Goodbye, Super Tuesday — Who Could Hang a Game on You?

Goodbye, Super Tuesday

Who Could Hang a Game on You?

(apologies to Mick Jagger)

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 7th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The most pointless primary season since primaries began has ground to an effective end, and oh, my gosh, can you believe this? Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s nominees! Whoa! Did you see that coming?

Well, of course you did. You’re not an idiot.

Cable channels devoted hours to covering this non-story, with on-air journalists declaring solemnly that with the polls closed just two minutes earlier, the results were “too close to call.” It was a bit like watching Walter Cronkite narrate a Popeye cartoon and pretend feverishly that Bluto was by far the leading candidate in the race, but it wasn’t over yet! It was pretty sad. Speaking of cartoons, I switched off MSNBC and watched cartoons instead. Even Steve Kornacki couldn’t wring any drama out of the vote count. The only upsets were in DC and Vermont, where Trump managed to lose to Haley. Which showed that in two corners of the country, the majority of Republicans still hold three-digit IQs.

They were glaring exceptions. Most of the polling showed that the former political party known as the Republicans have been fully subsumed by the Nutzis and Nazis. In North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was selected to run for governor of the state. He’s a holocaust denier, a 9/11 truther, quotes Hitler, and wants to strip gays and other gendered people of all rights. And like most of what’s left of his party, he believes humanity begins at conception and ends at birth. He’s a raving nut, not to put too fine a point on it. In Alabama, they chose “justice” Sarah Stewart on Tuesday as their nominee to lead the state Supreme Court. She was one of the judges who ruled that frozen embryos were persons. In California, Steve Garvey, who played first base for the Dodgers for many years up until about forty years ago, came in second in the Senate primary in the state’s free-for-all vote where the top two vote getters are the nominees, even if they are both from the same party—as often happens in a state where the GOP is moribund. Garvey came in second, partly from name recognition (he was a good ball player) and party because Adam Schiff and other Democrats actually PROMOTED Garvey’s campaign, reasoning that he would be easier to beat in the General than Katie Porter or Barbara Lee would be. While he only beat Garvey by a percentage point, it’s important to note that nearly all of the 34% who voted for someone else are Democrats, and probably as much as a third of Garvey’s vote came from Democrats as well. This was probably a kind of a high-water mark for the GOP, since Garvey at least is sane and not a full-blown fascist. By GOP standards, that makes him a fairly respectable candidate.

So now the real fight begins, and despite the on-going dissolution of Donald Trump, it is a serious fight, with the fate of the country at risk.

Trump, in and of himself, is a fading risk. He clearly is suffering from dementia. He only occasionally remembers who the president is, and one of the times he got it right, he wound up endorsing him instead of himself.

But there are a lot of bad actors about, and they are very willing to lie, cheat, steal and commit any fraudulent acts possible to win. The Heritage Foundation (i.e., The National Association of Zealots and Ideologues) openly flaunts its “Project 2025” which starts by eliminating civil service laws to protect Americans from the spoils system, and allows Trump to fire and replace all federal employees with his own loyalists. An Ayn Rand nightmare, it would eliminate the Departments of Commerce and Education, nearly all environmental laws, and “deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries.” A fascist coup, in other words.

They also promote in full the demands of the vile anti-American zealots that call themselves “Christian Nationalists,” eliminating rights to abortion or contraception, the right to be gay or other-gendered, and eliminating separation of church and state, eliminating rights for all but a small percentage of Christians.

They are spending billions through their vast propaganda network, backed by the pack of Australian Nazis who run Fox News.

Bad actors abound. The Republicans, at Trump’s behest, deliberately scrapped the immigration bill that they themselves wrote, in order to try to keep “the border crisis” a campaign issue. Fox and other minutes are having five-minutes-of-hate sessions every half hour to keep the haters and bigots stirred up.

