Category: Foreign Affairs

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Aprés le deluge — As Trump falls, we must rise

Aprés le deluge

As Trump falls, we must rise

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 25th, 2026

David Brin wrote to some unknown person on Facebook yesterday: I have got to repost this utter MALARKEY! If you issue a sanctimonious yowl like this one, while knowing nothing at all about how hard Bernie+AOC+Liz worked WITH Pelosi+Biden+Schomer in 2021-22… the one year in the last 20 when democrats had power, then all you are is a self-righteous ignoramus.

These are strong, smart people, fighting for us daily and WE LET THEM DOWN, not the other way around!

Try actually knowing something before yowling your smarmy righteous trap, hm? You could start here https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-devastating-rebuttals-to-use-with.html

Am I pleased with them? Not entirely. They are horrible tacticians. Are YOU better?

Try out my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms

https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html

Me: Do you propose we just forgive and forget the Trump administration?

Brin: You can go to hell. Masturbatory sanctimony is not restricted to MAGA. I have worked harder and more effectively against the madness on any given day than you have in the last YEAR and yet you are SO righteous! Whatever. If you are not a Kremlin bot you might as well be.

Me: In these times, telling me to go to hell is probably superfluous. You’re a better writer than that. But it’s a legitimate question: should we just forgive and forget?

OK, for anyone who thought the exchange is a bit startling, Brin and I go back a decade, and we’ve always had a contentious relationship. I suspect he thinks of me as some wet-behind-the-ears college sophomore with a single class in polisci, and he in the role of the irascible and hidebound professor from The Practice Effect.

The thing about Brin is he likes to challenge people to think. That why he does what he does for a living, and he’s very good at it. I’ve been reading him for 40 years, and a fair chuck of my philosophy grew from his observations. He hasn’t posted a reply as of now, but anything beyond “I’m David Brin and you’re not” I’ll be sure to include.

So: the issue was whether we should forgive and forget with the Trump regime. My answer in a nutshell is “Forgive? Sometimes. Forget? Never. But this regime must go.”

It’s the day after the election, and despite Trump and Elon’s best efforts, the Dems have gained 40 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate (which is what the conservative reading of the polls suggests.). They have clear working majorities in both houses. The notion of Trump wielding unchallenged and nearly absolute authority has ended, and an era has effectively ended.

Now, it may be amusing to consider little old ladies sitting around knitting while the guillotines chop, chop, chop, but remember—it took France decades just to achieve the hideously poor standard of living it had before the revolution, and the bloodshed didn’t stop with les aristos. Revolutions may be stirring, but are always a shit idea. Even the American revolution, lauded as a “successful revolution” involved at least one subsequent government collapse, widespread popular revolts, and about 40 years before living standards for the plebs reached the levels they enjoyed under the oppressive English. I’m not praising the blood and horror and terror; I’m just pointing out that even without them, revolutions never work out well for at least decades. So let’s put post-revolutionary bloodbaths on the back burner, OK?

The flip side is excessive forgiveness. People point to the Civil War and Reconstruction as a gleaming example of how “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” bound up the nation’s wounds. But Lincoln got shot, and his successor, a southern Democrat, helped to dismantled the social progressive ideas that might have actually reformed the South, and as a result, we’re still fighting that fucking war in myriad ways.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a body blow to America: rather than heal, it grievously hurt the long-held belief that government could always be held accountable, and the Republicans learned they Could Get Away With It. Treason was already on their minds:

Nixon’s subversion of the Paris peace talks got him elected and extended the war two more years to no gain. He didn’t pay for that.

Reagan subverted negotiations over the hostage crisis, arranging with gleeful Iranian ayatollahs to delay the release of the hostages until after the election. He paid no price.

Reagan traded arms for hostages, and some of those arms led to the massacre of over 200 Marines in Beirut a few years later. He paid no price.

George Bush Jr ginned up wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, on the totally ersatz ground that Afghanistan was involved in 9/11 and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He paid no price.

Is it any wonder that Trump and the fascists propping up his regime felt no compunctions about running roughshod over all laws and decency and honor? They are convinced nobody would make them pay.

Brin is furious that people don’t trust New Democrats to finally make a stand and make the fascists pay for their undeniable crimes. “But they are with us on social democracy and justice and the working class and human rights!” he might say. But when it come to fighting the enemies of those laudable ideals, their track record, going all the way back to the Nixon impeachment, has been pitiful. Brin can point to the indisputable accomplishments we’ve seen under Clinton and Obama and Biden, but when it was time to stand for what is right rather than just what is politically popular, most Democratic office holders folded. They couldn’t withstand corporate money and religious fevers and the endless stream of lies from the far right. They couldn’t stand and deliver a stentorian shout of “THIS IS BULLSHIT!” Long after they needed righteous rage, they were mumbling about “taking the high road” against an adversary who sees decency as a weakness.

This may be their best, and possibly final, chance to address that.

The first thing they need to do is assure the general population and surviving Republicans (and the masters the Republicans serve) that efforts to subvert or nullify the results will be met with resistance up to and including street riots, such as the storming of the Parliament that saved South Korean democracy in 2024. These efforts are illegal, treasonous, and the people reserve the right to oppose such by all means necessary. “The tree of liberty…” and so on. We won’t be fighting against the United States; we will be fighting to restore it.

Once the new Congress is installed, the time has come to end the Trump regime once and for all. And the way to do that is by trying the entire Trump administration for treason.

The Constitution reads: Article II, Section 4 says: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Now add this: Article III, Section 3, 2 which says: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

This means that on majority votes, the Senate can remove Trump, Vance, and the Cabinet in one fell swoop.

