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

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?

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

Well, Pardon Me! — Biden pardon ignites firestorm of hypocrisy

Well, Pardon Me!

Biden pardon ignites firestorm of hypocrisy

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 1st 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

When I heard that Joe Biden had pardoned his son, Hunter, I just sat back, grinned, and waited for the GOP to utterly disgrace themselves. If you expect the GOP to behave like cowardly hypocritical strutting little bootlickers, they will never, ever disappoint you. If you drop a skunk into a pen of terriers, you can take it as a given that most, if not all of the dogs are going to smell just awful in a few moments.

Joe Biden explained his decision thusly: “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

Hunter was convicted on federal gun charges: possessing a gun illegally. Not in the commission of a crime, mind you. Just possession. Now try and find a single Republican who would say prison was warranted for a first-time offense on that specific crime. Even the ones not owned outright by the NRA wouldn’t support that. Unless, of course, the accused happened to be a member or related to a member of the Democratic Party.

He was also convicted on federal tax evasion charges. I’m having a hard time imagining that Donnie looked in the mirror and snarled over that one. Hell, his party is BUILT on the concept of cheating the hell out of the United States, by any means legally or illegally.

I hope Joe Biden used both middle fingers when he held the pen to sign the pardon.

Donnie, who has form when it comes to abusing the power of the pardon, launched right in. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked Sunday. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

Well, the ones still in jail, his ‘hostages,’ are violent anti-American filth who threatened and tried to kill people for the crime of just doing their jobs. Trump says he plans to pardon them first thing, but they will still be violent anti-American filth. (I’m not counting on those pardons happening: Trump has form on screwing followers who are no longer of any use to him, and deep down he knows how utterly useless his ‘hostages’ are now that he’s back in power.)

But he will pardon anyone useful, no matter what they did. Steven Bannon. Charles Kushner, who he just named ambassador to France. Chuckles, like his son, is a real corrupt piece of work. Per Wikipedia, “In 2005, he was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering after hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranging to record a sexual encounter between the two, and sending the tape to his sister. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.” Yup, tax evasion. Like Hunter Biden, right.

I remember, a few decades back, I complained that American sex scandals tended to be kinda boring, and you had to turn to the Brits and the French for the really juicy, interesting types of scandals. So thank you, Chuckles, for making American perfidy interesting again. Just one thought: when you get to France, don’t try to compare yourself to Thomas Jefferson. The French will tell you, Chuckles, that they knew Thomas Jefferson, and that you, Chuckles, are no Thomas Jefferson.

Gym Jordan, a man who really should be in prison, had this to say: “Democrats said there was nothing to our impeachment inquiry. If that’s the case, why did Joe Biden just issue Hunter Biden a pardon for the very things we were inquiring about?” I guess Jimbo doesn’t quite get that Hunter was convicted by a court (you know, just like Donnie Trump and the J6 ‘hostages’ were) and not because of your circus show “investigations.” They were exercises in vicious foolishness conducted by vicious fools. No pardons needed there. At least not for Hunter. As for you clowns…

Rudy Giuliani, widely considered “Most Likely to Die in a Cardboard Box Under a Bridge” weighed in with his usual gravitas: “Biden, who will not even meet with his granddaughter Navy, didn’t pardon his son because he’s a good father. He did so because, as his son admits on the Hard Drive, for 30 years Hunter has given half the millions he’s collected to the Boss of the Crime Family – Joe Biden.” How you doing with those payments to the two women whose lives you ruined, Jools? I hear you’re crying you eyes out, and darn it, Trump can’t pardon you, even if he thought you were worth the effort.

Chuck Grassley, man least likely to remember he’s a senator, said, “I’m shocked Pres Biden pardoned his son Hunter [because] he said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him. Shame on me.” Hey, good going, Chuck. Those last three words are true.

Folks, the Trump regime is going to be a soul-sickening exercise in hypocrisy and viciousness. It won’t get any better from here.

Remember to laugh at these fools, or they’ll drive you crazy.

