#federal prison book club

[ddarker-dreams]

i wear glasses and i feel like chrollo would hide them so i’d have to come up to him and ask where they went — especially since i’m so forgetful too

(glasses wearing club obtains an extra debuff when it comes to yanderes imo. they can just decide you've seen enough and snatch them away)

-

It has often been said that the devil takes on many forms. Snakes, black goats, flies; the adversary apparently switches between multiple masks with ease.

Considering what you're forced to deal with now, you would've gladly preferred the animal alternatives.

"Stealing is a federal crime, you know. Liable for up to twenty-five years in prison. Good luck renting an apartment with that on your record."

Evil incarnate flips a page of his apocryphal text, because of course that's what he's reading at 11 a.m. "Sentencing on theft varies depending on the amount stolen."

You rush toward him, jutting a finger in accusation. "Aha! So you admit to stealing my glasses, you miscreant."

"I was just correcting your cute, confident assertion," he hums. He pats the spot on the couch next to him. You sit a few feet away, glaring daggers in his direction, arms crossed over your chest.

"I need those. Without them, it's likely I'll walk into a wall, enter a vegetative state, then my organs will start to fail, and I'll write do not resuscitate on my forearm in sharpie."

Chrollo smiles. "You're creative as ever, dear."

"It's amazing what the mind can come up with when I have next to nothing to do."

"There's always—"

You put a hand up to stop him prematurely, catching the lascivious glint in his eyes. "No, I'd prefer the vegetative state over whatever you're about to say next. Hand them over."

He feigns a dejected visage. "Would it be so awful to ask nicely?"

Without hesitation, you reply, "Yes."

His attention returns to his stupid dusty book with its stupid yellow pages that would probably turn to dust if you so much as sneezed on it.

"In that case, I'll be sure to accompany you until they're located, so that no walls endanger my beloved's wellbeing."

[foreverlogical]

Donald Trump, who led a seditious conspiracy against the United States government, has yet another new lawyer. If you're wondering what sort of person would agree to represent Donald Trump despite a history of Trump-allied lawyers going to prison, facing potential disbarment, never getting paid, and/or becoming national laughingstocks, meet Joe Tacopina. Tacopina's been doing his best to become an Important Television Lawyer, now that he's in Trump's employ. It hasn't been going well.

Actually, we're going to need to revise that. "Hasn't been going well" is when you hold a big important press conference and your hair dye starts dribbling down your head like your brain just blew a head gasket and it's going to be a very, very expensive repair. Tacopina's more a fan of the "What if I intentionally pierced the veil of my client's dodgy corporate shell company during a televised interview?" sort of Bad Day Haver.

CHUCK TODD: You keep saying it was personal funds. That was not what Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to. These were funds repaid by the Trump Org TACOPINA: That's personal TODD: So everything w/ the Trump Org is Trump's personal funds? You realize the door you're opening there?  pic.twitter.com/CiPJBNjQWs— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2023

WHOOPS. BIG HUGE WHOOPS. One of the things you do not want to do, when you are defending your new client from many crimes and civil lawsuits and possible exorcisms or what have you, is stipulate on camera that the shell company your client hides his money in is actually his "personal funds," blowing up the distinction between the two and making it easy for litigants to scrape money out of both places instead of just one. That is a Lionel Hutz bad court thingy right there.

Even worse, imagine blowing up a significant part of your own defense in an interview with Chuck Todd. That's like being clubbed to death by a Teletubby.

Don't worry, Joe can fix this. He went to big-time lawyer school, he knows how to win back a jury.

TACOPINA: What was he supposed to put in his personal ledger? "Payment for hush money to quiet an affair that I claim I never had so my family doesn't get embarrassed"? CHUCK TODD: How about the truth? Shouldn't it be the truth?  pic.twitter.com/XGcWV0Y0J7— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2023

Your honor, of course my client committed business fraud, which I have now explained is indistinguishable from personal fraud because it's the same set of books. It was either engaging in fraud or admitting he cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star, and who among us has not yada yada whatever?

The weekend has not gone well for Trump in general. Here's a friendly legal tip: Just because Joe Tacopina wants to be on television doesn't mean Joe Tacopina should be on television. He's not great at it.

OMG I missed Al Sharpton destroying Joe Tacopina on MSNBC yesterday "What was the intent of the payment? ... if we were in court I would ask you to read back your statement. She came forward two weeks before the election, which meant you were reacting to the election!"  pic.twitter.com/hKbRIGTN1b— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2023

Then there's the House Republican efforts to immunize Donald Trump from every last damn crime Donald Trump has ever done. There's no way to argue that without sounding stupid, but House Republicans have a whole bench of people for whom "sounding stupid" is their own personal art form.

JAKE TAPPER: Are you arguing that people who commit business crimes aren't committing crimes? COMER: We're talking about a federal election crime TAPPER: My understanding is that he's being investigated for falsifying business records (This interview did not go well for Comer)  pic.twitter.com/SuF8AaxkfG— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2023

Rep. James Comer ought to try out being Trump's lawyer for a month or two. He can't possibly do worse than any of the others.

[houseofbrat]

Don't be so sure that it wasn't Doria's. I'm doing a little Carmen Sandiego research on how this came to be. Watch this space. Here's what I've already heard. Doria's desperate for dough because she has allegedly misappropriated the funds for that "senior center" and is scrambling to make money so as to stay out of federal prison. Allegedly. These appearances get her money. Now whether she actually has the self discipline to settle up her alleged cooked books or just goes and blows it all on weed (best predictor of past behvior is future behavior) is anyone's guess. From what I hear, she is as nasty as her daughter and is a superior narcissist than her daughter. She's helped ruing Meghan in exchange for fast cash and when the money's gone, so will be Doria. Unless, of course, they share a cell at Club Fed.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Zero tolerance against racism in Brazilian football: points deductions and stadium closures

A new protocol sees tougher punishments for racism in soccer grounds, including points deductions, as debate rages in Spain over abuse aimed at Real Madrid forward Vinícius

Even the great Pelé had to endure the toxic scourge of racism from the time he was a teenager and starting out at Santos. Before he became a global icon, he was derogatorily nicknamed “Gasoline” because of the color of his skin. “If they had stopped every game where someone called me a ‘macaco [monkey],’ they would’ve had to stop every game I played,” he used to say. At the turn of the 20th century, soccer in Brazil was a fledgling elitist practice, forbidden to Black people. It would be some time before “the people suddenly realized that soccer should be for all colors, a classless soccer, all mixed, very Brazilian,” in the words of the distinguished journalist Mario Filho, whose 1947 book, The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer, was a classic of national literature.