This doesn’t mean mass executions or even punishment: it limits the consequences to removal from office. Criminal trials, if any, will fall under the purview of the judicial system and by existing law, which is as it should be.

This means the Speaker of the House to become President, and with concurrence of the Senate, select a new vice president.

Then begins the tedious process of clearing out the corruption in all the government agencies. As a matter of precedence, all Senate appointees turn in resignations upon the seating of a new administration. The new Senate will have the ability to reappoint or not.

All agencies, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security in particular, must evaluate all persons employed under the Trump regime, and if they have not meet the standards for employment established by law before Trump, be on probationary status until they can meet the requirements, including background checks, educational attainment requirements, and demonstrations of general competence and knowledge for the jobs they hold. All resignations will be accepted “without prejudice.” Yes, some evil bastards may skate, but a lot more bastards and incompetents will accept the deal for the sake of a quiet life without stigma.

Trump appointed judges will deserve scrutiny from various existing judicial review boards, but don’t assume all, or even many such appointees are corrupt. In Trump’s endless interactions with the legal system, most Trump-appointed judges involved have proved honest. The Supreme Court, on the other hand…well, start with inviting them to resign, and we can go from there.

Only after this is under way can political life as we know it return. Democratic centrists and the social democratic left differ not so much in the right directions to take, but rather how far we need to go on each trajectory. Our differences are political, not existential.

If I can make that distinction, then I’m certain Brin can as well.

I once had a comic piece in which I had a city planner in blitz-torn London saying, “First we destroy the Nazi monster. Then we debate what colour to paint the fire hydrants.” We’re at the “destroy-Nazi-monster” stage. The fire hydrants are tomorrow’s debates, and we won’t need to destroy any monsters in doing so.

Americans need to fight like wolverines to save the country now. Save the country, then we can worry about what it’s going to take to fix the damage.

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Bombs Awry! Behind the bluster, a real threat

Bombs Awry!

Behind the bluster, a real threat

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 7th, 2026

With nearly everyone else, I would have just assumed that Trump’s remarks about “Let them take out San Diego [or] Los Angeles” would just result from garbled phrasing. With a lot of extemporaneous speeches, the spoken word sounds more coherent than it would appear in writing, especially since the spoken word has all sorts of cues that words on paper lack: tone, pitch, timbre, pauses, timing, and of course facial expressions and body language. Anyone who has caught flak for being funny or “cute” on line realizes that humor without those cues can often be missed or misinterpreted—along with the fact that a given percentage of your readers are going to be humorless twats.

With Trump, that benefit of the doubt can’t really apply. Humor is out: he’s a cold, cruel man whose idea of hilarity lies in mocking and hurting the weak and defenseless. Forty-eight hours after he said that and the uproar began, his lackeys have spun endless “what he meant” excuses, but Trump himself has made no effort to correct or amend his remarks. He meant it.

These days his speeches totally lack any sense of real purpose, but are the same collection of prepackaged spiel that he uses regardless of occasion or tone that the speech might require. He’ll tell the same “you knew I was a snake” story at a campaign rally or at a military memorial. I’m not sure he has any actual understanding of half of what he says, but is just repeating himself like a broken Chatty Cathy doll.

And there is the constant element of actual malice. Trump hates California; not only has the state voted against him overwhelmingly in all three elections he’s faced, but it’s home to Governor Gavin Newsom, who was one of the first politicians to openly mock him, and did so very well. It’s also home to late night entertainers like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel, along with all the hated Hollywood personalities who have stepped forth to oppose him.

The right wing propaganda campaign is that prosperous social democratic states like California, and especially California, are in reality vast wastelands of homelessness, drug use, immigrants and homosexuals. Even here in far northern California, which admittedly is quite different from the rest of the state, it’s not hard to find MAGAts complaining about what a hellhole the ‘dumocrats’ have turned California into. If you ask them what makes their lives in California a living hell, they’re usually reduced to bitching about gas prices, and the two point two cents per gallon in taxes that were added since Newsom became governor. (Yes, I’ve actually had people tell me that 2.2 cents is the reason prices are so high!) But this plays into Trump’s paws, and even if the vast majority of Californians know the agitprop campaign is bullshit, people in Nebraska and other places eat it up, and even cheer the promised destruction of that librul hellhole to the west that is why their taxes suck, or something.

Finally, Trump is scared and desperate. Most of his policies have blown up in his face, he’s the least popular president since polling began, and increasingly, it looks like Dems will pick up dozens of seats in the House and perhaps a half dozen seats in the Senate.

Even Trump has to realize that in the aftermath of such a shellacking, his own party will largely turn against him. He has to seriously consider the consequences of being convicted, expelled, and put on trial for a huge assortment of crimes.

He needs a 9/11, a Reichstag fire, an October 7th. To that end, he might consider creating at least the impression of a catastrophe hitting in America, and if there is to be such a thing, have it in a place he doesn’t care about, such as Los Angeles or San Diego.

While I doubt this would result in mushroom clouds over either of those cities, I could image “nuclear devices” being “discovered” in those locales, obviously snuck in by Iranians, or perhaps Canadians. And hey, if that caused widespread panic in southern California that interfered with voting, why, so much the better! Two birds, one stone, right?

I suspect that given the level of competence and intelligence we’re seen from his administration, any such effort would backfire on him. His ability to bullshit his way out of any threat has worn thin. People realize Mexico isn’t sending rapists, Iran doesn’t have nukes, Haitians aren’t eating our dogs and cats, they aren’t forcing gender change on kids at school, and Canada isn’t shipping tons of fentanyl into the US inside Iranian nuclear plants. (Apparently nuclear plants are illicit drug factories. Stop by your local atomic plant and pick up a couple dime bags for the kids on Halloween!) In short, the Donald softshoe show has run its course.

