Category: hearings

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Perp-traitors — Donald and his legions about to perpwalk

Perp-traitors

Donald and his legions about to perpwalk

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 19th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There’s all sorts of crazy rumors flying around this weekend as the possible indictment (and yes, possible actual arrest) of Donald J. Trump is likely to occur Monday or Tuesday. Armed neo-Nazis will surround Mar-a-Lago and open fire on US Marshalls. Other groups will storm the New York court issuing the indictment. And of course, there is talk of storming Congress because, you know, Congress welcomes peaceful tourists. Why, Josh Hawley was so happy to see them he ran out to greet them, you know.

Assuming they actually do arrest Trump for the crimes his lawyer, Michael Cohen, already carried out and served time for at Trump’s behest, I expect scattered protests and lots of angry rhetoric on cesspools like Truth Social and Twitter.

But that’s about the extent of it.

My reasoning is simple enough: Trump’s star has dimmed considerably in the two years since the storming of the Capitol. The events of January 6 shocked those moderate supporters among independents and Republicans. Since then, there have been the 1/6 Committee hearings, which reminded most people of how Congress does when it actually works right (and we have the McCarthy-Greene-Jordan circus going on now to remind them of what Congress is like when fools, nuts and crooks are running the show).

There’s been the endless parade of right wing outrage staged over such things as green M&Ms, furries in the schools, drag queens, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. While Fox and Trump purposefully cultivated fools, they drew in a significant number of people who, while credulous and easily convinced of the evil of Democrats, knew damnfoolishness for what it was. Litter boxes in school restrooms? Bugs Bunny in a dress is a bigger threat to children than the thousands of pedophile priests? Those are bigger threats than mass shootings or climate change?

Putting zealots on the courts has backfired massively. Most Americans—including most Republicans—are frightened and angry at the ongoing assault on the rights of women, African Americans, undocumented aliens and other minorities. The notion that there are zealots on the courts who want a Christian version of Afghanistan or Iran is horrifying, and anyone who knows history knows that is exactly what they envision, with the best of motives. Serving God is a hard thing, you know. The unfaithful must pay a price.

They will also notice that promises to arrest and convict {Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, dozens of other Democrats} have never ever amounted to anything. Certainly nothing like the NYPD and Secret Service sitting down and planning how to turn Trump over to the police when they come to serve the arrest warrant. (The Trump people aren’t cooperating with the police, of course.)

The significance of the endless feigned outrage is finally wearing thin. Banks didn’t fail because libertarian tech bros who exploited them were woke; they failed because Trump and the Republicans stripped away rules that prevented such exploitation. Trains didn’t derail because Democrats didn’t care about rural white communities; they derailed because Trump stripped necessary safety regulations imposed during the Obama administration. Those weren’t peaceful tourists; those were terrorists and Nazis. The lies are getting ever more shrill and more transparent.

But the main reason Trump’s hoped-for revolt is going to fizzle is because the revelations from the Dominion lawsuit revealed once and for all that the whole “stolen election” lie upon which the storming of the Capitol and the outrage of Trump supporters rested was in fact a sham and a complete fabrication, and the propagandistic filth posing as “reporters” for Faux News knowingly and maliciously perpetrated the lie, aware that it was a lie, and aware of the damage it might do to the country.

There has always been a hard core of MAGAts who were absolutely unswerving in their support of Trump and the Big Lie. They truly believed the election was stolen. They were certain that it was orchestrated by Biden, George Soros, Hugo Chavez and drag queens. They made up perhaps 20% of the people who voted in 2020. That’s a sizable number, but similar numbers believe in faeries, that we’ve never been to the Moon, or that Ivermectin is the only treatment for COVID. Keep in mind that statistically, 20% of the population has an IQ below 90. That isn’t unrelated; many of these people are pure stupid and will die stupid.

But the Dominion findings have managed to penetrate even that rock of impermeable idiocy. In the weeks since the stories of what Tucker really thought of Trump and why Murdoch allowed this to happen and the rest, a full 21% of viewers who trusted Fox News no longer do. That’s a seismic shift in belief. (One of the weirder findings in that poll were the 23% of Fox viewers who didn’t trust the station to begin with.) There aren’t many substitutes for Faux: OANN and Newmax face oblivion, done in by their own excesses. That leaves just the howling nuts on talk radio and Youtube.

Even amongst the steadfast, there have to be doubts creeping in. When Tucker tells them they have to get out and save their country by facing the police and national guard, how many of them would now do so unreservedly? They know that over a thousand people have been convicted in the wake of 1/6, and thousands more convictions await. They know they won’t take the authorities by surprise this time, and Trump and his planted traitors won’t be available to blunt the response of authorities, or promise pardons to those who would betray their country.

Some will even think it through, and realize that fighting for the lies that Trump and Fox told them meant they actually were betraying their country. And they would then realize that Trump is an infinitely stupid hill to die upon.

I expect protests and angry rhetoric, and that’s fine. Those people have the right to protest and declaim.

But in the end, it will be an empty rattle, as devoid of authenticity and reason as the frantic lies spewed by Faux News.

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Fox News — Where whirlwinds go to die

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 2nd, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.–Hosea 8:7

The term “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” was first popularized by Hillary Clinton in 1998. She didn’t invent the specific term: it was in use in the US at least three years earlier, and in the UK in 1991. The far right, stung, tried to ridicule the phrase, with various deplorables going on line to proudly announce they were part of the VRWC. It didn’t deflect the validity of the phrase—people just pointed to Fox, to Rush Limbaugh, to the panoply of other right wing outlets: Regnery Press, the Scaife media empire, the vast array of right wing think tanks, including the Federalist Society, the Kochs, and the empire of the Christian falangist right, then known as the Moral Majority.

