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The United States versus America — The time is coming to choose sides

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 19th, 2025

I picked up a follower on Blue Sky the other day (I must be in double digits by now!) whose page reveled in his love of country and patriotism. He had pictures of himself in uniform, along with pictures of wheat fields and sunsets and dogs and all the other things that make America special in the eyes of hyper-patriots.

Nothing to take offense to, but I was mildly curious. I’m skeptical of hyperpatriotism for the same reasons I’m skeptical of overt religiosity or guys who scream about “impure women” or whatever. All are signs of fundamentalism, a mental disorder I’m at best uncomfortable around. My writings and posts don’t attract such people, other than the ones who want to scream about what a degenerate I am. One of the nice things about Blue Sky is that people like that tend to weed themselves out in pretty short order.

But I was curious. What did my new-found friend think about events over the past month? I scrolled through his past few weeks of posts. Not one word about any current event: nothing about the abandonment of Ukraine, or a psychopathic South African billionaire and his pock-faced juvenile delinquents rummaging through all the national secrets and finances. Nothing about the immense damage Trump has already inflicted on the country, both domestically and in foreign affairs.

I didn’t block or mute the guy, but I did elect to not follow him back. (Some people think the number of followers they have validates them, and that’s fine. I measure my reach by the number of people I elect to follow BACK. This eliminates all the people who want to sell me land, drugs, or bitcoin, the illuminati, or who want to sex me all night long for the cost of a penicillin shot.)

The polls show that Trump’s popularity is dropping at over 2% a week, which in the ideologically rigid present state of public opinion represents a vast and momentous shit. His polls on the economy have dropped 12% in two weeks, even though the economy really hasn’t reacted to his policies. But many idiots still measure the economy by the price of eggs, which is like picking the Superbowl winner by which mound of corn a chicken pecks at first. And the price of eggs is skyrocketing as bird flu decimates the laying hens.

The malicious ineptitude of the TrumpenMusk regime is starting to percolate through all the propaganda from newspits like Newsmax or the Washington Post. All the redcap morons are starting to realize they really mean the stuff they said in Project 2025, and do hope to wipe out medicare and social security and shift ALL the tax burden to the lower class while they totally raid the entire nation’s wealth. Right now they just see it in them cutting programs that matter to them; day care, product safety regulations, conservation, etc. In short, all the millions of things government actually does because it’s far cheaper and more efficient than the private sector could possibly manage.

For many years, the right wing has promoted the silly notion that you are a patriot if you love America but want to get rid of the United States. Instead of “United States” of course they say “government” and they lie constantly about how the government is wasteful (it is, but so are corporations; but a lot of their operations are ‘proprietary’ and so they aren’t transparent or responsive to public interest, and unfortunately it’s been nearly 250 years since Americans had to deal with power centers that were unresponsive to the public interest.) Government is oppressive, evil, eats kittens, yada, yada, yada.

What they don’t understand (and are prevented from understanding) is that the United States, the thing that makes America special, IS the Constitution, and the government which it founded. The separation of powers, the mandated responsiveness to the people, the protection of the oppressed, the Bill of Rights – that is what the United States is. That is what the rest of the world envied. Not fields and dogs and sunsets, because every fucking country in the world has those, and some are prettier. Without the United States, America is just another patch of land filled with squabbling and destitute peasants, no better than most and worse than some.

The Constitution—the heart and soul of the United States—exists with the express purpose of using government to defend the people from the depredations of banks, aristocrats, and churches. While it has had an imperfect record with these, it worked well enough to make America the greatest of nations for a long, long time.

Trump and Musk are the vile faces of an evil consortium of fundamentalist churches, rapacious corporations, and vicious plutocrats—all the evils men like Jefferson and Madison wanted to free the citizenry from. The reason Trump and Musk are dismantling government isn’t to save the taxpayers money—they have zero interest in that, and quite the opposite, in fact. They want to create a power vacuum and fill it themselves, and put every public need on a “make it pay” basis. Instead of a not-for-profit service such as social security or medicare, they want to run it on a 30% markup, and regard the actual services as outlays that need to be minimized for the sake of profit.

We’re rapidly approaching a point where all the dog and sunset-loving cardboard patriots have to decide if they love a rapidly diminishing America, or want to fight for the United States.

I know which line they may cross: when they declare that they are no longer obliged to observe court rulings. That’s where I begin to advocate the overthrow of Musk and Trump by any means possible. At that point, they are outlaw, and enemies of the United States.

If people want to keep the America they love, they may well have to take up arms on behalf of the United States.

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The Wednesday Night Massacre — The battle between Trump and America is joined

The Wednesday Night Massacre

The battle between Trump and America is joined

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 14th, 2025

Some of you may remember the Saturday Night Massacre. It was the turning point of the Watergate scandal in 1973, when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had taped his conversations in the Oval Office—which would likely include conversations pertaining to the break-in at Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate hotel and subsequent conversations about the cover-up of the crime and possible White House complicity.

The special prosecutor investigating the case, Archibald Cox, promptly issued a subpoena for the tapes. Nixon refused, and ordered Cox to drop the subpoena. Cox refused. Nixon then ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the assistant attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. He refused and resigned. Finally, Nixon found a willing toady in the contemptible Robert Bork who said, in effect, oh, hey, master, no problem! Cox is gone. Bork went on to become a hero to the morally bankrupt conservative movement, even getting nominated to the Supreme Court before people remembered who he was.

The fiasco pretty much sealed Nixon’s fate. Americans hadn’t yet been subjected to 50 years of right wing propaganda designed to erode their confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and themselves. They realized that Nixon’s behavior was not that of an unjustly accused president, and his support plummeted.

