I will continue to lament the power that the ‘Negro Bible’ continues to hold on the still enslaved minds of minorities in this country. The Christian religion has it’s hooks ingrained in Hispanics Mexican -Americans, who are more evangelical in the southwest, many Native Americans, in the north central part ofthe country, and Asian-Americans i.e. Koreans and Chinese.

Historically, the racist tinged spread of Christianity was introduced to the western hemisphere via the Catholic Church through European explorers and treasure seekers. The cruelty through which the religion was imposed was particularly dehumanizing toward the indigenous tribes and later the peoples stolen from the continent of Africa. It is exceptionally difficult to watch the likes of Kristina Karamo, the newly elected chair of the Michigan State GOP, MAGA election denier, and self-described ‘Chrisitan Nationalist’.

When you watch this video, you will see that she was kicked down a very deep and irrational ‘Rabbit Hole’ where the likes of the most intellectually deficient racists and conspiracy theorist reside. People like Karamo, Byron Donald, Tim Scott, Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Ward Connally, and a host of other non-whites, pretend to ignore the racism, and view politics, and public policy solely in the context of those old bibles prepared just for the subjugated by their White masters.

In reality the only cure for this is a collective resistance to drinking the kool-aid of Abrahamic religions. The break has to be aboslute, There are those who rationalize that the way they practice Christianity is different. While I would never confront them about their beliefs, I would say, does it matter if you consume poison by a lethal gallon, or by a drop at a time? Over a period the cumulative affects are mentally, socially, and culturally detrimental.

Racist White Christian Nationalists want a racially pure nation. They use religion to say this is a Christian Nation and only Christians belong here. They get the minorities to embrace their religious doctrine to root out their more resistant Brothers and Sisters. Eventually they want a racially pure nation, except for those who must serve their needs.

Under the guise of religion some minorities embraced the continuation of slavery, the confederacy, and the right for racist whites to impose their heritage while denying miniorities their history and culture outside of the context of the history that racist White Christians wish to permit. Why? Because racist White Christians have you believing Jesus, is a blue-eyed blond European. Non-whites can only purify themselves by being as much like Whites as thet can, even to the point of aiding in subjugating other minorities to be accepted in their concept of heaven.

This goes beyond brain washing. One has to be brain dead to accept one iota of this premise, politically, socially, or morally.

After the shock of the DJT election to the Presidency in 2015, I started doing some research and I discovered reporting that showed that James Comey was motivated to reopen the investigation into the Clinton emails because he was afraid that FBI agents in New York, who investigated the Clinton Foundation were going to leak false information. The situation was so bad because of pro-Trump FBI agents that Comey eventually reassigned the investigation out of New York.

A former top FBI official in New York has been arrested over his ties to a Russian oligarch, law enforcement sources told ABC News Monday.

Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.

McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.

McGonigal, 54, is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list. McGonigal is one of the highest-ranking former FBI officials ever charged with a crime.

“Charlie has had a long, distinguished career with the FBI. He’s served the United States for decades,” McGonigal’s lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told ABC News in a statement. “This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family, but we’ll review the evidence, we’ll closely scrutinize it, and we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal.”

It does not take much to connect this agent; managing the FBI Counterintelligence efforts out of New York, to coordinating with the subversive efforts of Russia, to undermine the Clinton candidacy for President. The more we look objectively at the Trump Presidency, it’s clear that administration worked to transactionalize the office of President with a national security adversary. Russia is run by a crime organization run by Vladimer Putin.

Trump has worked to elevate himself to be the Putin-like Boss of the U.S. under the moniker of White Christian Nationalist ‘MAGA’ racism. It appears that a number of New York FBI agents have played a role in undermining democracy to elect Trump and support his administration. Don’t be surprised if a handful more are investigated, by those other than Jim Jordan in Congress.

As the MAGA wing of Congress does the so called investigation into the weaponization of the US Government, they have no interest in the actions of Trump and Bill Barr. They have no interest in Jim Comey labeling #BLM a ‘Terrorist Group’. They have no interest in looking into ‘COINTELPRO’ that went after the leaders and activist groups of the Civil Rights era, that entails thousands more people than just MLK, people.

The thing to remember about this FBI agent McGonigal is that he and Trump supporting MAGA whites would rather march in racism with Putin than set their hatred of people of different races aside. What is really interesting, is that while some MAGA Americans support Putin, he is waging a scorched earth war against other White Europeans. What should that tell indigenous people, Africans, Hispanics, Asians, Blacks, and marginalized people oblivious to what is going one and not paying attention?

If you are not looking out for your interest, those folks are slowly preparing to wipeout those of you who will not be subjugated! They have shown that they will wipe out those that look like them. Why should they keep you around if you are of no service to their sense of privilege?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/davis-time-to-correct-the-record-again-hillary-clinton-did-not-have-a-single-email-marked-classified/ar-AA16URbF?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=421f0200b8db4a0fb81aed92904bee8a

…”Recently, pro-Trump/MAGA Republicans and even many in the mainstream media have inaccurately reported that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton transferred identifiable classified information in her emails to her private server. 