Smith’s Second Filing — More “ruh-roh” moments for Donny

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 2nd, 2024

Jack Smith’s new 167-page filing against Donald Trump contains several bombshells.

Trump, of course, was hoping his lunatic pet fascists on the Supreme Court would give him full immunity against any actions he performed as President. But even his six corrupt right wingers knew they had to figleaf their ruling to give it a pretense of Constitutional law, and they stipulated that immunity only applied to “official acts.” Still “law” on the level of the Dredd Scott decision, but it was enough.

Very little of Trump’s activities between the month or so prior to the election and January 6th fell under the aegis of ‘official acts.’ Even after the Supreme Court decided the United States needed a king instead of a president, most of his activities were flat-out illegal.

So Smith rewrote his filing to stipulate that Trump’s actions did not fall under the official duties of a president. While you can argue that various presidents in American history would have been delighted to see their vice presidents lynched, it is, in fact, not an official presidential duty. The constitution is curiously mute on the issue of when it is proper for a president to have his first-in-line murdered even though at the time of the Constitution, the vice president was whoever got the second-most votes. “Uneasy lies the head,” indeed!

Of course, the endless delays meant that Smith had more time to broaden his investigation and include new allegations in his superseding document. The delays were caused, not by Smith but by Trump, who hoped to delay it all past the election, where hopefully he would win or steal a second term and fire Jack Smith.

Smith had an allegation missing from the first filing: that Trump knew his claims he won the election but it was stolen from him were false. The new filing contains eyewitness allegations that Trump dismissed voting results as “details” that “don’t matter” and the strategy was simply to throw doubt over the results, justified or not. In Trump’s own words, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”

Trump couldn’t even be bothered with a coherent theory as to how the votes were taken from them. His claims vary wildly from filing to filing, even in appeals of the same case! His estimates amounted to “whatever sounds good,” and the only thing they had in common was an utter lack of evidence to support them. That’s why he lost every single voter fraud filing he made, even though a third of the judges reviewing his filings were Trump appointees. Smith includes first-hand accounts of Trump mocking allegations that voting machines “changed the votes.” I wonder if Fox News will sue Trump if he is found guilty of willfully lying about that; after all, it was repeating those lies that cost Fox News three quarters of a billion dollars in a defamation suit.

Smith hardened the allegations that Trump planned to not only contest, but cast doubt on the election prior to the election. One Trump lawyer’s quote that made it in this time: “What Trump’s going to do is just declare victory. … That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner … that’s our strategy.”

Trump hired Giuliani because Giuliani had stated he would support Trump’s lies. In Smith’s words, Giuliani “was willing to falsely claim victory and spread knowingly false claims of election fraud” The filing contains one tidbit that Rudy might find interesting: Trump planned to stiff him if the filing failed, and of course it was bound to.

On January 6th, Trump posted to his enraged MAGA monkeys that by failing to invalidate the electoral count, Mike Pence lacked the “courage to do what should have been done.” Learning that Pence had been taken to a safe location so the monkeys wouldn’t lynch him, Trump’s response was “so what?”

Trump’s own people knew he was a lying sack. One staffer’s quote Smith saw fit to include was, “It’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.” Some of Trump’s lawyers have already been sanctioned, and even disbarred for filing his nonsense. More are sure to follow in light of these new revelations. Even the chair of the RNC was warned that Trump’s motions were “fucking nuts.”

More details on the hours Trump spent watching TV and grinning at the chaos he brought to the capitol on January 6th have emerged, and those are included in the filing.

Apparently Jack Smith doesn’t think that watching coverage of a Trump-caused riot is an “official duty.” It’s about on the same ‘official’ level as watching a movie about the French Revolution while munching chips.

It’s pretty safe to assume that Trump’s delay tactics have whipped around and bitten him on the ass.

And this all serves as a warning: Trump plans to pull the same shit again next month.

Smith made it that much harder for Trump to convince Americans with brains of his bullshit.