But if we assume that Trump can’t conjure up some sort of credible crisis to save his ass, the threat level escalates after the election, especially if it makes clear that Trump has lost control of Congress and possibly his own party. (I don’t think he’s going to try to cancel the election. Even his flunkies realize that might spark a widespread revolt and a very one-sided civil war he would lose.)

But in extremis, he’ll do everything he can to maintain control, and he’ll be a raging and unpredictable mass of howling paranoia and narcissistic end-stage rage. He’ll be extremely dangerous. He’ll risk anything and everything. He may even forbid Congress from convening in January.

For Californians, there’s an extra element of danger. He hates us because we are “disloyal” and “librul”. And he is perfectly willing to punish ‘blue states.’

Example: under all presidents since FEMA was established, there was no difference in emergency FEMA request grants among various states. It was a steady 85-90%. In Trump’s second term, that has changed. Red states enjoy the same 85-90% approval rate. Blue states are seeing a 20% approval rate. It’s almost like natural disasters no longer afflict blue states! Yeah, that must be it.

But meanwhile, California is looking at the winter from hell. The most recent projections of El Niño effects are flat out terrifying. One model I saw showed expected precipitation along the California coast to be an absurd 300-500% of normal for December through March, which is our wet season. If that actually comes to pass, the floods and landslides would be catastrophic!

Federal relief? Fuhgeddaboutit. We’re a 20% state—if we’re lucky. More than likely, Trump would just station troops along Oregon, Nevada and Arizona border to shoot Californians trying to escape. So if you happen to have El Niño’s email, you might want to send a note politely asking it to hold off until mid January, when hopefully we’ll have a new Congress and Trump has fled to Russia.

Otherwise, we’re on our own. Good luck.

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Articles II and III — On Treason against the United States

Articles II and III

On Treason against the United States

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 1st, 2026

www.zeppscommentaries.online

 

Did you know the Constitution has a clause that could make it possible to throw out not just Donald Trump, but all of his executive orders, most of his appointments, and even the Big Beautiful Bill that is destroying the lives of millions so the rich can steal more?

Turns out the Founders did expect that at some point the populace would vomit up a complete and utter moral and ethical wastrel, and gave us an out to deal with such.

Article II, Section 4 says: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Now add this: Article III, Section 3, 2 which says: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

It does NOT state that impeachments under Article III must be individual and separate. Nor does a Congressional finding of treason require a supermajority the way a simple impeachment would. But if the Congress finds the President committed treason, then all of his acts and appointments can be nullified.

Convicting Trump of bribery would require the same level of difficulty as, say, proving that cows really exist. He’s racked up the better part of five billion dollars through his various grifts, frauds, and outright bribes for which he has so badly abused his office. But bribery limits culpability to a now-standard Trump impeachment and given the number of corrupt cowards and lackeys in Congress, may not succeed because it would be like asking a Colombian cartel to just say no to drugs. Unless, of course, Trump sparks a popular rebellion, which he could possibly do, given his approach to things, in which case Congress might realize that throwing Trump to the wolves might save their asses from anything worse than just getting voted out of office.

Treason, of course, is much harder to prove, which is appropriate, since it is a much more serious crime than bribe-taking. That Trump acts against the best interests of the American populace is evident, but that doesn’t rise to the level of treason. His associations with antagonists to America such as Putin or Netanyahu are also pretty obvious, but minus a smoking gun, outright proof that Trump conspired to betray his country, treason would be hard to prove.

However, Trump may have committed treason with his attack on Iran. He got at least 14 American service personnel killed, and hundreds more injured. And it isn’t difficult to show that he attacked, not because of his imaginary nuclear threat, but at the behest of Netanyahu. He has publicly admitted to that. And it’s very clear that he has played around with the conduct of the operations primarily for the purposes of manipulating the markets to his own benefit and the benefit of his insider trading buddies, many of whom are sitting in his cabinet and many more are in Congress.

Anyone who gets his own soldiers killed and injured in the name of personal profit is pretty clearly committing treason. It’s an action that pretty much DEFINES treason. A case can be made that Donald Trump committed treasonous acts while serving as President.

It’s possible that Trump’s dismantling of the nation’s intelligence-gathering apparatus and undermining of relationships with friends and allies provided aid and comfort to America’s enemies, but the legal requirements for specificity and hard evidence make that a bit of a stretch.

Congress could establish a finding of treason on a simple majority vote in each House, and then proceed to impeachment. If the case is strong enough, and Congress honest enough, Trump could be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate of treason. He would have to leave office. But unlike other impeachments, it wouldn’t be just him. His officials, which would include the vice president and the cabinet would also have to go. And all his executive orders rendered null and void.

Subsequent criminal prosecutions would of course have to be conducted on an individual basis. And it’s likely that many if not most cabinet members never committed any acts that rose to the level of treason.

And while Donald Trump has always been a huge fan of the death penalty, it’s extremely unlikely that he would face capital charges. I doubt the country could stomach the notion of a president, even a shoddy specimen such as Trump, being on trial for his life. But he could face imprisonment and loss of most if not all of his fortune. (Most of it was attained through pretty dubious means to begin with!)