Now here we are not one month into the most criminally capricious and ethically destitute administration in US history, and an even bigger massacre has taken place.

Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City, and he is a piece of work. He was, at best, a shady cop for many years, and rose to captain. He retired, got elected to the state senate, then became Brooklyn borough president, and then ran for mayor, winning handily against an inept vigilante.

Adams’ ethics, if he ever had any, vanished, and by 2024 he had been indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He was the first mayor to face federal charges while still in office.

Then Trump got elected, and set about destroying rule of law. After Matt Gaetz flamed out, he picked his second-best alternative, Pam Bondi, to run the Justice Department. (Yes, she was sloppy seconds to Matt Gaetz, so don’t get your hopes up.) The DoJ immediately became what Trump claimed it was when it was prosecuting him: corrupt, incompetent, and politicized. (Trump ALWAYS accuses others of being what he is himself).

Trump needed scapegoats who couldn’t fight back to blame the country’s problems upon, and immigrants are his version of the Jews under Hitler. He was delighted that Eric Adams shared his views and wished to punish people in order to make it look patriotic. Eric Adams wouldn’t be much use in prison. So he told Bondi to make the charges go away, just like he did with hundreds awaiting trial for January 6th, and she passed word down to one of her flunkies, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, to make the case go away. Emil, no hero, passed word down to one Danielle Renee Sassoon, who was appointed the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York by Trump just the month before. Bove claimed that the charges against Adams, a Democrat, were politically motivated. (The charges were brought under Merrick Garland during the Biden Administration.) Bove no doubt presumed that Sassoon would be as corrupt, nuts and/or servile as all Trump’s other appointments.

Well, turns out she isn’t.

She wrote a seven page letter detailing why she could not follow Bove’s orders to drop the case against Adams, and resigned effective immediately. Starting to sound familiar?

It turned into an avalanche. According to an MSN report, “According to a person briefed on the matter, after Sassoon refused to dismiss the case, the Trump administration directed John Keller, the acting head of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, to do so.

“Keller also resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter said. Kevin Driscoll, a senior official in the department’s criminal division, has also resigned, one of the people said.

“Three other deputies in the Justice Department’s public corruption unit – Rob Heberle, Jenn Clarke, and Marco Palmieri – also resigned on Thursday over the orders to dismiss the Adams case, a person familiar with the matter said.”

Wow. This already makes the Saturday Night Massacre look like an office spat over nuking popcorn in the microwave and stinking up the place. Seven resignations on principle, and counting.

An army of skunks couldn’t stink up the place the way Trump has.

More resignations are expected as all the decent people get out, leaving the Justice Department (and our dependence on a fair and just legal system) in the hands of obedient strutting swine and toadies. Good luck, America. I’ll probably end up in Gitmo for writing this.

Mind you, the massacre 52 years ago took place when lack of evidence made the entire Watergate case a matter of “he said she said.” Many people sided with Nixon in good faith. That’s not the case here.

Bove’s order to Sassoon made it clear that there was a fiddle in the case. Again, according to MSN: “Sassoon said the memo Bove wrote directing the case be dropped makes clear Adams is being granted leniency in exchange for assisting the federal government with its immigration priorities, citing a meeting Jan. 31 that she, Bove, Adams’s attorney and members of her office attended.

‘Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,’ Sassoon said in the letter Wednesday.”

Rachel Maddow reported that the order was to dismiss the charges against Adams “without prejudice” which, Maddow explained, meant that they were to be suspended rather than dropped entirely, and would be left hanging over Adams’ head for as long as he was in office and carrying out Trump’s pogrom against immigrants for him. No hint of coercion there, right?

It’s been 52 years since the Saturday Night Massacre. Since then, Americans have been subjected to a half century of endless propaganda designed to erode American confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and self-respect. The Massacre effectively ended Nixon. Will this end Trump? With a corrupt Court and servile, cringing Republican congress? Will the public finally rise up against this criminal?

When the right decided to avenge Watergate and end the American experiment, they probably didn’t think it would culminate in Donald Trump, already known back then as a vicious and unreliable clown.

But their cause is a broken and twisted one, so it’s no surprise their hirelings are broken and twisted people.

All the decent people in the Justice Department are getting out. What remains are swine and lower than swine.

Good luck to all of us

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World Wide Weather — In the Event Of

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 5th 2025

www.zeppscommentaries.online

With the events in Boulder this morning, with Elon Musk’s move to take over the NOAA headquarters, we must prepare for the possibility that NOAA may vanish, or be subsumed into a commercial weather service that puts profits and political expediency ahead of accuracy.

Below are a list of site that may survive such a purge and continue to be useful. Note that many depend on NOAA for their basic data and hopefully are scrambling to access data from outside the United States.

I’ll also included tips for security accessing sites that may not be approved of by the government going forward so you won’t be in the dark.

https://worldweather.wmo.int/en/home.html

“This global website presents OFFICIAL weather observations, weather forecasts and climatological information for selected cities supplied by National Meteorological & Hydrological Services (NMHSs) worldwide.The NMHSs make official weather observations in their respective countries. Links to their official weather service websites and tourism board/organization are also provided whenever available. Weather icons are shown alongside worded forecasts in this version to facilitate visual inspection.”

https://www.bbc.com/weather

Weather forecasts for thousands of sites around the world

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/

“The Met Office has been keeping folks informed about changes in the weather for over a century and a half now. As the official forecaster for the UK, they know their stuff! Based in Exeter, their team watches endless amounts of data from locations all over using some high-tech supercomputers. We appreciate how the regional forecasts on their site make planning trips featured in our travel blogs a breeze. Beyond daily outlooks, they also offer specialized guidance for marine weather that even the hardiest sailors rely on. With unmatched experience studying the complex sciences behind our atmosphere, the professionals at the Met Office have a well-earned reputation for reliable predictions.”