The House Republicans have nearly all co-sponsored HR 431, which declares that personhood begins at conception and thus abortion and birth control are murder.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia plan to slash oil production, hoping to drive up prices which the public, at the behest of the extreme right, will blame Biden for. They already have senile stooges like Trump and Chuck Grassley declaring that Biden “slashed oil production” and so prices will rise. The fact is US domestic oil production is the highest it has been in history. Meanwhile, does anybody believe Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russian want Trump because “he will stand tall for America.” Or do they just want a moronic and treasonous dupe? Which makes more sense to you? Viktor Orbán has become a major figure in GOP circles, and I’m sure he does it because he just loves America, right?

But Republicans are liars. Remember that. What ever it is, they will lie about it. Immigrants have lower crime rates, less gun violence, and add a net $40 billion to the economy. The liars on Fox News say otherwise, of course.

It’s going to get ugly, and fast. They already busted a string of websites yesterday purporting to be local news outlets that were actually run by Russia to interfere in election coverage. That happened yesterday. Google “Florida Observer” for details.

Remember: Republicans lie, and a vote for Trump is a vote for Treason.

Low-Rent Gods and Men — Does Trump reveal God’s Purpose?

Low-Rent Gods and Men

Does Trump reveal God’s Purpose?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 27th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

 

A survey conducted by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe found around 30 percent of Americans believe Trump “was anointed by God to become president.” Thirty percent.

Now, I don’t know anything about the methodology of this poll. Frankly, I doubt the number is anywhere near that high. Ten percent, tops. Trump’s support among the religious is pretty much limited to evangelicals, and they only make up 25% of the population. And the same Economist article that cited that number also reported, “In a Pew poll in 2021, more than a third of white evangelicals said the government should stop enforcing the separation of church and state.” Outside of that group, the notion that scrapping separation of church and state and making Trump some sort of god/emporer drops through the basement. I doubt very much 10% of Catholics buy into that, much less mainstream Protestants, non-Christian and unaffiliated/secular.

Still, there’s a lot of Americans who do believe that nonsense. One of the stranger ones is the notion that there are seven “mountains” to a godly life: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Daemons controlled those, but Trump has already climbed and taken over entertainment, business, media, government and family. This group thinks he’s taken over religion, as well. That would leave education to surmount.

OK, let’s take a pause while you get your breath back. Those of you still laughing, imagine being in bed with Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Yes, that’s a cruel thing to do to you, but if you don’t stop laughing you might hurt yourself.

There’s a saying popular amongst us secular sorts: “Science asks questions that demand an answer. Religion provides answers that demand no questions.” Obviously, that’s a simplification. There are many people of faith who do ask questions, including of their own beliefs. And some scientists are as hidebound and rigid in their intellectual structure as any 16th century preacher. But the fact remains that the true first commandment in many branches of religion is “Thou shalt not question.” Obviously, this is a fertile demographic for opportunists and demagogues.

Let’s see about those mountains that Trump is supposedly climbing. I’ll start out by noting that you’re far more likely to find a sea slug at the peak of Everest, just so you aren’t burdened by any suspense about the following.

Entertainment: Trump was a B-list celebrity with a reality TV show. The highest Neilson rating it ever got was 7.0. It never was anywhere near the most popular show in its timeslot.

Media: Trump had Faux News, and now, having cost them $787 million in costs from lying on his behalf, he doesn’t even have that. He has Truth Social, which is pretty pathetic, and lunatic-fringe outfits like Newsmax and OANN, both of which face massive defamation suits of their own.

Business: Until Elon Musk came along, Trump had lost more money than any individual in the history of America. He took over three casinos and they all went bust within a few years. Casinos are licenses to mint money! He’s been found guilty of tax fraud and is awaiting sentencing. He settled a vast class action suit for fraud for Trump University days before he took office. He is banned from running charities after he was found to have stolen from a children’s cancer charity he ran. Business attracts thieves, con artists and other filth, and it certainly attracted Trump. But he never was any good at it.

Entertainment: Well, his venality and endless personal scandals kept cartoonists and humorists busy for decades, so I suppose there’s that. And he attracts eyeballs, although the leading reasons are “What’s that idiot done now?” and “Oh, fuck, NO!”

Family: he’s had three wives and at least a dozen mistresses. He was banging Stormy Daniels while Melania was carrying his youngest son. His niece, Mary Trump, openly despises him. He buried one of his exes in an unmarked grave on one of his golf courses, and its rumored that her coffin contains incriminating evidence Trump wanted to go away forever.

