Hey Sharia law MAGAs who say stone LBGTQs, let any among you without sin cast the first stone

Divination

Sharia is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and hadith. In Arabic, the. term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and this is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its interpretations by Islamic scholars.

    Something showed up in my Apple newsfeed from LGBTQ Nation yesterday, which reminded me of women being stoned for adultery.

Donald Trump shares stage with rightwing activist who’s discussing stoning gay people to death
Trump has repeatedly attended and spoken at Charlie Kirk's rallies despite his extreme anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
Wednesday, June 12, 2024

A rightwing activist whose rally Donald Trump spoke at last week in Arizona is now telling his podcast audience that the Bible calls on Christians to stone gay people to death and saying that being gay is “an error” and compared homosexuality to drug addiction and alcoholism.

Turning Point USA founder and executive director Charlie Kirk was discussing children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel, who was targeted by rightwingers earlier this month because she acknowledged that June is Pride Month on social media.

RELATED:
Charlie Kirk claims China will invade Taiwan because an American high school hosted a drag show
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/10/charlie-kirk-claims-china-will-invade-taiwan-american-high-school-hosted-drag-show/

The far-right “youth” leader is one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders.

“I’m so glad you’re here, I’m so glad you’re who you are,” she said in the fairly anodyne message.

She later posted a video responding to the rightwing backlash – many on the right, including Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and “Christian fascist” Matt Walsh, accused her of supporting “child mutilation” and “gender ideology” – where she pointed out that she is Christian and her Christianity inspires her to want to help build an accepting world for everyone.

“In Matthew 22, a religious teacher asks Jesus, ‘What’s the most important commandment?'” Ms. Rachel says in the video. “And Jesus says to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

“There’s no greater commandments than these, I believe it’s mentioned eight times, love your neighbor.”

That made Kirk mad.

“I mean, Satan has quoted scripture plenty,” Kirk retorted. “You love somebody by telling the truth, not by confirming or affirming their sin.”

“And it says, by the way Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18 is that thou shall… Lay with another man and be stoned to death,” Kirk continued.

“Just sayin’,” he said, smiling as his co-hosts laughed. “So, Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself, the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”

He was referring to Leviticus 18:22, which says, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” and Leviticus 20:13, which says, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Trump attended the Turning Point USA rally in Dream City Church in Phoenix last Thursday, where both Trump and Kirk spread the message that they were going to make the 2024 election “too big to rig,” a reference to the conservative lie that there was massive, widespread voter fraud in 2020.

“We are going to make November too big to rig and we are going to overwhelm the ballot boxes,” Kirk said at the event. “There is no path to the White House without Arizona.”

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020. Trump is an unindicted coconspirator in Arizona’s case against false electors who allegedly tried to circumvent the electoral process in an effort to install Trump as president for a second term.

In that same podcast episode, Kirk said that being gay is an “error” and compared homosexuality to alcoholism and drug addiction.

“It’s very simple,” Kirk said. “So how do you love somebody? You love them so much to correct their error. So let’s just take the Pride conversation out because people think it’s an identification… It’s not, it’s sexual behavior.”

“But if you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle?” he continued. “No! You say, you’re better than this, let’s get you free from that, let’s get you free from that activity.”

    I wondered why I had not read in the news that Donald Trump reamed out self-proclaimed St. Charlie Kirk for saying LBGTQs should be stoned?

    Here’s what Kirk’s alleged savior Jesus had to say in the Gospels about women being stoned for adultery.

John 8
New International Version
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

    Here’s what Jesus said in the Gospels about homosexuality:

zero, nada, zilch

    Here’s what I heard many Christians say:

God is perfect

God makes no mistakes

    I have known many queer people. Everyone of them felt they were born queer. There was nothing they could do about it. So either God screwed up, or God made them queer. 

    My younger brother was bisexual in the closet. Someone  threatened to out him and there was nothing he could do about it and he killed himself and tried to make it look like murder.

    I lived many years in Key West, where maybe 25 percent of the people living there belong to the LBGQT side of God’s creation.

    Because of that, the Key West City Commission passed a resolution that adopted “We are all members of One Human Family” as the city's official philosophy.

    For years, members of Key West's LBGQT and straight communities joined in a parade on Duval Street that stretched the rainbow flag across the island.