https://weatherspark.com/

“WeatherSpark is one of the best weather sites for super simple yet effective planning. Based out of Seattle, their team has made forecasting fun with their clean interface focused on graphics over jargon. We love how their maps show easy-to-grasp color animations right on top of places featured in our travel blogs. Beyond standard precipitation and temp charts, they provide cool extras too – from “feels like” Adjusted Temperature charts to chance of snow measurements. WeatherSpark also gathers hyper-local data using sensors embedded around cities. This street-level detail comes in handy when we’re deciding between hiking trails. And it’s not just us – Foursquare users voted them ‘Best new weather app’”

[Note: while based in Seattle, they are close enough to the Canadian border that they may be able to continue operations]

https://www.windy.com/?41.248,-122.113,5

Based in the Czech Republic, Windy has a real time wind map of the globe.

https://www.sat24.com/en-gb

Global coverage by satellite in real time.

 

https://www.ventusky.com/

Ventusky (AI forecasts, so remember what happens if you ask AI if water freezes at 27F)

“This is one of the best weather websites. You see forecasts for a whole week and hour to hour too. This lets owners schedule events better. Ventusky works worldwide too. Alerts come quickly if bad weather is near. The app is neat and easy. AI helps explain what weather means. Companies doing things outside need good weather tips.

“It even learns where you are to give better forecasts. Maps and pictures show lots of weather details too. Plus fun articles teach about weather. Whether for work or play, Ventusky gives good weather so plans can happen no matter the sky.”

https://www.meteoprog.com/

Meteoprog

“Meteoprog combines weather data and technology to help countries, companies and people better address weather-related challenges. This site provides the ability to track meteorological information around the world. Meteoprog has been forecasting the weather for over 20 years. This site has own solutions and forecast models.”

https://www.worldweatheronline.com/

Weather World Online

“World Weather Online is one of the best weather websites. Weather-obsessed and accuracy-focused, we pour passion into predictions for all – from skiers to surfers. Daily downpours or weekend wonders worldwide, you’ll get reliable, up-to-date climate intel. Sports folks score with specially simulated conditions. Businesses and developers leverage our precise APIs in myriad mediums. Continually crunching complex climate data through our forecasting framework, we fuse major meteorological models for the most masterful meteorology possible.”

https://www.Weatherwest.com

I’ve no doubt Daniel Swain will keep his site going for as long as possible and is surveying sources of reliable meteorological and climatological information.

A lot of these sites depend on NOAA, in part or in whole, for their forecast models. Should NOAA go dark or be mismanaged into irrelevance, sites like these will be prepared to step in should we be reduced to being charged money for inferior information.

Security is always an issue. People should get a good VPN (Proton is free and works quite well), along with a Tor Browser (also free), use Duck Duck Go for searches (also free and they don’t track you). For untraceable communication, the ancient pre-web technology of Usenet is available. Type in “Endless September” on your internet search engine for details.

We are in unpredictable times, and access to good scientific data is under assault. Prepare now while there is time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Tariffic Time Was Had By All — The Art of the Dealt

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 3rd 2025

When Donald Trump called me to tell me that if I didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to slap tariffs on me, I was nonplussed. Weren’t the price of eggs already too high? “Please, Mister Trump,” I begged him. “What do you want, Mister Trump?”

There was a pause. I was sure Donald knew what he wanted when he picked up the phone. But you know, he’s a very important man. Important things to see, important people to do. It gets confusing.

Time to avail myself of an opportunity to fill that void.

“Do whatever you want, but please, please don’t demand I give you Mar-a-Lago. Please. Anything but that!”

“Mar-a-lago, eh?” I heard him give a sly cackle. Clearly, he thought he had be over a barrel. “OK,” he said, “Here’s my offer. I won’t slap tariffs on you if you give me Mar-a-Lago.”

I whimpered convincingly, begging him to spare me. He hung up. I looked at my phone and chuckled.

A few days later, he announced the tariffs on me. He did it on a Friday because nobody watches the news on Friday. I nearly missed it myself.

By Monday morning, the stock market people were talking openly about a market crash. Market people don’t like to talk about crashes, you know. They don’t even like to admit such things exist. Usually if a broker mentions the word ‘crash’ it means he has jumped from the plane, fallen for ten seconds, and just realized he forgot his parachute. Meanwhile, the phrase ‘trade war,’ one hated by nearly all businessmen, was being bandied about. The whole world, it seemed, was mad at Donald.

He gave me a call. “This is your last chance. Agree to giving me Mar-a-Lago and I’ll consider dropping the tariffs.”

“Sorry. Can’t do it.” I hung up.

I turned on the stock-ticker channel and watched the meltdown proceed.

The phone rang. “Give me Mar-a-Lago and I’ll drop the tariffs for two weeks.”

“No good. I’ll tariff you right back.” I reminded myself to call the stock ticker channel and make the same threat. Should put the tech stocks in a tailspin.

I watched the cartoon channel. I didn’t mean to. It’s just a bit hard to tell Looney Tunes from Fox News. Ring!

“As you know, I am a top-flight negotiator, and I’ve given this considerable thought. I want to help you here. I’ll suspend tariffs for thirty days, only by the time a month has rolled around, everyone will have forgotten them. In return, you don’t mention tariffs to anyone. You give me Mar-a-Lago, and I’ll give you $3.5 million just to sweeten the deal and make it look legit for the tax people.”

