Sweet batshit crazy pro-life Alabama: Will Nick Saban run for US Senate and put his life at risk? Alabama Supreme Court declares frozen embryos are people

    Two crazy, if not batshit crazy, Al.com (formerly The Birmingham News) offerings grabbed my attention today.

Down In Alabama

Feb 20, 2024

Ike Morgan

If Saban ran ...

We generally don't drop too many political poll stories unless they're really important. And, of course, applicable to serious issues and campaigns in the state of Alabama.

With that in mind, I'll share the results of a YouGov poll that said if Nick Saban runs as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in 2026, he'd beat Tommy Tuberville 42 percent to 39 percent (although that's close enough to be within the margin of error), reports AL.com's Howard Koplowitz.

If Saban did beat Tuberville it would make the former college football coaches 4-4 against each other in head-to-head matchups, incidentally.

If the theoretical poll sounds a little like a fantasy for liberal Crimson Tide fans, it probably is, since it assigns Saban to the Democratic party without having him adopt policy positions.

In the same poll, Tuberville was ahead of a "generic Democrat" 49-32 and ahead of former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in another theoretical matchup, 52-27.

Saban has neither endorsed a political party nor expressed interest in running for office.

And we can appreciate that position.

    I replied:

I'm curious if you have any "insider" gossip or crystal ball info that Nick Saban ever considered, is considering, running for the U.S. Senate? 

I wish Nick would run against Tuberville, who said on TV, I saw and heard it, if elected, he would do whatever Donald Trump said. 

I wonder if Nick wants to drag himself through another colossal house of ill repute after leaving college football's NIL and transfer portal?

I wonder what Miss Terry [the wife] might say about that? 

I wonder if Nick runs against Tuberville, if he and Miss Terry's lives will be at risk?

I know for a fact that Nick leading his football team in the Black Lives Matter march in Tuscaloosa during the covid shutdown pissed off a lot of MAGAs.

I hoped Doug Jones would beat Tuberville. Jones had put his life at risk prosecuting the Klansmen who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 

Alas, the South rose again and voted for Trump and Tuberville, and our Governor Kay Ivey, whom I hear said does what important Alabama conservatives tell her to do, when she's sober, and that's just how it is.

And this:

Crazy In Alabama

Feb 20, 2024

John Archibald
 
Still crazy, after all these years
Is it just me? Tell me it’s not just me.

Or if it’s just me, tell me that, too. Because I’ll have some choices to make.

It’s been crazy in Montgomery since time immemorial. Since John Knox and his constitution, since George Wallace and his segregation, since Gov. Rose Emoji and his failure to understand the way text messages work.

But man. The crazy used to be on the fringes.

I guess I need to let the column speak it for me. Say it, column. Say it.
 
Learning to live with the anti-woke mind virus
Lord have mercy, it’s like the crazy crept up on us in the night. While we were supposed to be asleep.

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos are people too. Popsicle people, maybe, but people.

So when somebody drops a vial of humans in a lab, it’s not a cleanup on aisle one, anymore. It’s a wrongful death suit. We’re just a hop, skip and bump away from somebody getting locked up in Alabama’s death camp prisons for knocking over a test tube.

Is it just me? Tell me it’s not just me.

Alabama lawmakers are pushing bills that would protect themselves, that would give them the illusion of power over history, that would keep them from having to deal with real problems, that would make sure the state of Alabama will continue to feel unwelcome to any of those weirdos. 

That’s the goal.

    I replied:

Regarding the embryo is a protected child decision...

CBS 

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled last week that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization, or IVF, are considered children under state law and are therefore subject to legislation dealing with the wrongful death of a minor if one is destroyed.

"The Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location," the opinion states, including "unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed."

The immediate impact of the ruling will be to allow three couples to sue for wrongful death after their frozen embryos were destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. 

But this first-of-its-kind court decision could also have broader implications. 

"No court — anywhere in the country — has reached the conclusion the main opinion reaches," Justice Greg Cook wrote in his dissenting opinion in the case, adding that it "almost certainly ends the creation of frozen embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama." 

Some time ago, something got into me and I wrote this below, which became a chapter in a book I was writing, Diary Of A Redneck Mystic Lawyer God Grabbed Once Upon A Time, now a free read at the internet library, archive.org - https://archive.org/details/diary-of-a-redneck-mystic-lawyer-god-grabbed-once-upon-a-time/page/n163/mode/2up

Chapter 28: Did Colonial America women have an unalienable Right to use herbs made by God or Mother Nature (you pick) to prevent or end pregnancies?

A friend reported a dream earlier today, in which Archangel Michael said there are people who might try to kill me over my discussing "Eve's herbs", which end pregnancy.

Same friend told me later today that he'd heard from a woman interested in those herbs, that my home state Alabama, and other red states, are preparing legislation to go quickly into effect,  which makes herbs that cause miscarriage, class 1 drugs, which require a doctor's prescription. I replied that no doctor known to me would prescribe herbs for any reason. It later occurred to me that the Mafia and the south of the border drug cartels are gearing up to grow lots of those herbs to sell on the streets of America. 

That Pearl Harbor lookout issue aside, I marvel over the federal and state governments presuming they know better than God or Mother Nature (you pick) what Americans should or should not do with herbs made by God or Mother Nature (you pick). 

