No Labels, No Brains — They’ll appeal to Never Trumpers, and nobody else

No Labels, No Brains

They’ll appeal to Never Trumpers, and nobody else

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 12th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Progressives have been all a-flutter over the so-called “moderate movement” calling itself “No Labels.” In fact, it’s neither moderate nor a movement. It lacks a platform, a goal, a focus, identifiable leadership or, for that matter, actual followers. I don’t think it even has House or Senate candidates yet.

The fuss ratcheted up this week when Joe Manchin (D-Coal) announced he wouldn’t be running for office again. Rumors immediately started that he would be the lead presidential candidate for the No Hopers instead of ancient Joe Lieberman (D-AIPAC). This would surely split the Democratic vote, giving Trump a second term even if he only got 38% of the vote, like Lincoln did. (Astute readers will note that I don’t perceive any other similarities between Trump and Lincoln, starting with the fact that Lincoln didn’t look like a Kewpie Doll mated with a Bratwurst).

Of course, Manchin has no popularity at all with any Democrats outside of West Virginia. He’s no more popular than Joe Lieberman or Kyrsten Sinema. He, like those other two, is a corporate creature, more likely to vote with the Heritage Foundation than with Joe Biden. The Foundation (which I often refer to as the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues) had considerable sway in the Democratic Party starting with Bill Clinton, when the “New Democratic” wave embraced the stances of moderate Republicans and weakened labor and consumer rights and gave big business free rein.

Adopting “Reaganomics Lite” worked out about the way Reaganomics did, and now the bloom has fallen off that particular rose. You may have noticed that labor unions have staged a huge comeback in recent years, and voter approval of unions has risen from a low in the high thirties twenty years ago to the mid seventies now. Largely successful attacks on women’s rights, voter rights, and the rights of minorities have sharpened focus on the realization that the American right is no ally to the American people. Even if you don’t care about women, voters or minorities, you have to be pretty damned daft not to realize that they will come for you next.

Being pro-business isn’t a great voter draw when most voters are realizing that big business is not their friend and savior.

Joe Manchin would be running as the Heritage Foundation candidate, which means he’ll be effectively be the Libertarian candidate, and he’ll stay very quiet about civil rights, income equality, and the rights of workers and consumers. He’ll be in the extremely awkward position of hoping the zealots and neo-nazis will continue to loudly identify with Trump whilst secretly voting for him, which isn’t very likely.

In theory, Joe Lieberman is supposed to draw the Jewish vote, but I don’t think he did that very well in 2000 when he was Al Gore’s running mate. I suspect most American Jews who voted Democratic looked at Lieberman, held their noses, and voted for Al Gore because they liked Al Gore. And now his perceived ties to Netanyahu will flat-out alienate him from most Jews and a large majority of Democratic voters. Even if the slaughter in Gaza ended tomorrow, it’s the sort of thing voters will remember a year later. There was a time when supporting Netanyahu meant you were pro-Israel and thus one of the good guys, but Netanyahu’s viciousness and corruption has made that a thing of the past.

Speaking of viciousness and corruption, there’s the matter of Trump. The media are frantically pretending that he isn’t just viable, but the only possible candidate the Republicans will have next year. That makes several large assumptions. First, there’s the very real possibility that Trump will be appealing several large felony convictions before the election, if not flat-out in jail. If some idiot tries to shoot one of the judges or court officials and then blabs that he did it for Trump, Trump’s odds of staying out of prison effectively drop to zero. Trump might say something under oath that will really finish him off, legally, such as boasting that he sold national secrets to Putin. That might sound like an insane thing for him to do, but that’s another issue in itself that I’ll get to in a minute. Two minutes, if you’re a slow reader.

Second, the fiasco that is the House of Representatives may alienate millions of voters from the GOP. They’ve tried like hell to blame Democrats for that insane mess, but that hasn’t worked. If they blow it with the budget next week (and I’m as close to certain as I will ever get that they will) voters will know it was they who fucked things up. Blaming the bad economy on the Democrats won’t work.

Third, public outrage over such things as the Dobbs decision and gerrymandering isn’t going away, and the No Labels crowd don’t dare take a stand on those. Remember, they want to play footsie with the MAGAts and don’t want to piss them off without sounding like the Me-Tooers running against Trump in the GOP.

Third is the matter of age. Manchin is mentally and physically in far better shape than Trump, but he’s no spring chicken. He was born in 1947, which means he’ll be 77 next year. Trump, if he’s still alive, will be 79, and Biden 81. Guess which of the three I think is in the best shape, physically and mentally? Bingo! In one. Biden, of course. Manchin is close. Trump isn’t.

As for Trump, if he isn’t dead or in jail, there’s a possibility he’ll be drooling in a wheelchair and slapping irritably but ineffectually at the day nurse who is trying to feed him his Ensure. The man is in bad shape and declining rapidly. When he isn’t insisting that he’s still the President, he now seems to think Obama is still the President.

His speeches are getting wilder and nastier. He’s actually using some of the same language that Hitler used, saying that liberals and socialists are “vermin” who need to be eradicated. His followers may be the biggest bunch of dumb bastards in American history, but at least some of them are going to notice just how dangerously erratic he has become, and look to Manchin as an alternative.

So: let’s assume a three way race next year. The Greens aren’t going to matter, especially since Biden has adopted a lot of their platform, and the No Labels will make the Libertarians redundant. Three candidates: Biden, Trump, Manchin.

Trump maght get about 30% of the vote. His ceiling is 35%, and his floor is about 20%, assuming he stays out of jail and is still capable of running. Manchin might get 10% of the Democratic vote, and it’s reasonable to assume he’ll get the Never-Trumper Republican vote. So he might get 30% of the vote. Maybe. Americans generally don’t like third party candidates, and if the No Labels party don’t get cracking and get candidates in all 435 Congressional races and 34 Senate races, then their presidential candidate will be a no-hoper fluke, doomed even if he could somehow win.

That leaves Biden with a rock-bottom minimum of 40% of the vote, and that’s assuming a sour economy and the House getting its act together, if too late for the economy. Realistically, the vote would probably go 60-25-15 and Biden would win 40 states. Most of the independent voters would go for him, and Manchin will peel off far more Republican votes than Democratic.

