As the rest of the world watches the alien lizard virus invasion of America

     

    In 1968, I graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law and clerked for United States District Judge Clarence W. Allgood in Birmingham, Alabama. He presided over every federal prosecution in north Alabama. Behind the scenes, he ran the Democratic Party in Alabama, except for the George Wallace faction. Although he did not attend church, he was the most Godly man I ever knew. He is he first person memorialized in my book, A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, which is a free read at the internet library, archive.org- https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    An amiga, who lives near Birmingham and has followed my online musings since my younger brother Major died in 2010,  texted me after the hush money jury verdict came in, in New York City.

Mortica 

Now I can breathe, I can’t wait to see your post about it.

You know people know who was on the jury. If you were off seven weeks and the triall was 7 weeks. Coworkers figured it out already. 

    After publishing yesterday’s the great pussy grabber’s pecker was convicted by an extraordinarily brave jury of his peers in his hometown of tampering the 2016 presidential election, I texted Morticia, and then we had ourselves a little jitterbug perfume waltz tango.

Me

Trump’s lawyers were given the jurors' names

Morticia

Surely they won’t make it public, that fool might.

Me

I will be very surprised if they didn’t give Trump that info, even though they were not supposed to. I expect a leak in the courthouse will out the jurors. No way they remain anonymous.

Morticia

That’s a shame, I heard Trump’s lawyer say they expected all along a guilty verdict.

Me

I just now saw on CNN that MAGAs are claiming the evil judge gave bad instructions to the jury, but, hey, Trump’s lawyers had signed off on those instructions.

Morticia

Trump’s sick mentally.

Narcissist. He’s the type it’s everybody on earth's fault but his.

Me

Actually, it’s his pecker's fault :-) 

 

Morticia

He’d have to have Bill Cosby (drug) me. Honey Bunch. That was his name for Stormy in her book. “When will you be back in my Honey Bunch”? Well, he loves to be the number one person. I wish the news would shut up talking about him. I think he should go to Rikers. Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy were chained in courtroom shackles and led straight to prison. At least Trump was found to be a felon and you know he has to be livid. If they quit talking about him on news that will get him even worse.

What really will kill him if he’s incarcerated or house arrest NO GOLF!!!!!

Me

I prefer Rikers.

After tampering the 2016 presidential election, Trump tried to overthrow the national government, claiming the Dems rigged the 2020 election. 

[Siegelman was an Alabama governor and Scrushy owned a Birmingham hospital.]

Morticia 

Riker’s no Secret Service.

No Diet Coke

Me

Orange Crush  

 

    My friend Bob, who does the tech work for my books at the free internet library, said he perused Trump’s Truth Social, and it's filled with conspiracy theories: those people will believe anything; they say the New York hush money case prosecutor is a lizard person, a reptilian alien.

    Bob said it's in the online media that the hush money case jury was not picked from Manhattan, but was picked from somewhere else in New York where Democrats far outnumber Republicans, when, in fact, the jurors all live in Manhattan.

    Bob said it's in the online media that Judge Juan Merchan’s parents were illegal immigrants from Puerto Rico. I said Puerto Rico is an American territory, and New York City is full of Puerto Ricans.

    Bob said it's in the online media, which I also had heard from a MAGA friend, that in Judge Merchan's instructions to the jurors, he said they didn’t have to be unanimous to convict. 

    I emailed Bob what Judge Merchan instructed the jurors, which Trump’s lawyers had signed off on, and MAGAs twisted into nonsense.

Your verdict, on each count you consider, whether guilty or

not guilty, must be unanimous. In order to find the defendant

guilty, however, you need not be unanimous on whether the

defendant committed the crime personally, or by acting in concert with another, or both.

“By Unlawful Means”

Although you must conclude unanimously that the

defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.

In determining whether the defendant conspired to

promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following: (1) violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA;

(2) the falsification of other business records; or (3) violation of tax laws.