Will this actually happen? I’ve no idea. Honestly, the way he’s disintegrating, I think it’s far more likely that he’ll be removed under the 25th amendment for being unable to discharge his duties as president, and if it was on grounds of dementia, then he would never stand trial. And honestly, I couldn’t support trying a man who is too far gone to understand that he’s on trial, let alone for why. Even Trump deserves that much mercy.

If America learns from the lessons Trump is giving us all, then perhaps that will suffice unto the day.

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In Hot Water — The Pool Reflects Trump’s Woes

In Hot Water

The Pool Reflects Trump’s Woes

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 20th, 2026

For some reason, an old golden-age science fiction story has been going through my mind this week as I watch the antics of the rapidly-disintegrating Donald Trump. The 1941 story was called “Bullard Reflects” by Malcolm Jameson. It’s available free to read at the link, and is worth it simply because it has one of the greatest closing lines of all time. Jameson’s story also played a significant role in naval strategic operations going forward.

Now, Bullard’s antagonist was “Egon Ziffler, chief of secret police of the Jovian Empire—the Torturer.” Egon was vicious, vainglorious, with a wildly inflated sense of self-worth and utterly abysmal strategic or tactical skills. So, OK, there’s a lot there to remind me of Trump. But I think it’s because of the use of the word “reflect” in the story that brought it to mind.

It’s a weird situation in pretty much any context, but the fact is that Trump has probably taken more political damage from a vanity project to pretty up a Washington landmark then he has from his catastrophic defeat in his ill-considered foray against Iran. It takes real talent to put a minor refurb project ahead of America’s greatest military and diplomatic defeat in the eyes of the public, but Trump managed.

I’m talking, of course, about the Reflecting Pool. I’ve already had a couple of Trump supporters complain that “liberals never gave the Reflecting Pool a second thought until they saw an opportunity to embarrass Trump.” There’s a certain amount of truth there: most people, including most liberals, just sort of thought of the Pool as one of those pretty sites that was part of DC’s character and that was about it. It was more a matter of good taste and ambiance rather then the sort of deep significance of the Lincoln Memorial or the Vietnam Wall. So no, I never gave it much thought beyond, “Oh, that’s pretty.” I doubt most other people did, either.

Until Trump, as part of his monomaniacal and egotistical drive to reshape DC in his image, declared the Pool a disgrace and blamed its allegedly deplorable condition on Obama and Biden and any other Democrat nearby. As with his other ‘renovations’, he moved unilaterally, without regard to whether he had authority, funding, or if the property was his to reshape. Other presidents, following set procedures, have made similar changes, and nobody ever heard of them. But this is Trump, and the public, already deeply outraged by his destruction of the East Wing and the Kennedy Center, were, at best, deeply skeptical. Experts weighed in, noting that granite couldn’t hold paint well and noting that making the shallow Pool darker under that Washington sun would make the water much warmer.

The rest you know about. The algae exploded, and in an effort to contain it, they dumped in hundreds of gallons of hydrogen peroxide. It killed the algae, but, as Matt Viser at the Atlantic explained, it was replaced by “Scenedesmus, a genus of green algae nicknamed ‘Skinny Dead Mouse’ by scientists.” It’s much harder to kill. Even worse, the lining of the Pool laid out by the contractor, the aptly-named “Greenwater, Inc.” began to disintegrate and bob to the surface. The lining was the same stuff used in truckbeds, and usually works pretty well, assuming it’s given time to cure, isn’t under water, and isn’t exposed to hydrogen peroxide.

So another Trump-created crisis has turned into an utter fiasco. At last word he had stationed National Guard troops around the Pool to prevent souvenir takers from making off with the erstwhile Pool bed while his flying monkeys swamp the social media with screams that Democrats somehow sabotaged the project. This is farce of the purest ray divine.

A court blocked him from closing the Kennedy Center for two years for ‘renovations’–a move on his part to hide the utter fiasco of his renaming the center and alienating all of the world’s higher art community. The running joke was that he only had the option of 900 consecutive nights of some country and western twat yodeling “Proud to be an American” in lieu of all the other performances. He had to hide the utter failure. While the court was at it, they ordered his name removed from the center. He had that done, behind a tarp so the public couldn’t see, a calculated three hours after the court deadline. The tarp is still in place, which is having the opposite effect of what Trump hoped for by paradoxically keeping it in the public eye. There’s already rumors he didn’t really remove his name. Eventually someone will paint “8647” on the tarp and he’ll have to replace it and station more troops to guard it.

Then there was the G7 conference. It was an even bigger fiasco than the Reflecting Pool, and while the stakes are far higher, the nuances were less obvious. Hell, the Pool may have distracted the public enough to spare Trump a greater humiliation.

First, he tried, on camera, to kiss French First Lady Brigitt Macron. He looked for all the world like Uncle Pervy trying to lay a big wet on on an obviously flustered and unwilling twelve-year-old niece. But French President Emmanuel Macron already had the last laugh, arranging for the historically illiterate US leader to sign his agreement with Iran at Versailles, a place that enjoys a certain infamy when it comes to bad treaties and French vengeance.

In another extraordinary diplomatic gaffe, he claimed that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the closest thing to an ideological ally he had in the G7, ‘begged’ him to have her picture taken with him. Understandably infuriated, Meloni called the Trump claim ‘fabricated’ and wrote, “As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you. My popularity depends on my ability to defend Italy’s national interest, and that is exactly what I have always done.” Trump, ever the fool, reiterated that she begged him, ‘over and over.’ The US just lost one of its few remaining friends.

Did I mention Trump called Netanyahu a ‘motherfucker’? Yup. One of the few things he got right this week, but not particularly helpful.