This is false. Indeed, former FBI Director James Comey, not exactly remembered as helpful to Clinton, confirmed this in congressional testimony.   

On July 7, 2016, Comey testified before the House Oversight Committee. He agreed under questioning that the FBI, after reviewing individually the 33,000 Clinton emails in the spring and early summer of 2016, found only three e-mails that had any identifiable classified marking at all. Comey told Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) that only three e-mails contained a lower-case “c” in the middle of a paragraph. (Shortly after the hearing, the actual number was corrected from three to one.) And he stated that even classification experts would not recognize that little “c” as a classified marking. ”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/fbi-trump-comey/597523/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/james-comey-fbi-clinton-emails_n_581bb74be4b0e80b02c8e185

A recent comment I received about my posts is, ” You sure pack a lot of things into these. There is a lot to think about.”

Yes, the insight is simple, most people believe that threats and challenges happen as singularities, but in reality most of the threats and challenges to humanity and peaceful coexistence are not singularities, they are part of conspired coordinated movements. From the time we humans moved from being ‘hunter gatherers’ to the agrarian culture, where land ownership and control of food dictated wealth, power, and how individuals are valued, there has been a concerted effort to limit who controls the land, the seeds, the harvesting, storage of food, processing, marketing , and access to food, raw materials, capital, politics, and public policy for all creatures and plant life on the planet.

What we know is that having the power to impose ideas, beliefs, greed, doctrine, and indoctrinations have been the bane of peaceful coexisitence and environmentally intelligent understandings. Humans have been insisent about role of religion and their interprations of god as their source of power. In Western societies, the power has been controlled by White European Christians through racism since the ‘Crusades’.

Since those times Eupropean Whites and their descendants have spread a virulent form of race based Christianity against indeginous peoples all over the world. Jesus has morphed from being a middle eastern born individual, into a blond, blue-eyed European looking icon, that condones racism, genocide, enviromental destruction of the planet, and raw power. This transformation of the conceptual icons of Jesus and god are celebrated today by racist Christian Nationalists who believe that god has ordained DJT, other authoritarians rulers, and elites to be the lords of the planet.

What is worse many descendants of the victims of genocide, subjugation, and opprssion are supportive of the politcal order of these racists with wealthy elite Whites having absolute power over the socially and economically disadvantged. These elites promote a system where non-Whites value their roles being near Whites socially by embracing their religious doctrine in order to enact power over other non-Whites who do not have relationships approved by empowered Whites.

To be honest, some of the descendants of violently colonized aboriginal and indigenous peoples equate their proximity to White Christians, especially evangelicals and pentacostals, to some having semblance of power. Today, racist White Christian Nationalists defy the US Constitution and the will of the ‘Founders’ for maintaing a separation of ‘Church and State’ by saying that the U.S. is a ‘Christian Nation’ and those who don’t share their beliefs need not live. There are many minorities in the US today who also enbrace these beliefs because they have embraced Christian ‘Fundelmentalist Evangelicalism’.

Ask yourself, why would the citizens of Uvalde, Texas vote for Greg Abbot for Governor by over 60% after the in school shootings of 19 children and two teachers? Ask yourself why the mostly Hispanic population in many south Texas districts voted Republican in the 2022 midterms. Most of those candidates had strong ties to ‘Evangelical Christian Churches’.

Without question Christian Churches have established nearly unbreakable ties in Black communities. A large percentage of ‘Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ have their origins in Christian Churches. During slavery the most promient Black person on the plantation was the one the master chose to pastor and indoctrinate his fellow slaves in the Christianty by seeking a better life in heaven whiles accepting their status as slaves here on earth.

But let us always remeber the basic premise, White Christians were always, always, always chosen by god to wield power over lesser humans and other creatures. That notion is still very alive today and the movement to reinstate this notion is always beneath the surface. It always has been.

Perhaps , due to the end of the earth’s 365 day run around the sun and the beginning of another, that as a non-religious soverign individual, I have long sought a different means to recognize the sense of renewal that accompanies the ‘New Year’. To that point, I observe the cultrual ‘Holiday of Kwanzaa’. While most people are wondering what to do between December 25th and December 31st, I am engaing in the 7 day observance of community, heritage, and the diaspora born of the enslavement of Black Africans.

I get to watch everyone celebrate their holiday rituals and then I get to end the year practicing my own. I laughed when ‘Ye’ complained to the Foxnonsense host about his kids learning about ‘Kwanzaa’. What could be better than people who of his race celebrating the most positive aspects of community and pride by a people who were enslaved, dehumanized, denigrated, marginalized, and hated by the likes of Foxnonsense commentators regardless of their race.