Walzing to a Win — Vance dance slick, but hobbled by Trumpentruths

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 1st, 2024

On the surface, tonight’s vice-presidential debates harkened back to debates prior to the Trump era. Both candidates were articulate, reasonable-sounding, and civil. If you stripped the content of the debate of all context, they seemed evenly matched. Give Vance credit: he came across as human, a feature he has struggled with since he was nominated.

But he was badly crippled by the fact that he had to present the general lunacy of Trumpentruths. Thus, he had to spout utter absurdities as “Trump saved the ACA” Really? Nobody remembers Trump’s campaign to repeal it, a drive that was stymied in the final minute by a dramatic midnight thumbs-down gesture by a dying John McCain? Walz, thinking fast, immediately brought up that seven years later, Trump only has a “concept of a plan” to deal with health care.

He had to mirror Trump’s waffling on the issue of bodily autonomy. So he had to simultaneously pretend that Trump ended abortion while saying that the public wanted the states to determine a woman’s right to abortion. Walz parried it beautifully, noting that fundamental rights should not be subject to geography. It was the perfect response to the GOP pretense that it’s a states’ rights issue: the constitution supersedes states in the matter of establishing rights, and no state may suborn a national civil right.

On health care, in addition to the ACA blunder, Vance tried to argue that costs of health care needed to be distributed, and not the sole domain of government. He managed to say it in such a way that he wasn’t saying people should depend on churches for health care.

Vance had to evade answering the yes-no-no question, “Is the climate changing?” His response went, “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change … let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.” He fluffed the question, saying that the all-powerful Harris should have reduced pollution by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, saying (falsely) that the US has the cleanest economy in the world. He claimed, again falsely, that solar panels are all made in China, although when pressed, he muttered that the parts that go into solar panels were made there. Under Biden, of course, manufacturing jobs have been returning to the US (Harris may have supported him, doubtlessly did, but vice presidents don’t have any particular authority on this). He tried saying that Trump did not consider climate change despite the fact that Trump is on record, repeatedly, for making that very claim.

Vance had to bash immigrants since that’s the centerpiece of Trump’s Naziesque hate campaign. He tried blaming immigrants for the high cost of housing, but had to back off when Walz noted that immigration was dropping. I would have noted that few immigrants are financially able to buy a home.

Confronted with the fruits of his hate campaign against Springfield, Ohio, he tried saying that the only reason they were there was because Harris (apparently the most powerful vice president in history) let them in under a special refugee law. They did in fact enter under such a law—one signed by Donald Trump. Oh, and at the invitation of Springfield, which needed labor.

Finally, and this was where Vance successfully knocked himself out, he tried the pretense that Trump did not want to overturn the 2020 election, and wanted only a peaceful protest at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. He couldn’t handle the question that he had stated that if he had been vice president instead of Mike Pence, he would have rejected the electoral vote citing “questions” and thrown it to Congress. (In the event of a legitimate tie in the electoral college, Congress could vote on who won. And it isn’t a straight up-and-down vote: each state gets one vote, and in 2021, the outgoing Congress had a majority representation in 27 states. They might have overturned the election had Mike Pence not done his job.)

A lot of people have said that Trump made a poor choice when he selected JD Vance as his running mate. But watching him squirm and battle to toe the party line, the absurd Trumpentruths that have turned the GOP into an anti-American and savage cult, I think it wasn’t Trump who made the bad choice for a running mate. It was JD Vance who made the poor choice for a running mate.

Vice Presidential debates rarely shift votes, and it’s unlikely this one did. Walz won, both on presentation and debate points. It wasn’t the utter carnage of the first two presidential debates, and won’t get a lot of attention.

But watching Vance, and how slick and mentally agile he was, I realized how fantastically dangerous this soulless man would be if he elects to run in 2028, armed with his own Trumpentruths.

 

The Debate — Biden’s night off obscures Trump’s maliciousness

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 28th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.com

It’s one thing to say that Biden performed extremely poorly during the debate, and he did, looking and sounding like an 82 year old man pushed beyond his limits. Democrats are asking hard questions about the viability of the Biden campaign, and there are suggestions he stand down, either as a candidate (leading to an open convention) or even as President, in which case Kamala Harris would be president, and in all likelihood, the candidate for office this year. I’m not going to even try to guess how this is going to unfold.

