Category: Politics

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“Present the Body” — Yes. Mayors, too

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 10th 2025

On his podcast the other day, a right winger calling himself “DC Draino” (his parents, somewhat more sane, named him Rogan O’Handley) urged Steve Bannon to consider that eventually Donald Trump would have to suspend habeas corpus. Bannon has no formal role in the Trump administration, but like so many ‘positions’ in the incoherent world of Donald Trump, title, or lack thereof, has little to do with power and influence in this junta. Bannon has considerable power and influence, and didn’t seem to find suspending habeas corpus objectionable.

Nor did the White House mouthpiece: “I have not heard such discussions take place, but I can assure you that the President and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals on our nation’s border,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Well, the ‘legal and constitutional remedies’ that Baghdad Barbie envisioned is mentioned in the Constitution, as follows: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Since this appears in Article One, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives,” this is a power of Congress and not the administration.

The administration has proffered the fantasy that Venezuela is invading, or fostering an invasion of the United States through a criminal cartel called Tren de Aragua. A dozen courts have determined that this rationale has no basis in law or reality, but the Trump junta is still pushing it as ‘fact.’ Leavitt is lying.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for the crime of standing on public property outside of an ICE facility talking peacefully with two congressional representatives opposing the illegal incarceration of people in defiance of habeas corpus. They argued briefly with ICE thugs a few minutes earlier but had peacefully retreated. The mayor was singled out (a progressive Democrat, he had opposed the building of the facility on zoning issues and is running for Governor of New Jersey this fall). Nobody else was arrested or even asked to leave.

Trump’s gestapo may have realized they overstepped, and the mayor was released a couple of hours later, and he reported he was treated with respect during his incarceration although undeniably a prisoner.

Alina Habba, Trump’s personal mouthpiece and acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, claimed Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. … He has been taken into custody.”

In true Pravda form, DHS flak Tricia McLaughlin said, “Today, as a bus of detainees was entering the security gate of Delaney Hall Detention Center, a group of protestors [sic], including two members of US Congress, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.” Video shows that the arrest was clearly made on public property, the mayor and his fellow Bastille-stormers having already obeyed warnings and backed off.

Apparently ICE is so fragile that two middle aged congressionals exchanging sharp words with heavily armed guards is considered a “storming.” God help the poor wee bastards if someone flips them the bird. Although if Congressionals were doing this storming, why did they arrest the mayor instead? Wasn’t his role more along the lines of a brief shower, rather than a storm?

Over 200 court decisions have found Trump’s executive orders pertaining to arrests of immigrants or firing of federal employees and cutting of allocated budgets to be illegal, or at the very least, overreach. He has, in total, five decisions that didn’t just slap him flat.

Trump is becoming more erratic and less coherent by the day. Any other president displaying the behavioral and cognitive symptoms Trump has would have either been convinced to step down or face a 25th Amendment process to remove him from office.

But Trump is just the puppet. It’s the powerful extremist movements backing him that are the real danger: the fascistic Heritage Foundation and its dream of corporate takeover of America, the racist and nationalist neo-Nazis like Steve Bannon, and the religious nutjobs who want a vicious theocracy. They are the ones behind this, and they are the ones pulling the strings of the increasingly befuddled and pathetic Trump. He doesn’t even know if he is supposed to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.

We are now very rapidly approaching the point where the administration has become outlaw—it has already begun arresting judges and threatening members of congress for the crime of opposing them. It is ignoring, sometimes blatantly, 200 court decisions against it. And it is still quite literally tearing apart the fabric of USA governance, leaving the people with no representation and totally at the mercy of incredibly rapacious and corrupt criminals.

I still maintain hope of a peaceful and democratic solution to all this. Anything else will be a horror show. But we are now at the point where anyone who has taken an oath to obey the Constitution must oppose these people, and prepare for the eventuality that it may have to be “by any means necessary.”

