Friday, May 31, 2024

the great pussy grabber’s pecker was convicted by an extraordinarily brave jury of his peers in his hometown of tampering the 2016 presidential election

  

    After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1968, I clerked for a United States District Judge in Birmingham, Alabama, who presided over every federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama. For a year and a half, I watched many federal prosecutions in his courtroom. I watched very good federal prosecutors and defense lawyers do their thing, I sat in my judge's chambers with him and federal prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers, as they discussed cases before him. It was like getting a 2nd law school education.

    Yesterday, an extraordinarily brave jury of Donald Trump's peers knowingly risked their and their families’ lives in Trump's hometown and convicted him on all 34 counts of tampering the 2016 presidential election. Each member of the New York state court jury then was polled by the trial judge and affirmed his/her vote to convict. I think the definition of patriot needs to be reexamined by every American, for those 12 jurors set the gold standard. 

    In my sprit code, 3 is the number for the Holy Spirit, and 4 is the number for politics, and 7 is the number for God on an event or person.

    Now the New York state court trial judge will determine the sentence. If I were the trial judge, who knows his and his family's lives are at grave risk, I would consider the jury convicted Trump of tampering the 2016 election. I would consider Trump got himself 4 years in the White House. The maximum sentence I can impose is 4 years. I would think poetic justice requires sentencing Trump to 4 years in a New York state maximum security prison. I would not stay incarceration, but would leave it up to New York state appellate court judges, who know their and their families lives are at risk, to decide whether or not the homeboy remains in prison during the appeal process.

    On appeal, the finder of fact, the jury, is not challenged by an appellate court, unless there simply were no facts that would support a conviction, which is so rare that I never heard of a jury finding of fact in a criminal prosecution being overturned on appeal.

    On appeal, the New York appellate courts will determine whether the trial judge handled the case properly, interpreted the law correctly, admitted evidence correctly, instructed the jury on the law correctly, and whether the trial judge imposed a sentence allowed by New York state law.

    If the New York appellate courts affirms the conviction, Trump can ask the  United States Supreme Court to review and overturn his conviction and sentence. For the Supreme Court to side with Trump, it will have to find the New York state court criminal prosecution violated Trump’s rights provided by Acts of Congress and/or the United States Constitution and Amendments thereto.

    Of course, there is always the possibility that the Supreme Court Justices, who know their and their families' lives are at grave risk, will invent whatever they want to invent to let Trump prevail. 

    If Trump loses his appeals and is incarcerated, he can be on the presidential ballot, and if he is elected, he can serve as president from prison.

    Why the Founding Fathers did not put into the United States Constitution that a convicted felon cannot be president of the United States causes me to wonder if the Founding Fathers themselves were felons who were not caught and convicted.

    Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine such a bizarre spectacle in an American courtroom. If asked to sum it up in a nutshell, I’d say what I told a friend over dinner last night. She grew up on Long Island and worked in New York City and is very familiar with Donald Trump. I told her that Trump’s pecker did him in, and he has nobody to blame for that but his pecker. Perhaps Wille Nelson and Johnny Cash somehow can team up and write a song about that.

    She texted me las night, and …

She
We are still all fk’ed!!! Not negating credit to the jury or judge at tis point, It is all a slap on the wrist. Just s small progress report.

Me
The sentence will define the degree of the penalty, but there is no erasing 12 men and women convicted him,

She
??? No erasing?

Me
They branded him.

She
Yes, but the greater whitewashed still believe. It is their religious connection.that is a larger subject on the uneducated and entertained with little self esteem. That is a larger subject on the uneducated and entertained while little self esteem that depend on a character to complete their self. In any case I believe the government is rotten from its roots just hiding behind the word ‘democracy".
After all, someone in mail for for selling weed can’t run for president.
Simplistic speaking.

Me
Agree re democracy noise and your priceless psychoanalysis.
Someone in jail for selling weed can run for president, and if elected, can serve from behind bars.
As for the religious right who see only what they want to see, the religious left is no different. They see only what they want to see.
Something precious and priceless happened yesterday. 12 men and women risked their and their families’ lives and convicted Donald Tump in his hometown of criminally tampering the presidential election. He got 4 years in the White House. If I were the tiral judge, I’d give him 4 years in a New York maximum security prison.