But the most important element of the debate was that Trump, as always, is a sociopathic, remorseless, malign, criminal liar. The Biden campaign listed 50 lies Trump told in just the 40 minutes in which he could speak. Yes, more than a lie a minute, and at that, he repeated many of them. But the campaign didn’t say what made them lies. So let me give it a go:

  1. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well, and everybody was amazed by it.”

Mark that a partial lie. Trump had the greatest economy TO 2019, in terms of sheer size. But if you draw a straight line from the start of Trump’s term to today, leveling out the pandemic, then the economy has actually outperformed Trump’s, more than making up for the pandemic dislocations.

  1. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID.”

Eight million jobs were lost in the early stages of the pandemic. But since taking office, Biden has seen a job increase of over 16 million jobs, which is eight million jobs net in just over three years. That’s the biggest increase in American history. The “illegal immigrants” crack is just more Trump hate mongering.

  1. [10% universal tariff proposal is] not going to drive [prices] higher.”

Of course it will. The exporters in other countries aren’t running charities; they cover their increased costs by raising prices. A typical kindergartener could figure that one out.

  1. [Tariff proposal is] just going to just force [other countries] to pay us a lot of money.”

See number 3. There is no “just” about it. Also, the best estimate for tariff revenues is about $400 billion, and that’s assuming countries don’t redirect trade to less protectionist countries.

  1. I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”

He gave the top 1% the largest tax cut in history. It did nothing for working people, let alone the poor, and added 40% to the national debt.

  1. I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we’re getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.”

Initially, he wanted to get out of Afghanistan two weeks after he made the snap decision. A horrified Pentagon persuaded him to make the pull out date March of 2021. He then released 15,000 Taliban prisoners, and ordered the Pentagon to slow-walk the pullout process, deliberately leaving Biden with an unsolvable mess in his first six weeks in office. Trump is probably just sorry that more American “losers and suckers” weren’t killed by the mess he deliberately made.

  1. The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen.”

In a word, no. “Trickle down” has never spurred the economy, and it didn’t this time.

 

  1. Now, when we cut the taxes…we took in more revenue with much less tax.”

In 2017, revenues were $3.32T. In 2020, they were $3.42T. That’s far less than inflation, or national economic growth—in other words, a loss.

  1. We had largely fixed [COVID].”

…He said, while trying to blame Biden for all the deaths after he left office. He did fast-track the vaccine program, the one thing he got right. But he bollixed everything else pertaining to the pandemic.

  1. Throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore. We’re like a third world nation.”

Biden’s leadership ratings world wide, according to Pew, are slightly underwater, 41-46. But Trump’s were a catastrophic 28-69 underwater. Nearly everyone hated and mistrusted Trump, and with good reason.

  1. He allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”

Another hate-mongering lie. There is no evidence to support this. But Hitler would be proud.

  1. He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.”

Medicare is doing just fine despite Republican efforts to destroy it. And while undocumented immigrants can get emergency medical care in some circumstances, for the most part they aren’t covered. Even though they contribute nearly $2T/year to the national economy.

  1. The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.”

No, they just deferred action on it. It’s a catastrophe politically for the Republicans, since the vast majority of American aren’t women-hating religious freaks.

  1. Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted [abortion] brought back to the states.”

Quite aside from being patently false, you would have to wonder why these foreign scholars would even give a fuck in the first place. It’s not like they have to live here.

  1. They’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth. After birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we’ll put the baby aside, I will determine what we do with the baby, meaning will kill the baby.”

An absolute and utter lie, told by and believed by women-hating psychotics. The alleged quote is an utter fabrication.

  1. Under Roe v. Wade, you have late term abortion. You can do whatever you want depending on the state. You can do whatever you want.”

The text of Roe v. Wade is online and easily available. It divides pregnancy into three “trimesters” and has increasing amounts of restrictions for each trimester. Abortion was never available after the sixth month “on demand.” It’s a zealot lie, and of course, it’s a Trump lie.

