It is time to blow Taps for America?

    While right wing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito assures he had nothing to do with an upside down American flag, which came to represent “Stop The Steal”, being displayed at his home after  the January 6, 2020 peace demonstration, I’m wondering if maybe the reality is I’ve shot my off my mouth enough at this mock campaign blog, and it’s time for me to shoot off my mouth somewhere else, or go out to pasture, or be recalled by the Mother Ship?

    I am satisfied from going at national politics at my blogs, on Facebook and in online forums since 2016, that nothing I say or write has any effect on the American right or the American left. Both sides appear to be so sure they hear from God’s mouth to their ears, literally or metaphorically, that they, on the right, remind me of Adolph Hitler’s goose-stepping hordes, and they, on the left, remind me of the mythical Fukawi tribe, which was forever getting lost and gathering in a circle and sitting down and holding hands and chanting, “Where in the fuck are we? Where in the fuck are we?”

    Recently, I stumbled across another old fossil on Substack, who seems pretty darn fed up with how it’s going in America, and he shoots off his mouth about it. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but he seems able to poke the left and the right. You met him in yesterday’s Hey gun nuts, where is the Amendment II enabling well regulated militia? post at this blog, and today you can get to know him better by opening the link below and reading what he wrote today. It’s l-o-n-g.

The Shade Tree

Allow Me to Retort

The empty suit known as Joe Biden needs to be retired from office permanently.

THE FOSSIL

MAY 20, 2024  

    https://wfslthefossil.substack.com/p/allow-me-to-retort

    Here is my reply to what The Fossil wrote today:

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Re:

Actually, it appears Donald Trump did shit his pants from time to time :-).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnK164efOB0

 

During the covid shut down, I had radiation therapy for prostate cancer, which really sapped my energy, but it seems so far to have killed the cancer, although the radiation caused scar tissue in my pee machine and I think it damaged my colon worse than IBS had damaged it. I only had Medicare, and if I had not had it, I could not have afforded the radiation treatment. Medicare knocked the radiation treatment cost way down, as it knocks way down all of my doctor and hospital bills. I’m sorry you have cancer, and I wonder what variety inflicted you?  

I’m curious. Did you vote for Trump or HIllary in 2016? Did you vote for Trump or Biden in 2020? Do you say the 2020 election was stolen from Trump? Will you vote for Trump this year, 2024? I think you owe that information to whomever receives The Shade Tree. 

Considering Biden, Trump and RFK, Jr., I think America is FUBAR regardless of who is in the White House. If I weren’t 81, I might already have moved to another country. But Biden doesn’t remind me of Adolph HItler and the Democrats don’t remind me of Hitler’s goostepping military and civilian hordes. Even so, I won’t vote for Biden in 2024. I very reluctantly voted for him in 2020, the first and only time I voted for a major party candidate for president. I now wish I had written in Mickey Mouse for president in 2020. 

This morning on CNN, the ICC (World Court) is seeking to get arrest warrants for Hamas and Israel leaders. Why in the FUBAR isn’t the ICC also seeking to get arrest warrants for President Biden, who gave Israel the money and weapons it needed to obliterate Gaza? Donald Trump told Israel he is their best friend. If he were president now, his religious right base would be shrieking for him to give Israel whatever it asks to obliterate Gaza.  

I was influenced by the Ukraine War story you promote in your post today, until I watched the YouTube Tucker Carlson interview of Vladiimir Putin, in which Putan flat said Ukraine courting NATO was not why he invaded Ukraine. He invaded because Ukraine historically was part of Russia, and it still is. Even so, there is no way Hunter Biden got rich in Ukraine without his daddy’s influence, and I’m all for that sewer being opened up and drained in a United States District Court criminal prosecution, alongside Trump being prosecuted for lying in bed with his good KGB buddy Putin who didn’t want Hillary Clinton elected, either :-), because he knew she was not Russia’s bosom buddy. 

Among other meds, President Trump was given Remedisvir when he had Covid-19. Trump had in his paws Dr. Zelenko’s cheap, fast, early infection stage cure, zinc, hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin, which would have saved your brother the Remedisvir misery he endured and would have allowed America to stay open. 

Hydroxychloriquine transported zinc into body cells, where Covid-19 took up residence, and zinc inhibited Covid-19 replication. Azithromycin fought any secondary infection. The Zelenko cocktail only worked if it was given when Covid-19 symptoms first appeared. Waiting for positive tests, before giving the cocktail, gave Covid 19 too much head start and Covid-19 infecteds went the way of your brother. 

