I have a huge question. Israel and Hamas just made a deal to release hostages for prisoners. Why are the 150 prisoners Israel will be releasing, women and children? Has Israel been holding women and child noncombatants in prisons?

I am not talking about dangerous prisoners like the 5000 Taliban members the Trump Administration negotiated to release more than a year before the Biden Administration pulled US forces out of Afghanistan. The Taliban had more than a year to reclaim the country before the US left. In that period, the Taliban closed off escape routes for women and Afghan citizens who supported the Afghan Government and US military forces during the 20 years of military involvement. They didn’t even allow the Afghan government to sit in on those negotiations.

This allowed the Taliban to control the country before storming into Kabul in August of 2021. People called the Biden Administration’s handling of the pull out messy, but no one reports on the role the Trump Administration played in helping the Taliban reestablish its hold on Afghanistan. 13 US military personnel lost their lives during that chaotic withdrawal, when suicide bombers, members of ISIS, attacked just outside the airport. They also killed over 170 Afghan citizens, injuring hundreds of others.

Returning to my original question, why are the 150 prisoners Israel is exchanging for some of the non military hostages captured on the November 7th Hamas attack, women and children? I am not the only one asking this question. Many of the Jewish protestors all over the world, objecting to the Israeli war strategy in Gaza, are asking this question also.

The current Israeli governing coalition has turned to the extreme right. Many of these leaders have not been shy about calling for the annihilation of Hamas, at the expense and extreme suffering of the Palestinian citizens trapped in Gaza. Current reporting suggests that over 14,000 Palestinian non-combatants have been killed, including women and over 3000 children.

Let me be clear, the citizens of Gaza are as much victims of Hamas as they are victims of the Israeli Defense Forces. Hamas committed horrendous crimes against Israeli citizens on November 7th. They knew that by committing those acts, they were inviting the IDF to commit near genocidal acts in Gaza in retaliation. The noncombatants in Gaza are powerless to act against either group of armed forces.

Now Palestinians in the US are mad at Biden because he expressed unwavering support for Israel after the November 7th attack. Actually, the US Government has always made that claim. Every Democratic President since Bill Clinton has said that publicly, while working behind the scenes on a two state solution. Palestine could have had its own state when PLO Chairman Arafat and Israeli PM Barak negotiated at Camp David in 2000. But Arab extremists reminded Arafat of what happened to Anwar Sadat after he signed a peace agreement with Israel at Camp David in 1978 when Jimmy Carter was President.

Barak Obama used his position to try to reign in Israel and its expansion of settlements into Palestinian territories. Netanyahu turned to the Republicans resisting Obama at every turn for support. He even came to the US to speak before Congress without giving Obama the respect due an American President. Let’s remember who was Vice President at that time.

Obama made a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear development program. Netanyahu was against the deal. That deal would have set Iran’s nuclear weapons program idle for decades. When Trump became President he killed the deal. Today, Iran is on the verge of creating nuclear grade plutonium and weapons in less than a year. As an added benefit to Netanyahu’s mischief, Iran is suspected of financing and training the Hamas insurgents who executed the November 7th attacks.

We don’t hear any of this from Palestinians complaining about Biden. We don’t hear them condemning Hamas for the carnage the people in Gaza have now endured. Biden isn’t responsible for the women and children noncombatants deaths there. Hamas is responsible. Hamas wages war from among the citizenry. Hamas uses them as shields knowing that racist right wing zealots govern Israel.

If Trump wins instead of Biden, Palestinians will be expelled from the country. There will be a Muslim Ban enacted. Trump has already told his followers that these are his plans. So while Biden works behind the scene to find more moderate Israelis he can work with to agree to a Palestinian state, Palestinians in this country who can vote are talking about not voting for him and giving Trump a greater probability of winning and ultimately deporting them.

Moving beyond the issues in Israel, there are many in the Democratic Party who have swallowed the MAGA bait and bought into worrying about Biden’s age. Democrats are talking that we need new blood. One Democrat has decided to challenge Biden in the primaries. He has chosen former Republican campaign manager for John McCain to run his challenge to Biden. You know, Steve Schmidt, the guy who got McCain to choose Sarah Palin as his VP candidate.

I hear influential Blacks complain about Biden, but no one has named a single viable person who is ready to win the Democratic nomination in 2024 and then beat Trump in a general election. You can’t listen to the polling and think those numbers are real. Biden wasn’t even taken seriously as the Democratic nominee until February of 2020 when he won the South Carolina Primary. Everyone who was pushed as the next choice flamed out by Super Tuesday in early March of 2020.

Democrats talk about his age, but name someone younger who is as policy savvy and gets the nuances of policy as well as Biden? Name someone who grasps the position and responsibility of being President without it being a naked authoritarian power grab. Biden jacked Republicans up on their efforts to cut Medicare and Social Security during the State of the Union Address standing at the podium on the fly. He negotiated a debt ceiling increase, maintained current spending levels, and moved the next debt ceiling increase to 2025, after the election.

Republicans call him senile and corrupt but Trump has his 2024 calendar full of criminal and civil trials. Biden stutters, Trump gives you incoherent whiny word salad. You folks had better wake up and understand what’s at stake.

You folks have allowed the media and social media propaganda to tell you what and how to think. These streams of information are controlled by monied interests and White Christian Nationalists. You think they are interested in your real concerns? They aren’t. They give you bogus religious and social issues to distract you into adopting their interests and neglect your own.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/israel-hamas-war-hostages-freed-deal-ceasefire

I have refrained from posting at this time because we’re in a period where critical thinking is at a loss. I read all these opinion pieces and polls about Biden being ‘too old’. News entities are telling us that voters don’t have much faith in the ability of the Biden administration to win them over in 2024.

Think about this point. The mainstream news media, which is controlled by the wealth class in this capitalistic society, is telling us that we need new blood in the Democratic Party. But they work to make the half-sane, often non-lucid, ego-maniac multi-indicted Donald Trump, acceptable for re-election, though he is only 3 years younger than Biden.

Biden has had a highly successful Presidency while Trump, by any objective measure, was a failure. The media tells us Democrats need to bring in new blood, while Republicans are expanding on the Reagan troupe of bringing in the conservative religious right to use culture wars to distract us from the reality of failed conservative religious-based political policies and politicians like the White Nationalists MTG, and the new House Speaker ‘If You What to Know Me, Read the Bible’ Mike Johnson.