However, the elements of most western holidays is the Judeo-Christian foundation. This is the nature of their religious based holidays. The irony is that the racial hatred, genocide, colonization, subugation, and subversion of economic and voting rights all have their implementation by European expansion and greed in these religious doctrines. I can’t blame it all on Europeans, there were plenty of indigenous peoples both in Africa and the Western Hemisphere who were complicit in the spread of White religious based hatred, subjugation, and greed.

The Europeans have always benefitted from people turning on their own race for the sake of religion on the surface and deep seeded greed or ambition under the befief that European imperialism could be contained. This phenomenon happened in Egypt, North, Central, and South Americas, the Carribean, East, Central, and West Africa, as well as Austrialia, New Zealand, India, and Indoneisia. In other words the spread of the Abrahamic religions by Assyrian, Arab, Jewish, and European cultures has been largely behind how life operates in the current state of how the politics works in the world.

I mention all this because, in the past few weeks, I have been reading and watching MAGA-loving Black folks in elected positions take stands against voting rights. They are OK with the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, supporters of ‘Qualified Immuinuty’ for abusive police. They believe White Christian Nationalists should not be forced to own up the unhumanity and cruety of slavery and racial genocide. Just this past week a Black Republican Congressman from Florida, Byron Donald, allowed himself to be used as a prop in the 15 rounds of voting that was the fiasco of the 118th Congress election for the Speaker of the House.

The White Congressman who put his name in nomination had no desire to see Donald become the Speaker. He just wanted to make a racist false point of equivalency. But saying in his nomintion statement that his act would make history by having two Black men nominated for Speaker of the House. He was making the subliminal suggestion one Black man would be no better than the other. Although one has been in Congress for 10 years and has served in a leadership role of his caucus for five years. The other, the Black MAGA-Head is just beginning his 2nd term and has yet to serve a leadership role with his party in Congress. Actually, he’s taking his marching orders from DJT sychophant Matt Gatez.

Just so we’re clear, Donald is a conservative DJT supporting Black man from Florida who voted with insurrectionists to not certify Biden’s election, who supports Ron DeSantis, and has been banned by the Congressional Black Caucus because he has openly expressed his desire to teach them that they need to change their liberal leftist ways. Those folks gave him a thumbs down, they don’t need a toadie and a relatively new member of Congress coming in dictating to them that they need to embrace racist White Christian Nationalist Conservatism even if his complexion is brown.

It’s bad enough that Black folks don’t turn out to vote because they feel intimidated. Just look at Milwuakee, WI where more than 35,000 fewer people turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms than they did in 2020. The Black candidate for Senate, Mandela Barnes lost that race by about 25,000 votes. If the Black and Hispanic communities had turned out Barnes would have own that race. Now some people ask what will a Democrat do to make my life better? I would respond by saying that all the bills passed in 2022 will make life better for many people. Republicans voted against every one of those bills.

Some say, well Mandela Barnes didn’t run a great campaign in Black and Hispanic areas. My reply is really? You needed Barnes, who is a Progressive Democrat and would vote for the the bills Ron Johnson voted against to come into your community and promise not to be a GOP jerk? You have to know what is in your interest and stand up as a community to the outside bullies.

Every time I hear some smart sounding young or old Black person say voting doesn’t matter; because they are not going to do for us, I think of people who are not engaged. I think of people who vote then go home expecting to receive a windfall. Then they get upset when those elected don’t go out into the garden and tend to the seeds the voters intended for them to plant.

Between these type people, and Blacks who respond to #BLM with but All Lives Matter, or ‘WLM also’, or people like Candace Owens defending the Confederate Flag, or Black Folk using their religious beliefs to justify ignoring racism, I say this, “You’re all enablers of ‘Violent White Racism’.

The facts are that European Whites have used not just violence, but genocide, against major indigenous populations in the world. None of these type Blacks or Hispanics spoke up against systemic police brutality weaponized during slavery and is still utilized today. People like Donald have not ever voiced concern over the decimation of ‘Voting Rights’ at the hands of the SCOTUS. Donald thinks Florida, which gerrymandered their districts to allow Black Democrats only one potential seat in Congress, has the best elections polices in the country.

I invite you to click on the links below and try to grasp how these people are feeding you the ‘Okie Doke’ and they are happy that you are blinded by their gaslighting.

The problem with Donald’s attempt to ‘Mansplain to Reid using typical GOP talking points is that he’s talking to a journalist who won’t accept his comments at face value.

Wisconsin Republican who bragged about low turnout faces calls to resign | Wisconsin | The Guardian

For the past year I have been posting on the political, religious (those are far too intertwined for my comfort) and life issues. We seem to flow from one world wide or national drama to the next. This flow happens with very little respites as we go from one challenge into the next. Sadly, all these things are going on and I don’t ever really delve into the various daily dramas of my own corporeal personal journey as an earthbound being.