It was around long before 1991, of course. America has always had an authoritarian right wing streak, dating back to the “Know Nothing” party and slavers before the Civil War, and Southern Democrats and groups such as the KKK after. That in turn morphed into the German American Bund, Father Coughlin, and a rise of radio hatemongers. After the second world war, with the term “Fascist” so thoroughly discredited, the far right appropriated the title of “conservative” and began a general infiltration of the actual conservative party in America, which was caught off guard because the new breed of fascists launched by Koch money in the form of the hyper-patriotic John Birch Society were flag wavers and bible pounders. Patriots and God-fearers couldn’t be bad, right? And like most Americans, conservatives thought they were immune to the power of propaganda. Only slave populations like those of the Soviet Union could fall for alluring lies, right? Americans were educated and smart and laughed at propaganda.

Fascist plutocrats such as Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs, and Richard Scaife knew better, and took the lessons taught by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and turned a blare of misinformation on the American public.

Their target was the low-information voter. The methods were time honored: repeat simple lies over and over; persuade their targets that they, and only they, possessed “family values” and held true to American ideals. Sneer at liberals, intellectuals, and non-Christians and imply that they were hostile to America and American values. Explain that public schools, unions, and public interest groups were “communist.” Persuade people that marginalized groups (such as African Americans) were responsible for their poor pay and lousy jobs, and not the plutocrats who spent tons of money in hundreds of outlets to convince them of this.

They targeted the poorly-educated, the impoverished, the fundamentalists, the disaffected and the resentful. They wanted an army of angry morons, not to put too fine a point on it.

But the art of riling up people and getting them angry has a trap. People eventually become numbed to the same provocative speech, repeated over and over, and concepts that once might have created angry mobs just become a background hum in a dull life. So they have to keep topping themselves. Liberalism isn’t just unAmerican; it’s ANTI-American. Blacks don’t want to go to your schools and work in your jobs; they want to take them over. People getting $500 on food stamps are the reason the country is broke, and not the billionaires who pay little or no taxes. Abortion isn’t just unpleasant; it’s murder!

Not enough. People get inured. And of course in instances where the far right could prevail, such as turning back civil rights or banning abortion, they didn’t dare actually try to win because their followers would just look at them and say, “OK, we won. Now what?” Reagan and Bush Junior both ran on anti-abortion platforms, and neither tried to implement change. Bush Junior and the radicals in the House tried to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into an insurance scam and it cost them dearly in the next election.

It was one thing to bellow angry imprecations into the wind, quite another to act on them.

Newt Gingrich took the GOP to a posture of wild and mostly idiotic stances, blind intransigence, and endless scandal-mongering. He was the face of the VRWC, as Hillary Clinton so deftly noted. Not surprisingly, a lot of this platform blew up in right wing faces (the “Contract for America” quickly became a joke, people noticed the GOP was more interested in posturing rather than governing, and the effort to impeach Bill Clinton actually made him more popular. Newt ended up leaving in disgrace.

But the right wing noise machine was there to soothe the injuries of exposed hypocrisy, social amorality, and blind opposition to providing direction to the country. It was all the fault of the liberal media and social justice warriors, they explained. Newt was a victim. The GOP was a victim. You are a victim.

It worked, for a while.

Then Obama was elected, and suddenly every racist coward in the country was scrambling aboard the GOP noise machine to air their grievances. The tone of the VRWC, never sunny and warm, turned far darker and uglier.

The GOP recruited the racists, and the conspiracy theorists. The latter, being the most credulous and dim-witted of the population, were eager to join powerful forces who would at least pretend to validate their crackpot and often flat-out crazed notions. Yes, the government is lying about UFOs. Yes, Jews secretly control the world. Yes, the Moon landing was faked. Yes, you can turn water into gasoline with this simple little pill.

Enter Donald Trump, amoral, narcissistic, and vicious, but wily enough to know that all he had to do was stir the shit just a bit, and he would have an army of howling, screeching lunatics and toy Nazis set to do his bidding.

Which we saw on January 6th, 2021.

And it is still cresting with the House taken over by the worst of the worst, regular Republicans too weak and cowardly to resist, and the claims getting wilder and wilder, the proposed “solutions” more and more draconian and ridiculous. Ban the Democrat [sic] Party! Jews are out to replace us! They have space lasers! M&M candies are attacking American sexual purity! Litter boxes in school bathrooms! The rest of the world thinks America has gone nuts. It’s actually a smallish group of nuts, but then, so were Hitler’s followers in 1933, or Lenin’s in 1919. They are dangerous, no matter how ridiculous they look.

But the Fox News implosion, combined with the tidal wave of accountability facing Trump and his minions, may cause that wave to break and foam and froth harmlessly back out to sea.

The fascist right spent years cultivating morons. They succeeded. Then the morons took over. Hosea 8:7.

And now, hopefully the end to the fascist right-wing madness is in sight.

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Trump’s Cross to Bear — or why cross people can’t bear him

Trump’s Cross to Bear

or why cross people can’t bear him

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 22nd, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

It’s not clear why Donald Trump decided to start attacking the Christian evangelicals who had been the backbone of his support. Perhaps it was Trump’s well-known propensity for shooting himself in the foot. Or perhaps it was because he always regarded the evangelicals as idiots and had an unguarded moment. He does that a lot, recently furnishing prosecutors for a motive for stealing all those classified documents (he apparently was looking for evidence to support the ludicrous “crossfire hurricane” election theft conspiracy theory). When his lawyers got fined nearly a million bucks for frivolous abuse of the legal system, he promptly withdrew another, similar case against Hillary Clinton et al, a tacit admission that it, too, was frivolous and would be seen as a waste of the court’s time. He does that a lot, too.

But I suspect that it’s mostly because the evangelicals have been souring on him. The flock are finally noticing that he isn’t really the second coming of Christ (and yes, a few of them literally believed that) and in fact, he might not be all that godly at all (paging Captain Obvious!). The evangelical leadership, safely inured from such inconveniences as faith or belief, saw that not only was Trump’s power slipping, but he was dragging the entire evangelical movement down. Yes, the evangelical movement had always been viewed from outside with a mixture of pity and disgust but that didn’t bother the leadership as long as their political stock remained firm. Now that it isn’t, it suddenly bothers them a lot.

