correspondent to U.S. President Donald Trump, Thursday night, October 15, 2020, at a town hall styled outdoor debate at Perez Art Museum, Miami, Florida

US President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an NBC News town hall event moderated by Savannah Guthrie at the Perez Art Museum in Miami, Florida on October 15, 2020.

In addition to getting losing ratings when compared to Biden’s Philadelphia town hall event, Trumpanzee acted like the ass he’s always been – even while in office. A leopard can’t change its spots, nor a zebra its stripes. And Trump can’t be anything other than an asshole – the Asshole in Chief, specifically.

CBS News wrote a succinctly wonderful news story about the event, which in pertinent part reads:

America’s Bizarre Voting Mishmash

Voting in America is crazy.

Reading the bizarre differences of Voter ID laws, rules, and regulations in four neighboring states – Florida and Alabama, Alabama and Tennessee, and Tennessee and Kentucky – one can’t help but laugh at the absurdity, and inconsistency of it all.

Moreover, it gives pause for thought, and raises the question: What the hell is going on, and why?

Such absurdity is not limited to those Southern former “slave states.” Throughout America, laws relating or pertaining to voting are a poorly designed, pathetically executed mishmash, a harum-scarum hodgepodge, which is rickety and contradictory, and a miserably vacillating excuse for a democratic process as one could possibly imagine.

There is LITERALLY NO CONSISTENCY in them whatsoever!

LITERALLY!

Here are a few simple, yet egregious examples to illustrate the case in point.

In Vermont, Maine, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico (yes, Puerto Ricans are American citizens) convicted felons can vote… while incarcerated.

But not in any other state in the union.

In Florida, voters in the Sunshine State agreed in 2018 with a 65% majority to allow former felons who had completed their sentences to vote. It restored the rights of nearly 1.5 million citizens in that state. However, the GOP-dominated legislature overrode the citizens expressed will and changed the law to require the former felons to have paid all fines and fees associated with their case, before they could register to vote, thereby effectively disenfranchising at least 6.98% of 21,477,737 Floridians of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right.

The National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) makes this observation about numerous inconsistencies regarding felony disenfranchisement in the 50 states:

• In 16 states, felons lose their voting rights only while incarcerated, and receive automatic restoration upon release.
• In 21 states, felons lose their voting rights during incarceration, and for a period of time after, typically while on parole and/or probation. Voting rights are automatically restored after this time period. Former felons may also have to pay any outstanding fines, fees or restitution before their rights are restored as well.
• In 11 states felons lose their voting rights indefinitely for some crimes, or require a governor’s pardon in order for voting rights to be restored, face an additional waiting period after completion of sentence (including parole and probation) or require additional action before voting rights can be restored.

And while some states revoke the right to vote following a felony conviction, thereby requiring re-registration, North Dakota automatically registers all eligible voters.

And that’s just a good start to illustrate the case in point.

There is NO consistency in the 50 states’ laws when it comes to matters pertaining to voting.

For the largest part, states can, and do, whatever they want when it comes to matters pertaining to voting.

Why?

Because they can.

There are very few, if any, Federal voting-related laws, rules, or regulations in the United States.

Article I., Section 4 of the United States Constitution reads in pertinent part that, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The USA.gov website writes this about voting laws, and specifically,

Making America’s Bed With Donald Trump

In this critique by an Australian directed at Australians, a former Australian government official warns about the toxic mess which the American President Donald J. Trump has created in the United States surrounding the voting process in the 50 states.

In an oblique way, it could be considered an enumeration of reasons why American voters should NOT vote for, nor support the man, nor his re-election to office. Again, it is merely a statement of fact about voting-related incidents in, and sad facts about the U.S.A. as it relates to voting, and serves as a warning to Australians to NOT make the same mistakes, and to stay AS FAR AWAY AS POSSIBLE from such.

Face it, folks… Trump has NOT made America “great again.” But of course, the slogan “make America great again” was bad, and fatally flawed to begin with – just like his presidency – because a thing cannot be made again unless it is unmade to begin with. It’s kinda’ like your bed. It’s either made, or not, and to make it again (if it is made already) requires unmaking it.

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The US electoral system is not a pretty sight. Australia should take heed.

by Philip Citowicki
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/15/the-us-electoral-system-is-not-a-pretty-sight-australia-should-take-heed

As the US presidential election on 3 November draws near, many around the world watch on with concern and denounce the erosion of democracy and democratic values from afar.

For Australia, it should act as a poignant reminder to consider the health of our own system, where mistrust in politicians and the political system features glaringly in public sentiment.

The global flag-bearer of democracy, the US, has been engulfed in a wave of disputes regarding gerrymandering, voter purges from electoral rolls, and ugly voter suppression campaigns. Voter turnout has seldom nudged the 60% mark, which ranks among the lowest of major democratic countries in the world. [emphasis added -ed.]

In Australia, we have watched

$16T Is Not COVID-19 Costs, It’s Racism’s Costs

40 acres and a mule.

That was the promise which was authorized and made to freed slaves by General Tecumseh Sherman in Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865, during the last days of the Civil War.

It was promptly broken by President Johnson, who was a slave owner, and had become President upon Lincoln’s assassination.

America has been breaking promises at least since 1776.

America has broken numerous promises to, and treaties with Indians (Native Americans).

America broke numerous promises to Blacks – and, still is.

And, in large part, America has broken faith with the Common Man at least ever since 1980, so that now, “corporations people, my friend.” {So said Mitt Romney while campaigning at the Iowa State Fair to be the Republican party’s Presidential Nominee in August 2011.}

I wish that America’s politicians
(especially the GOP)
cared more for The People
than for corporations.

Anyone that loves America, loves her people, loves the idea of liberty, of equality, and guaranteed rights under law, should also love honesty, justice, and responsibility. And one simply CANNOT examine any segment of American history without acknowledging the horrific and grotesque inequity present FROM THE BEGINNING of this nation. It’s written in the Constitution, for heaven’s sake!

Women did not have the right to vote (suffrage).

Blacks were enslaved. Then, Blacks were continually discriminated against in seemingly countless ways – ranging from the denial of voting rights, of commerce, of justice, and more. And, as if to add insult to injury, the 13th Amendment has an exclusion clause FOR the purpose of perpetuating slavery. The amendment reads: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

“…except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…”

Yes, slavery IS 100% Legal in the United States. The Constitution says so.

And to ANYONE who claims or asserts that there is not now institutionalized racism in this country need only look to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) to see that racism is institutionalized, and alive and well in the United States.

In the 1999 Class Action case Pigford v. Glickman(Timothy Pigford, et al., v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, United States Department of Agriculture), “the suit claimed that the agency had discriminated against black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983 to 1997.” Members of the class included those who received allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1981 and 1996. (See: “Black Farmers Win $1.25 Billion In Discrimination Suit,” By Jasmin Melvin, February 18, 2010, online at
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farmers-pigford-idUSTRE61H5XD20100218)

• The 2007 Census of Agriculture reported that 2.20 million farms operated in the United States. Of this total, 32,938, or approximately 1.5% of all farms, were operated by African Americans.

• Over 74% (24,466) of African American farmers in the United States reside in Texas, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana.

• Average annual market value for farms operated by African American farmers in 2007 was $30,829. The national average for white U.S. farmers was $140,521.

• Overall, the number of farms operated in the United States increased by 3.2% between 2002 and 2007. Farms operated by African Americans increased from 29,090 to 32,938, an 11.7% increase over the five-year period.

• In 2007, 348 (757 in 2002) African American farmers received Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) loans amounting to a total of $9.9 million. This averaged $28,408 per participating African American farmer, about 32% of the national average ($87,917). Average CCC loan value to white farmers was $88,379.

• Other federal farm payments to African American operated farms averaged $4,260, half the national average government farm payment of $9,518. About 31% of all African American farmers received some government payment compared to 50% of white farmers.

The Congressional Research Service has written about the Pigford v Glickman case in

The Direction America Should Go In, Is…

Most polls which ask the question “Do you think America is headed in the right direction?” find that an exceeding majority of respondents answer “NO” to that very simple, straight-forward question.

Since January 2009 to today (October 13, 2020), those who believe the country is on the wrong track has ranged from a high of 76.5% to a low of 45.8%, with the majority occurring in the 60% range for most of that time, who think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That’s according to the averaged aggregate polling data collected by RealClearPolitics from a variety of polling organizations.

About the President, some have intoned sarcastically, “Poor ol’ Trump is the only President that has ever made mistakes.”

No, of course not, and it’s easy to understand the tenor and gist of such sarcasm.

Flooding by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans

I can say, have said, and will say this, however, and it is that, to date, in our nation’s history, he is the ONLY President whom has NEVER held any office of Public Trust of any kind, whatsoever – neither elected nor appointed – nor has he EVER volunteered for or with any kind of Public Service in ANY capacity with any public policy or public service-based organization. And for that reason, he is as unfit for duty as his bone spurs made him during Vietnam.

While many criticize and make political hay out of regarding a candidate’s “inexperience,” and tout that as being a strong point of benefit, there is this to consider – which I’ll explain using analogy.

Most people are employees. They have a job to do, and do it well. But they’ve never owned, nor run a company of any kind.

So it would be utterly preposterous, absurd, and even stupid, to imagine that just anyone would be able to step into Jeff Bezos’s shoes (Amazon’s Founder, President, CEO) and perform his job at least as good as he does.

We would be utter failures… just like the President is.