Government: Yes, he was a one term president. He won despite losing the popular vote, and never has won a popular vote. The economy contracted during his term, the worst since Hoover, and the deficit exploded. He turned the Supreme Court into a sad joke. And because of the cowardice of mainstream Republicans, that party is now home to traitors, religious nuts, violent extremists, and the most ignorant fools America can scrape up.

Religion: Well, define “religion.” If love of money, power and self-aggrandizement is a religion, then Trump qualifies. Claiming to have god on his side doesn’t count. Nearly every dictator and tyrant in the history of this sad world has claimed to have god on his side. Fundamentalists cannot question and cannot learn. They are fodder and feeding ground for monsters. In stressful times, they are enough to put a Hitler or a Cromwell in power.

That leaves Education. Again, the term is subjective. When the evangelicals talk about that particular mountain, they have something entirely different from what most people think of when you mention education. Math and science are not a part of that particular equation. For that matter, the word ‘equation’ isn’t, either. Learning biblical writ, obeying and never questioning are considered virtues, and a child who questions is a child who must be beaten. So Trump may surmount Education, although, like Religion, it might be in a form none of us would recognize as such.

If ten percent of the population swallow the nonsense of Trump being “the Will of God,” that’s disturbing and a sad reflection on humanity in general. Thirty percent would be catastrophic, a certain sign that a culture has fully decompensated and slid into madness. Mass jailing and mass executions will follow, along with widespread misery. So that’s why I don’t buy that poll. America is having problems, but it isn’t in hospice.

But never forget that this type of religious fervor is toxic, and an infection in even the healthiest of societies.

“Shall have engaged in insurrection…” — Colorado Supreme Court stunner

Shall have engaged in insurrection…”

Colorado Supreme Court stunner

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 19th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Today’s ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court (Anderson vs. Griswald) set the US political scene upside down and inside out. The four-three decision ruled that Trump had engaged in insurrection against the United States of America and therefore was ineligible to hold office, and thus should be excluded from the Colorado primary ballot. It’s worth noting that the three justices who dissented did NOT dispute that Trump had engaged in insurrection, but that it wasn’t grounds to exclude him from the ballot. The decision was made by a court where, while all seven were appointed by Democratic leges, was infamous for originalist and conservative rulings, especially in regards to the Second Amendment, which could best be described as being in the Church of Yosemite Sam.

The dissent was based on whether a state elections board had the right to determine the participants in a federal election. This decision will get to the Supreme Court very quickly, I should think, and I imagine some, if not most of the justices are slapping their foreheads and wondering why they had to deal with this hot potato at a time when the legitimacy of the Court is teetering in the public eye. Given that valid arguments in this case can be made for both sides (Trump supporters are pointing out that Trump hasn’t been convicted, or even indicted for insurrection). But Trump is a clear and present danger to the country, and there is solid evidence that he did participate in insurrection, and that he gave aid and comfort to enemies of the United States.

So, lacking clear direction or meaningful precedent to base stare decisis upon, the Court essentially may use political calculation. Despite the reputation of the Court these days, that doesn’t mean their decision is a slam dunk. Yes, Trump appointed three of them, and two of the others are, respectively, a bought-out hack with the manners and morals of a Sudanese border guard, and a religious whack finding his cherished beliefs under worldwide attack for his authorship of the ruling undoing Roe V Wade.

But still not that easily determined. The justices are going to be uneasily aware of the fact that Trump has tried to overthrow an election, and that the propaganda net that made Trump possible is unraveling quickly, often because of court decisions. Trump is becoming a political liability.

They aren’t as insulated as they like to pretend, and have to be aware of Trump’s stated intentions should he become President again. He has made it clear that he will eviscerate the power of the courts, exactly in the same way that Netanyahu did with the Israel Supreme Court, now just an empty and token shell. Even Clarence Thomas has to realize that if the Court no longer has any clout, his sugar daddies aren’t going to be arsed supporting him in the style to which he has become accustomed. The Court has little incentive to support a man who will destroy it.