The blob squad, the vicious biblical demagogues who hilariously characterize themselves as ‘pro life,’ have lost a certain amount of interest in the presidential race. They only supported candidates who promised to put anti-choice zealots on the courts, and Trump obliged them, giving them what they wanted. Now, they have a brighter fascistic zealot to worship: Ron DeSantis, who is intent on getting rid of all that “individual liberties” and “personal freedoms” shit and make the right people safe in the arms of Jeezus. At a recent blob squad convention, DeSantis outpolled Trump for President by about 54% to 20%. After all, he’s most likely to destroy women’s rights and keep the ‘lower races’ in their place.

Without the zealots, Trump is going nowhere. He didn’t have a prayer in ‘16 or ‘20 without them (and in fact lost the popular vote in both elections anyway) and even if he stays out of jail, he won’t have their support in ‘24.

Sic transit gloria mon dieu.

The MAGA crowd are evaporating, as well. That decline began the evening of January 6th, 2021, when the implications of what that mob in Washington were trying to do started to sink in with those followers who weren’t completely nihilistic zombies. That unease has slowly snowballed since, with the January 6th Select Committee erasing any and all doubt that these were not just enthusiastic Trump tourists agitated by dark AntiFa forces. Or that Trump didn’t really mean to have Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi hanged for daring to oppose his attempted coup.

As the legal system closes in on Trump himself, the legal penalties his hirelings and supporters face have sharply increased of late. A lot of the defendants haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory, offering excuses that are ridiculous on the face of it (Just wanted to go to the bathroom and somehow wound up with his feet up on Pelosi’s desk) and some are just cowards. A lot of them blamed Trump for misleading them into their predicaments.

Then there’s the matter of the sorts of people who have infiltrated the Republican party and turned it into a grotesque unintentional parody of the Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s brownshirts. While a lot of that indisputably preceded Trump (Newt Gingrich did much to create the present face of the GOP) he has encouraged and empowered the likes of George Santos (or whatever the hell he calls himself) and Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert.

Then there’s Trump’s basic personality. We got a sample of that just today. There was a horrible mass shooting in Los Angeles at Monterey Park, where ten were killed and ten more wounded when someone attacked a Chinese New Years’ party. He wrote on his fake Twitter, “10 dead in California shooting, horrible gun wielding ANTIFA protest against our great police in Atlanta – Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction.” Yes, he really compared largely peaceful (and unarmed) protesters to a gunsel who massacred innocent people. He went on to say things like that wouldn’t happen if he was president, even though many of the nation’s worst mass shooting DID happen during his four years in office. But he was too busy trying to get the Army to teargas peaceful protesters in front of a church he was using as a stage prop.

A lot of people, myself included, believe that at this point, to support a man like this means you are utter filth yourself. And that view, increasingly, is becoming widespread, and Trump supporters are finally realizing that not only are their views unpopular, but many people see them as vile and anti-American. Yes, even the evangelicals, who pride themselves on being cruel, disagreeable and anti-American in the name of Christ.

Unfortunately, this crowd is impervious to the concept of “a learning experience.” Some other opportunistic demagogue will come along for them to glom on to. Church of George Santos, anyone?

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The Trump Dump — January 6th Committee gives its referrals

The Trump Dump

January 6th Committee gives its referrals

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 19th, 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The January 6th committee held its final meeting today, and voted to make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice on Trump for four potential felony counts. Those referrals included obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, assisting an insurrection and conspiring to defraud the United States. The committee also said Trump may have committed seditious conspiracy. Should the Department of Justice elect to act on these referrals, the resultant indictments could amount to 35 years in jail. Given Trump’s age and health, even a ten year sentence would ensure he never walked free again.

The seditious conspiracy charge is both the rarest and the most serious. It’s one step short of a charge of treason.

The committee also referred ethics charges against four congressmen, all Republicans for their involvement in the events of January 6. Those four are Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs and Scott Perry. McCarthy is the leading candidate to be Speaker (second in line to the Presidency) and Jordan is expected to become chair of the Judiciary Committee. If nothing else shows how incredibly low the Republican Party has sunk, that would be it.

Jordan plans to launch endless investigations, of Biden, of Biden family members, of Special Counsel Jack Smith, Attorney-General Merrick Garland, the FBI, the CIA, and pretty much anyone who isn’t part of the nutball right. It’s going to be fun watching him issue subpoenas while under investigations for an ethics breach, the nature of which includes refusing to obey a congressional subpoena.

Andy Biggs spent the rest of his day on Twitter, or what’s left of it, raving about the “open border” and all the terrible people swarming over and replacing the white race. (That last bit was implied. Evidently the Canadian border, which is far less guarded, isn’t a problem.)

Special Counsel Jack Smith hasn’t been showing any signs he’s just screwing around, but the Committee’s finding today, combined with the thousand pages of evidence coming out Wednesday, should make formal DOJ indictments against Trump, some of his co-conspirators, and members of Congress almost inevitable.

The January Sixth Committee will go down as one of the legendary committees in Congressional history, along with the 9/11 Committee, the Watergate Committees, the Army-McCarthy hearings. It will be something the public will want to remember, particularly the fairness and decorum and the investigative depth shown, when the clown show convenes next January, and we are once again treated to the spectacle of amoral slime like Jim Jordan screaming down witnesses as they try to answer ridiculously contrived questions about scandals that didn’t actually exist. Kevin McCarthy has vowed to throw all Democrats who were on the 1/6 Committee out of all committee memberships in an open act of childish and improper retaliation.

The Republicans will look like scum, not just because they are scum, but because with the 1/6 Committee, the public saw Congress doing its job, protecting the Constitution and finding the truth.

An amazing 62% of the public say they want to read the Committee’s final report, which is said to be over 1,000 pages long. Just the introduction is 100 pages, and I’ll be surprised if 10% actually read that. (I hope to be in that 10%, but I’ll be the first to admit that a thousand pages might be too much for me).