The FDA gave emergency approval for hydroxychloroquine, but after Joe Biden, the Democrats, Dr. Fauci, CDC, NIH, WHO, Big Pharma and the liberal media went batshit crazy against Dr. Zelenko’s cocktail, the FDA rescinded the emergency approval, and what did President Trump do? Did he fire his FDA director and get a new director who would reinstate the Zelenko cure? No. Make America Great Trump launched Operation Warp Speed. He could have saved America from shutting down. Instead, he told Americans to be Big Pharma’s guinea pigs. 

I became one of those guinea pigs. I then watched hospitals all over my home state, Alabama, be flooded with unvaccinated Covid-10 patients, which caused those hospitals to turn away people with critical non-Covid-19 troubles. Trump came to Alabama and did a MAGA rally in Culman, and was booed by his adoring MAGAs for asking them to get vaccinated. Trump goosestepper Alabama Governor Kay Ivey urged all Alabamians to get vaccinated, because Alabama’s hospitals were tsunamied by unvaccinated MAGAs, whom I argued online should have been turned away by those hospitals, because they had made their constitutional right to die by their own choice, and they should be allowed to do it, so help their in God they trusted and were dying precious selves :-). 

 

The Fossil
My cancer is an adenocarcinoma of unspecified origin, they can't tell us what caused it, where it started or what specific mutation it is. My upper and lower GIs are clean, so clean they were surprised by it. I'm unjabbed and have never been a smoker, my wife and I believe it's related to my Army service and career as an industrial electrician. I presented stage four and was told without chemo I'd be dead in months. After a year of it the oncologist said he couldn't do anything else for me and wants me to go to clinical trials. He refuses any other course of action. My tumors have shrunk some but are still present in my neck, chest, stomach and liver. Being a guinea pig isn't on my list so from here out we're going with homeopathic, natural treatment and that's still expensive but it's my life. We're going to make it to our fiftieth anniversary and believe nothing less.
Yes I voted for Trump in 2016 despite years of not liking him. I've been fed up with both parties for a long time and finally here was someone who wasn't a politician and wanted to fix things. Plus the fact that set off his opponents by announcing water is wet was appealing and funny. And though he did some good, he hung gun owners out to dry, didn't even attempt half of what he promised and surrounded himself with swamp creatures like Barr, Haley and Pence to name a few. I don't believe Russia hacked the 2016 election, and when the pussy hat crowd descended on DC they were treated with kid gloves. I would never consider voting for HRC, the woman is a carpet bagger and a criminal. 
Due to Trump's behavior I didn't vote for either him or Biden, ol' Joe is a reprehensible pedophile, straight from his daughter's diary and mouth. Hunter's misdeeds in service of the Biden crime family need their own post, we all know what he's done. Slo and his family have treated the nation and it's people like their personal piggy bank and slaves. Threatening voters on the campaign trail, telling them they aren't black if they don't vote for him, appointments made because they check boxes on DEI scorecard, it's endless. Can you imagine the howling had Trump yelled at the nation from a blood red lit stage with Marines present? 
The fact is it's a uniparty determined to drag us into another war, support Israel no matter what they do, tell illegals to surge the border and do more for them than Americans. And it's not fair to the people who immigrated legally. There's more to this than they're admitting, wait and see. So I'll not vote this year either, or anymore federal elections period since they want to strip us of our first amendment rights to keep Tel Aviv happy. The uniparty wants to strip our rights away and saddle the next 5 generations with debt. I withdraw my consent unless I vote for an Alice Cooper/Vermont Supreme ticket. 

Sloan Bashinsky
My sincere condolences your cancer bummer. My brother’s oldest daughter, whom I viewed as my own daughter, died during the Covid shutdown after two rounds of chemo. I tried tp persuade God to take me instead of her. Broke my heart. 
First I heard of Biden being a child molester. Otherwise, I think you tarred and feathered him pretty good. 
Russia did hack and influence the 2016 election, not just limited to HRC dirt, which needed to come out. In 2016, I kept posting at my blog that Hillary and Donald should be locked up in adjoining cells, and i told many Democrats that they got Trump elected by running Hillary. 
I agree with you re Israel. It was a grave mistake to create Israel. Too bad America didn’t receive the WWII Jewish refugees. 
Trump’s God assignment while he was in the White House was to make Dr. Zelenko’s Covid-19 cure freely available in America, and America could have stayed open. Trump blew that assignment, made Big Pharma happy, and set out to try to become like Vladimir Putin.
Trump could have made Mexico stop the southern invasion by stopping Mexico products and farm produce from coming into America and stopping Americans and their money from going to Mexico, until Mexico stopped the invasion. 
81-year-old me wakes up every morning wishing the Mother Ship had recalled me yesterday, but since it didn’t happen, I figure God, the Force, or Whatever, still wants me to be here, and I get up and start shooting off my mouth again.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Hey American gun nuts, where is the Amendment II enabling well regulated militia?