Another part of that problem is that the President’s “mistakes,” or “failures,” as they’re properly called, affects 330,441,455 people, and the world’s LARGEST economy.

And on that note, I’ll make this observation:

As the world’s 3rd most populous nation, to China and India, respectively, each with over 1 BILLION MORE people than we have, it is the height of absurdity and preposterousness to imagine for even a moment that somehow, with that many people and STILL GROWING, that we should somehow have a “smaller” government is not merely stupid, it is moronic.

Analogously again, it’s like imagining that you should wear smaller clothes the bigger you get. It’s nonsensical on the order of Alice in Wonderland.

VERY few people want to talk about it, and even FEWER want to hear it, but… because our elected officials

POTUS & FLOTUS Test POSITIVE For COVID-19

🎯BULLSEYE!!🦠☠️

The “October Surprise” is right on time!

Not to worry… a cup of bleach oughta’ clear it right up!🤣
Or some hydroxychloroquine.🏴‍☠️
Sarcasm purposely intended.

Why does this NOT surprise anyone – not even one iota?

When it comes to the matter of the eventuality of his infection, for quite some time numerous individuals have maintained that “the booms are getting closer,” a colloquialism meaning that sooner, or later, the “booms” will find their target.

It’s disturbing that

Trump FailBlog: Notes on the First 2020 Presidential Debacle… er “Debate”

The Current White House Occupant managed to shoot himself and the GOP in the foot again last night (Tuesday, 29 September 2020) with his unmitigated bullying and verbal abuse at the first Trump-Biden Presidential Debate. No doubt, GOP candidates in so-called “down ballot” races will appreciate his effort for making the party look so appealng. </sarcasm>

True to form, and likely knowing that he couldn’t succeed against Biden – an expert debater with 36 years of Senate experience – Trump took a “burn it down/scorched earth” approach and succeeded in destroying the debate, format and forum, by repeatedly interrupting his opponent, the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and the Moderator, in order to prevent his opponent from cogently responding.

Trump even verbally attacked Moderator Chris Wallace, Fox News Anchor, several times. In the history of American Presidential debates, that has never happened. At one point, Wallace found it necessary to sternly ask Trump to allow his opponent, the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, to answer the question, and Trump rudely interrupted him. The exchange was:

WALLACE: “Mr. President, I’m the moderator of this debate and I’d like you to let me ask my questions.”

TRUMP: “I guess I’m debating you, not him. I’m not surprised.”

To characterize the GOP candidate as undisciplined, unbridled, unhinged, out-of-control, and even rude throughout the 90 minute episode, would be diplomatically generous on all counts. Interestingly enough, his performance was oddly reminiscent of Russian tactics during World War II in which the Russians and their army retreated as the German Nazis advanced toward Moscow – colloquially termed as a “scorched earth” policy – in August/September/October 1941. Knowing that the Nazis were approaching, the peasants and others decided to evacuate their towns and cities, burning everything that could possibly be useful to the enemy as they departed. Moreover, it was Hitler’s ill-fated decision to invade Russia, in conjunction with the Russian tactic, that marked a turning point in World War II for the Nazis, which depleted their strength, and resolve. And ironically, Trump’s scorched earth approach to the debate may similarly prove to be the turning point of his candidacy, and presidency, marking the beginning of his end.

Republican strategist Alex Conant confirmed Trump’s failed “burn it down” approach by acknowledging that Trump undoubtedly knows that he’s behind in numerous national polls, and among voting groups whose support it critical to his success, especially in

“The Notorious RBG” – A Very Short Story

The Supreme Court, and the legal profession in general, are steeped in tradition – perhaps even more so than the United States Senate.

If you’ve ever heard any of the oral arguments before the nation’s highest court, you’ve likely heard the opening remark, “Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.”

However, if you’ve never heard an oral argument, you’re fortunate to be living in this age, because oral arguments in the nation’s highest court are recorded and archived for posterity sake. Audio recordings of the arguments may be found

Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, etc., etc…. Do we have a problem, or do we have a problem?

What the police did in Louisville, KY is CRIMINAL, and INEXCUSABLE.
PERIOD.

That her murderers/killers were NOT indicted is a indictment itself upon the INJUSTICE system in that town.
This is where vigilante justice comes in handy begins to enter the picture.

Right-Wing Extremists and GOPers are doing it (look at Wisconsin), and now, turn about’s fair play.
They’re permanently marked men – with the “mark of Cain.”
But unlike Cain, look for them to  be

Tragically Ironic, Poetic Justice Serves You Right

I hate to admit this, but I am practically at the point of saying, when it comes to so-called “anti-maskers” (who are most often Trump supporters and GOP types), and others who proudly flout and steadfastly refuse to wear any type of face mask thereby endangering the lives of others, and who deny that COVID-19 is a pernicious health threat to our nation’s people, and by extension to our national security, I am just about ready to say to them all – FUCK YOU. I hope you get it, and die. It would serve you right.

Their maliciously malignant behavior is not merely stupid, it is cruel, and inhumane.

Michael L. Parson is the 57th Governor of Missouri.

Yet, there comes a time when good will is exhausted, and there is nothing remaining for those who would otherwise need it the most. The dregs having been long drained from the bottom of the barrel of the milk of human kindness, it has become bone dry, and utterly bereft of anything but empty space – a yawning void, a catastrophic chasm of unimaginable vacuousness. Yet it was them who gleefully rejected all sound advice, and threw caution to the wind.

They might as well die.

It’s the classical Darwin theory – the survival of the fittest – at work.

That’s how utterly FED UP I am with the ignorance-promoting, anti-science nut jobs who loudly bray their ignorance like a donkey does its presence. Perhaps even more so.

And just yesterday, when I read the news that Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson, a virulent anti-masker, along with his wife Teresa, tested POSITIVE for COVID-19, I thought that it serves him right. There is poetic justice in this world, and it’s often tragically ironic.

However, I hasten to add this:

The sowing of confusion and chaos in this matter is the work of America’s enemies, most notably, Russia.

And sadly, the American president (yes, like it, or not, he’s America’s President), has long played friendly with totalitarian regimes, again, most notably, Russia, long before he became the Misleader of the Free World, and Liar in Chief.

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Springfield News-Leader (Missouri)
https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/18/white-house-covid-19-advisors-urged-texas-style-mask-rule-missouri/5824275002/
Despite Parson’s Rejection, White House COVID Group Urged Texas-Style Mask Mandate Here
September 18, 2020 by Austin Huguelet
Gov. Mike Parson publicly rejected the idea of implementing a mask mandate in Missouri

More American Problems

The sorts of problems described in the story linked below could be resolved very simply by Congress, which has the authority to regulate election law, but has chosen to abdicate the responsibility, failed to exercise that right, and allowed chaos and pandemonium to ensue by allowing at least 50 different laws, rules, regulations, and more.

By establishing a National Standard Election and Uniform Voting Law which would cover ALL aspects of voting, from registration, to identification, to hours of operation and places of polls, to dates, times, and types of voting methods used, ALL those questions and more would be settled, and uniform nationwide, from state to state, and sea to shining sea.

From Maine to Minnesota, Mississippi to Maryland, Michigan to Arizona, and from Florida to Washington, Georgia to Oregon, and California to Texas to the Carolinas, and all points in between — ONE LAW to govern them all.

We would then begin to have a truly UNITED STATES!

 

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2020 Election Faces Unprecedented Amount Of Litigation

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/914431067/step-aside-election-2000-this-years-election-may-be-the-most-litigated-yet

Hundreds of lawsuits are already swirling around mail-in voting as campaigns, parties and outside groups try to sort issues both basic and technical — questions such as:

“Must a ballot be

WE DID IT!

Thanks… for nothing, Trump – you piece of shit.

Congratulations, Murka!

You did it!

You’ve
SURPASSED
the
200,000
Trumpvirus Death Count!

In a mere 8 months and 2 days, Trump’s

Dog Whistler For Sale

UrbanDictionary.com states this about the popular cultural meaning of “Dog Whistle“:

“Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is “in the know” will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.

“Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level.”

---

Trump To White Minnesota Audience:

“You Have Good Genes.”

by Christopher Wilson – Senior Writer, Yahoo News
September 21, 2020

It’s called a “dog whistle,” a word or phrase in a speech that is unobjectionable on the surface but conveys a coded message to partisans, by analogy to high-pitched sounds that are audible to dogs but not to people. Richard Nixon leaned on it heavily during his 1968 presidential campaign, referencing “law and order” and a “war on drugs,” further codifying racial appeals from Barry Goldwater for “states’ rights” and “freedom of association.” Ronald Reagan took it to another level in 1976, demonizing a “welfare queen” who fraudulently collected $150,000 in government benefits, a barely concealed appeal to the race and class resentments of White voters toward Blacks.