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Donnie XOs the Constitution — His Mentis is non Compos

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 4th 2025

Donald Trump gave the clearest indication yet that he is totally unfit for office when asked by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, Mr. President?” An obviously confused Trump replied, “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.” Like any good mob boss, he’s going to refuse to answer under advice of counsel and in accordance with the fifth amendment.

The thing is that you don’t need a lawyer to determine this particular presidential duty. The Constitution mandates the oath of office, as follows:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

As for the oath itself, it can’t possibly be clearer. “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Yup. That pretty much covers it. There are parts of the Constitution that are unclear, or at least open to interpretation, but this ain’t one of them. I went looking for cases involving the oath of office, and all I could find were some lower case decisions that allowed that a bible wasn’t required for the oath of office. Nobody has ever tried to contest that the oath was unclear or open to interpretation.

And it isn’t. And yes, Donnie has taken that oath. Twice.

He did show a few moments of mental clarity during the interview, admitting that the Constitution doesn’t permit him to run again after this term of office, and that invading Canada probably wasn’t a good idea.

But asked about the rights of immigrants he’s persecuting, he replied, “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the supreme court said. What you said is not what I heard the supreme court said. They have a different interpretation.” The decision was 9-0, which seems pretty clear. And this is the guy who wants to mandate that English be the official language of the United States. The court—even Slappy and little Scalia—admit that non-citizens have the right to due process. Again, per the Constitution:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

He’s still fantasizing about invading Greenland. Military invasion, at that. Well, Greenland only has about 56,000 people, about the size of Arcadia, California. Even with Elon Musk running the show, the mighty US military could probably invade Arcadia. Holding it might be another matter. The US spent nearly a quarter century in Afghanistan before writing it off as a bad job.

But Greenland has friends. It’s been a part of Denmark since 1814, and even though autonomous, is considered part of a NATO member. And NATO has one bedrock principle: attack any member nation, and it’s considered an act of war against all of them. That’s an area three times the size of the United States, with a combined $25 trillion economy, and a military budget about 65% of the US—and not as heavily afflicted with waste, fraud and abuse like the US one is. The US would be in the position of fighting Germany, only Germany would have the UK, France, and Canada on their side. Along with a bunch of other countries with a long history of FAFO.

So talk of invading Greenland is sheer lunacy.

Donald’s list of executive orders (which do NOT have the force of law, despite what Donnie thinks) are grandiose, ridiculous, incomprehensible and even cruel. One example is the one mandating English as the official language of the United States. Am I violating that directive by talking about Los Angeles? That’s Spanish. Terre Haute? (French). Illinois? (Illini tribe).

If I use the words color or honor in this essay, is that wrong? After all, the English spelling of those words is ‘colour’ and ‘honour.’ We would need a whole new set of characters for our numbers, because those are all Arabic. Would we have to write upper-case ‘q’ as ‘2’ like the English do? Pronounce the last letter of the alphabet as “Zed”?

If I get arrested and deported to President Bukkake’s Summertime Playground Gulag for the Woke and Non-white, is my lawyer in trouble for filing a writ of habeas corpus? That’s Latin, you know.

Most cookbooks would have to be banned.

We would have to throw out all our legal texts, and nearly all of our scientific and medical texts. (OK, Trump and his MAGAts would probably approve of that last bit.)

Finally, I would have to stop saying ‘finally.’ Usually the most welcome word in my essays according to readers, it happens to be French.

And on that note, I say, au revoir!

 

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After the Demonstrations — Ways to further block fascism

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 22nd, 2025

New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” to protest the Trump administration. Brooks, who has been with the Times since the invention of dirt, is the ultimate establishment ‘button-down’ conservative. When HE calls for a “comprehensive national civic uprising,” you know we’re well out of normal times.

I was at the local demonstration Saturday, and while the crowd was enthusiastic, it was about two-thirds the size of the rally held two weeks earlier. Part of that was because it was cooler and windier, and because it was on Easter weekend.