    For those who prefer mainstream reporting:

Reuters
May 30, 2024 9:44 PM UTC
Jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts at hush money trial
Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime on Thursday when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
After deliberations over two days, the 12-member jury announced it had found Trump guilty on all 34 counts he faced. Unanimity was required for any verdict.
Trump watched the jurors dispassionately as they were polled to confirm the guilty verdict.
Justice Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, days before the July 15 start of the Republican National Convention expected to formally nominate Trump for president.
Merchan thanked the jurors for their service. “Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. The choice is yours,” Merchan said.
The verdict plunges the United States into unexplored territory ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, when Trump, the Republican candidate, will try to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden. 
 
1440 Daily Digest
May 31, 2024
Trump Criminal Conviction
A New York jury yesterday found former President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts related to falsifying business records in the hush-money trial against him. The news makes him the first former US president convicted of a crime.
The case against Trump related to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The crux of the case rested on whether Trump altered records of $130K in hush money payments to make them appear legitimate and help his chances in the election. (See the full list of counts here.) Trump has repeatedly dismissed the trial as politically motivated and is expected to appeal. 
The conviction does not preclude Trump from running for office. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before the Republican National Committee is set to formally nominate Trump for president. While Trump faces fines and a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison, an estimated one in 10 people convicted of similar charges is imprisoned.
 
 
Today from Al.com, formerly The Birmingham News
The Alabama reaction
Donald Trump's conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his personal dalliances with a pornography actress drew outrage and claims of a fix from many Republicans, including some of Alabama's top elected officials.
A popular talking-point in the reactions was to compare the U.S. to nations that might be under the thumbs of tyrants. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt used the phrase "banana republic," which was a popular one with Trump supporters. Our other senator, Tommy Tuberville, compared us to Venezuela and China.
Obviously, one thing we do have in this country is an appellate court system. Republicans in Alabama also expressed a confidence that he will beat this in court.
Said Gov. Kay Ivey: "Despite this New York jury, as President Trump said, the real verdict will be by the people on Election Day November 5.”

I replied:
This old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Court Judge in Birmingham, who presided over every federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama, and used to drink moonshine, cussed and did not attend church, and was the most Godly man I ever knew, sez the real verdict was in God’s Courtroom yesterday, The star witnesses were porn star Stormy Daniels, former editor of the National Enquirer David Pecker, the defendant’s own lawyer, and the defendant's pecker, who said he would take the stand, but weenied out, which was not lost on the jury of his peers in his hometown, and fearing for their and their families lives, they convicted his pecker. Why any Christian, why any woman, why any parent would want to have anything to do with Donald Trump, I cannot for the life of me imagine, unless, if they are men, they envy him, or if they are women, they secretly wish he would grab their pussy. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

Thursday, May 30, 2024

we're all doing time riddles and puzzles

    An old lawyer buddy likes to give me riddles and I tend to respond unpredictably :-). When I told him that I’m a patriot, he said he’s read my writings and I’m a radical. I said I have a different perspective of patriotism.

    When he asked me, “What was wrong with the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on October 6, 2023?”, I said that was a very good question, and Hamas figured out what would punch every button in Israel’s leaders, and Hamas hoped that would provoke Israel to do what it did in Gaza and turn the entire world against Israel and its benefactor America, and when President Biden saw Israel’s response, he should have stopped giving Israel money and weapons and munitions to obliterate Gaza; and President Biden should get America of the Middle East altogether. because America has no business being there.

    I gave my old lawyer buddy a riddle the other day.

    Please help me understand how Amendment 2 gives Americans the right to own AR-15s, when the citizens right to bear arms is predicated on there being a well-regulated militia? 


Amendment II 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.


    He said that he said he sided with me on that, and the U,S. Supreme Court has ignored the well regulated militia predicate.

    I said there has not been a well regulated militia since the Revolutionary War. He said, what about the national guards? I said, then only the national guards should have such weapons. He said, then there is the question of what is “arms”?


    When Amendment 2 was passed, arms meant sticks, rocks, hammers, hoes, rakes, shovels, hatchets, axes, spears, bows and arrows, knives, daggers, sabers, black powder ball and shot pistols and muskets, black power cannons and cannon balls, and black powder explosives.