  1. He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists.”

AKA “the Republican base.” Another Trump hate mongering lie. You have to be a pretty vile human being to believe it.

  1. He didn’t need legislation because I didn’t have legislation. I said close the border.”

A lie on the face of it. Immigration dropped, but that was the pandemic, and not Trump’s non-existent policy.

  1. [Migrants are] living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.”

Some were put briefly in hotels when the human-trafficking scum in Florida and Georgia foisted immigrants, some legal, on them.

  1. He doesn’t care about our veterans. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn’t care about our veterans.”

The VA budget in 2017 was $177.54 billion. This year, it’s $369.3 billion. Any questions?

  1. I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA. He has the worst. He’s gotten rid of all the things that I approved.”

According to Business Insider, “Younger veterans prefer Biden, with 51% of veterans ages 35-54 backing Biden over Trump. Among veterans under the age of 35, 46% said they preferred Biden while 42% supported Trump.”

  1. First of all, that was a made-up quote, ‘suckers and losers.’ They made it up.”

No, they didn’t. His own JCOS reported he said it.

  1. Our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand this guy. They can’t stand him. They think he’s the worst Commander in Chief, if that’s what you call him, that we’ve ever had.”

I think it’s very unlikely Trump has spoken to any soldiers since leaving office. He didn’t have any respect for them while he was in office, after all.

  1. He did nothing to stop [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine]. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”What was he supposed to do? Nuke Moscow? More Trump drivel, wholly invented.
  2. Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke.”

He also destroyed the nuclear agreement we had with Iran and stood by meekly while Iran bombed American facilities in Iraq, injuring dozens of American troops. He even held up issuing purple heart medals because he didn’t want the public to know the damage his policies caused to US troops.

  1. You had no terror at all during my administration.”

You mean besides January 6th? Well, see answer 25, immediately above. It’s still terror if your own little Nazi shitbags commit it.

  1. Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter, who’s a documentary filmmaker they say, but she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this’ because I offered them 10,000 soldiers or National Guard. And she turned them down.”

Demonstrably false from the documentary itself, which shows Pelosi frantically asking the White House and other available authorities for National Guard protection while Trump watched TV and chortled.

  1. The unselect committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all the information they found because they found out we were right. We were right. And they deleted and destroyed all of the information.”Republicans deleted and destroyed the information they could get their hands on. But the public records were all preserved, and it’s believed that some Democrats stashed the rest for historical purposes.
  2. Telling the Ukrainian people that we’re going to want a billion dollars or you change the prosecutor, otherwise you’re not getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that’s quid pro quo.” He did say that, during that ‘perfect phone call’ and was impeached for it, by the highest margin in history. Only the 2/3rds majority law in the Senate saved his ass.
  3. I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” Granted, she didn’t consider it much in the way of sex, but yeah, you banged Stormy Daniels and then falsified business records to cover it up. That’s why you’re a felon.
  4. He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.” No need. Trump does plenty of damage to himself. That’s why he’s lost so many court cases in so many ways, including 34 felonies.
  5. He made up the Charlottesville story.” The Charlottesville event we all saw on our televisions?
  6. He caused the inflation and it’s killing Black families and Hispanic families.” Inflation was a bounce-back from the pandemic, fueled by corporate greed. At that, it was lower than in any other developed nation on Earth. Biden didn’t cause it.
  7. They can’t buy groceries anymore, they can’t, you look at the cost of food where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live, they’re not living anymore.” Groceries across the board went up 25-30%. Painful, yes, but again, not Biden’s fault.
  8. [European countries] don’t want anything that we have.” Trump clearly thinks America produces nothing but worthless shit. Looking at Trump, I could see where some people might see it that way. But they don’t. America is still the world’s top exporter.
  9. Almost every police group in the nation from every state is supporting Donald J. Trump. Almost every police group.” So far, most haven’t. Nor are they likely to support a felon who fostered a violent rebellion that got cops disabled and even killed.
  10. And what he’s done to the black population is horrible, including the fact that for ten years he called them super-predators.” Biden did that, and supported Slappy for the Supreme Court, and other bad mistakes. But tell me, Donald: did he ever buy ads in the New York Times demanding that five kids be executed, even after they were exonerated of the crime they had been accused of?
  11. And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”Trump deliberately slow walked enforcement of nearly all environmental regulations. Granted, his numbers were the best from the viewpoint of major corporate polluters.
  12. The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion and China nothing and Russia, nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip off of the United States and I ended it because I didn’t want to waste that money because they treated us horribly…. Nobody else was paying into it and it was, it was a disaster.” The one trillion is made up, and China got a grace period to implement required changes. Russia wasn’t involved.
  13. I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.” He reduced it, one time, to $200. Virtually no help at all to anyone. Biden got an ongoing monthly cap of $35, saving thousands of lives.
  14. On migrants: “They’re taking over our schools our hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over our schools or hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over Social Security.” More hate mongering from fascist filth. He is vicious trash, appealing to vicious trash.
  15. But Social Security – he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security. They’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid. They’re putting them in our hospitals.”