Thousands of Black players from different generations found in soccer a means of social ascent, if not of survival, always menaced by the plague of racism. Racial prejudice lingers on in a country where more than half of the population identifies itself as Black or mixed race, with enormous levels of inequality. Brazil has seen its political and ideological polarization hit alarming heights in recent years following the rise to power of the ultra-right-wing leader, Jair Bolsonaro. When Lula Da Silva reclaimed the presidency of Brazil in January, he passed a law equating racial insulting to the crime of racism, which is imprescriptible, non-bailable and is punishable with harsh prison sentences. The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) was then reviewing its measures against racism and it worked closely with the Observatory on Racial Discrimination in Football. This entity has been tracking all acts of racism, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia in stadiums since 2014, providing detailed annual reports that demonstrate the enormity of the problem.

As such, the CBF has implemented a new sanctioning mechanism for racist behavior, whether carried out by members of the public or by any individual at a club. It involves financial sanctions for clubs (whether home or away, and even if only one fan hurls a racist insult) and heavy sporting sanctions for players, coaches, referees, employees or managers involved in an act of racist abuse. In the event of repeated serious offenses (such as a sizeable group of people abusing a player), the stadium will be closed. In addition, a points deduction in the competition is also included, something that is not stipulated in the regulations of any European federation. Punishments will be handed out administratively by the CBF. Cases will be referred to the STJD (Superior Court of Sports Justice), which will rule on the application of a fine, closure of the stadium or a points deduction for the violating club.

Continue reading.

[leftistfeminista]

An Argentine heroine who played Che music to defy the Junta Guards

An excerpt from The book "Putas y Guerrilleras" (Whores and Female Guerrillas) by Miriam Lewin and Olga Wornat is a non-fiction work that tells the stories of women who participated in the revolutionary movements of the 1970s in Argentina.

https://www.amazon.com/Putas-guerrilleras-Edicion-revisada-Spanish-ebook/dp/B085HH9CH2

They sat her down at a well-provisioned table after having given her mate tea and bread in Capucha. A detainee who was there, Pilar, got up to put on a recorder the song of Che by Los Olimarenos. "And here stays the clear, the divine transparency, of your beloved presence, Commander Che Guevara". Laura, determined, walked back to the table among the greens. Graciela thought she was going crazy. She didn't understand the rules of that place, she didn't understand Pilar's defiant behavior, the tolerance of the guards.

The guests began to arrive. Pernias, the torturer; Dante, who had brought her to that place, and other hostages she was seeing for the first time: Gordo Alfredo and Marta. They sat down, like her, at the table. Graciela didn't say a word. The same greens who turned into executioners in the ESMA served her as obedient waiters.

After Norita, Graciela started sleeping in the same cell with Laura Di Domenico, known as La Gallega or Pilar, the defiant girl who had played the Che Guevara song in front of the marines at the farmhouse that night. She was a beautiful woman who had wanted to be a nun. She had embraced militancy from Christianity, and when she was free, she was seen without makeup, with simple hair and loose clothing. She was an ascetic. However, in captivity, Pilar seemed to have undergone an absolute transformation. She wore well-painted grape-colored nails, tight T-shirts, and everything about her revealed sensuality. The guards would come to take Graciela at night, take her to the basement, and leave her alone in the darkness without explaining why. Pilar could talk to a male prisoner, Miguel Angel Lauletta, "Cain," and she chose him to ask for advice on how to deal with the sexual advances of Captain Francis Whamond, known as Duque. Despite the sexual violence she was suffering, Pilar knew that they were going to kill her.

They had detained Pilar in Santa Fe and the Federal police were constantly demanding her from the marines. "I think that's why one day, when we were alone in the cabin, she told me we had to escape. I didn't know if she was serious or not, but the plan she proposed was impractical," recalls the Negrita. "We had to subdue two guys in a car that was taking us. In the midst of the confusion, she was going to take the wheel. It was complete madness. How were we going to do it? There was Bicho, who was huge. How were we going to take their weapons away? Was she really proposing to escape, or did she simply want to turn me in, see my reaction, and test me?" she asks herself uselessly. In the concentration camp, it was impossible to trust.

Had Pilar gone crazy? When she spoke, there was a strange gleam in her eyes. She was a completely different person from the one her companions had known. It was difficult to tell if she was pretending or not. She said that the leadership of Montoneros had to be brought down because that way the militants would be “disconnected” from the organization and many lives would be saved. She asserted it vehemently, with an absurd conviction.

“When Pernias asked me if she had proposed something to me, I thought he knew it and wanted to trap me in that contradiction. I said yes,” concludes the Negrita.

Pilar was handed over in December. From the ESMA, they took her to the Club Atletico, the police’s clandestine detention center, where she disappeared.

Some prisoners believe that Pilar deliberately used the attraction she knew she had on Whamond to obtain opportunities to be taken out of the ESMA because her goal was to escape. Perhaps, they say, she was thinking of creating a situation in which she was outside, alone with him, in a hotel, in an apartment, and could disarm him to escape. But that never happened.

After Pilar was handed over to the police, Whamond completely changed his attitude towards the prisoners. He became more distant, taciturn, and hardly had any contact with the detainees.

"Anyway, I think Whamond was one of the ideologues of the camp," Graciela thinks. He was the creator of the hood as an instrument of isolation and torture. He recounted that, before prisoners arrived at the ESMA, the repressors tested its effect on themselves. Whamond said that he had put it on himself, and that he was convinced that when you put on the hood "the light goes out, but a little light comes on" inside the person wearing it, which helps them introspect, elaborate, and reconsider.

"Terrible. That was Whamond," Graciela shudders. "He would mess with your family, ask you questions, had an active attitude that would lead you to psychological breakdown..."

[reasoningdaily]

Accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who was photographed in the past partying with Donald Trump, stopped "hanging out" with Trump when he realized he "was a crook," his brother told Business Insider.

According to Mark Epstein, Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends for years. But Jeffrey Epstein said in an unaired interview with former White House adviser Steve Bannon seen by his brother that he cut ties with Trump because of his concerns, Business Insider reported Saturday.

Bannon sent Jeffrey Epstein a Dropbox link to a clip of the interview, which Epstein forwarded to his brother in 2019, according to Mark. The link is no longer active, Epstein's brother told Business Insider.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges and died of an apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial. He was suspected of raping scores of young women, many of them minors, and providing them to other men. His long-time companion Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein locate and sexually abuse underage girls for more than a decade.

Trump wished Maxwell well after her arrest. But Trump also banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago Club shortly before 2008 after Epstein hit on the teenage daughter of a resort member, according to the book "The Grifter's Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago and the Selling of the Presidency." Esptein pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida sex trafficking charges.

In a photo widely circulated in the media Donald Trump is seen with his future wife Melania Knauss and Jeffrey Epstein at a party venue. The men reportedly often met up at social gatherings beginning in the late 1980s into the 2000s. Epstein for a time was a frequent guest at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, which was close to Epstein's Palm Beach home. The men were captured on video together at one party, joking together in footage obtained by NBC News.