I spent thirty seconds pretending to think about it. I could almost hear him sweating over the phone. I didn’t want to think what that smelled like.

“Donald, I think we have a deal. You truly are the world’s greatest deal-maker. I tell you this, sir, with tears in my eyes.”

I wondered if any of his flunkies would work up the nerve to tell him he already owned Mar-a-Lago and I had just sold him his own property to defuse a threat he wasn’t prepared to carry out.

The money arrived the next day in the form of a bearer bond. Which was good—I wouldn’t trust a check from that guy.

Pretty good day’s work, really. Think I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him all the people at OANN are secretly woke.

But first, call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Presidente Claudia Sheinbaum. Tell them that if they want to avoid a trade war, they should tell him their respective countries won’t swap places on the map, and that Mexico might be willing to sell him Alaska while Canada might sell him Texas.

Just my little contribution to world peace, that.

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Let the Lunacy Begin! — Chaotic Trump’s chaotic start

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 30th 2025

“A 100 metre-wide asteroid has triggered global planetary defence procedures for the first time after telescope observations revealed it has a chance of colliding with Earth in 2032…Based on measurements gathered so far, the asteroid has a 1.3% chance of smashing into Earth on 22 December 2032, or put another way, a nearly 99% probability of barrelling past without incident.”

My response to that January 29th Guardian article was “Sure. Why the hell not?” Figure Trump will have been just reelected President for life and beyond on a unanimous vote from Congress and the Supreme Court. Most of the US will be an Ayn Rand hellscape where trillionaires amuse themselves by having captive workers put on sex shows. Churches will be clamoring for the newest bible from Lord Elon Musk.

An asteroid capable of wiping out a major city would be a welcome distraction.

Granted, it’s been a bit chaotic the past 10 days or so. Trump talked about shock and awe, which was one way of describing his blitzkrieg-style power grab.

First there was the blanket pardon. Trump is lazy and incompetent, and thought it was too cumbersome to vet all the 1600 or so people convicted for actions taken on January 6th. While questionable ethically (pardons are not supposed to be based on politics or transactional) most of the people pardoned committed minor offenses and some had even done their time. Others where vicious criminals, guilty of anything from sedition to child rape. The head of the Proud Boys was shopped by his own son, and rightly so. Now out, he’s threatening and trying to track down his son. Another died in a shootout with police, and another convicted of forcible child rape and sentenced to 17 years. Fortunately, more responsible adults have kept his ass in prison.

Then there was the since-rescinded spending freeze which caused 48 hours of utter chaos. Matthew J. Vaeth wrote the memo (given the secrecy and buffoonery of the administration, it’s impossible to guess if Trump even knew about it) even though he was only acting interim director of the Office of Management and Budget. But he was also one of the authors of Project 2025, and made his fascist impulses known in the memo, writing “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.” Just another howling Heritage Foundation right-wing nut.

It was blatantly unconstitutional, of course. Congress appropriates spending; the chief executive branch only administers it, and has no say in second guessing the Congressional budget. A few years back there was a move to give the president line-item veto power, and it was slapped down by the courts as unconstitutional.

Then there was the abjectly silly attempt to get government employees a seven-month buyout option, a bonus for early retirement. Again, totally illegal. This scheme sprung from the noble brow of one Elon Musk, who made a similar offer to Twitter employees when he bought the media, a first step toward turning it into the plane of Nazi vomit it is today. He even used the same title: “A Fork in the Road” for both memos. Musk wants to do for America what he did for Twitter. X it out and replace it with…well, a right wing shit pile.

Rachel Maddow noted that JD Vance, who once said, “So step one in the process is to totally replace — like rip out like a tumor — the current American leadership class, and then reinstall some sense of American political religion.”, was almost wholly backed in his unlikely political career by Peter Theil protégé Curtis Yarvin, who wants to rip out the entire government and replace it with a corporation. He concludes, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.”

Personally, I have a phobia of dictators, I admit it. Never turned out very nicely. And this clown is holding the strings of the vice President.

Trump’s enablers want a Unified Executive, which is a fancy way of saying “Dictator.” Trump may be a bit vague on that, but I’m sure he likes the sound of a scheme that means unlimited profit. He’s like a Ferengi from Star Trek, only not ethically limited by the Rules of Acquisition.

There’s the start of the mass deportation. The claim is he’s deporting criminals. In reality, most of those being deported have no criminal record, and contrary to what the hate mongers on the right claim, the act of being in the country without permission is not an actual crime. People who call them “illegal people” are, wittingly or not, just using the tired old Nazi tactic of dehumanizing their victims. And as for “anchor babies” (Barron Trump qualifies for that term), even this sad spectacle of a Supreme Court is going to find it hard to opine that the 14th amendment can be erased by an executive order from a nutball president.

That all said, there are two things going on for which Trump is not responsible.

He didn’t cause yesterday’s horrible mid-air collision in Washington, DC or even make it more likely. Yes, he forced the head of the FAA to resign, but that was just last week and couldn’t have affected day-to-day operations in the control towers. It was just pure bad luck. Trump, of course, tried blaming the crash on “Biden policies” because Trump is a morally empty dirtbag.

Nor is Trump responsible for the current price of eggs. That’s almost entirely because of the fast-spreading bird flu, which has resulted in the deaths of some 130 million hens. Trump is no more at fault for that than Biden was, but unlike MAGAts, I’m honest enough to not base a blame game just on which party is in the White House.

That said, expect produce prices to explode, since crops are rotting in the fields because of Trump’s pogrom against foreign workers. And I have little hope of any positive approach to bird flu, either.

Four more years of this craziness. At least.

Say! Is there any way to speed up that asteroid?