Frankly, I am thankful for the blessings of the many ongoing distractions that keep me from really focusing on that constant movie that takes place before my eyes each day. I mean I am grateful for each day I open my eyes and find that I am fortunate enough to be able to get my stiff muscles coordinated enough to lift me out of bed, take a morning walk or work out. But after every imagined challege I keep thinking “ah now that’s settled”. Then I realize that the next moment shows up. As long as I am living, another challenge will appear. In reality ‘life is fluid and nothing is ever really settled.”

As I opened my eyes this morning, it was suppose to be a new year. That’s fine in terms of establishing a linear frame of referece. But the truth is, it is the planet earth taking another juant around the sun, That will take approximately 365 days to complete. It is the planets journey but it’s still in very small measure, my life. Now that isn’t something to take for granted. In the next 365 days many corporeal persona that I am aware of will exit this ride. They will leave at some moment in time, they won’t ask my permission, they may or may not get to say ‘Goodbye. Without much ceremony the animating lifeforce (energy) will step off the transport we think of as the living realm. They will no longer be physical beings with names, cultures, history, attributes, flaults, and they’ll just be memories that we choose to assign to how we perceived them based on our individual interactions with them.

What I have come to formulate as my own understanding is this. We are each born as ego centered personas into political environments of culture, socialization, climate, theology or spirituailty, previledge or oppression of differing degress. At some point some of us realize that we have a purpose, that purpose is to understand that beyond the distractions of existing as personas, we are not the perceivers of the magic of life, we are something much more.

We are the life-force or the energy that utilizes the persona to transmute energy waves, frequencies, and vibrations into what we perceive as the physical universe. We are the quantum consciuosness that is far too vast to be experienced in physical form so the persona was created as sort of a seonsory data collector and translator to convert the consciousness into the physical materialized manifestaion that is thought of as life. It is a jarring and overwhelming sensory happening. It is so overwhelming that many lose themsleves in the sensory experience and believe themselves to actually be the ego that filters the whole experinece of living for the persona.

Over time the ego becomes so strong and self sustaining that it also belives that it is existence and not merely a integral part of transmuting the magic into the physical living experience. The ego strives to make the most of the physical existence at the expense of us coming into understanding of our higher spiritual selves. Why? Because once this understanding takes place that we truly are the spiritual consciousness and not the ego then we change the whole dynamic of how we perceieve our lives. The ego remains necessary but not in control.

As physical beings, we suffer as long as we struggle to remain in control of the unknowable. We only know the past and the current moment. The future, even the how the next momemt will fully manifest is unknowable. We can dream about what we may desire of the future, we can want what we dream, but very few of us in the corporeal form can know the future. It is our spirit that observes and guides us to some extent.

The more we become aware of spirit and surrender ego to it, the more enlightened we become as we move toward our exit on the journey around the sun on this transport we call life. The less we distract ourselves by being totally awed by the magic of living, or being so overwhemled that we become numb and bored, the more we are able to freely experince the wonders of living.

These are just a few insights that crossed into my thoughts as we begin another journey around the sun. Be well, even more be open to expand your understanding.

As we come to the end of 2022 following the the midterm elections, Democrats are thankful that they did not suffer the massive losses that the mainstream media kept promoting. But they will come to wish that certain decisions by voters had been different. I posted many times during 2022 that Democrats needed to pick up three Senate seats to 53 and they needed to hold their majority in the House. As we close out the year Democrats picked up only one Senate seat and they lost their majority in the House.

Had they spent a little more in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio, all of which turned out to be real close losses, they would be able to negate the whims of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate. As for the control of the House of Representatives, a large part of the narrow majority Republicans won can be directly attributed to the horrendous attempts to gerrymander the districts in the state of New York which were rejected by the courts and redrawn in a way at that pitted Democrats against each other in certain districts and Republicans picked up a number of new seats.

The Democrats did not have a bad midterm, but without election reform being passed before this Congress ends, 2024 might be brutal because they will have 23 Senate seats open and Republicans will have only 11. The House majority is a toss up for now, but Republican extremists will overplay their hand with bogus retaliatory investigations. If they follow through with impeachment hearings, shut down the government, or refuse to raise the debt limit while trying to cut Medicare and Social Security, the only thing that will save them in 2024 is a disastrous SCOTUS ruling that further imperils voting rights and allows states to limit access to voting for 18-29 year old citizens.

When looking at the post midterm election voting trends it was the 18-29 voters that blunted the anticipated ‘Red Wave’. There was a decline in Black/Hispanic/Asian voters 30-65 and 65+. More Hispanic voters in ‘Red States’ voted for Republicans. The most amazing trend was that more voters 65+ went Republican with the threat of cutting Medicare and Social Security being a stated GOP goal.