Republicans have been predicting doom for Social Security “any time now” since 1935. But undocumented aliens aren’t eligible for Social Security. But then, you knew that, didn’t you.

  1. He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters.”

Hatemongering. Insert the word “Jews” for “immigrants” and you’ll see where he gets it from.

  1. He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.”

OK, that one is actually true. He does. America isn’t here to serve the superrich.

  1. He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.”

If he means quadrupling taxes, that’s sort of true for the billionaire class. He wants to raise their tax rate from 6% to 25%. By comparison, the average middle-class family pays about 16%.

  1. We now have the largest [trade] deficit in the history of our country under this guy. We have the largest deficit with China.”

In terms of unadjusted dollars, yes, but in terms of percentage of GDP, not even close. Not even in the top 15 years.

  1. He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. So I think he’s afraid to deal with them.”Trump needs a psych eval, I’m afraid. BTW, which candidate has hundreds of millions in business dealings with China again?
  2. We had two cases, we paid $6 billion for five people.”Does anybody know what the hell he’s talking about?
  3. They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol, and in many cases were ushered in by the police.” There are a couple of instances of capital cops just letting the insurgents in, and I believe they are now gone. But we’ve all seen the images. Trump is lying, again.
  4. I would have much rather accepted these [election results in 2020], but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”And yet in 61 cases alleging fraud, courts tossed 60 of them, one third being decided by Trump appointed judges. And Faux news lost $757 billion in damages from repeated and promoting Trump’s lies.

So there are actually 47 demonstrable lies there, two that were somewhat true, and one too incoherent to tell.

No, Biden didn’t do well. And Democrats are going to have to waste no time sorting that out. But Trump was, and is, a malicious, vicious, remorseless and relentless liar, and if he gets back in, he will destroy America and take most of us with it.

If the Dems have to replace Biden, they will do so. But Trump is far worse, and the Republicans lack any character or courage. We’re stuck with him as a candidate, and there’s no circumstance where he’s better than Biden.

 

Executing the Opposition — Not just a pretty idea

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 19th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Last night, Donald Trump stood in front of the National Rifle Association and discussed the execution of President Joe Biden. He didn’t call for Biden’s assassination, mind you; there’s enough neurons firing in that diseased mess he calls a brain to understand that would immediately finish him and he would have been arrested by now, the following morning. But he talked about it. He just kinda wanted people to leave with the concept of a dead President Biden in the back of their minds.

And he did it in front of a desperate group of gun nuts who are still struggling to survive the scandal of their ties to Putin, a group most likely to have a deranged individual with the motive, means, and inclination to kill any politician with whom Trump disparages. If said individual approves of Trump at this stage, then he’s already a half dozen stations down the crazytown train route.

Discussing execution of one’s opponent is unheard of. Doing it in front of an angry and alienated group of gun nuts is flat out obscene.

It wasn’t the only Trump moment yesterday that should have ended his campaign in the eyes of any sane person. While delivering his standard mash of lies and smears, he suddenly stopped mid speech and for about forty-five seconds, just gazed around himself, seemingly unaware of where he was or what he was doing. It resembled the fugue state that gripped Mitch McConnell a few times before he announced his retirement.