New blood on the Democratic side, waiting in the wings are the likes of Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jefferies, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom, California Congressman Ro Kahnna, and there are many more waiting to receive the baton after the 2024 election. Let’s face it, Bernie failed, Elizabeth Warren failed, because they also dwell in the age grouping of Biden and Trump.

Here is a realization about the ‘Biden is too old narrative’. It sounds as if it is being used against Biden. Only Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a brown-skinned woman, has the pedigree to speak plainly about the real target of the comment. The threat to Republicans is Kamala Harris. The real target of the Biden is too old line of attack is VP Harris.

The real target is a political and religious victim of misogyny and racism should she run for President in 2028. Who is telling us that Kamala is deeply unpopular? Primarily, religious white males. But there will be plenty of women, Black, White, Latino, and Asian, along with Black males who profess a deep faith in their Christianity, who will also express staunch offensive reactionary but baseless dislike for VP Harris.

I find it intriguing that Nikki Haley, a woman of East Indian descent, who has spoken out against both her political opponents of Indian ancestry in disparaging ways, ignores the total disqualifying conduct and policies of DJT and Ron DeSantis. She has clearly made herself a useful idiot of the racist White Nationalist crowd, by claiming she is a Republican. But that party has no intention of making her or any other Brown-skinned candidate, much less a child of immigrants, their Presidential standard bearer.

VP Harris, is an important partner for Biden. He works with her in many ways the same way Obama worked with him as VP. But VPs do not get out in front of their Presidents in most cases. I will concede that Biden did force Obama’s hand on ‘Marriage Equality’. That turned out to be a positive development. That move proved important to inspiring the engagement and turnout of younger voters in recent election cycles.

Let’s look at the mainstream media’s obsession with polling and personality perceptions. They tell us that Biden is too old, But ask yourself, between Biden and DJT which one looks overweight and out of shape? Which one rambles and can not put a coherent sentence together? Which one sounds like a whiny yapping Chihuahua? Which one accepts the consequences of his actions while the other blames everyone else if his actions elicit consequences, like 4 indictments and 91 criminal charges?

At this point in 2019, going into the 2020 election, no one imagined that Joe Biden could be elected to office. He certainly wasn’t polling well. He was in his basement trying to avoid contracting Covid-19. At this point in 2021, polls were predicting a ‘Red Wave’ where MAGA Republicans were going to win everything by huge margins.

None of those things happened. This whole narrative about people wanting someone different as the Democratic nominee is foolish. Name the person you feel is ready right this moment to assume the mantle of being a stable pragmatic leader. Who is it? You think Marianne Williamson is that person? How about Cornel West? What about Joe Manchin, the guy who voted with Republicans against the Child Tax, which lifted millions of families with children out of poverty. He is also the guy, along with Kirsten Sinema, who would not vote to eliminate the Senate Filibuster to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights act. This would have fixed the gerrymandering problem for federal elections in ‘Red States’.

Trump and White Christian Nationalists, are now telling us, that if he is elected again, they will strip the US Government of any semblance of Democracy. They will work to make the Constitution worthless (I get that many people will say that it already is worthless). These folks will be out to enact a certain level of authoritarian oligarchy where only the Corporate elite, the Fundamentalist Christian Church, and Trump will make the rules.

Let me make one last point. I told several friends of mine in 2019, who were embracing Steve Schmidt because MSNBC hired him as an analyst, to beware. This is the guy who convinced John McCain to make Sarah Palin his VP choice in 2008. If we never had Palin, we would have never had Trump. Now Schmidt is managing the campaign of the Democrat from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, who is challenging Biden for the nomination. I am less concerned about Phillips than I am about his choice to make Schmidt, with his demonstrated bad political judgement, his campaign manager.

Be on the skeptical side of the ‘No Labels’ Party. Though they may have a few Black faces out front, they are funded by Republican dark money donors. That cannot be a good thing. There is so much at stake going into these next elections. Democrats need to win The White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. They need to be able to build a firewall for democracy for the next generations.

Don’t buy into the media’s need to sell advertising. Study the real issues and vote for the quality of equality your kids and grandkids will have in the future. Understand that Christianity, as White Christian Nationalists view it will not accept power sharing with minorities

There has been so much going on. I had to step back and try to see beyond the trees or the components of the mosaic to see the forest or the actual image that exists. The old axiom “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is what screams out at me. When all is said and done, capitalism is basically designed to benefit racist White Christian Males.

This is the foundation of religious policies and concepts that European explorers brought to the ‘New World’ and the colonization of all other cultures: Misogyny, economic, gender, racial, and educational inequality are at it’s foundation and in the radical right-wing ideologies that are promoted every day. What is sad is that many members of the affected marginalized groups are being duped into embracing fascists policies. They buy into various Abrahamic religious doctrine. Some are involved in the military, or are politically apathetic, or socially disaffected.

The European Christian church approved of the genocide, subjugation, theft of land, and dehumanization of any peoples who did not share their beliefs, language, or complexions. This is also true of Judaism and Islam. They all had no problem using their faith beliefs to go to war, commit murder, theft, rape, and project inequality onto the citizenry with the approval of their idea of god.

It is of no surprise in 2023 that the basic tenets of authoritarianism, racism, and dehumanizing inequality are still being transmitted from conception through religion. The whole push against abortion, is coupled with the notion of religious and family values. Income inequality, anti-LGBTQ bias, anti-history, anti-health care, poor food sourcing, are all part of the original White Nationalists concept that god always intended that non-European Whites were to slavishly serve the power structure they set up. Chosen members of all the minority groups were allowed a degree of status to serve as useful idiots, useful tools to help maintain the White racist dominance over culture.

This is clearly demonstrated in the attached videos which highlight efforts of Evangelical religious doctrine all over the world. ‘GOP Conservatives’ in local, state, and federal government entities here in the US to get disaffected minorities to support economic and social policies that work against their interests by mistakenly adopting policies supported by their religious views. Republicans in the U.S. Congress and the Senate seek to reduce and/or eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other social services benefits provided by the government. Under the blatant lie that Democracy was founded strictly in Christian terms. (Christian White Nationalists terms!)

The videos below speak to the general points as to how effective the embrace of evangelical interpretations of the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity has been holding the line. I encourage you to view the attached videos objectively with understanding that mere survival is existentially under threat.

We often hear the media inform us of what the polls have to say about the upcoming 2024 election. They report the numbers breathlessly. They ignore the notion that the polls have been largely wrong for decades.

They report Trump saying that he leads Biden in the polls by a lot without challenging the statement. How do you let a guy who told over 30,000 documented lies during his four years in office say anything as if it is credible?