I notice today that very few Republicans were out there defending Trump. Mitch McConnell annoyed some of the more servile members of the party by observing, “’The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations.” McConnell is belatedly realizing what his legacy in all this is going to be.

Even Trump himself seems to have gone silent. I doubt that will last. Trump can’t ignore any sort of attack for long. And I suppose his response will only implicate him further.

A hundred years from now, some overimaginative playwright will hit on the notion of Trump as a heroic, tragic, flawed figure, one who brought about his own demise from his sterling belief that he was acting only in the interests of what was best for all. A King Lear figure, perhaps, even Prometheus.

But we know better. Trump was never anything more than a third-rater, born to far too much wealth and power, protected his entire life from consequences, and never forced to consider treating others as humans rather than objects to be manipulated. His fall comes, not from good intentions, but only the lowliest and tawdriest, the Faginesque grasping of an amoral man seeking ultimate power.

The Committee didn’t save Americans from the vice of worshiping such men, but they may have broken them of the vice of worshiping this particular specimen.

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The Stump of Trump — Has he finally self-destructed?

The Stump of Trump

Has he finally self-destructed?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 4th 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Going back to the days of Reagan, we’ve talked about politicians who had a kind of a magic Teflon(TM) shield that protected them, no matter how corrupt, dim-witted or objectionable their actions might be. Democrats attributed this magic to Reagan, Gingrich and both Bushes. Republicans declared it gleamed over the horrors of Obama and the Clintons. In most cases rather than magic, it was just a matter of political inertia combined with a rather dim public that couldn’t really be bothered with the goings-on of government. In the case of the Clintons, they were blessed with getting absolute morons for detractors.

But Donald Trump broke the mold when it came to Teflon(TM) magic. It’s impossible to count the number of events and actions he took that would have driven him from public view and into well-deserved obscurity and contempt. From his “grab them by the pussy” and “some of them are rapists” debut up to his stunning string of rebukes from the courts and from reality, he should have been consigned to a vague lingering foulness on the public mind, a fart in the collective elevator.

Indeed, his supporters had to develop iron-strength shells of denial, disbelief and malevolence of the sort one associates with members of particularly nasty cults that end in mass suicide. It’s normal for followers of any given politician to encounter those who question their intelligence and judgment, but Trump supporters were at such odds with the rest of society that they found their character, sanity and patriotism were open to question, and more and more often, people weren’t listening to their rationalization.

The movement (and it is now a cult movement) reacted defensively by becoming ever more extreme, more violent, more hateful. Most of mass gun shootings in America this year were committed by Trump supporters, often in openly political actions of pure hatred.

Trump himself, now under enormous pressure from all sides, followed and encouraged this same path of psychological crises, leading to a sort of ultimate breakdown.

A psychologist would have no trouble recognizing the mental route Trump is following. He was a child of privilege and believed, with good reason, that he was above the petty laws of the land. With wealth and power he could easily crush those who stood against him in any way, even just honest contractors expecting to be paid for their work. His lawyers could manipulate the law and the courts to ensure that any suit or complaint brought against him could linger for decades unresolved, and proving an unendurable financial burden to those who opposed him.

He is also a narcissist, smug in his belief that he is the only real person in the world and the rest of us just spear carriers arrayed about him for his own personal use, manipulation and gratification. We are wraiths to him, little more than characters in a high-end video game.

But now that is all crashing down. The legal threats, some deferred for decades, have all become very real and very immediate. Actions he assumed he would never be held to account for may result in prison time within a year. He has been forced to confront the fact that his political power has slipped greatly, and the pack of skulking, cowardly dogs that propped him up through two impeachments and endless scandals are deserting and even turning on him. There is blood in the water, and it is his blood.

If he had enough power, he would be extraordinarily dangerous right now. His back is to the wall, and he must lash out.

Fortunately for us, much of that power is gone, residing only in the most craven members of the party, and the vicious and racist trash that have come to dominate the MAGA movement.

But lash out he will. He attacked the wife of the Special Counsel sent to bedevil him. He attacked the wife of his erstwhile ally, the Senate Minority Leader—a racist attack, at that. He applauded the attack on the husband of the House speaker. (See a pattern here? When he can’t quite work up the nerve to attack individuals, he goes after members of their families. He is what Stephen King would characterize as “a Low Man.”)

The latest events would be hilarious if the intent behind them weren’t so grotesque. His meeting with the troubled Klanye West (also an individual in psychological crisis) and the despicable Nick Fuentes (an open holocaust denier, and West subsequently went on to praise Hitler) was incredibly over the top even by the tawdry standards of Trump. He then followed it with his usual lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him with the demand “for the termination of all our rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Even Republicans found his assertion that the Constitution itself should be terminated for his personal benefit to be too much, and recognized that the greater danger now lay in supporting Trump rather than standing up to him.

Don’t mistake the Republican refutation of Trump for courage; it isn’t. It’s just self-preservation by people who have little to justify their existence to begin with. But it is happening, and with it, the last tattered remains of Trump’s power. He has finally destroyed himself.

Expect wilder and more insane outbursts from him. Except more and more shrugs from his once-avid supporters. MAGA will vanish in much the same way that Nazis vanished in Germany in 1945.

And the wheels of justice will grind him to dust.

He’s finally going down.

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The Wave Breaks — But the sand persists

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 20th, 2022

zeppscommentaries.online

In a way, the election last week didn’t change a whole lot. The Democrats held the Senate and maybe will add a seat in two weeks, and while they lost the House, the number of seats lost by the party holding the White House was the second-least in over 70 years.

Very little changed, and yet it feels like everything has changed.

About 90% of political power is illusory, and that was the case with the out-of-office Donald Trump. Not only did he fail to avail himself of the standard political winds to get his party a large majority in both Houses, but he was actually a drag on the ticket, with many of his hand-picked candidates losing in races they ought to have handily won, and a lot of Qanon “the election was stolen” nuts getting rejected en masse.