It’s a microcosm of the entire issue of what a state, including a free and democratic state, can do to protect itself against wannabe tyrants and demagogues. Freedom of speech is both the greatest strength of a free country and its greatest weakness. What do do about someone who runs for office advocating the downfall of the existing state?

There’s a case in recent history of someone running for the highest elected office in the land, a man who not only was indicted for trying to overthrow the state, but convicted and imprisoned for it. Once out of prison, he was free to run again, take office, and destroy the state.

That man was Adolf Hitler, architect of the Beer Hall Putsch and eventually, chancellor of Germany which became a nightmare of lawlessness and slaughter before self-destructing after just a dozen bloody years.

Under present German law, Hitler would be disqualified from holding office.

The Court will be in a position where they need to not only try to reestablish their legitimacy, but avoid their own destruction, since a Trump regime would at best regard courts as puppet apparatus for subjugation of anyone Trump found annoying.

The mere fact of the Colorado court decision does put yet another large dent in Trump’s political power, and it is certain that other states will now be encouraged to make similar moves.

Of course some of the red states will try to make a similar exclusion of Biden, claiming that he’s being impeached and he sold sex-slave children in pizza boxes to Lemurians and try to exclude Biden.

Yes, it’s a mess. It may be the court will rule that yes, Trump was in violation of the 14th amendment, but that it’s not the place of individual states to act on a federal crime. And then rule that only federal courts could rule, and proceed to uphold the Colorado case without it turning into a complete circus.

But this is all just guesswork. The only prediction I’ll stand behind is that the Court will act as quickly as possible on this one.

Dominion Over Us — By your nose you be known

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
October 28th 2023
www.zeppscommentaries.online

Mike Johnson is our new speaker, 51, a Dominionist, a MAGAt, and an insurrectionist supporter. In short, nobody who should be within a thousand miles of American power.
I wasn’t going to waste an essay on him for the simple reason that just about every person in this country who loves the Constitution is loudly warning everyone just what a danger this person is to our rights and freedoms.
But then I came across this quote from Johnson: “This is not about the people themselves. I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”
Well, OK, then. Game on.
Citing weird biblical beliefs is nothing new, of course. Nor is citing the hypocrisy of most bible pounders. The very first episode of West Wing had President Bartlett give a wonderful example of this when pressed to embrace biblical values for America by a pushy fundie.
But it’s always worth selecting a few choice things the bible mandates people believe that aren’t exactly congruent with 21st century American values. So here’s a list of things that Mike Johnson apparently professes to believe.
A man can force his wife to get an abortion if he believes she has been unfaithful. Numbers 5:11-31.
It’s even worse if a man is unfaithful to his wife: If a man cheateth on his wife, or vice versa, both the man and the woman must die. Leviticus 20:10. Helluva note: the poor wife gets smote, too. Or is it “the other woman.” Who dies? Melania or Stormy? I wonder if Johnson wants to form a wife-smiting committee or just make it part of Health and Human Resources.
Churches can eliminate those handicap parking spots. People who have flat noses, or are blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God. Leviticus 21:17-18. I’m sure that one mega-church pastor who has been whinging about handicap access can help Congress on that one. Have a law where if the tip of the nose fails to protrude more than 1.5 inches from the back of the nostrils, ain’t no praying allowed for that freak of nature! God is pleased by lordly beaks. I think Johnson may be in trouble himself over that one.
Another one that Johnson might find awkward is Leviticus 19:27: Don’t cut your hair nor shave.
The bible says If you find out a city worships a different god, destroy the city and kill all of its inhabitants, even the animals. Deuteronomy 13:12-16. OK, I can see killing all the cats, especially the black ones. Christianity has a long and storied history of killing cats, tossing them off towers and whatnot. That makes perfect sense. But the dogs, too?
Pagan cities don’t do well when it’s the Israelites smiting them. The bible suggests ripping infants from their mothers’ wombs and dashing their brains out against rocks. Hosea 13-16. Even though it calls fetuses “infants,” the anti-abortion crowd don’t like to cite that one. I think we can guess what Johnson thinks Israel should do to Gaza. And their little dogs, too!
The blob squad like to run around claiming that ‘libruls’ want to abort babies after they’re born.
Anyone who actually believes that has to be a little bit psychotic, but Johnson may have to make that a new law, it seems. “If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” Leviticus 26:27-30. That one should produce some interesting debate in Congress. Do you have to eat ALL your sons and daughters, or just one per transgression? And is there a cut-off age where you don’t have to eat them, but simply be stoned to death instead? Do kids with flat noses count?
Women should be generally submissive and should be quiet, never teach or hold any authority over men. They should just be silent. 1 Timothy 2:12. OK, I’m looking at Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, and I’m thinking Johnson could make good use of this. I wonder if his first act will be to remove all female members of Congress and the Vice President?
While the bible does demand that all non-believers be put to death, there is a loophole. If you are lucky enough to have hemorrhoids and rats, get them bronzed and send them on in as an offering. Or as the bible says, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.” 1 Samuel 6:4-5. I wonder if those are tax deductible. Mike? You’re the God Squad guy. Whaddaya say?
The NRA isn’t going to be happy with Mike’s godlaw. According to Exodus 22, you can only use lethal force to defend your home at night. Now, how can you have a happy and stable society if paranoid whacks with weapons of war can’t blast away at any stray noise they hear outside their front door at 11am? Crime never sleeps, you know!
So: this is the zealot creature who is now two bullets from the Oval Office.
Sleep tight.