It’s interesting that these people vote against their own self interests or in the case of Wisconsin, don’t show up to vote at all. If Black voters who stayed at home in Milwaukee had turned out to vote, Mandela Barnes would be the Senator-elect. If more Black voters had turned out in North Carolina perhaps Cheri Beasley would be the Senator-elect. Surely just a few more Black voters in Ohio might have gotten Tim Ryan elected to the Senate. Those are three Senate seats that would have made a huge difference during the next two years and will make a huge difference in 2024.

Allow me to address a final thought on the midterm outcomes. People think they understand numbers but they don’t understand them in terms of politics. The Democrats controlled the Senate because Biden is President and Kamala Harris is the President of the Senate. She gets to cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie on legislation.

Joe Manchin is the only Democrat elected on a statewide basis in West Virginia. This is a state that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 and in 2020. He is not a very progressive member of the Democratic caucus and in a 50/50 Senate he knows he has the power to pull back legislation he feels he cannot support back home. Let’s not forget that he also blocked legislation that would not support his personal business interests.

Kyrsten Sinema, was elected to the Senate from Arizona. She was elected with the support of Democrats of all stripes, moderates and progressives along with independents. Once in office Sinema quickly made a deal with Mitch McConnell that she would not support any change in the ‘Senate Filibuster Rule ‘ if he consented to being the ‘Minority Leader’. The Filibuster Rule allows Republicans to stifle legislation unless 60 or more Senator agree to debate it and then vote on it.

Sinema then then used her position to block major legislation like the $3 Trillion dollar social and infrastructure ‘Build Back Better Bill’ or position herself as champion of bipartisanism standing against the Biden agenda and working across the aisle to pass the watered down $1 trillion dollar ‘Infrastructure Bill’ in a way that presented herself as the lynchpin to ‘Take It Or Leave It’ bills when Biden needed wins of some kind. In doing this Sinema has become the lowest polling elected official in Arizona. If she wants to be reelected, she cannot win a Democratic primary. She cannot win a Republican primary so her recent move to ditch the Democratic Party to become an Independent is solely a move for survival. She’s daring the Democratic Party to field a challenger and risk losing the Senate seat to a Republican in a three way race.

If Black voters in the states I mentioned before had turned out, this move by Sinema would not be relevant. Democrats need to refocus on Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters from 18+. They need to target voters who vote against their own interest at the ballot box and by sitting on their butts at home the whole election cycle.

Last thing….I loved seeing Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader rushing out to welcome Raphael Warnock back to the Capitol possibly to make up for his open mic comment to Joe Biden that the Warnock campaign was going downhill in Georgia.

https://www.deseret.com/2022/12/2/23459510/black-and-latino-voters-shift-towards-republicans-in-midterms

“The “red ripple” that barely carried Republicans to a House majority in last month’s midterms contained a notable rightward shift among voters of color in some parts of the country. As Republicans continue to try to make gains among this diverse group of voters, their success in some states may point the way to a larger shift nationally.

While collectively making up less than 40% of the population, Black, Latino and Asian American communities found themselves at the center of a rightward shift in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and New York City. Though Democrats still won these voters at the national level, it was by a significantly smaller margin than in the last midterm elections in 2018, suggesting that Black, Latino and Asian American voters cannot be taken for granted by Democrats and that Republicans may still be able to build on their 2020 gains among voters of color.

Black voters remained one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies in this midterm election, even as their support for the party decreased by four percentage points, from 90% to 86%, since the last midterm elections in 2018, according to exit polls conducted by the National Election Pool and Edison Research.

Democrats saw a significantly larger loss among Latino voters. In 2022, 60% of Latino voters cast their ballots for Democrats, down from 69% in 2018. At 39%, the share of Latino voters who cast their ballots for the GOP in the 2022 midterms was the largest in two decades, and 10 percentage points more than in 2018. The shift was most dramatic among Latino men — Democrats won Latino men by 29 percentage points in 2018 but by just 8 percentage points in 2022. 

But it could be that the demographic most eager to shed their historically blue affiliation for red was Asian Americans, whose support for Democrats dropped precipitously since the last midterms, possibly due to concerns over rising crime and changes to the education system. Nationally, the share of Asian American voters who cast their vote for Democrats fell from 77% in 2018 to 58% in 2022. “

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-record-high-young-people-voted-midterms.html

“Implications for 2024 and beyond

Millions more young people born after 1996 will reach voting age by 2024. Their political power will only grow in the years to come, while those over the age of 65 will make up a declining share of the population and the electorate.

What that shift means for election results will depend on how political parties and other political and civic groups engage young people.

In recent years, most young people have voted for Democrats. This is a shift from just 20 years ago, when voters under 30 split their vote fairly evenly between Democrat and Republican candidates.

But Republicans lag behind Democrats when it comes to directly communicating with young people. Just less than 1 in 3 people aged 18 to 29 said they heard from the Republican Party or the Donald Trump campaign in the month before Election Day in 2020. Half of young people, conversely, said they heard from the Democratic Party or Joe Biden’s campaign.