His handlers claimed that his teleprompter had seized up. It was a curious admission from a campaign—hell, from an entire party—that likes to pretend that Democrats are all utterly dependent on teleprompters in order to give a coherent speech. Donald, it seems, relies on a teleprompter just to give an incoherent speech. The wonder of it all. (The whole “Dems need cue cards” thing didn’t start with Trump; they were making the same claim about Obama and both Clintons. Bill Clinton famously gave an SOTU address during the first few minutes of which his teleprompter crapped out. He calmly went ahead and gave an hour and fifteen minute speech chock-full of facts and figures, winging it the whole way. Even his speechwriter didn’t know anything was amiss. The fact is Democrats are more intelligent than Republicans, almost without exception.)

Trump and some of the lower Republicans have been claiming that when Biden gave his fiery SOTU speech in March that so thoroughly destroyed the cultivated GOP myth that Biden was a senescent and feeble drooler, he did so jacked up on something (“probably cocaine” because cocaine is so good for the concentration). Trump lacks the wit or imagination to come up with a replacement fable, and so challenged Biden to take a drug test prior to each of the two debates. I think he was honestly astonished when Biden cheerfully agreed to the stipulation, but only if Trump also took a drug test. He wasn’t supposed to react that way, dammit! Trump, like most flailing con artists, is beginning to believe his own lies.

Trump also had his whipped dogs in the Republican House leadership come out and perform a little monkey dance for him at his trial. The men all dressed like Trump in a stunning display of servility, and the women might have as well except their asses weren’t big enough to carry it off. While it served as a good reminder of just how pathetic that contingent really are, it served a more sinister purpose: while the saddest possible examples of the offices they hold, they do, in fact, hold the most powerful offices in the country, and the whole reason for this sad spectacle was to display Power—corrupt, vicious power—in a ploy to intimidate the jurors and court officials, including the judge. Trump’s dogs dutifully disobeyed the gag order to smear the judge’s daughter. Trump is filth. They are filth. It may be the low point in American governance.

Speaking of the judge, did you know he was a Democratic donor? I’m sure you do, because since the story broke two days ago, Republicans have been screaming it to the skies.

And what was this donation that proves the judge can’t possibly not be biased? He donated $35 dollars to a liberal organization that usually supports Democrats called Act Blue. It happened in 2020 during the campaign, before anyone considered that Trump would do anything including insurrection and treason to try to stay in office. Unlike certain members of the Supreme Court, Judge Juan Merchan had no inkling he might end up overseeing the trial in a case in which he might be ruling on something his donation addressed. It was improper for a judge to do that, of course, but given the tiny amount, the fact that it wasn’t directly to a candidate or a political party, meant that it was a transgression, and not a punishable offense. A judicial ethics board criticized Merchan for it, he apologized and promised not to do it again. Normally, that would be the end of it.

I wonder if they’ll get Slappy Thomas to come out and lecture Merchan on judicial ethics. They could have him dress up in a blue suit and red tie and join the other doggies parading in front of the trial tomorrow. Maybe they could get Alito, in matching dress, to proclaim that no responsible judge ever allows personal political or religious views to interfere with a proper legal decision. Yeah, that’ll own the libs.

I’ve been saying for some time that Trump will be lucky if he makes it to the convention in July as a viable candidate, and if he does, it means the end of the GOP. At the rate he’s going, he could give Biden 400 electoral votes.

I haven’t seen anything this week to change my mind on that. Trump is falling apart, and taking the GOP with him.

And part of him knows it. That’s why he was making a veiled suggestion to America’s biggest collection of gun nuts.

The Supine Court Strikes — What is this silly ‘law’ stuff, anyway?

The Supine Court Strikes

What is this silly ‘law’ stuff, anyway?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 26th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The Heritage Foundation, or as I like to call them, the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues, represents a broken and twisted philosophy, a sick combination of fascism and Christian reconstructionalism. So it’s no surprise that their hirelings are also broken and twisted creatures.