So ignore the pundits who say Manchin has doomed Biden and the Democrats. The opposite is true.

This election remains Biden’s to lose.

“The Lady Said ‘No’” — Voters reject abortion and book bans, zealot rule, and Trump

The Lady Said ‘No’”

Voters reject abortion and book bans, zealot rule, and Trump

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 9th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Off-off-year elections usually don’t make the front page, other than in the local areas and handful of states where they occur. Normally there’s little reason to care if some state you never plan to live in wants to amend their constitution, or a congressional district is voting to replace a deceased member of the House. In normal times, school board elections are of little interest, even in the school districts in which they occur. It’s not uncommon for a winner to be elected with less than 5% of the eligible vote, even when the local high school football team is losing. Normally a typical voter wouldn’t be able to name a single member of his own State Supreme Court, or even if the members were elected or appointed. Said voter might remember something or other about someone running for judge unopposed. Fratzweiner, something like that. Boy judge or girl judge? Can’t remember if a vote was cast or not.

But these are fraught times, with America facing an ongoing coup from the far right. And as has happened before in history, the haters of democracy and freedom are trying to use those very foundations of society in order to rid themselves of democracy and freedom. So voters were confronted with religious zealots who want to ban abortion, books, and even science. They had to choose between little Trump clones and never-Trumpers. There were even candidates who openly stated that the voters should have no role on the candidates or issues upon which they were running for votes.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars from right wing propaganda pits (aka the National Associations of Zealots and Ideologues) and thousands of air-time hours spend by the Lord Haw-Haws and Tokyo Roses from the far right, and the threats, open and implied, from Trump and the MAGAts, the voters slapped down the far right resoundingly.

In Ohio, voters amended the state constitution to ensure the right to safe and legal abortions by a whopping half-million votes, 56.6% to 43.4%. Only a long-overdue measure to legalize cannabis for personal use was more popular (it got 57% of the vote). In Kentucky, the Democratic governor Andy Bashear, who was elected by a 5,000 vote margin in 2019, walloped his opponent, Daniel Cameron, by 67,000 votes. Cameron pretended to be a “moderate” on abortion, offering a horrible ‘split the baby’ compromise of banning abortion after 15 weeks. Worse, he tried to be a McConnell corporate fascist AND a Trump neo-Nazi at the same time, which only exacerbated the rift between Republicans who want to destroy the United States and Republicans who merely want to own it.

Even infamous Shasta County followed the trend. I was a bit surprised they had results, given they were insisting on hand-counting votes at last word (the state had ordered them to use the machines, which may be the totals reported unofficially). But then, only 6,000 votes were cast. In any event, Casey Bowden, a moderate who said he’s focused on giving teachers confidence to do their jobs, handily beat Camille King a “parental rights” advocate by a 58-42 margin.

In Kentucky, Democrats not only maintained control of the Senate, but took back the House.

Two states bucking the tide were Mississippi, where being related to Elvis Presley wasn’t enough (Republican Tate Reeves beat the Tupelo Honey 51-47) and Maine, which resoundingly rejected creation of a public-owned electric utility.

But mostly it was rejection of authoritarians and Republicans in general across the board. Moms for Liberty, the anti-trans book-banning hate group had been an ascendant force in 2022, and now found themselves on the losing end in over 60% of the school board races they participated in. Quite a few of the losers were running as incumbents.

Republican reaction was about what you might expect. Trump blamed McConnell in particular and RINOs in general, even though Trump-backed and Trump-supporting candidates performed even more dismally than the “mainstream” Republican candidates. MAGAts claimed the GOP was too moderate and needed to bear down on electing Trump, eliminating separation of church and state, banning abortion AND birth control, and imprisoning criminals, including refugees, Palestinians, and members of the FBI or IRS. One GOP candidate in NY who lost by a 70-20 margin howled that all Jews should leave New York City immediately because the Nazis had won. Mental health may have been an issue there.

The New York Times trying to game the elections with an amazingly fortuitous Siena polls just days before the election that claimed Trump was leading Biden in six key states, all of which Biden had won in 2020. Siena is a privately owned college (by the Franciscans) and I was unable to find their methodology beyond a claim that 600 where interviewed in each state, and a bland assurance that it was evenly spread to reflect the population at large, neither of which inspire much confidence in the accuracy of the poll.

But boy, I bet it sold newspapers and got lots of visits to the NYT website! Long time readers will recall that the Times flat out lied about the results of a in-depth survey of the vote count in Florida in 2000, and of course cheer-led and lied about the run-up to war with Iraq a couple of years later. An “independent” poll showing spectacular if problematic results gives them hits and plausible deniability, all at once. Win-win!

But it seems the voters weren’t interested in such efforts to pump up Trump and the GOP, and resoundingly rejected both.

Meltdown — Making our brains run in slime

Meltdown

Making our brains run in slime

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 24th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Some cheeky sort named “Anotherdumblib” posted this on Truth Social today: “First the Kraken, then the Cheeseball, and now Tell Us Ellis. $5,000 fine, five years probation, gotta write a letter of apology, and some community service. Fani Willis has to be pretty happy right now.” That should push Donnie’s diastolic into the triple digits.

He hasn’t been doing well lately. The other day, he confused Turkey and Hungary. Granted, he’s getting on, and the nurse probably forgot to give him his Ensure before he went on stage and started babbling. He KNOWS Turkey is in Argentina and Hungary is a Canadian province. He was just feeling peckish, is all.

But his mind is still ticking like one of those boxes where you turn the crank and a clown pops out. He was, according to himself, the first to ever notice that the abbreviation for the United States and the pronoun “us” were spelled exactly the same! Ha! Top THAT, Neil Degrasse-Tyson!

That Jenna Ellis became the third of Trump’s lawyers to cop a plea in the Georgia election tampering case and, like Powell and Cheseboro, got slaps on the wrist, bodes very poorly for our Donnie. Those three, among them, pretty much know where ALL the bodies are buried.