    Fantasy Fest, held on Duval Street in late October, Key West’s biggest money maker, was started by the LBGTQ community.

    Key West’s lesbian mayor Teri Johnston was a city commissioner for two 4-year terms, when she took a break because, I felt, she was disgusted with how the commission was running the city government. Every time Teri ran for commission, she won overwhelmingly. Later, she ran for mayor and was elected twice, overwhelmingly. I think she is the best elected official Key West ever had. Now in her second term, Teri has announced she will not run for reelection,

    I think the 2nd best Key West elected official is my straight Jewish lawyer and friend Sam Kaufman, who has served two  terms as a city commissioner. Sam told me in his law office that it did not bother him that I talked about my dreams, because Jewish people think dreams come from God.

    When I was homeless in 2016 and 2017, I slept nights on a metal bench in the front lobby of the Key West police station, because the city’s homeless shelter banned me for life over what I wrote about the shelter, its employees and homeless people at my blog, goodmorningkeywest.com, which died and went to heaven, and its successor, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, which sometimes still is alive and kicking,

    A gay man in Key West, who was a political activist and well liked and respected, allowed me to leave my backpack and dirty clothes laundry bag on his front porch, so I didn’t have to carry them everywhere I went. He bought me a sleeping bag, so I would not be cold during winter nights. He bought me a hammock and an annual pass to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, so I could hang out there during the daytime and nap in the hammock and not be harassed by Key West City police, who did not allow homeless people so sit on towels or blankets on the ground, or lie down on the ground, because that violated the city’s no camping ordinance, which was never enforced against anyone but homeless people.

    In 2018, I made my 6th run for mayor and Teri Johnston was elected but was not yet in office. A big anti-LBGQT hoopla was started by local right wing Christians. My final public act before I moved back to Alabama late that year was to attend a Key West City Commission meeting, which I had done maybe 300 times and had spoken for the allowed 3 minutes maybe 1,000 times about items on the city commission’s printed agenda.

    There was nothing on the city commission printed agenda about the anti-LBGQT hoopla, but at the end of a city commission meeting citizens were allowed to speak 3 minutes on any topic they wished. I got out out of my chair and walked to the citizen speaker podium and told the outgoing mayor and the 6 city commissioners, including Sam Kaufman, something like this:

I heard many Christians quote St. Paul far more than they quoted Jesus. In one of his letters, Paul said he had a thorn in the flesh, which he had asked God to remove, and God had told him the thorn would not be removed because it would help him grow. In one of his letters, Paul condemned homosexuality as an abomination. In his letters, Paul spoke poorly of women. He said only through her husband can a woman know Christ. He said sex caused trouble and he wished all of his followers were like him, celibate. 

As described in Acts of the Apostles, before he was Paul, Paul was a Jewish Pharisee named Saul of Taurus, who made it his life work to find Christians and turn them in to the Roman government, which was crucifying Christians that did not renounce Jesus. Saul stopped doing that after he was confronted by Jesus in vision on the Road to Damascus, and Jesus asked him, “Why do you persecute me, Saul?” Whereupon, Saul was struck by lightning and blinded and knocked off his horse. After a dark night of the soul, Saul emerged as the Christian Paul, who became an apostle, who never met Jesus in the flesh. 

All Jewish men, and especially Pharisees, had a solemn duty to marry and propagate God’s chosen people. There is nothing in Paul’s letters that he married or sired children. Every woman around Paul knew his thorn in the flesh was that he was gay. As for Jesus, if Mary Magdalene publicly washed the homeless man Jesus's feet with water and her own hair and tears and anointed his feet with sacred ointment she scarce could afford, what did she wash and anoint him with when they were in private?

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

America: the fish rots from the head down

    Yesterday, a federal court jury convicted President Joe Biden’s son Hunter for lying on a federal form that he was not an addict when he purchased a .38 Colt revolver shortly after doing 11 days in a drug rehab facility.

    From what all I read in online news media and saw on TV news media, Hunter’s defense was (a) he wasn’t using drugs when he bought the gun and wrote on the federal form that he was not and addict, and (b) Amendment 2 of the U.S. Constitution allows a drug addict to buy a gun and overrides the federal disclosure form Hunter signed. The US District Court trial judge ruled against Hunter on the Amendment 2 argument, and the jury ruled against Hunter on the he was not an addict when he wrote on the federal from that he was not an addict. 