While the twice impeached and four-time indicted candidate may win the Republican nomination walking away, the media does not consistently report that his general election chances are already questionable. Here is an excerpt taken from an article on the 538 blog published Aug. 16, 2023….

“Trump’s Indictments Might Be Hurting Him — Just Not In The Primary Polls By G. Elliott Morris

The fallout for Trump may get worse in the general election

Trump’s indictments for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, meanwhile, could have additional political costs, particularly if he wins the Republican nomination. GOP primary voters might not care about allegations of interference, but general election voters are another story: Two studies of election results in the 2022 midterms found that the Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives who received endorsements from Trump or voiced support for his election denialism performed worse than Republican House candidates who did not. In a CBS/YouGov poll conducted Aug. 2-4,  a majority of adults said the indictments against Trump were “upholding the rule of law” (57 percent) and an effort to “defend democracy” (52 percent), although more than half also said the indictments and investigations were trying to stop the Trump campaign (59 percent).

And of course, these are just the indictments. Potential fallout from the trials for each series of charges (which could start as soon as January) could be even more significant. Not only will the public see an actual prosecution, Trump will also be forced to divert focus from running for president to appear in court — which could distract from his campaign. In what will be a messy next 12 months for Trump, the costs of his behavior may become clearer.”

The mainstream or legacy media, now owned by big money interests, also reports to us that if Republicans walked away from Trump any other GOP candidate could beat an unpopular Joe Biden. What they don’t tell you are these three things:

1. Biden is more popular right now as President than Trump ever was. Most Presidents at this point in their terms garner less than 50% favorability.
2. If Trump were not the GOP nominee for 2024, MAGA voters would stay home. That means the GOP would loss 20% to 35% of their support across the country. That would impact down ballot elections and control of both houses of Congress and possibly state level legislatures and Governorships.
3. Independent voters, who are not crazy about Biden, won’t vote for Trump in 2024. They may also be skeptical of a third party at this time, that has the potential to earn Trump a 2nd term.

The only issue that really needs to be addressed is overcoming voter suppression efforts in swing states. So extra efforts need to be taken in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Democrats need to compete in all 50 states, but the four I listed need extra attention. There has to be grassroots voter turnout on the ground that overwhelm the laws put in place to discourage voters.

Democrats will have to be aggressive about flipping a couple of seats to replace the Senate seat Joe Manchin now holds in West Virginia, because he is going to lose it. It’s not as if he was a reliable vote anyway. Democrats have to also take the seat Kyrsten Sinema holds in Arizona. She too was not a reliable vote. Both sought personal gain by accepting campaign contributions to stymie progressive Democratic reforms for healthcare, taxing the wealthy, minimum wage, prescription drugs, fossil fuel subsidies, and most important, voting rights reforms.

These are not things the media will promote. One other issue I need to mention. Black males in the 18-35 range have increased their voting percentage for Trump in the last two two Presidential election cycles. Its a trend rooted in ‘Toxic Masculinity’, anti-LGBTQ beliefs, and Christian religious influence.

While this trend towards Trump’s Authoritarianism, has grown to about 7%, when coupled with the lower voter turnout within that demographic, it can weigh heavily in some states.

The key point is that if your only source of political analysis is the legacy news, cable news, or social media, you’re not getting reliable information. Actually, you’re getting false equivalency discussions or outright disinformation. I do access Roland Martin and the Meidas Touch Network for their more reality based biases. The last place I would turn to is any news source rooted in religious doctrine. Those sources are usually misogynistic, homophobic, and subtly racist at best.

Below I have included other information and sources to support my comments. I sourced PBS, Vox, 270 to Win, and USA Today for this posting.

“About half of Americans — 49 percent — said they approve of how Biden has served as president so far, less than two months into his presidency, according to the latest poll. But as was the case with his predecessor, whose last year in office was marred by the pandemic, much of that support comes from people who identify as members of his own party. Among Democrats, Biden’s approval rating was 87 percent. But only 11 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of independents said they approved of the president.

Another 42 percent of Americans disapprove of what Biden has done so far as president, including 81 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of independents.

Still, Biden currently has a higher job approval rating than former President Donald Trump ever reached during his four years in the White House, according to Marist polling data. And support for Biden seems to be growing. In this latest poll, 52 percent of Americans said they had a favorable impression of him. That’s up from 41 percent in October 2019 in the midst of Trump’s first impeachment. Since then, Biden has inched up in favorability.

The White House is overall better esteemed than Capitol Hill at present, with 41 percent of Americans saying they approve of the job Democrats are doing in Congress, and just 28 percent saying they approve of the job Republicans are doing. The approval rating for Democrats is up significantly from 34 percent in January 2019, after the last Congress had just been sworn in, but 51 percent of Americans still disapprove of what Democrats are doing, including 16 percent of Democratic voters and 86 percent of Republicans.

Republicans in Congress face steeper job disapproval, with 64 percent of Americans saying they do not like what they are seeing, an increase of 6 percentage points over January 2019, including 38 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats.

Independents also largely disapproved of lawmakers from both parties, with 56 percent disapproving of Democrats in Congress and 63 percent disapproving of Republicans.”

https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21537966/trump-black-voters-exit-polls

“Pew Research Center study on the 2016 election’s demographic breakdowns of verified voters was published not months after that contest, but in August 2018. AP and Edison pollsters are still adjusting the weighting on their data to ensure it’s as accurate as possible, but here’s what we know right now:

• Black voters made up about 11 or 12 percent of the electorate, according to the AP and Edison, respectively.
• The AP found that 90 percent of Black voters went to Biden and 8 percent to Trump.
• Edison Research determined that 87 percent of Black voters voted for Biden and 12 percent for Trump.
• Both found Black men were more likely than Black women to support Trump. In the AP’s case, 12 percent of Black men voters backed Trump, compared to 6 percent of Black women; in Edison’s case, 18 percent of Black men voters cast ballots for Trump, while 8 percent of Black women did the same.

The election is still very close, and his gains with Black voters may not be enough to win Trump the presidency, but it is certainly enough to make Democrats wonder about their strategy with Black voters — particularly Black men.

About 87% of Black voters nationwide chose Biden over Trump, according to preliminary national exit polling. Those early exit polls show that 19% of Black men voted for Trump, as did 9% of Black women.

An Associated Press VoteCast survey showed overall larger Black support for Biden — 90%. According to the AP survey, 12% of Black men voted for Trump, while only 6% of Black women supported him. 