    

    Bob said the twisting and spinning will get a lot worse. I said it’s been worse for a long time. MAGAs are like a lizard virus that keeps mutating into strange new forms. Ditto the Democrats, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his devotees.

    Bob said the jury wasn’t sequestered and Trump kept bellowing to the press and other news media and on Truth Social what he thought about the trial, Judge Merchan, the prosecutors and the witnesses, and the jury had to hear of that and it did not sit well with them. 

    I said I can imagine the jurors also got wind of Trump and MAGAs and FOX News and other conservative taking heads claiming the New York City trial was a political witch hunt, behind which was President Joe Biden, who had zero sway over what the New York state prosecutor was doing, and I can imagine that did not sit well with the jurors, either, and I can imagine it crossed their minds that Trump actually is a warlock and their job was try to do something about it.

     I told Bob that the hush money jury had two lawyers on it, and he said he had not known that. I said Trump and his lawyers really screwed up letting lawyers be on that jury. When a lawyer is on a jury, the jury behaves very differently, because the lawyer cuts through all the bull shit and hones in on the facts and the law. 

    A trial that long, the jury reached unanimous verdicts on all counts in two days’ time, I can’t imagine that happening that fast without the two lawyers on the jury and if the jury was not overwhelmingly convinced Trump was guilty.

    Trump had boasted he would testify, but when it came down to it, he didn’t, and he was the only person who could refute what Stormy Daniels and the former editor of the National Enquirer David Pecker and Trump's own lawyer Michael Cohen, who did the hush money deal with Daniels, had testified.

    I read enough news reports of Daniels, Peckers and Cohen’s testimony to think there was no way the jury would think they were lying, and the jury knew Trump’s lawyers thought Daniels, Pecker and Cohen were telling the truth, and Trump’s lawyers kept badgering them, did not sit well with the jury. 

    I think any lawyer worth his or her salt would have told Trump to plead out and get a wrist slap, and I imagine his lawyers did that and Trump told them it wasn’t going to happen, and I imagine the two lawyers on the jury explained that to the rest of the jurors.

    Nor did Trump seeming to fall asleep many times during the trial. and acting out in  and outside the courtroom, as if he was the king of a banana public.

    I spent a good bit of time in poor tropical countries and Americans who have not done that have no clue what a banana republic is. MAGAs call Democrats communists, when they should look at the guy Trump looks up to, Vladimir Putin, who was KGB.

    When I heard that Trump raised $50,000,000 since the jury verdict came in, I was not surprised, and two thoughts came to me: "You cannot worship God and mammon", and "A sucker is born every minute.” 

    The hush money trial and conviction indeed made the great pussy grabber lizard virus more vigorous and determined, and it very well might get him elected in November.

    I think there was a problem with Judge Merchant being the judge after he had donated to the Dems, and he was assigned the case instead of a computer lottery assigning the case, and perhaps the prosecutor should not have brought the case under the legal theory it used. However, some of the Republican justices on the United States Supreme Court don't recuse themselves when they have a conflict of interest. 

    It was important for the American public to see that Donald Trump bought silence to help him win the 2016 presidential election, and in that way he rigged that election.

    Alas, I think the lizard Joe Biden should retire- I won’t vote for him in November- but he’s the Democrats’ horse, and the Republicans have no other horse but Donald Trump, so unless Biden and Trump, and the lizard Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are abducted by aliens, or the the Lord takes them, and Chaos of an entirely different kind arrives...

    Good grief, what if the presidential election ends in a dead heat, a tie, and the House of Representatives has to decide it? Eeek!!! 

    I told someone yesterday, who was moaning about America going to hell, that the only solution I see is to nuke Washington, D.C., when Biden and Trump are there, and Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court are in session- that would drain the swamp.

    Since that’s not likely to happen, I add to my recent offer to God, my life for Donald Trump’s life, my life for Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy’s lives, too.

    MAGAs are not the only lizard virus, but they and their Warlock are the most dangerous lizard virus in America today. They are a reaction to the Democrats nominating the lizard Hillary Clinton in 2016, so in that sense, the Democrats are responsible for the lizard Donald Trump being a convicted felon. 