There are other actions and policies that could get more people under 30 to the polls.

Preregistration, which allows young people to register to vote at age 16 so they’re ready to cast a ballot once they turn 18, can increase youth turnout, but it’s only available in 16 states. Other policies and efforts by election administrators to get more young people to vote can vary widely across states, leading to major differences in participation. In 2020, youth turnout varied from 32% in South Dakota to 67% in New Jersey.

Young people’s estimated 27% turnout rate in 2022 marks a near-record for an age group that has historically participated at lower rates in midterm elections. Whether this is a long-term trend or not will depend on whether communities and political groups implement the changes that research suggests can lead to sustained increases in youth voter turnout.”

When a Black minister spoke out against the Walker candidacy last month, the right wing yelled about the violation of IRS regulations against openly advocating political positions from the pulpit. The regulation says a church or charity could forfeit their tax exempt status by being openly and flagrantly political. Never mind that White ministers do this all the time.

Some White ministers even call for political violence from their pulpits but few call for their tax exempt status to be revoked when they commit such acts. The hypocrisy of the religious right is not surprising. The thing that befuddles me is that Black activists groups don’t call them out for their duplicity.

Imagine how mostly White Evangelicals have openly sided with Walker over an ordained Black minister. Imagine Walker referencing (or inappropriately referencing) the Bible one week and Vampires/Werewolves the next, when he is flashing fake police badges to validate his lie that he has the same arresting powers as a sworn police officers. Yet Evangelicals have not issues with Walker or the underlying racist rationale for supporting him. It is helpful to understand when and how the role of religious leaders became entrenched in modern day politics.

Aside from the fact that the early settlers in the new world were puritans (Christians with extreme beliefs), along with indentured slaves, and prisoners, religious doctrine was imposed on the inhabitants of the Americas by Columbus and all invading Europeans who followed. History shows that Christianity, as we know it, was spread by genocidal, colonizing, grifting Europeans going back to before the crusades of 1095. Murderous White Europeans brought the grace of Christianity and pandemic level diseases to the indigenous spiritual peoples that existed in the western hemisphere upon their arrival. Though those cultures had some rather barbaric religious traditions of their own, they did not include hemispheric wide genocide and dehumanizing colonization.

The pretext, for dogmatic racism is rooted in the practices of all the Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). Christianity was later formalized when it was adopted most notably by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. He was the first Roman ruler (Italian) to convert to Christianity. As these religions moved across Africa, they all made it a practice to enslave enslave Black Africans.

“Forcing Religion on the Indigenous?

Another achievement that Columbus is awarded is the spread of Christianity, more specifically, the spread of Catholicism. Coming from a religious nation, Spain; the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, were in full support of the spread of Catholicism. Many Catholic figureheads, including Pope Leo XIII praised Columbus for bringing the truth to the Natives. Although the spread of religion can be seen as a good thing, his actions were harmful towards the Indigenous people. Columbus forced the Natives to convert to Christianity and to begin practicing this new religion against their desires.

Who’s to say that the Natives wanted to practice Catholicism? In order to advance his personal gains, Columbus disregarded the interest of the Natives and forced them to practice a foreign religion. “By his toil . . . hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed from savagery to gentleness and humanity, and, greatest of all, by the acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the Author, they have been recalled from destruction to eternal life.” “The Catholic Venture of Christopher Columbus.” Catholicism.org, 10 Oct 2016,

The idea that Columbus did the Natives a favor by bringing the Christian religion to them in a very brutal and inhumane manner is totally ignored. This is much the same as as the brutality and harsh consequences of racist White Christian Nationalism is enacted today. Pro-Columbus advocates continue to praise him for his actions without the slightest regard for pain and suffering the wave of genocide that followed caused. The Natives are painted as savages that needed to be shown the truth of Jesus’s love. This idea gave justification to the brutality of murderous and other dehumanizing criminal actions taken by Columbus and other conquering, treasure seeking, and colonizing Europeans enacted.

I lay a premise here for a point of view that will not be popular. As I watched the recent Senatorial contest in Georgia, I was struck by the struggle for political office, that two Black American men experienced. Both both victims of the harsh imposition of Christianity on their persons and how that plays out in their differing characters. First I will admit that I am agnostic. I reject all Abrahamic religions which have historically been utilized in the colonization and enslavement of Nubian and other Black Africans.

Semitic Judaism, Arab Islamism, and European Christianity were the basis to colonize and enslave Black Africans for centuries. Abrahamic religions have not been kind to indigenous peoples and people of darker skin around the world. I would also point out that most dark skinned people in eastern cultures, such as India, New Zealand, or Australia are also treated unjustly. Dark skinned Africans, including those referred to as ‘Nubians’, have been colonized and enslaved under the Abrahamic religions, by Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, and Europeans for centuries.