I doubt Trump is going to be the Republican candidate next year. In fact, I’m not sure that party will even HAVE a candidate. Or rather, several versions of the party, all calling themselves “The REAL Republican Party” will have candidates. I mean, look at the House. These are the same pack of clowns who have to figure out who their presidential candidate should be—and the main guy is now very clearly going down in flames. One of the candidates—probably a pro-Israel holocaust-denying civil libertarian who wants Jesus to run the country and birth control outlawed—might win pluralities in some place like Oklahoma or Idaho, but essentially, Biden will run unopposed. Not that I think Biden hasn’t earned a second term, but one-party rule is a bad thing, even if it’s the party with the grown-ups.

The Republicans who aren’t convulsing in the House are planning another unwatched shouty match. NBC, who really should know better, will be carrying it. I don’t plan to watch, but the expressions on Rachel Maddow’s face afterward should be entertaining as hell. Imagine the look on King Charles’ face if you walked up to him and offered to slip a live trout down his pants. Yeah. That expression. Rachel is sane and intelligent. Sane and intelligent people shouldn’t have to deal with Republican candidates. In fairness, the king of England shouldn’t have to deal with people like me, who suggest accosting the royal personage with fish.

The debate is going to be streamed exclusively by Rumble, a place that brags that it is home to people too disgusting and bent for any of the other streaming services. Lots of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and conspiracy theories. One of the sponsors of the debate is an outfit called “The Republican Jewish Coalition” which apparently is fine with a venue that is holocaust-denying (except for the ones who are pro-holocaust) and Hitler-praising. Yeah, that seems like an apt site for the GOP to engage in Jewish outreach.

Between Russia’s inept invasion of Ukraine, and the vicious attack by Hamas on Israel followed by the even more vicious Netanyahu retaliation, the world is teetering on the brink of a possible global war. But Vivek Ramaswamy thinks this is a good time for the US to pull out of NATO, and maybe the UN, as well. Because, like the GOP in the late 1930s, this iteration also believes the best way to deal with those foreign dictators they admire so much (they make the trains run on thyme, you know, very aromatic) is to embrace isolationism. Vivek isn’t the only Republican who feels that way, of course. Most of the ones getting their strings pulled by the rapidly-dwindling Trump profess the same nonsense.

Putin is continuing his not-so-subtle sabre-rattling, and is now threatening to pull out of the 1963 test ban treaty. But Donnie and his crowd still worship Putin. He makes the trains run in rhyme, you know, very poetic.

Meanwhile, there’s this: Dr Christopher Wolf, at Oregon State University (OSU) in the US and a lead author of the report, [told the Guardian]: “Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from Earth than it can safely give, we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and freshwater.

“By 2100, as many as 3 billion to 6 billion people may find themselves outside Earth’s livable regions, meaning they will be encountering severe heat, limited food availability and elevated mortality rates.”

We won’t need to wait until 2100. Our current “Super El Nino” is building, and this winter should see weather that will displace millions of people and kill thousands. Meanwhile, south of the equator, this summer should be a real horror show. About the only thing in Australia not at risk of burning is Ayer’s Rock (now called Uluru, but since Australians voted last week to not give Aboriginals full citizenship, perhaps they’ll show the same grace and charm of our Republicans and change the name back to the British appellation.)

Grim times, yes. You a gotta laugh, right? It’s that, or walk into a jet intake.

Hm. I wonder if we can convince Donnie to wear a longer tie when he’s around Trump Farce One. Or would that suggestion just get me a visit from the Secret Service?

Who Will Drive the Clown Car? — Kev’s self-destruction was pretty awesome

Who Will Drive the Clown Car?

Kev’s self-destruction was pretty awesome

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 4th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

In the wake of the breakthrough on the budget impasse just last Saturday, I entertained the thought that the agreement might have created enough goodwill between then-Speaker McCarthy and the Democratic caucus that they might save him from the inevitable motion to vacate. The Dems were considering telling McCarthy, “Just negotiate with us openly and in good faith, and work to avoid the next budget crisis in mid-November, and we’ll provide enough votes to negate the MAGA caucus.”

In a sane era, that would have been a pretty good bet.

But Kevin McCarthy is almost fantastically stupid. Instead of building bridges, he went on “Meet the Press” (a former news show that now seems to serve only as a way for right wingers to take enough rope to hang themselves) and blamed the Democrats for the impasse leading to the budget crisis. It was, as so many things McCarthy says, deeply dishonest, and any support Dems may have had to save him from his own lunatic fringe evaporated. A politician who doesn’t keep his word is of little value in the House, and McCarthy had burned his last bridge. Furious Dems openly called him a snake who couldn’t be trusted, and they were right.

They voted unanimously for the motion to vacate, grinning and remembering the line from “The Art of War”: When your foe is making a mistake, let him.

So Matt Gaetz and his scummy crew joined with the Democrats and voted Kevin out of office, the first time in American history that a Speaker had been fired. (A lot of Speakers, always Republican, end up quitting rather than answering for major personal scandals up to and including child sexual abuse. The only recent exception to that was Paul Ryan, who realized what a confederacy of dunces his party had become and quit in disgust.)

With nobody driving the clown car that is the House, Patrick McHenry (R-NC) became a straw speaker, with the title “Speaker Pro Tempore” which loosely translates to “Christ, can we find anyone stupid enough to take this impossible job?” Patty immediately proved that he is, in fact, like so many Republicans these days, a massive cunt. With the House grippled in crisis, his first order was to tell Nancy Pelosi (who didn’t vote on the motion to vacate because she was attending Diane Feinstein’s funeral) that she had “to vacate her Capitol Hill offices by tomorrow.” The missive, which Patty didn’t have the guts to sign, continued, “Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed.” It was petty, it was vicious, and it proves that, as I said, McHenry is a cunt.

That’s probably about as close to any constructive activity we’re going to see from the GOP’s self-decapitated caucus.

There are rumors that enough mainstream Republicans are so fed up with the MAGA caucus that they may move to expel Matt Gaetz from their caucus. They probably could team up with Democrats and expel him from the House, but it wouldn’t really solve the problem.

The GOP are hagridden with nasty anti-American nuts, and getting rid of the most visible dirtbag won’t solve the problem.