As a licensed attorney in Alabama, I have a serious legal problem with the federal and state governments preventing people from using herbs that grow wild in nature. Since when do governments have legal jurisdiction over God and Mother Nature?

In that context, let me say I am not a physician, and I do not advise people about medical conditions, other than sometimes I tell people what I do about my own medical problems, by using physicians sometimes, alternative methods sometimes, and blending the two approaches sometimes. 

Sometimes I tell people how I use herbs, vitamins and minerals to make me smell like a skunk to Covid-19 and its many variants. I also had 3 Pfizer shots.

Although I am not an herbalist, I used herbs in past times, which helped me, and I use a few herbs today, which seem to help conditions that medicine alone has not been able to help.

The first time I caught salmonella and felt I surely would die, I took an herbal combination prescribed by a naturopath and the salmonella cleared up in a few days. 

The next time I caught salmonella and felt I surely would die, a veterinarian, who treated his animal patients with homeopathic remedies, as well as with modern veterinary medicine, gave me homeopathic arsenic, and the salmonella cleared up in a few days.

Did I break state laws? Did those doctors violate state laws? Did that matter to me or them? No. What mattered was the salmonella went away.

Some years ago, I read a very interesting report of a federal lawsuit filed by the Texas medical profession, seeking to ban acupuncturists, who were not M.D.s, from practicing acupuncture. The Texas medical profession's lawyers argued  acupuncture was experimental medicine and, under Texas law, only the Texas medical profession could regulate and use acupuncture. The female federal judge noted that the Texas medical profession had been around about 100 years, while acupuncture had been used in China for 5,000 years and was not experimental. Judgment for the acupuncturists.

Beyond all of that, I can say, based on many conversations I have had with religious right Americans face to face, on Facebook, and elsewhere online, that the root of the opposition to abortion in Alabama, and in America, is the religious right.

If I were hired as a trial attorney, to deal with federal and/or state restrictions on herbs in a court case, I would subpoena anti-abortionists and put them on the witness stand, and prove through them that their opposition to abortion is rooted in their religion.

I would hand them a Bible and ask them to read Genesis 2:7 to the Court.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

They would be between a rock and a hard spot. 

I would ask them if the Bible is the inerrant word of God, every word in it is true? They would be between a rock and a hard spot.

I would ask them who created the heavens and the earth, and al the plants and living beings on the earth? They would be between a rock and a hard spot. 

I would ask them if, in the Bible, the only herb God told Adam and Eve not to eat was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? They would be between a rock and a hard spot.

I would ask them if God ever made a mistake? They would be between a rock and a hard spot. 

I would ask the witnesses if God made herbs that would cause miscarriage? The witnesses would be between a rock and a hard spot.

I would hand them a copy of the Declaration of Independence and ask them to read the Preamble:

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. 

I would ask them if the Founding Fathers drew their authority from Nature and Nature's God? The witnesses would be between a rock and a hard spot.

I would hand them a copy of Amendment I, U.S. Constitution and ask them to read the first line to the Court:

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.

I would hand them a copy of Amendment 14, and ask them to read it to the Court.

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State where they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I would ask them if they see anything in Amendment 14 saying unborn persons have any of those rights and immunities. They would be between a rock and a hard spot.

I would ask them if Amendment 14 applies the 1st line of Amendment 1 to the states? They would be between a rock and a hard spot.

Of course, opposing legal counsel would object to questions that ask a lay person to state an opinion on the law. I would reply that I"m simply asking the witnesses to read the law and use their common sense to reply to my questions.

In that context, and continuing my mystical and legal opining about such matters also were addressed in the two previous chapters of this unfolding book...

Before and after Bible times, women used herbs to prevent and end pregnancies.

Women used herbs in Colonial America to prevent and end pregnancies. Benjamin Franklin covered the practice in his book, THE AMERICAN INSTRUCTOR.

I did a Google search for Ben Franklin's book and this NPR interview came up:

For Ben Franklin, abortion was basic arithmetic

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099244635/for-ben-franklin-abortion-was-basic-arithmetic

For Ben Franklin, abortion was basic arithmetic NPR's Emily Feng speaks with Molly Farrell from The Ohio State University on why Ben Franklin included instructi...

A book by John M. Riddle, CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD THROUGH THE RENAISSANCE, traced the anthropological history of herbs used by women to prevent and end pregnancy.

A similar, later book by Riddle, EVE'S HERBS: A HISTORY OF CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION IN THE WEST, was featured in an exhaustive article in The American Historical Society article:archives. 

HERBALGRAM.ORG

Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. - American Botanical Council

Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. - American Botanical Council

https://www.herbalgram.org/resources/herbalgram/issues/45/table-of-contents/article763/?fbclid=IwAR2JFAxrzdIACzu7On4As59BE-OqZ5yJ9pfQMas_evGh_ZaqnByiMr_jG0I

Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. - Am...

The article's author reported that he and his wife enjoyed drinking pennyroyal tea. She was pregnant. She miscarried. He did research and learned pennyroyal was long used to end pregnancies. He did a lot more research and reported that, too, in his article, which some women told me is fascinating.

The EVE'S HERBS book was available for free via a PDF, until it was taken down yesterday, because Riddle was receiving death threats.

Here is a link to an Institute for New Economic Thinking interview of Riddle: Abortion Drugs Fundamental to Ancient Economies, Argues Historian

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/abortion-drugs-fundamental-to-ancient-economies-argues-historian

Abortion Drugs Fundamental to Ancient Economies, Argues Historian As women’s rights to make reproductive choices come under assault, historian John M. Riddle argues that abortion...