 

 

Sixes and Sevens — An act of courage to save the country

Sixes and Sevens

An act of courage to save the country

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 24th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I haven’t been writing political pieces for the past few weeks for the simple reason that the political scene in the United States has gone utterly mad. I don’t need to spell it out for you. You already know that a small group of febrile zealots and fascists have leveraged the slim margin the GOP have in the House to turn the place into an utter clown show, aided by the weakest and most ineffectual Speaker in the history of the Republic. You know how bad the situation is; they want a shutdown for all sorts of crackpot reasons; ban abortion, impeach Biden, and, oh, I don’t know—maybe make NASA come clean about the great UFO conspiracy, or hang General Milley, or something.

There IS a way around this, though, and I’ll bet at least some House Republicans are already contemplating the very same answer.

All it would take would be for a relative handful of the sane Republicans in the House to leave the party. Oh, they wouldn’t have to defect and become Democrats; there’s enough conservatives in the Democratic Party as it is. They could just declare themselves independents, and leave the Republican caucus.

For it to work, it would take just six out of the 160 or so Republicans who aren’t really part of the insane clown posse that calls itself MAGA. The math is simple: presently, there’s 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats. Two seats are vacant. If just six Republicans became independent, you would have 212 Democrats, 215 Republicans, and 6 independents. If the six voted with the Dems on the budget plans that already passed the Senate by huge margins (70% of Republican Senators voted for them), the shutdown crisis would be averted.

It would be an act of considerable courage. Quite aside from the inevitable threats against themselves and their families from the violent lunatics that Trump formed into a cult, it would probably be the end of the GOP as we know it. Oh, a new right-of-center party would eventually arise from the ashes, and the sooner the better because no democracy should be a single party, even if it’s ‘the good guys.’ The defectors would be vilified and harassed for years. Obviously, there is some safety in numbers—ask any minnow—and if 12, or 20—defected then that would diffuse the threats.

Now, some of you have probably realized that what I’m suggesting is that we nullify one splinter group that has undue influence in the House and replace it with another splinter group that has undue influence in the House. Those six, or twenty or however many ex-Republicans will effectively control all legislation, even determine not only who the next Speaker is, but which party he is from.

But here’s the main thing that makes this different: this group will self-select based on such criteria as common sense, sanity, desire to un-paralyze the House, and patriotism. Oh, I know most politicians regard patriotism much the same way as most priests regard faith; something to wave in front of the plebs to keep them glassy-eyed. But at the very least they realize that destroying the government in the name of America is bad for business and will probably get a lot of people killed. And they understand that the amorphous and diffuse concept of “America” is a very poor replacement for “The United States of America.” The US as a constitutional democratic republic is far better than the vague, cloying and usually idiotic notions the morons get when they get glassy-eyed over “America” which combines the worst of patriotism and faith.