    This old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Judge that presided over ever federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama, sez only the blind, death and dumb can't see that the federal prosecution of Hunter Biden is a tempest in a teapot, which never would have gone to trial if it was anyone but the son of the president of the United States of America. If it was anyone else, it would have been settled with a plea deal years ago, with the defendant being put on probation- or nothing would have happened, because the defendant didn’t do anything with the gun after he bought it, and a US Attorney would have had far more important matters to address.

    I’ll back up and start over.

    The federal prosecution of Hunter by a US Attorney appointed by President Donald Trump, presided over by a United States District Judge appointed by President Donald Trump, ABSOLUTELY GUTS the argument made over and over by convicted felon Donald Trump and his legions of MAGA and Republican lemmings that the United States Department of Justice is PARTISAN in favor of the Democrats.

    President Biden saying he will not pardon Hunter and President Biden never attacking the trial judge, prosecutors, prosecution witnesses, jury, etc., and saying he respects the rule of law and the federal criminal justice system and jury’s verdict, puts him in an entirely different universe from the convicted felon Donald Trump, who clearly believes he is immune to the law. 

    Donald Trump is an unnatural disaster.

    As is President Biden, for his continued financial and arms aid to Israel in its war in Gaza.

    Hunter Biden proved that he, too, is an unnatural disaster.

    Here’s how.

    Hunter knew darn well that a drug addict should not buy a gun, and he didn’t need his former vice president father to tell him that.

    When Hunter left the rehab facility and bought a gun, he proved to the whole wide world that he was nuts, dangerous and depraved. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timer in Narcotics Anonymous. 

    When Hunter left the drug rehab facility and bought the gun, he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timer in Narcotic Anonymous.

    When Hunter was caught and prosecuted by the Feds and he didn’t admit his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of the federal judicial justice system and spare his loved ones and his very prominent American family what they would publicly endure, he proved he cares only about himself. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timers in Narcotics anonymous.

    If President Biden has not figured out that Hunter cares only about himself and got from the jury what he deserved, then President Biden is not fit to be President of the United States of America, because his eyes, ears, mind and heart are broken beyond repair.

    But we already knew that from how President Biden dealt with Israel after he saw what Israel was doing in Gaza. That is not to give Hamas a free pass, but is to not give President Biden a free pass, which he gave himself, and that’s another reason he is not fit to be president of the United States of America.

    We also know, because there is no other possible explanation, that Hunter got very rich via business dealings in Ukraine and Red China because of his vice-president and president father, and that’s another reason his father is not fit to be president of the United States of America. 

    Any Republican or MAGA, who has not yet figured out that Donald Trump is no different from Hunter Biden, but on a much larger scale, is just as insane and incorrigible as Donald Trump,  Hunter Biden and his father.

    If you don’t believe me, go into your prayer closet and stay there until you hear God’s VERDICT, which was in my Apple newsfeed this morning:

The Hill

Paul Ryan says he won’t vote for Trump: ‘I’m gonna write in a Republican’

BY TARA SUTER - 05/08/24 9:35 AM ET

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he does not plan to vote for former President Trump in November, suggesting he would write in another candidate instead.

“Character is too important to me,” Ryan, who left Congress in 2019, told Yahoo Finance at the Milken Global Institute Conference. “And it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he just doesn’t have.”

“Having said that, I really disagree with [President Biden] on policy,” he added. “I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.” 

Ryan, the head of the Republican House majority during Trump’s first two years in the White House, has became a vocal critic of the former president. He has argued that Trump is not a “conservative” but rather an “authoritarian narcissist,” and backed former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for standing up to the former president. 

“Historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good in any given moment,” Ryan said in an interview late last year.  

“He doesn’t think in classical liberal conservative terms,” he continued at the time. “He thinks in an authoritarian way, and he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.” 

The former Speaker has also stated it is “really clear” that Biden won the 2020 election, despite the former president and his allies’ common claims to the contrary. 

“It was not rigged. It was not stolen,” Ryan said in an interview in 2021. “Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won the election. It’s really clear.”

Ryan left Congress after serving 20 years representing Wisconsin’s 1st District. He was also Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) running mate in the 2012 presidential election. 