But it got me thinking. The 50501 “Hands Off” rallies, while terrific at galvanizing public opinion, aren’t going to be enough. Interest will wane, especially since it would become obvious it wasn’t slowing Trump’s fascist coup against America in the slightest.

Brooks is right; a civic uprising is needed. I’m not thinking peasants with pitchforks and blood in the streets; with a half-billion guns loose in the country, that’s the last thing we need. What we do need are national strikes. Yes, plural. Rolling strikes, areas hit once per week.

When you hear the word ‘strike’ you may think of workers walking off the job in protest. But this is America: only 3% of workers have union protection, and most unions are barred by law from having ‘wildcat’ strikes. And most states have what is laughingly referred to as “right-to-work” laws which generally translates to “at will” employment. You only have a job until the boss gets a bug up his ass, and you’re out the door, usually without so much as a day’s warning.

The fact is most American workers don’t have much more in the way of job security and rights than your typical wage slave in Bangladesh. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and are perhaps two months away from homelessness. It’s a shit work culture, but it’s the result of 45 years of Reaganomics.

So a strike has to be something much more than workplace actions.

They may have coercive power over you on the job, but they can’t make you buy stuff. There have already been embargoes ranging from one day to one week against major retailers such as Amazon and Nestle, and boycotts against Target and similar outfits that have been ongoing, and they’ve been effective enough to cause worry in the right quarters. The Trump admin already floated the idea of a 5 year prison sentence for anyone demonstrating in front of a Tesla dealership. Elon Musk has already figured out that the widespread hatred caused by his rampage through most government programs isn’t going away, and he has already lost hundreds of billions and risks losing it all. He announced he’s getting out of politics by the end of May. Hopefully he’ll get the fuck out of the country.

But picture this: the manager at the local fast-food joint has already told his employees that if they so much as call in sick on the day of a scheduled strike, he’ll fire them. Yes, in much of the county, a shit boss like him can get away with that crap. Because we still have full employment, jobs are scarce, and he holds the whip.

But come the day of the strike, all the employees he coerced into showing up are standing around idle, because walk-in business has dropped 70%. He’ll send some of them home, of course, and if he’s a big enough a bastard, he might try telling them not to join any protests that might be going on.

If this happens once a week, he’s going to see that his profit margins—which in the fast-food industry are pretty thin—are vanishing. He can’t take a 10% overall loss in business.

And if he starts firing people, he may find he no longer has any control over them, and they may well be standing across the street from his business on days of the strike, adding to the pressure for people to stay away and urging employees to engage in malicious compliance.

What we need to do is set up five zones across the country, one for each workday, Monday through Friday. One day per week, we get as many people as possible to buy nothing (currently such actions exempt small, locally-owned businesses, and that’s a wise distinction to make). Nothing purchased on line, and skip lunch at the chain eatery. Don’t buy groceries that day. (It’s ok to stock up the day before if needed—the bosses will notice the one day slump a lot more than a smaller one-day bump in sales.)

And on those Zone days, everyone who can, protest. It can be as small as a bumper sticker, or a small flag, or even a prearranged dress code (for instance, everyone wear something red on the Zone Action Day.) If you can march and chant and ring cow bells, do so. Just…don’t let up.

And keep the pressure on elected officials. Republicans are already running scared, and they need to realize that Trump and his MAGAts are the lesser of two factions. They are between a rock and a hard place, and you are the hard place.

And talk to people. Persuade them that this is no longer just “politics”; it’s the survival of a free and open America. These aren’t disagreements over policy; this is a fight to stop a fascist coup against the United States, and if we don’t stop them now, then we may face a very bloody war as the final option. And nobody with any sense of decency or intelligence wants to go there.

We fight hard now, or we fight for our very lives later. There’s no point in asking nicely. The fascists aren’t going to simply go away.