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Ed. NOTE: Reagan’s demagogic demonization of an ostensibly Black woman as a “welfare queen” is a highly-popularized modern-day Republican myth. Linda Taylor, a Tennessee-born White Chicago-area resident, was given the miscreant moniker by the Chicago Tribune in October 1974, which also focused upon her personal possessions – jewelry, furs, and a Cadillac – though the real story of her behavior was much worse, and more complicated than a relatively minor case of simple welfare fraud. In 2013, Josh Levin, Editorial Director for Slate, wrote an extensively detailed report of the real-life character who Reagan mythologized on his campaign trail, exclusively in an effort to capitalize upon the “shock and awe” factor to gain voter support for his candidacy. Reagan’s use of exaggeration as a raconteur was renown, and in a January 1976 campaign rally, as any good story-teller would, he embellished that character by claiming, “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” While much has been written about Reagan’s well-known penchant for demagoguery, little of what he claimed was true, though he made significant political hay with it by portraying one isolated problem as a wholesale representation of systemic organizational failure, which he later used to justify reducing spending on social welfare programs. While Taylor did go to prison for committing about $8000 in welfare fraud (the 2020 value of which would be about $36,500), she was more memorable for her theft-claim and bigamy scams, which frauds were discovered only years later, along with probable murder and kidnapping for which she was never indicted. Levin wrote, “For Linda Taylor, people were consumable goods, objects to cultivate, manipulate, and discard. For Ronald Reagan, Taylor was a tool to convince voters that the government was in crisis.”

---

By that standard, President Trump’s riff about the “good genes” found among the people of Minnesota — an 80 percent white state — wasn’t a dog whistle. It was a train whistle, folding in Trump’s long-held belief that some people, himself especially, are simply born with superior traits to others.

“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump said during his Saturday rally in front of a nearly all-white crowd in Bemidji. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

The racehorse theory is the belief that some humans have a better genetic endowment than others, and by breeding two superior people you end up with superior offspring. The belief in eugenics, the pseudoscience of trimming out “inferior” bloodlines to increase the quality of the gene pool, is part of a long, racist history in America, from forced sterilizations to research funded by the Carnegie Institution, among other wealthy foundations. Earlier this month, charges surfaced that a doctor at an ICE facility was performing unwanted and likely unnecessary hysterectomies on detained immigrant women, which would prevent them from having more children.

“It’s not just eugenics in theory, but it’s eugenics in practice,” said Steve Silberman, a historian whose

Hurricane Sally Starts Death Toll In Alabama

The Latest: Mayor says 1 dead, 1 missing in coastal Alabama

Waves near a damaged pier at Gulf State Park after Hurricane Sally moved through, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in Gulf Shores, AL. Sally made landfall Wednesday near Gulf Shores, as a Category 2 storm, pushing a surge of ocean water onto the coast and dumping torrential rain that forecasters said would cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and well inland in the days ahead.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

By The Associated Press

ORANGE BEACH, Alabama — The mayor of a coastal Alabama town says one person has died as a result of Hurricane Sally.

Mayor Tony Kennon of Orange Beach tells The Associated Press that the person died Wednesday. He added that one other person is missing. Kennon said no other details would be released immediately.

Sally came ashore Wednesday morning near the popular vacation destination as a major hurricane. Kennon says damage to the beach was not too bad.

Away from the beach, in neighborhoods along canals and beside the bay, damage was worse than what the city suffered in Hurricane Ivan, which hit 16 years to the day earlier.

Five corner units of Tropic Isles condominiums after Hurricane Sally moved through the area, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in Orange Beach, AL. Sally made landfall Wednesday near Gulf Shores as a Category 2 storm, pushing a surge of ocean water onto the coast and dumping torrential rain that forecasters said would cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and well inland in the days ahead.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

___

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s governor is warning people in the state’s hard-hit panhandle to remain vigilant as Sally heads inland, warning major river flooding could come next.

Gov. Ron DeSantis told a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Sally is dumping heavy rains as it treks inland across the Southeast. He said that is expected to cause massive flooding of several Florida Panhandle rivers in the coming days.

“So this is kind of the initial salvo, but there is going to be more that you’re going to have to contend with,” DeSantis said at an appearance at the state emergency operations center in Tallahassee.

—

MOBILE, Ala. — Rivers have begun to rise from Sally’s heavy rains, and at least eight waterways in south Alabama and the Florida Panhandle are expected to hit major flood stage by Thursday.

Some of the crests could break records, submerge bridges and flood some homes, the National Weather Service warned in a message late Wednesday.

Vehicles maneuver on a flooded road near a boat washed up near the road after Hurricane Sally moved through the area, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020, in Orange Beach, AL. Sally made landfall Wednesday near Gulf Shores, AL, as a Category 2 storm, pushing a surge of ocean water onto the coast and dumping torrential rain that forecasters said would cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and well inland in the days ahead. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In Alabama, affected waterways include

Who Votes? Who Says They Do And Don’t? Are They Trump Voters?

The mythical Trump voter, the ones who don’t regularly show up to vote at elections, are often cited as the ones who helped put Trump over the top in the 2016 General Election.

Also sometimes also called “secret,” “hidden” or “shy” Trump voters,” they’re often identified demographically as being White, largely middle-to-lower class, with only a high school education, or less.

Before the November 2016 General Election, in March that same year, the Pew Research Center did some investigation on such a matter – the occasional voters, sometimes also known as those individuals who say they voted, but didn’t – long before it was “a thing.” Here’s what they found: “16% of those who say they “definitely voted” in the 2014 midterm election have no record of voting in commercially available national voter files.”

Their work was definitely cut out for them, because as they acknowledged, “while the presence of a record of voting almost certainly means that a person voted, the absence of a record doesn’t necessarily mean they did not.” In other words, a person could be registered to vote, but for one reason or another, they may not have exercised their right to vote, or, a record of their participation in the election is not available. In election parlance, that’s called a voting mismatch – the uncertainty of knowing whether someone registered to vote did, or did not vote.

“Respondents who say they turned out to vote in a particular election is often far greater than the proportion of the population who turned out according to official turnout tallies,” and “one-size-does-not-fit-all when it comes to the best way to validate registration and turnout across U.S. states.”

There are numerous reasons why

I’ve Resisted Calling Trump a Fascist. Not Anymore.

by Dean Obeidallah,
The Daily Beast • September 2, 2020

Many people have used the word “fascist” to describe Donald Trump over the past few years. I was not one of them—until Monday night, when Trump openly defended and endorsed violence by his supporters.

First, Trump shockingly defended his 17-year-old supporter Kyle Rittenhouse, who drove across state lines into Wisconsin where he illegally carried a weapon in the streets of Kenosha and then shot and killed two people. (Criminal charges filed against Rittenhouse include first-degree intentional homicide and illegal possession of a deadly weapon.)

Then Trump backed his supporters who on Saturday descended in a caravan of cars on Portland, Oregon, where they were seen shooting projectiles such as paintballs and pepper spray at people in the street. Trump defended this criminal conduct as a “peaceful protest,” arguing that “paint is not bullets.” In reality, shooting people with paintballs is a crime—we all know that. It could blind a person or worse. Yet Trump defends it because the people engaged in this violence were on Team Trump.

We have now entered a new reality in America where Trump, like fascists before, is embracing violence to remain in power. Let’s be clear about what fascism is. As Madeleine Albright explained while discussing her 2018 book, Fascism: A Warning,

“Fascism is not an ideology; it’s a process for taking and holding power.”

She added that “what differentiates fascism from other ideological movements is the use of violence and anger to achieve political ends.” Hammering that point home, Albright back in early 2019 used a line that sums up Trump today:

“Fascism involves the endorsement and use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in power.”

While Trump has embraced other methods used by fascists before—such as pitting Americans against one another to incite anger—that has been

Today is 9/11. What’re you gonna’ do about it?

“American 11: We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.”

The controller only heard something unintelligible; he did not hear the specific words “we have some planes.” The next transmission came seconds later:

“American 11: Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

–– excerpt from The 9/11 Commission Report

Nineteen years ago today, the United States and the world was devastated when 19 al Qaeda-backed male terrorists, at the behest and guidance of their leader Osama bin Ladin (who was later killed during the Obama administration May 2, 2011 in a raid upon his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan shortly after 0100 local time), in a coordinated effort, hijacked and deliberately flew 4 passenger jet airliners into the World Trade Center’s towers 1 and 2, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., while a fourth crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Over 3000 people were directly killed that day in those events, over 25,000 were injured, with scores of others suffering long-term health injuries, many of which have been fatal.

The weather that Tuesday morning couldn’t have been more perfect. Skies were clear up and down the entire Eastern United States and seaboard, from Maine to Mississippi – visibility was unlimited, as pilots would say – not a cloud in the sky. And then, at 0845 Eastern Time

Edible Fake Food Is A Real Problem, But Who Has Your Back?

Food Fraud: How Do You Know What You Buy Is What It’s Labeled As Being?

What is it, how often, and where does it occur?

Who does it?

What’s being done about it?

Sure, you may pooh-pooh the thought, the idea, the notion, that someone, anyone (people) could be defrauded in food purchases.

And quite frankly, the reason why, is that YOU TAKE IT FOR GRANTED.

Yes, 99.99% of ALL PEOPLE in the United States TAKE FOR GRANTED THAT THEIR FOOD IS WHAT IT IS LABELED TO BE.

Milk, for example, comes from a mammal, such as a cow, or goat – NOT a plant, NOT a nut (almond) – a MAMMAL.

Horse, or donkey milk isn’t a popular item in the States. And I don’t think that I’ve ever seen, or heard of camel’s milk anywhere stateside.

But, there is NO SUCH THING as “almond milk.” It’s actually a HIGHLY PROCESSED, chemically-produced, made-in-a-chemical-laboratory concoction that’s a poor wanna-be ALMOND JUICE, or some other disgusting kind of slurry of crushed almonds that couldn’t make the cut for edible snacks.

If you want REAL FOOD, only buy REAL FOOD.