And most of Trump’s political power collapsed like a soap bubble. Suddenly the Voice of Donald, which thundered in GOP ranks, provoking shivers and submissive urination, became a shrill whine which Republicans felt free to swat at in irritation, like a mosquito. Suddenly, Trump found himself being rejected and even dismissed by his former sycophants, and even publicly challenged.

The Congressional Republicans decided to pretend that the narrow three-or-four seat majority they had in the House amounted to a mighty 1932-style mandate, and immediately chorused that they would start fresh rounds of the indeterminable hearings that were usually investigations in search of a crime, the same tiresome nonsense they’ve inflicted on the country since Newt Gingrich started pointless but politically damaging congressional investigations of the Clintons. They were already losing what little potency they possessed before January 6th, 2021. The eight different Benghazi investigations, including 11 hours of testimony from Hillary Clinton hurt her so badly that she only got three million more votes than Donald.

But the January 6th Committee hearing showed the nation what honest, conscientious Congressional hearings were like. There was no shouting down of witnesses (despite the fact that most of the witnesses were Republicans and members of the Trump team), actual evidence was presented with strong documentation, video and written records. There was no grandstanding, no shouted promises to convict as soon as something came up that could result in actual charges. It showed the prior “investigations” to be the silly, pointless, futile clown shows that in the end, were all the GOP had to offer. Even the one investigation over the past almost 30 years that actually found wrong doing and resulted in charges was so petty, mean, and rankly hypocritical that the impeachment of Bill Clinton for getting a blow job actually resulted in an increase in his popularity. People might have honestly disapproved of Bill’s behavior, but they didn’t need the likes of Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde lecturing them on what proper moral behavior might be.

So now we have the likes of Gym Jordan, Margie “Armpits” Taylor-Greene and Bobo Boebert to tell us that investigations of criminals by the Department of Justice and the FBI are bad, bad, bad. If Republican criminals aren’t safe, then by gawd, no criminal is safe!

They’re even talking about resurrecting Benghazi. After nearly two years of trying to defend, or at least excuse or even deny the events of January 6th, they want to tell us all that an armed mob attacking a US government facility resulting in the deaths of Americans is bad, and someone needs to pay. Think about that. Just brimming with moral authority there, aren’t we?

They want to impeach Joe Biden because Hunter something. Hunter is a sleaze and probably will end up getting tried at some point for some sort of malfeasance (high crimes that in Trump world are known as “Wednesday”) but the investigations will turn themselves inside out trying to show, with no evidence, that Joe orchestrated it all. They want to impeach Merrick Garland because he’s investigating Trump. They want to impeach Jack Smith for being named Special Counsel, apparently unaware of the fact that they cannot impeach a Special Counsel.

Having already lost the moderates and independents they hoped to corral in the election, they now face a slow, steady withdrawal of those supporting them – the so-called “mainstream Republicans” – the corporate types, the actual conservatives, and Republicans who don’t fancy clown shows, fascism, hate mongering or theocracies. There was a glaring example of that withdrawal from the bat-shit wing of the party by Murdoch’s New York Post, which noted Trump’s ill-advised declaration of candidacy for 2024 by putting on the bottom of their front page, “Florida Man makes announcement. Page 27”. Leading Republicans, including fascist slimes Ted Cruz and DeSantis, openly challenged the Trump announcement. Both have been fervent belly-crawlers for Trump, and if those two whipped dogs could work up the courage to disobey Trump then truly his star has dimmed.

Given the unbridled glee and enthusiasm of the bat-shit contingent, and the pulling back of the saner elements in the GOP, a civil war in the party, particularly in the House, seems likely. Pass the popcorn. I’m actually hoping the zanies will prevail, not just for their ability to do damage to themselves and their party, but because it may lead to some Republican congressionals leaving the party, becoming independents, putting control of the House back in Democratic hands. The Dems not only need to consider who the minority leader will be to replace Nancy Pelosi, but potentially who the Speaker will be.

We’re seeing a sea change. Americans got to see what Trump, Qanon and the various other extreme right factions had to offer—the hatred, the racism, the cruelty and the vicious imposition of religion—and don’t want it. This election, for all that it changed little, moved mountains.

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Last Election? — Or jumping off place?

Last Election?

Or jumping off place?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 5th 2023

zeppscommentaries.online

Trump has been teasing his cult that he will announce if he’s running for President in 2024 or not on November 14th. That happens to be the day he has to comply with the January 6th Committee’s subpoena to appear, but I don’t think that is it. For one thing, the committee gave him an extra week.

No, the main thinking is that it’s his time after the mid-term elections. His entire strategy for the next two years rests on whether the GOP win the House and Senate or not.

If the Democrats keep the House, he might want to rile up his base whether he complies or not. Being morally bereft, they’ll be fine with it either way. He’ll be pushing the ‘stolen election’ narrative and hoping to foment a revolution.

What happens if the Republicans take Congress?

He might see that happen. Fivethirtyeight.com is one of the few outfits not interested in blowing smoke up the asses of one side or the other, but even then, a lot of the polls they use have become increasingly suspect, partly from political influence, and partly from an out-of-date methodology (many voters, particularly younger ones, don’t even HAVE landlines, and because of the huge numbers of spam and scam calls we all get, anyone with caller ID tends to not answer calls from unfamiliar numbers). And this year, pollsters are ignoring the elephant in the room, and not asking about abortion.

And because “common sense” says that incumbent presidents lose seats in the midterm election, and the supposition that inflation hurts the party in power, so pollsters are uncritically saying it looks like a Republican election, with gains in the House and Senate. Add the factors of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and voter intimidation that the GOP is engaging in, and a Republican win seems likely. Certainly Donald must think so. But then, he didn’t expect to lose power in 2021, either.

If the Republicans do take the House and Senate, he will certainly announce that he’s running for President.

He can quit worrying about his legal problems. First thing the House will do is shut down the Congressional investigation. And they will launch endless “investigations” of the Department of Justice that should completely hogtie Merrick Garland. State cases will face increasingly hostile courts as suborned judges blindly rule in favor of Trump, going to any ludicrous length they can to protect him. We’ve already seen quite a bit of that. Sammy, Slappy, and the Three Trump Stooges will be Trump’s refuge from then on.