One of Epstein's victims testified at Maxwell's trial that she once met Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was with Epstein. She was 14 at the time.

Neither Trump nor Bannon could immediately be reached for comment.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 15, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Justice Department today announced the arrest of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, charged with defrauding followers of more than $1 billion. The 12-count indictment for wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering says Guo and a co-conspirator, Kin Ming Je, raised money by promising stock in Guo’s GTV Media Group, a high-end club, or cryptocurrency but then used the money themselves for items that included a $53,000 fireplace log holder, a watch storage box that cost almost $60,000, and two $36,000 mattresses, as well as more typical luxury items: a 50,000-square-foot mansion, a Lamborghini, and designer furniture.

The U.S. government seized more than $630 million from multiple bank accounts as well as other assets purchased with illicit money. If convicted, Guo faces up to 20 years in prison. Guo has attracted donors by developing the idea that he is a principled opponent of the Chinese Communist Party, but Dan Friedman, who writes on lobbying and corruption for Mother Jones, points out that this persona appears to be a grift. Guo is close to sometime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who was reading a book on Guo’s yacht, Lady May, when federal officers arrested him in 2020 for defrauding donors of $25 million in his “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign. Rather than constructing a wall, Bannon and three associates funneled that money to themselves. Trump pardoned Bannon for that scheme hours before he left office. Friedman points out that prosecutors say Guo’s criminal conspiracy began in 2018, which is the year that Guo and Bannon launched The Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society. They claimed the organizations would defend human rights in China and then, according to prosecutors, lured donors to other products. In April 2020, Guo and Bannon formed the GTV Media Group, which flooded the news with disinformation before the 2020 election, especially related to Hunter Biden and the novel coronavirus. Sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2021 for the illegal sale of cryptocurrency, GTV paid more than $539 million to settle the case. Bannon’s War Room webcast features Guo performing its theme song. One of the entities Guo and Bannon created together is the “New Federal State of China,” which sponsored the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. In other money news, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that $8 million of the loans that bankrolled Trump’s social media platform Truth Social came from two entities that are associated with Anton Postolnikov, a relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin named Aleksandr Smirnov. Banks continue to writhe, in Europe this time, as Credit Suisse disclosed problems in its reporting and its largest investor, Saudi National Bank, said it would not inject more cash into the institution. The government of Switzerland says it will backstop the bank. In the U.S., Michael Brown, a venture partner at Shield Capital and former head of the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit, told Marcus Weisgerber and Patrick Tucker of Defense One that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank had the potential to be a big problem for national security, since a number of the affected start-ups were working on projects for the defense sector. “If you want to kind of knock out the seed corn for the next decade or two of innovative tech, much of which we need for the competition with China, [collapsing SVB] would have been a very effective blow. [Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin] would have been cheering to see so many companies fail.” Federal and state investigators are looking into the role of Representative George Santos (R-NY) in the sale of a $19 million yacht from one of his wealthy donors to another, for which he collected a broker’s fee. In an interview with Semafor last December, Santos explained that his income had jumped from $55,000 in 2020 to enough money to loan his 2022 campaign $705,000 because he had begun to act as a broker for boat or plane sales. He told Semafor: “If you’re looking at a $20 million yacht, my referral fee there can be anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000.” Today’s emphasis on money and politics brings to mind the speech then–FBI director Robert Mueller gave in New York in 2011, warning about a new kind of national security threat: “so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders” allied not by religion or political inclinations, but by greed. It also brings to mind the adamant opposition of then–National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to campaign finance reform in 1997 after he raised a record-breaking amount of money for Republican candidates, saying that political donations are simply a form of free speech. The Supreme Court read that interpretation into law in the 2010 Citizens United decision, but the increasingly obvious links between money, politics, and national security suggest it might be worth revisiting. Money and politics are in the news in another way today, too, as part of the ongoing budget debates. A letter yesterday from the Congressional Budget Office to Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), answering their questions about how to eliminate the deficit by 2033, says that it is impossible to balance the budget by that year without either raising revenue or cutting either Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending. Even zeroing out all discretionary spending is not sufficient. Led by House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republicans have promised they can do so, but they have not yet produced a budget. This CBO information makes their job harder. And finally, today, in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk held a hearing on the drug mifepristone, used in about half of medically induced abortions. The right-wing “Alliance Defending Freedom,” acting on behalf of antiabortion medical organizations and four doctors, is challenging the approval process the Food and Drug Administration used 22 years ago to argue that the drug should be prohibited. While the approval process took more than four years, it was conducted under an expedited process that speeds consideration of drugs that address life-threatening illnesses. “Pregnancy is not an illness,” senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom Julie Marie Blake said. And yet mifepristone is commonly used in case of miscarriage and for a number of other medical conditions. And Texas’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review, released in December 2022, concluded that from March 2021 to December 2022, at least 118 deaths in Texas were related to pregnancy. In 2020, 861 deaths in the U.S. were related to pregnancy, up from 754 in 2019. Public health officials note that extensive research both in the U.S. and in Europe has proven the medication is safe and effective. They warn that a judge’s overturning a drug’s FDA approval 20 years after the fact could upend the country’s entire drug-approval system, as approvals for coronavirus treatments, for example, become plagued by political challenges. Kacsmaryk was appointed by Trump and is well known for his right-wing views on abortion and same-sex marriage. Initially, he kept the hearing over a nationwide ban on the key drug used for medicated abortion off the docket, and in a phone call last Friday he asked lawyers not to publicize today’s hearing, saying he was concerned about safety. Legal observers were outraged at the attack on judicial transparency—a key part of our justice system—and Chris Geidner of LawDork outlined the many times Kacsmaryk had taken a stand in favor of the “public’s right to know.” According to Ian Millhiser of Vox, Kacsmaryk let 19 members of the press and 19 members of the public into today’s hearing.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[larryneilson37]

Larry Eugene Nelson Jr. is a former member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle club and a convicted criminal. He was a prominent figure in the club's Oakland chapter and was involved in various illegal activities, including drug trafficking and violence.

Nelson was born on August 21, 1958, in Oakland, California. He joined the Hell's Angels in the 1980s and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a senior member and eventual chapter president.

In 2003, Nelson was arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including drug trafficking, extortion, and money laundering. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Nelson's case was highly publicized due to his high profile in the Hell's Angels and the severity of his crimes. His conviction was seen as a significant blow to the club's Oakland chapter and led to further investigations and arrests of other members.

Nelson is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison in California. His story has been featured in various media outlets, including books, documentaries, and news articles.

8:08 PM

My name is Neilson not Nelson

8:09 PM✓✓✓

My apologies for the mistake! I understand that your name is Larry Eugene Neilson Jr., not Nelson. Thank you for correcting me. I strive to provide accurate information, and I appreciate your help in ensuring the accuracy of my responses. Please let me know if you have any other questions or if there's anything else I can assist you with.