Same thing goes for the gobbledygook parading as “turkey bacon.” There’s NO SUCH THING. BACON COMES FROM THE PORK BELLY – NOT GROUND-UP, HIGHLY PROCESSED TURKEY MEAT.

The etymology of the word “bacon” (its origin and derivation) is from the:

“early 14c., “meat from the back and sides of a hog” (originally either fresh or cured, but especially cured), from Old French bacon, from Proto-Germanic *bakkon “back meat” (source also of Old High German bahho, Old Dutch baken “bacon”). Slang phrase bring home the bacon first recorded 1908; bacon formerly being the staple meat of the working class and the rural population (in Shakespeare bacon is a derisive term for “a rustic”).”

Chicken, beef, pork… same thing. Not only is it by law, USDA inspected to be free from diseases or defects, and for cleanliness and sanitary conditions of slaughter and preparation, it’s the world’s HIGHEST quality for those reasons.

And, believe it, or else, in some nations – such as China, or India – food is REGULARLY adulterated (contaminated and mixed with) non-food items such as cellulose (paper/wood pulp), then sold to unsuspecting consumers. And, it’s NOT illegal.

Adulterated, and purposely mislabeled food is NOT a problem with a limited scope, or occurrence, and sadly, in recent years, with the proliferation and increase in global trade, it has increased in volume, and incidents, at home, and abroad.

For examples of other such instances, see:
• https://foodrevolution.org/blog/food-fraud-olive-oil-and-avocado-oil/

• https://globalnews.ca/news/4014182/food-fraud-avoiding-fake-product/

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2019/02/17/5-fake-foods-and-food-scams-you-need-to-avoid/

• https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/over-%E2%82%AC100-million-worth-of-fake-food-and-drinks-seized-in-latest-europol-interpol-operation

• https://realfoodfakefood.com/

• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-fake-food-sector-unlicensed-products-knock-offs-supply-chain-contamination-public-health-alibaba-walmart-inscatech-a7880341.html

• https://www.fraud.org/fraud_food

• https://nationalpost.com/life/food/food-fraud-hits-one-of-italys-most-famous-products-raising-questions-about-effectiveness-of-gourmet-labels

The United States’ food safety and health laws have historically prevented such abusive, deceptive practices from occurring. It doesn’t mean, however, that it never occurs. I have written about this subject previously.

And yet, mostly-Republican administrations (including this one) have attempted to cut back on

Donald’s Daily Death Count

AT LEAST

183,068

KNOWN DEAD

FROM

COVID-19

BECAUSE OF

DONALD “DJ” TRUMP.

 

VERY NEARLY 6 MILLION INFECTED.

 

ALL BECAUSE OF TRUMP.

Is America Liberal?

Some political voices decry “liberality” in American laws as if it were something evil.

However, consider the following three recent TRUE events.

In a certain town, along a well-traveled

Nova Scotia’s Canadian Cannabis

Weed is popular.

Nova Scotians found that out after that Canadian island province located in the North Atlantic,  legalized cannabis for adult recreational use, along with the 9 other provinces and 2 territories.

Cannabis, which Canadians nationally made 100% legal in October 2018 in every Canadian province and territory, had remained illegal for adult recreational use and largely unregulated until then.

The largely rural, Christian Catholic/Protestant, English-speaking provincial island just off the coast of the American state of Maine, has a population approaching 1 million, and demographically, the 25-44, and 45-to-64 age categories constitute the majority of the population, followed by those aged 65-and-older.

The Canadian government also found that in the 4th quarter of 2019, of all Canadian provinces, 27.5% of Nova Scotians had

Will “Secret Trump Voters” Swing The 2020 Election?

All matters of politics, policy and governance aside, yes, aside, what this matter speaks to is the lack of authenticity and lack of veracity of polling techniques. And mathematically, that is problematic.

Oh, perhaps you’re not interested in math, you may say.

“He told me that they fundamentally undercounted the Trump vote;
that the Trump voter is not a voter in every single election,
that they come out for Trump,
so they’re hard to count.”

Roaches come out when you turn off the light.
Turn it on and they scatter.

Very well, then… move along, move along – there’s nothing here to see.

But, it’s not the first time we’ve heard that “voice crying in the wilderness,” per se.

Former CIA Intelligence Analyst now Congressional Representative Alyssia Slotkin, who represents Michigan’s 8th Congressional District as a Democrat has said that,

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall Is Callous To Suicide

“Ambushed” is how Alabama’s GOP Attorney General Steve Marshall characterized the Department of Justice’s findings of the State of Alabama’s Department of Corrections unconstitutionally inhumane treatment of prisoners.

That came from the weakling former District Attorney whom corrupt GOP former Governor Bentley appointed February 2017 to avoid prosecution.

But perhaps Marshall is correct – that he was ambushed – and for that reason is so utterly inept and incompetent that

Common Sense: An Endangered Species?

Perhaps it’s been said before – “common sense isn’t so common anymore.”

Maybe even, at one time, or another, you’ve said as much.

Common sense, of course, is a thought process that implies a.) one is thinking, and b.) one is using process of reasoning.

And, without exception, EVERYONE thinks. Not everyone exercises good judgment.

Some take common sense for granted, while others do not.

Common sense may arise from experience, and/or education, and sometimes, experience is a harsh taskmaster – lessons learned aren’t always learned the easiest, or best way. But, it’s education nevertheless.

Point being, is that when we think, we use our highest and best faculties, which separates us and makes us unique in the animal kingdom.

So let’s quickly talk about common sense and politics – an area in which many seem to disagree, some even vehemently, and unfortunately, sometimes violently.

When we fight, we often “lose our mind,” and are motivated and actuated by feelings… which can often betray us. Yet, even in structured fighting, such as war, we employ our faculties of reason to win the victory. War, its strategies and tactics, is studied, and taught. So that very act itself demonstrates that our thinking faculties are a higher order than feeling.

Note that instead of saying “I think,” many people say, “I feel.”

That, I think, is a mistake to say that one “feels” rather than “thinks” when expressing an opinion, for it – the feeling – is something which rationally, one cannot argue against. Feelings may be pleasant, or unpleasant. And if one feels this way, or that way, it is a merely a feeling – and may be, and often is, fleeting, or passing – it is temporal, and lasts only briefly. Consider the feeling of being sad, bloated, or even gassy.

This too, shall pass.

But let’s not delve too deeply into the matter, not to become too philosophical or analytical, per se, and suffice it to say that we want to share some common sensical thoughts – ones that many, if not most, or, even all, could agree upon – in the realm of politics.

It is, after all, political season, and we human beings are political animals.

Robert Reich: GOP Is A Clueless One Trick Pony

It’s true what Madam Speaker Pelosi said about the GOP to host Jim Cramer, August 6, 2020 on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program:

“That’s the problem. See, the thing is, they don’t believe in governance. They don’t believe in governance, and that requires some acts of government to do that.”

Until such time as the GOP figures out that Donald “DJ” Trump has been BAD for America, and BAD for the Republican party, they’ll drop his sorry carcass like a hot potato. He’ll be anathema, a practical political pariah to them.

But, the damage has already been done.

Time to move along.

Progress.

Something alien to the GOP.

Eliminating agencies, and cutting taxes can only go so far.

Under their plan, soon enough, there’d be no government, and no money to run it.

We’re a nation of 330,000,000 people… and growing daily.

We have SIGNIFICANT, unaddressed needs in this nation that require diligent attention, and bravery to remedy. Cutting taxes won’t cut it. Eliminating laws, policies, and agencies is contrary to the very premise of the increased needs that accompany increased population.

The GOP just doesn’t get it.

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US voters can replace a party that knows how to fight with one that knows how to govern

The division between Republicans and Democrats is no longer between left and right but between different core competences.

by Robert Reich

Sunday 16 Aug 2020 01.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/16/us-election-democrats-republicans-trump

As America heads into its quadrennial circus of nominating conventions (this year’s even more surreal because of the pandemic), it’s important to understand the real difference between America’s two political parties at this point in history.

Instead of “left” versus “right”, think of two different core competences.

Robert Reich served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, was Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, and was a member of President Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board.
As well, since 2006, he has been the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley, was formerly Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

The Democratic party is basically a governing party, organized around developing and implementing public policies. The Republican party has become an attack party, organized around developing and implementing political vitriol. Democrats legislate. Republicans fulminate.

In theory, politics requires both capacities – to govern, but also to fight to attain and retain power. The dysfunction today is that Republicans can’t govern and Democrats can’t fight.

Donald Trump is the culmination of a half-century of Republican belligerence. Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricks” were followed by Republican operative Lee Atwater’s smear tactics, Newt Gingrich’s take-no-prisoners reign as House speaker, the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry, and the Republicans’ increasingly blatant uses of racism and xenophobia to build an overwhelmingly white, rural base.

Atwater, trained in the southern swamp of the modern Republican party, once noted: “Republicans in the south could not win elections by talking about issues. You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Over time, the GOP’s core competence came to be vilification.

The stars of today’s Republican party, in addition to

Consistently Reaffirmed

Here’s another argument for the jus soli case for citizenship, versus the jus sanguinis.

Just in the case you may not be aware of the two terms’ meaning, they are Latin literally interpreted as “law of soil,” and “law of blood,” more commonly referred to as “by soil,” and “by blood,” respectively, and refers to the principle of citizenship being obtained from the location of one’s birth, and of citizenship obtained through ancestry of one’s parents’ citizenship.