 

 

 

 

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DeepSeek — China gets the drop on us

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 27th, 2025

Hey, everyone, remember the gigantic AI thing, the one that Musk wanted to raise a trillion* dollars to invest, backed by bitcoin? Trump was talking about a $500 billion that he would probably just steal from the Social Security fund. All the tech giants were in a huge race to pour money into AI, hoping to make it bigger, stronger, faster? Remember that?

Sure you do. It was all just there yesterday.

Well, funny story.

China has released something called DeepSeek. It’s their own AI platform, easily as powerful and flexible as the ones the tech bros have been dumping all those trillions into. They did it on a grand total of six million dollars budget. Pocket change for Intel, and for Musk, just part of his pocket lint.

Oh, yeah. Also, it’s open source. That means anyone can take it, play with it, use it, adapt it, all for free.

The financial bubble pop was probably big enough that it caused that earthquake in Maine. It may well be the biggest financial pop in history, even bigger than the real estate crash of ‘08.

Investors react to such upheavals with the equanimity of a flock of chickens in a thunderstorm, and as a result, the tech markets are busily tearing out their own entrails and eating them feverishly in a effort of minimize the scale of the crash.

A glance at the markets this morning shows carnage. Nvidia is down 17%. NASDAQ is down over 600 points. Marketwatch has the reassuring headline, “Does DeepSeek spell doomsday for Nvidia and other AI stocks? Here’s what to know.” The lede was interesting, as well: “That’s the big question on the minds of investors Monday, given newfound attention on DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app that has climbed to the top of downloads from Apple’s U.S. App Store. The service has become so popular that it’s restricting registration due to what it called ‘large-scale malicious attacks.’” Hmm. I’m guessing those attacks aren’t coming from Dark Web hackers. Care to guess which companies and/or countries are behind it? I’m imagining the TrumpenMusk coalition is quite busy this morning.

On one hand, it’s gratifying to see the techbros take a haircut on this scale. Most of them have accumulated vast amounts of wealth and power, which they’ve combined with a vapid kleptomaniacal libertarianism in hopes of unlimited wealth and power while the other 99.9% of us eke out an existence in an Ayn Randian hellscape.

And I was contemplating a vast bubble backed by cybercurrency, a truly frightening prospect. It’s one thing to say currency has no real intrinsic value and thus bitcoin is equal, and that’s true so far as it goes; you can’t eat gold, as they say. But regular currency has consensus value: a dollar is worth a dollar because everyone roughly agrees that a dollar has value. With bitcoin, the “consensus” lies in computer algorithms which are far more volatile and not attuned to human needs. If the lights go out, bitcoins value vanishes. Vaporware backed by pretend money really does sound a bit…tenuous, doesn’t it?

But I also feel apprehension. DeepSeek doesn’t just open Pandora’s Box; it blows that sucker to smithereens. Everyone will have access to extraordinarily powerful AI and can play with it in any way they choose.

The Trump administration will probably yell that it can’t be trusted because there’s no guessing what the Chinese have in the way of back doors or acquisitionware. You know, like they supposedly do with TikTok.

But being open source means anyone can examine the source code, line by line, making unexpected guests on board next to impossible.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone else can take that code and add all sorts of goodies and foist that off on an unsuspecting public.

I would imagine that something similar to the Linux community will spring up and monitor the various flavors of DeepSeek that emerge. While significantly more complex than a desktop OS, Deep Seek does have the advantage over Windows and other programs in that it’s ALL visible.

But if you thought AI was expanding at a fantastic rate before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This doesn’t bring about a smarter AI that can actually think. And it can make some really amazing mistakes. Peter Cawdron posted an in-depth, probing five-page AI-spawned review of his book “Enclave.” It was very convincing except for one little thing—he never wrote a book called “Enclave.” And I can’t imagine writing a five page review of his work without mentioning First Contact. The other day, someone asked an AI if water freezes at 27F. The AI replied it does not, it freezes at 32F, so in order to freeze the water, you would need to raise the temperature from 27 to 32. And you thought Bible-based “science classes” were ridiculous.

Right now, we’re all just blinking at the afterglow of a thermonuclear explosion. I suspect we’re in for an interesting few months, even without the Nazis in Washington.

* Yes, trillion, one thousand billions, one million millions unless you learned to count English style, in which case it’s a British billion.

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Springtime for Trumpie and USA — Winter for … well, everybody

Springtime for Trumpie and USA

Winter for … well, everybody

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 19th 2025

It really does feel like March 1933, doesn’t it? Hitler has just seized power. In America, the country is teetering on the verge of collapse, and a dozen states are no longer accepting US currency, opting for state script instead. A third of the banks have collapsed, and millions are starving, desperate, homeless. The Republicans are saying the poor are refusing to buy food or pay rent in order to punish the rich. A new guy, an affable and seemingly shallow New York pol named Roosevelt is about to be inaugurated, and the same people beating their breasts over starving children refusing to keep millionaires comfortable are warning the country will collapse, banks will fail, and people will suffer greatly—just like they did under Republicans, only they leave that last bit out and hope nobody notices. Meanwhile, Japan has expanded over much of west Asia and is making little effort to conceal its plans for the Philippines, Indonesia, and even Australia.

We’re at about January 1933 if the parallels hold up. Things are bad and look to get far worse in the near future.

American voters were seduced by an unholy coalition of plutocrats and zealots, who gleefully encouraged people to be their worst. Hate immigrants, gay and trans people, liberals, non-Christians and anyone with a good education. They believe such ridiculous lies as immigrants have a higher crime rate and eat people’s cats and dogs; gays and trans are forcing children to have sex-change operations in secret, liberals want us all to live in caves and hug trees, and non-Christians are completely amoral and most are terrorists. And worst of all, the educated sneer at morons and use big words. It’s why flat earthers hate astrophysicists.