    But what’s that got to do with a well regulated militia? The Founding Fathers never dreamed the 2nd Amendment would be twisted to nilly willy private citzen ownership of guns designed to quickly kill as many unarmed Americans as possible.

    Flash back to 1991, when, at the request of a prison chaplain, I did a two-day workshop in his maximum security prison, about which I wrote in Prisons & Freedom, which I self-published later in 1991. 

    How the workship came about was the chaplin had read my book, The High Legal Road: A New Approach to Legal Problems, which I had self-published in 1990, 

    The chaplain told me ahead of time that some of the inmates were convicted of sex crimes and were very sensitive about that, and I should not go into that during the workshop. What I did instead was ask them if they did what they were convicted of doing?


    Unable to sell The High Legal Road and Prisons & Freedom, I gave several thousand copies to the Prison Library Project in Clermont, California, which was founded by Ram Dass, with Bo Lozoff’s help. Bo’s book, We’re All Doing Time, had helped prod me to write Prisons & Freedom. The Prison Library Project mailed inmates books on topics in which inmates expressed interest. I ended up with some prison inmate pen pals for a while.
    In the Preface to Prisons & Freedom, I gave Bo and his wife Sita attaboys for their going into prisons and teaching yoga and meditation ti inmates, and I gave favorable mention to Bo’s books, and I said in one of his books, he had said he and Sita had reluctantly decided to start asking for donations for their work. 

    I had sent Bo a copy of The High Legal Road, and after Prisons & Freedom was published, I sent him a copy of it. 

    In one his books, Bo had written that he and Sita told inmates that they struggled with their own sexual urges, which some yoga practitioners view as low base energies, and I wondered out loud in Prisons & Freedom.about what it might be like to be married to someone trying to practice celibacy?

     I received a letter from Bo, in which he tore up my books as psychobabble, and he said I had cut him and Sita’s feelings to the quick. That led to more back and forth letters, which went nowhere, and I moved on.

    One day, I called the Prison Library Project about something they had sent me regarding a tax deduction for donating my books to them. The fellow said he needed to tell me something: after they received my books, Bo told them to tear out the Preface to Prisons & Freedom, which they had done before sending it to inmates. The fellow said he didn’t feel right about that. I said keep doing it, it’s Bo’s karma.

    I wrote Bo a letter explaining that. He did not respond.

    I started receiving unsolicited copies of Bo’s newsletter, in one of which he announced he was going into silence. There was something in the letter about him being interviewed in the media about him going into silence. I didn’t get any of his newsletters for a while.

    Then a newsletter came in the mail which Bo announced someone  had given him and Sita a nice piece of land in the country,  where he could build a retreat for former prisoners to live and work their way back into society, and he had come up with the ideal of “money yoga”, and it would be the spiritual thing to do for people to donate money for that project.

    I wrote Bo a letter, in which I said he had gone into silence to enhance is internal feminine, yin, and God heard him and someone donated them the land, but instead of waiting for the next step, instead of being patient, honoring the feminine, he had  gone yang and invented money yoga.

    Bo did not respond.

    Another newsletter came in the mail and I read it and left it on the kitchen table and my wife, who was a licensed clinical social worker, looked thorough it and found a picture of Sita, which was in all of Bo’s newsletters.

    My wife asked me to cover the right side of Sita’s face and look only at the left side of her face, which I did, and Sita’s left eye and the left side of her face look like a seriously tortured soul. The left side of the body is the feminine, or yin, side.

    I wrote Bo a letter, telling him what my wife had observed. In Bo’s next newsletter, there was no photo of Sita. Nor was her photo in any future newsletters.

    Many years later, I read in an online publication that Bo had confessed that he was a fraud, a con man. He had sex with women in his ashram. He was abusive to released inmates, who came to live and work at his farm retreat cult. Later, I read somewhere that Bo had died.

    A Substack missive from a fellow who had done time showed up in my email account the other day.


A Convict’s Perspective

Rearview Mirror 

Objects on the internet may appear closer than they are

COLEMAN

MAY 27 

 

I was going to write an article based off my Note this morning and decided I didn't want to be tic-tacing on my phone all day. 
 

https://indamidle.substack.com/p/rearview-mirror?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=1147979&post_id=145032318&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&r=8wjd3&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email&initial_medium=video


Anyway, I haven't even listened to it yet because I knew I would've been annoyed by some thing or another and don't want to re-record like I'm a YouTuber or some nonsense like that.