Romney, who announced in September that he will retire from the Senate at the end of his term, has also recently emerged as a strong critic of the former president.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

    Meanwhile, if you are wondering what’s really going on in Hamas, read this VERY TARDY CNN finally got some of the shit out of its eyes and ears wake up call in my Apple newsfeed this morning::

CNN

Hamas gambled on the suffering of civilians in Gaza. Netanyahu played right into it
7:01 PM EDT June 11, 2024

Yahya Sinwar has so far survived eight months of Israeli’s brutal military campaign to kill him. His longevity is a personal victory for the Hamas leader – and increasingly appears to be grim vindication of his decision to seize the initiative in the generational Palestinian struggle with Israel by launching a bloody attack on October 7 that would plunge Gaza’s two million residents into a predictable hell.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his military responded as expected to Sinwar’s onslaught of terror that killed more than 1,200 people and saw over 220 taken hostage, declaring war and vowing to destroy Hamas.

Predictably too, according to many regional diplomats, Israel’s military campaign is failing to deliver on the dismantling of Hamas, even as the number of Palestinians killed soars past 36,000. While Hamas is people and structures, they argue, it is also an ideology.

Now Sinwar – who speaks fluent Hebrew and has a nuanced knowledge of Israeli politics – believes he still has the war’s initiative, amid high-stakes bargaining with Israel for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” he is said to have told other Hamas leaders, in leaked messages reported by The Wall Street Journal. He appeared to justify the deaths of Palestinian civilians as a “necessary sacrifice” according to the messages.

If this were a conventional war, it would be easy to write Sinwar off as deluded; Israel has the upper hand by far in conventional weapons. But the weapons’ devastating effectiveness is becoming a liability in this asymmetric conflict, and against the backdrop of a tortured history that Sinwar is adroitly weaponizing against Israel.

Because of the enormous civilian casualties and suffering inflicted by Israel in its pursuit of Hamas, Netanyahu now faces a possible arrest warrant for war crimes from the ICC, the world’s top court – just like Sinwar. And the consequences for Netanyahu are far more serious than for Hamas’ leader, because Sinwar is already a renowned terrorist hiding in a tunnel with limited prospects and Netanyahu is a global leader whose world will dramatically shrink if the ICC issues warrants.

Netanyahu dismisses the ICC as anti-Semitic, but that hasn’t neutralized the damage in the court of international opinion. Meanwhile, Sinwar can sit back and cash in on the international anger over Palestinian suffering.

Wind in Sinwar’s sails

Earlier this year, university campuses across the United States and Europe combusted in spontaneous protest over the toll of Israel’s war on civilians in Gaza, where humanitarians warn of a growing hunger crisis.

For the first time, a generation of Palestinian were able to witness what they’d always hoped for, a potent political force able to rival what they’ve always perceived as an over loud, over pervasive and over powerful lobby for Israeli interests.

In any other year this may have been irrelevant, but Biden’s back is to the wall in the upcoming US presidential election. He has pledged unwavering support to Israel and continues to send weapons to Israel’s military, but if he stays the course, Biden risks losing vital votes in swing states from a new generation of left-leaning Democrats. He can’t ignore the protesters’ anger about Gaza’s plight.

T his puts wind in Sinwar’s political sails. His negotiating team has gotten tougher: first appearing to be on the verge of compromise, then holding out for a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. He also appears to have brought the reality of a Palestinian state closer too – a political coup following decades of stultifying inertia.

US regional allies, notably Saudi Arabia, have set an “irreversible” path to a two-state solution as part of their price for buy-in to help Gaza rebuild. And while Netanyahu’s far-right ministers predictably say no to Palestinian statehood, some Western partners are showing they’re fed up with Israeli intransigence.

In recent weeks, Ireland, Spain, Norway and Portugal, all frustrated Netanyahu won’t agree a peace deal, have formally recognized Palestinian statehood. The statements mark a remarkable departure from their previously cautious approach to Netanyahu’s belligerence.

Israel has lashed out against the four European nations, but this doesn’t sting Sinwar. He is able to hunker down deep below Gaza and relish the hell he has unleashed above and the repercussions he gambled on.

Hamas’s ideology thrives under the current Israeli attacks, precisely because it was born of, and nurtured on, that very narrative. The war Sinwar started has taken Palestinian suffering to the next level – and Netanyahu has played right into it.