Here’s a simple explanation to further clarify:
• Under the principle of jus soli, one who is born in San Francisco, California is a citizen of that city, state, and of the United States.
• Under the principle of jus sanguinis, one who is born in San Francisco to parents of Indian and Jamaican extraction is Indian and Jamaican.

Once again, jus soli refers to “the principle that a person’s nationality at birth is determined by the place of birth,” while jus sanguinis refers to “the principle that a person’s nationality at birth is the same as that of his natural parents.”

Historically, jus sanguinis came from Roman law, whereas jus soli came from English common law.

Before proceeding further, some background is helpful for greater understanding.

Kamala Harris with her Jamaican grandmother Miss Chrishy in Browns Town Jamaica

The jus soli system, sometimes also referred to as the “birthright citizenship” system, is common in developed nations that desire to increase the number of their own citizens (population).

A few nations that use jus soli are:
• Argentina
• Barbados
• Brazil
• Canada
• Colombia
• Jamaica
• Mexico
• Pakistan
• Peru
• United States
• Uruguay

Several European nations follow the principle of jus sanguinis, which generally means that citizenship is conferred by birth, and is obtained from a parent who is already a citizen of, or naturalized in that nation. The principle of jus sanguinis is contrary to jus soli because, according to the principle, the mere fact that a person is born in a nation does not, in and of itself, confer citizenship.

Some European nations that use jus sanguinis are:
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Ireland
• Luxembourg
• Portugal
• Romania
• Spain
• United Kingdom

Some nations have a blend of the two – soli, and sanguinis – although one is typically predominate.

If a nation adheres to the “jus sanguinis” or right of blood system, the child inherits a parent’s citizenship. So, for example, if your father and mother were each from a different jus sanguinis nation and you were born in a jus soli jurisdiction, you would be able to claim citizenship in three countries.

And, as is often the case, there are exceptions to whatever rule a nation follows because of treaties with other nations, including, for example, the determination of citizenship of children born to foreign diplomats, who are recognized as being citizens of the country that sent their parents there, as is done in the United States.

As well, people born on a foreign flagship or airliner are entitled to claim citizenship in the country under whose flag the vessel was registered.

The 14th Amendment, Section 1 states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall

Going Postal Over Voting By Mail, Voting In Person, Early Voting, Voter ID, And Many More Confusing Things

Apparently, it ~has~ come to this sorry state of affairs in our nation.

After Donald the Trump’s ravages, America will DEFINITELY need to be made great again.

Perhaps more than anything, this matter points to the need for the Federal government to step in and establish an across-the-board 50-state Uniform Voting Standard law so that there are NO inconsistencies whatsoever.

Presently, there are a plethora of voting laws nationwide, some even varying within the state, as evidenced by this sentence in the news item: “Ohio offers 28 days of early, in-person voting. Traditional, in-person voting also will be available on Election Day.”

For example, in Tennessee, the Secretary of State’s website writes this about Early Voting:

“Early voting is one of two ways in which a registered voter of Tennessee may vote before the actual election day.  The second way for a registered voter to vote early is called by-mail voting.

“The early voting period typically begins twenty (20) days before an election and ends five (5) days before an election. The exception is for the Presidential Preference Primary, when early voting ends seven (7) days before the election.”

But first, there are a few catches.

As they appear on the SOS’ website they are:

Trump Confirms He’s Interfering With 2020 Election

This is about the 2nd, or 3rd time POTUS has stated that he is specifically denying funding for the Constitutionally-mandated United States Postal Service in order to delay the tallying of ballots sent through the USPS.

This is blatantly – as he has so stated this time, and others – an attempt to thwart the will of The People by interfering with the election.

Furthermore, it would make perfectly good, and logical sense for the USPS to have the money they need to resolve any problems, just as much as it would for states and municipalities to have the money they need in the matter of balloting.

Frankly, it’s nonsensical to assert that a problem exists and to refuse to provide the resources, financial, or otherwise, necessary to remedy the problem.

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https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6180774889001/?playlist_id=3166411554001

Trump calls in on Maria Bartiromo’s “Maria in the Morning” show on Fox Business News

Thursday, 13 August 2020

Trump: Coronavirus stimulus negotiations sticking point is mail-in voting

Aug. 13, 2020 – 40:46 – President Trump speaks exclusively to FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo in a wide-ranging interview on Kamala Harris, what the economy will do if Joe Biden wins the presidential election,

Who Was The First Black Female VP Candidate?

Charlotta Bass (right) Progressive Party VP candidate, and Progressive Party Presidential candidate Vincent Hallinan, 1952

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Kudos to Kamala Harris on being selected by former Vice President Joe Biden to be his, and the Democratic Party’s Vice Presidential candidate. Truly, it’s a momentous moment in time.

But Senator Harris isn’t the first Black woman to have ever been a Vice Presidential pick.

Los Angeles newspaper owner and political activist Charlotta Bass (1874-1969) was.

She began her career as a conservative Republican, but by the 1940s, however, she had made a singificant political transition.

And in 1948 she supported Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace in his unsuccessful bid for the Presidency.

Four years later, she was nominated to be the Vice Presidential nominee on the Progressive Party ticket.

She was the first African American woman to carry a political party’s nomination for the second highest office in the land.

Her acceptance speech to be the Progressive Party’s VP candidate was given at the Chicago convention of the Progressive Party on Sunday, March 30, 1952, and appears below.

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I stand before you with great pride.

This is a historic moment in American political life.

Historic for myself, for my people, for all women.

For the first time in the history of this nation a political party has chosen a Negro woman for the second highest office in the land.

It is a great honor to be chosen as a pioneer. And a great responsibility. But I am strengthened by thousands on thousands of pioneers who stand by my side and look over my shoulder—those who have led the fight for freedom—those who led the fight for women’s rights—those who have been in the front line fighting for peace and justice and equality everywhere. How they must rejoice in this great understanding which here joins the cause of peace and freedom.

These pioneers, the living and the dead, men and women, black and white, give me strength and a new sense of dedication.

I shall tell you how I come to stand here. I am a Negro woman. My people came before the Mayflower. I am more concerned with what is happening to my people in my country than in pouring out money to rebuild a decadent Europe for a new war. We have lived through two wars and seen their promises turn to bitter ashes. Two Negroes were the first Americans to be decorated for bravery in France in World War I, that war that was fought to make the world safe for democracy. But when it ended, we discovered we were making Africa safe for exploitation by the very European powers whose freedom and soil we had defended. And that war was barely over when a Negro soldier, returning to his home in Georgia, was lynched almost before he could take off his uniform. That war was scarcely over before my people were stoned and shot and beaten in a dozen northern cities. The guns were hardly silenced before a reign of terror was unloosed against every minority that fought for a better life.

And then we fought another war. You know Dorie Miller, the spud peeler who came out of his galley to fight while white officers slept at Pearl Harbor. And I think of Robert Brooks, another “first Negro”, and of my own nephew. We fought a war to end fascism whose germ is German race superiority and the oppression of other peoples. A Negro soldier returned from that war—he was not even allowed to take off his uniform before he was lynched for daring to exercise his constitutional right to vote in a Democratic primary.

Yes, we fought to end Hitlerism. But less than 7 years after the end of that war, I find men who lead my government paying out my money and your money to support the rebirth of Hitlerism in Germany to make it a willing partner in another war. We thought to destroy Hitlerism—but its germ took root right here. I look about me, at my own people—at all colored peoples all over the world. I see the men who lead my government supporting oppression of the colored peoples of the earth who today reach out for the independence this nation achieved in 1776.

Yes, it is my government that supports the segregation by violence practiced by a Malan in South Africa, sends guns to maintain a bloody French rule in Indo-China, gives money to help the Dutch repress Indonesia, props up Churchill’s rule in the Middle East and over the colored peoples of Africa and Malaya. This week Churchill’s general in Malaya terrorized a whole village for refusing to act as spies for the British, charging these Malyan and Chinese villagers who enjoyed no rights and no privileges—and I quote him literally—“for failing to shoulder the responsibility of citizenship.” But neither the Malayan people—nor the African people who demonstrate on April 6—will take this terror lying down. They are fighting back.

Shall my people support a new war to create new oppressions? We want peace and we shall have freedom. We support the movement for freedom of all peoples everywhere—in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, and above all, here in our own country. And we will not be silenced by the rope, the gun, the lynch mob or the lynch judge. We will not be stopped by the reign of terror let loose against all who speak for peace and freedom and share of the world’s goods, a reign of terror the like of which this nation has never seen.

Postcard with a photograph of a young Charlotta Bass, c.1901-1910. The photograph may have been taken in Providence, Rhode Island, where Bass (then Charlotta Spears) lived with an older brother and worked at the Providence Watchman, an African-American newspaper. From the Charlotta Bass / California Eagle Photograph Collection, 1880-1986, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles, CA.

For 40 years I have been a working editor and publisher of the oldest Negro newspaper in the least. During those 40 years I stood

Do You Eat Onions? If So, Read This

https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/outbreak-investigation-salmonella-newport-red-onions-july-2020

Red onions grown by Thomson International, Inc. of Bakersfield, CA have been ID’d as potentially contaminated by the Salmonella Newport infection.

Also recalled are all varieties of onions that could have come in contact with potentially contaminated red onions, due to the risk of cross-contamination.

Recalled products include red, yellow, white, and sweet yellow onions shipped nationwide from May 1, 2020 to August 1, 2020, sold under the following brand names:

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President: Mandate 6-Week 50-State Lockdowns to Save Lives -and- Economy

Hey, I’m ALL FOR THAT IDEA!