I would've gotten halfway through and been like, “this is dumb” and deleted it.

So, anyway, enjoy the dumb.

Or don't.

Whatever 

 

     After listening to Coleman sitting in the front seat of his parked car ramble on about Americans fret a lot about stuff they can’t do anything about, and learning about him only what might be read between the lines, I posted this comment.

Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter

I’m curious about what you do after you wake up in the morning not in a prison? Although most people wake up  each morning in a prison of their own making, about which a guy named Bo Lozoff wrote some books, as did I. Bo ended up not so swell, but I thought his early books were  important. Last below is a link to one of my books, Prisons & Freedom, a free read, no ads, no soliciting, no hustle. You might be asked if you wish to open the link? Archive.org is an internet library funded and operated by American colleges. The free library specializes in out of print books and books by authors who give their writings to the library. 

 

https://archive.org/details/prisons-and-freedom-revision-3oh-1-compressed 
 
About six months ago, I received an email from a fellow who said he read Prisons & Freedom at the free library, and it moved him to leave a cult in which he had been very active for a couple of decades. I didn’t write the book with cults in mind, but I did have some people come to me from time to time, who were involved in cults and wanted help moving on. 

    So far, no reply from Coleman.

   Today’s comic relief is provided by Al.com's "Down Home In Alabama”. Al.com once was The Birmingham News.

'I ain't writing no letter'

A judge has dismissed the case against an Ozark man who was caught speeding and said he'd rather go to jail than give the police officer a written apology for his behavior, reports AL.com's Amy Yurkanin.

The story was picked up on some national outlets. Reginald Burks was pulled over and ticketed for speeding while taking his kids to school. He said that as he was trying to leave the officer was standing in front of his car so that he had to back up and go around. He said he then told the officer to "get your (butt) out of the way," but he didn't say "butt."

(Note: This is the most G-rated newsletter you'll read today. Apparently more G-rated even than car line.)

Now, folks may have varying degrees of respect for law enforcement or opinions on their motives, but this isn't one of those stories. The big question in this story is not so much the appropriateness of the officer, or of the motorist. It is about the appropriateness of the Ozark Municipal Court judge's order for the man to apologize to the officer in writing or face 10-30 days in jail.

University of Alabama law professor Jenny Carroll said up to 30 days is a long sentence for somebody who dropped a mere A-bomb in a moment of frustration.

The man wasn't budging, either. He said he'd pay his fines. However: “What am I going to do? I’m going to jail. I ain’t writing no letter.”

A hearing was set for June 4, but evidently the city's prosecutors weren't interested in pursuing the case because the judge dismissed the case on Wednesday.

    Ya’ll come!
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

confessions of a radical patriot

    Yesterday brought closing arguments in the hush money case in New York City. This old lawyer wonders how the 12 men and women on the jury can be impartial when they fear for their lives if they don’t vote to acquit? This old lawyer wonders if people working for or in behalf of Donald Trump don’t already know the names and home addresses of the 12 jurors? This old lawyer wonders if the 12 jurors wonder if their identities are compromised?

    Yesterday, someone told me that I am a radical. I said, actually I am a patriot. He said he has read my writings and he is far more patriotic than I am. I said I have a very different view of patriotism...

    So, what is patriotism?


    Is it waving the American flag?


    Is it celebrating and honoring America’s war dead?


    Is it saying God is on America’s side?


    Is it saying America was founded on Christian principles?


    Is it supporting America fighting a foreign war that benefits only rich white American capitalists?


    Is it saying America should back Israel in its war in Gaza?


    Is it saying what anyone wants to say?


    Yesterday, someone else told me that President Joe Biden had said Memorial Day is for remembering Geoge Floyd. I said that’s not what Memorial Day is about. I did not say, if Biden said that, then he’s nuts.


    Memorial Day was May 27.


    According to Huff Post, May 24:


Biden Marks 4th Anniversary Of George Floyd’s Murder, Urges Action On Police Reform Bill

The president signed an executive order in 2022 to implement police reform and accountability measures, and he's urging Congress to follow through.


