Racial Injustice

Joe Biden Needs To Use Executive Orders Vigorously To Overcome Stalemate In Congress

Executive Orders have been part of American government, and often are controversial.

It is clear that President Elect Joe Biden will use this authority extensively to backtrack and reverse many of the Executive Orders put forth by outgoing President Donald Trump.

This use of executive orders has been escalating in recent years as Congress has become more difficult and intransigent, forcing Presidents to take action, which sometimes is challenged in the Courts, but often is not successful in negating what Presidents have initiated.

It seems clear that Biden is likely to use executive orders on such matters as

Climate Change
Covid 19 Pandemic
Racial Injustice
Economic Depression
Health Care Reform
Immigration Reform

There will be opposition, but Joe Biden has done better in popular vote support than when Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush were elected, and these are crisis times, which calls for strong leadership by the 46th President!

The Ten Most Disgraceful United States Senators In The 116th Congress

The United States Senate is a great institution, which has had 1,984 members in its 232 year history since 1789.

It has had its heroes and champions, but also some of the worst demagogues and villains imaginable.

As we come up to the 2020 elections, this is a time to look at who this author and blogger considers to be the ten most disgraceful US Senators in the 116th Congress.

There will be disagreement on any such list, of course, but this author and blogger sees the top ten most disgraceful US Senators to be all Republicans, unconcerned about the COVID 19 Pandemic, the economic collapse in what is fast becoming the Second Great Depression, and the racial injustice that prevails in our society.

So here goes the list, with ranking of the level of evil being attempted below:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—who has shown complete hypocrisy on the Supreme Court regarding Merrick Garland in 2016 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, and is someone who should be defeated for reelection in November, but in Kentucky it is hard to get people to understand the depth of his venality on so many matters and issues. Were he to lose next month, it would be a massive victory of major proportions!

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—who has a much tougher challenge to reelection, and has gained the enmity of many people who see him as having totally abandoned any sense of ethics or morality regarding President Donald Trump, including allowing his former friendship with the late Senator John McCain to be thrown aside with abandon, since McCain’s passing in 2018.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas—who this author and blogger thought in 2016 was more dangerous and terrifying than Donald Trump, and who remains a truly evil, dangerous, egocentric threat, and with plans to run for President in 2024.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas—also seen as certain to run for President in 2024, and perceived as particularly dangerous in his views and outlook on just about any major issue that arises.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin—who has been an outrage and totally corrupt and manipulative, and makes one wonder why his state chose him twice for the Senate in 2010 and 2016 over their exceptional Senator Russ Feingold.

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri—who is the youngest Senator at present, having defeated Claire McCaskill in 2018, and with grand ambitions to run for President in 2024, with a very hard Right set of values that makes him totally terrifying to any sane person!

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky— who is a fake libertarian and total phony, but seems likely to run for President again in 2024, and one wonders why anyone would go to this privately licensed eye doctor, who is not accredited by national organizations which he has repudiated, and who expresses the weirdest ideas imaginable, not impressing anyone who has intelligence!

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma—who is running for reelection at age 86, and rejects science and climate change, and if he survives, would be one of just a few who would be in office in their 90s, a horrific thought! Oklahoma can do better than this, but unlikely Inhofe will lose next month, sadly!

Senator Rick Scott of Florida—-a felon who got away with Medicare and Medicaid fraud, and was elected twice as Governor and now to the Senate by less than one percent of the vote each time, and who did great harm in the Sunshine State when Governor, and is often called “Lord Voldemort” of the Harry Potter series, as Scott resembles him in appearance, but without the smashed nose, lol!

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee—the only woman in the group, but with a long held reputation as an extremely nasty, mean spirited Congresswoman, who sadly was elected to succeed Bob Corker, who was a reasonable conservative Republican and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, who turned against Donald Trump, and retired in 2018.

I welcome commentary and viewpoints on this list!

The Horrific Racial Record Of Florida: From Rosewood To Trayvon Martin!

Florida is in the center of controversy again, due to the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman a month ago.

This is another example of African Americans being killed without a sense of justice in a state with a horrific record historically on the issue of race.

We like to think, particularly those of us who live in the Sunshine State, that Florida has come a long way from the “Old South” mentality of the past.

But in actual fact, much of the state, north of Palm Beach County, is still perceived as different from South Florida, with an attitude and mentality more like Alabama or Georgia, if not Mississippi! And even South Florida has its ghosts of prejudice and racism!

This is the state that has tried to hide its racial past, both then and even now!

This is the state of Rosewood, a black settlement on the Gulf of Mexico, 140 miles west of Sanford, where the town was destroyed and multiple numbers of blacks were killed by a white mob in 1923, simply on the suspicion that a black man had assaulted a white woman. This was a well hidden story until recent years, when the few survivors were paid compensation for what they went through.

This is the state that in 1934 saw one of the most heinous lynchings of a black man, Claude Neal, in this case in the Florida Panhandle, who was castrated, tortured for hours with tremendous cruelty, and his fingers displayed as souvenirs.

This is the state where a spokesman for the NAACP was killed, along with his wife in 1951, by a bomb exploding under their bed, because they were trying to register voters and get equal wages for black teachers.

This is the state of a lynching by Fort Lauderdale police officers in 1960, and of Miami police killing a motorcyclist in 1979, arrested for speeding, but being handcuffed and beaten with nightsticks until he expired.

In all of the above cases and more, juries found the perpetrators not guilty, or there was no trial at all.

Florida has a lot to answer for, and this Trayvon Martin case may be going down the same path, as George Zimmerman was not questioned by the police at the time; he was not tested for drug use; he was not given medical care for his wounds, which might have explained what really happened a month ago; Treyvon Martin’s body was not identified as more than John Doe for a few days, as the police failed to call the last callers on his cell phone; and the police department now seems to be out to trash Trayvon Martin for his youthful shortcomings, rather than look at what George Zimmerman did against the statements of the 911 contact who told him to stop interfering and leave it to the police to investigate the purpose of Trayvon Martin being in the gated community in Sanford.

Florida will take a long time, if ever, to recover from the damage done to its reputation by yet another racial bias case, nearly as heinous as its long disgraceful racial history, as outlined above!