But… you’re gonna’ have to open up the purse WIDELY — V – E – R – Y — W – I – D – E – L – Y — for it to even begin to work.

And there’s a wee bit of GOOD NEWS!!

Yes, there’s a very bright spot in this matter, and it is this:

“We can actually fund the additional unemployment benefits, for example, or additional support to small businesses from our own domestic resources. That is much, much better than having to borrow it from abroad. So this recession is very unique in how we’ve shut down part of the economy because it’s also generating savings that can support the workers who are most affected. I know it’s complicated, but this is a unique moment when the traditional concerns about government deficits, debt to GDP, do not apply.“

But part of, if not the exclusive problem, with Trump’s response is that it’s misguided (as in “uncentered, and lacks focus”), and has no cohesive unifying action, or standard. There’s no clear guidance on what to do, who does what, when, how, to what extent, or anything… literally.

FEMA… if ever there were an emergency, this is it – what have they done?

Zero, zilch, nada.

Seriously.

Have you seen them in YOUR state, or neighborhood? Have you read, or heard of anything they’re doing in your state or community?

I didn’t think so.

How has the Red Cross been involved?

That I’m aware, that I’ve heard of, or read, they haven’t been asked.

Same thing as FEMA – have you seen them in YOUR state, or neighborhood?

I didn’t think so.

U.S. Border Patrol, in conjunction with the Coast Guard… could’ve been swabbing nasal passages and mouths of every person crossing and along our nation’s borders, and coasts.

Nope.

Didn’t happen.

Same thing for our National Guard – EVERY SINGLE UNIT NATIONWIDE could’ve been Federalized and activated, and swabbing nasal passages and mouths of every person in every town across America. Manpower for the 50 states’ National Guard – Army and Air Force – stands at approximately 444,600.

They could’ve shipped out millions of testing kits, and hundreds of thousands of laboratory analysis machines to hospitals and clinics nationwide.

Nope.

Didn’t even happen.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Red Cross in conjunction with the USDA could’ve been handing out staples of food rations – meat, eggs, flour, oil, cheese, milk, bread, vegetables, etc., just like the Red Cross has been doing in Australia – including daily well-being calls.

Nope.

‘Twas just a fleeting dream.

POTUS could’ve Federalized (mobilized/activated) the U.S. Public Health Service and the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and established a 50-State testing response, and contact tracing system.

Nope, didn’t happen.

“Anemic,” and “practically non-existent” is how I’d describe the FAILED Federal Response.

Numerous individuals have repeatedly asked the POTUS to invoke the National Emergency Powers Act, and he delayed response until March 13.

He was repeatedly begged to appropriate the Defense Production Act, and his response was

“The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping.
You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”

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Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari visits “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” at Fox Business Network Studios on October 11, 2019. Kashkari is calling for a return to mandated lockdowns in every state for up to six weeks in an effort to save both lives and the economy in response to COVID-19. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

The United States has now surpassed five million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 160,000 deaths from the virus as tens of millions of Americans file for unemployment, causing experts to debate how the nation should respond.

Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says the answer should be

Things Don’t Look Good For Alabama State Representative Will Dismukes

Be very wary of an attorney who says these type things about his client:

“Will is young and is learning some hard lessons. But he’s a very convicted man. He’s very convicted in his faith and he’s very convicted in his character. He’s very convicted in his heritage. And Will’s not a person who’s going to shy away from the tough questions to satisfy folks. And that upsets a lot of people. And I understand that. Especially in these times.

“But Will’s not going to admit to something he didn’t do. And he’s not going to step down from a position that he was elected to that he’s trying to do a good job at just because someone has pointed the finger and tried to make him out to be a bad guy. He’s a fighter. I’d be surprised if he resigns.”

Learning hard lessons…

Convicted – 4 times!…

Heritage – especially if you’re aligned with a White Supremacist group…

Resigns…

When your own attorney uses those words in response to the charges, you gotta’ KNOW that it prolly won’t go well.

So already, things don’t look good for Will Dismukes.

A since-deleted Facebook social media post by Will Dismukes, a White Republican member of the Alabama State House of Representatives, State House District 88, who was at the time, also a Baptist pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Prattville. Dismukes resigned after 3 days of outcry following discovery of this since-deleted social media post. “Fort Dixie” is the Selma, Alabama, home of Patricia Godwin, a woman with deep ties to the neo-Confederate cause and organized hate.

You should be concerned particularly, and especially if

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: Former Governor Rick Scott Watched Over Unemployment System Revamp

In a recent interview published Tuesday, 04 August 2020, with Jim DeFede Investigative Reporter for WFOR-TV ch4, Miami, FL’s CBS affiliate, Governor Ron DeSantis made some startling comments, the most notable of which was about the state’s Unemployment Compensation system.

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, succeeded Rick Scott, also a Republican

While acknowledging the state’s Unemployment Compensation system was previously aged 40 or 50 years, and therefore, by some means, inefficient, it was revamped in the last 5, or 6 years during the administration of then-Governor Rick Scott, also a Republican.

While he didn’t explicitly blame the former Governor, he left little room for speculation that Rick Scott had a hand in frustrating a system for claimants and claims upon the state’s UC system.

An earlier news item published 28 May 2020 by ABC News affiliate WFTS-TV ch28 in Tampa, identified that

Forget Will Dismukes; ALGOP Chair Terry Lathan Is Worse

“It is one thing to honor one’s Southern heritage; however, it is completely another issue to specifically commemorate the leader of an organization with an indisputable history of unconscionable actions and atrocities toward African-Americans.”

Alabama GOP Chair Terry Lathan (RIGHT, in red) with Donald Trump (LEFT)

– Alabama Republican Chairwoman Terry Lathan, official statement upon learning that Will Dismukes, a Republican member of the Alabama State House of Representatives, from the 88th State House District which includes Prattville, attended a party celebrating late KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest on the day of late U.S. Representative John Lewis’ memorial in Alabama

Terry Lathan is correct – “it is completely another issue to specifically commemorate the leader of an organization with an indisputable history of unconscionable actions and atrocities toward African-Americans.”

But…

Can you smell the hypocrisy cooking?

By officially celebrating as holidays the birthdays of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, the State of Alabama “specifically commemorates the leader[s] of an organization with an indisputable history of unconscionable acts and atrocities toward African-Americans.”

That Madam Chairman Lathan specifically ignores the proverbial “elephant in the room” of racism, strains at the gnat of Will Dismukes, and swallows the camel of state-sponsored endorsement of the institution of slavery is the entire point. Will Dismukes is a gnat on the derriere of the ALGOP. Lathan is its mouthpiece.

Slavery, racism, and discrimination are Alabama’s heritage – a genuine homemade Southern mess. It’s tough to erase history, so they don’t even try. Instead, they embrace it as a lost sheep, welcoming it back into the Confederate fold.

Officially acknowledging Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis is the ULTIMATE act of hypocrisy, and the demonstration of

Things Will Get Worse

With a little over 330 million people, America has about 4.3% of the world’s population.

And yet, with 26.1346% of the world’s cases, we’re the undisputed leader as the world’s repository for COVID-19.

And with 146,934 lives claimed so far, the United States has

An Easy Answer to “Cancel Culture,” to Right-Wing Extremists, and Others

The removal of statuary commemorating or honoring men (typically) who were complicit in slavery has been a question in the public dialogue for many weeks and months.

Some ask, “What about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?”

“What to do with all those statues?”

Both those men, notable for their role as founders of our nation, were slave owners.

The answer is a fairly easy one (or so I think), though it’s not one typically considered by the boogymen who raise the invented evil spectre of the so-called “cancel culture,” which is evidenced by their whipping up their non-thinking audience into a foaming-at-the-mouth froth.

A friend asked:

“Just that of something If the democrats want to get rid of all things slavery and racist, then should not the democrat party go away they start the KKK, Jim Crowe laws. What are your thoughts?” [sic]

Here’s my reply.

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You raise an interesting question, one which exemplifies the complexity of the matter.

I think it’s important to reiterate that statuary of subjects about which public opinion has changed, and which has been, or considering being removed, should either be

Congressional Apportionment & Illegal Aliens

Mo Brooks is Alabama’s 5th Congressional District Republican Representative.

Earlier yesterday, Alabama’s 5th Congressional District Representative Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks appeared on the NPR program On Point.

His appearance was in reference to a Federal lawsuit in which he, and the State of Alabama (through its Attorney General Steve Marshall), are plaintiffs, which raised a question about enumeration, and apportionment.¹

(Read the lawsuit here: State of AL & Mo Brooks v US Census Bureau)

Specifically, the state is concerned that they might lose a seat in reapportionment – along with the Federal dollars that accompany it – because of concern that other states might increase their apportionment of the 435 Members of the House of Representatives.

Now, if you think about it, that’s ironic, if not outright hypocritical, because Alabama is a significant recipient of government largess, aka “tax dollars” more so, than they send in. In other words, Alabama is a welfare recipient state. And welfare is something anathema to GOPers.

But it’s not as if Alabama hasn’t been shortchanged before. The “Alabama Paradox,” which interestingly – and, again ironically – is the inversely proportional phenomenon in which a state’s population increases, yet Congressional representation decreases, which was first discovered in 1880 by C. W. Seaton, Chief Clerk of the United States Census Bureau, who calculated apportionments for all House sizes between 275 and 350, and discovered that Alabama would get 8 seats with a House size of 299, but only 7 with a House size of 300. The same phenomenon was discovered to exist with new states admitted to the union (such as with Colorado in 1900), and generally refers to an apportionment scenario in which increasing the number of Representatives would decrease at least one state’s number of representatives in the House.