 

    For the first time ever, a shade tree gun nut with a helluva sense of humor blessed my 81-years with his Substack newsletter, but the didn’t scratch all of my NRA stand your ground he-man heretic itches.

The Shade Tree

Cheetolini Receives NRA Endorsement 

Both the NRA & Trump think gun owners are exist to be fleeced for votes and designer suits. Disabuse them of the notion.

THE FOSSIL

MAY 19, 2024

Donald Trump, AKA Cheetolini and a million other descriptive nicknames and monikers, spoke to the NRA convention in Dallas Texas tonight, picking up the organization’s endorsement for the third time since 2016, in the prelude to his 2024 Uniparty Geriatric Slap Fight Royale. That bit of theater will determine who gets to be the figurehead of the Uniparty, sleep at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and fly around the world at taxpayer expense selling out the American people and their descendants to a future of debt servitude and forever war that doesn't benefit them at all. Unless you count the privilege of dying or being maimed for life as a perk.

The crowd of NRA members, mostly BoomerCons afflicted with cognitive dissonance and wearing tshirts with asinine slogans like God Guns and Trump gave him a rapturous greeting while he squinted and smirked back at them, no doubt about to cream his tighty whiteys at the thought of all the rubes eagerly accepting his lies as the gospel truth.

NRA MEMBERS & TRUMP SUPPORTERS READING THIS.

Trump urged all gun owners to get out and vote in 2024, saying ‘ I think you're a rebellious bunch. But let's be rebellious and vote this time.’ He is no doubt aware that a majority of gun owners stayed home in 2020. In Dallas Saturday night Trump raised the specter of Biden and the Democrats acting to seize their guns, calling himself ‘…the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House.’ In 2016 gun owners were a large part of his base as he promised to remove prohibitions on buying & owning suppressors, national reciprocity of handgun carry permits and other issues important to gun owners.

The reality was far different. Despite having a Republican majority for the first two years of his term, Trump not only failed to keep those promises he moved to ban bump stocks in 2017 following the mass shooting in Las Vegas. In 2018 the Orange One came out in support of Extreme Risk Protective Orders (ERPO), commonly known as red flag laws and used to circumvent your 2nd and 4th amendment rights as well as the due process clause found in the 5th and 14th amendments. The 4th guarantees your right to be secure in your person, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, the 5th protects you from self incrimination and the 14th prohibits the State from making or enforcing any law abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law and applying equal protection of the law to state and federal governments. Don't take my word for it, it'll take you less than five minutes to find the same information. As a result of this duplicitous treatment, or Tuesday afternoon as it's known in Trump World (I should copyright that), gun owners largely stayed home in 2020 rather than hold their nose a second time to vote for a candidate who didn't care about them or defending constitutionally protected natural rights.

And of course the NRA supported all of it, just as they supported the Hughes amendment in 1986 when then best friend to gun owners Ronnie Raygun signed that into law. The bill forbade the domestic manufacturing of new machine guns after May 19 1986. Of course they still begged for money to fight the Democrats, I remember as that was the first year of my joining the organization. As a patriotic teenager who had just started paying income taxes the idea that someone would take away my rights to enjoy something I'd enjoyed my entire young life was appalling and frightening. Their support of that act wasn't publicized and if it did come up the boomers calling the shots would say nobody needs a machine gun to go hunting, never mind that hunting has fuck all to do with the intent of the second amendment. You don't need designer suits for hunting either but years later it would come out that CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was using membership dues to fill his closet with them before his resignation in January of this year.

The NRA was there again to support the Gun Control Act of 1968, outlawing American’s rights to purchase firearms through mail order and delivered to their doorstep, removing the rights of convicted felons to own guns, prohibiting the importation of ‘Saturday Night Specials ‘ and other restrictions. The fact is that this was another assault on the freedom of American citizens under the guise of getting tough on crime and came on the heels of the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. Forget about the fact that criminals don't obey the law to start with and that convicted felon or not, if you've served your time and are safe enough to be released then you should have your rights restored without prejudice. This was just another way to disenfranchise a group of people, depriving them of their rights and advancing tyranny through scare tactics.