The House will revert to the kangaroo court hearings that were the mainstay of the GOP House Rule going back to the Newt Gingrich years, only this group are even crazier and nastier.

MAGA followers, emboldened, will intimidate and harass all dissenting opinion. I wouldn’t rule out pogroms and a Kristallnacht or two. Targets will be blacks, Hispanics, anyone suspected of “sexual deviancy,” Moslems (including Sikhs, Amish, and anyone who “looks like an Arab”), and Jews “who don’t support Israel.”

Then Donald can run without any impediment from the law or popular sentiment.

Nor will he have to worry about losing the election. If the GOP control the methods of counting the votes and determining who will be permitted to vote, it won’t matter if the voters hate Donald or not. He will get elected, just the same way Stalin and Xi and other autocrats got elected. Republicans know they can’t win an honest election; they make sure they can’t lose a dishonest one.

The GOP have promised to do away with Social Security and Medicare, and will go after workers’ rights, civil rights, environmental protections, and anything that might annoy or inconvenience a major corporation.

Voters will be too busy fighting to survive to care about fighting the government, and will be hit with a wave of propaganda about how the new misery that makes up their lives is a result of the failed “great experiment” that imposed liberalism and godlessness on the citizenry. They just won’t mention that that experiment began in 1789.

Personally, I fully expect to end up in the camps if the Republicans win this time. I’m a blasphemer, you see, a liberal, an intellectual, and a socialist. Why, with a record like that I don’t even have to be guilty of any crime, but no worries: courts in the land of Trump will be happy to secure convictions for the greater good of the party.

Think I’m exaggerating? Boy, I sure would like to think so. But I’ve read history, you see. I know how this sort of thing goes, and I don’t for an instant believe Americans are immune. There’s a reason the French and the Germans are watching events here with a mixture of horror and disgust. They’ve been down that road. They know all about having a Strong Leader to Make the Country Great Again in the Name of God. The leader won’t be strong; he’ll be brittle and cruel. The country won’t be great again; you’ll just get propaganda telling you it will become great only when enemies both inside and out have been eliminated, and they are the reason there is no food or services. And as usual, God will be silent, but every vicious opportunistic jackass in the country will be willing to speak up on his behalf—and amazingly, it turns out God hates anyone who so much as doubts Trump.

Can’t happen here? Folks, it very nearly has. We’re only one step away. And we might take that step Tuesday.

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MYOB — Republicans have curious way of promoting freedom of information

MYOB

Republicans have curious way of promoting freedom of information

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 23rd, 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Watching Donald tie himself in knots over the classified materials found at Mar-A-Lardo is funnier than hell if you overlook the elements of criminality, national betrayal and possible treason. Donald’s latest approach is that he declassified documents using the power of his mind. If Uri Geller could bend keys with his mind as easily as Donald bends the truth with his, um, mind, Uri would be a billionaire by now. It’s fascinating watching Donald and his little flock of D-list lawyers claim that the documents were declassified and thus Donald’s property but refusing to make the same claim in front of Judge Dearie, Trump’s choice to be “Special Master” that the idiot Aileen Cannon thought could protect Donald. Dearie already let it be known that if the documents weren’t classified, he was wasting his time, and if they were, Donald had already lost.

Donald also claims that it’s really nobody’s business why he took the documents or what they were. If they are unclassified he can say they’re none of our business, and if they’re classified he can’t discuss them with us because they’re classified. Paging Doc Daneeka!

With a massive fraud case brought by the state of New York looming and likely to utterly destroy the Trump financial empire, you might think that Donald and his sons would try to come up with something better than MYOB in their under-oath dealings with the state DA’s office. But no; they pled the fifth, Donald and Junior over 900 times between them. Keep in mind that this is a CIVIL suit, not a criminal one. (Although that’s likely pending). In a civil suit, unlike in a criminal trial, pleading the Fifth is considered evidentiary, in other words, something the jury can consider as an effort to hide culpability. They can go, “Aha, this bozo is hiding something!”

I’ll note that in Congressional investigations, Hillary Clinton didn’t plead the fifth once. All of those investigations, including the nine hours of testimony the Republican House put her through.

Needless to say, the large majority of Americans see this for the mendacious nonsense it is. You would think that other Republicans would look at this and back away. But no.

Hershel Walker, who bragged of his charitable giving, when faced with the utter lack of evidence that he did anything of the sort, took the Donald defense. It was nobody’s business, he declared, who he gave the money to or what it was for. Fortunately for Hershel, he’s just trying to backtrack on some campaign bullshit. Donald tried that defense at trial, and it cost him millions of dollars and he’s banned from charitable associations in New York. Seems he was stealing donations from kids with cancer. Whatta sweet guy!

One goof running for Congress in Ohio, a J.R. Majewski, had been boasting of flying many missions into Afghanistan, which would be commendable, except the AP looked into the claims and could find nothing in his military record to show such activities from Majewski, who apparently actually worked at a supply depot in Qatar, far from Afghanistan. Majewski, not content with 48 hours of ‘stolen valour’ stories in the media, came out and claimed his missions were classified and that’s why they aren’t on his record. Hmm. Well, doesn’t that mean he broke the law by discussing those missions in the first place? Or is he lying again?

I know, I know. It’s none of my business.

Republicans as a whole have decided that they are not going to participate in debates over the next five weeks before the election. Bad enough that moderators ask questions they don’t want to answer like “Who is the President of the United States?” or “Shouldn’t billionaires contribute more of what America gave them back?” or “Did the Moon landings really happen?” But their opponents might point to erroneous statements, false claims, investigations for fraud and criminal activity, and past criminal proceedings.

Why, they done rehabilitated themselves. Ain’t nobody’s business if they are criminals or con artists or raving far-right loons. They don’t have to explain themselves to a bunch of randos known as “the voters”!

