America: the fish rots from the head down

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

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

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

    I’ll back up and start over.

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

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

    Donald Trump is an unnatural disaster.

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

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

    Here’s how.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hill

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

BY TARA SUTER - 05/08/24 9:35 AM ET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wind in Sinwar’s sails

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who’s calling the shots in Gaza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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

 

    Last night, a friend emailed me this Alternet article:

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

Opinion by David Badash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I put the 4 references to Deity in bold.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

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

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

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

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

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

    The Constitution begins:

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

    There is nothing in the Constitution about Christianity.

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

    However, there is mention of religion in Amendment I:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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

Carlottesville, Virginia 

Confederate monuments removal protest

led to

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

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

A Convict’s Perspective   

Racist S#!t 

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

Coleman and Torrance Stephens, PhD 

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

Preface: (Yeah, I do those now)

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

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

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

The perspectives of a black PHD and a white GED

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

Let's roll dog. 

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

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

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

•Go jump in front of a bus…..

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

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

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

Bill Beshlian

Bill’s Substack

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

Argo the Second

The Professional Amateur

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

The reactions would be peak entertainment.

An K.

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

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

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

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

Fear mongering and propaganda are a succesful trap.

Judgment and condemnation have got to stop. 

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

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

It's we the people not them people.

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

Kill'em with kindness. 

Thank you!!

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sean’s Substack

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

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

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

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

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

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

Crixcyon

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

Kristin , MSN, RN, CCRN

Heal: The Intensive Care of You

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

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

Openly Fae

Hermetic Musings

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

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

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

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

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

Yosef Hirsh

Searching for Solomon

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

Grand Moff Porkins

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

Sloan Bashinsky

Sloan’s Newsletter

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

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Will the Hunter Bidden prosecutors call Narcotics Anonymous old timers as expert witnesses?

 

    I read online this morning  that President Biden was asked in Paris yesterday if he will pardon Hunter if he is convicted by jury for answering No, on October 2, 2018, to: 

Alcohol Tax & Firearms (ATF) Form 4473

Section 3: Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana, or any depressant, stimulant or narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?

    President Biden answered that he would not pardon Hunter if he is convicted, and when asked about Donald Trump being convicted in New York City, President Biden said Trump got a fair trial and the jury convicted him.

    I read online yesterday that Hunter bought the gun on October 2, 2018, after he came out of 11 days of drug rehab, and that’s why he answered No on the form. 

    I read online this morning that Hunter claimed he got clean in 2019, and has been clean ever since.

    Excerpts from a BBC News article yesterday:

Hallie Biden, who is also the widow of the defendant's late brother Beau, said she had discovered the revolver amid piles of clothes and litter in the glove compartment of Hunter Biden's truck. 
Ms Biden, 50, also told the court she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to have started smoking crack cocaine herself after Mr Biden, 54, introduced her to the drug.
In often emotional, detailed testimony, she spoke of the pair's "volatile" and "off-on" relationship, as well as their struggles with drug use and agonising battles to recover. 
Concerned after seeing Mr Biden looking "exhausted" and fearing he could have relapsed into crack use, Ms Biden told jurors she had searched his truck early on the morning of 23 October 2018 - something she had frequently done. 
There, among piles of clothes and garbage, she had found "remnants" of crack cocaine as well as drug paraphernalia. 
“Oh, and the gun, obviously," she added.
Almost instantly, she recalled, panic set in. 
"I didn't want him to hurt himself, and I didn't want my kids to find it and hurt themselves," the mother-of-two said. 
"I was afraid to kind of touch it. I didn't know it was loaded," Ms Biden added.
Fearful, she wrapped the .38 calibre Colt Cobra revolver into a leather pouch, stuffed it into a purple "little gift shopping bag" and drove to a nearby grocery store, where she threw it in a rubbish bin.
"I realise it was a stupid idea now," she said. "But I was panicking." 
Initially, she did not plan to tell Mr Biden about what she had done. But when he woke up that morning, he realised it was missing. 
"Did you take that from me Hallie," read one angry text shown to jurors. "You really need to help me think right now, Hallie. This is very serious." 
At his urging, she returned to the store to find the gun but was unable to. She then filed a police report. 
"I'll take the blame," she texted him from the scene. "I don't want to live like this." 
Ms Biden also told the court that she had not see Mr Biden use crack cocaine in the days leading up to him buying the gun and her disposing of it.
Ms Biden testified that she had stopped using the drug in August 2018, but that he had continued to use.
The prosecutor asked on Thursday about a text message Hunter Biden had sent to Ms Biden the day after he bought the gun, saying he was waiting for a dealer named Mookie.
She told the court that had meant "he was buying crack cocaine".
Two days after the gun purchase, he texted Ms Biden that he was "sleeping on a car smoking crack".
The series of texts also included several emotional messages from Ms Biden in which she pleaded with him to get sober. 
"I'm afraid you're going to die," one message read. 
The defendant's lawyers explained the texts by suggesting their client had been lying about drug use to avoid seeing Hallie Biden - noting that she had had no way of knowing what he was actually doing at the time. 
During cross-examination, Ms Biden confirmed she had not seen him using drugs around this time. 
Abbe Lowell, Mr Biden's attorney, asked her whether the request to "help me get sober" could have also referred to alcohol - to which she agreed. 
The prosecution's case, however, rests on convincing jurors that he was an addict. 
Ms Biden's testimony was followed by Millard Greer, a former Delaware State Police lieutenant who recovered the weapon, as well as Edward Banner, an 80-year-old pensioner who found the weapon while looking for recyclables in the grocery store's bins. 
The prosecution is expected to call two more witnesses, including an FBI expert and a DEA agent, before resting its case.

    After reading that, I wondered if Abbe Lowell ever had up close and personal dealings with drug addicts, for whom sober means not using drugs, just as for alcoholics, sober means not using alcohol? Or, was Lowell simply depraved?

    I will now tell how I got to know drug addicts up close and personal. 

    In 2003, I became infected with awful skin abscesses caused by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) flesh-eating bacteria, which was common in Key West. 

    I was homeless, living in a tent in the wetlands near the Key West airport. I knew I could no longer live that way and survive, and I entered a halfway program offered by Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC), which provided room and board to anyone in need who could pass an alcohol/drug pee screen.

    To get into FKOC, I had to pass an alcohol and narcotics urine screen. FKOC clients were given random alcohol and narcotics urine screens, and if they flunked a screen, they were booted out immediately, regardless of time of day or night or weather conditions. FKOC clients were required to attend 12 Step meetings daily, and to get the person running a meeting to sign an attendance sheet that we were there on such and such date and time.

    Anchors Away on Whitehead Street was the Alcoholics Anonymous chapter house, and a room was provided for Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I attended AA meetings, and learned that when people spoke, they said, “Hi, I’m So and So, I’m an alcoholic.” When I spoke, I said, "Hi, I’m Sloan.”

    When I started attending meetings at Anchors Away, the angels who had been hard on my case since early 1987, took me through the 12 Steps and it was no damn fun, and there was nothing I could do about it, and that is how I learned the 12 Steps are a true spiritual path for anyone, addict or not- if God, or an angel of God, gets involved. If that doesn’t happen, the alcoholic relies on himself and his sponsor and regularly attends AA meetings to try to stay sober. 

    In an AA meeting, I told about how God was taking me throuugh the 12 Steps and it was no fun, and I told about a dream that had really shook me up. After the meeting, an old timer walked over to me and said he liked what I had said and there was going to be a meeting of old timers and would I like to attend? I said, yes. He asked who was my sponsor? I said, God. He gave me the look, and said I hadn’t learned anything in these walls. I said, actually, I had learned quite a lot, and I had read The Big Book, by Bob and Bill, and I had read all of the stuff on the walls, and there is nothing in any of it about having a human sponsor, and the Twelve Steps plainly say God is the sponsor. The old timer turned and walked away, and I did not get invited to the old timers meeting.