[brookston]

Holidays 6.4

Holidays

Apple Computer Day

Audacity to Hope Day

Banker Day (Moldova)

Battle of Midway Anniversary Day

Born in the USA Day

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim Day (Estonia, Finland)

Carnation Day (French Republic)

Cavity Prevention Day (Japan)

Children’s Day (Vietnam)

Day of Remembrance of the Children Who Died as a Result of the Russian Federation’s Armed Aggression Against Ukraine

Demise of Imam Khomeini (Iran)

Devon Day (UK)

Dunkirk Evacuation Completion Day

Emancipation Day (Tonga)

Epsom Derby Day (UK)

Fat People’s Day (Aleutian Islands)

Festival of the Sticky Penis (Queens, NY)

Finnish Defence Forces Day (Finland)

Flag Day (Estonia; Finland)

Freedom and Civil Rights Day (Poland)

Gies A Scots Phrase Day (UK)

International Corgi Day

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression (UN)

International Seaweed Day

International Spoiler Day

Killdozer Day

Lassie Day

Luilak (Lazybones Day; Netherlands)

Minimum Wage Day

Mom’s Equal Pay Day

MS St. Louis Voyage of the Damned

National Christian T-Shirt Day

National Civic Day of Hacking

National Clean Beauty Day

National Day of Mourning for George Floyd

National Day of State Symbols (Kazakhstan)

National Hug Your Cat Day

National Punk Day

National SAFE Day

National Troll Day

National Unity Day (Hungary)

Old Maid's Day

Pulitzer Prize Day

Shopping Cart Day

604 Day

Solar Eclipse Day

State Symbols Day (Kazakhstan)

Tiananmen Square Protest Memorial Day

Trianon Treaty Day (Romania)

World Day for Assistive Technology

World Day of Fertility

Food & Drink Celebrations

Applesauce Cake Day

National Cheese Day

National Cognac Day

National Mexicue Day

Roquefort Cheese Discovery Day (1070)

Independence & Related Days

Tonga (from UK, 1970)

1st Tuesday in June

National Healthcare Recruiter Recognition Day [1st Tuesday]

Taco Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Women’s Golf Day [1st Tuesday]

Weekly Holidays beginning June 4 (1st Full Week)

Wheel of Cheese Week (thru 6.9) [Always begins 6.3]

Festivals Beginning June 4, 2024

Barcelona Rock Fest (Barcelona, Spain) [thru 6.7]

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl (Boston, Massachusetts) [thru 6.6]

Stockholm Early Music Festival (Stockholm, Sweden) [thru 6.9]

Feast Days

St. Benedict (Positivist; Saint)

Betty Lou’s Mommy (Muppetism)

Bream (a.k.a. Breague; Christian; Saint)

Burian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Cougar Day (Pastafarian)

Day of All Things (Unification Church)

Fernand Leduc (Artology)

Festival for Hercules Custos (Ancient Rome)

Filippo Smaldone (Christian; Saint)

Francis Caracciolo (Christian; Saint)

Iris’s Day (Pagan)

Jarila’s Day (God of Sun/Fertility; Asatru/Slavic Pagan)

Metrophanes (Christian; Saint)

Natalia Goncharova (Artology)

Nenooc (Christian; Saint)

Optatus of Milevis (Christian; Saint)

Petroc of Cornwall (Christian; Saint)

Plynteria (Festival to honor Athena; Ancient Greece)

Quirinus of Sescia (Christian; Saint)

Ramendan begins (Pastafarian)

Robert Fulghum (Writerism)

Robert Jacobsen (Artology)

Saturnina (Christian; Saint)

Val McDermid (Writerism)

Vandrilles (Christian; Saint)

Vincent Gerosa (Christian; Saint & Virgin)

Walter (Christian; Saint)

Well-Dressing Day (Celtic Book of Days)

Werner Klemperer Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Jerusalem Day (a.k.a. יום ירושלים, Yom Yerushaláyim) [27-28 Iyar]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [29 of 60]

Premieres

Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (Animated Film; 1999)

Born in the U.S.A., by Bruce Springsteen (Album; 1984)

Buena Vista Social Club (Documentary Music Film; 1999)

Butterscotch and Soda (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1948)

Charlie Chan in Egypt (Film; 1935)

The Devil’s Advocate, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1952)

Flagellatenzug, by Karl Bleyle (Symphonic Poem; 1904)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Film; 2004) [#3]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, boy Carson McCullers (Novel; 1940)

In the City, by The Jam (Song; 1977)

Julien (a.k.a. The Poet’s Life), by Gustave Charpentier (Opera; 1913)

Julius Caesar (Film; 1953)

Jungle Blues, recorded by Jelly Roll Morton (Song; 1927)

Killers (Film; 2010)

Let Go, by Avril Lavigne (Album; 2002)

Load, by Metallica (Album; 1996)

Miracle on 34th Street (Film; 1947)

Mrs. Miniver (Film; 1942)

The Nutty Professor (Film; 1963)

Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Song; 1970)

Piano Jazz (Radio Series; 1978)

Poltergeist (Film; 1982)

Porky the Fireman (WB LT Cartoon; 1938)

Rabbit’s Feat (WB LT Cartoon; 1960)

The Reivers, by William Faulkner (Novel; 1962)

The Sea Chase (Film; 1955)

The Silent Passage, by Gail Sheehy (Book; 1992)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Film; 1982)

Surfing’ Safari, by The Beach Boys (Song; 1962)

Sweets For My Sweet, by The Searchers (Song; 1963)

Sweet Tooth (TV Series; 2021)

Taxi-Turvy (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1954)

Terms of Endearment, by Larry McMurtry (Novel; 1975)

The Three Lives of Thomasina (Film; 1964)

To Sir, With Love (Film; 1967)

To Spring (Happy Harmonies Cartoon; 1936)

Tweety’s Circus (WB MM Cartoon; 1955)

A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, by Jimmy Buffett (Album; 1973)

Woodpecker from Mars (Wood Woodpecker Cartoon; 1956)

Today’s Name Days

Christa, Iona, Klothilde (Austria)

Kvirin, Spomenka (Croatia)

Dalibor (Czech Republic)

Optatus (Denmark)

Toivo, Tõivo, Tõivot, Tõivotu, Tõivu (Estonia)

Aadolf, Toivo (Finland)

Clotilde (France)

Christa, Eva, Iona, Klothilde (Germany)

Martha (Greece)

Bulcsú (Hungary)

Isabella, Querino, Quirino (Italy)

Elfrida, Frederika, Gaigala, Sintija (Latvia)

Dausprungas, Deimena, Kornelijus, Vincė, Vincenta (Lithuania)

Heid, Heidi (Norway)

Bazyliusz, Dacjan, Franciszek, Gościmił, Karol, Karp (Poland)