Another image caught a seemingly oblivious Trump standing in the midst of other world leaders who were affably greeting and meeting, as isolated and spurned as the proverbial turd in the swimming pool.

And back to the Pool: It just came out that Olympian David Hearn was just arrested. He stopped by the Pool to see for himself, and apparently reached in and felt a chuck of the lining fragment. He then released it, stood up, and walked back to his bicycle. Park Police promptly arrested him for “destruction of government property”! You can’t make this up!

Trump apparently never heard the Charlie Chaplin quote, “The tyrant fears the laugh more than the assassin’s bullet.” But he does have some dim, rat-like awareness that looking like a fool is very dangerous for him. And in increasingly frantic efforts to counteract that, he acts like a greater fool with every passing day. And the laughter grows.

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Birthday of the Strait Man You can make a street walker think, but you can’t make a Hormuz

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 13th, 2026

Tomorrow, June 14th, is Barack Hussein Obama Day. Everyone alive and decent back then has a good memory. Mine was of him singing “Amazing Grace” at the church in South Carolina where a racist gun nut killed a dozen people, including Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, State Senator and pastor at that church. Very moving, and I’m not even religious.

People who hate Obama are welcome to express their thoughts, as well. We can laugh at you, and let’s face it; smearing Obama is a hell of a lot easier these days than praising Trump.

The Orange Shitstain turns 80 tomorrow, and of course he’s celebrating with all the class and dignity of a Dogpatch Kickapoo Joy Juice festival. (Oh, look it up; it’s the sort of Boomer shit the Internet was born to immortalize).

Fresh off his triumph at The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Trump announced that a peace deal with Iran would be signed tomorrow. That, or he would deploy the ultimate weapon against them. It was quite vague, which with Trump is a bit of an improvement.

I was puzzled at first. Usually Trump announces a peace deal in order to manipulate the markets for a bit of insider trading. But the markets are closed Sunday. Then it hit me: right. His big 8-0. He wants a big “peace is at hand, inflation is done, and it’s all Biden’s fault” speech for his White House Cage Match. Yes, “White House Cage Match.”

Trouble is, Iran holds the whip hand. They control the Strait of Hormuz. Even if Trump’s recent unfounded claim that the US was able to sneak 40 million barrels of oil through (even assuming tankers can tip-toe, 40m/bbl is about a month supply for California alone) was true, Iran’s control is pretty much absolute. The regime is very firmly in control, since opposition dropped out of sight. (That tends to happen in countries where you try to influence them by bombing them. Ask any Londoner). And major financial dislocation is expected to really hit in August. That’s when the last of the tankers that sailed through the Strait in late February arrive at the more distant ports—including Long Beach or Galveston or, well, you get the idea.

Trump doesn’t want massive economic dislocation six weeks before the midterms. So if he’s desperate enough, he might just accede to Iran’s demands, which include control of the Strait, $300 billion in war damage reparations, release of another $35 billion or so in frozen assets, and an agreement to reestablish the nuclear proliferation agreement that Obama negotiated and which Trump unilaterally tore up.

Yes, I’m sure they included that last as a deliberate insult to Trump, but why not? Assuming they don’t really want to build nuclear weapons—and the fact that they haven’t in the past 45 years that they could have is suggestive—the agreement costs them little and helps ensure stability in the region.

Of course, Trump is almost certainly lying. Isn’t this the fortieth “peace is at hand” declaration he’s made since it became obvious he wasn’t going to get a quick-and-dirty win like he did in Venezuela? So whatever he says at tomorrow’s trash-fest, don’t believe it.

Suppose we all get a giant surprise tomorrow and Iran announces that a deal has been reached? That the Strait of Hormuz is now open for business, with Iran getting $10 million per supertanker and all the rest of it. Trump will strut and dance like a lobotomized Robin Williams on Quaaludes, Republican congressmen will drop to their knees if not already there and sing hosannas, and on Monday the markets will explode, making “irrational exuberance” look like mildly amused.

Only…well there’s a fly in the ointment. Remember what I said about the last ships to clear the Strait in late February arriving in August? There’s about 2,000 ships awaiting passage. The Strait in normal times can handle 100 ships a day, so there’s a three week backlog just to clear the existing traffic. So normal shipping wouldn’t resume until early July. Now factor in what I call “transit latency” – the amount of time needed for ships to reach their destination ports. While two months is average, some destinations lie five months away.

So trade won’t even begin to reach normal levels until…hmm…September. Careful calculation reveals that that comes after August, the point where things start to come apart in earnest.

So even if the crows of an agreement being signed tomorrow actually are more than the usual Trump duck-and-weave bullshit, it’s too late. Trump probably doesn’t have the brights to understand any of that, but his handlers certainly do, and after a brief pause for the sell-short guys to weigh in, the markets will, as well. An actual market crash in June is possible. Then the fun begins in earnest. Come August, we’re screwed.

It comes at a time when we already face: A screwworm invasion, a massive disruption in medical supplies, a super El Niño that may start making significant disruptions by September—including, yes, shipping lanes—and several financial bubbles—housing, AI, and derivatives—all nearing the point of the inevitable implosion. And it comes at a time when the government is crippled by the self-serving malice of the Trump crime syndicate and the sheer libertarian foolishness of the tech bros headed by trillionaire Elon Musk.

I used to joke that I didn’t write summer solstice pieces because if the message in the winter solstice piece was that the sun was coming back so there is hope, a summer solstice theme would have to be “it’s all downhill from here.” My winter solstice piece preceded a planned two-month hiatus that extended to six months because I’m a lazy bastard, but here we are approaching a summer solstice, and here I am, with a message.