It could work. It would work. Just six at a minimum. More is better. Yes, it’s a temporary fix, one that will allow the country to stagger forward to the next election when, hopefully, the voters will cast off the madness of the zealots and ideologues that have made “America” something very toxic.

I’m not going to soft-peddle this: it would be an act of remarkable courage by those who defect. They would make many enemies for what at best would be a transitory gain, and some, if not all, might get voted out in the next election, if only because if one party or the other gets a majority, their leverage is gone. I’m not asking them to return an overdue library book; I’m asking them to throw themselves on the grenade. History will view them kindly, for whatever that’s worth.

Are there a half dozen Republicans who have the integrity and guts to do the right thing? If just 2% of Republicans do that right thing, they will be remembered as saving the country from the madness of Trump and the malice of Putin.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…–Trump Audio recording eliminates any defense he had

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 31st, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The denouement of Trump’s defense in the documents scandal came from a New Yorker story by Susan Glasser that, by itself, was utterly horrifying. The story details how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley opposed Trump, both openly and behind the scenes, to stymie Trump’s impulse to launch a full-scale military invasion of Iran.

Milley presumably realized that this would be the greatest military blunder in American history. Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea would all pale next to it. Those were all small, comparatively weak nations and time after time the US sank into a quagmire they eventually lost. Iran is neither small nor weak, and an attack there would almost certainly draw in the Russians. It probably would be the start of World War III. Milley went so far, according to the story, to surreptitiously tell the military to ignore any “illegal orders” that might come from the President.

The story utterly infuriated Trump (OK, for once I can at least understand why he would be pissed). But his endless need to self-justify and his thin skin led him to what perhaps was the most damning error he has made, post-presidency.

Per CNN, “President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.”

The story goes that two writers for Mark Meadows “autobiography” met with Trump at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. That autobiography contains an account where Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.” It’s anyone’s guess if Milley was contradicting himself, or this is just one of the obligatory scenarios the military delight in creating (“What happens if Lower Slobbovia invades Delaware? Or vice-versa?”) but Trump seized on it as proof Milley was lying.

Trump rattled some papers at the interviewers, and said that these were classified documents that showed the truth of the Meadows claims, and he would like to show them to the interviewers, but the documents were classified, so he couldn’t.

How do we know this?

Oh, lord, there are tapes, part XI. The interviewees, with Trump’s knowledge and consent, were recording the meeting. Trump either forgot, or was so irate he simply lost his temper, or both.

And Jack Smith has that tape. Lawdy, lawdy.

I can envision dozens of felony counts awaiting Trump just on the documents case. But for the first time, I think the DoJ has a prima facie case to persecute Trump for espionage. Combined with the probable indictments for the January 6th case (insurrection) and the Georgia vote count (election tampering) Trump’s most likely future will include dying in prison. This one tape demonstrates that Trump was lying about declassifying the documents, or that he COULD declassify them, or that he didn’t know he had them, or that he ever misused them in any way. This tape is more damning than all the Nixon tapes combined, including the infamous missing “14 ½ minutes.”

It came at the same time that Trump revealed just how far his contempt for the Constitution went by vowing to rescind the 14th amendment through executive order. Even Slappy Thomas would have trouble justifying that one. Trump is irked that the constitution specifies that anyone born in the territories of the US are American citizens, including babies who don’t speak English. (That would be most of them, I would hazard.)

He also threw his weight behind preventing the impeachment of Ken Paxton in Texas who was, of course, promptly impeached. It shows how weak his grasp on the party has become, even as the marching morons continue to chant his praises.

Trump legally, is a dead man walking. He won’t be a candidate in 2024 because he will be in prison. He may still claim to be a candidate, but his campaign will be as quixotically ridiculous as the one run by Lyndon LaRouche back about 30 years ago. The Republicans who, under Trump, let the lunatic fringe take over their party are in such disarray that they will have severe trouble coming up with any candidate at all. They may no longer even be a single discrete party at that point.