By 

Shruti Rajkumar

May 24, 2024, 05:21 PM EDT


President Joe Biden reflected on moments he shared with George Floyd’s family and called for Congress to advance police reform legislation as he marked the fourth anniversary of the day police murdered the Black man on a Minneapolis street.

“George Floyd should be alive today. His murder shook the conscience of our nation and reminded us that our country has never fully lived up to its highest ideal of fair and impartial justice for all under the law,” Biden said in a statement Friday.

On May 25, 2020, Floyd, a 46-year-old father, died while a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his back and neck for more than nine minutes despite Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.” The plea for mercy as he died was captured on video, sparking outrage and protests nationwide. 

Protesters demanded not only justice for Floyd, but also the protection of Black lives against police force and violence, along with reform and greater accountability within the law enforcement system.

Last year, jurors found Chauvin guilty of murder in the death of Floyd, and the former Minneapolis police officer was sentenced to 22½ years in prison. On Tuesday, a new lawsuit was filed against Chauvin, alleging that he had pinned down a woman and knelt on her neck in January 2020, just as he had done to Floyd a few months later.

Biden has spoken with Floyd’s family over the past four years to commemorate his life, and he has vowed to ensure law enforcement accountability. In his statement on Friday, the president reflected on an encounter he had with Floyd’s daughter the day before his funeral in 2020. 

“The day before George Floyd’s funeral, his young daughter, Gianna, told me, ‘Daddy changed the world.’ Four years after her father’s murder, there is no doubt that he has,” he said.

The families of those who had been killed by police officers were eager for Biden to take action, to push forward police reform and accountability, which he had promised in his 2020 presidential campaign. In 2022, he signed an executive order to implement aspects of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, including restricting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and establishing a database to track police misconduct. 

Now Biden is calling on Congress to send the legislation to his desk.

“My Administration has made significant progress in implementing this Executive Order, and will continue our work to build public trust and strengthen public safety. But real and lasting change at the state and local level will only come when Congress acts,” the president said in Friday’s statement.

    According to Reuters, May 27:

Biden honors fallen soldiers during Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery
By Jarrett Renshaw
May 27, 20249:58 PM CDT

ARLINGTON, Virginia, May 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden honored fallen soldiers during the 156th observance of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery outside the nation's capital on Monday.
Biden placed a wreath of flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a solemn ceremony, where he was accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
"We gather at this sacred place, at this solemn moment, to remember, to honor the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who have given their lives for this nation," Biden said afterward at the cemetery's amphitheater.
Earlier in the day, Biden hosted a White House breakfast in honor of Memorial Day that included administration officials, military leadership, veterans and so-called Gold Star family members, referring to those who have lost an immediate relative in military action.
The Memorial Day ceremony is the latest in a string of events where Biden has focused on active and retired military personnel, including delivering the commencement speech on Saturday at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.
Next week, the president will travel to Normandy, France, to participate in ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He is expected to give a major speech about the heroism of Allied forces in World War Two and the continuing threats to democracy today.
Thursday will mark the ninth anniversary of the death of Biden's son Beau, who served in Iraq as part of Delaware's National Guard. Beau died from glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer that his father believes was possibly a consequence of exposure to military burn pits in Iraq
"This week marks nine years since I lost my son, Beau," Biden said. "Our losses are not the same. He didn't perish on the battlefield. He was a cancer victim.
"The pain of his loss is with me every day ... so is the pride in his service," the president said.
On Memorial Day, each grave site at Arlington will have a small American flag carefully positioned exactly one boot’s length away from the headstone. The flags were placed by 1,500 soldiers from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, better known as The Old Guard. The regiment has carried out the tradition, known as “Flags In,” just before Memorial Day every year since 1948, when it was designated as the Army’s official ceremonial unit. 

    So, is patriotism making up facts to support your partisan perspective?


    Is patriotism mourning dead America war veterans and waving American flags on Memorial Day, without saying America had a hand in causing every war it waged during my lifetime, and the beneficiaries of those wars were rich white American military industrial complex capitalists?

    

    I say patriotism is hororing the truth, regardless.