It’s not really a surprise that a crowd like that would vomit up a con artist, a rapist, a philanderer and a felon to the oval office—again. What is shocking is that there are so many Low People (as Stephen King once famously referred to them as) that they could do it. I think a lot of fundamentalists are correct that only God can make people good. Take anyone who thinks that only an invisible, silent sky pixie in his head stops him from stealing, raping, cheating and killing, and give him permission to be a scumbag in the name of god and country, and you end up with a depressingly large number of scumbags.

How low? Well, look at the politicians who watched the Los Angeles fires and thought to themselves, “Hey, I can use that to blackmail the country into doing what I want!” Sure, they’ll provide aid. But they want … conditions.

It’s about as low as an American politician can possibly sink. Donald Trump is one of those politicians, of course, but that’s no surprise. There are mob bosses, serial killers and CEOs with more principles and decency. A lot of it comes from states that California has sent many billions of dollars helping after disasters, such as Florida. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Scumsuckers) said, “I believe that if a state is so grossly mismanaged that the initial disaster is not quickly contained, then we have a responsibility to do common-sense things.” OK, but remember your whole fucking state is going to be underwater by the end of the century, and you’ll be begging for our help. “Rebuild maybe so that the conditions are such that the threat from fire is lessened so that we won’t have to do it again,” added Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Mewling Hypocrites). Have you asked California for aid in hardening your structures against hurricanes, Carly? Oh, and what’s your stance on immigrants? Ready to throw those whiny ungrateful Cubans out?

At least Florida, like California, contributes more in revenues to the country then it gets back. It’s small compared to the $85-120 billion California overpays, but at least Florida carries its own weight. The loudest whiners come from pauper states that take far more than they give back. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Blub blub blub), a shell of a man emptied by toxic religion and subservience to Donald Trump, indignantly demands conditions. Say, Mike, how much did California demand in return for helping after Katrina? Or any of the other dozens of catastrophes your state has suffered?

Gavin Newsom said of Trump last year, “Everything was a transaction against his own citizens.”

Indeed. Well, expect more of that. Trump is out to punish anyone who didn’t vote for him. States, individuals, it doesn’t matter. He feels victimized because people hate him for being a hateful person, and he is out for revenge. It’s all very noble, you know.

But Trump and his followers have various weaknesses to exploit. The MAGAts and zealots are of a fundamentalist mindset, and are rapidly developing factions and schisms over such issues as whether there are “good immigrants” versus the regular kind, or how much government should be destroyed. (Most, but far from all, are smart enough to want to keep the parts of government they benefit from.) Those can be exploited. The billionaires have a united front right now, but wait until they start seeing others getting favored treatment, whether they actually are or not.

And finally, Trump himself has myriad weaknesses. He’s vain and cowardly. He just moved his inauguration inside and semi-private, supposedly because of cold weather (24F, or -5C, but who could have guessed it would be cold in January?) but I suspect he feared a small crowd would be there, or worse, a large unfriendly crowd from the 100,000 strong demonstration held two days before. He also doesn’t hesitate to screw over his helpers and followers. He’s infamous for that. Tens of thousands of people spend large amounts of money-in some cases life savings—to bear witness to his glorious restoration to the throne, only to have him cancel just 36 hours prior. Even the given reason was stupid. And threatening America’s best allies seems like a really dumb idea, especially given the quality of the few “world leaders” who do support him in Russia, China, Hungary or North Korea.

And you’re seen the quality of his cabinet and other position nominees. You could find a better collection of people in the county drunk tank on a Saturday night with a full moon. Criminals, bankrupts, white supremacists, conspiracy nuts and fools. It’s like each was made from a shaving off Donald Trump himself.

Lastly, there’s Trump’s competence. Or lack thereof. His followers are going to be very upset that many of his “first day” promises are vaporware, idiot ideas aimed at angry morons. His followers, as is usually the case, will be the first to get hit by his supposed brainstorms. Pissing off an angry, ignorant mob that has already been artificially riled up by propaganda seems like a really dumb idea.

As for the rest of us, resist in any way possible. Be rude. Be firm. Make life as difficult as possible for these idiots. And maybe we can salvage the country by doing so.

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Cry Havoc! — And let slip the war of dogs!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 3rd, 2025

For those of you familiar with Marc Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, no, I didn’t transpose the famous quote. This isn’t a mustering of the troops. This is just an avoidable dog fight amongst mangy curs scrapping over carrion.

