Columbia Daily Spectator

Now, is the time to begin lobbying Congress and the new administration for action on our causes: Health Care, Gun Reform, Environmental Protection, Racism amelioration, Etc.

Under-65s will only receive a COVID-19 Vaccine if they are considered to be vulnerable in health. For all those who are not yet receiving a vaccine - the most scientifically evidenced way to protect yourself from COVID-19 is to eat anti-viral foods and engage in a moderate daily exercise routine. DISCOVER THE SCIENCE NOW @ https://KnowledgeIsForEveryone.com - God Bless New York!

Debunking 25 left-wing and Arab myths from a left-wing Arab perspective I'm left-wing and Arab myself, but no, I don't believe this conflict is really a dispute over land https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/debunking-25-left-wing-and-arab-myths-from-a-left-wing-arab-perspective/?fbclid=IwAR29TPt4x9hhmNxFcZQTe4WFXky1hq4eY9jQJhUoEPXFDGAR35SXyEmMQI0

Truth Forever on the Scaffold By John B. Smith The quote “Truth forever on the scaffold wrong forever on the throne” is from the poem “Truth And Falsehood” by James Russell Lowell. Almost a sermon these lyrics from 1840 rings even truer today than when first spoked. Trying to unlock the truth about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I filed a partition with the Chairperson of the Congressional Black Caucus, US Representative Karen Bass, requesting that Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi schedule a vote to unlock the investigation report from the House of Representatives investigation in 1978. However, there has been no response or action from either Chairwoman Bass or Speaker Pelosi. I made this request to the Congressional Black Caucus because it comprises every representative elected from the majority of African American communities across the United States. If African American Representatives are unwilling to respond promptly and affirmatively to such a consequential and critically important request, with truth on the scaffold in America, the outcome of the November 3rd election will not reverse the conditions that brought Donald Trump to power. Whoopi Goldberg, a former comedian, and actress, now host “The View,” asked rhetorically during a recent show discussing the current Constitutional crisis created by Donald Trump’s legal team and the Republican Party pushing lies in courts and to the public, “Why is this happening in America?” My answer is that “truth has no relevance today in America!” I say further that when the House of Representatives voted to lock the truth away before the American people knew its conclusion in 1978 and again in 2003, it put truth in jail and allowed lies to run free. That vote kept the American people from knowing the extent of the federal government involvement in Dr. King’s murder. Hiding the truth has allowed people like Donald Trump and his Republican enablers to lie to the American people and not only get away with lying, but lying is justified because they are to protect the American people. The coup de grace that illustrates my point came back in March after Bob Witworth’s interview with Donald Trump became public. Trump justified lying to the American People by claiming, “I lied because I didn’t want panic to people.” Those in the US House that voted to seal the report on Dr. King’s assassination use the same lie to justify, locking the truth in jail each time, and white people accepted those lies because they did not want to know the truth. Consequently, lying to the American people as their means to accomplish political goals became the modus operandi of the Republican Party. However, the killing blow to American democracy was delivered by evangelicals Christians, who took lying to a whole new level. Today, evangelical Christians are Trump’s base. They are backing his lies with worship services, prayers, speaking in tongue, and even mad-hatter laughter sessions, imploring God to intervene on Trump’s behalf. Although they claim to believe in the Bible while following the scriptures, their blind obedience to Trump’s lies is more indicative of “idolaters” described in biblical writings. My example is Moses and the Children of Israel and comes from the scriptures of Exodus. Sending Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt and gave Moses the powers to liberate them. However, pharaoh refused to accept God’s truth, spoken by Moses. God told Moses he would send plagues upon Egypt, and the last would be the angel of death. God instructed Moses to tell true believers to shelter themselves in their homes and put blood upon the doorpost. What is most significant here is the plague did not kill only Egyptians, but anyone that did not follow God’s instructions. Evangelical Christians, who are supposed to know COVID-19 is a plague, should know God works in mysterious ways. God gave protection from the “angel of death to those that put lamb’s blood above their door.” “Idolaters” defied God’s warning from Moses, as did pharaoh, until his firstborn was taken. This biblical message has real implications for America, not only because of the plague, but the lies “Idolaters” told to preserve the power they gained under pharaoh. So, I return to the present where evangelicals are wholehearted worshipping at the altar of Donald Trump, where lies are the keys to the kingdom. However, evangelicals are not the problem, per se; it is the lies they are spewing and supporting to serve Trump and Republican interests. This liar’s parade marched across America, pushing the nation's acceptance of lies. The government offered to explain Dr. King’s assassination, and white people believing not knowing the truth was best for America. Consequently, like the Children of Israel, the American people’s only salvation is to be allowed to know how they were lied to, and the Congressional Report unlocked and truth let out of jail because only truth can defeat a lie. More lies, no matter how well-intended, will