None of this means Sinwar will be winning a popular vote in Gaza during his lifetime, however long or short that may be. But the enormous bloodshed he precipitated has allowed him to tap into global moral outrage. He is now playing the Democratic world against itself, and his tools are the very values that developed nations hold sacrosanct: sanctity of life and fair play.

From a position of apparent weakness, he tries to turn every apparent disadvantage to advantage. On the cusp of Israel’s imminent Rafah operation, he tried to stall it by claiming to accept an Egyptian peace deal that he said Israel had accepted – with his officials briefing details of the mechanics and timings of how hostage releases would work.

As expected, the tactic spun up already febrile Israeli street protest against Netanyahu to a new level. Demonstrators demanded Netanyahu forestall the Rafah operation in favor of a seemingly tantalizingly close hostage release deal.

Who’s calling the shots in Gaza

According to regional diplomats, many of Sinwar’s power plays were entirely predictable. Decades of Israeli failure to address Palestinians’ security and economic concerns outside of Israel’s perceived interests set the table for Sinwar’s challenge, and what he could expect to achieve.

Sinwar’s power amid the war seems to be becoming part of the perceived wisdom about Gaza and the war. In Israel on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “I don’t think anyone other than the Hamas leadership in Gaza actually are the ones who can make decisions.”

E ven if Sinwar were inclined to solicit input from Hamas’s well-heeled leadership cadre sitting in the comfort of Doha, and meeting leaders in Iran and Turkey, the likelihood they can bridge the gaps in their thinking through detailed discussion is almost nil. Unfettered communication away from Israel’s prying ears and eyes is impossible.

In the final days before Northern Ireland’s momentous 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement between the IRA’s political wing Sinn Fein and the British government, I watched the group’s top leaders emerge from the talks locked in intense, semi-silent conspiratorial whispers, slowly pacing adjacent gardens.

But such conversations are likely a luxury Sinwar neither has, nor dares risk taking, from wherever he is hiding in Gaza. And like any leader convinced he is proving his point, he is unlikely to back down now unless his key demands are locked in.

His recent warning that Israel will have to fight for Rafah strongly suggest he is still in the process of bargaining.

Blinken didn’t mention Sinwar by name in his remarks Tuesday, but there was no need. Everyone in the room understood who he meant when he added, “That is what we are waiting on.”

And if messages of pressure to make a deal are reaching Sinwar he will also understand them for another part of what they are – an attempt to turn Gazans desperate for an end to the conflict against him.

As much as Sinwar has put the psychological screws on Israel’s leadership, he can be made vulnerable too. And if past experience is any measure, he will likely gamble that he can play mind games better than Netanyahu. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Hey Supreme Court Justice Alito, the Declaration of Independence and Amendment 1 prove America was not founded as a Christian nation

 

    Last night, a friend emailed me this Alternet article:

'Unethical' and 'corrupt': Secret Alito audio revealing 'Christian nationalist' stuns experts

Opinion by David Badash

Secret audio recording of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito casually and unreservedly telling a woman posing as a right-wing Catholic conservative that there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,”and agreeing the nation needs to return to “godliness,” has sparked strong criticism by legal and political experts.

Justice Alito agreed with the woman, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who told him, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”

“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she added before Alito replied, “I think you’re probably right.”

Alito continued, saying, “there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Many expect judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, to maintain an impartiality, including when weighing in on issues of faith and morality. The U.S. Constitution itself states justices serve for life if they remain on “good behavior.”

“The key part of the Alito tape is his concession that compromise on fundamental issues is probably impossible. A horrific quality for a judge or human being,” declared constitutional law scholar and professor of law Eric Segall.

“Sam Alito is a Christian Nationalist,” said attorney and author Andrew L. Seidel, a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Anyone familiar with his opinions on religious freedom and church-state separation (or who has read American Crusade) has known this for some time. Then there’s his admission with the flags. Now this confession.”

Professor of law, MSNBC legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance shared several concerns.

“If Justice Alito is making comments like this to a random person at a get-together, what is he saying to his close confidants? How is this impartial justice, especially when his votes/rationale on cases are considered?” she asked.

“This is a Justice who believes the correct way to determine the law is via a strict appeal to ‘history & tradition’ even though both of those things assume a legal system where Black people & women have no rights,” Vance added.