The fuckery of the NRA goes all the way back to 1936 when FDR, likely seeking another tyrannical thrill like he got in 1934 by outlawing and confiscating gold possessed by ordinary American citizens, forbade the sale to and possession of machine guns without registration and payment of taxes, thus converting a right into a privilege in another violation of the 14th amendment.

Before that you could buy a Thompson, the Chicago typewriter, or any other machine gun through the Sears catalog among other places. Machine guns were brought back as war trophies, purchased from military surplus sales or even from your neighbor. But through fear mongering and plain federal government tyranny those freedoms were taken away. 

None of those things prevented crime, they just infringed upon the rights of the law abiding and made a new class of criminals with each successive action. Trump, Biden, Reagan and all the other politicians and lobbyists know this but they count on the division of identity politics and the apathy of the American people to steal your freedoms and sell you and your family into the servitude of debt to pursue endless wars overseas. 

I'm not afflicted with TDS, not everything he does sends me into a blind rage and I'll admit that he did some good things during his first term. Gas was affordable, there weren't empty shelves at the grocery store, he capped the price of insulin, epi-pens and other life saving medication needed by millions of Americans among other things. But he doesn't deserve a second term even though he was cheated in 2020. 

There are alternatives to the NRA such as the Gun Owners of America, The Second Amendment Foundation, The Firearms Policy Coalition and one of my favorite names, Black Guns Matter, as well as numerous other organizations all fighting for your rights to own whatever gun you can afford and desire. And don't fall into the identity politics trope of it's just a bunch of redneck white men who benefit from the second amendment. There are groups such as the Pink Pistols that advocate for homosexual gun owners, the Second Amendment Sisters for female firearms advocacy, the Huey P Newton Gun Club supporting black gun ownership and a whole host of others. Even leftist groups like the John Brown Gun Club. My point being that this issue affects all of us and is just another example of the important things that bind us together as Americans versus the trap of divisive identity politics employed by Trump, Biden, Obama, the Bushes and Clintons and all the other Uniparty clowns. Instead of supporting either Trump or Biden how about we all stay home or vote for a third party or other write in candidate. Imagine what it would look like in November with vacant, empty polling places nationwide.

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

Kinda f-ing hilarious even to a non gun nut, who used to have shotguns for hunting flying feathered friends and a .22 bolt action which never got much action, and a .177 CO2-powered pellet gun, which got lots of action poaching neighbors’ squirrels and doves inside the city limits. Kept an Ithaca 12-gauge pump loaded with #4 buckshot in a closet in my wife’s and my bedroom, just in case a prowler got by the electronic alarm system, because even the most idiotic intruder immediately recognizes THE FEAR OF GOD caused by the sound of a shell being pumped from the magazine into the chamber. For stand my ground backup, a S & W 38 police special. 

But, I swan, I never was able to wrap my mind around needing a machine gun or large capacity mag pretend machine gun to shoot deer, elk, moose, coyotes, wolves, bears, alligators, cruising sharks, groundhogs, feral cats, etc., unless the shooter was blind, and I wondered why guards were not put in every public school armed with Thompsons, AK47s, AR-15s, etc. to protect school children from the NRA and the US Supreme Court, who this tired old lawyer saw never was able to even see the regulated militia premise of Amendment II:

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

Where in the f— is the enabling well regulated militia?

creative writing and living

 

    Some strange dreams a close friend had, and some strange currents I felt, as I followed the trial in a New York City state court, left 81+ year old lawyer me wondering if I should crawl deep down inside to a place I know is there but seldom visit, and I did it with something in mind, which was, although it won’t fix anything in America, it might really mess up a big theme park, and I told God that I don’t know if it's okay, or if it's possible, but I'm an American, so I have standing, and I clerked for a United States District Judge, who presided over every criminal prosecution in north Alabama, and I offer a life for a life: take Donald Trump and me, and let America get on without us.

    That done, I returned from the Mother Ship to resume being 80+ and what all that entails. 