Even Newt Gingrich, father of the modern puddle of vomit that is today’s GOP, is snarling that anyone who asks why the January 6th Committee wants to talk to him about his role in the coup “has a learning disability.” People with such disabilities shouldn’t be rude to their betters by asking awkward questions, right? Especially those reporters.

The House Republicans blocked a bill that would have revealed the sources of dark money flooding campaigns.

It’s nobody’s concern who’s buying up your country.

Mind Your Own Business.

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Let’s Go, Brandon! — Biden takes MAGA behind the woodshed

September 4th, 2022

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The whole world knows that Biden called out the MAGAts—the Trump supporters who cling stubbornly to the lie that the election was stolen and Trump is the legitimate president. That all elections are rigged except of course for the ones Republicans win. (Ok, there was one case where a Republican won and charges of rigged election were brought up—by another Republican in the race who lost). He called out the violent clowns who terrorize poll workers and school boards, and who loudly proclaim that they and only they have rights, and liberals are just pedophile snowflakes.

MAGAts are disgusting anti-American people, and Biden was right to call them out.

While the reaction in the vast right wing media circus was predictable (scalded cats, meet outraged nuns who just found a porn magazine) it was somewhat muted and not as convincing as it might otherwise have been. After all, these are the people who thundered endlessly for years over such silly made-up crap such as Whitewater, the Arkansas assassinations, Vince Foster, tan suits, Grey Poupon mustard, Benghazi, “her emails” and, horror of horrors, Sandy Duncan taking home A classified file. They turned the once-reputable Kenneth Starr into a porn writer in an effort to get Bill Clinton on Monica. And of course they embraced all the fruitloop theories propounded by Alex Jones and the trash far right, about how liberals are “groomers” and want to ban Christianity and on and on and on.

Given how readily they slip into moral outrage on a moment’s notice, you might think the explosion that greeted Biden’s speech would have shook the world.

Granted, it is a holiday weekend, and that may have muted them a bit. It may be that they’ll wait until the survivors return from the last holiday of the summer before demanding Biden’s impeachment and/or execution, and claim that the 4% of the country that support him are commies and/or pedophiles (honestly, can any of these morons even SPELL “pedophile”? Or know what it is? OK, I spell it paedophile, but I was raised in England and Canada, and there is no cure.)

Or could it be that more and more Republicans are realizing that Donald Trump is a really stupid bet for 2024, or the future of the party?

Biden certainly knows that. He very carefully pointed out that most Republicans no longer support MAGA if they ever did, and that is a number that is dwindling rapidly. Even the true believers who are convinced the impeachments were hoaxes and that January 6th was a false-flag operation staged by AntiFa (and you have to be pretty stupid and/or mental to believe those things to begin with) are beginning to realize that the secret files that the FBI seized at Mar-A-Lago are clear and compelling evidence that major felonies were committed by Trump, up to and including treason. Trump himself has been increasingly shrill and desperate, his wild and often contradictory reactions less and less plausible, and the efforts of more and more Republicans to distance themselves from this vast, mushrooming nuclear scandal ever more apparent.

Even Doctor Oz, who is running one of the most tone-deaf campaigns in the country, has shown enough sense to try to back away from Trump, which he did at that pathetic rally in Philadelphia last night.

One of the most striking things about that rally came in the wee hours, when Trump took to his failing “Truth Social” to declare, “Thank you to everyone who attended the Rally last night. It was a two-hour speech, and the only disappointment was that they were screaming, ‘Please, please, go longer.’ They love our Country, and I love them!” It was such a pitch-perfect evocation of Groucho Marx’ Dictator that I was prompted to write, “Remember, Donald Trump shoots a perfect 18 on every round of golf, impregnates a thousand virgins a night, and won the War of 1812.” The leader is infallible, medals for everyone, yes.

Despite the billions spent by the autocratic aristocracy (one clown gave $1.6 billion to the Federalist Society to aid their never-ending search for corporate buffoons and religious nuts to put on the courts) and the millions of man-hours in the echoverse of right wing media, Trump’s support is diminishing, and the GOP is dwindling with him. I won’t be surprised along about late October to see more Republicans openly breaking ranks with Trump and essentially declaring themselves to be “Biden Republicans”—not vicious nuts who want to destroy democracy. Oh, they won’t call themselves that; that would be a death sentence. But they would be using that very demarcation to persuade voters that they are sane, respect rights, and don’t want to destroy the United States. It may even help, a bit.

Trump will still be twisting in the wind at that point. The Department of Justice won’t indict him on the grounds that it’s too close to an election that Trump isn’t even running for office in. It’s moments like these when I wonder if the colonists are really ready for self-rule, but then I look at the messy national suicide that is Britain, and I just hush mah mouf. I don’t think England is ready for self-rule, either. Someone call the Saxon suicide watch line.

Trump will continue to lose ground both legally and politically, and between him and the Dobbs decision, which unleashed the theocratic lunatics on America, the Democrats should do quite well in the November elections.

Trump, of course, will blame it on lack of resolve by his followers. That’s what failed megalomaniacs always do.

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A Message from Trumpworld — At least they can count to twenty…

A Message from Trumpworld

At least they can count to twenty…

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 11th, 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

A buddy of mine in the Weasels passed this list of twenty complaints about the general state of affairs along to me the other day. It was posted on the web by a fellow named P. Ritter. It strikes me as a fairly good example of the sort of stuff that is circulating amongst the information-deprived and increasingly cultish right.

Now, I don’t know this Ritter fellow, so I won’t speculate on his motives or level of knowledge. But most of the items bear examination, and a response. His text is in italics. Mine is in English.