There are now three leading candidates for the Speaker of the House. Jim Jordan, one of the most loathsome creatures in the House, a vicious and loud bully with a dark cloud over him of a history of at best turning a blind eye to sexual abuse in the phys-ed department of the college he ran. Steve Scalise is also running, and has described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” That’s a bit like self-describing as “Charlie Manson without the notoriety.” Even if it didn’t suggest unspeakable vileness about Scalise’s attitudes towards African-Americans (Duke was a KKK Grand Wizard), it’s not a link most people would welcome. Scalise’s main redeeming feature is that somebody shot him.

The third possible candidate is none other than Donald J. Trump. Several Republicans are promoting him. The supporters are, as you might expect, utterly servile and cringing, as befits lackeys of the Trumpster. Even as he was disgracing himself in court, shouting that he had a right to a jury trial that his lawyers had waived on his behalf, and threatening officers of the court, his sad little supporters agreed he was “America’s finest president” and deserved to be Speaker. Just two bullets and he would be back in the White House, right?

But the Republicans have a little problem there: Rule 26. It’s a Republican rule (which means a rule they can ignore unless someone notices) that states that anyone with indictments and facing more than two years in jail cannot serve as Speaker. Ooops. Republicans really are masters at passing rules that are meant to limit everyone else that end up with them clotheslining themselves. It’s a talent.

Meanwhile, the House opened today and immediately adjourned, because…the Speaker wasn’t there. Until the Republicans figure out something they (and perhaps enough Democrats) can agree on, the House is paralyzed.

But no worries: I’m sure Kevin will find a way to blame Pelosi for that.

History Warns Us — But what do we hear?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
September 30th, 2023
www.zeppscommentaries.online

In 2017 there was a pitch-black dark comedy called The Death of Stalin. A scalpel-sharp political satire, it pasquinaded the utter madness and viciousness that accompanies the decline of all authoritarian governments. It was the age of Stalin at its ultimate. The metronome in the background was the sound of people who were guilty of being accused of anything or nothing being dragged into interrogation cells and shot. At the higher levels of power, the arena of government management, both legal and extralegal, played out like a kindergarten recess where all the children are armed with AR-15s and grenades. With people like Steve Buscemi and Michael Palin it’s side-splittingly funny from the comfort of your living room and if you don’t think too hard about the reality of what you are watching. You can stream a free and legal version of the film at Tubi.
Anyone with even an ordinary understanding of history is going to feel a bit of disquiet while watching the movie. You see, while it’s clearly a parody, it isn’t an exaggeration. While the end of the Stalin era was marked by spasmodic and insane viciousness, the entire era of Stalin was one of persecution, genocide, blind obedience to mad authority, wholesale wasting of lives, and willful blindness by the millions who witnessed all this and said nothing.
But it’s not unique to Stalinism. Quite the opposite. It is a set-in-stone feature of all authoritarian regimes. All of them. No exceptions. All authoritarian structures have the cruelty and insanity that was so evident during the reign of Stalin. It doesn’t matter if they are theocracies, absolute monarchies, fascist or dictatorship, or political or social movements that keep leadership unaccountable to the followers and citizenry. They all become corrupt, brutal, insensate, and intolerant of any dissent of any kind. No exceptions.
The reason is that the coin of such realms is money and power. Nothing else. And those drawn to serve in such regimes are the very worst people for such positions. They are people who value money and power and nothing else. The power struggles are inevitable, and rapidly become no-holds-barred destructive frenzies on incurring court favor and amassing an ever-greater unassailable authority.
Quite often such regimes are “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” as Winston Churchill famously described the machinations of the Kremlin during the Stalin era. The only times we get a look at their inner workings are during their ascendancy, and when they collapse. Hitler ran for office in the 1920s and wrote a book in prison that made no effort to hide his plans for genocide and war. That Nazism devolved into utter lunacy in short order came as no real surprise to historians, who have an endless parade of tyrants and movements and churches they could compare the Nazi regime to. A good correlation to Death of Stalin would be Downfall (Der Untergang) 2004 film by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Source of thousands of “Hitler Finds Out” memes, the movie detailed the final days of the Nazi regime. Again, available to watch for free on Tubi. Not intended as a comedy, but eerily similar, because the pathology of the social phenomenon is essentially identical.
Stalin, while in his role of “Lenin’s left foot” wrote in Marxism and the National Question this summation: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” You don’t have to squint very hard to see the bones of “Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer” behind that thought. The {collective, state, church} above all, accountable only to itself.
Authoritarians usually make no real secret of what they are or what their plans are for you. But they wrap the malice in conspiracy theories and claims that you are the victim of enemies, real and imagined, inside or outside your nation. Most Americans are familiar with the hatred Republicans spit at single moms for daring to ask for help raising their kids, and blandly ignore the trillions stolen by the plutocratic class.
Accountability is the key element. It always has been. Freedom and social progress began only when leaders and prelates and governments had to become accountable for their actions. In the west, it began in 1215, when the King was forced to adopt the Magna Carta, making him responsive to the nobility. It culminated in 1789 with the Constitution, which set out to make the government the design of the people, and very deliberately worked to keep religious entities and the aristocracy out of power. It had mixed results, but it enabled Americans to largely avoid the madness and brutality of autocracy for 200 years. It was an ongoing process, of course. In the beginning, less than 10% of the population actually had rights.
It leaves Americans unprepared for the rise of an authoritarian movement, and even with a half-century of warning signs, most don’t recognize the GOP, hagridden with fascists, plutocrats, dominionists and libertarians, for the extreme danger that it is. Many believe that they lie for you, cheat for you, steal for you, kill for you, to protect your freedoms. It isn’t even intentional dishonesty on their part, usually. It’s willful blindness, denialism carried to an extreme. There are people who earnestly believe Donald Trump is being crucified for us. Most supporters blandly ignore the embrace of racism, deliberate cruelty, and outright Nazism, and parrot the propaganda about how the GOP is conservative, patriotic, and beholden to God.
When you watch the destructive nihilism of Republicans trashing the economy deliberately in a vain effort to pass cruel and draconian laws, or seeking to imprison women for the crime of not wanting to be pregnant, or staging the farcical and inane kangaroo court like the “Biden Impeachment hearings” remember Hitler and Stalin and many others, who made it crystal clear what they were, and what they would become if they seized power. The GOP want to be the Fourth Reich, the new Soviet State.
Denialism stretches to insane lengths. I began by discussing Russia in the throes of the death of Stalin. I’ll return there, only not as seen through the lens of a satire, but from a very grim reality, one described by a master eyewitness of that era, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The acclaimed novelist was, like millions of other Soviet citizenry, incarcerated in Stalin’s vast Gulag prison system (the book itself is part one of “The Gulag Archipelago”). He was there doing a ten-year stretch for “Anti-Soviet Agitation.” The so-called ASA laws allowed the state to imprison anyone for pretty much anything, or nothing at all. One of his cellmates was a peasant, learning to write. He had been taught to sign his name, and, proud of this new accomplishment, signed it wherever he could put pen to paper. One of the papers he used was the daily Pravda, and he signed his name across a picture of Stalin that happened to be there. His party block captain noticed. Ten years, ASA.
Solzhenitsyn was in prison with thousands of others that day in 1953 when news of Stalin’s death was broadcast. These were people whose lives had been destroyed, usually unfairly and often capriciously, and all knew people who had been ground to death under the wheels of the Soviet state. Many had seen the unbelievable carnage that ensued when Stalin attempted to stop the German army behind walls of bloody splintered bones that had been the pride of the Soviet Union. Millions more perished because of the mad agricultural polices of Lysenkoism.
You might think the prisoners all erupted in joy over the death of the man who had ruined their lives and murdered so many of their family and friends. But no! They wept! They wailed! They mourned the loss of this despot as if their own fathers had died (and in many cases, Stalin had caused the deaths of their own fathers!). There was an orgy of unfeigned and unstaged grief, totally genuine. Stalin was the state. He was the father figure. He was the kindly ruler who sometimes had to do hard things for the sake of his people. His victims wept, not for themselves and their loved ones, but for their loss of Stalin.
In the GOP, we find history has repeated itself. These people are showing us what they are, and anyone with any knowledge of history knows what they will do. Without restraint, and without limits, seeing cruelty as strength and freedom as a threat to their authority. Their coin is the frightfulness of madness, the inexorability of blind authority. They want to crush you. They will crush you, and they will work hard to persuade you to praise them as they do so.
Watch the Republicans, and see them for the horrible danger they are.