The American Declaration of Independence says:

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."

Unalienable means it cannot be taken away. 

Among these means there were other unalienable Rights. 

Clearly, the Declaration does not say women had unalienable rights. However, if men had unalienable rights, surely women had them, even if men back then did agree .

Was women's ancient and ongoing use of herbs made by God or Mother Nature (you choose ) to regulate their fertility, an unalienable Right? 

As pointed out earlier in this chapter, Benjamin Franklin, who was reputed to be a ladies man, spoke of such herbs in THE AMERICAN INSTRUCTOR. 

The American Declaration of Independence birthed the United States of America. 

The Declaration was America's first legal document. 

The U.S. Constitution and its Amendments were derived from the Declaration. 

Unalienable Rights were inherent in the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided American corporations have some Constitutional Rights, even though there is no mention of corporations in the Constitution and its Amendments, nor in the Declaration.

If corporations have Constitutional Rights, how could the herbs created by God or Mother Nature (you choose), about which  Benjamin Franklin wrote, not be unalienable fertility Rights Colonial American women enjoyed, which could not be taken away?

Well?

Consider further rhetorical questions.

Would the American religious right dare contest herbs God made, knowing very well what those herbs could be used for?

Would anyone that heard, "It's not wise to piss off Mother Nature," dare contest herbs She made, knowing full well what those herbs could be used for?

Would the American medical profession (AMA) contest those herbs?

Would Big Pharma contest those herbs?

Would the FDA, CDC and NIH contest those herbs?

Would the Republicans and MAGAs and Donald Trump contest those herbs?

Would 6 religious right U.S. Supreme Court Justices contest those herbs? 

Would Joe Biden and the Democrats contest those herbs?

So, what about pregnant women living in red states, who do not want to carry their fetus to term?

They birth a baby they don't want and resent?

They commit suicide?

They use a coat hanger?

They do things to try to kill the fetus, so a doctor can legally perform an abortion to save the life of the mother?

They go out of state to get abortions?

They find pharmacy pills that cause abortions?

They become herbalists and claim their herbs are an unalienable right, protected by the Declaration of Independence? 

They claim their herbs are part of their religion, protected by Amendment 1 and Amendment 14 of the U.S. Constitution?

Consider, Native American tribes are allowed to use peyote, as part of their religion.

Consider, a great many pills the FDA, CDC, NIH, AMA and Big Pharma depend on were derived from plants.

Consider the medical uses today of marijuana extracts.

Consider hemp was raised and sold by some of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington. Do you think they ever lit and smoked hemp?

Do you think the Founding Fathers ever used hashish and opium brought back by The East India Trading Company to England and America?

Do you know any forms of booze, a known killer, not derived from a plant?

Do you smoke or chew tobacco, a known killer?

Is it any skin off your nose, if women use God or Mother Nature's herbs (you choose), to prevent or end pregnancy?

Don't you have something more important to do than butt your nose into the uteruses of women you don't know and could care less about, unless they are pregnant and want an abortion?

Are you standing at an abortion clinic every day it's open, begging women who go inside to agree to let you adopt and raise their unwanted baby?

Have you ever had a young child of yours die? If so, you know that hurt you far more than anyone can begin to imagine, who has not had a young child die. 

My first wife had two miscarriages, which upset her a lot. I was upset,  but not nearly as much as her. 

When our son was later born, and then at 7 weeks he died of sudden infant death syndrome, my wife and I were devastated. It was a zillion times worse than the miscarriages.

We did not have funerals for her miscarried fetuses, but we certainly had a funeral for our beautiful, dead infant son, whom we grieved for a very long time.

I don't see funerals for miscarried or aborted fetuses. 

In the law is the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, Latin for, "The thing speaks for itself."

sloanbashinsky

Gaza: a clinical study of abused children and their abusive parents?

    Last year, the Australian political commentator Caitlin Johnstone subscribed to my Substack and invited me to subscribe to hers, which I did and started receiving in my email account her machine gun-like slams of Israel and President Biden for helping Israel kill now close to 30,000 predominately unarmedpeople in Gaza, making most of the people of Gaza homeless and at risk to starvation and plague. I agreed many times with Caitlin’s condemnation of Israel and President Biden, and said it might be worse if Donald Trump was president, given he told Israel he is their best friend, hoping to get the vote of every Jew and conservative Christian in America.

    I also said many times that Hamas imbedded itself within and underneath civilians, making it certain that many civilians would be killed and wounded and displaced and experience diaspora if Israel came to Gaza to fight Hamas, and that the October 7, 2023 raid in Israel was clever bait Hamas hoped would provoke Israel to do precisely what then did in Gaza, which turned Israel into a pariah state likened to Nazi German, supported by America,

    For that, I was condemned many times by  Caitlin’s readers. I was asked why I was there? When I told them I was there at Caitlin’s invitation, they condemned me all the more. Although Caitlin sometimes responded to a reader who had praised her, she never responded to me directly. Sometimes, I thought perhaps her posts were aimed at me indirectly, such as her post yesterday, by this title: "Nobody Who Gets Gaza Wrong Is Worth Listening To”. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/nobody-who-gets-gaza-wrong-is-worth?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=141808129&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8wjd3&utm_medium=email 

    Yesterday morning, it occurred to me that Caitlin had trolled me to read her, and she and a number of her devoted readers had reacted to me as if they are the abused children of Gaza and I am their abusive parent. 