Atal, Camasis, Filip, Zotic (România)

Lenka (Slovakia)

Francisco, Noemí, Rut, Ruth, Saturnina (Spain)

Holmfrid, Solbritt, Solveig (Sweden)

Martha (Ukraine)

Cora, Coral, Coretta, Corey, Cori, Corina, Corine, Corinne, Corrigan, Corrin, Cory, Homer, Kori, Korey, Korin, Korrigan, Kory (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 156 of 2024; 210 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 23 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Huath (Hawthorn) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 4 (Ji-Si), Day 28 (Ji-Hai)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 27 Iyar 5784

Islamic: 27 Dhu al-Qada 1445

J Cal: 6 Blue; Sixday [6 of 30]

Julian: 22 May 2024

Moon: 5%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 15 St. Paul (6th Month) [St. Benedict]

Runic Half Month: Odal (Home, Possession) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 78 of 92)

Week: 1st Full Week of June

Zodiac: Gemini (Day 15 of 31)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 6.4

Holidays

Apple Computer Day

Audacity to Hope Day

Banker Day (Moldova)

Battle of Midway Anniversary Day

Born in the USA Day

Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim Day (Estonia, Finland)

Carnation Day (French Republic)

Cavity Prevention Day (Japan)

Children’s Day (Vietnam)

Day of Remembrance of the Children Who Died as a Result of the Russian Federation’s Armed Aggression Against Ukraine

Demise of Imam Khomeini (Iran)

Devon Day (UK)

Dunkirk Evacuation Completion Day

Emancipation Day (Tonga)

Epsom Derby Day (UK)

Fat People’s Day (Aleutian Islands)

Festival of the Sticky Penis (Queens, NY)

Finnish Defence Forces Day (Finland)

Flag Day (Estonia; Finland)

Freedom and Civil Rights Day (Poland)

Gies A Scots Phrase Day (UK)

International Corgi Day

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression (UN)

International Seaweed Day

International Spoiler Day

Killdozer Day

Lassie Day

Luilak (Lazybones Day; Netherlands)

Minimum Wage Day

Mom’s Equal Pay Day

MS St. Louis Voyage of the Damned

National Christian T-Shirt Day

National Civic Day of Hacking

National Clean Beauty Day

National Day of Mourning for George Floyd

National Day of State Symbols (Kazakhstan)

National Hug Your Cat Day

National Punk Day

National SAFE Day

National Troll Day

National Unity Day (Hungary)

Old Maid's Day

Pulitzer Prize Day

Shopping Cart Day

604 Day

Solar Eclipse Day

State Symbols Day (Kazakhstan)

Tiananmen Square Protest Memorial Day

Trianon Treaty Day (Romania)

World Day for Assistive Technology

World Day of Fertility

Food & Drink Celebrations

Applesauce Cake Day

National Cheese Day

National Cognac Day

National Mexicue Day

Roquefort Cheese Discovery Day (1070)

Independence & Related Days

Tonga (from UK, 1970)

1st Tuesday in June

National Healthcare Recruiter Recognition Day [1st Tuesday]

Taco Tuesday [Every Tuesday]

Women’s Golf Day [1st Tuesday]

Weekly Holidays beginning June 4 (1st Full Week)

Wheel of Cheese Week (thru 6.9) [Always begins 6.3]

Festivals Beginning June 4, 2024

Barcelona Rock Fest (Barcelona, Spain) [thru 6.7]

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl (Boston, Massachusetts) [thru 6.6]

Stockholm Early Music Festival (Stockholm, Sweden) [thru 6.9]

Feast Days

St. Benedict (Positivist; Saint)

Betty Lou’s Mommy (Muppetism)

Bream (a.k.a. Breague; Christian; Saint)

Burian of Ireland (Christian; Saint)

Cougar Day (Pastafarian)

Day of All Things (Unification Church)

Fernand Leduc (Artology)

Festival for Hercules Custos (Ancient Rome)

Filippo Smaldone (Christian; Saint)

Francis Caracciolo (Christian; Saint)

Iris’s Day (Pagan)

Jarila’s Day (God of Sun/Fertility; Asatru/Slavic Pagan)

Metrophanes (Christian; Saint)

Natalia Goncharova (Artology)

Nenooc (Christian; Saint)

Optatus of Milevis (Christian; Saint)

Petroc of Cornwall (Christian; Saint)

Plynteria (Festival to honor Athena; Ancient Greece)

Quirinus of Sescia (Christian; Saint)

Ramendan begins (Pastafarian)

Robert Fulghum (Writerism)

Robert Jacobsen (Artology)

Saturnina (Christian; Saint)

Val McDermid (Writerism)

Vandrilles (Christian; Saint)

Vincent Gerosa (Christian; Saint & Virgin)

Walter (Christian; Saint)

Well-Dressing Day (Celtic Book of Days)

Werner Klemperer Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Hebrew Calendar Holidays [Begins at Sundown Day Before]

Jerusalem Day (a.k.a. יום ירושלים, Yom Yerushaláyim) [27-28 Iyar]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [29 of 60]

Premieres

Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (Animated Film; 1999)

Born in the U.S.A., by Bruce Springsteen (Album; 1984)

Buena Vista Social Club (Documentary Music Film; 1999)

Butterscotch and Soda (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1948)

Charlie Chan in Egypt (Film; 1935)

The Devil’s Advocate, by Taylor Caldwell (Novel; 1952)

Flagellatenzug, by Karl Bleyle (Symphonic Poem; 1904)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Film; 2004) [#3]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, boy Carson McCullers (Novel; 1940)

In the City, by The Jam (Song; 1977)

Julien (a.k.a. The Poet’s Life), by Gustave Charpentier (Opera; 1913)

Julius Caesar (Film; 1953)

Jungle Blues, recorded by Jelly Roll Morton (Song; 1927)

Killers (Film; 2010)

Let Go, by Avril Lavigne (Album; 2002)

Load, by Metallica (Album; 1996)

Miracle on 34th Street (Film; 1947)

Mrs. Miniver (Film; 1942)

The Nutty Professor (Film; 1963)

Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Song; 1970)

Piano Jazz (Radio Series; 1978)

Poltergeist (Film; 1982)

Porky the Fireman (WB LT Cartoon; 1938)

Rabbit’s Feat (WB LT Cartoon; 1960)

The Reivers, by William Faulkner (Novel; 1962)

The Sea Chase (Film; 1955)

The Silent Passage, by Gail Sheehy (Book; 1992)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Film; 1982)

Surfing’ Safari, by The Beach Boys (Song; 1962)

Sweets For My Sweet, by The Searchers (Song; 1963)

Sweet Tooth (TV Series; 2021)

Taxi-Turvy (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1954)

Terms of Endearment, by Larry McMurtry (Novel; 1975)