* * *

The Libertarian Party, and its fascist leaders, are one of the main reasons madness has taken over the Republican party and threatens to destroy all of us. Thom Hartmann, the renowned columnist, has a pair of deeply insightful pieces on the rise of this evil empire.

How Libertarianism is a poison that’s crept into America

And

As Republicans begin phony ‘impeachment hearings’ Democrats are ignoring real crimes

 

The Mugshot — Churchill, by Kubrick

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 24th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The Trump mugshot was a shot seen ’round the world. Few who have seen it have been able to avoid interpreting the lowered-head scowl of Trump, seen variously as being in a fit of psychotic rage, scared to death, or defiant.

A meme all over social media mentions “the Kubrick glare,” or “the Kubrick stare.” It’s a favorite way the famed director Stanley Kubrick had of portraying one of his lead actors in a state of decompensation and sheer malice, described as “a heavy-browed look of insanity”. Think of Jack in The Shining. Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. For the first two actors mentioned (Jack Nicholson and Malcolm McDowell) they became career-defining images, and doubtlessly those demented glares contributed to the success of their films.

It probably wasn’t the look Trump was aiming for. His followers insist the look is one of defiance, and I suspect that was what he had in mind. And he based that on another iconic and world-famous photograph of a politician, the “Thundering Lion” image of Sir Winston S. Churchill.

The picture shows a seated Churchill glowering at the camera, and many people have inferred, from the time the photograph was taken (December 30th, 1941) that Churchill was trying to project courage and defiance.

Indeed, Churchill wanted to project that. While Britain had successfully fended off the planned German invasion (The Battle of Britain, aka “The Blitz”) some six months earlier, Churchill knew that he had to get the Americans to join in because otherwise the respite was only temporary. So he went to his ally, Canada, (at that point already actively fighting alongside Britain for two years) to harden resolve in the Canadian parliament, and by extension, persuade a reluctant US Congress.

Churchill did give a characteristically marvelous speech to the House of Commons, a speech famed in itself for his disparaging comments about the Petain regime in semi-occupied France. (“When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Some chicken! Some neck!”) But it is that image that is instantly recognized over 80 years later. (The signed original hung in Ottawa’s famed Château Laurier until December of 2020, when someone stole it.)

But defiance wasn’t what Churchill was trying to project when Yousuf Karsch snapped his shutter. It was more along the line of baffled, incredulous outrage over a sudden act of temerity against the Prime Minister.

Churchill had one of his stogies going, and Karsch didn’t want the smoke obscuring the image. He asked Churchill if he would set the cigar aside. Churchill refused. So just before the camera went off, Karsch darted in and snatched the cigar right out from Churchill’s mouth! What the camera caught was a look of amazed shock on Churchill’s face.

Yes, cameras lie. The image became synonymous with British resolve and cemented Churchill’s image as a heroic figure facing down the Nazi foe. You can recreate the photo just by walking up to any random baby and snatching the num-num from its mouth. Although if mum is nearby, you risk, in the words of some unfortunate French general, getting your “neck wrung like a chicken.”

Churchill himself admiringly remarked Karsch could “even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed,” which led, somewhat inexplicably, to the title of the photo.

I think Trump was trying to recreate the image of defiance that Thundering Lion evokes. But like most things Trump, he got it ass backwards. Churchill wasn’t feeling resolute at that instant; he was about to have a tantrum.

Trump wanted to project resolve and defiance. Instead, he looks like he’s about to have a tantrum. Someone stole his num-num.

I suspect that Trump practices a lot of his facial expressions in the mirror. A lot of sociopaths do, in an effort to appear more human and less unco. Trump, however, didn’t practice this one very much. That, or he was so rattled at having his mug shot taken (the emotional equivalent of some commoner ripping a cigar out of his mouth) that he wound up looking like a man who had just plotzed and was hoping his Depends would contain the odor.