    Quite a while ago I wondered if Caitlin and her many readers who kept tearing into me were severely abused in childhood and they identified with the Hamas civilians and were in denial about their own abusive parents, and thus were in denial about Hamas? 

    The day before yesterday, Caitlin and two of her readers caused me to wonder that even more.

    We Think This Dystopia Is Normal Like People In Abusive Relationships Think It's Normal

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
FEB 15, 2024
Westerners who don’t appreciate the extreme dysfunctionality of western civilization are like someone in an abusive marriage who hasn’t yet recognized that there’s a problem, or someone who had a violent and chaotic childhood who still thinks their home life was basically normal.
All of us understand that there are problems with our society, and most of us understand that a lot of those problems are severe. But few westerners really get just how bad it is. How pervasively diseased it is.
In reality, we are living in a profoundly sick dystopia that is built on a foundation of human corpses and fueled by an endless river of human blood. Our news media are propaganda services, our entertainment is brainwashing, and our mainstream culture is social engineering, all built to keep us turning the gears of a vast globe-dominating empire.
There’s a widespread assumption throughout the western world that while things might not be perfect our society is certainly much better than what people experience in a nation like China, smugly believing ourselves to be a free society full of free thinkers and free people in contrast with those unfortunate thought-controlled communist conformists. In fact western civilization is one giant thought-controlled conformity machine where people’s minds are shaped by mass-scale psychological manipulation far more effectively than anywhere else in the world, exactly because westerners don’t know this is happening and believe they are free.
Western minds don’t like to be told this, because it goes against everything they’ve been trained to believe about their nation, their society, and their world. Obviously we are much freer here than those poor saps to the east; here in the west we are free to choose between 197 flavors of frosted breakfast cereal and 20,000 different superhero movies. We are free to choose between voting for warmongering capitalist authoritarian Democrats or warmongering capitalist authoritarian Republicans. We are free to sell our labor at a fraction of the value it generates to any exploitative ecocidal employer of our choosing. We are free to think whatever thoughts we’ve been trained to think by our education systems, mass media, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation. We are free to speak our minds, which have been shaped and conditioned to serve the interests of the powerful and never to say anything that falls outside the Overton window of acceptable opinion.
Sure there are outliers in the margins, westerners who’ve slipped outside the matrix of thought control and have gained the ability to traffick in unauthorized opinions — if you’re reading this you’re probably one of them. But our numbers are deliberately kept too small to have any political consequence, and if those numbers start getting too big for comfort we immediately see influence ops to sow division and confusion and herd people back toward the mainstream flock. Sure we in our small numbers are free to voice unauthorized opinions on marginal platforms where we can’t have much impact — we’re free to dig a hole in the ground and whisper whatever we want into it, too.
The single biggest obstacle to our freedom in the west is our widespread belief that we are free. Until we collectively realize we’re human livestock being continually herded into our respective gear-turning stations to keep the imperial juggernaut trudging ever forward on the world stage, we’ve got no chance to break free and bring the whole abusive system crashing down.
Until this is seen we’re like the wife who thinks it’s perfectly normal that her husband controls all her finances and dictates every aspect of her life, and who’d be shocked and angered if anyone tried to tell her that this is what an abusive relationship looks like. We’re like the man who insists he had a happy childhood despite remembering a lot of body trauma and screams. 
The truth is all around us — we’re marinating in it 24/7/365. But we can’t see it, because it’s all we’ve ever known. We’ve been conditioned to think that this murderous ecocidal mind-controlled dystopia is normal, and we can’t imagine it being any other way. The prospect of ending it can actually feel scary and intimidating, just as it can for someone who’s thinking about fleeing an abusive relationship. 
But real freedom is just on the other side of that fear. All we’ve got to do is become sufficiently conscious of what’s really going on here. 

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Well said. 

In the.main, humanity indeed is brainwashed, programmed like computers, behaves like lemmings. lives in herds, which actually are cults. People in cults cannot be reasoned with, reached. They, and their leaders, are incapable of introspection, looking at themselves in the mirror and taking fearless and searching inventories of themselves. The many beams in their own eyes. 

Convinced they are right, pointing their finger everywhere but at themselves, they are l-o-s-t, un-woke, asleep- thinking they are woke, all-seeing, all-knowing. 

The cold truth is, humanity, America, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, for examples, moved through SNAFU deep into FUBAR. Trying to fix that may be noble, or it might be projection, or it might be dangerous, but it is futile. They will not change because someone tells them to change.

According to Acts of the Apostles, the Jewish pharisee Saul of Tarsus had no intention of stopping his getting Christians crucified by the Roman government if they did not renounce Jesus, until a bolt of lighting blinded him and knocked him off his horse on the road to Damascus, and Jesus asked him, “Saul, why do you persecute, me?”

I bring that up, not to say it actually happened, but to say what might change herds and their leaders. Might.

Gpcus

"In reality, we are living in a profoundly sick dystopia that is built on a foundation of human corpses and fueled by an endless river of human blood. Our news media are propaganda services, our entertainment is brainwashing, and our mainstream culture is social engineering, all built to keep us turning the gears of a vast globe-dominating empire"... That's exactly how I feel! Is anyone out there feeling the same? How do you cope with it? I mean how do you rationalize it to stand up in the morning and go to work or to tell your children everything is OK and their future is radiant?