    Something  from Poetic Outlaws in my email this Sunday morning aroused me a bit.

now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?
By: Charles Bukowski

POETIC OUTLAWS
MAY 19, 2024

 

 

I'd tell them to have an unhappy love
affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth
and to drink cheap wine,
avoid opera and golf and chess,
to keep switching the head of their
bed from wall to wall
and then I'd tell them to have
another unhappy love affair
and never to use a silk typewriter
ribbon,
avoid family picnics
or being photographed in a rose
garden;
read Hemingway only once,
skip Faulkner
ignore Gogol
stare at photographs of Gertrude Stein
and read Sherwood Anderson in bed
while eating Ritz crackers,
realize that people who keep
talking about sexual liberation
are more frightened than you are.
listen to E. Power Biggs work the
organ on your radio while you're
rolling Bull Durham in the dark
in a strange town
with one day left on the rent
after having given up
friends, relatives, and jobs.
never consider yourself superior and /
or fair
and never try to be.
have another unhappy love affair.
watch a fly on a summer curtain
never try to succeed.
don't shoot pool.
be righteously angry when you
find your car has a flat tire.
take vitamins but don't lift weights or jog.

then after all this
reverse the procedure.
have a good love affair.
and the thing
you might learn
is that nobody knows anything --
not the State, nor the mice
the garden hose or the North Star.
and if you ever catch me
teaching a creative writing class
and you read this back to me
I'll give you a straight A
right up the pickle
barrel.

Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter

I would tell them, 
if they have not lived, 
then do that.
I would tell them,
if they think they can learn to write
by reading a book,
or attending a creative writing class,
they missed the entire point.
I would tell them,
if they are Americans,
yes, read Hemingway,
read Faulkner,
read Melville,
and Poe,
then forget them,
because they are dead
and cannot be resurrected,
nor replicated.
Then read John Grisham,
to see how getting religion 
can mess up good thing.
Then,
read James Lee Burke,,
read Tom Robbins- 
but if you have not lived,
if you have not been shredded by life,
if you have not lost everything
and gotten up and kept going,
if you think wanting to be a writer 
makes you a writer,
if you think reading Bukowski
will make you a writer,
you missed the entire point,
but reading other writers
might arouse something in you,
it might help you in some ways
to craft your own style,
or it might help you become
a robot, a clone-
the only way to really write
is to be demolished,
mutilated,
pulverized,
destroyed,
obliterated,
by life,
and not kill yourself,
and stone cold sober,
standing before a mirror,
staring into the depths
of your very own soul,
staring at you, 
your life,
naked,
bare,
no secrets,
no fig leaves,
no shame,
your reputation ruined,
by you, 
now you are free,
now you are unchained,
now you can write,
if you dare,
if you care,
if you wish,
if you don’t give a shit
what anyone else thinks,
or wants,
or cares

    The free internet library, archive.org, holds my stranger than fiction novels, which could be introduced by something that fell out of me in the spring of 1994.

    Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, when the tale is told, every character is a character is a character in himself, every plot, a plot in himself- there are no surprises- on his to discover parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away, or never even knew were there. Perhaps in that way, he and God are somewhat alike- they both create to discover just who and what they really are?

Kundalina, Alabama: A Strange Tale

https://archive.org/details/kundalina

Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale

https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212

Return of the Strange

https://archive.org/details/retun-of-the-strange-v-20_202306

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

some inconvenient truths about religious fanatics in Palestine and America

    While the world’s most famous Bible salesman, who told Israel he is their best friend, is prosecuted in his hometown for paying a porno star hush money to help him get elected president, this very interesting analysis of where the Jews in Israel originated showed up in my email account yesterday, and I could not help myself.

My Two Senses

Hopefully, Some Small Insight on the Hamas-Israel War
In this conflict everyone loses, again and again.

OL’ FLAWRIDUH CRACKER
MAY 15, 2024

Arc of a Covenant, authored by Walter Russell Meade* was published in 2022. Though it received highly positive and glowing reviews, it never landed on my list of must reads. No, I’m not going to cry over not having read this in two years ago. However, I’m ecstatic over finding it recently.

Among the numerous food for thought insights he provides are:

The demographics of Israel

For most of my life I believed that the vast majority of Jews in Israel (I would have thought 80% conservatively) migrated to Israel from Europe in three waves. The first and far smaller was post WWI as the result of the Balfour Declaration, where Great Britain carved out a homeland for Jews in Palestine. This wave was supported largely by the Zionist movement 

The second and far larger would be of course survivors of the Holocaust, what might be called “The Exodus” wave made popular by Otto Preminger’s blockbuster film with Paul Newman in the lead protagonist role.

The third wave embedded in my mind was resultant from the crumbling of the USSR, where Russian Jews, exited to move to Israel.

Occasionally I would read about Jews from Ethiopia and North Africa migrating, but it barely made my radar scope.

Here is the reality

The largest sect of Jews in Israel today are not from or descendent from the WWII Holocaust European or Ashkenazi Jews ( 32%). The largest Jewish ethnic group in Israel, about 40% to 45% of Israel’s population, are called Mizrahi; Jews’ whose ancestors hailed from Jewish communities in the Middle East, including Israel itself.