    For those who prefer mainstream reporting and commentary. I interjected just a few words, in bold.

Courthouse News Service

JOSH RUSSELL / May 31, 2024

MANHATTAN (CN) — After a mixed jury of a dozen New Yorkers unanimously delivered guilty verdicts on all 34 felony counts against Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon, legal experts told Courthouse News that two lawyers on the panel may have helped other jurors see through the noise in the case and focus on the “actual law” behind the charges of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election.

Deliberations lasted roughly 12 hours over two days before jurors reached the unanimous guilty verdict on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, making the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in November's election the first former U.S. president in the nation's history to be convicted of a crime.

The jury — seven men and five women — included two attorneys, a software engineer, an e-commerce sales professional, a security engineer, a teacher, a speech therapist, an investment banker and a retired wealth manager.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Courthouse News he thought it was a mistake for Trump’s lawyers to not strike the two lawyers from the trial jury.

“That never ever happens,” he said. “You rarely have one, much less two.”

Rahmani said lawyer-jurors can be “so powerful in the deliberation room” because they’re able to set aside the irrelevant spectacle surrounding a case and instead “focus on the jury instructions and the actual law in the case.”

“When you have lawyers on the panel, they tend to sway the deliberations, so you have to make sure that they’re on your side,” he said, noting that as a trial litigator he nearly always uses peremptory strikes to remove lawyers from the potential jury pool.

“Lawyer-jurors are very, very risky unless they’re on your side,” Rahmani added.“Jurors like that are high-risk, and certainly not helpful.”

The 12-person jury, empaneled six weeks ago after more than two days of jury selection, found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to cover up his reimbursement of a payment to actress Stormy during the 2016 presidential election to silence her about an extramarital tryst with Trump a decade prior.

At the request of the jurors during deliberations, Justice Juan Merchan reread his lengthy instructions [click that link to see Judge Merchan’s v-e-r-y l-o-n-g instructions] about how the jurors were to consider evidence and what can and cannot be inferred from it.

"You must set aside any personal opinions or bias you might have in favor of or against the defendant, and you must not allow any such opinions to influence your verdict,” the judge instructed.

Jurors were not given a written copy of those instructions, per state court rules, but the judge was allowed to reread the instructions out loud. Many jurors were seen writing notes while Merchan spoke.

They also asked to review transcripts of testimony from prosecution witnesses, Michael Cohen and David Pecker, whom the Manhattan district attorney accused of conspiring with Trump to bury negative publicity around the 2016 presidential election.

Attorney Renato Stabile told Courthouse News he believed that Trump’s defense pinned hope on a holdout juror prompting a mistrial, and believed the two lawyers on the slate of jurors “were going to parse the legal issues very carefully for the rest of the jury.”

“I'm not sure that happened in this case,” Stabile said Friday. “While the jury asked for a readback of the jury instructions, I ultimately think that the instructions … were too complicated for even the lawyers to fully understand and dissect.”

Horse shit 

 

Stabile said the other jurors, including would-be holdouts, are likely to look to lawyers as leaders, even if they practice civil litigation, not criminal law.

“For that reason, I tend to avoid keeping lawyers on any jury unless I am very confident that they will be on my side,” he said. “In this case, I believe that political affiliation was the ‘super factor’ in jury selection and was significantly more important than any other juror characteristic."

Juror No. 3 was identified as a corporate lawyer originally from Oregon. During jury selection, he told the court that he is “actually not super familiar with the other charges” Trump faced. 

“I don’t really follow the news that closely; a little embarrassing to say,” said the juror, who told the court he gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Google.

The other lawyer on the panel was Juror No. 7, a middle-aged civil litigator who is originally from North Carolina.

He told the court he didn't know “anything about election finance” and said he was ambivalent about Trump, liking some things about him but disliking others.

“I’m not sure I know anything about his character,” he added. “I’m a litigator, so I take the law seriously and I take the judge’s instructions very seriously.” He also said he was a regular listener of the New York Public Radio station, WNYC.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday credited the jury for reaching a verdict “based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone."