    I shifted to attending NA meetings, where people who spoke said, “Hi, I’m So and So, I’m an addict. After attending a few NA meetings, I felt the NA people were far more tuned in and rigorous about their predicament than were the AA people, who did not view themselves as addicts or alcohol as a drug. The NA people viewed alcohol as a drug and alcoholics as addicts.

Narcotics Anonymous Twelve Steps

We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

    I knew from when I lived in Boulder, Colorado,1987-1995, where I had friends who attended AA and NA meetings, that the relapse rate rate was 95 percent, and I although they did not want to admit it, I was able to get a few old timers at Anchors Away to say that was accurate. I learned that FKOC had a high relapse rate, and its graduates had a high relapse rate. That was not FKOC’s fault, but was the nature of the addiction beast.

   It is from that background that I observe the prosecution of Hunter Biden for answering “No” to this this question:

Alcohol Tax & Firearms (ATF) Form 4473 

Section 3: Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana, or any depressant, stimulant or narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?

   I wonder if Hunter Biden’s defense team puts him on the witness stand to testify to his state of mind when he bought the gun and that he was not using illegal drugs at that point in time? 

    If Hunter testifies, the prosecution can ask if he learned in drug rehab that he is a drug addict for the rest of his life?

    The prosecution can ask Hunter if the rehab people told him to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings daily after he got out of rehab? 

    The prosecution can ask Hunter if he attended NA meetings after he left rehab, before he bought the gun, and if so, how many NA meetings did he attend, and where did he attend those meetings?

    The prosecution can ask Hunter if he answered No on ATF form 4437 not knowing when he would start using again? 

    The prosecution can ask Hunter how long was it after he bought the gun that he started using again? 

    The prosecution can ask Hunter if he did not claim he got clean in 2019? 

    The prosecution can ask Hunter about texts to his girlfriend, Haile Biden, who was his deceased brother Beau's widow, in which he said he was going to see his drug dealer after he bought the gun.

    The prosecution can ask Hunter if he told the rehab people he was going to buy a gun after he left rehab? 

    The prosecution can put NA old timers on the witness stand, as expert witnesses, and ask them what getting sober means to them, and they will say not using drugs, including alcohol.

    The prosecution can ask NA old timers if drug users can be trusted to tell the truth, and it is a steep climb for recovering drug addicts to tell the truth, and the NA old timer experts will answer, Yes.

    The prosecution can ask NA old timers expert witnesses if addiction is a choice, and they will say, Yes, because any drug user can choose to seek help, go into rehab, get educated in rehab about what being an addict really is all about, and leave rehab determined to stay clean, be different, start a new life, and attend NA meetings, or go back to drugging.

    The prosecution can ask NA old timer witnesses what they think about Hunter buying a gun right after he got out of 11 days of rehab, and he didn’t tell anyone he bought the gun? I can imagine NA old timers saying that sends cold chills up and down their spines.

    If I were a juror, I would be freaked out that Hunter bought a gun right after he got out of rehab, and he didn’t tell anyone he bought the gun.

    If I were a juror, I would think President Biden and his family had moral and patriotic obligations to be good role models for all Americans, especially American children, and Hunter’s girlfriend  ditched the gun where even a child could find it, and the thought of voting to acquit Hunter sends cold chills up and down my spine.

    If the jury convicts Hunter, it falls on the presiding US District Court judge to impose sentence. 

    If this old lawyer who clerked for a US District Court judge, who presided over every criminal prosecution in Alabama, were the judge in Hunter's case, I would ask him if he agrees with the jury’s verdict? If he says, No, I give him a prison sentence in accord with the Federal Court Sentencing Guidelines.

    If Hunter says, Yes, I give him a suspended sentence and put him on probation and require he attend AA meetings every day for 3 years; he furnishes proof of that each month to his probation officer; he passes random drug screens for three years, the timing and place determined by his probation officer; and if he violates his probation, he goes to a federal prison for 3 years.

    It will be on a US Circuit Court of Appeals to agree or overrule me.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com