breed more lies, and Trump’s fight to stay in the White House is all the proof an intelligent person needs. But with COVID-19 slaughtering Americans, like the plague in Egypt, the only real vaccine against the liar’s environment that has infected America is truth. For instance, Georgia’s appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler, after dragging remarks Rev. Raphael Warnock sermon from way back in 2011 also used them to pull Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar into the Georgia Senate race. Loffler used her “dog whistle,” declaring Omar should be “expelled from Congress” because she supports Rev. Warnock. Loeffler and David Perdue are trying to draw anyone and anything into Georgia’s Senate race to cover over the fact she does not have a record on which to run. Both Loeffler and Perdue are trying to hide their scandalous “money-grubbing” as “inside traders” by attacking their opponents rather than telling Georgia’s voters what they have accomplished in the Senate. This duo used their position on Senate committees to learn information, make trades, and buy stocks that took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown. These two insider traders—Loeffler and Perdue—acted against Senate rules, but more than that, it is illegal; of course, Republicans looked the other way. So without any issues to run on Loeffler had to go all the way back to 2011 to find something to try and create an issue hoping to draw attention away from her not having a record, with her non-scandal to taint Rev. Warnock. Then there is David Perdue, the other “insider trader/money-grubber” and should have been convicted of malfeasance, as an insider trading. Still, more than that, Perdue is a renowned hypocrite that used his “dog whistle,” missed pronouncing Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris’ name, who is someone he saw in the Senate on the few occasions he was there. Perdue’s performance was part of Donald Trump’s dog and pony super spreader COVID-19 show in Georgia, which helped to create Georgia’s current coronavirus spiking, as Trump hides out safely in the White House, refusing to do anything to address the pandemic. Reid Wilson’s article “Georgia” Perdue-Ossoff: runoff a legacy of the Solid South” for The Hill gives some history on Republicans’ strategy supporting Trump’s denial of losing to President-elect Joe Biden. However, I looked back even further to its origin, the election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Hayes trailed Tilden by more than 260,000 popular votes. Preliminary returns showed Tilden had 184 electoral votes to Hayes’s 165 (one shy of the majority needed to win the election), with 19 electoral votes from three states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) and one elector from Oregon (awarded Tilden originally) still in doubt. The US Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the dispute. Hayes made a deal with Southerners to end Reconstruction (remove Union troops from the South and disenfranchise former slaves) to win 185 to 184 in the Electoral College. Trump and Republicans are angling to hook just such an outcome by creating doubt about the vote on November 3rd. The lies from the 1876 election trapped descendants of American slavery in their current second class status, the minds of white people. Hayes’ deal with Southerners ended the progress former slaves were making, similar to today, following emancipation, 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, and Reconstruction. Southerners could not repeal all these amendments, and the US Supreme could not outlaw all of them, so the Court came up with Plessy v. Ferguson—separate but equal—to disenfranchise descendants of American slavery. Plessy v. Ferguson denied former slaves’ access to courts, as Southern politicians concocted two fictitious concepts, “interposition and nullification.” They used to justify disfranchising descendants of American slavery through segregation. “Interposition,” said southern legislatures had the right to position or interpose themselves between the US Constitution and former slaves to protect the rights of white citizens from any illegal actions of the federal government. This made-up concept allowed Southern Legislatures to nullify the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments and the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. These Amendments and the Civil Rights Bill were never repealed or outlawed. They were simply “nullified.” “Nullification and interposition” explain why the US Supreme Court could not throw Byron Allen’s suit against Comcast out of court. But ruled, “Its unanimous judgment sent his case back to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for further clarification on discrimination,” because the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 has always been the law. Southern states used “nullification and interposition” to justify blocking former slaves access to equal justice and other rights granted under the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is current law.” Its passage protected “the Civil Rights of all Persons in the United States, and furnishes the Means of their vindication, by declaring that all people born in the United States who are not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” A similar provision (called the Citizenship Clause) was written into the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared also that “any citizen has the same right that a white citizen has to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” Additionally, the act guaranteed to all citizens the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, like punishment, pains, and penalties... Persons who denied these rights on account of race or previous enslavement are guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is what Republicans are really fighting to keep alive the belief that black people are not