It is with this backdrop that I took notice of the two Black candidates for the US Senate seat in Georgia. Both profess to be Christian. One is an ordained Baptist Minister and the other claims to be a born again evangelical Christian. One man has character that is above reproach the other man has a history with episode after episode of flawed character issues and highly questionable judgement.

In Georgia, White voters are told that the Black ordained minister who is a Democrat is less trustworthy to the cause of White Christians maintaining power than the handpicked Black Republican who is an habitual lair and violent abuser that White Evangelical voters found to be acceptable because they see no difference between the two Black men. One is no better than the other since the man of greater character and less flawed was not likely to conform to their desire to retain political power.

It strikes me that both men embrace a religious doctrine that was beat into the psyche of our enslaved African ancestors as well as the aboriginal peoples White Europeans colonized wherever they went. The brutal imposition of the Abrahamic religious doctrines has sadly become embedded into the DNA of their descendants today. It is ingrained in us along with the violence and haltered that European White Christians used as the building blocks of culture they instilled all over the colonized world. Although the two candidates could not be more different in their personal values, those values are still framed by the racially imposed doctrine of European Christian White Nationalism.

One man reflects the ideals of Christian attributes and the other reflects what appears to be its darker attributes. But make no mistake the doctrine was conceived and spread to make any person of color struggle to assert their humanity, seek justice, and enjoy the true freedom of basic equality within a truly diverse society.

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

Herschel Walker just released a disgusting ‘Anti-Transgender’ ad for his senate campaign on the heels of the shooting at a ‘Gay Club’ in Colorado. In the ad Walker is sitting next to female college swimmer, Riley Gaines, who provides a narrative that suggests that she was cheated out of winning a swimming competition because of a ‘Trans’ swimmer, Lia Thomas, whom she describes as a biological male. Walker listens to her story and ends the commercial by saying something like, “And that’s wrong.”

However, because of his ‘Trump-like’ penchant for lying, there is more to the story of the misleading Walker ad. You see Riley Gaines did not lose her competition to Lia Thomas. They tied. They didn’t tie for gold, silver, or bronze positions. (I only use these references to make a point.) They tied for fifth place. This means that four other biological females beat them both.

I am reminded of the Alan Bakke Affirmative Action case in the early 1970’s. Back then, to address a historical wrong some colleges used racial quotas in their admission practices. They set aside a small percentage of admission slots to allow minority students to attend their institutions. Bakke, who did not earn admission among the general white population of students to a medical school sued charging that minority students who were admitted were not as qualified as he was.

So looking at this, let’s say 50 slots were available. Let’s say 42 of those slots went to White students and the remaining 8 went to other applicants of different races. Bakke’s application was not as strong as 42 other White applicants, so he sued claiming that one or two minority applicants had been given a slot that he was entitled to have because they were not as academically as strong.

In the same light Ms. Gaines lost to four other biological women in her swimming competition and she tied with the ‘Transgender’ swimmer. But her real issue is this. There was a trophy for the fifth place swimmer of the competition. The trophy was given to Lia Thomas. Ms. Gaines is upset that she did not receive what amounts to a participation trophy at the competition.

A trophy eventually made its way to Ms. Gaines, but her presentation was misleading in suggesting that she lost the competition to a biological male. She lost her event to four other young women. This is nothing new. Republicans have been producing ads that flat out lied all during the midterm campaign. Walker has been committed to lying from the outset.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/swimmer-who-tied-lia-thomas-taken-aback-in-trophy-handling/

Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will not seek to be the Minority Leader in the 2023 Congress. It has also been announced from the two other members of House Leadership, Steny Hoyer will also step down and James Clyburn will seek to hold the fourth ranking position, assist, “As we Democrats set about the work of retaking the majority in 2024 and re-electing our President, I humbly ask for your support to remain at the leadership table as the Assistant Democratic Leader, to work alongside our new generation of Democratic leaders which I hope to be Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar,” Clyburn wrote. 

Just two day ago, I commented that the Gen Z participation in the midterm elections helped Democrats avoid major loses. Democrats maintained control of the Senate but lost control of the House by less than six seats. I argued that Democrats would have to bring new blood to leadership. However, I am surprised that this move has come about so quickly.

At the moment it is suggested that Reps. Hakeem Jeffries D-N.Y. could become the next Minority Leader and possibly future Speaker of the House. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) are speculated to round new Democratic House Leadership team beginning in 2023. This also means new faces might also be assigned to the top partisan position of ‘Ranking Member’ of the various Congressional Committees. The Chairmanship of these committees goes to the party that controls the chamber. So no Democrat will Chair a House Committee until 2025 and that is only if they win back control of the House.