Chang Chokaski

I know exactly how you feel Gpcus, since I feel it too and am grappling with the same questions that you are.

"How do you cope with it?" I mean how do you rationalize it to stand up in the morning and go to work or to tell your children everything is OK and their future is radiant?"

What seems to be helping me (though I'm not totally sure):

(1) Anti-depressants

(2) No TV or MSM news sources

(3) Music (playing the piano for me)

(4) some physical exercise

Unfortunately, none of the above strategies have been enough to help me deal emotionally with the ongoing live-streamed Genocide taking place in Gaza. If you do find something that works for you, please do let me know as I seem to be in the same boat as you.

Lisa

We know it's way worse than we can even imagine. I avoid dwelling too long on some videos. I keep the sound off and don't even look at some. Instagram is my only video source. Still I have cried. I need to know what's really happening, but for my own sanity I can't spend too much time there. I post and repost about it all on Instagram. If enough people would do it, a national strike on work and buying might make a difference. 

Sloan Bashinsky

Chang, I think you are playing with fire using antidepressants, which contain chemicals alien to human biology and genomes, and produce side effects which have their own side effects. If what’s going on somewhere else is wrecking you and your ability to work and father your children, perhaps you should turn off forums like this one as well? For your distress bleeds into your children, who have not yet being affected by the world as you have, they still are empaths, they pick up on, feel what is going on in you. Looking back from 81 years on this planet, I see lots of how I was that my children endured because I was wrapped up in my own dramas and agenda. I worry today for them and their children in a country, America, going to hell, I think. And unable to do lots of things I once did, some because I had to, some because I wanted to, I spend a lot of time online, which saves me from talking a lot more to myself than I already do. Your children need you a lot more now, than they will ten years from now.

Jeano

This may piss you off, Chang, but I heard in meditation this morning that I needed to pray for Israel. And yes, I’m like wha?!?!?! But on reflection, I can see that my feelings about Israel are only adding to the miasma of dis-grace that surrounds the Gaza crisis. That my lack of grace towards the “perpetrators” increases their negative energy and negative energy is what we need to stop. I KNOW it sounds too woo-woo for words but that’s what I heard in my thoughts and that’s what I’m going to do, even if I don’t mean it—until I do mean it. Can’t be any worse than being debilitated by grief as I am now. Sometimes I can hardly breathe. 

Chang Chokaski

You're right - something like that would indeed piss me off. I pray for Zionism to not exist. I pray for Israel in its current incarnation to not exist. I would rather pray for a million other things. In fact, I think praying for the Palestinians and praying against the Israelis sounds pretty cathartic to me. (Then again, I am an athiest - and I don't think my athiest God is likely to listen to my prayers 😃) 

Jeano

🤗. Ya. Exactly. And I’ve been wish/praying like you do for weeks now. But I do believe in dark matter and in dark energy, and they seem to represent principles of reality that I can’t even imagine. So I’m willing to allow as how the I Ching might have a point when it says “do not do evil the courtesy of fighting it blow for blow, for it only thinks of weapons. Instead, make energetic progress in the good.” It’s entirely possible in a universe so full of strange and confusing stuff, that GOOD is an energy that actually accomplishes what we want. Guess I’ll see when I croak! 😁😆

Sloan Bashinsky

Matthew 5:44-45 American Standard Version (ASV)

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

Jeano

Ya—this is the kind of crap that makes me NOT want to pray for Israel. This is Jehovah’s book. Jehovah, the god the Israelites made up, the guy who needed the sacrifice of his own son before he could accept humanity as being is no better than he made us, the guy who decided the Jews were special and “gave” them Israel. I wouldn’t anymore follow his advice than I’d fuck a duck. 

Sloan Bashinsky

If that man’s teachings and the way he lived had been taken to heart, humanity would be very different, there would be no war in Gaza, or anywhere.

Jeano

Dream on Buckwheat. 

  

Sloan Bashinsky

"Jeano

This may piss you off but I heard in meditation this morning that I needed to pray for Israel. And yes, I’m like wha?!?!?! But on reflection, I can see that my feelings about Israel are only adding to the miasma of dis-grace that surrounds the Gaza crisis. That my lack of grace towards the “perpetrators” increases their negative energy and negative energy is what we need to stop. I KNOW it sounds too woo-woo for words but that’s what I heard in my thoughts and that’s what I’m going to do, even if I don’t mean it—until I do mean it. Can’t be any worse than being debilitated by grief as I am now. Sometimes I can hardly breathe." 

 

russian_bot

You forgot plastic smiles. The first thing I'm thinking when I see absent, moronic smiles void of any context - someone is "bigging" themselves up.
One thing good about covid was it wiped them off people's faces. Some continued doing it while masked and that looked even weirder.

You need a rest, "Sloan". I think I already mentioned that elsewhere.

Sloan Bashinsky

I've had a great deal of experience with adults who were severely abused in childhood, and it looks to me that Caitlin and most of her readers who comment under her Gaza posts were severely abused in childhood and are in denial about how abusive their parents were. They emotionally identify with the dead, wounded, oppressed, shellshocked, depressed, starving, displaced people of Gaza and are not able to see their parents and Hamas psychologically are one and the same, pretending love and caring but giving them just the opposite. 