actually legal citizens of the United States. Republicans are trying to re-impose “interposition and nullification” as they did with “separate but equal.” This strategy worked during the early 1900s only because Democrats elected Woodrow Wilson, who, like Rutherford B. Hayes, was willing to disregard the US Constitution when it came to black Americans. Trump and Republicans are trying to revive “interposition and nullification” with their election fraud claims if they can get states to go along with the lies they are spreading through the news media. Even though Mitch McConnell was able to pack the federal court system with his judges, state court judges are not going along with their scheme to bring their trumped-up charges of voter fraud into federal courts. The stakes in their attempted coup are so high that Lindsey Graham put his credibility on the line, trying to intimidate Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Back in the old Solid South Graham’s tactic would have worked. But, state judges and legislative officials across the United States who are standing firm and backing the US Constitutional are protecting America’s democracy. Following the bizarre media events of this and last week from the Republican National Committee endorsing the wild statements made during Giuliani’s hilarious and lie-filled press conference falsely claimed that Trump not only won the presidential election but did it in a “landslide.” Republicans then doubled down on their reckless attempted coup. The RNC left little doubt that the Republican Party had gone full MAGA when it shared a video of one of the president’s lawyers, Sidney Powell, indignantly spreading misinformation about election fraud. “American patriots are fed up with corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government. And we are going to take this country back. We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down. We are going to clean this mess up,” Powell continued, “President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.” In another bizarre press statement but telegraphing where Trump and Republicans are heading, Kayleigh McEnany blared, “Trump's path to victory is the Supreme Court, exposing 'systemic' voter fraud.” Topping this charade off, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “He’s ready to work with any U.S. leader, but still isn’t ready to recognize the election victory of Joe Biden. How chilling is this? Vladimir Putin, an autocrat Trump, is known to admire, stuck his mouth into the chaos going on in America. Next, will he take sides and talk of intervening on Trump’s behalf to prevent a Biden coup? An even weirder remark came from former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who weighed in on the Trump coup, declaring “Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his Mideast peace deals.” However, US District Court Judge Matthew Brann in a scathing ruling, criticized Republicans for their lack of evidence, as the Trump campaign argued to potentially disenfranchise every voter in the commonwealth who cast a ballot in the 2020 elections—nearly 7 million. That ruling and the 30 something other rulings against Trump’s is why I see his continued efforts to change the election’s outcome as an attempted coup. American patriots are the only thing standing between American democracy and the coup Donald Trump and Republicans are attempting to perpetrate. Republicans are relying on lies to trump the truth, and that is why it so important the US House of Representatives let the truth out of jail by voting to open Dr. King’s assassination file to public view. It will show what Republicans are willing to do to get their way when they do not have the votes to support their aims. President-elect Joe Biden is right in believing that Trump’s efforts to overturn the people’s will in the election will fail if courts continue turning away the insufficient and crumbling case that Trump’s lawyers are trying to build to prevent Pres. Biden from assuming his rightful position. But the President-elect is incorrect if he thinks Trump’s legal assault on his election and on American democracy is the principal problem he faces. Trump is poisoning the atmosphere for Biden as well as American’s confidence in its electoral process. The libel, the calumnies, the discrediting of Mr. Biden’s legitimacy and of American democracy will persist unless he tackles Trump and Republicans head on now and prevents Trump from crippling his presidency before it begins. However, let me be very clear as to what I believe is happening in America. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are definitely engaged in a coup based on their claim that President-elect Joe Biden was elected by illegal votes. My belief is based on the fact Trump believes that “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” which is how he has run his businesses. He is in possession of the White House and will not give it up voluntarily. Trump will make any argument, no matter the facts or truth of them; the idea is to maintain possession. Republicans are complicit by making the argument “Trump has the right to make sure “every legal vote” is counted and contest all illegal votes and make sure they are not counted.” Their calculated statement is an attempt to buy time and push his occupancy of the White House beyond January 20th, never conceding he was defeated. Then the Secret Service, which is loyal to Trump, has to be trusted to force him to leave the White House. The only guarantee the American people have is that the US military remains loyal to the US Constitution and its leaders must state now unequivocally, if the Secret Service does not do its job and escort Donald Trump from the White, they will sept in to protect the United States Constitution and insure a peaceful transfer of power. I opened with Exodus, and I close on Psalm Chapter 40 verse 4, “Blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.”