And that message is: “Cheer up. Most of us will get through this.”

 

 

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Solstice 2025 — The end of the beginning is not the beginning of the end

Solstice 2025

The end of the beginning is not the beginning of the end

To say we’re in perilous times is a bit like saying that crossing the Sahara on foot presents challenges. Even if you only know a small portion of the possibilities, it’s a daunting prospect.

Historians are all too familiar with what we are going through right now. Most nations on Earth have, at one point or another, had a leader who was utterly mad, utterly corrupt, and utterly contemptuous of the damage his actions were causing.

Just as the specifics of such misrules are as varied as human psychopathology, so too are the end results. The spectrum can range from utter ruin to widespread reform that restores sanity and a functional society and economy. Determinants include how much the Mad Emperor gets away with before the inevitable collapse, the strength of the saner and more stable traditions of the nation so afflicted, and the extent of the damage.

European history is full of Mad Emperors, and the results cover the full panoply ranging from the Emperor being executed or deposed to widespread war, an emptied treasury, and even occupation by annoyed neighbors. England had both the mildest and one of the worst examples of such; in 1688 the generally incompetent and egotistic James II was bloodlessly overthrown by William and Mary of the somewhat better-behaved House of Orange. It was done so competently and peacefully that few Britons realized they had staged an invasion and coup. To this day the “Glorious Revolution” is seen as a peaceful transfer of power, much like Presidential inaugurations were. At the other end of the spectrum was Charles I, who led England to a civil war followed by a vicious republic of religious fanatics. You could say he was in over his head.

In fact, England is noted for its monarchs of misrule. I could easily give as horrible examples Edward II, Henry VI (who also caused a civil war), Richard III, Henry VIII, and George IV of whom one of his aides wrote,‘A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist. There have been good and wise kings but not many of them and this I believe to be one of the worst.’

That last one might sound familiar to most of us. Wikipedia says of him, “He led an extravagant lifestyle that contributed to the fashions of the Regency era. He was a patron of new forms of leisure, style and taste. He commissioned John Nash to build the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and remodel Buckingham Palace, and commissioned Jeffry Wyatville to rebuild Windsor Castle. George’s charm and culture earned him the title “the first gentleman of England”, but his dissolute way of life and poor relationships with his parents and his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, earned him the contempt of the people and dimmed the prestige of the monarchy. He excluded Caroline from his coronation and asked the government to introduce the unpopular Pains and Penalties Bill in an unsuccessful attempt to divorce her…George’s rule was tarnished by scandal and financial extravagance. His ministers found his behaviour selfish, unreliable and irresponsible, and he was strongly influenced by favourites.”

Hoo, boy. And good old George IV would actually be an improvement over what we have now. “The first gentleman” is not a phrase that springs readily to the minds of most Americans when it comes to The Leader.

But if you take a look at the map, you’ll notice that it still says “England” on that portion of the British Isles. Similarly, other nations that have had even far worse and more destructive rulers are still there: France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Russia, and Italy. All suffered horribly at various junctures because of vicious and incompetent misrule. But they survived, and while all cultures change and evolve, none were annihilated by Mad Emperors. Even the most extreme recent example, Germany, came out of Hitler’s horrific 12 years and eventually became the prosperous and peaceful land it is today.

I can’t begin to guess how much damage this regime has done to America at this point. I strongly suspect our national security is now at best a joke, with most of our most strategic secrets available for Kremlin perusal. Project 2025, the thinly disguised rape of the national treasury and elimination of those pesky civil rights, has proceeded apace, and millions of Americans are facing financial ruin and deprivation as a result. All America’s allies are estranged, and rivals are picking our bones. We’ve lost, perhaps for decades, the advantages of free trade and good will.

Mad rulers die and/or are deposed sooner rather than later. Many bring doom upon themselves. Without the mesmerizing toxic attraction of the madman (or as John Randolph once wrote about Henry Clay, ‘like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he both shines and stinks.‘) public fury against the architects of Project 2025 will explode.

I can’t predict how much more damage we’ll take, or how harsh or prolonged the recovery will be. All I can promise is that there will be a recovery. Many nations have suffered worse than America is going through now, and survived to tell the tale. America will, as well, and with great good luck, will emerge with its core values of democracy and justice still intact. That will speed the recovery.

And yes, there will be a recovery. It may be painful, but those that live to see it will be the lucky ones.

The sun rises again tomorrow.

Don’t lose hope. Never lose hope.

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No Tariffs? Oh, SNAP! — Revolt against Trump grows

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 2nd, 2026

Trump got two ginormous setbacks in his efforts to turn America into a libertarian paradise with himself as the Howard Roark figure this week.

The first was a court ruling, when U.S. District Judge John McConnell ruled that the administration had no right to deny use of emergency funds as a stopgap measure to continue SNAP, and that the administration acted illegally in denying SNAP benefits to some forty million people, noting that those benefits had continued without a hitch during the 2019 shutdown.

The administration, intent on blackmailing the country, is complaining that they need court guidance on how to dispense the funds, since they have apparently forgotten how to do it since the last time, a month ago. The admin has to give the court an accounting tomorrow, Monday.

The larger issue of Trump’s capricious reallocation of SNAP funds already allocated by Congress is before the Supreme Court. In normal times, the case would be a no-brainer. Rescission, or reallocation of funds, is permitted only in emergencies and on a limited scale. Trump has simply reallocated (stolen) hundreds of billions in already-allocated federal funds. But knowing this Court, they will rule that they “need to study the matter” further while permitting Trump to continue gutting the country.