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Trumpenomics — The best way to save money is to waste it

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 12th, 2025

G. Elliot Morris, formerly one of the guiding geniuses behind the late, lamented 538 website, came up with this tidbit today: “According to the Hamilton Project data, the U.S. government has spent $2.17 trillion as of April 10, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. ET (the data, which comes from the Treasury, is updated in near-real-time). That is just shy of a 6% increase over spending on the same date in 2024 when the feds had spent “just” $2.05 trillion at this point in the year. This puts the US federal government on track to spend $8 trillion this year, barring other budget changes…”

As odd as that stat is in light of ElonTrump’s chainsaw ‘cost-cutting’ measures, it only tells a small part of the tale. In fact, trillions of dollars have been lost over the past two months to waste, fraud and abuse, and even though Trump had to scurry back on his “Liberation Day” tariffs in light of a potential total economic collapse, the wholesale destruction will continue.

The slashes to government programs, big and small, have been capricious, arbitrary, and often cruel. Thousands of on-going projects have been stopped in their tracks, even though the money for them had already been allocated and spent, meaning that money—hundreds of billions—has been thrown away. Just the ongoing research programs that just got torched alone were in the billions.

They’ve gutted thousands of departments by taking a very systematic and subtle approach: just fire anybody who a) is on probationary status and b) has a vowel or a consonant in their name. This meant every promising new hire who hadn’t been there two years yet, all temporary employees, and anyone who had just been promoted for doing a superior job but whose promotion came with probationary status. With no regard to capabilities or functions.

Courts have ordered thousands of employees unfired, and many of those returned to find their chairs, their desks, and their computers all gone, either trashed or dumped at fire sale prices.

Many of the most important (and popular) government programs, including the Department of Education, NOAA, NASA, Department of the Interior and Social Security are being gutted. That last one, which makes up about 10% of national economic income for the general public, is teetering and in danger of collapse. They want to privatize the Post Office, which means thousands of non-profitable rural post offices will close even as the price of sending a letter explodes ten-fold.

I’ve actually had right wingers whine that we wouldn’t be complaining if a Democrat did to the government what Trump is doing. Typical of MAGAts—they love to howl about what victims they are as they rape and bully everyone around them.

Fact is, Democrats DID cut government spending, and even balanced the budget. This was in Bill Clinton’s second term, with vice President Al Gore overseeing the government efficiency task force. It was called “Reinventing Government” It eliminated what Elaine Kamarck, administrator of the program, said was “more than 400,000 federal positions between 1993 and 2000 through a combination of voluntary departures, attrition and a relatively small number of layoffs.”

Hundreds of departments were merged or eliminated, and the savings were so great that the Clinton administration had the first (and last) balanced budget since 1968. The day George Bush Jr took office, newspapers and economists where rhapsodizing about “surpluses as far as the eye can see” and there was serious talk of retiring the national debt by 2010. Of course, Republican fiscal fecklessness and greed, serving the notion that the national treasury should be the plaything of the very rich, eliminated the surpluses and instead created record floods of red ink, which their propagandists assured the public was the result of “Democrat spending.” It was a lie, but it was repeated endlessly.

And Reinventing Government slid into the memory hole, partly because it didn’t support the fascist narrative, and partly because it worked exactly the way government was supposed to work: democratically, with decision-making and responsibility shared between Congress and the executive, and with time taken to determine what jobs and projects served a good purpose and which were just accumulated fat. It worked so well hardly anybody even noticed it.

So the next time some wankers moan in self pity that people just hate right wingers, it isn’t politics or factionalism; it’s disgust for greed, incompetence, capriciousness and viciousness. The Democrats used competence, honesty, and good faith. The difference is night and day. People don’t hate Trump and Musk for “saving money”; they hate them because they are hateful people who are destroying the country and selling it off for parts and at our expense.

Even though Trump had to back off on his massive tariffs folly, the damage is already nearly unrecoverable. Not just the incredible waste and incompetence of his “cost-cutting”; the extraneous damage inflicted.