 

I give Hamas and Israel equal credit for the mayhem in Gaza. Hamas imbedded itself within and underneath civilians, making it certain that many civilians would be killed and wounded and displaced and experience diaspora if Israel came to Gaza to fight Hamas. The October 7, 2023 raid in Israel was clever bait Hamas hoped would provoke Israel to do precisely what then did in Gaza, which turned Israel into a pariah state likened to Nazi German, supported by America. Instead of defending the people of Gaza, Hamas did the opposite. 

 

russian_bot
"turned Israel into a pariah state likened to Nazi German, supported by America" - Israel was that all along and Hamas attack certainly brought it up to the surface so it's very difficult to no longer pay attention to.
That Israel is and has been a Nazi state from its inception - read history. I believe you've been provided with authors and books already.
Your analysis of Caitlin and her audience is weak, by the way. People who do psychological work like you said you did, often tend to subsequently overestimate their psychic powers.

Sloan Bashinsky
I have psychic powers, but that is not what this is about. Hamas was supposed to protect the people of Gaza from Israel, in Gaza. Hamas did just the opposite by provoking Israel to attack Gaza and then fighting to defend Hamas. I think anyone who cannot see that needs counseling. I think anyone who sees it, but doesn’t acknowledge it, will be visited by Lady Karma sooner or later, and they may or may not connect the dots.

russian_bot
I know it's about Hamas. I just wonder when you are going to shut up about it.

Sloan Bashinsky
Maybe when Caitlin, who invited me here, says it’s about Hamas?  

 

russian_bot

I know you know it but still - you're such a pain in the ass 😉 

Sloan Bashinsky

I hear that a lot. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

     

some redneck mystic lawyer musings after Tsar Putin-Tucker Carlson interview

    Early on, The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast was banned in Russia and Belarus. After my friend Bob learned about the Torrent universe and started seeding our podcast episodes there, Torrent subscribers anywhere could watch our podcasts.

    By the time I saw Red Notice author Bill Browder interviewed this Sunday morning on CNN’s United States of Scandal. I had seen several news reports and commentaries on the death in prison of Russian political dissident Alexel Navaln, viewed by many as murder by Vladimir Putin.

    When I lived in Key West, a local lawyer I knew pretty well lemt me his copy of Red Notice, and told me to read it and find out what is really going on. So, I read it and came away even more convinced that Vladimir Putin was KGB through and through, cut from the mold of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev.

    On CNN today, Browder said Putin needs to be stopped. I wondered how that might happen? Is Browder going to Russia to stop Putin? I wondered why Browder did not say what I was thinking? That Donald Trump intends to be like Putin, if he gets back in the White House. 

    Now why would I think such a hateful thing?

    How about I watched Trump on TV ask Russia to help him dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016.

    How about after Trump was sworn in as President in 2017, I watched him on TV talk about  Vladimir Putin being elected what appeared to be president for life of Russia, and he, Trump, liked that idea, president for life.

    How about I read numerous news reports last year and this year, in which Trump was quoted as saying he will get even with the people who falsely persecuted him, and he will pardon the January 6, 2020 insurrectionists.

    How about I’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb, or pretend like a sly like a fox not to know Donald Trump is possessed by a demon, which has infiltrated his lemmings, which happened to Adolph Hitler and his lemmings, and to Vladimir Putin and his lemmings, and is happening to Joe Biden and his lemmings.

    Oh, you say I can’t say that about Joe Biden? 

    Really? 

    Well, pretend you are a pastor I know.

    I told him yesterday that Joe Biden has helped Israel kill a lot of civilians in Gaza and is guilty of war crimes. The pastor said God is behind it. I said God has nothing to do with it. The pastor said God had the Israelites kill a lot of people in the Bible. I said that's in the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, Jesus said he brought a new covenant, and Jesus never told anyone to kill anyone. The pastor said it is in the New Testament, too. I said he has not read his Bible.

    Right now, I'm watching Trump rail on CNN that the $355 million dollar fine against his company in New York, in a New York state court, is the end of democracy in America. Trump and the MAGAs, and the Republicans who stick with Trump, are the end of democracy in America.

    Joe Biden is an agent of the Devil in Gaza, and he has bat shit for brains about how his son Hunter got filthy rich in Ukraine, and about Israel and southern border immigration, but Bidn has not said, if reelected, he will be a dictator. He has not said, if reelected, he will get even. He has not said he likes Vladimir Putin. He has not said he likes the idea of being president for life.

    Biden won’t get my vote in 2024, but he is not a ticket to America’s version of Nazi Germany and Putin Russia.

    That said, I think all Americans, and all people anywhere, should watch Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vladimir Putin, regardless of how they view Carlson and/or Putin, in which Putin tells Carson that America needs a president who understands Russia better, ie. Donald Trump. 

    Here is a link for the interview. It’s a little over 2 hours.

https://tuckercarlson.com/the-vladimir-putin-interview/

    I think that everyone should watch the interview, because Putin is Russia today. Therefore, it is as important to know what he has to say, as it is important to know what Biden and Trump and the leader of China, Xi Jinping, have to say.

    Putin told Carlson that Russia and China share thousands of kilometers of common border. They are trading partners. In that way, they depend on each other. 

    Putin told Carlson that Russia’s economy is the largest economy in Europe. 5th behind China, America, India and Japan. 