The Three Lives of Thomasina (Film; 1964)

To Sir, With Love (Film; 1967)

To Spring (Happy Harmonies Cartoon; 1936)

Tweety’s Circus (WB MM Cartoon; 1955)

A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, by Jimmy Buffett (Album; 1973)

Woodpecker from Mars (Wood Woodpecker Cartoon; 1956)

Today’s Name Days

Christa, Iona, Klothilde (Austria)

Kvirin, Spomenka (Croatia)

Dalibor (Czech Republic)

Optatus (Denmark)

Toivo, Tõivo, Tõivot, Tõivotu, Tõivu (Estonia)

Aadolf, Toivo (Finland)

Clotilde (France)

Christa, Eva, Iona, Klothilde (Germany)

Martha (Greece)

Bulcsú (Hungary)

Isabella, Querino, Quirino (Italy)

Elfrida, Frederika, Gaigala, Sintija (Latvia)

Dausprungas, Deimena, Kornelijus, Vincė, Vincenta (Lithuania)

Heid, Heidi (Norway)

Bazyliusz, Dacjan, Franciszek, Gościmił, Karol, Karp (Poland)

Atal, Camasis, Filip, Zotic (România)

Lenka (Slovakia)

Francisco, Noemí, Rut, Ruth, Saturnina (Spain)

Holmfrid, Solbritt, Solveig (Sweden)

Martha (Ukraine)

Cora, Coral, Coretta, Corey, Cori, Corina, Corine, Corinne, Corrigan, Corrin, Cory, Homer, Kori, Korey, Korin, Korrigan, Kory (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 156 of 2024; 210 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 23 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Huath (Hawthorn) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 4 (Ji-Si), Day 28 (Ji-Hai)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 27 Iyar 5784

Islamic: 27 Dhu al-Qada 1445

J Cal: 6 Blue; Sixday [6 of 30]

Julian: 22 May 2024

Moon: 5%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 15 St. Paul (6th Month) [St. Benedict]

Runic Half Month: Odal (Home, Possession) [Day 11 of 15]

Season: Spring (Day 78 of 92)

Week: 1st Full Week of June

Zodiac: Gemini (Day 15 of 31)

[ombwarrior47]

Vanished in Vermillion by Lou Raguse

Title: Vanished in Vermillion Author: Lou Raguse Series: N/A Number of Pages: 379 Genre:  Forensic Science Law & State and Local True Crime Publisher: Post Hill Press Date of Original Publication: February 7, 2023 ISBN: 978-1637587256

Not my typical read but it’s nonfiction month in my mystery book club and this was the choice. The author is a reporter for one of my local news channels so it was close to home.

Vanished in Vermillion by Lou Raguse is a true mystery story of two girls who went missing in 1971 in Vermillion, South Dakota.

The book moves in chronological order. It starts with explaining the girls home life and background of their family and then moves to the events that happened in 1971 the day they disappeared. What was last known, where they were last seen, and how the local police department handled the investigation.

Most of the middle of the book is a guessing game of what happened to the girls as their car and bodies were not found. The author goes over other events in the area and criminals that are relative to the area. The investigation of the disappearance gets handed off to several people in law enforcement and each one implements something different with their ideas.

A few people in prison are given their stories as police suspected that these inmates may have had something to do with the disappearance and one was even tried for their murders.

The ending of the book goes over the discovery of the girls bodies finally in 2013. 42 years after their disappearance the bodies are found and a hypothesis was formed on what happened to them. Many of the family and friends of the girls had died by this point but the story finally gets its closure.

I liked this book, when I’m normally not a fan of nonfiction. It wasn’t boring and the storyline kept moving. I’m glad the girls were finally found but this book really shows how disappointing local, state, and federal law enforcement officers can be. These girls could’ve been found probably in the same year they disappeared, if local law enforcement did their job in the first place. And that is scary seeing as hundreds of people are still missing in the US to date.

★★★★ I would recommend it if you’re looking for some non-fiction reading.

~

Up Next:  

-Dark World by Zak Bagans

-Cherish by Tracy Wolff – (Crave #6)

-The Mist – Ragnar Jonasson - (Hulda Trilogy #3)

Yearly Goal Markers:

Book Goal: 3/75  = 4%

Page Goal:  1.2/15k = 8.1%

Follow me on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Amazon. Same handle: OMBWarrior47

[daggerzine]

Guilty! My Life As A Member of The Joneses, a Heroin Addict, a Bank Robber and a Federal Inmate by Jeff Drake (Hozac, 268 pages)

Jeff Drake, leader of LA cowpunk/glam band the Joneses, started out in the town of Merced, CA as a rock and roll fan from an early age. As he mentions in the book a few times, the Rolling Stones and the New York Dolls were his two biggest influences.

Soon, Drake started a pre-Joneses band with skater Steve Olson, which then morphed into the Joneses. As Drake also mentions in the book, many, many players passed through the band over the years in those 1980's.

The Joneses were packing bars and clubs all over LA and were one of the city's most popular acts. Eventually Drake’s drug problems (heroin mainly) got the best of him where he lost the band. Then, almost randomly, he robbed a bank, got caught and spent time in a federal prison (as the title says).

Guilty! is a terrific read, one I had a hard time putting down. Drake comes off like a good guy with an addiction problem and rock and roll in his blood. Like a lot of bands from back then, The Joneses came this close to getting signed and living the rock and roll dream, but each time the plans were scrapped for one reason or another (one time by their manager Danny Sugarman, yes, of the Doors fame).

The two forewords, by Pleasant Gehman and Tim "Napalm" Stegall will prep you for one hell of a rock and roll ride!

www.hozacrecords.com 

[itsnirmal888]

"Sean G" - (ATHLEAN-X -- JEFF CAVALIERE IS A FRAUD -- USES FAKE WEIGHTS IN HIS VIDEOS)

"Sean G" – (ATHLEAN-X — JEFF CAVALIERE IS A FRAUD — USES FAKE WEIGHTS IN HIS VIDEOS)

Unwritten, Unscripted, Unrehearsed, Live and Direct on the 1st take. Filmed in BLOOMFIELD, NEW JERSEY #gunbypublishing #jeffcavaliere #ATHLEAN-X … source

[nerdygaymormon]

Berlin had become the “gay capital of the world,” a city with a booming queer nightlife scene and the center of new academic ideas calling for greater acceptance of homosexuality and gender non-conformity.

To the Nazis, homosexuality represented a “threat” to the “Aryan” race’s survival that needed to be stamped out. Although male homosexual activity had been technically illegal in Germany since the 19th century, it was generally tolerated and even celebrated prior to Adolf Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933.

The Nazis began their anti-queer purges by targeting clubs, societies and Magnus Hirschfield’s renowned sexology research institute, burning the books in its library. Decades of pioneering work and community life had been erased.