Take the six “justices” that the Foundation lied, cheated and stole in order to infiltrate the Supreme Court. That suborned court is presently pretending to “deliberate” over whether a President or former president has absolute legal immunity for any actions taken while holding office.

They spent this week, after weeks of absurd delay, quibbling with lawyers over whether a president could be held accountable for “official acts” versus personal misdeeds. It’s a distinction without a difference; if it is an illegal act, then by definition it is not an official act. Presidents are required to “faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” Their own constitutional job description deems illegal acts to be outside the duties and responsibilities of the office. Were he not so hopelessly corrupt, even the befuddled and pampered pet of billionaires, Clarence Thomas, would be able to discern that. (Slappy made one real contribution to the proceedings, wanting to know if the appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor was legal. It didn’t have anything to do with this case, and I’m sure his wife, Gin Soaked, put him up to it. I doubt he has the wit to think of it for himself.)

The court will doubtlessly remand this case to the lower courts, who already made their decision loud and clear. Stripped of the legal niceties, they perceived the claim of absolute right of presidents to be a huge load of utter rubbish and about as unAmerican as it gets. But remanding it means the court gets to pretend to ‘consider’ it again no sooner than October, and can wait until five months after the election to decide if Trump can be held liable for his many crimes or not.

Yes, the true purpose of all this is to delay the various trials of Donald Trump until after the election. If the Heritage Foundation can only steal this coming election the way they stole the last five of six elections that produced a Republican president, then they can grandly declare the Republican President has the divine right of kings and end this democracy nonsense once and for all. But they can’t do that right now. After all, that would be giving BIDEN unlimited power and he might use it to order the Supreme Court (well, two thirds of it) taken out and shot, or Trump assassinated. (Assassinating Trump is pretty much redundant at this point; he’s well topped himself with his ongoing antics and clear lack of power in the court and on his silly vanity social media.)

Trump cannot possibly win a fair election. The primaries show that a full third of Republican voters want anyone other than Trump. He has only 30% support from independents and that’s plummeting in the face of Trump’s weakness and culpability on display in the ongoing trial. But the Heritage Foundation, with the backing of most of America’s 850 billionaires, is working hard to keep Republicans in control of government, or, failing that, to at least have enough votes in the gerrymandered House and corn-and-sagebrush-weighted Senate to keep a second Biden term paralyzed and ineffectual. (Most people still don’t understand how fantastic the accomplishments of the first Biden term—the roaring economy, the explosion of manufacturing jobs, the rise of unions and wages—were, despite the unending efforts of Republicans to subvert and deny such accomplishments.)

Thanks to the power of propaganda, people still blame Democrats for the economy (always better under Democratic administrations), the debt (90% of which came from Republican policies and misadventures) and the border (a non-crisis that is exacerbated by Republican refusal to consider legislation that they themselves introduced to try and codify American policy toward refugees.)

Never mind Trump’s lies and bullshit. The far more dangerous ones are the ones promoted endlessly on the propaganda outlets like Faux News and church pulpits.

How effective is it? The Republicans have taken out the old Reagan chestnut “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and are running on it, despite the obvious and clear evidence that virtually everyone, including the people asking that question, are in fact better off now than they were four years ago when hundreds of thousands were dying of COVID, unemployment was more than double what it is now, and the president was a psychotic liar.

Stolen elections? They’ll have you think it’s Democrats. But if you look at people indicted and convicted of election or voter fraud, nearly all of them are Republicans. Which party has administration officials facing trial for falsifying election certifications?

Even as Trump disintegrates, expect a blizzard of lies and hate from the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues. To them, the brass ring is nearly in grasp. They only need one final election to seal the deal, and erect the Christian Fascist state they dream of, where workers are powerless and frightened, consumers are captive and utterly at the mercy of merchants, minorities of all kinds dehumanized and cut off from society, and questioning any of this is not only treason, but sacrilege.

They almost have America. They can taste it.

And once they have it, they don’t plan to share it with you.

America won’t be yours.

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