    Russia has more nuclear weapons than America. Russia has hypersonic missiles, which America does not have. Russia has EMP weapons, which can disable American war plane, ship, ground vehicle and missile electronics, which America does not have. Russia’s hackers appear to be better than America’s hackers.

    If I were America’s president, I would have zoom discussions with Vladimir Putin once a month, if he would do it. I would have zoom discussions once a month with Xi , if he would do it. I would do that, because Russia and China can destroy America with nuclear weapons, which no other country can do yet, and  America can destroy Russia and China with nuclear weapons.

    After talking with other nation’s leaders, I would have dreams about them, and peopleI know would have dreams about those leaders, which provide me information about those leaders and guidance about how to deal further with them. If they would not talk with me, the same would happen.

    I would have that advantage over them. I know this, because I have dreams about everything which I get involved, and other people have dreams about that, too, which they share with me. Also, for a very long time, when there is something I don’t know about what I am involved in, sooner or later, I learn about it in some way or another. 

    About half of the interview is about Ukraine.

    Putin claims in interview to be a Christian. When Carlson asks Putin how he reconciles killing people in Ukraine with being a Christian, Putin says defending Russia comes first.  Sound’s pretty American, yes?

 Putin explains to Carlson the history of Ukraine and Russia’s relationship with Ukraine since around 800 A.D. Putin views much of Ukraine as part of Russia. Putin says Russia invaded in 2014 where Neo-Nazis in Russian-speaking Donbass Ukraine were mistreating Russian Ukrainians. 

    Putin says the 2014 uprising that saw former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich forced from office was the result of a “coup” orchestrated by the United States and supported by Washington’s European allies. 

    Putin says NATO agreed many years ago not to expand, and then it took in countries closer to Russia.

    Putin says Ukraine President Volodymyr  Zelenskyy’s delegation in Istanbul, Turkey was about to sign a peace agreement to end the current invasion of Ukraine and return some of the land Russia had taken, and Great Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on behalf of President Biden, talked Zelensky out of it. Putin tells Carlson that agreement can still be implemented.

    Putin says NATO agreed many years ago not expand, and then NATO put bases closer to Russia.

    Putin tells Carlson that after the economic sanctions were imposed against Ukraine, the American dollar became a good bit less important in world commerce, because Russia was forced to pay more in rubles than in dollars.

    Neither Carlson or Putin talk about Russian rockets pounding Ukraine cities and killing and wounding lots of Ukrainian civilians, and Russian troops invading parts of eastern Ukraine having nothing to do with Donbass.

    Me, personally, I take what national leaders say with a grain of salt.

     It’s not in their nature to think as I think, because they have not had angels known in the Bible hard on their cases since early 1987. 

    I am not in their shoes, dealing with what they deal with, but if I were America’s president, I would deal with some things very differently than Joe Biden, Donald Trump and their predecessors.

    Regarding Ukraine, I would tell the leaders of Western Europe nations that Ukraine is their neighbor and it is on them whether or not to help Ukraine fight Russia, because NATO only comes to the aid of NATO members which have been attacked by a non-NATO country, and Ukraine is not a member of NATO. 

    My position has nothing to do with how I feel about Russia and Ukraine, or their leaders. What goes on between Ukraine and America is none of America’s business. I feel the same about China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, Israel and Islam.

    For way too long, America has used preserving “democracy” as an excuse to go to war in foreign countries, when the real reason is the religion of the American Empire is capitalism, and war makes the American military-industrial complex a great deal of money.

    When he was leaving the White House, President Eisenhower, who had been commander in chief of the Allied Command in defeating Adolph Hitler’s military in Western Europe, while Joseph Stalin's Russia was defeating Hitler’s military in Eastern Europe with America’s help, told Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex.

    What is not taught in American history courses is President Harry Truman wrote in his diary, which I saw in a Life magazine issue maybe in 2005, that he did not drop the A-bombs on Japan to defeat Japan, which was trying to surrender. He dropped the A-bombs to intimidate the Russians, and look at how that turned out.

     A palace on the Black Sea coast near Gelendzhik, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Sergei Kolesnikov and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), led by Alexei Navalny, said the palace was built for President Vladimir Putin. On 30 January 2021, Arkady Rotenberg said he owned the palace.

    President for life.

    Donald Trump said he liked that idea.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com    

Wavy Gravy endorses The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast on Canada public radio and the podcast is blacklisted by Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Austria and other European countries

    Recently, CBC, the Canadian version of America’s National Public Radio (NPR), interviewed Wavy Gravy (born Hugh Romney, no relation to Mitt), the founder of The Phurst Church of Fun, The Hog Farm, the longest existing commune to this day, The Church of the Cosmic Eagle, the Church of the Infinite Giggle, and Nobody For President, a beloved farm pig who had crossed over and was running from Pig Nirvana.

    Wavy Gravy told the CPR host that nobody is qualified to be America’s president, and the host said he could not say that, because it was hateful, and he said he just said it. 

    The host asked Wavy Gravy if he had found anyone out there to carry on the cultural activism he had inspired, such as Ivan Stang and J.R. Bob Dobbs' Church of the Sub Genius. Wavy Gravy named two podcasts, one of which was The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast. He said those two guys (Bob and me) may be viewed by some people as crazy, but what is considered sane is so insane, perhaps people should be listening to the crazy.  (Maybe a year and a half ago, Ivan Stang endorsed our podcast.)