Among all voters, Biden won Detroit, capturing 94% of the vote while Trump received only 5%. In Philadelphia, Biden grabbed 81% compared to 18% for Trump. Philly’s diverse surrounding suburbs also outperformed for Biden. Atlanta residents backed Biden over Trump 73% to 26%.

At least one preliminary snapshot shows that Trump made slight inroads with Black voters, compared with 2016 results. And while final numbers may show a negligible Trump bump this year among African American voters, exit polls are notoriously inaccurate, especially when the final vote count hasn’t been weighted.

Trump’s lack of leadership and incompetence allowed the deadly coronavirus to run rampant, disproportionately affecting Black people. Trump has attacked Black athletes, Black journalists and Black female members of Congress. He has called African countries “s—holes.” He has aligned himself with white nationalists, called Black Lives Matter a symbol of hate, and answered cries for freedom during racial justice protests this summer with a “law and order” rhetoric. 

In April, when cornonavirus-induced unemployment numbers peaked nationally at 14.7% — the highest rate since the Great Depression — unemployment levels for Black people soared to 16.7%. 

In September, 12.1% of Black Americans were out of work, compared with 7% of whites.

Under Trump, Black folks have lost a lot.”

.

If your only source of political information is the mainstream media, you are being exposed to major gaslighting about the upcoming elections. Honestly, you have been for years. We have been subjected to the notion that there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans. The false equivalency theme pushed in the media owned by oligarchic monied interests has middle-class Americans voting on (this includes failing to make the effort to show up to vote against these policies) and acting against their own self-interests since before the Civil War. That dynamic is still a powerful force behind current-day politics.

Another powerful under current to this reality is the hold tax-exempt religious groups play in our politics. The hold that Christianity and Judaism have on our politics is devastating. These religions remain foundational to racist White Nationalism as it helps keep Black and Brown people in line to accept and be complicit with policies that are anti-diversity, anti-woman, anti-equality on social and economic levels. They use their doctrine to force minority groups to accept abusive policing and economically repressive justice systems in their communities.

Currently, the media and Republicans in Congress regularly promote the notion of a two-tier justice system weaponized and directed at Donald Trump. It is clear that he has benefitted from being a White male of the wealth class to elude accountability for a life of white-collar criminality. During the same period, hundreds of thousands of Black, Brown, and lower-income people have suffered quick and sometimes fatal consequences from law enforcement officers who are rarely held to account for the abuse and misuse of their authorities.

Sadly the most powerful gaslighting comes in the form of candidate and policy disinformation during election cycles. The 2024 Presidential election cycle has begun. The mainstream media demonstrates daily that it is not equipped or unwilling to highlight and fact-check disinformation.

Trump realized that he has severe legal exposure so he announced in December 2022 that he is a candidate for President. This move was preemptive on two fronts, first to deter serious Republican competition, and second to use the candidacy as a means to thwart prosecution, at least a trial before the election. He is afraid that if he is convicted he will not win the general election and not have the ability to pardon himself.

The other major bit of gaslighting by the media, Republicans, and some Democrats, is the issue of Joe Biden’s age. This false flag issue permeates the Presidential discussion, without regard to Biden’s legislative wins, the success of his economic policies, the success of the COVID-19 plans his Administration implemented, the plan to address the supply-chain shortages, his policies to curb the rise of gas prices for American motorists, and his efforts to make diversity a focal point in his administration.

Republicans make fun of his speech, but most informed people know Biden stuttered in his youth and still struggles with it from time to time. Many people, including the media, seem to have no problem with the word-salad nonsensical things Trump and most MAGA non-intellectuals utter daily. Biden works more hours per day than Trump did as President. Trump needs two hands to drink a glass of water. Trump needed an escort to walk down a ramp. Biden tripped over a sandbag that was onstage at a graduation. Biden is formidable with his grasp of details. I had a strong grasp of intricate and nuanced concepts during meetings. Trump holds meetings to force his cabinet members to sing his praises.

I have no problem with his age. He has been insightful and forward-thinking. I do take issue with so-called Moderate Democrats like Sinema, Manchin, and Feinstein who take money from business entities looking to block Progressive reforms to tax breaks, environmental regulations, financial industry regulations, and income equality. These folks will generate a third-party candidate to run against Trump and Biden, should they be the general election candidates.

We should remember that the Trump Administration was informed about COVID-19 in October 2019. Trump praised China’s handling of the initial outbreak. Later, Trump’s administration bungled the crisis, allowing over 1 million Americans to die. Many Republican Governors, Senators, and other officials fought the implementation of safety protocols and resisted supporting the vaccine. They resisted closing schools though they know that older Americans, especially teachers, were susceptible to contracting the virus while younger Americans, like students, were initially not widely affected until the virus mutated.

Here is the point, the next election is critical to preserving a diverse multicultural democratic nation, versus a Christian White Nationalist Dictatorship/Autocratic/Oligarchy. Democrats have to gain control of the House of Representatives, The Senate, and the Presidency. Even then Moderates who blocked the Biden agenda have to be voted out of office. Biden won’t run on this, but Democrats then have to expand the Supreme Court to 13 seats.

The Supreme Court has to be counted on to make judicial rulings that benefit the majority of citizens, not a handful of millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

Below are links to videos and opinion pieces that support some of the points in this post. Being accurately informed is essential to sound judgment. Disinformation that you have not scrutinized with a discerning eye will make a ‘Useful Fool’ of anyone. Know the bias of your sources. My bias is clear, I am honesty, integrity, and the greater good.

https://youtu.be/K61H0hc7SSo

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/07/third-party-candidates-spoiler-president-multiparty-democracy.html

…”Demand is high. So where are the third parties?

Here’s the problem: Our system of single-winner elections puts tremendous pressure on politicians and voters to consolidate around two options. If there can be only one winner, any vote for a minor party can only be a protest—but in a close election, that protest becomes a spoiler. In 2000, for example, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader drew crucial votes from Al Gore. If we want more parties, we need better, fairer voting rules—not more protest candidates.

The need for more parties has increased considerably over the last decade. In 2000, Nader could credibly argue that the Democrats and Republicans were too similar, even if they were drifting apart. Today, Democrats and Republicans have split into conflicting realities, threatening the foundation of electoral legitimacy on which our democracy depends.