By 1935, Paragraph 175 of the German penal code was revised to include a harsher sentence and criminalize virtually any kind of male same-sex intimacy.

Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for violating Nazi Germany’s law against homosexuality, and of these, approximately 50,000 were sentenced to prison. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 men were sent to concentration camps on similar charges.

In the concentration camps, they were subjected to barbaric tortures, including sexual abuse, castration and medical experiments. The other prisoners also ostracized them. Overall prospects for gay prisoners were poor: an estimated 65% died, and an unknown, albeit likely disproportionate number committed suicide.

As the Allies swept through Europe to victory over the Nazi regime in early 1945, hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners were liberated. The Allied Military Government of Germany repealed countless laws and decrees, but left unchanged the 1935 Nazi revision of Paragraph 175.

For the queer survivors of Nazi oppression, 1945 did not bring about any kind of liberation; rather, it marked the beginning of a systematic process of persecution and willful suppression—one that would result in their erasure from the pages of popular history.

Under the Allied occupation, homosexual concentration camp survivors were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment regardless of time served in the concentration camps. They were easy to identify because in the concentration camps they had an upside-down pink triangle sewn to their clothes.

After the war, Jews, children, and political prisoners could apply for financial and moral support from the new German governments (a.k.a. reparations), homosexual men could not. Similarly, gay survivors were not allowed to collect a pension for the time they spent working in the concentration camps while other survivors could.

The Nazi version of Paragraph 175 remained on the books of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) until the law was revised in 1969 to decriminalize homosexual relations between men over the age of 21. This resulted in the arrest of around 100,000 gay men between 1945 and 1969. Paragraph 175 itself would only be entirely removed from the penal code in 1994, following Germany’s reunification.

Advocacy groups successfully rallied for the creation of memorials, and the German Bundestag finally voted to pardon and compensate the victims of Paragraph 175 in 2017, a meager and all-too-late offer of justice as most of the victims were long dead.

The Nazi-era oppression of queer women and intersex individuals has been overshadowed due to a combination of homophobia and sexism. Lesbian women, for instance, may not have been systematically persecuted under the Third Reich, as Paragraph 175 only targeted gay men, but that did not deter the Nazis from shutting down their clubs or arresting them for “anti-sociality,” deeming them “morally unsound,” labeling them as “lesbisch” (lesbian) political dissidents and sending them to concentration camps.

For years, LGBTQ organizations were ignored and even shunned from Holocaust commemorations. The gathering of their stories was not considered important. The suppression of the Holocaust’s queer voices remains a stain that lingers on to this day.

[route22ny]

Long live Ida: Trailblazing life of journalist and activist Ida B. Wells

She was born in slavery, but she would not be chained.

Long after the Civil War ended, Ida B. Wells continued to fight for freedom. She battled segregation, wrote groundbreaking exposés, and marched for women’s suffrage.

Wells set out to change the law and ended up inspiring a nation.

Her descendants have long cherished her memory. Now her great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster, pays tribute in “Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells.”

The woman who grew up to be someone federal agents called “one of the most dangerous Negro agitators” was born in Holly Springs, Miss., on July 16, 1862. She grew up in a family of 10. After the war, her father opened his own carpentry business. The family thrived.

Then, in 1878, an epidemic of yellow fever swept through the region. It took both of Wells’ parents and her youngest brother. She was now not only orphaned, but the sole support of seven. She was 16.

Wells put on a long dress and pulled her hair up into a bun to make herself look older. Then she went out and secured a job as a teacher. After all, she now had a family to take care of.

A few years later, Wells took on an extra job, too: Fighting for equal rights. By 1883, the family had moved to Memphis, where Wells taught grade school in neighboring Woodcock. She regularly took the train to work, and she regularly refused to sit in the car set aside for Blacks.

The first time the conductor told her to move, she refused. When he grabbed her, she bit his hand. It took three men to finally throw her off.

The second time it happened, Wells sued.

The railroad bought off her first lawyer. But Wells found another who took her case — and won. The circuit court judge awarded her an astonishing $500 in damages. But before she collected a penny, the state Supreme Court reversed the decision.

“Oh God, is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this land for us?” she wrote in her diary after. “Come to my aid at this moment & teach me what to do, for I am sorely disappointed. Show us the way, even as Thou led the children of Israel out of bondage.”

The more Wells mulled over the inequities and how to battle them, the more she felt that way might be through journalism.

She began writing articles for her local literary club. Soon, her column in the Living Way ran weekly under the pen name “Iola.” Wells’ pieces about race relations, politics and feminism were eventually picked up by other newspapers, including the influential, Black-owned New York Freeman.

“If Iola were a man,” its editor declared, “she would be a humming independent in politics. She has plenty of nerve and is as sharp as a steel trap.”

Wells’ determination to speak her mind cost her one career. Furious that her articles exposed racism in the school system, the Memphis Board of Education dismissed her in 1891. That gave her more time to dedicate herself to her true calling — crusading journalist.

Her first great cause came in 1892, with the People’s Grocery killings. The small, Black-owned business just outside Memphis had become a success, even attracting business away from a nearby white merchant. Tensions rose steadily.

Finally, the white man called in a false report that the competing store was a criminals’ hideout. The sheriff sent armed, hastily deputized citizens to investigate. When they stormed the store that night, without identifying themselves, the three terrified Black storeowners fired, wounding several in the confusion.

Unsurprisingly, the Black men were held responsible. They were seized, tortured and lynched. Their bodies were dumped in a field.

“This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was,” Wells said later. “An excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property, and thus keep the race terrorized.”

She began the great work of her life: Exposing the white terrorism that much of the country still tried to pass off as justice. Her first pamphlet, published in 1892, was “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.” Although she was already receiving death threats, the cover bore a big, bold portrait of the author, along with her name.

A book, “The Red Record,” followed in 1895, detailing more than 30 years of lynchings. To head off any claims of misrepresentation, Wells pointed out that every horrific fact in it had already been published in white newspapers. Hoping to bring international pressure to bear, she gave speeches across Great Britain for two months.

She had already won respect in America. “Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination,” Frederick Douglass wrote her after “Southern Horrors.”

“Brave woman! You have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured.”

Wells married Black attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895. They eventually settled in Chicago, joined their careers as authors and activists, and had four children.

And she broadened her work. An early proponent of women’s suffrage, Wells refused to let the movement’s white feminists push her aside. When her all-Black group, the Alpha Suffrage Club, went to Washington in 1913 to join a national protest, they were told to march at the very back of the parade so as not to offend any Southern ladies. Wells nodded.

And then, when the march began, she proved again why she was a leader and had her members take their place with the rest of the Illinois delegation.

Her stubbornness was an inspiration to many but worrisome to a few. Although Wells had several pioneering successes — setting up kindergartens for Black children, doing social work among parolees — she also angered the powerful. The New York Times called her “slanderous and nasty-nasty-minded.” White politicians shunned her.