Mathematically, of course, it’s impossible to have a perfectly equal representation, which was proven in 1983 by two mathematicians, Michel Balinski and Peyton Young, who discovered that any method of apportionment which does not violate the quota rule – being that the number of seats to be allocated should be between the upper or lower roundings of its fractional proportional share – will result in paradoxes whenever there are three or more states. Earlier, in 1980, the Balinski–Young theorem proved that if an apportionment method satisfies the quota rule, it must fail to satisfy some apportionment paradox.

But, determining methods to apportion is getting much too complex, and practically misses the entire point, which is that the Constitution plainly states that ALL people should be counted, and Alabama is claiming that all people should NOT be counted, alleging that illegal aliens constitute an inordinate number of people in the nation.

Again, Alabama has been down that path before with their HB56 law written by Kris Kobach when he was Kansas Secretary of State, which sought to exclude people from legal rights (freedom of movement, etc.) and long-standing protections, based upon their immigration status, which was typically determined by looking at skin color, or surname, and little else. Federal courts have since struck down most of the law.

The wording in the recent Alabama & Mo Brooks v Census Bureau suit states that “plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the Residence Rule is unconstitutional because an apportionment of members of the House of Representatives and Electoral College votes among the states based on population figures which include illegal aliens would violate § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Article I, § 2’s requirement of an “actual Enumeration” of the population of the United States, and Article II, § 1 of the United States Constitution.”

The suit seeks remedy through a rather perverse – and un-Constitutional – means, making accusation that illegal aliens (aka undocumented immigrants, otherwise known as people who are here in violation of immigration law, such as Canadians, who illegally overstayed their visas, which research showed are far more abundant than Hispanics, or Mexicans, and in 2016-17 accounted for at least 93,000 – more than any other nation), and that such contravention is anathema to the purpose of the Census, which states that all people shall be counted, making no differentiation among citizens, and non-citizens… at least none that we now know of – except for the Indian thing (“excluding Indians not taxed”)… and the Three-Fifths Compromise and the 13th Amendment, which still allows slavery, albeit “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

Most recently, on July 21, 2020, the White House wrote a “Memorandum for the Secretary of Commerce” which was entitled “Memorandum on Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census,” and acknowledged in part that, “The Constitution does not specifically define which persons must be included in the apportionment base.” That’s interesting, because as they continue down the rabbit hole of their illogic, they conclude with the President having the final say in the Census by writing “The President, by law, makes the final determination regarding the “whole number of persons in each State,” which determines the number of Representatives to be apportioned to each State, and transmits these determinations and accompanying census data to the Congress (2 U.S.C. 2a(a)).”

However, the law which they quote 2 U.S.C. 2a(a) states in pertinent part, that “the President shall transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State…” not that the President shall make any changes, or additions.

Moreover, there’s likely little disagreement that

Mitch McConnell: Legislative Grim Reaper casts “a veto over Americans’ political speech.”

A billboard on I-65 in Horse Cave, KY. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)

Term Limits, anyone?

How about a functioning Congress, instead?

Specifically, I mean to refer to the GOP-majority-led Senate under Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Addison Mitchell McConnell has been in the Senate since 1984 – 36 years.

In his early years in the Senate, he was more pragmatic, but as the years wore on, he became increasingly intransigent, and in the last year (since April 2019) took great delight in calling himself “The Grim Reaper” of House-passed bills, meaning that he would refuse to allow any bills from the House to come to the floor of the Senate for debate.

And with over 400 bills from the House sitting on his desk, he has done precisely that.

Legislation dealing with

George F. Will: America is in trouble.

UPDATE 21 July 2020: In a July 20 interview with Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief for USA TODAY, George F. Will stated that he will be voting for the Democratic Party’s presumptive Presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, for President in the 2020 November General Election.

In the interview conducted virtually via Zoom, Ms. Page asked Mr. Will, “Who do you plan to vote for in November?”

Without hesitation, Mr. Will stated, “Biden.”

She quickly followed up with the question, “Have you voted for a Democrat before?”

Mr. Will replied, “Never. I’ve nothing against Democrats. But I’ve never had the opportunity to vote for one.”

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Rarely has Right Wing Conservative Columnist George F. Will ever agreed with any other political perspective.

However, this time, he has.

Though he has long written an OpEd column for the revered “Gray Lady,” aka The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and others, the magazine with which he may best remain known, National Review, has never had soft feelings for “The Donald” as a political candidate.

And in fact, from 1972-78, Will served as an Editor for National Review, right alongside its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr. – himself no shrinking violet to conservatism, and outspoken critic of progressivism (although, some liberals considered his positions almost identical to theirs, and enjoyed debate with him for that reason).

In January 2016, National Review wrote of then-GOP candidate-among-many Trump that, “Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”

And though Trump flies his flag under the GOP’s banner, the “Party of Lincoln” would just as soon not have him. That much is plainly evident.

I have previously written that his relationship to the GOP is much like a line in a Bob Seger song:

“I used her, she used me. But neither one cared.”

Those in the GOP with a conscience, and the ones with a spine have spoken out against him, and his malignant ways.

On numerous occasions, David Duke has plainly said that Trump is “by far the best candidate,” that he “is really treason to your heritage,” and that “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years.”

For White Supremacists, “heritage” is “dog whistle” language meaning White Supremacy.

And though Trump’s caustically racist remarks are every bit as inflammatory as David Duke’s – a high-ranking Ku Klux Klansman whose brief political career as a GOP Representative in Louisiana’s State House ran from 1989-92 – the Republican Party merely tolerates him.

But back to the point – George F. Will’s agreement.

In his most recent column in The Washington Post, Mr. Will found not only significant areas of agreement with those whom decry Trump, within and without the Republican Party, but forewarned of worse things to come because of his Presidency.

Writing that “The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime,” Mr. Will took direct aim at Trump’s commutation of long-time GOP political operative Roger Stone’s Federal conviction of 7 felony charges, which included witness tampering, lying under oath to investigators, and obstructing a Congressional investigation – which carried combined sentences of 40 years. Stone was significantly influential in Trump’s campaign, as he has been in every election since Nixon.

Citing also numerous incidents of incompetence and voter suppression efforts in primarily GOP-dominated States, along with self-evident malfeasance in the Federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Will concluded simply,

“This is what national decline looks like.”

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The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come.

by George F. Will
July 14, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-what-national-decline-looks-like/2020/07/14/ef499fd4-c5f0-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html

Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang. The entertainer has become a bore, and foretelling his defeat no longer involves peering into a distant future: Early voting begins in two states (South Dakota and Minnesota) 61 days from Sunday, which is 107 days before Election Day.

Never has a U.S. election come at such a moment of national mortification. In April 1970, President Richard M. Nixon told a national television audience that futility in Vietnam would make the United States appear to the world as “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Half a century later, America, for the first time in its history, is pitied.Not even during the Civil War, when the country was blood-soaked by a conflict involving enormous issues, was it viewed with disdainful condescension as it now is, and not without reason: Last Sunday, Germany (population 80.2 million) had 159 new cases of covid-19; Florida (population 21.5 million) had 15,300.Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying. Because pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel.“Longing on a large scale is what makes history,” wrote Don DeLillo in his sprawling 1997 novel “Underworld” about America in the second half of the 20th century. Today, there is a vast longing for respite from the 21st century, which — before the pandemic, two inconclusive wars and the Great Recession — began with a presidential election that turned on 537 Florida votes and was not decided until a Dec. 12, 2000, Supreme Court decision. Given Trump’s reckless lying and the supine nature of most Republican officeholders, it is imperative that the Nov. 3 result be obvious that evening.This year, the pandemic will be an accelerant of preexisting trends: There will be a surge of early and mail voting. So, an unambiguous decision by midnight Eastern time Nov. 3 will require (in addition to state requirements that mailed ballots be postmarked, say, no later than Oct. 31) a popular-vote tsunami so large against the president that there will be a continentwide guffaw when he makes charges, as surely he will, akin to those he made in 2016. Then, he said he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million because “millions” of undocumented immigrants voted against him. Making a preemptive strike against civic confidence, Trump has announced that the 2020 election will be the “most corrupt” in U.S. history.The 2020 presidential selection process began with Iowa’s shambolic Democratic caucuses, a result not of corruption but incompetence, an abundant commodity nowadays. It is scandalous that in many places casting a ballot requires hours of standing in line. Larry Diamond of the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford discerns another scandal:“The hard truth is that there has been a rising tide of voter suppression in recent U.S. elections. These actions — such as overeager purging of electoral registers and reducing early voting — have the appearance of enforcing abstract principles of electoral integrity but the clear effect (and apparent intent) of disproportionately disenfranchising racial minorities. One example was the decision of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (now Governor) Brian Kemp to suspend 53,000 predominantly African-American voter registration applications in 2018 because the names did not produce an ‘exact match’ with other records.”This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.

Giving Honor To Whom Honor Is Not Due

Where are statues to Adolph Hitler Hermann Göring, Josef Mengele, or the Third Reich ?

There are over 1,747 public symbols to honor the Confederacy.

Statues, monuments, schools, buildings, parks, courthouse & government office grounds, counties/municipalities, roads, holidays, flags, scholarships, songs, and other things have all been named to dignify, commemorate, and honor traitorous loser Confederates.