I’m referring to the opening day of the 119th House of Representatives. The second order of business (after the quorum call) is the vote to select a new Speaker. Mike Johnson (R-Self-Styled Christians Who Worship Trump) is the current Speaker—for now. A weak man stuck in an impossible situation, he’s been the least effective Speaker since the antebellum era, the last time the nation has been so divided by sectionalism. The Democrats, at least, are taking it seriously. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who fractured her hip and had it replaced last month, is there. They know there is an outside chance that in all the chaos, they could end up in control of the House. At the very least, they can enjoy the spectacle of the Republicans self-destructing. The margin Republicans enjoy in the House is one vote. And at least one Republican, Thomas Massie (R-Screaming Right Wing Loons) has indicated to kindred soul Matt Gaetz (former R-Pedophiles, now OANN flack) that he would not be supporting Johnson. Colorfully. “You can pull all my fingernails out; you can shove bamboo up in them; you can start cutting off my fingers…I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow, and you can take that to the bank.” OK, let’s put him down as a tentative no vote. A new complicating factor is Chip Roy (R-Mean Texas Bigots) who wants to be in charge of the Rules Committee. The MAGA coalition allow that if Johnson endorses Roy for that role, it might bring the non-Massey coalition in line and put Johnson over the top. However, the other 150 members of the GOP caucus who aren’t completely insane aren’t impressed. Don Bacon from Nebraska told the press, “Putting Chip Roy in charge of the rules committee is like putting Stalin in charge of amnesty and diplomacy.” This puts Johnson in an impossible situation—support the loathsome Roy and risk losing non-MAGA Republicans, or reject him, which would probably cost him three or four MAGA votes, perhaps more. Well, hee-whack. He didn’t support Roy, to his faint credit. Massie voted for the 118th House Majority Whip, Tom Emmer, so Johnson’s margin is zero. Why am I paying such close attention to this? Well, without a House Speaker, the new Congress, whose members were sworn in earlier today, cannot convene. Until they have selected the Speaker, the only thing they can do under the Constitution is select a new Speaker. They don’t officially exist until that happens. …and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina just voted for House Republican Gym Jordan (R-Men’s Shower Room). Right. Cry havoc, indeed. Havoc is a neat word. It means either “wide and general destruction” or “great confusion and disorder.” The GOP have just implemented the second meaning of the term. Congress is paralyzed. They can’t certify Donnie as President. For starters. I’m wondering what happens on the 20th if Donnie still hasn’t been certified. Trump himself realizes it’s a very important formality—he staged an insurrection to try to prevent Biden from being certified almost four years ago. I’m sure folks remember. This is the third go-around where the GOP have imploded over picking a speaker. It took 15 votes to get Mike Johnson, a relative unknown, into office that last time. Almost two weeks. That takes us very close to January 20th, you know? Living where I do, I know any number of idiots who opine that the United States would be better off without a government. Or they want a government in charge of cops and the military and nothing else, thus owing nothing to the people. Every so often I point out that if government spending is the heart of the economy, keeping the blood flowing, then governance is the brain. The United States without a government, one responsible to the people, is just another shit hole country like Russia or Hungary, and at worse is a vast anarchy like Somalia. It would fly apart, and there’s maybe ten states with the economic might and diversity to survive as sovereign nations. Most of the red states would be economic basket cases without the support of the nation. The MAGAts, who love America but hate the United States, may be taking us on the first step along that path. I’ve suggested this before, and now I’ll do so again: if just five Republicans cross the aisle, and become Democrats, this would not only provide the country with a functional Congress, but blunt the horrors that Trump hopes to visit upon us. He’d threaten to primary them like he does, but as Dems, they would be facing a Republican in the next election anyway. It’s unlikely to happen, but if enough simply abstain from voting at some point in the Speaker votes to come, Hakeem Jeffries could take over, and the country can remain functional. Trump is bad. Anarchy with Trump pretending to be president would be even worse.
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Solstice 2024 — Expiry dates and the Cassandra Effect

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 21st, 2024

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Science may not have a hard-and-fast rule that stipulates when hominids became truly human, but if it was up to me, I would say it was the first a hominid raised his fists in the air and shouted, “We are all DOOMED!” Now, granted, science may find that a bit unhelpful, since nobody can say when the first doom-shouter arose, but they have been an inextricable part of humanity since it became overcooked apes.

“The end is nigh” may be a popular pastime with us somewhat-evolved monkeys, and the real allure lies in the fact that if you shout it long enough, you’ll eventually be right. All things end. Look upon my works and despair. We are but mortal. Even the Universe has an expiry date.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doom-shouting, of course. Oh, you won’t get invited to many parties and your kids will tell you the music in your day was also crap, but often such shouts warn of clear, present, and avoidable dangers. Things such as overpopulation, climate change, nuclear proliferation and pandemics are very real and even existential threats.

One drawback to doom-shouting is that the shouter will encounter the Cassandra effect. Cassandra was an ancient Greek soothsayer who was always right, but cursed because nobody ever believed her. Part of it is because most people are at least mildly optimistic. There are the incurable Panglossians, (aka “idiots”) who see everything through rose-coloured lenses, and the deterministic optimists (my group) who acknowledge the dangers and threats but think we can work our way through them. We’re also idiots, but a good deal less starry-eyed about it.

Most doom shouters are full of crap, of course. Humanity did not end because of cats, communists, Elvis, or rap music. Religious texts are big on “End of Days,” leading to endless trouble because of nitwits who interpret it to mean it is Divine Will they bring about the End of Days, but those texts are uniformly a load of crap, too. Too many people believe if you pile bullshit high enough, it becomes worthy of worship. Another sign of humanity, I suppose.

Which brings us to the here-and-now. America has willingly swallowed poison, and we’re all waiting to see if it was a lethal dose, or if America will end up puking it up and feeling really bad for a long time after.

For those of us currently living in the US who aren’t part of the One Percent, we’re in for hard times. There’s a very real possibility that America as we know it won’t exist by Solstice 2025. Class-based coups are always ugly, and those staged by the aristocracy tend to be even crueler and bloodier, and often throw the host nation into third-world poverty. And that, in a nutshell, is what has happened in America.

My brand of optimism doesn’t believe that the course of human events is on an inevitably downward path. If that were true, I believe history would have come to a close at the gates of Auschwitz.
No human force is truly inexorable, no matter how powerful it seems. The USSR was one of the most brutal and pervasive regimes in history, but when the government lost even the passive consensual support of the people, it collapsed relatively bloodlessly in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t a one-off. Ask Assad—his mail is being forwarded to Moscow now.