It wasn’t his Churchillian moment. It was, if anything, his anti-Churchillian moment. Whatever that grimace was, it wasn’t calm determination. It was the opposite of calm determination. It was a man about to lose his shit.

It was the Kubrick stare, only he wasn’t acting.

Like Nixon Flinging Poo — Trump’s demise is ultimately low comedy

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 25th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Back nearly fifty years ago, my buddy Grunt and I were sitting around in my room/converted garage and just shooting the shit. It was late July, 1974, and it was becoming obvious that the Nixon presidency was drawing to a close. Like nearly everyone, we were wondering What Would Happen Next.

Grunt was of the opinion that Nixon would not go quietly, and gleefully painted a lurid picture of a naked or near naked Nixon, clinging frantically to the top of the highest flagpole over the White House, howling obscenities into the wind as he swayed back and forth, shrieking and flinging his poo at the army helicopters that circled around him.

Mind you, this was back when presidents were supposed to be dignified and present a good example to the nation. Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman were considered shockingly undignified at the time. We thought Nixon was the worst, most blatant criminal to ever occupy the oval office. But at least he tried to hide his wrong-doings. And he even had a moral basement. For instance, as the looming indictments and impeachment grew, he and staff forbade themselves to use the word “pardon” in any context (Gerald Ford didn’t get the memo, apparently) not just because it looked bad, but it crossed a line most of Nixon’s staff were not willing to step over.

It was a different era. Since then, we’ve had Reagan, Bush the lesser and Trump to show that the adage that “anyone can grow up to be president” includes fools, morons, scofflaws and people so poorly trained in social skills that they wouldn’t be able to hold a job pumping gas. People might want an Abraham Lincoln, but they’ll settle for a Zaphod Beeblebrox. Two heads are better than one, right?

But back in 1974, Grunt’s view of the demise of Nixon was outrageously funny. (There may have been some beer involved.) It was about as outside the realm of expected actions as the Pope hitting the local pub, getting pissed and doing a Knees Up Mother Brown whilst wearing an Andy Capp cap. Jerry Lewis playing Atticus Finch.

I should ring Grunt (we talk about once a month anyway) and get his take on the demise of Trump. I know he’s delighted. I never saw him more openly angry then he was when, in the summer of 2016, we discussed the chance of Trump becoming president. We both knew the possibility was real.

But it would be unfair to expect Grunt to match his soliloquy on Nixon. At least, as far as being outrageously and unexpectedly funny. Grunt still has matchless verbal skills.

It’s just that every night now, Trump climbs the Truth Social flag pole and starts screaming and flinging his poo. He screams delusional bluster about how indicting him “will destroy the Joe Biden presidency” and calls for Congress to destroy the FBI, the District Attorneys, and every other legal force that might inconvenience him. He makes open threats, and openly promises pardons to the violent filth that turned out on his behalf on January 6th. He’s showing all the dignity and gravitas of one of the meth clowns in wifebeaters waving 40s who got hauled in on Cops. Mack Sennet comedies usually ended with more gravitas and probity. Trump has reduced American politics and governance to a pie fight.

Grunt won’t be able to match his effort which I remember so vividly a half century later.

Sorry, Grunt. It’s not you. It’s the world that’s changed.

What is truly depressing is how much of America Trump pulled down around him. Oh, his supporters have always existed, and they were always deplorable. Trump just made it easier for them to crawl out from under their rocks. But the GOP has become a self-doomed disgrace. When Trump falls, they will implode. They worshiped Trump, and he gave them the moral equivalent of syphilis.

Will the media have a similar fall? Faux will never recover from the role they played propping up Trump and lying on his behalf. But what about CNN and MSNBC, who even now put in hours pretending the Trump presidential campaign is a real thing and he might be president again? It’s a lie, one that drives up ratings, and they know it’s a lie. They can bloviate all they want about how popular Trump is amongst Republicans, but that is only a quarter of the voting population. The rest want to see the end of him in overwhelming numbers. Sixty percent of voters reject Trump under all circumstances. No candidate can overcome that.

Will the media do their own version of Nixon’s demise as Trump collapses? After all, once he’s in prison and finished, how are they going to attract viewers? More indictments are coming, possibly this week, and some are the sort that will finish any political credibility Trump has remaining. Even his followers are beginning to wise up. Prince Charming just wants to sell Springfield an elevated monorail, and whatever Jesus is doing, even the Jesus that wants to gas transgenders, he isn’t hugging Trump.

It’s a sign of how frantic the right is becoming as they become ever more loud and violent and vicious, hoping to detract from the fall of Trump and hoping that something in their message will appeal to Americans. It explains the flat-out Naziesque cruelty of people like Ron DeSantis or Gregg Abbott, or the increasingly ludicrous Hunter Biden scandal or the Barbie foofooraw. (Yes, Barbie. The doll. Apparently she’s an agent for Pink China.)

Expect lots of monkeys on lots of flagpoles throwing lots of poo.

But watch carefully: Three quarters of the population will be still, and silent, and thoughtful, carefully watching the end of Trump and his diseased movement. They, not the poo-flingers, are what matter.

Trying Times — MAGAts are having the week from hell

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 20th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Well, it’s not a very good day for MAGAts. First, Trump had an absolutely catastrophic interview with, of all people, Brett Baier at Fox News. The following morning, the date and location for his trial was announced: “This case is hereby set for a Criminal Jury Trial during the two-week period commencing August 14, 2023, or as soon thereafter as the case may be called. A Calendar Call will be held at 1:45 p.m. on August 8, 2023. All hearings will be held at Alto Lee Adams, Sr. United States Courthouse, 101 South U.S. Highway 1, Courtroom 4008, Fort Pierce, Florida 34950, with modifications to be made as necessary as this matter proceeds.”

Aileen (the Loose) Cannon will be presiding, and much as she may want to get Trump off the hook, it doesn’t seem likely that she could get away with anything other than a negotiated plea bargain (and even if Trump had enough sense to accept a deal, Jack Smith is unlikely to let him get away with a slap on the wrist.) Her other escape avenue would be to have Trump submit to a competency hearing. In the wake of the Baier interview, a case really could be made for that.