Map from Wikipedia indicating geographic origins of Mizrahi Jews whose diaspora came almost exclusively from being driven from Muslim/Arab nations.

The second-largest ethnic Jewish group in Israel, about 32% of the population, is Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi Jews trace their ancestry to central Europe, most often via Eastern Europe. By 1945 when WWII ended, about two thirds of these Jews had been murdered by the Nazis.

Why this shows has connection to the current Hamas-Israel War?

This is largely the conclusion I draw from the fact that in the 1948 war about 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Palestine and within the year:

entire communities of Jews in Middle Eastern countries (primarily Iraq and Yemen) were relocated to Israel with the active help of the State. Jews from North African countries followed in the late 1950s in a wave of migration that continued until the late 1960s. While they were all Jews, they were a rather diverse population in terms of their socioeconomic resources 

(Cohen 2002; Semyonov and Lerenthal 1991),

Effectively the fledging state of Israel embittered three-quarters of million Palestinians by taking the land they lived on and then back filled it with equally embittered Mizrahi Jews who had been driven from their land by Muslim ruled nations.

There is no “The Reason” for the renewed and devastating war that now rages, but the situation that drove it was virtually cemented in by 1948.

---

* Meade is a professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and Editor-at-Large of The American Interest. From 1997 to 2010, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Dang interesting demographics. 
Too bad the good American Bible people didn’t clamor for America to receive the European WWII Jewish refugees, instead of later clamoring for the state of Israel to come to be, because their Bible gave that land to the Israelites, even though they had told God to take a hike many times since being made that promise? Now the good American Bible people, and their Bible salesman, Donald the Great, want Israel to atone for some of their ancestors having Jesus crucified by defending where he was born, roamed and died to save them, whom he never knew, from whatever they did wrong without any remorse, even to the extent of killing every Muslim nearby, if that’s what it takes?

Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker
I’ll use Meade’s research to lend some insight on American support for Palestine as a land where Jews could go to live.
It is a combination of views and ideals that morph over time. American support for “nationalist” causes, where people of all ethnic and nationalists beliefs would have a place to call homeland is a big part of it. Why? Because it mirrors concepts of self determination, and Democracy for the downtrodden. 
Another ties in with Biblical philosophy among Evangelicals and Puritans who felt America was a surrogate for the “shining city on a hill” and all kinds of Moses like promised land is America thinking.
Finally, after the “Big Wave” of immigration it meant less Jews living in America, because they had a place they could go to. Out of sight out of mind.

Sloan Bashinsky
Indeed, out of sight out of mind :-)
Imagine no Israel in Palestine. Imagine the hand-wringing and gut-wrenching in the America religious right over Islam controlling where their Jewish savior was born, roamed, and killed at the behest of Jewish leaders of that time. 
That’s what the Crusades were about- Islam controlled that place. That, and a lot of Christian men were not happy where they were and took a vacation hoping to get laid, feel important, get rich, famous, or whatever.
As long as Israel exists, that place will be what the Old Testament foretold, and maybe that’s where Armageddon will start? If Israel feels sufficiently threatened, it will detonate its nuclear arsenal wherever it feels will do it the most good and wreak the most havoc.
The America religious right hope Israel will kill every Muslim in the Middle East.
When Donald Trump announced he was Israel's best friend, he hoped that would get him every Jewish vote in America.
When Trump started praising the Bible, he hoped it would get him every conservative Christian vote in America. 
The two Bush presidents got America into a war with Islam, and President Biden and the Democrats view Israel as America’s only ally in the Middle East.
In Genesis, God told Abraham that Isaac’s seed would become a great nation, and that Ishmael’s seed also would become a great nation and would cause Isaac’s seed trouble. Judaism and Christendom view Isaac as the child God promised Abraham, but Islam views Ishmael as that promised child, and therein lies the still very much alive root of what is going on in that region.

Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker

Clearly a core issue in the “legitimacy” issues of Israel and Palestine is directly tied to “The Bible.” Because this proponents will tell you is the accurate, and undeniable truth, straight from God to those he inspired. So, depending on the current “expert” of the moment, currently claiming to have a direct connection with God as a divine interpreter, then there is no higher voice of truth or authority. This methodology worked well for early Puritans, who decided to make America the “New Jerusalem” The authority of a perceived God who sanctions a belief is clearly powerful stuff. It’s what makes suicide bombers and martyrs as well.