Democrats will be powerless to stop MAGA inspired investigations of any kind. The only thing they might possibly do is challenge the shrieking disinformation that is bound to come out of MAGA led investigations for the next two years. It is my hope that someone like Alexandria Ocaciao-Cortez is given the ranking member position on the House Oversite and Reform Committee that will be chaired by Jim Jordan. She is smart enough and will confront Jim Jordan the way the late Elijah Cummings challenged his Republican counterpart before he passed in 2019. When he became the Chair of the Committee he was one of the most respected and beloved members of Congress.

It’s time Democrats unleash the next generation to respond to the MAGA disinformation and lies. But let me be clear before the uninformed start griping. The leadership moves are planned. Before some think Progressives were frozen out , understand that they went along with these moves. (See Politico link below ‘Dems get in array on future leadership after Pelosi departs’)

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/18/house-dems-leadership-roles-pelosi-00069334

OK we can enjoy that deep breath and that sigh of relief. The mainstream media bought into the GOP gaslighting and spent months telling you about the coming ‘Red Wave’ in hopes that thinking people would become demoralized and not turn out to vote. The good news is that Democrats have been given a clear path forward and Republicans are in a burning building that is likely to collapse.

Let’s keep in mind that not only did DJT endorse all the 2020 election denying losers of the 2022 midterms, but so did all the 2024 Presidential candidate wannabes. That means DeSantis, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Rubio were also rebuffed by the voters all over the country.by saying no to more than 300 election denying candidates from holding important offices. They blocked those who want to undermine our political system from inside access to the machinery that allows it to function.

Even though it appears Democrats will loose control of the US House of Representatives, Democrats will maintain control of the Senate which means all the clown theatrics that will come under the McCarthy Speakership will be meaningless because any partisan legislation will be ‘DOA’ upon arrival to the Senate and will go straight into the compost heap. Any of the threaten impeachments won’t matter, any bills to do away with Social Security and Medicare will be used as fertilizer to grow plants in Capitol Hill offices.

However, there was an extremely important message for Democrats in this election. Get new blood in leadership. It’s time to retire many of the old faces and move some younger more compelling voices into leadership positions on the Federal, State, County, and Municipal levels. Progressives need a new voice that is not Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. .Some names to consider are Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal,.Congressman Ro Khanna, Congressman Jamie Raskin,  Congressman David Cicilline, Congressman Ruben Gallego, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, and Congresswoman Katie Porter, if she wins reelection.

The fact is, Democrats lost the over 30 demographic of White men and women, urban and rural voters. But they got enough support from White Independents to compliment the overwhelming youth vote they received. Gen X and Gen Z voters now outnumber Baby Boomer voters and they are tired of the failed trickle down economics, the disastrously punishing impact of ignoring climate change, and the move to embrace the racist White Christian Nationalist theocratic authoritarianism of MAGA-world/TeaParty/Q anon.

So what dangers lie ahead? Well we have the racist White Christian Nationalist theocratic authoritarianism of MAGA-world/TeaParty/Q anon/SCOTUS majority hell bent on trying to enforce this dogma despite the will of the majority of Americans. In 2023 they will consider a case out of North Carolina Moore v Harper: (“The doctrine at the heart of the case is known as the “independent state legislature” theory – the idea that, under the Constitution, only the legislature has the power to regulate federal elections, without interference from state courts. Proponents of the theory point to the Constitution’s elections clause, which gives state legislatures the power to set the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.”

Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist was an early proponent of the theory. In a concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that halted the recount in Florida in the presidential election, Rehnquist (in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) outlined his view that the state court’s recount conflicted with the deadlines set by the state legislature for the election.

The issue returned to the Supreme Court in 2020, when the justices turned down a request by Pennsylvania Republicans to fast-track their challenge to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that required state election officials to count mail-in ballots received within three days of Election Day. In an opinion that accompanied the court’s order, Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch) suggested that the state supreme court’s decision to extend the deadline for counting ballots likely violated the Constitution.”)

It means that SCOTUS will consider a way to back door the strategy DJT wanted to employ on January 6, 2020. S0 while we successfully fought off the major threats in the 2022 midterms, the six ideologues making up the SCOTUS majority have decided to actually consider nullification of American’s right to vote. They set this up by allowing states to gerrymander their legislative districts so that a majority of the most extreme partisan candidates can win, primarily in red states even if they have fewer votes. I have been commenting on this issue since the 2010 Census midterm Tea Party ‘Red Tide.'”.

Now many of the MAGA cultists in red states office are talking about raising the voting age to 21. There is no letting up because the religious MAGA-minded racists will be relentless in their efforts to maintain their perceived right to power. The only choice for the Democratic party is to give the largest potential voting block in the country more reasons to vote for them. This means showing superior undeniable leadership and the bravery to stand up to the cowardly bullies of the Republican/MAGA/TeaParty/White Christian Nationalist/corporate/wealthy/billionaire anti American insurrectionists.

Justices will hear case that tests power of state legislatures to set rules for federal elections