Trump, meanwhile, wants to force millions into starvation. At the very least, it would take his lie about how “they’re eating the pets” and turn it into truth. Not that Trump is any big lover of truth.

And the Senate somehow worked up enough nerve to challenge Trump’s takeover of the Congressional power of assessing tariffs and revoked all of his tariffs. As if that wasn’t a big enough slap at his pumpkin face, the vote happened just a day after he was frantically negotiating with China’s Premier Xi in an effort to get China to import at least some of the American soybeans. He had just gotten Xi to agree to import roughly 35% of what it had been importing before Trump came alone, in exchange for who knows what? [Hint: keep an eye on Intel stock. China wants some high-end chips that American heretofore had not wanted them to have because of cyber and military uses]. Xi will doubtlessly hold Trump to whatever they agreed, even though he will no longer have to pay the tariffs.

Soybean farmers are overjoyed, but that will be short-lived. It’s still only 35 or perhaps 40 percent of prior sales, and few business can survive a 60% cut in revenues, especially farmers. Meanwhile, tariffs have jacked the prices of farm equipment and fertilizers, and the draconian ICEcapades of this hateful administration mean a large labor shortage. The farmers are still badly screwed by Trump policies.

Even baseball bit Donald on the ass. He wanted to make a thing of the fact that the two teams were respectively from California and Ontario, since he was already punishing both locales for not being pro-Trump. (A joke making the rounds up north goes: “Canadians are so smart that not one of them voted for Trump.”) He is mad at Ontario Premier Doug Ford (Canada’s answer to Ron DeSantis) who aired an ad accurately portraying Ronald Reagan as being largely opposed to tariffs. Trump riposted by slapping a completely arbitrary 10% additional tariff on Canadian goods, a move so gratuitously capricious that it may have been what sparked the Senate revolt. And he’s mad at California and California governor Gavin Newsom because…well, heh, you’ve seen the things Newsom’s staff have been putting out on social media. Trump may love Trump, but he hates having a mirror put up to him.

If he was hoping to use the World Series to humiliate and insult Canada or California, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays had other ideas. This World Series was a classic, hard fought, not decided until the final out, exciting as hell, with two wildly popular and talented teams. And even the most xenophobic of Trump’s followers couldn’t make some nativist thing out of it: I’ll bet the Blue Jays have more American-born players than do the Dodgers. Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki are all Japanese, and of course Freddie Freeman is Canadian. LA also has players representing much of Central and South America, as well.

Public sentiment regarding the shutdown, and the House being in extended recess, is turning rapidly against the Republicans. The propaganda outlets all demand the Democrats end the shutdown and pass “a clean CR”, and the Democrats simply note that a “clean CR” would gut medical coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and destroy many vital government services that DOGE hadn’t already ruined. They also note that until the House reconvenes, no meaningful negotiation is possible. Squeaker Mike Johnson (R-What Christianity Might Look Like if They’d Crucified Ayn Rand Instead) is now saying he may not reconvene the House until January 2026. Between that and the increasing gaps in services and funding the government provides for vital social function, public support for the GOP is plummeting. There are off-off year elections this week, including a critical district reallocation vote in California, and while the scope of the elections is small, Republicans are bracing for bad news as public dissatisfaction mounts.

Keep pressing. They’re starting to crumble.

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Market Markers — How now down Dow?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 11th 2025

 

JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon said he is “far more worried than others” about a correction in U.S. stocks. In an interview with the BBC, Dimon said, “You see a lot of things out there, the amount of uncertainty and I put geopolitics in that category, fiscal spending in that category, politics in that category, the re-militarization of the world in that category. All these things cause a lot of issues that we don’t know how they’re going to sort out…[W]e should be stockpiling bullets, guns and bombs,” as the world’s a “far more dangerous place.”

But remilitarization, while alarming in and of itself, wasn’t the only issue on Dimon’s mind. It’s clear he’s worried about AI, which I consider a multi-trillion dollar economic bubble that could pop at any minute. (My words, not his, just to be clear). He said, “So if the market is pricing in 10%, I would say it’s more like 30%, and I’m not saying next year because the timing of these things is almost impossible.” He considers a “market correction” likely, perhaps in six months, possibly two years.

A “correction” is nabob-speak for a market slump of more than 20%, which in the case of the Dow Jones would work out to a drop approaching ten thousand points.

The very next day, Lev Parnas wrote this: “Trump’s Tariff Shock EXPOSED — The $1 Billion Crypto Heist They Don’t Want You to See. Minutes before Trump announced 100% tariffs on China, a secret wallet moved over $1 billion into crypto — triggering the biggest market crash in months and revealing […] insider corruption and market.”

OK, it was no crash: the Dow slipped 1,500 points over two days, about 3% of its value. But yes, the timing was almost prima facie evidence that the corrupt and venal Trump gave some insider traders a heads up before making his shock tariff announcement. It’s hardly the first time something like this has occurred—indeed, Trump’s seemingly erratic and capricious tariffs games have made some people, including Trump and members of his family—obscenely wealthy.

This entire administration is run by corrupt plutocrats intent on plundering the entire American economy. This collection of libertarians and fascists have managed to convince themselves that the economy can manage quite nicely without any economic involvement of the society that created that economy in the first place. They’ve spent so much time arguing that workers are nothing more than an economic outlay and to argue otherwise is communism that they’ve taken up believing their own propaganda. Most of them are corrupt, and the rest are delusional. And they are in charge.