It’s past time for the South – and the rest of the nation – to bury the myth of the Lost Cause once and for all.¹ ² ³ ⁴

In order to more fully understand the artwork, it must be placed in a proper context to be better interpreted. Further, it provides opportunity for preservation and care.

We see that in the many National Parks and on-site museums at Civil War battlefield sites. So placing such statuary in a museum, or other area -and- given a much more full explanation of the artist, the era, and the events commemorated, we can more fully understand the thing which is being interpreted. Andrew Jackson’s homeplace “The Hermitage” is such an example, and I have visited the site which is a park, museum, and interpretive center, along with other Civil War battlefield sites which also have museums and interpretive centers.

To simply place a thing in the public square with a plaque is a disservice to the art, and the artist, and to those who would interpret it – the viewers.

“Confederate markers do not provide a comprehensive look at the Civil War but rather focus narrowly on the Confederate war effort. In 2008, the Georgia Historical Society conducted a review of the more than 900 Civil War markers in the state. It found that “over 90 percent of the existing markers dealt strictly with military topics, leaving vast segments of the Civil War story untold — with almost no markers describing the war’s impact on civilians, politics, industry, the home front, African Americans, or women.””

Cold Harbor, Va. African Americans collecting bones of soldiers killed in the battle. Photographed by John Reekie, April 1865. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018666599/ Title: [Cold Harbor, Va. African Americans collecting bones of soldiers killed in the battle] Creator(s): Reekie, John, photographer Date Created/Published: 1865 April. Medium: 1 negative : glass, wet collodion. Summary: Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, Grant’s Wilderness Campaign, May-June 1864. Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-cwpb-04324 (digital file from original neg.) LC-B8171-7926 (b&w film neg.) Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. For information, see “Civil war photographs, 1861-1865,”(http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/120_cwar.html) Call Number: LC-B817- 7926 [P&P] LOT 4167-B (corresponding photographic print) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

The term Lost Cause first appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the historian Edward A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. However, it was the articles written for the Southern Historical Society by Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early in the 1870s that established the Lost Cause as a long-lasting literary and cultural phenomenon.

Early’s original inspiration for his views may have come from General Robert E. Lee.  In his farewell order to the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee spoke of the “overwhelming resources and numbers” that the Confederate army fought against.

The Lost Cause theme was taken up by memorial associations such as the United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Lost Cause helped Southerners to cope with the social, political, and economic changes after the Civil War especially in the oppressive Reconstruction era.

Some of the main tenets of the Lost Cause movement were that:

• Confederate generals such as Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson represented the virtues of Southern nobility. This nobility was contrast most significantly in comparisons between U.S. Grant and Lee. The Northern generals, were characterized as men with low moral standards who engaged in vicious campaigns against Southern civilians such as Sherman’s March to the Sea and Philip Sheridan’s burning of the Shenandoah Valley in the Valley Campaigns of 1864.
• Losses on the battlefield were

COVID-19 Lawsuits In Waiting

In civil society, one CANNOT do whatever the hell they feel like doing, just because.

Why?

Just because someone might get hurt by those actions.

That’s why.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-students-travel-bring-back-covid-19-ohio-west-virginia/

So, the obvious questions is…

When do the lawsuits begin, eh?

Seriously.

Again, I am VERY SERIOUS about that matter.

One’s personal irresponsibility causing harm to another is the VERY BASIS of personal injury law.

“Students who recently traveled to

NASCAR Noose ~IS~ Quintessential Alabama

Alabamians, with their bigoted history of racism and hatred by and through the KKK, take the noose so much for granted that the terror symbol is used even as a garage door pull.

UPDATE, Tuesday, 23 June 2020, 1923 CDT:
Joint Statement from U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp, Jr. Regarding the Noose Found in NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace’s Garage at Talladega Superspeedway
United States Attorney’s Office – Northern District of AL
Department of Justice

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/joint-statement-us-attorney-jay-e-town-and-fbi-special-agent-charge-johnnie-sharp-jr

“The FBI learned that garage number 4, where the noose was found, was assigned to Bubba Wallace last week. The investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the noose found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019. Although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”

A Confederate flag is flown from a small personal aircraft over Talladega Superspeedway racetrack in Alabama recently (formerly the “Alabama International Motor Speedway”) following news that the private firm would forbid display of the racist White Supremacist symbol anywhere on their property.

Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., wearing an “I CAN’T BREATHE” Black Lives Matter tee-shirt

Just in the case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few days, weeks, or even months due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19, there’s no need to fear. Simply head on out to your local _(insert store type of choice here)_ store for a lovely coronafest.

Best part?

Masks not included… nor are they required!

However, pointy hooded white robes ARE required in Alabama.

It seems that NASCAR driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. – driver of the legendary No. 43, which was Richard Petty’s car for 1125 of 2000 starts from 1959-1992 – found a noose hanging in the car’s garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway yesterday (Sunday, June 21, 2020).

An American Civil War era miniature Stars and Bars Confederate battle flag is seen next to a Black Lawn Jockey statue during the 1998 NASCAR Winston Cup Series Die Hard 500 on 26 April 1998 at the Talladega Superspeedway, Talladega, Alabama, United States. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Allsport/Getty Images)

Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. – a Black man, and genuine rarity in motorsports, especially “stock car racing” – debuted in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2017 at Pocono, substituting for the injured Aric Almirola, an American of Cuban descent, and made a total of four starts.

The next year, Richard Petty Motorsports – owner of the legendary Number 43 racecar – named “Bubba” Wallace as the car’s full-time driver in the NASCAR Cup Series.

The Talladega 500, affectionately known as ‘dega to many, is the motorsport’s series fastest track, which until the mandatory installation of restrictor plates, supported speeds of well over 200mph on the “tri-oval” racecourse.

Naturally, everyone’s in a tizzy over the noose, and the Trump administration’s  “disgraceful” FBI henchmen (or punching bag, take your pick), are allegedly “investigating,” whatever ~that~ is supposed to mean.

But poor Bubba.

He was born to Black woman.

His daddy is White.

And, the 26-year-old was born in Mobile, Alabama, but grew up in Concord, North Carolina.

So he knows ALL about it.

And so should his parents.

And as far as Alabama is concerned, Black Lives DON’T Matter… regardless of what is plastered on the side of a race car, and regardless of who drives it.

As evidence of Alabama’s long-term and ongoing support of racism – even to this day – consider the following:

This plaque is located on the landing steps of the Alabama State Capitol building in Montgomery, AL; the inscription reads: Placed by SOPHIE BIBB CHAPTER Daughters of the Confederacy on the spot where JEFFERSON DAVIS stood when inaugurated president of C.S.A., Feb. 18, 1861

• Montgomery was the first Capitol of the Confederacy in 1861. There’s even a star commemorating the spot where Confederate President Jefferson Davis

Celebrating Freedom On Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Major General Gordon Granger, along with his command, arrived in Galveston, in the then-District of Texas, he issued General Orders No. 3, and that day read aloud the following:

“The people of Texas are informed that,
in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States,
all slaves are free.
This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves,
and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.
They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

This past Friday, 19 June 2020, marked the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, a holiday celebrated in 46 states, and the District of Columbia, commemorating the abolition of slavery which occurs annually on June 19.

The date actually refers not to the end of legal slavery in the United States, but to the gap in time after the Emancipation Proclamation, and refers to the date the U.S. Army’s Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, in the then-District of Texas and made an official proclamation of the news that Lincoln had freed slaves in the 10 secessionist rebel Confederate states through the Emancipation Proclamation (EP).

The EP was not applicable to the four border slave states that were not in rebellion – Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri.

To be certain, as a societal evil, slavery was and remains despicably abhorrent, and had long been practiced by humanity throughout history. Efforts to eradicate slavery in the United States were fraught with legal difficulties, most which seriously complicated matters, and placed the status of the newly emerging and growing nation known as the United States in perilous jeopardy.

A statue depicts a man holding the state law that made Juneteenth a state holiday is shown Wednesday, June 17, 2020, in Galveston, Texas. The inscription on the statue reads “On June 19, 1865, at the close of the Civil War, U.S. Army General Gordon Granger issued an order in Galveston stating that the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was in effect. That event, later known as “Juneteenth,” marked the end of slavery in Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

An interesting feature, is the date and timing of General Orders No. 3, which reinforced, and supported the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Emancipation Proclamation – also known as “Proclamation 95” – was initially issued by

Why Are Southern States So Messed Up?

The scars of slavery are apparent, and are in this nation everywhere one looks.

Most are plainly evident, some not so much.

It’s like that with mental illness.

It’s not clearly visible from the outside, and that’s because of where the damage has occurred… on the inside – of the brain.

It’s a way of thinking which sets apart mental illness from mental health.

Eventually, of course, the illness is reflected in the behavior, and that includes speech, which is an activity.

Such scars are evident ESPECIALLY and particularly in the South, where Slavery once occurred, and where states seceded from the Union in order to preserve the status quo, rather than change.

The damage is reflected in whom the majority White population votes for, and elects, to rule over them.

Again, it’s NOT plainly visible, but clearly, something IS drastically wrong, and it’s evidenced by poor policy, and bad laws.

Following are excerpts of dialogue with friends about the matter.

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To Friend:

“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

–– U.S. Idiot in Chief Donald J. Trump to Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, June 17, 2020

FRIEND: We need to do a study to try and determine why