Sloan Bashinsky

You summed it up nicely, even though puking might be the candid response :-). Religious fanatics are certain God is on their side, they are the chosen people, and that’s been proven over and over again in Judaism, Christendom and Islam. If I were America’s president, I would detach America from the Middle East altogether, and let whatever happens there, happen, while I attempt do deal with what is going on in inside of America, which is so much less convenient and fun, but it is what the Jew Jesus recommended- beam in one’s own eye, the true jihad. :-)  Any nation that claims to be under God and puts in God we trust on its money, invites God to say, “Oh, really?”:-)

    After I published the above at my Substack newsletter, a classmate at Crestline Heights Elementary School in Mountian Brook, Alabama, commented:

Peter Rodes Robinson
Utopian Solutions 
Very readable and interesting. I recommend putting colons after headlines that indicate who is speaking. I didn't immediately get the alternative speaker structure of your essay.
A relevant fact. Some Arabs in the Middle East protected Jews during Holocaust. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_and_Muslim_rescue_efforts_during_the_Holocaust

Sloan Bashinsky
Thanks, Peter.
It was OL’ FLAWRIDUH CRACKER’s My Two Sense’s Substack post, so I didn’t occur to me to use colons, which I used to do when reporting dialogue with other people, and maybe I should return to that style.
Once upon a time, I read in the Koran that Mohammed advised treating surrendered enemies kindly. From what I read of the history of the Middle East, Asia Minor, Turkey, etc. after Islam took it over, people of all faiths were welcome, as long as they didn’t cause trouble. 
The Christian Crusades seriously damaged that balance and created deep hard feelings in Islam toward Christendom. 
I’ve had several discussions with OL’ FLAWRIDUH CRACKER since stumbling across his Substack. He does not belong to any herd, sect, cult, from all I can tell. He puts a great deal of thought into what he publishes. He does not seem inclined to think, or believe, or perhaps he’s simply agnostic, that what you and I were raised in Crestline to call God exists. So, he doesn’t seem particularly inclined to give the three Abrahamic religions/their scriptures credit for the dynamics in Palestine and the Middle East. 
The Christians and Jews I discuss Palestine with tend to side the chosen people view and that’s why America must help Israel. Their Bible says, so that’s what is, as far as they are concerned. 
I wonder how they would deal with what Archangel Michael told me as I walked out of the U.S. Post Office in Key West a few days after 9/11? “America should get out of the Middle East altogether and let Islam and Israel fight it out, or work it out, and in that way learn, which, if either, are God’s chosen people?” 
Three nights before 9/11, Michael had asked me in my sleep, “Will you make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity?” I woke up, made the prayer and went back to sleep. On 9/11, my concern was President Bush would get America into another Vietnam-like war it could not win. It did not occur to me that he would get America into two such wars.
Whenever I told American Christians or Jews what Michael told me, they shrugged it off, or looked at me like I was daff, or nuts.
I remember a Methodist Sunday school teacher telling his class in 2004, “I wish God would kill all Muslims!” I said softly, “What about turn the other cheek, pray for and do good to your enemies?” He said it again. I tried again. He said it again. I switched gears and said loudly, “What’s wrong with Christians? Don’t they read their own Bible?! In Genesis, God told Abraham that Ishmael’s seed would become a great nation and cause Isaac’s seed trouble, so if God said it, what’s the big deal?” It was as if all the oxygen was taken out of that Sunday school classroom. They couldn’t speak. 
I spent some time in churches back in those days, even though in the Gospels Jesus himself never built one church of wood, stone and mortar.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

President Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump?

    In my Apple newsfeed today, my interjected thoughts in bold.

The Guardian 

Biden should have pardoned Trump on federal charges, Mitt Romney says

Republican senator tells MSNBC that ‘frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president’
Martin Pengelly in Washington
Wed 15 May 2024 16.56 EDT

Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump on all federal criminal charges the moment they were announced, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said.

“Had I been President Biden,” Romney said, “when the justice department brought out indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump.”

“Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned the little guy. And, number two, it’s not going to get resolved before the election. It’s not going to have an impact before the election. And, frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president.”

Romney is a Mormon, and since that religion calls itself “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”, I wonder if Romney drew from Jesus saying in the Gospels, to resist not one who does evil, and to pray for and do good to your enemies? I wonder if Romney considers that in the Big Scheme, we all are on trial in God’s Courtroom, and in that sense, the federal and state prosecutions of Trump put every American on trial in God’s Courtroom, regarding how they viewed and responded to those prosecutions? 