"Over the course of the past several weeks, a jury of 12 everyday New Yorkers was presented with overwhelming evidence — including invoices, checks, bank statements, audio recordings, phone logs, text messages and direct testimony from 22 witnesses — that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump illegally falsified 34 New York business records,” Bragg said in a statement announcing the verdict Thursday.

Throughout the trial at the New York Supreme criminal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Justice Merchan and the New York Office of Court Administration took special measures to ensure the jurors remained anonymous. The judge specifically prohibited the release of their names or addresses, without objection from Trump’s lawyers.

After delivering the guilty verdicts on Thursday, three black Ford Transit passenger vans with tinted windows, appearing to be carrying the anonymous jury, drove the wrong way up a one-way street away from the frenzied scene around the courthouse.

Trump's lawyers have vowed to appeal. He is set to be sentenced on July 11, days before the delegates of the Republican Party are expected to confirm him as the party’s nomination for presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In March, he moved to have the proceedings indefinitely adjourned due to “prejudicial pretrial publicity,” claiming that the juror pool in Manhattan had been “bombarded” with negative media coverage of Trump which tainted his odds at a fair trial.

On the heels of the verdict Thursday, donors contributed a daily record of nearly $35 million to Trump’s effort for a second term as president, his campaign announced Friday.

Throughout the trial, Trump regularly opined to reporters that he should have been out campaigning but was in court instead for what he called a “a very unfair trial.”

What was unfair was Trump hid paying hush money to keep private information that might have cost him the 2016 election, and he didn’t take the stand and defend himself, boo hoo, and the jurors, prosecutors, prosecution witnesses and Judge Merchan put their and their families’ lives at risk. 

sloanbashinskky@yahoo.com

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    She texted me las night, and …

She

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

Me

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

She

??? No erasing?

Me

They branded him.

She

Yes, but the greater whitewashed still believe. It is their religious connection.that is a larger subject on the uneducated and entertained with little self esteem. That is a larger subject on the uneducated and entertained while little self esteem that depend on a character to complete their self. In any case I believe the government is rotten from its roots just hiding behind the word ‘democracy".

After all, someone in mail for for selling weed can’t run for president.

Simplistic speaking.

Me

Agree re democracy noise and your priceless psychoanalysis.

Someone in jail for selling weed can run for president, and if elected, can serve from behind bars.

As for the religious right who see only what they want to see, the religious left is no different. They see only what they want to see.

Something precious and priceless happened yesterday. 12 men and women risked their and their families’ lives and convicted Donald Tump in his hometown of criminally tampering the presidential election. He got 4 years in the White House. If I were the tiral judge, I’d give him 4 years in a New York maximum security prison.

    For those who prefer mainstream reporting:

Reuters

May 30, 2024 9:44 PM UTC

Jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts at hush money trial

Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime on Thursday when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

After deliberations over two days, the 12-member jury announced it had found Trump guilty on all 34 counts he faced. Unanimity was required for any verdict.

Trump watched the jurors dispassionately as they were polled to confirm the guilty verdict.

Justice Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, days before the July 15 start of the Republican National Convention expected to formally nominate Trump for president.

Merchan thanked the jurors for their service. “Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. The choice is yours,” Merchan said.

The verdict plunges the United States into unexplored territory ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, when Trump, the Republican candidate, will try to win the White House back from Democratic President Joe Biden. 

 

1440 Daily Digest

May 31, 2024

Trump Criminal Conviction
A New York jury yesterday found former President Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts related to falsifying business records in the hush-money trial against him. The news makes him the first former US president convicted of a crime.
The case against Trump related to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The crux of the case rested on whether Trump altered records of $130K in hush money payments to make them appear legitimate and help his chances in the election. (See the full list of counts here.) Trump has repeatedly dismissed the trial as politically motivated and is expected to appeal. 
The conviction does not preclude Trump from running for office. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, four days before the Republican National Committee is set to formally nominate Trump for president. While Trump faces fines and a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison, an estimated one in 10 people convicted of similar charges is imprisoned. 