The bond market is teetering. US bonds are the “safe haven” for investors during market crashes, something that New Deal economics took out of our lives which Reaganomics restored. Stocks tank, you invest in bonds and wait it out.

But bonds depend entirely on “The Full Faith and Credit” of the United States, and under this administration, nobody trusts that government. As far as good credit goes, the US might as well be Zimbabwe. And the bond market—nearly $30 trillion in size—relies entirely on trust in the US government.

You hear a lot about China owning a chunk of that, and it does: about $1.8 trillion. About 6%, more or less. A small but significant share. (Most of the bond market is money the US owes to itself).

Trump is going out of his way to antagonize and even insult the Chinese with his mindless bluster. If China tanks the bond market, they will take great economic damage. But the US would be ruined. It would take decades for the nation to recover, and it wouldn’t look anything like the US that we all enjoyed in the 20th century.

It’s clear Trump isn’t running the show: his plutocrats, including Musk, are. But they aren’t noticeably smarter or more competent, and often mistake greed for wisdom. Most of them have the compassion and knowledge of Charles Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson’s boss. Two words: Howard Lutnick. And he’s not even the worst one: far from it. Trump’s Secretary of Education is talking about using that thinking computer thingie for educating the kids, what was it she called it? Oh, yes, “A-One.”

Hope she didn’t pick Hewlett-Packard for the computers. Everyone knows HP and A One are competitors.

Sheesh.

 

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Trump America — Another business destined to fail

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 5th 2025

When the Dow drops 3,600 points—9% of its value—in just two days, it’s pretty safe to say market conditions are ‘unsettled’ in much the same way that Grindavik is unsettled.

My guess is we’ll see a partial recovery Monday, and then the slide will resume. It’s illegal to manipulate markets for a quick and dirty profit, but that’s hardly going to slow down Donald Trump, America’s most powerful con man. He’ll keep right on making announcements that will manipulate the market to his advantage.

The game has already begun. Erik the Moron piped up today, saying that the tariffs were “negotiable” and the first countries to negotiate would get the best deals.

While that made perfect sense to a dimwitted conman, it will also completely blows up the premise behind Trump’s tariffs. The stated reason is that it will force manufacturing to either move to America or start up there. But that means the tariffs have to be inflexible and permanent. Nobody is going to go to the trouble and expense of moving their operations stateside only to find the tariffs have been dropped or reduced and they find themselves competing with competitors back in their previous locales who didn’t move.

The sheer hucksterism of “move now because these deals won’t last” is pretty jawdropping.

Of course, to make a factory that was paying its employees $1.50 a day to set up shop in America means that to make it work, the have to slash pay scales and find a way to greatly reduce all other costs to match what they were paying in Vietnam or Laos or wherever. In other words, to make it worth the overhead of the tariffs, they would have to cut everything to third world levels: no OSHA, no FDA, no EPA, no minimum wage, nothing.

Donald, of course is working hard to get rid of all that crap. It’s patriotic to send your eight year old to work in a poisonous, dangerous place where they might live to be 12 if they’re lucky. Florida is already working on legislation to replace migrant labor with child labor. No, I’m not kidding.

Warren Buffet, who knows a thing or two about the markets, suggested that Trump also inflicted the incoherent tariffs in order to drive interest rates up, something that would also greatly profit the markets. That statement left Donald screaming in rage, which tells you that Buffet pretty much nailed it.

Trump is openly defying courts, ignoring direct orders not to send innocent people to his gulags, knowing that the five fascists on the supreme court will rule in his favor. It won’t be Donald who ends the United States: it will be Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, none of whom seem to realize that once they’ve ended the country, they will no longer have any importance to anyone. Some of them are rich and will do OK in the new plutocracy, but lawn jockeys like Thomas and religious whack jobs like Coney Barret will find themselves on the outside looking in.