    Wavy Gravy named two more podcasts, and as he was about to name a fifth podcast, the host said she had been advised that all of those podcasts contained potential hate speech and she terminated the interview.

    Bob told me that he listened to the interview before the station took the interview off its website and warned that anyone who republished the interview would violate the Millennium Digitial Copyright Act.

    The Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcast had a surge in watcher numbers. 

    I was reminded of this poem by a south Alabama amiga:

All want the security of the well fed pig.
Horror at the baseness unrecognized.
A lifetime spent in shirt stuffing.
And pen comparison.
Is truth more palatable when honeyed?
Is a stark soulscape less so with the eyes of Monet? 
May my affectations always be understood.

    Around the time Wavy Gravy was interviewed by CBC, The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast was blacklisted in Canada, Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain and several other west Europe countries, and Australia for “hate speech”, because, Bob and I had discussed Donald Trump and MAGAs and Joe Biden being demonically possessed; we had discussed The Spear of Destiny, by Trevor Ravenscroft, which describes how a powerful demon infiltrated and enhanced Adolph Hitler and his inner Nazi Circle and much of the German population; I had proposed bringing home America’s troops to defend its southern border as peacefully as possible; and we had trolled and criticized the Australian political commentator Caitlin Johnstone, who subscribed to my Substack Newsletter and then invited me to subscribe to her Substack Newsletter, where I watched her repeatedly ignore Israel had responded to the October 7, 2023 Hamas raid how Hamas had hoped Israel would respond, so Israel would become a pariah state supported by America, which some of Islam views as the great Satan, which America sometimes is, but then, so is some of Islam.

    Links to the 2 podcasts before the one Bob and I did tonight about Wavy Gravy and our podcast being blacklisted.

https://youtu.be/DoRDLQMm6FA

The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Survey of Land Mine America and the Cost of Truth

https://youtu.be/-oWyz2GV9Yk

Thank you Donald Trump for making America Dangerous to Disagree with You

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, by A Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic

   Two friends' and my dreams left me feeling I might wish to go back in time to a little book that came up out of me amidst oceans of tears and snot. I suppose anyone running for president, even if only make-believe, should share with the public a little bit about people who affected him in his early life and remain with him today.

   The book can be can be read for free at either of these links: https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-few-remarkable-alabama-peoplei-have.html ;

 https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    The introduction below explains how the book came about.

A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN

by A southern lawyer who became a mystic

This first little book in a trilogy (see links at very end) was set up by a poem, which fell out of me as fast as I could write it.

SHANGHAIED

A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,
which legitimates both the calling and the serving
so that the two are one.
Only the one called to serve
can know this wisdom,
and for some who are called
the knowing comes easily,
while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.
Each calling is different,
and while some callings can be declined,
others cannot,
and those whose calling is without repentance
know they are in it for the duration of the calling,
and while others may try to persuade them out of it,
the calling for ones such as these always prevails;
thus is it advised to all called for keeps
that they view their calling as a blessing
even when it seems at times to be a curse,
and that they try to reconcile the loss of their captain status
and allow the Spirit of God to man the helm of their ship,
and be glad and willing crew members thereon,
knowing that all sailing ships of souls
need a crew as well as a captain
to maintain and navigate the ship through
seas of many tones, depths and flavors;
so consider each league sailed
as part of the overall journey
going to where the captain deigns to go
by using whatever winds and sea currents available
to navigate the ship to the experiences
this ship and crew need to have
in order to fulfill their calling and its wisdom
revealed by the journey of many leagues,
many known only to the ship and its crew,
all of whom come to know,
some sooner than others,
that once conscripted
there is no safe jumping ship.

(7 June 2004)

A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE 

I HAVE KNOWN

GREETINGS

This little book of stories about five large Birmingham, Alabama people, and one from Poland via Troy, Alabama, started falling out of me, amidst much weeping, in the early fall of 2004.

Here’s how this little book began:

From	sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com [no longer valid]
Sent	Thursday, September 16, 2004 4:33 PM
To	mecommentary@npr.ord, atccommentary@npr.org, sflowers@npr.org
Subject:	commentary submission

Dear NPR,

After a two-year hiatus, I recently had my geographic and fiscal circumstances change so that I could again listen regularly to NPR. Then late last week I heard on an afternoon NPR show a couple of commentaries about stagnated writers whose careers were rejuvenated by synchronistic experiences. The next or maybe the next afternoon, I heard a young woman read at length out of a book she had written about her public service experiences in Africa. Yesterday morning I was moved to tell a good buddy of a remarkable judge I’d once known, who was, I felt, a saint, even though he did not attend church. My friend said he hoped I would write it all down and give him and our minister a copy. I then sat down and wrote a piece that mostly wrote itself and took me into some pretty deep places. After I read it to my new landlady and new friend yesterday afternoon, and told her how it had all come about and that I was thinking perhaps of submitting it to NPR, she said that she was already thinking along those lines, and that the piece might be the first of a number of somewhat similar pieces, perhaps to make up a book. I had three non-fiction books published/handled by Simon & Shuster, several lifetimes ago, it seems. Then my writing became mostly mystical non-fiction, verse and novels, which I self-published and mostly gave away, as I then had money for doing that. This new piece perhaps is more generally accessible. Thanks for considering it, and, even if you don’t feel you can use it, for helping to inspire it.

Sloan Bashinsky

[NPR did not respond.]

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com