Vance also remarked, “A statistic that stuck with me about Alito’s jurisprudence is that ‘An empirical analysis of the Court’s ‘standing’ decisions…found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100% of the time & against liberal litigants in every single case.’ ”

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar responded to remarks Justice Alito made, writing: “Utterly unethical, corrupt, a serial liar, and a radical lacking every element of judicial temperament. This monster does not belong in civil society, much less on any court, much much less on the Supreme Court.”

Some, including attorney George Conway, pointed out the difference between Justice Alito’s response to Windsor and Chief Justice John Roberts, who was asked similar questions.

“Pressed on whether the court has an obligation to put the country on a more ‘moral path,'” Rolling Stone reported, “Roberts turns the tables on his questioner: ‘Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?’ He argues instead: ‘That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.’ Presented with the claim that America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the Supreme Court should be ‘guiding us in that path,’ Roberts again disagrees, citing the perspectives of ‘Jewish and Muslim friends,’ before asserting: ‘It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.’ ”

“The contrast between Alito’s responses and Roberts’s speaks volumes,” Conway said. “Oh my.

    When this old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Judge, hears someone say America was founded as a Christian nation, or was founded on Christian principles, I want give Justice Alito and the other 5 Christian right judges on the U.S. Supreme Court the text of the American Declaration of Independence to read, because there is nothing in it about Christianity. 

    Many signers of the Declaration, including its principal author Thomas Jefferson, were Free Masons and Deists, and their sacred symbols, the pyramid with the single eye at the top, are on America’s paper money today. 

    The Declaration of Independence makes four non-Christian lingo references to Deity from which it draws its authority.

  I put the 4 references to Deity in bold.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    Then follows a long list of grievances against England's king, in which there is no reference to Deity.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

    After defeating King Georges’s army, a good bit of which consisted of German mercenaries, the Colonists created the new nations' second legal document, the United States Constitution, which divided the national government into three branches, Congress, Executive, and Supreme Court, and provided how those branches would operate.

    The Constitution begins:

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to our- selves and our Posterity, do ordain and estab- lish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    There is nothing in the Constitution about Christianity.

    After enacting the Constitution, Congress enacted Ten Amendments, which became known as “The Bill of Rights”, in which there is nothing about Christianity. 

    However, there is mention of religion in Amendment I:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

      The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the religious oppression in England and the rest of the British Isles and in Western Europe. They did not want to see that happen in America, thus the bar against a religion of the State and the prohibition against restricting free exercise of religion.

    After America became a nation, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, “Give me liberty, or give me death” Patrick Henry, the Governor of the State of Virginia, introduced a bill into the Virginia Legislature that effectively would have made Christianity the state religion of Virginia.

    Thomas Jefferson, and another signer of the Declaration, James Madison, lived in Virginia, and they led the charge to defeat Governor Henry’s bill being passed by the Virginia Legislature. 

    I was not taught any of the above in American history courses in elementary school, high school and college. I was not taught any of the above at the University of Alabama School of Law. I never read, saw or heard any of the above discussed  publicly or privately, even though Jesus in the Gospels said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God’s.

   When I was in elementary school, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which is stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," was changed to “one nation, under God, indivisible", to elevate America above godless communist Soviet Union and China. 

    In 2016, I watched the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. I watched Trump promise the American Christian right that he would put their people on the United States Supreme Court. I watched Trump get elected and put three right wing Christians on the United States Supreme Court, for all of which the Democrats can stand up take a bow, because Vice President Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump in 2016, but Hillary had dirt on the Bidens, so the Democrats nominated Hillary, without vetting her, and, oh, my, her dirt got Donald Trump elected.

    The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. all, and Amendment 1 are rolling over in their graves.

  

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

This old Alabama honky sez, when Donald Trump and his legions say the 2020 presidential election was stolen, they mean it was stolen by blacks

Carlottesville, Virginia 

Confederate monuments removal protest

led to

    As I pondered some new sport to banish care, something that reminded me of the bunker buster movie, “The Brother From Another Planet", about which I was schooled by white street kids when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, showed up in my email from a white guy named Coleman, who did serious time in prison, and now he has his own Substack. 

    What Coleman and a deep thinking black dude tag teamer wrote about what calling someone a Nigga really means is really long. I provide the beginning and a link that can be opened to the whole thing. This is an interesting look at what being called a Nigga really means. Yet, I wonder if something much bigger and pressing was getting a free pass, and I addressed that in my second comment, which Coleman and his guest commentator and other readers did not touch, so far. 