Over the past three decades, Democrats and Republicans have sorted into two distinct geographical and cultural coalitions, with little shared real estate—either physical or mental. In today’s highly nationalized culture-war politics, the two parties maintain and energize their coalitions through the never-ending, fear-inducing fight for the soul of the nation. If you feel as though your country is being stolen from you, it might seem perfectly reasonable to storm the U.S. Capitol, as many did on Jan. 6, 2021. And it’s hard to maintain a democracy when two competing partisan teams see each other as threats to their fundamental values and way of life.

How do we escape this doom loop of escalating binary partisan warfare? The way out is to change our voting rules so more parties can play a productive—not destructive—role in our politics. The two-party system persists not because Americans want to maintain it, but because our antiquated system of single-winner plurality elections holds it in place—and makes it easy for the two parties to crush upstart opposition.

Simple plurality elections may have been the default choice 250 years ago, when it was the only mode of voting yet invented. But the world has changed considerably since then. Most advanced democracies use proportional representation to elect their legislatures, and allow multiple parties to form, and better represent the nation as a result.

Such a change may feel like a moonshot, but it doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. Congress could enact proportional multimember districts with ordinary legislation. American democracy is not static—we’ve made major changes in the past, and moments of crisis are also moments of imagination and transformation.

In countries with proportional multiparty systems, citizens are more engaged. They vote at higher rates. Partisans don’t hate each other so much. Legislatures are less geriatric. Citizens are happier.

And proportional multimember districts would make gerrymandering irrelevant. With single-member districts in a two-party system, line-drawers have tens of thousands of possible maps from which to draw the winningest one. But larger districts mean fewer lines. More parties mean less predictable voting. And multimember districts with proportionality mean that a party with 50.1 percent of the vote wins only half of the seats, instead of all (one) of them.

The good news is that the United States could easily move to proportional representation for the U.S. Congress. The elections clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section IV) gives Congress the power to decide how the House should be elected, a power it has used repeatedly. In 1967, Congress used it to require that states use single-member districts. This act, the Uniform Congressional District Act, was passed as a Civil Rights measure to prevent Southern states from using at-large bloc voting, a system that had historically disenfranchised Black voters.

They didn’t consider proportional representation back in 1967, as the two-party system was functioning reasonably well. After all, landmark Civil Rights legislation had just been passed, with overwhelming cross-partisan support. But in the 56 years since, the two parties have sorted into two geographically distinct coalitions, fighting over diverging visions of America’s future and rooted in disparate narratives of the past. Knife’s-edge majorities keep total control of Washington always one election away—a dynamic that has empowered extremists on the far right, who appear eager to throw everything into chaos rather than maintain a rotten status quo.

Proportional representation paves the way for new, flexible coalitions to emerge that allow for politics to realign and move forward, breaking the “doom loop” of escalating partisan fighting.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/07/no-labels-third-party-2024-presidential-campaign.html

….”The avowedly moderate advocacy group No Labels has long been a pain in the neck for the Democratic Party’s left wing, and even sometimes for its mainstream leaders. In 2021, for instance, it directed public support and behind-the-scenes fundraising assistance to the members of the House and Senate, most prominently New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who were working gleefully and successfully to kill large parts of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better proposal.

Now, though, the group has become a major irritant to the Beltway’s other professional centrists, too. It’s feuding with several Democratic members of the House’s bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, to the point that it paid to send attack texts out to voters in one member’s district. The business-friendly Third Way think tank recently hosted a meeting with White House officials and “Never Trump” Republicans whose subject was, in essence, how to manage their shared No Labels problem.

The cause of all this tension? No Labels plans to run its own presidential candidate in 2024 if it decides the major parties’ nominees are, quote, “unacceptable”—a determination that it says could apply to a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump. In this scenario, polling suggests that a third-party candidate running as a self-declared moderate would draw more votes from Biden than from his opponent. An organization which claims to promote civility in politics would have, in effect, engineered the reinstallation of the least civil president in American history. (A No Labels staffer told Politico that the organization will not run a third-party candidate if Ron DeSantis is the Republican nominee.)

Figuring out why this is happening requires going back to No Labels’ origins. The group is the brainchild of longtime Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson, who got her start in politics organizing for presidential candidate Gary Hart on the Syracuse University campus in 1984; she’d go on to raise money for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and serve as the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee. Both Hart and Clinton were “New Democrats” associated with the Democratic Leadership Council, which prided itself on having outside-the-box ideas that existed in a space both between and beyond conservatism and liberalism. It was thus not surprising that when Jacobson launched No Labels in 2010, the group’s stated purpose was to create “a new kind of politics” on the “common ground” between the major parties.

Trump is using his run for President to shield him from prosecution. He is also using racist White Christian Nationalism and bogus assertions that the U.S. was founded as a ‘Christian Nation’ for the benefit of White people. So why doesn’t the mainstream news disclose these facts in an honest and direct way?

Timeline of FBI Investigation of Trump’s Handling of Highly Classified Documents

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/donald-trump-2024-announcement-prosecution

…..”Donald Trump famously hated the actual job of being president of the United States, given its emphasis on reading documents, listening to experts, and giving a crap about other people. On the other hand, he did enjoy the power, and one aspect of the power he really seemed to like was the fact that, according to his lawyers, he couldn’t be held accountable for any crimes while in office.

Now, at the moment, Donald Trump is not president, and his legal situation isn’t looking so hot. For one thing, the January 6 committee has given the Justice Department a whole bunch of reasons to indict the guy, and on Sunday, vice-chair Liz Cheney said the panel may make its own criminal referral. For another, the Fulton County criminal investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election is heating up and actually appears to have legs. Anyway, can you see where this is going?

The Guardian reports that Trump has told advisers—some of whom believe he should wait until after the midterms to make an announcement—that throwing his hat in the ring early would allow him to “strengthen his argument that…criminal investigations against him in New York and Georgia are politically motivated.” (In addition to the Fulton County probe and the work of the January 6 committee, the former president’s company is also under criminal investigation in Westchester County, while the New York attorney general is set to depose him under oath this month.) As my colleague Eric Lutz noted last week, despite what appears to be an overwhelming amount of evidence against him, Democrats are concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s fear of looking political may result in the DOJ getting cold feet when it comes to prosecuting. “I’m just not seeing the urgency from the attorney general,” Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego told CNN last month. “He’s thinking more about protecting the institution of the Department of Justice. And I appreciate that, but he has to be thinking about protecting the institution of democracy.” While acknowledging that no one is above the law, former senator Doug Jones told Politico, “there are so many more dynamics that I think come into play when trying to indict a former president of the United States for activities that took place in office.” If Trump were to run for a second term, it would, The Guardian writes, “complicate any decision to criminally charge him.”