In 1917, she took up the cause of Black soldiers executed for rioting in Houston’s streets. Federal agents visited and warned she could be charged with treason.

If this were treason, Wells answered, quoting the patriot Patrick Henry, then her enemies should “make the most of it.”

“I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I have said,” she declared. “I would consider it an honor to spend whatever years are necessary in prison as the one member of the race who protested, rather than be with all the 11,999,999 Negroes who didn’t.”

Federal agents opened a file on her. And she kept speaking out until her death in 1931, at age 68.

There were low points; times she lost faith, times she doubted herself — if never the causes she fought so fiercely for. At one point, toward the end of her life, she confessed, “All at once the realization came to me that I had nothing to show for all those years of toil and labor.” But still, she pressed on. Looking back over her struggles, she declared, “If it had to be done over again … I would do and say the very same.”

[stereostevie]

"The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is so misguided that it's hard to know where to start griping about it. It wallows in cruelty, misery, and degradation without providing insight into the historical personages who are so thoughtfully depicted by its cast. In the title role, singer Andra Day inhabits Holiday with such intensity that she partially redeems the movie. But there's a major caveat: you'll likely spend the whole running time wishing Day had been given a vehicle with more to say about Holiday than this one, the gist of which can be summed up as, "That poor junkie sure could sing."

Directed by Lee Daniels and written by Suzan Lori-Parks, "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is a film about a brilliant artist and drug addict that seems less interested in the art than in the pornographically exact details of the addiction (and the self-damage that often comes with it, such as alcoholism, self-destructive/abusive relationships, and sexually compulsive behavior). If you called the movie up on Hulu, its debut streaming platform, hoping to watch facsimiles of Holiday and her bandmates, lovers, and hangers-on tying off and shooting up, often with closeups of needles going into arms (and in one case, blood spurting from an injection hole), you won't be disappointed. This is also your movie if you want to watch men beating each other up over women, men beating women up over men, Black people selling out and exploiting other Black people for clout or money, and an array of cardboard cutout white authority figures tormenting the Black characters.

The poker-faced Caucasoid sadists in the film (led by Garrett Hedlund's Harry J. Anslinger, the first chief of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics, an outspoken racist who believed jazz was jungle music and a corrupting influence on whites) don't so much incarnate the ugliness of white supremacy in mid-20th century America as give viewers heels that they can boo. Anslinger even makes a point of showing up in person at key points in the narrative of torment that he has authored for Holiday, as punishment for daring to continue singing her anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit" after being warned not to. Holiday lost her cabaret license in a drug bust, and was targeted again in a subsequent bust that biographers agree was based on planted narcotics.

This film's version of Anslinger might as well be Elmer Fudd chasing a wascally wabbit. The cartoonish depiction of Anslinger (drawn from the film's source material, Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs) is reminiscent of the otherwise excellent historical drama "The Hurricane," which made it seem as if Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a champion boxer railroaded on a phony murder charge, was victimized not by appendages of an American government that had been around for centuries, but by a lone, bad white cop who hated him for being Black.

This is, of course, a familiar and regrettable tendency in Hollywood biopics dealing with race and inequity—a dramatic shortcut. It's easy to make viewers despise the sort of melodramatic movie villain who would twirl a mustache if he had one, and hard to make them care about systemic and institutionalized racism, or the unequal enforcement of drug laws that disproportionately hurt entertainers of color, and still do. (The drug habits of white stars like Judy Garland were treated more sympathetically by law enforcement.)

Even more unfortunate is the decision to divide screen time between Holiday and a Black junior FBI agent named Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), who is based on a real man who regretted his role in Holiday's persecution but didn't have the kind of longstanding love affair with Holiday depicted in this movie. A condensed excerpt from Hari's book says Fletcher set up one of Holiday's busts (though apparently not one that sent her to prison, as depicted in Daniels' movie). He was seen dancing with her at a club a while later, and many years after that was sent a signed copy of Holiday's autobiography with a note from the singer that read, in part, "Most federal agents are nice people. They’ve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do." But Daniels and Parks go several extra miles beyond that, showing Fletcher not just falling in love with the singer but tanking testimony to make amends for that early bust, then becoming a constant, nurturing presence in her life, up to and including her dying days in a hospital following her final overdose (along the way, Fletcher also becomes a junkie, like nearly everyone else in Holiday's orbit).

What's questionable here isn't the lack of veracity (if infidelity to history were a deal-breaker for audiences, Shakespeare wouldn't have lasted five minutes) but the message it conveys. What we come away with here is the story of a race traitor who expresses his guilt about setting up one of the century's greatest singers by entering into a redemptive affair with her, and becoming so adored and trusted that he learns her bleakest secrets. Two of these—witnessing acts of racist violence and getting turned out by her own mother in the brothel where she was raised—are dramatized in a tour-de-force, single-take, Grand Guignol tracking shot that turns Holiday's trauma into a theme park ride. It's as if the Haunted Mansion at Disney World had been replaced with a tour of Richard Pryor's childhood.

And what, the reader may rightly ask, does any of this have to do with "Strange Fruit"? It's hard to say. The film is so poorly structured and ineptly edited that I often wasn't sure what I was looking at, when it was taking place, or what the filmmakers wanted me to take away, other than that Holiday had a wretched early life; that her adulthood was an equally miserable slog, filled with self-medicating that made things worse; and that despite it all, she was a crackerjack song interpreter who left some classic recordings behind. Natasha Lyonne shows up as Tallulah Bankhead, Holiday's maybe-lover, and disappears instantly. Years bleed into other years. Much dope is shot.

Holiday's indefatigable spirit gets buried under misery porn that's a bit much even by Daniels' standards. At least "Precious" was audacious. You could tell Daniels was going for a semi-satirical, Todd Solondz-like vibe, where you were supposed to ask, "Is this meant to be funny, and am I a bad person for laughing?" There's no such tonal cheekiness here. The film is solemn as can be, hammering nails into Billie Holiday's ankles and wrists and raising her up on the cross at the end. Daniels frames Holiday in a tight closeup and watches her sing as she stares into the middle distance through glazed eyes. He crosscuts between Holiday singing onstage and getting shtupped backstage by a smooth criminal. He stares at her defeated, puffy face as she lies in a hospital bed with a catheter snaking from her hospital gown, talking to her pals about how her liver has failed. There seems to be no dramatic objective to scenes like these other than to remind us yet again, "Billie Holiday was a junkie, drugs are bad."

Over the course of two hours that feel like three, "All of Me" loops in and out of the soundtrack in varied arrangements, including a rumbling funereal version that may very well show up in a trailer advertising an R-rated, dark-and-gritty reboot of, hell, who knows which early 20th century cartoon property. Maybe Betty Boop. The film itself seems strung out, and not in an interesting way. It needed an intervention.