A Convict’s Perspective   

Racist S#!t 

https://indamidle.substack.com/p/racist-st

Coleman and Torrance Stephens, PhD 

When a PHD and a GED set out to make everyone Big Mad

Preface: (Yeah, I do those now)

I wanted to approach this topic with more than simply what I had to offer. That's why I hit up Torrance for a helping hand. From having read his work, I came to understand that we started out in a similar world. Here was a man who also lived that life and got out. What's even better is how he did it.

Torrance got out the right way. The cliche is that I, being the white kid, would've worked my way out and became a doctor while the black guy learned through prison. Yet we're the opposite of the narratives we're all told. 

He saw that life and made himself a better man in spite of it and clawed his way out. I, on the other hand, fully embraced it and survived through sheer luck. That gives us a pair of perspectives our respective races “aren't supposed to have” and I think that's absolutely fantastic for this topic.

The perspectives of a black PHD and a white GED

That said, let's discuss that which shall not be mentioned.

Let's roll dog. 

Gimme that mic, a honky is about to talk about racism. I've included the following evacuation procedures to assist any readers who believe I can't speak on this topic:

•Safely stop your work. Shut down equipment that could become unstable or present a hazard.....

Leave the building through the nearest door with an EXIT sign..…

•Go jump in front of a bus…..

I’m going to skip the fact that I spent many years around actual race gangs and save that for another time. For this I'm going to focus on how I grew up in the PJ's. I don't mean a poor neighborhood, I mean them streets. The kind of neighborhoods where you couldn't have a pizza delivered to your house. Where the police didn't patrol because they took random gunfire while at stop lights. Where the corner stores had bullet proof glass for the criminals and steel doors for the cops. The kind of neighborhood where was one of the few white kids.

So let's start with a hang-up a lot of people seem to have.

The first 30-odd years of my life I used and answered to “Nigga” just like everyone else did where we lived. Be mad, stay mad. People on the outside looking in never understood that word. I'm so tired of hearing uptight bougie talking-heads moaning, “if the N-word is so offensive, then why do they use it in their rap music and say it 50 times in every sentence?”. Because fuck you, that's why. If you can't tell the difference between there, their and they're, then you're in over your head.

Bill Beshlian

Bill’s Substack

Excellent gentlemen. I believe this is the explanation most could listen to.

Argo the Second

The Professional Amateur

Two guys in suits. Hard part of town. Throwing gang signs on camera.

The reactions would be peak entertainment.

An K.

As a white immigrant women, I learned that the undertones, the understanding or "weight" of words have a totally different meaning for people depending on where they came from, what they have been through.

The day we realize that we have fallen victim ( division by class, race and even religion ..) to a system that is not meant to work for human kind but to exploit it and that it is not just done with hard work but with kindness, understanding and tolerance will be the day that we will be truly free.

I cannot understand or even grasp what people have been through, I have not walked in their shoes.

I know that it's been hard for most, twisted by crazy sociatal unspoken and spoken rules, an inhumane system, causing unrealistic expectations, fear and hate.

Fear mongering and propaganda are a succesful trap.

Judgment and condemnation have got to stop. 

We should remember that most of us just want a peaceful existence.

It will be up to each one of us. Every day.

It's we the people not them people.

All we can do is stop passing it on, stop spreading the hate, arrogance and ignorance, try to help when possible and be the change.

Kill'em with kindness. 

Thank you!!

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

I was born and raised in an affluent white family in the upscale white  Birmingham, Alabama suburb Mountain Book, which in time earned the nickname, The Tiny Kingdom, which is pretty much how I view it today. 

The day I was born,  a woman whose parents had been plantation slaves in Alabama came to my parents’ home looking for work, and she was hired, and her name was Charlotte Washington, but I could not pronounce Charlotte as a tot, and I called her “Cha”,  pronounced “Sha”, and that stuck, and that’s what everyone who came to our home called her, too. 

Her cooking was divine. She washed and ironed all of our clothes. She loved me as one of her own. In time, I came to see, if she had not been there when I was growing up, I would have been in really deep shit in many important ways.