     Maybe the next time a Trumper talks to me about patriotism, I will remember to say President Donald Trump called American soldiers killed during World War II in France, losers and suckers, and his adoring Republican Alabama U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville single-handedly held up promotions of generals and admirals because the U.S. Armed forces were helping armed services women travel to where they could get legal abortions and keep defending America.

    I’m a radical.


sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Memorial Day reflections: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you

 

     Another old fart's Substack howler flew itself into my Yahoo inbox yesterday and set me to howling, too.

My Two Senses

“D-DAY 2024” 

Some thoughts on how we got here and why we can’t make it go away


The Apprentice, and massive Fascist propaganda over a 40 year period generated millions of aggrieved Americans.

© MojoMan 2024

The turn to the far right for Republicans has it’s roots in an amalgam of Rich White Men who embrace Fascist ideologies, from race supremacy, antiSemitism to an obsessive fear of Communism stealing their ill-gotten rents. The road to Trump goes back to the Goldwater race for the White House. The Young Republicans and the JBS, backed by Corporatist Republican elites formed what amounted to a dopplegänger of the Communist Cadres they so feared.

This John Bircher Society ideology clearly inspired the 1964 article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” by Richard Hofstadter, that was and is still considered a seminal work that tracked the conspiratorial roots that would lead to the JBS. Later Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” tried to relate how being aggrieved, and as Hofstadter put it, feelings of being dispossessed fueled resentment that took us into the Reagan/Nixon/Bush fiascos. Having been largely rejected as wingnut fascist ideology the Fascist loving billionaires put on a little lipstick and pretended to reflect mainstream thinking.

Now (talking about paranoia) I’m actually beginning to believe that microplastics in the diet of Far Right Republicans, whether put there by intent or as a bi-product of redneck lifestyle, is a likely major contributor to the cancerous mental malignancy reflected in todays Neo-Fascist ideology.

Along the same lines I have become a fanboy of Dr. Bandi X. Lee, and her recent work on “mass psychosis” Dr. Lee was academically cancelled from her professorship at Yale (thanks largely to the efforts of Allen Dershowitz) because she dared to correlate the clear symptoms of Trump’s “malignant narcissism” in explaining his bizarre behavior. This effort centers (and again I agree with her) on a lock and key paradigm of Trump to his base about that cements this “mass psychosis”. He seeks their constant adoration and they seek his ability to enact their insane dreams of revenge and overwhelming dictatorial rule.

Here we are confronted with essentially a religious cult, fueled by 40 years of paranoia, aggrievement and a complete embrace of Fascism/Christo-Fascism.

Is there a way outta here?

At some point I actually had genuine hope of finding the proverbial key to unlock the mind of these delusional masses, but today it appears that  the Fascist  Republican mindset is beyond any form of cognitive repair.

It is mirrored in science to cases if brain damage of the frontal pre-cortex suffered by veterans who have suffered TBI from being too close to blasts. Study has validated that there is a propensity to embrace deeply rightwing religous and political views.

Think about it. 50 years of constant Fascist propaganda packaged as “patriotism”, true Christianity, and White Identity. Do we really think there is a chance in Hell of helping these deluded masses to see how downright evil their thinking is in the next six months? 

Eighty percent of registered Republicans are prepared to go all the way with Trump and that means to avenge and destroy millions of decent Americans in his demigod name.
In closing I’d like to share that I just finished watching “The Manchurian Candidate” beautifully restored to hi-def black and White. Could it be that Ivanka (an FSB spy under direction of Putin) is Trump’s handler? I know, I’m again sounding a bit paranoid, but given our current threat to Democracy in Trump I’d like to consider it facing reality.

Sloan Bashinsky

A friend of mine once said, “Just because you're paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

“Deer Ed”, in honor of the key deer that inhabited Big Pine Key, operated the very popular “Coconut Telegraph” public forum at bigpinekey.com. The forum catered to “Kudos & Whiners”. 

Deer Ed built my websites, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which were read all over the Florida Keys.

Deer Ed designed a campaign website for a woman friend of mine, who decided to run for sheriff in the Florida Keys.

One page of my friend’s campaign website described the sheriff department harassing her sons, whom the sheriff department contended were criminals, and she contended otherwise. She had some pretty good conventional ammunition, and she had something else. 