Our would-be masters, no matter how arrogant or brutal, absolutely depend upon our support. Without it, they will fall. Remember that. A national strike and millions in the streets peacefully protesting, can end them. It’s up to us. It is always up to us. Be prepared to resist.

How will the world do? We seem to be undergoing a world-wide convulsion and shifting, one that seems to happen every ninety years or so (the 1930s, the 1840s, the 1760s). Each brought about strife, loss, and bloodshed, but in the end the overall lot of humanity improved. That’s important to remember—the next decade might be fairly crappy, but history suggests a better life for the survivors.

The existential threats I mention above will still be with us. They are, after all, reiterations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Nothing new under our sun. And while its possible that one or more of them may raise up to decimate us, I doubt any will end us. For all that we seem hell-bent on self-obliteration, there’s always some sort of built-in override that causes enough of us to dig in our heels and save us from ourselves. Overall, pollution isn’t as bad as it was fifty years ago. A lower percentage of people died in warfare in the 20th century than in any century going back to the 14th century. (Admittedly, those are low bars.)

We’ve managed to live under the nuclear threat for eighty years now. We aren’t likely to see a pandemic that will kill off a third of us like the one in the 17th century. Over-population was seen as an intractable and inevitable doom fifty years ago. But our birthrate is declining world wide. (Due, in part, to the aforementioned pollution. Details, details.)

Even climate change may encounter built-in natural governors of the sort that prevented Earth in the past from becoming another Venus, or allowed it to come back at least three times from a state of “Snowball Earth.”

How will we fare? Um, well, let’s just say the Earth is considerably more durable than we are. But existential threats mean existential reckonings. We may yet find ways to avoid the worst of the consequences we’ve laid out for ourselves.

I believe, and will always believe, that we will somehow muddle through, and even prevail.

Why would we persevere, if not for the fact that most of us believe that?

It’s Winter Solstice 2024.

The wolf didn’t eat the sun. It will return.

Don’t lose hope. Never lose hope.

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Overall Sickness — More poison is the only cure, Trump thinks

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 18th, 2024

“The shocking assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on a New York City sidewalk earlier this month is viewed as “acceptable” by four in 10 young adults, an Emerson College poll found.

“The survey concluded that 41 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 – a percentage that far exceeds any other age group – found the shooting to be either “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable.

“Additionally, 23 percent of adults in their 30s thought the shooting was acceptable, along with 13 percent of adults in their 40s, 8 percent in their 50s and 10 percent in their 60s and 70s.”

–Raw Story

Donald Trump (R-Rich White Trash) weighed in, saying, “I think it’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him (Luigi Mangione), like him. And I was happy to see that it wasn’t specific to this gentleman that was killed. It’s just an overall sickness, as opposed to a specific sickness. That was a terrible thing. It was cold-blooded. Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing. And how people can like this guy is — that’s a sickness, actually.”

As usual, Trump got it completely wrong. It was specific, if not to Brian Thompson personally, to his role in the medical coverage system. Pretending it was result of of “overall sickness” is just giving protection to our screwed-up medical system.

That America has an overall sickness is beyond dispute. Just the other day we had another school shooting, three dead including the shooter, a 15 year-old girl. Just as I was responding to a gun nut on Facebook who called me “evil” for advocating for gun licenses. (Haven’t heard back from him.)

And of course, the fact that Trump got elected is proof that a plurality of voters have lost their minds and their sense of decency.

But Trump’s personal contributions to that “overall sickness” could fill volumes. He swears he’s going to issue a blanket pardon to all the rioters jailed in the wake of the January 6th insurrection, quite a few of whom are violent, unrepentant criminal filth. He wants to try members of the J6 Congressional committee for treason, apparently unaware that quite aside from the fact that they were committing the opposite of treason, the Constitution explicitly protects members of Congress for anything said in the chambers while in session. Doesn’t matter, I suppose: none of Trump’s supporters care what the Constitution says.

He hasn’t hesitated to call for the execution of protesters—yes, including peaceful protest—who didn’t riot on his behalf. Death is cheap under Trump; he has a long list of people who he thinks should be executed or thrown in prison for life. He very avidly wants to execute people, and has stuff the once-proud Supreme Court who have allowed executions to proceed, even when the prosecutors and the family of the victims begged them not to. He has proudly posed with the likes of Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse. Both indisputably killed people, but got off in court. More of that overall sickness, I suppose.

But then, we’ve established that under fascist rule, you don’t have to actually be guilty of any crime in order to justify being executed by the state. Trump has made that clear. His criminals get pardons, of course.

Sebastrian Gorka, who looks and sounds like an extra from a film about Stalin’s Politburo, came out the other day and said that anyone who expresses approval of the slaying of Brian Thompson should be executed. Gorka may sound like the dreary, bitter old drunk at the end of the bar whom everyone hope will pass out soon, but he is slated to serve as deputy assistant to the president and serve as senior director for counterterrorism in the NSC.

Gorka is probably something of a pretend intellectual and self-styled political scientist, but even he ought to be aware that while advocating for someone’s murder is a criminal act (as well it should be), expressing approval that someone died is not. “They ought to shoot so-and-so” can get you arrested and possibly convicted. “That son-of-a-bitch had it coming” is not a crime. It’s just an opinion.

But Gorka is more interested, like his empty, vainglorious master, in causing suppression and fear, and has no use for any moral niceties that may be involved.

But he likes history, so he should be aware of a saying about powerful leaders that has applied everywhere throughout history: “When you make dissent impossible, you make revolution inevitable.”

I doubt Gorka or Trump possess the wisdom to know when to slip the iron fist back into the velvet glove. Meanwhile, the new regime will add me to their list, if I’m not already there.