Cha is the second person I memorialized in A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known (2004), which I self-published and had reprinted several times, as I kept giving copies away. Today it's a free read at the internet library, archive.org. Her chapter is entitled, “She worked behind the scenes.” https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

We had other black servants who came “over the mounntain” from Birmingham to work in our home and take care of the yard. Cha cooked them lunch, which usually included turnip greens, sweet potato, black-eyed peas, cornbread and a meat. I never ate it, and one day when I was hungry and asked Cha to fix me something to eat, she said to try what she had fixed the servants, who were eating there in our kitchen. I said, “I don’t eat no nigger food.” When my mother heard about that, she gave me bloody hell. 

Today, I eats lots of sweet potato and collard greens dishes, which I prefer to white folks food. I speak southern English, redneck, and dialect, and sumtimes I mixes dems up. I went through a time of being  racist, but I grew out of it. I never once heard no white man be called a Nigga, until I read your exposition. Live and learn. 

 

Sean’s Substack

Sloan Bashinsky, you have a fabulous name. You should be a character in a novel with so excellent a name!

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Thanks, that’s hilarious, actually :-) Perhaps my entire life is a novel, in which I have had many experiences that can be believed, and many experiences that maybe only a batshit crazy person might believe?

It turned out that I became a writer, after all else failed :-), and I came to wonder if my father ever wished he had not suggested that I take a typing course my freshman year in a Birmingham public high school? 

Bashinsky is the Englishized spelling of my Polish Jew great grandfather Leopold’s last name. He came to America in the late 1800s. Quite an interesting man I only met through handed down family stories. However, I did know his Southern Baptist wife somewhat. Her father was a former officer in the Confederate Army. She was a school teacher. She and Leopold decided to raise their children in the Baptist church, in Troy, Alabama, where they both had ended up and met. Their son Leo married a woman from Memphis, Tennessee, whose family had Sloan as last first names, which completes the loop of how I got my name. I memorialized Leopold in the “He was a nobel creation” chapter of A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known. https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

Many of my books, three novels, the rest non-fiction bordering on stranger than fiction, are free reads at arcive.org. Enter Sloan Bashinsky in the search space and icon links for my books come up and can be opened by clicking on the icons. The free internet library specializes in out of print books and books by authors not seeking payment. The free library is funded and operated by American colleges. Thanks to modern technology, the free library’s books can be read in English and around 35 other languages.

Crixcyon

I am so glad I don't engage in this racist nonsense. You tend to see and think racism because you are taught to always think and see racism. You can hardly read anything in the news without the descriptors being used such as; race, color, creed, wealth or lack thereof, employment, living conditions, place of residence, past history, age, schooling...etc. Humans are humans and that's as far as it should go.

Kristin , MSN, RN, CCRN

Heal: The Intensive Care of You

Yo! Thank you from a white girl who grew up in a low income housing project, where I was one of many minorities. 

I got hit a lot, but only by the parents I love and who otherwise are great people. A lot of people need to be hit with the truth they don’t ever want to hear. 

Openly Fae

Hermetic Musings

I've also had the "privilege" to be in the crowd of white folk allowed to use that word, although since I no longer live around the areas I was granted that, I have since switched to "my ninja" unless I'm singing along to actual rap.

I too have been the "designated whitey" - especially driving. I can pull stunt driver level stuff and no one notices a whitey doing ten over unless they're reckless.

And like you said, we could carry anything anywhere. I didn't usually, but I had lots of white friends who were willing. I liked my hands clean as possible.

Now when people know me at all - and I mostly keep to myself - I can mask up most of my street time and come across as straight edge, mass-produced office fodder.

But just because I left the street don't mean it left me. People best not let me catch them exploiting or hurting people. Then the skills come back out, you know?

Yosef Hirsh

Searching for Solomon

Not sure why but I read this article in my head to a hip-hop beat.

Grand Moff Porkins

Years ago, in my mostly white city, I heard “Check yo self, nigga!” I looked up as the only black man on the street made a slight head turn, then the Colemanesque young white man repeated his request, and it was clear he was talking to another white man. I got what he meant. Maybe he was LARPING, but if so, he had it down. Gotta commit to the bit.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

I commented here previously, and it kept nagging me that I had not said it’s my impression, that when Trump and his MAGAs say the 2020 presidential election was stolen, they mean it was stolen by blacks. Wnen I see photos and film clips of the Charlottesville Confederate monument removal protest, Trump MAGA rallies, and the January 6 coup attemp, I see oceans of white people.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com