And while he doesn’t know a lot—for instance, how toilets, exercise, or hurricanes work, or that you can’t get cancer from sound—Trump clearly knows this and wants to use it to his benefit. “The advantages of declaring now are that potential rivals could be dissuaded from running against him,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at that the University of Richmond, told The Guardian. “Meanwhile, the pressure will build for the January 6 committee to move quickly to find as much damning information as it can and refer it over to the attorney general.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/trump-wants-use-his-campaign-escape-prosecution/674672/

…”One common anti-Trump belief—one might even call it a conspiracy theory—post-2020 is that Trump is running for president again in 2024 mostly as a way of trying to avoid prosecution in the several current and possible cases against him. He frequently talks about how annoying it was for him to leave behind his comfortable life to be president, and he didn’t really seem to enjoy the job much. His 2024 campaign has so far been mostly about bad personal vibes, not building walls and making Mexico pay for them. Almost exactly a year ago, Rolling Stone reported that Trump was “leaving confidants with the impression that, as his criminal exposure has increased, so has his focus on the legal protections of the executive branch.”

True to form, the former president’s lawyers have now confirmed all these suspicions, contending in a court document that his status as presidential contender ought to indefinitely spare him a trial. In a filing last night to Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing his indictment for mishandling classified documents, they asked that a trial be delayed at least until after the 2024 election.

For one thing, they write, he’s just too busy. “President Trump is running for President of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee. This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024.” As for his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, his “job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country. This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the Defendants challenging.” Many defendants in criminal cases would prefer to pursue other opportunities instead of face charges, but that doesn’t usually entitle them to indefinite delay. Although some commentators have argued that a current or prospective president ought to be held to a higher standard of behavior, Trump’s lawyers are effectively arguing the reverse, saying he should receive extra forbearance because of the job he’s seeking.

They go on to argue that he simply can’t go through the judicial system now because he is running for president: “There is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a Presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election and, importantly, the ability of the Defendants to obtain a fair trial.” (They do, however, nod to his other legal troubles, adding, “Previously scheduled trials in other matters for both President Trump and
defense counsel make it nearly impossible to prepare for this trial by December 2023.”)

The logistical and political hurdles the Trump team identifies aren’t imaginary. No comparable situation has ever occurred in U.S. history, a fact that Trump attributes to persecution but that’s better chalked up to his uniquely aberrant behavior. But the justice system has to balance interests, and the implications of being able to punt the trial just because he has voluntarily decided to run for president are troubling. It would suggest that as long as you are credibly seeking the most powerful position in the land, you can’t be held accountable for your actions.

If Trump wins, he would have the effective power to shut down any federal case against him. He and his allies are already laying the groundwork for further eroding the political insulation of the Department of Justice, which brought the documents case against him. (He would also presumably argue that, once he was president-elect or president, he would be too busy to stand trial.) If he does not win the election, his legal prospects are bleaker—which gives him additional incentives to subvert the election, just as he tried to do in 2020.”

In 2018, 2020, and 2022 the media and political polls predicted disaster for Democrats in those federal election years. As it turned out, after two years of the Trump ‘Drama and Whining’ Administration and Republican control of Congress, voters were tired of the constant gaslighting and lies. They were not tired enough to address the structural issues restricting voting rights. They did settle for putting the brakes on the absolute partisan rule of Republican populism in Washington D.C.

In 2018 the Democrats took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2020 the media and polls indicated Trump would win. The Democrats maintained control of the U.S. House and won 50 seats in the Senate. In 2022 the legacy media and political pundits told us about the ‘Red Wave’ that would wash away the Extreme Progressive Left. That wave never materialized.

It’s more than a year before Americans go to the polls for the next Presidential elections. They will elect their Representatives for Congress and some seats in the Senate. Right now, the media is bombarding us with polls about Biden’s popularity, Trump’s popularity, and which party is likely to win control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

It is all irrelevant. In early 2020, the polls did not indicate that Joe Biden could win the Democratic nomination, much less the Presidency. In 2022, Republican Christian Nationalist Conservatives on the Supreme Court used their majority to disregard the overwhelming number of Americans polled and take away the right of women to control their bodies, permitting states to ban abortions. The decision drafted by Samuel Alito will haunt the Republican party for decades.

The decision was rooted in Christian Conservative Extremism and corporate funding from wealthy religious idealogue billionaires and millionaires who used their money to bribe the Conservative SCOTUS Justices who lack the integrity to forgo overwhelming public opinion and impose views held by a minority of the electorate. The decision assumes that the American voters were willing to accept a ‘White Christian Theocratic Authoritarian Government’ instead of a Democratic Republic.
It is not clear that this notion is incorrect. Once Ronald Reagan drafted the Religious Right into Conservative politics as foot soldiers for the GOP agenda, Conservative politics/policies moved towards a Christian Nationalist Taliban of sorts. The proponents of this agenda incorrectly assert that the Founding Fathers of the country intended this to be a ‘Christian Nation’ governed by biblical principles, somehow rooted in misogyny, racism, and sexism.

They ignore the Constitution and Bill of Rights, which forbids the government from adopting a national religion. They disregard that it is unlawful for the government to discriminate against any religious beliefs, including agnostic or non-religious beliefs. They seek to impose a racist Christian Nationalist religious government on all American citizens.

The basic premise here is that the polling and opinions currently in the news do not show us where the American electorate will be in July or August of 2024. These views are conjecture. They usually fail to materialize once the voting is over.

My final point is that if the voters turn out, objectively engage, and participate in the election process, the outcomes typically do not resemble the views and polling we hear. We should have learned that if voters turn out, their votes change the reality of baseless opinions projected on legacy media outlets and social media platforms.

Recent events have motivated me to remember how foolish people can be because they don’t know how to research topics in the age of ‘Disinformation’. It was on the Facebook page of my elementary school in March of 2021, as the COVID-19 virus was moving like a wildfire throughout the world, when I saw the first anti-vax post related to the COVID vaccine. I attended an all-black elementary school. Imagine my shock when a post showed up on that page that seriously maligned the vaccine. I discovered the article supporting the post was from a racist White website. The person posting it, claiming to have attended my elementary school, several decades after I did, clearly did not investigate the source of the anti-vax disinformation.

After avoiding contracting COVID-19 for three years, I recently contracted it from my wife who was exposed to someone who had no symptoms and probably never knew they had the virus. She had simply attended a family gathering, to plan funeral services for her mother’s last surviving sibling. My wife had the vaccine and all the boosters, did not wear a mask around family members.