The voting on the debt ceiling limit is taking place as I write this, and its passage is extremely likely. For a small number of concessions, Biden got the Republicans to throw away the only real weapon they still possessed, eliminating the debt ceiling until after the 2024 election. Yes, Biden is smarter than the GOP—combined. I was of the strong opinion that Biden shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, but the implications of this agreement please even me. Biden lost a couple of minor skirmishes, but won the war. The same Republicans who had been howling that Biden was so senile and/or incompetent he couldn’t find his trousers just learned they lost their own pants in a poker match against him.

I’m starting to feel hope that America is going to survive Trump, and MAGA, and Qanon.

In any event, the next few weeks should be entertaining as all hell.

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.

Drumpf’s Kampf — Trump no longer echoes Hitler; he channels him.

Drumpf’s Kampf

Trump no longer echoes Hitler; he channels him.

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 5th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I guess it was only a matter of time before Trump started sounding like the Big Bad in a poorly translated anime series. The demagoguery and megalomania reached Hitlerian proportions at his speech at the lightly-attended CPAC convention last night.

2016 habe ich erklärt: Ich bin deine Stimme, ich bin dein Krieger. Ich bin eure Gerechtigkeit. Und für diejenigen, denen Unrecht getan und betrogen wurde: Ich bin eure Vergeltung.”

OK, Hitler would have screamed it better. He was, after all, a superb orator, even if he did look goofy to non-German eyes. And of course Trump only has a fourth-grade level vocabulary in English; his German is probably limited to whatever he picked up from watching Hogan’s Heroes.

Granted, my own German is little better. I used translate.com above. What Donald actually screamed to his howling band of insurrectionists was “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution,”

No historian is going to hear that and not immediately think something like, “Oh, holy fuck. If this maniac gets back in office, he’s going to get millions of people killed.” It comes as no surprise that in the past week followers of his have proposed exterminating gays and lesbians, executing doctors who provide gender ID therapy to anyone under 18, and banning opposition political parties.

And Donald wants retribution. Revenge against those forces, within and without, that have betrayed America. Hitler blamed Jews, labor, intellectuals, Communists, socialists, and the media for Germany losing the great war. Trump blames gays, Mexicans, Muslims and the media for him losing the election in 2020. And don’t kid yourself: in his narcissistic mind, him losing an election is as every bit a great tragedy as his nation losing a world war. Perhaps more, because he believes if he fails America will fall because it’s nothing without him.

He went on, “For seven years you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it. We are going to finish what we started. We started something that was a miracle. We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.”

If you read Hitler’s speeches given after his failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and his ascendancy to power in 1933, you’ll see the same sort of verbiage and rhetorical flourishes. The German word for ‘struggle’ is kampf, as in Mein Kampf. Both had missions to make their country great again, including retribution, extermination, elimination of opposition, and throwing off the (imaginary) yoke of victimhood.

It gets worse: “With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers… We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all…We had a Republican party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots and fools but we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Jeb Bush.”

The use of “globalists” is interesting. As the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt put it, “Where the term originates from is a reference to Jewish people who are seen as having allegiances not to their countries of origin like the United States, but to some global conspiracy.”

Trump went on, “And you’re going to have world war three, by the way. We’re going to have world war three if something doesn’t happen fast. I am the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent world war three.” Just like Hitler promised to avoid further wars and undo the damage of The Great War. And about as likely.

He then made the absurd promise, “Before I arrive in the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine ended… I know what to say.” OK, so why doesn’t he say it? Even ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who have died and the vast destruction, there’s the fact that his good buddy Putin has his tail stuck in a crack over this war he started, and if he wasn’t in that position, he would be much more likely to help Donald win like he did in 2016.

He finished with, “We have no choice, this is the final battle. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever.”

If he somehow crawls back into power, America will be lost forever, and I, along with most of you reading this, will be dead. Count on it. You can nearly see him building the death camps in his mind as he creates his vision of a Trumpian utopia in which white America takes over the world and only the evangelicals are permitted to vote.

He gave America a warning every bit as clear as the ones Hitler gave prior to 1933. And Germans at that time were better educated and more politically savvy than Americans are today. And still they fell to that madman. Can America do better?