Add the vindictive madness that drives Trump and his supporters, the desire to utterly destroy a fifth of the labor force for the crime of dark skin or accents, the sheer paranoia and xenophobia that is causing them to cheer the dismantling of the United States of America (and yes, the democratic constitutional government IS the United States of America, and without it, it’s just another big patch of land with lawless tribes)—combine all that, and the stage is set for an economic catastrophe.

Project 2025, in the form of White House Office of Management and Budget director Russel Vought, is manipulating the latest Republican-engineered government to dismantle huge chunks of the government, firing tens of thousands of experienced and capable government employees supposedly because of the shutdown. There have been a dozen shutdowns, some lasting weeks. Workers got furloughed, knowing their jobs (and in most cases back pay) would be there when the shutdown ended. Vought’s vision of a fascist dictatorship means he must do as much to destroy the government now while he has the opportunity. He is doing this to the open cheers of his senile mouthpiece president, who has openly cheered “the unprecedented opportunity” to dismantle “democrat agencies.”

Most of those supposedly Democratic functions: education, medical care, legal protections, scientific research, and public protection agencies such as the weather service, OPEC, and FEMA, disproportionately serve the people in Republican areas, where state services are thin or even lacking and the overall economy is either weak or exploited by plutocrats in the name of “supply-side economics.”

But make no mistake—we’ll ALL be hurt if Trump and his handlers pull this off. We’ll begin missing meals or end up in the camps just in time for the entire financial structure to to implode, possibly taking the currency and remaining national wealth with it, leaving America—and Americans—bankrupt and destitute. Then, and only then, will the malefactors in the top 1% realize that we were the tide that raised their yachts.

By then, it will be too late. Unless we move to prevent it now.

 

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Cornered Rat — More dangerous to deal with

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 27th 2025

This week’s offensives against George Soros and the city of Portland reflect, not a disintegration of America, but a disintegration of the Donald Trump regime.

The Epstein files aren’t going away, and now, with the election of a new Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona (in a deep red district that went for Trump by 30 points!) Congress now has the votes to force a floor debate and vote on the matter.

Mike Johnson, perhaps the greatest coward in the history of Congress, has suspended congressional business for a week while frantically trying to delay swearing in newly minted Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. This would under normal circumstances, be the sort of chickenshittery you might expect from Johnson-without-a-Johnson, but what makes this far more remarkable is that it means Congress cannot do anything to avoid a government shutdown on October 1st. Trump is, incredibly, trying to make that part of his plan, which apparently involves firing most of the people that made government functional. While the shutdown would not affect Social Security or Medicare or Veteran Affairs (already damaged by Trump and Musk’s sweeping rape of the government) it would bring to a halt most of the government’s most loved elements—national parks and reserves, monuments, and most other non-essential functions.

We’ve been through this contrived “crisis” a dozen times or more since Newt Gingrich realized it was a great way to extort the country. And sometimes the government has shut down, and Republicans have taken it on the chin each time because the public, for the most part, realized who the extortionists were.

This time is different. Not only can Congress not come up with a last-minute solution to the crisis, but Trump’s answer is to fire all the non-essential workers, ensuring the crisis becomes permanent no matter what Congress does.

The Republicans rigged the “Big Beautiful Bill” to ensure that the most vicious fallout wouldn’t occur until after November 2026, and this will undo in one swipe the palatability for the stupid people who love Donald Trump.

Donald announced a military invasion of “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon yesterday. This will come as news to Portland residents, who probably thought their greatest adversary was forest fires—and this has been a relatively mellow fire season.

He also declared AntiFa a “domestic terrorism” organization. He needs to set up a new PAC: “Fascists against AntiFascism.”

He has also declared war on George Soros because decades of antisemitic “pro-Israel” propaganda from Faux News means most of his supporters have heard of Soros. But then, Soros is supporting Newsom’s redistricting battle after Texas’ Trump-sponsored move to steal five Congressional seats.

And last week was an unmitigated fiasco for Trump. First, there was the Jimmy Kimmel thing. The only thing stupider than losing to a comedian with twenty million followers is picking a fight with a comedian with twenty million followers in the first place.

Then there was the catastrophe of the UN address. Bad enough that Trump’s staff fucked up the teleprompter, which meant that the wingless Donald had to fly solo, but he went on to tell the assemblage their countries were all “going to hell”, and whined about the teleprompter, an escalator that stalled, and that the UN rejected a remodeling bid from Trump FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

One Blue Sky wit wrote, “Lead your life in such a way that if the escalator breaks, it isn’t because someone wants to kill you.” Seems easy enough advice to follow, doesn’t it? Well, funny story…

So, Donald is on the ropes. He’s scared, he’s desperate.

That isn’t necessarily good news: cornered rats are considerably more dangerous than regular rats. Remember that.

But murderous desperation is showing up in Congress, too. Marjorie Taylor-Greene posted a tweet today telling her members that In the Event Of, she wants them to know she isn’t even remotely suicidal and any unexpected death should be met with a healthy skepticism. Now, MT-G is noted for histrionic persiflage, it is true, but this sounds more like someone who is genuinely frightened. I’ve little love for her, but I wish her a long and healthy life!

Meanwhile, another nasty clown in the GOP, one “John Gillette (R-Kingman), wrote on the social media site X that U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., was calling for the government to be overthrown and should be hanged. ‘Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged.. it will continue,’ Gillette said in response to a video of Jayapal.’’ [excerpt from Huffpost]

Jayapal’s ‘crime’? Calling for people to get out and demonstrate. That’s all.

I have a feeling that we are rapidly approaching a climax to the rise and hoped-for fall of Donald Trump. But I won’t breathe freely until he is out of office and in prison where he belongs.

Best of luck, everyone!

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