Within two days of that gathering she tested positive for the virus. Unfortunately, I slept in the same bed for two nights before she took the at home test that produced positive results. Of course, I immediately began testing, wearing a mask and slept in a separate room. For two days the results were negative but on the third day, my results came up positive.

Even though the World Health Organization, ‘WHO’ and the CDC have declared the COVID Health Emergency is over, more than 1000 people in the US died from COVID related issues in 2023.

Many people have gone back to relaxed practices regarding masking and social distances. However, people over 60, or of any age who have compromised immunity, should not be so eager to let down their guard. I recently heard from a friend, who has an adult daughter who had a kidney transplant, and her body rejected the transplanted kidney due to Lupus.

The daughter is being evaluated for a second transplant. My friend received a call from a friend of the daughter that had a very close relationship with the daughter. She wanted to come visit. My friend did not give it a second thought. She imagined the visit would be a morale booster for her daughter. It turns out the visitor brought COVID with her. Both my friend and her daughter contracted the virus.

Upon further discussion, they discovered that the visitor was a COVID vaccine ‘Anti-Vaxxer’. She felt the vaccine was developed too quickly to be trusted. I asked, given your daughter’s compromised state of health, didn’t it occur to you to ask the visitor’s vaccination status? The answer was, “I could not imagine that this person would ever put our health at risk, so it did not occur to me to consider asking.”

I attached an article below that explains the rDNA technology that was used to develop the COVID vaccine, was developed almost 50 years ago. Even though the Trump Administration called the vaccine development, ‘Project Warp Speed’ the knowledge to develop it has been around almost twice as long as mifepristone/RU-486, the abortion pill that has been recently in the news. The rDNA technology has been around longer than Viagra, Ozempic, and a host of other drugs people rely on every day.

But the reality is really stark. COVID will be with us for a long time. With more than 1,000 people dying from this virus or underlying issues impacted by the virus, you need to exercise more care before you expose yourself to others. Don’t assume everyone you think you know is thoughtful and considerate enough to tell you up front about their immunization beliefs.

I attached an article where even a CDC conference had an outbreak of the virus among their attendees. You cannot be too careful, when around people you do not see daily and if you don’t know their views on vaccinations.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/a-covid-outbreak-at-a-cdc-conference-is-ironic-but-is-it-a-big-deal/ar-AA1aJoPv

https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/herbert-w-boyer-and-stanley-n-cohen

https://www.salon.com/2023/05/08/mission-not-accomplished-joe-despite-declaring-victory-over-covid-health-care-is-code-blue_partner/

Since so much disinformation comes from right-wing sources, Qanon, Christian Nationalists, sources, we have to be much more discerning. The biggest problem being we have many minorities, people of color who embrace racists views as part of their religious beliefs. Just as a number of assailants on recent mass shootings in Texas have been Hispanic, we must remember that the original Europeans to the western hemisphere who espoused racists views, genocide, and the dehumanization of anyone not European were Spanish. They were later followed by the Portuguese, British, and French.

The Leader of the Proud Boys is a Black Cuban, a number of Trump Officials and supporters are descendants of people from India. There are many people from Mexico who live in Texas border cities who voted for Trump and have no issues with Trump’s immigration policies. Most of the voting population in those border towns vote Republican.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/04/us/census-browning-of-america-myth-blake/index.html

….”Don’t ever underestimate White supremacy’s ability to adapt.

The assumption that more racial diversity equals more racial equality is a dangerous myth. Racial diversity can function as a cloaking device, concealing the most powerful forms of White supremacy while giving the appearance of racial progress.

Racism will likely be just as entrenched in a browner America as it is now. It will still be White supremacy, with a tan.

“America will soon belong to the men and women – white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight – who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions.”

The US has broadened its definition of White people throughout history enough to maintain power over Black, Asian and Latino people, writes political scientist Justin Gest in a recent essay, “What the ‘Majority Minority’ Shift Really Means for America.”

“Through a historical lens, being white in America today is like belonging to a once-exclusive social club that had to loosen its membership criteria to stay afloat,” Gest writes.

Why do so many racial groups gravitate toward Whiteness? The answer is both pragmatic and psychological.

It’s due to a racial hierarchy that places Whiter-looking people at the top and darker-skinned people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

“Sometimes looking White puts money directly into your pockets,” says Tanya K. Hernandez, author of the forthcoming book “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and The Struggle for Equality.”

“You get access to jobs, opportunities and being viewed as competent. But there’s also a psychological benefit, that feeling of having enhanced status, of being part of Whiteness.”

The YouTube video below entitled, ‘He Said It Out Loud’ makes an astounding assertions of a political conversion that has been in the works since the election of Ronald Reagan. While Reagan has been promoted as a great American President in Conservative quaters, he actually oversaw the building and implementation of the nations’s most deliberate and potentially destructive mechanism of the US economy, the Middle Class, economic equality, social equality, religious freedom, and our social safety-net. Regan gave flowery speeches about freedom and American Exceptionalism, but hidden among these seeds of niceties was the invitation to challenge ‘Liberalism’, tolerance, and economic justice with Theocracy, intolerance, and economic injustice. Indeed, he opened the door to insulate White Christian Nationalism with his reliance upon the Evangelicals of the’Christan Moral Majority’, ‘Trickle Down Economic policies’, and reinforcing the use of the criminal justice system to target all groups that are racially and economically disadvantaged.

This was always the objective of Conservatives, to dismantle the social safety net set up by the massive legislation implemented by the FDR and LBJ presidencies. The play allowed for Americans to become complacent in their middled-class status which many attributed to their religious views. Once the Trickle Down Economic polices and the wealth redistribution of tax laws benefitting the wealthiest individuals and corporations were implemented. The newly constructed drivers of in economic market place began to claw back a massive amount of wealth by offshoring industries, jobs and wealth to adversaries like China, Vietnam, and India.

By partnering with the racially Conservative minded Evangelical Christian Church, the Republican Party has become almost totally reliant on this group to hold political power on the state level and in Congress. They were able to effectively gain control of this power in 2010 following the election of Barrack Obama, when in a Census year they secured trifecta control (holding the Governorship, and control of both legislative houses) of state. They then gerrymandered election maps to totally control those legislatures and Congressional delegations even if they won fewer popular votes . (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/redmap-gop-gerrymandering-strategy/)

Since 2010, Conservative Republicans Christian Evangelicals hold complete control of 22 states. In those states voting rights, abortion rights, access to birth control, education funding, access to healthcare, school lunch programs, gun control, freedom to not observe Christianity. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, indeed the term ‘Freedom’, have truly become empty words.