I can just picture MAGAts in their flags and star-spangled panties and such declaring, “He may be a drooling idiot, but by God, he’s OUR drooling idiot.” Voters with three digit IQs who don’t have six or more psychiatric markers might have second thoughts about him.

Then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, they announced a plea bargain in the case against Hunter Biden. According to the Guardian, “Biden, 53, was charged with illegally owning a firearm in 2018 after lying about his drug use when he purchased a gun. Biden was also charged with failing to file and pay taxes in 2017 and 2018, which are misdemeanor offenses. Documents from the Justice Department confirm that Biden will enter a pre-trial diversion agreement for the firearm offense.” Biden probably won’t serve any jail time, although the firearms agreement is likely to result in probation and he may lose the right to vote for a while. But the laptop and the missing 19 tapes and the “special whistleblower” nobody can find all just went away, leaving only the ineffectual nuts to howl their conspiracy theories into the void.

Since I started writing this about a half hour ago, Trump said: “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!” Well, if the system didn’t have serious flaws, Trump would have been in prison many years ago, so there’s that.

James Comer called Biden’s charges a “slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery”. OK, bubbles. Prove it. Oh, you’ve spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars already, and have nothing to show for it? Aw, poor Jimmy. Bit a wooden leg and now his teeth hurt.

Mary Millar, howling nut from Illinois, wrote, “Hunter Biden is receiving a sweetheart deal from the DOJ that shields ‘THE BIG GUY’ Joe Biden from the Biden foreign bribery operation. The cash & diamonds he didn’t pay taxes on came from CHINA, RUSSIA & UKRAINE. No FARA foreign agent charges? TWO SYSTEMS OF JUSTICE!” All the scattershot all caps accusations really make for a convincing case. Yup. Shore do.

I note none of them want to mention that the DA who signed off on the plea deal, David Weiss, was a Trump appointee. Ironically, he wasn’t asked to step down when Joe Biden’s administration started because he was already handling the Hunter Biden case, and it was felt that asking him to resign under the circumstances would be seen as partisan.

So let the nuts scream. The Hunter Biden “case” is dead.

I suspect the saner Republican are all secretly feeling a sense of relief over all this. The Trump trial might loosen his grip on the party and they were facing the prospect of a candidate who 60% of all voters absolutely hated. Granted, the rest of their field is dominated by kooks and vicious Nazis, and they are probably just going to have to suffer a pasting come November, 2024, but they pretty much brought that upon themselves. Trump was already a liability before the Baier interview—now he’s flat-out radioactive.

Trump’s confused and crazy lies were bad enough—even worse than the CNN ‘town hall’ that nearly destroyed that channel. But I can’t imagine how he thought he could go on Faux and announce the 2020 election had been stolen. Baier had 787 million reasons to flatly contradict him, and he did.

And for the first time, Trump actually looked scared. I think he is finally realizing the wheels of justice are not going to let him walk away unscathed.

The trial is going to be complicated. I know a lot of people wanted the trial televised, but I don’t see how that’s possible. I want them to televise whatever they can of it, but there are legitimate complications.

The 37 counts all involve Trump’s mishandling and possible abuse of national security files—some listed as top secret, and even the ones listed as “confidential” have information that could put national interests and assets at risk. But it would be impossible to give Trump a fair trial (which he has an absolute right to) without letting the jury know the exact nature of those documents.

That means the jurors and court officials will all have to have at least temporary national security clearance to handle top secret information. They will probably have to sign an agreement that if they discuss ANY of that with anyone, they will end up in a cell next to Donald’s and probably be there after he dies.

They’ll also have to set up a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) in order to keep the contents of the evidence and testimony pertaining to such evidence secret. They have no choice: the jury MUST know the exact nature of the secrets.

But all the rest can and must be public. MAGAts will never read the transcripts because they have to stay safe in their psychotic little bubble, but fortunately, the large majority of Americans aren’t MAGAts, and they want and deserve to know exactly what is going on, and how a verdict was reached.

And don’t forget: there’s still the felony indictments for the New York tax scheme trial, and pending findings for January 6th and the efforts to overturn the Georgia election.

Trump really is going to be “too busy” for once, and his monkeys are going to wear themselves out screaming about it.

37 Counts — Florida grand jury nails Trump to the wall

37 Counts

Florida grand jury nails Trump to the wall

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 12th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The indictment is utterly damning. I know that pundits world wide have been saying that very thing thousands of times on the vast majority of news outlets around the world, but that’s only because it is so self-evidently true.

Yes, it’s 49 pages long, but it’s double-spaced and with a lot of images and lists, I would be surprised if it contains 8,000 words. Perhaps a dozen pages single-spaced and without images or annotations.

So perhaps a twenty-minute read. And the language is clear and straightforward, lacking either legalese or obfuscation. The laws cited are clear and direct, and the evidence that demonstrates violation of those laws is about as clear as it can possibly be.

Of course, Republicans are refuting it. The very worst of them are making veiled and sometimes not-so-veiled demands for violence and insurrection. Some of them, including a couple of Congressmen, might expect visits from the FBI in the not too distant future. Clay Higgins, in an act bordering on treason, tweeted, “President Trump said he has ‘been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.’ This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this,” he wrote. “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.” Andy Biggs tweeted, “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye.” I doubt either of them will actually lead any kind of armed protest, but if they did, and got arrested by National Guardsmen or Police defending the courthouse, I wouldn’t shed a tear.

Gym Jordan made the amazing claim that Trump declassified the documents before he stole them, which Trump himself directly contradicts on tape. Some of the more-ordinary-but-still-bloody-stupid Republicans are whining about “witch hunts” and how Trump is being persecuted by a “weaponized DoJ.” Most of them aren’t smart enough to come up with their own talking points and get their pretense at knowledgeability from the likes of Tucker Carlson and OANN.

Mind you, these are the same Republicans who demanded the death penalty for Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Katherine Gun, Erin Brockovich, and Julian Assange. They screamed “Lock her up” because they believed Hillary Clinton had secret documents on a server and, with no evidence, that she leaked them. They want a full investigation of Joe Biden over documents, but curiously not for Mike Pence who, like Biden, had some classified materials in his possession, and like Biden, notified the Archives as soon as he realized he had them. Unlike Trump, who concealed them and lied about it.