It’s not a question of right and wrong anymore. There have been plenty of examples of wrong in recent history. I will list them so there’s no equivocating about it:

  1. Supreme Court Justices intimidated without law enforcement action. No public official should ever be intimidated or threatened. This includes death threats (such as the one judge who issued the Mar-A-Lago warrant has received), doxxing, or threats against family members. Peaceful protests, on the other hand, are legal and should be encouraged.
  1. Prosecution of innocent Americans for political gain and judges that become the prosecutors.Anyone formally accused of a crime is entitled to a presumption of innocence. It is why newspapers refer to “suspects” rather than “criminals” until the accused are found guilty. It is why anyone being investigated for a crime is entitled to legal representation, reasonable bail, warrants and searches based upon probable cause, and trial by jury. It does NOT include whipping up mobs that chant “Lock Her Up!” or demands that men cleared of guilty verdicts upon the presentation of new evidence be executed anyway, as happened with the Central Park Five.
  2. District Attornies [sic] who refuse to prosecute and release criminals back into the population. America still has over two million people in jail, the highest prison population outside of China. The problem isn’t that District Attorneys don’t want convictions. In too many cases, DA’s regard convictions as notches on their belts, ones that could lead to higher office or a judgeship. It’s a system that breeds cruelty and corruption. I suspect Ritter is referring to the DA DeSantis just fired for saying he would not enforce Florida’s cruel new anti-choice laws. DeSantis has that right, but I would sooner have prosecutors that won’t uphold unjust laws over politicians to avidly support such in an appeal to their base.
  3. Juries that decide criminal cases based upon political affiliation and not evidence. Juries are usually better than we deserve. It used to be the sort of corruption that we see in “To Kill a Mockingbird” was widespread and socially acceptable. Our track record has improved. Demanding verdicts from juries based on politics is every bit as bad as a corrupt jury.
  1. No cash bail! See point 2. Bail has been used as a fundraising system by towns and even some states, with the result that people who haven’t been convicted of any crime are thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Financing a judicial and police system through traffic violations corrupts. Letting police seize and KEEP property is a recipe for a banana republic.
  2. Judges who let criminals off despite their prior convictions. We tried “three strikes” for some 20 years, and it turned out to be a horrible mistake. You had people getting 20-to-life for a third conviction, which might include stealing a bicycle, or a piece of pizza. Yes, both extremes actually happened. In the other direction, you had juries or DA s not convicting because it was clear that they would be giving a petty thief a life sentence for an action that might normally be a fine, or probation.
  3. Criminals killing innocent people at random in our largest cities. And smaller cities. And towns. But you know where the highest murder rate is? Rural areas! By way of example, my county, with some 40,000 people, had one murder in the past five years. To match that rate, Los Angeles County would have to have 2,500 murders over the same period.
  4. Schools, districts, and teacher’s unions want children to learn everything but what they should.That one is so ridiculously vague I can’t even respond. Ritter should check with the local public school district to see what the actual curriculum is. It’s public record. It will not include “critical race theory” which is taught only at a handful of universities and on the graduate level. As for what IS taught, Ritter may or may not agree, but he’ll have to be a bit more specific about what he disapproves of.
  5. Politicians doing insider trading right in front of our eyes and getting away with it.Absolutely! And any politician convicted of insider trading should be banned from running for office again. There is a bill, H.R.2655 – Insider Trading Prohibition Act, that passed the House by a huge margin, 350-75. An earlier version was passed in 2021 410-13. It is currently languishing in the Senate, lacking votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.
  6. Congress is fixated on prosecuting Donald Trump than on doing anything positive for America.Donald Trump is credibly accused of attempting to stage a coup against the United States. The Select Committee issued invitations to Trump and members of his administration to testify under oath on a voluntary basis. Some acceded, others refused. But insurrection is an extremely grave charge to make against any public official, and must be investigated. Why isn’t Trump raising a defense above the level of personal attacks on the members of the committee? Why have so many members of his administration been material witnesses?
  7. Taxpayer money is wasted on useless programs designed to weaken the economy and nation.Again, too vague to be of any use. I would agree that the F-35, and tens of billions in tax subsidies to oil companies weaken the economy and the nation. For all I know, Ritter had those in mind. Or perhaps not. He’ll have to let us know.
  8. China is in charge along with Russia. I’m not sure what “in charge” means. Russia is failing to conquer the Ukraine, a country about the size of California but with a much smaller economy. China is much more powerful, but remains no match for the United States.
  9. Our borders are more like open sewer lines flowing into the country. That’s not a very nice thing to say about your neighbors. It’s worth noting that the crime rate amongst aliens, documented or not, is lower than it is amongst Americans.
  10. Homelessness is so rampant that cities are incapable of dealing with the problem. True. But homelessness isn’t a crime or even a moral issue. It represents a failing by society, one that needs to be addressed.
  11. Food shortages, supply chain issues, and our President thinks things are hunky-dory. I doubt Biden thinks these issues are “hunky-dory.” Food shortages mostly stem from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and climate disruption. Accordingly, they will get worse. Supply chain issues stem from capitalism’s inability to adapt to the pandemic.
  12. Inflation is at its highest since it has been recorded.Nonsense. It was half again as high in 1974 compared to June. And the inflation rate in July of this year – last month – was ZERO.
  13. The President shuts down oil production and begs for oil from our enemies. Biden has shut down no production. I wish he would. He did negotiate prices with Saudi Arabia, which I don’t like, because I loathe theocracies. But he didn’t engage in begging, and he even managed to avoid ridiculous photo-ops with the Saudi royals and a glowing orb.
  14. The President sells our national emergency reserve oil to our enemies.Utter nonsense. Cite an example. Show your work.
  15. The President makes money off of our enemies with impunity. Again, utter nonsense. Cite an example. Show your work.
  16. The President’s family is immune from prosecution despite numerous criminal acts. Donald Trump Junior might beg to disagree. Oh, he won’t agree that he performed “numerous criminal acts”, but certainly the prosecution, although he’ll pronounce it ‘persecution.’ There are rumors that Jared Kushner may have provided evidence to the FBI for their warrant at Mar-a-Lago. Just rumors, but if that is the case, then the Feds had to have a fair bit of dirt on him to goad him into flipping on dear old daddy-in-law.

This is Trumpworld in a nutshell. Unsupported allegations, vague claims, a total lack of self-awareness, hypocrisy, and above all, projection. Recognize it when you see it.

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