In states dominated by racist religious Conservative lawmakers, women are forced to risk their lives carrying pregnancies to term regardless of the viability of the fetus. If a woman is raped, she is now forced to carry the seed of her rapist to term. A young girl who is molested and impregnated by a male relative, family friend, or neighbor is now deemed not old enough to determine if she wants an abortion, but she is old enough to risk death carrying the pregnancy to term.

States like Texas have even set up ‘Bounties’ where private citizens will now police and sue anyone they suspect helped a woman getting an abortion, even the Uber driver who unknowingly drops a woman off at a clinic. Some states are passing laws where women who get abortions and the doctors who perform them can be sentenced to prison. We’re talking about religious zealots who are stripping away personal freedom of women. Sadly, many of these zealots are women who embrace these steps under the influence of lobotomizing religious beliefs and conspiracy theories.

The invisible driving force behind all these actions is the original racist foundation by which Christianty was initially introduced into the Western Hemisphere and Africa. The motivation since 2010 was the election of Barak Obama as President and the realization that Black and Brown people would outnumber people of European descent in coming decades. So they are more interested in dramatically seeing a major increase in the birth rate of White babies.

Republicans realized that Democrats and minorities did not pay attention to local and state elections. When Ronald Reagan turned to the Evangelical Church with the likes of Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson, they were able to create a rage against abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, gun control, and the minimum wage. They focused on locking in Conservative power on the state level.

An intriguing outcome and downside to the success this reliance on Evangelical Conservatism in the states Republicans control is they no longer feel they need to be responsive to public opinion on public policy. When the Supreme Court, controlled by religious Conservatives, appointed by Republican Presidents and confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate gave the rights to set abortion access to the states, those gerrymandered state legislatures disregarded the majority views of it’s citizens.

The Republican controlled states have implemented laws that ban abortion, much to the dismay of the majority of their citizens. These states have passed laws to protect the ‘Unborn’, while at the same time making it easier to access high powered high capacity guns. Translation, they legislate to protect gun rights but not the lives of living viable children. According to the ‘Gun Violence Archive’, in 2022 6,023 U.S. children 17 years old or younger have been killed or hurt in gunfire this year, surpassing the 5,708 killed or hurt 2021.

Most of these policy decisions are rooted in a revisionist view that America is a Christian Nation and the White Nationalist notion their religious beliefs take precedence over the Constitutional mandate that government be independent of any religion.

https://www.alternet.org/are-they-all-dumb/

“Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) – a potential 2024 presidential contender, during a conversation with Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann at the 2023 Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition: “What should the, what should the next president do? What is the most immediate actions that the next president can do to stand for religious liberty?” Kaufmann asked Scott.

“We must tell the story of our Constitution that the First Amendment was written to protect the church from the state, not the state, from the church,” Scott replied.

The First Amendment is unequivocal in its language. It states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Scott’s assessment is not rooted in fact, precedent, or the intent of the Constitution’s framers, who were outspoken about their concerns about religion creeping into politics. His suggestion that the president has the power to declare a national religion also completely clashes with basic historical evidence.”

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I have been watching and listening to get a clear understanding of what we can expect to happen in the very near future. There is a lot going on so I am going to attempt to layout what I believe will be happening.

First, let’s dispense with the obvious, DJT was arrested in Manhattan. The details of his indictment and arrest have been widely reported. But let’s get to the real meat of what is coming into focus. It is likely that by late June DJT and more than two dozen others will be indicted and arrested in the State of Georgia for illegal election interference, the ‘Fake Electors Conspiracy’ and, ‘Seditious Consipracy’ to overthrow the US Government.

Included among those you might expect to see indicted or plea bargain with prosecutors will be US Congress and Senate persons who consider themselves part of the MAGA and Freedom Caucus crowd, as well as former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Also Former Vice-President Mike Pence has been ordered by the Courts to testify before a Federal grand jury about his knowledge leading up to the events of January 6, 2021.

As I pulled this post together, Democrats have won two monumental elections that may just foreshadow the upcoming 2024 Presidential elections. In Wisconsin a race of the State Supreme Court was won by the liberal Democrat in the most expensive state judicial race in the history of the country. Over $50 million dollars was spent with the majority of those funds spent on the losing election denying MAGA candidate.

In the City of Chicago two Democrats vied for the position of Mayor with the more liberal of the two winning that race. There is a common issue here. MAGA White Christian Nationalists have grown increasingly more lawless, paternalistic, afraid of losing their preferential status in the country, and isolated with their guns.

In Tennessee two black Gen-Z legislator were expelled from their elected positions because they took a stand on the House Floor in support of students who protested at the State Capitol after three students and three staff members at a Christian school were gunned down. MAGA Republicans are willing to continue to take away the freedoms of citizens all for the sake of keeping authoritarian-like powers despite the will of the majority of the citizens.

Fulton County DA Fauni Willis has signaled that she will impanel a grand jury in May and if she decides to indict people those indictments will be announced in June. We already know that the special grand jury she put in place has recommend that over two dozen people who appeared before them committed perjury, but that special grand jury did not have the power to indict.

We now know that the Special Prosecutor appointed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland has three federal grand juries going right now, all of these involve DJT. As of this week every high ranking official believed to have knowledge of his actions to overturn the 2020 elections has been ordered to testify before one Jack Smith’s grand juries. In addition to these people, staff members at DJT’s Florida home and golf resort have been subpoenaed. At least four of DJT’s attorney’s in all these cases have also been ordered to testify before one or more of these federal grand juries.

Don’t just focus on DJT, when this is all said and done don’t be surprised to see a number of MAGA members of Congress and the Senate indicted for their roles in planning the Jan-6 insurrection. In the mean time, you should begin talking to your friends and associates about registering to vote if they are not currently registered. We need to find ways to actively work to get out the vote in 2024. Most of all, work on them to get out to vote early. I remind you again if we learned notthing else from the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat race, it is important to learn the candiates for every position on the ballot that affects your community.

Also, unless there is another pandemic, push early voting in person and not voting by mail. It turns out the far more ballots from areas where the minority population is large are rejected by up to 24% versus 8% in non-minority areas. Please make sure you view the attached YouTube videos and the article from the Hill to get more insight into basis of my comments on this post.

Pence won’t appeal judge’s order to testify in Jan. 6 probe