We don’t know who Trump shared the documents with. We know he liked to boast about possessing them, and we know he had suspicious relationships with the leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom are friends of the United States. We know that the boxes were in areas that weren’t even remotely secure, and we know that Mar-a-Lago was a favorite target for spies familiar with Trump’s fecklessness and corruption.

We also know some of the material in the wrong hands could do immense damage to the United States, and to intelligence and military personnel involved with any of the secret activities the documents detailed.

We also know that Trump will stop at nothing for money or power, and personally, I have no doubt he will gleefully sell us out and do damage to the country for material gain.

Trump’s arraignment is on Tuesday, and I plan on writing another piece after that occurs. While I won’t try to predict the actual court proceedings themselves, I will predict what will become of the crowd that are calling for demonstrations and resistance on Trump’s behalf.

Nothing much.

Oh, a few hundred might turn up, and they might be noisy and even bellicose, but they will be out-numbered, not just by police but by counter-demonstrators chanting “Lock him up.”

The Trump MAGA movement has been slowly deflating over the past year. All the predicted horrors of a Biden tyranny failed to come to pass, and indeed, the economy is in amazingly good shape. We aren’t at war, not even with the Republicans who want war against Americans. Gas stoves aren’t banned, and nor are ICE vehicles. They will be phased out, but that’s called “progress.” Horse and carts didn’t get banned, either, but you don’t see them on the freeways.

Further, Trump’s self-pitying screeches and bellows are getting boring beyond belief. Even his followers are getting bored. It doesn’t help that he turns ANY occasion into a chance to whine about his alleged victimhood. Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Easter, any time people stop to think about things that really matter to them, here’s Donald, whining, trying to make it all about himself. The schtick is as dead as Vaudeville.

And there’s a growing realization that the law really is catching up to him. He was found liable in that defamation case. He has 31 counts arrayed against him in New York State on tax fraud. He has pending indictments under consideration for January 6th and for vote tampering in Georgia.

And Faux News is fully discredited because of it’s lying on his behalf. They still do lie, of course, but they’re a lot more circumspect about it. Like Trump, they still face massive legal sanctions for their behavior surrounding the 2020 election. As for some of the other right-wing flacks and outlets that tried to raise a revolution against democracy and America.

Finally, there’s the fact that a lot of Donald’s remaining followers are certifiable. A lot will stay away because of a conspiracy theory that the feds are holding the arraignment as a trap, with Trump as the honey pot. They’ll round up Trump supporters, the theory goes, and do unspeakable things to them to make them disappear. Something lurid, no doubt, and painful. MAGAts, let your imaginations run wild!

But Tuesday should be, for the rest of us, gratifying, and perhaps a bit amusing. And above all, reassuring. If the law can’t apply here, it is worthless.

A Trifecta Kind of Day — Maybe good things come in threes

A Trifecta Kind of Day

Maybe good things come in threes

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 8th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There were three news stories today that were a refreshing change from the unrelievedly grim news out of such diverse places as the Ukraine, the Canadian North, and Florida.

In ascending order of importance:

Pat Robertson is dead, age 93. This hateful televangelist has been a stain on American discourse for decades, and frankly, I’m glad he’s dead. He had his professed opinion on the nature of the afterlife, and I believe that when you die you simply wink out of existence and revert to the state of being you had for the 14 billion years before you were born. Ironically, he may be lucky if it turns out I was the one who was right.

The second most important story was the federal indictments that the justice department will unseal Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. This is the documents case, and there are reports that they include willful obstruction of justice and violations of the espionage act. The indictments will come from a Florida Grand Jury whose existence was a very well-kept secret until next week. This means the trial will be in Florida, negating Trump’s planned howls that he couldn’t get a fair trial in Washington or New York. The back up plan of course was to pretend the indictments were political and partisan. A Faux News “journalist” wanted to know if there was a REASON this was all happening “in the middle of a presidential election campaign.” I’m told that the respondee was unable to keep a straight face. Propaganda has to have at least a kernel of plausibility among the True Believers, and that one won’t even reach that low bar. To me, it reveals the vacuous desperation of the Republican party. I think Trump will be pretty much reduced to arguing he was innocent of breaking law because he was accused of abusing powers he didn’t actually have.

The most important story was the Supreme Court ruling on Allen v Milligan. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that the redistricting in Alabama was a clear violation of section two of the Voting Rights Act and was discriminatory based on race.

That the redistricting was discriminatory was pretty much indisputable on the face of it, and instead, what Alabama was asking the SC to do was simply junk the law the action violated. This was a step too far for John Roberts, who wrote, “The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew. We find Alabama’s new approach to §2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice. We accordingly decline to recast our §2 case law as Alabama requests.” Brett Kavanaugh joined Roberts in crossing over to the Dark Side (“We have cookies!”).

Nobody thinks for an instant that these two puppets of the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues have had a change of heart and want to uphold Civil Rights in the US. They may have simply realized that the legitimacy of the Court, already in tatters, could collapse entirely with a second incendiary and highly unpopular ruling in the same year. At least they could hide behind stare decisis and explain to those holding their leashes that they had to pretend to uphold case law, at least for now. I don’t trust their motives, whatever they are. But they flat-out declared the redistricting done by the bigots of Alabama to be unconstitutional.

But the results in the short term are monumental. Alabama will have to redraw their districts well before the next election, and further, similar cases in Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia are now effectively decided. That means that four states with 73 electoral votes will have to hurriedly redistrict, and the resulting shifts should create about 20 black-majority districts that didn’t previously exist. While it may not affect the presidential race (all four states have a winner-takes-all for the president candidate with the most votes statewide) it will affect congressional races—up to 20 seats may change. Had these redistricting had been struck down in 2021, the Democrats would currently enjoy at least a 5 seat majority in the House.

And for now, at least, Section Two of the Voting Rights Act remains the law of the land. It’s an encouraging development at at time when the Supreme Court is normally in the vanguard of a fascist coup against the country.

Robertson dead. Trump indicted (some more, this time federal). The VRA still alive.

Yup. Good things come in threes.

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