 

Today from Al.com, formerly The Birmingham News

The Alabama reaction
Donald Trump's conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up his personal dalliances with a pornography actress drew outrage and claims of a fix from many Republicans, including some of Alabama's top elected officials.
A popular talking-point in the reactions was to compare the U.S. to nations that might be under the thumbs of tyrants. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt used the phrase "banana republic," which was a popular one with Trump supporters. Our other senator, Tommy Tuberville, compared us to Venezuela and China.
Obviously, one thing we do have in this country is an appellate court system. Republicans in Alabama also expressed a confidence that he will beat this in court.
Said Gov. Kay Ivey: "Despite this New York jury, as President Trump said, the real verdict will be by the people on Election Day November 5.”

I replied:

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

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

we're all doing time riddles and puzzles

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

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

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

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

Amendment II 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Unable to sell The High Legal Road and Prisons & Freedom, I gave several thousand copies to the Prison Library Project in Clermont, California, which was founded by Ram Dass, with Bo Lozoff’s help. Bo’s book, We’re All Doing Time, had helped prod me to write Prisons & Freedom. The Prison Library Project mailed inmates books on topics in which inmates expressed interest. I ended up with some prison inmate pen pals for a while.

    In the Preface to Prisons & Freedom, I gave Bo and his wife Sita attaboys for their going into prisons and teaching yoga and meditation ti inmates, and I gave favorable mention to Bo’s books, and I said in one of his books, he had said he and Sita had reluctantly decided to start asking for donations for their work. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Bo did not respond.

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

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

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

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

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

A Convict’s Perspective

Rearview Mirror 

Objects on the internet may appear closer than they are

COLEMAN

MAY 27 

 

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

 

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

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

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

So, anyway, enjoy the dumb.

Or don't.

Whatever 

 

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

Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter

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

 

https://archive.org/details/prisons-and-freedom-revision-3oh-1-compressed 

 

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

    So far, no reply from Coleman.

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

'I ain't writing no letter'

A judge has dismissed the case against an Ozark man who was caught speeding and said he'd rather go to jail than give the police officer a written apology for his behavior, reports AL.com's Amy Yurkanin. The story was picked up on some national outlets. Reginald Burks was pulled over and ticketed for speeding while taking his kids to school. He said that as he was trying to leave the officer was standing in front of his car so that he had to back up and go around. He said he then told the officer to "get your (butt) out of the way," but he didn't say "butt." (Note: This is the most G-rated newsletter you'll read today. Apparently more G-rated even than car line.) Now, folks may have varying degrees of respect for law enforcement or opinions on their motives, but this isn't one of those stories. The big question in this story is not so much the appropriateness of the officer, or of the motorist. It is about the appropriateness of the Ozark Municipal Court judge's order for the man to apologize to the officer in writing or face 10-30 days in jail. University of Alabama law professor Jenny Carroll said up to 30 days is a long sentence for somebody who dropped a mere A-bomb in a moment of frustration. The man wasn't budging, either. He said he'd pay his fines. However: “What am I going to do? I’m going to jail. I ain’t writing no letter.” A hearing was set for June 4, but evidently the city's prosecutors weren't interested in pursuing the case because the judge dismissed the case on Wednesday.

    Ya’ll come!

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

confessions of a radical patriot

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

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

    So, what is patriotism?

    Is it waving the American flag?

    Is it celebrating and honoring America’s war dead?

    Is it saying God is on America’s side?

    Is it saying America was founded on Christian principles?

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

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

    Is it saying what anyone wants to say?

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

    Memorial Day was May 27.

    According to Huff Post, May 24:

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

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

By 

Shruti Rajkumar

May 24, 2024, 05:21 PM EDT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    According to Reuters, May 27:

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

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

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

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

    

    I say patriotism is hororing the truth, regardless.

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

    I’m a radical.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com