One thing that might save us: Hitler was only 44 when he seized power. Trump will be 78 in 2024. And he’s clearly not in good shape. Nature, rather than resolve, may be what saves America in the end.

McCarthy to Carlson to Lindell — An Infield from Hell

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 26th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” – Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

You have to wonder how many deaths Kevin McCarthy will suffer before Death,the real one, takes pity on the pathetic little sod and hauls his craven, twitching little ass away. It really would be a mercy at this point; I honestly cannot think of an individual in the entire scope of American history whose personal cowardice even approaches that of McCarthy.

He became Speaker, not because he was resolute and stood firm for what was right; the GOP wanted him because he was never either of those things in his entire political life. The extremists in the MAGA caucus knew he had the spine of a jellyfish and the ethical standards of a sewer rat. The rest of the GOP, not exactly great American heroes themselves, knew the bigots and traitors of the extreme right would block any other nominee.

There have been many instances in American history where groups of opposing views have agreed on a least objectionable candidate. Political conventions are famous for such. The results are usually either bad (Alf Landon),or mediocre (Hubert Humphrey), and sometimes the unobjectionable nebbish turns out to be a lion. (Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and now, it seems, Joe Biden).

This is a far rarer situation, where a rump party minority holds out for the MOST objectionable candidate, and will accept no alternatives. I’ve tried to find instances in history where this has happened and come up short. Short of invading countries installing puppet rulers (American products included a number of regimes in Central and South America), the closest I can think of would be Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both chosen explicitly by their party because they were easy to control and put a pleasant smile in front of an ugly reality.

With McCarthy, even the pretense of decency and resolve is completely missing. They didn’t want someone to look pretty for the cameras; they wanted someone who would do whatever the fuck he was told and not even hesitate.

When he was giving away the store to the lunatics of the far right in order to get the fifteen votes he so desperately needed in order to become elected speaker, he told them he would release all the video tapes from the Capital area that recorded the events of January 6th, 2021. That would be 41,000 hours of video recordings from over 5,000 cameras that explicitly showed all the emergency protocols used to protect members of the government on that day, both known and confidential.

If McCarthy had just released them to the press, that would have been a grave act of irresponsibility. Some of those recordings would show how to assassinate members of Congress by revealing the protective steps taken when dealing with a hostile invader. Anyone who hates America and the American government will love getting access to the information on those tapes.

But McCarthy didn’t do that: he released the tapes to Tucker Carlson.

Carlson isn’t even remotely a journalist. He is a propagandist, a paid liar, and a stooge for the far right. He’s a fascist and a demagogue, and recent revelations have shown incontrovertibly that he will cheerfully destroy the United States in the name of ratings and a small modicum of power. He’s quite possibly the sleaziest and most reprehensible character McCarthy could have picked. Carlson, of course, is the darling of the lunatics who made McCarthy’s speakership possible. And McCarthy, in an action so craven it would appall Doctor Smith of the old Lost in Space television show, gave Carlson exclusive rights to the footage.

Enter Mike Lindell. You know. The pillow guy. He has two things in common with Carlson. He’s getting sued for defamation by Dominion Voting, and he is Carlson’s equal as a journalist. Basic arithmetic, that: zero equals zero. The only real difference is that Lindell, who is something of a crackpot, apparently genuinely believes the election was stolen from Donald Trump in 2020. Carlson, of course, never believed a word of that.

So Lindell is now suing McCarthy, arguing that he has at least as much right to those video recordings as Carlson does. (Again, true. 0=0).

I suspect there are going to be many such suits filed. The Proud Boys will want those tapes. So will the Oath Keepers, Qanon, Al Qaida, Putin, and Xi. You never know when you might need information making it easy to wipe out most elected officials in Washington in one fell swoop.

McCarthy will eventually face civil and criminal charges for his actions. He belongs in prison for at least twenty years just for the security breaches. His actions, giving sensitive national security date to a hostile party (and Carlson has proven his hostility to the United States) border on treason.

McCarthy belongs in a prison cell, one next to Donald Trump’s.

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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