She became so concerned that sheriff deputies would find one of her sons and do him harm, that she sent him to work one day with his father, who operated a tree trimming company. Trimming a tree that day, their son touched a high power electric line and was electrocuted. His body was taken to the hospital on Stock Island, where the sheriff department and jail were, the island just above Key West. While she sat with her son’s body, grieving, the sheriff detective, who had pursued her son, came into the hospital room and made her leave so he could fingerprint her dead son’s hands and continue prosecuting him.

The Coconut Telegraph and my blogs heralded her campaign website coming online. The morning her campaign website went active,  bigpinekey.com was destroyed by hackers. Deer Ed was freaked out, because he had installed every kind of protection known at that time to protect his website.
 
The page on my friend’s campaign website, which contained the worst dirt on the sheriff department, was destroyed.

Deer Ed repaired his website and reported there what had happened, and the context. Some readers accused Deer Ed and my friend of being paranoid. Dear Ed responded with, “Just because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

Deer Ed was a recluse, and he was reluctant to take my suggestion to get the FBI involved, but he finally asked them to investigate. He told me that the FBI finally told him that his site had been hacked, but whoever did it was really good and covered their tracks really well.
 
I ran ten times for public office in the Florida Keys: 6 times for mayor of Key West, 3 times for county commission, 1 time for school board. I got my belly full trying to change the minds of people on the left and on the right, whose heads seemed to terminally live where the sun never shined. Quite a few of them were regular readers of and contributors to the Coconut Telegraph. A lot of them were conservative Christians.

When Donald Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, I watched him adroitly pluck every last string in redneck Christian America. He plucked them like they were little red violins that had longed all their lives to be plucked. 

What bugged me most was the people who ought to know better, who were not little red violins, voted for Trump in 2016. I was just as bugged by the Democrats running Hillary Clinton against Trump. That’s when it saw just how truly fucked up America was. 

I had no clue how much more fucked up America would become. 

Putting In God We Trust on its money and One Nation, Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and claiming America was founded on Christian principles didn’t make it so.

When I was writing the goodmorning blogs, which eventually went to Internet heaven, I heard about a black comedian in Texas, who said something like, “Attending church has as much chance of making you a Christian as sitting in your automobile in your garage has of making you an automobile.”

There was a regular contributor to Kudos and Whiners, went by the handle “From The Right”, or “FTR”. I met him after he asked Deer Ed to see if I would have dinner with him and his wife and Deer Ed. FTR seemed nice enough. His wife seemed nice enough. FTR was well versed in all things conservative. It was his religion. He was articulate.

After he outed himself at Kudos and Whiners, FTR posted on his Facebook that, as devoted as he was to the Republican way, he would. not vote for Donald Trump if he gained the Republican nomination. I wondered if FTR would hold true to that. 

By then, I was publishing at my mew blog, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should be locked up in adjoing cells.

After Trump won the Republican nomination, FTR announced on his Facebook that he would vote for Trump. That led so some interesting back and forth, and to FTR loosing his cool and tearing into me and displaying what I had figured was there all along.

Back when I was writing frequently at Kudos & Whiners, I developed a posse of Sloan haters, who took lots of pot shots at me from behind their fake names, which Deer Ed allowed them to have. I offered to meet them anywhere they chose, they could bring anyone they liked, and any weapons they liked, and I would bring me and the angels that never left me alone, and we could get to know each other. There were no takers. 
 
I think voting for Trump has as much chance of making God like you as waving a Confederate or Nazi flag has of making God like you. Alas, I don’t think voting for Joe Biden will get you any kudos from God, either. 

Old farts like you and me ain’t able to do the roughhouse things we once did, but we have l-o-n-g memories, and we know how to type, and we don’t like sitting at home playing TV bingo, and we still have some functioning brain cells, and we use them, and we shoot off our mouths, and it don’t change nothing, but at least we tried, and at least we are not going out brainwashed by cult leaders and stupidity, ignorance and gullibility.

Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker
I remain deeply, deeply distressed on this Memorial Day that the ultimate sacrifice and suffering of so many Americans that was about preserving our Democracy within a freely elected government acting in the spirit of E Pluribus Unum, is falling to a Fascist, Grifter Authoritarian hellscape. 

Sloan Bashinsky

That falling deeply distresses me, too, but I do think America’s wars during my lifetime were noble, given what America did to help those wars get started. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com