I wonder if Romney remembers that once Mormon men took multiple wives, like Old Testament men did,  and if the Mormon religion of old had prevailed in America, Romney, Joe Biden and Donald Trump would have several wives, and prostitutes, porn stars and Playboy bunnies might not be so much in demand. 

I wonder if Romney knows that when people vote for a candidate, they vouch to God for the candidate, and they become joined at the hip with the candidate in the karma realm, and if the candidate is elected, they remain joined at the hip, unless they repent and renounce their allegiance, and how that goes for them in God’s Courtroom is out of their control and knowing.

That aside, I say as a former practicing attorney, who clerked for a United States District Judge who presided over every federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama while I clerked for him, that if President Biden had pardoned Trump on the federal charges, that would have sealed Trump was guilty of the crimes charged against him in federal court and in God’s Courtrom, unless Trump had declined the pardon and claimed he had not committed the crimes for which he was pardoned :-). Whether or not Trump accepted or declined the pardon, he would be on trial in God’s Courtroom, along with everyone who voted for him, who had not repented and renounced him.

Romney was speaking to MSNBC, in an interview to be broadcast on The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday night.

Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee despite facing 88 criminal charges. Forty-four are federal: four regarding election subversion and 40 retention of classified information. Neither case has reached trial.

The president could not pardon Trump on his other 44 charges, at the state level. Thirty-four arise from hush-money payments to an adult film star around the 2016 election, an election subversion case now at trial in New York, and 10 concern election subversion in Georgia.

Trump has also been hit with multibillion-dollar fines in civil suits concerning his business practices and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.

When Trump was president, Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict in both Trump’s Senate impeachment trials, for seeking political dirt on opponents in Ukraine and for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.

Romney told MSNBC: “I think the American people have recognised that President Trump did have an inappropriate affair with someone who was a porn star. I think they realise that.

“I think they realise he took classified documents he shouldn’t have and didn’t handle them properly. I think they understand that as well.

“I think they realise he’s been lying about the election [and supposed voter fraud] in 2020. They know those things. [But] these things are not changing the public attitude.”

More accurate, the federal and state criminal and civil prosecutions of Trump have cemented his original base, and have drawn more people to support him, and it looks to me it might take a miracle for Joe Biden to win a second term. 

Far more pressing, the jury in the New York state court “hush money” criminal prosecution is acutely concerned about what will happen generally, and against them and their families, the prosecutors and their families, the prosecution’s witnesses and their families and the trial judge and his family, if they the jury acquit Trump.  

I think the jurors know, if they convict Trump, it will not change the minds of his loyal supporters, and it may gain him more votes and put him back in the White House. 

I can imagine the jury thinks the lesser of evils is to acquit Trump and hope he loses the election this year. 

Even if I misread the jury, I can imagine there is a Trumper on the jury, who didn’t get sniffed out by the prosecution during juror selection, and the Trumper will not vote for conviction and will hang the jury and Trump will skate, and maybe Trump’s base won’t retaliate against all of the aforementioned?

In America’s pre-Trump past, Romney lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. In 2016, as Trump stormed to the White House, Romney wrote in the name of his wife, Ann, rather than support Hillary Clinton. Romney then flirted with accepting a post in Trump’s cabinet, as secretary of state, but found humiliation instead.

According to the author Gabriel Debenedetti, Romney urged Biden to run against Trump in 2020. Romney has said he did not vote for Trump that year, reportedly writing in Ann again.

Romney told MSNBC he liked Biden, who he found “capable” despite widespread claims that at 81 Biden is too old for his job, claims less prevalent regarding Trump, who is 77.

But when asked who he would vote for, Romney did not say Biden.

“I’m not announcing that here and now,” he said. “I’m not going to be voting for President Trump. I made that clear. I know, for some people, the character is not the number one issue. It is for me. When someone has been, well, determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that’s not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States.”

Criticising Biden on the economy and border security – though acknowledging Trump’s role in stopping a bipartisan border measure passing Congress – Romney told MSNBC: “I don’t know if that’s [Trump’s] ambition to bring people together. I’m not sure exactly what it is he hopes to do if he gets a second term.”

Asked about continued surprisingly strong Republican primary performances by Nikki Haley, who dropped out more than two months ago, Romney rejected the idea that a moderate wing of his party could yet seek to retake control.

“My wing of the party, it’s like a chicken wing, all right?” the senator said. “It’s a little tiny thing that doesn’t take the bird off the ground.”

 Romney’s candor is refreshing, however I am aware of perhaps only one person being elected president of the United States of America, because he was honest- Abraham Lincoln.

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sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com