Basically, the plutocrats are working to parcel out the United States and make it an impoverished third-world nation while making off with tens of trillions in profits. It’s the biggest heist in history. Then they move on to the next prosperous zone and conduct a parasitic orgy there. China would be a sensible target since it’s already authoritarian. If they aren’t stopped, your life, and the life of your children, will be one of misery and deprivation.

Think Trump and his manipulators are not out to ruin your life and kill your children? Consider this Raw Story news article today: “A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump administration of “covertly” withholding funds for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief programs from states that didn’t vote for him, Courthouse News reported on Friday. In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid,” noted the report.”

A court finding is a bit more than a accusation. The reason McConnell ruled the way he did was because he had solid, incontrovertible evidence that Trump was deliberately cheating people for the crime of living in a state that didn’t vote for him.

Pussy Riot, indisputably the bravest rock group in the world, showed up in Manhattan today to urge Americans stand up for themselves against Trump’s planned tyranny. The cowardice of the Republicans is well documented. Democrats, as always, are divided on the notion of whether ‘tis nobler to be spineless, gutless, boot-licking cowards or not. Fortunately, most are not.

It’s the same as with the American public, where I’ve had people tell me they won’t come to today’s demonstrations because they want to keep their heads down and survive. Understandable, but I have to wonder what makes them think life outside of Trump’s gulags will be any improvement. He plans to leave you in poverty and squalor. That’s what’s in store. At least in prison you’ll get moldy bread and contaminated water, just like you would outside. And inside, nobody expects you to pretend to love Trump. Hopefully.

As most of you know, four American serviceman drowned in Lithuania in a motor vehicle mishap. Their bodies were eventually all recovered, and as the caskets were taken to the airport yesterday for the flight back to America, thousands of Lithuanians lined the streets to pay their respects.

The servicemen landed today, but Donald Trump wasn’t there.

He had a golf tournament to watch. That was more important than losers and suckers.

The rallies against Trump begin in an hour and a half (I’m finishing this at 7:25 PDT). I’m hoping nationwise five million will show up, but I think three million will get the point across. There may have do be more than one day of rallies, and widespread strikes and boycotts. But if we want our freedoms back, that’s what it’s going to take.

In a world of Cory Bookers, don’t be a Mike Johnson.

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Lost Signal — Even by Trump’s standards, this was dismal

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 27th 2025

The breaking story about the Signal chat group conversation leading up to the bombing of Houthis in Yemen was already one of the most egregious and bizarre in the annals of American history.

Accidentally inviting the top editor of one of America’s most renowned journalistic magazines, (Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, in case you’ve been on the far side of the Moon this past week) to a group chat about a pending military attack is a bit like being in an NFL team huddle and glancing up to see the stadium announcer is also in the huddle, holding a microphone, listening carefully to the play plan and nodding thoughtfully.

Of course, to stretch that simile further, in this particular huddle there’s no assurance that any of the guys wearing your uniform are actually on the same team. You already know the coach is working for the other guys, after all.

The participants, caught out, have been throwing excuses and lies around madly in all directions like custard pies in a Mack Sennet movie. They’ve tried claiming that the transcript was a hoax, that they didn’t discuss classified information, and that Goldberg made it up because he doesn’t like Trump.

Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t seem to know what country she was in during the discussion. Well, you know how it is: you see one Asian country, you’ve seen all of them. At least one participant was in Moscow during the chat.

Speaking of Moscow, it seems that the reason the Pentagon had issued a blanket order the week before to never use Signal for any official reasons was because Russia had successfully hacked the encryption of the app. And while the Russians may not have been involved with this particular breach, it seems that the names, phone numbers, emails and passwords of all the participants in the session were available online.

About the only people who didn’t know were the American public. But by inviting Goldberg, they got that covered.

To call this a clusterfuck is a bit like saying the Fyre Festival didn’t go well. It’s damning with faint praise.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the man who somehow invited Goldberg to the chat room, claims he never met Goldberg and had no idea who he was. Evidence, including photographs, says otherwise. It’s not quite clear how inviting a total stranger to a top-secret national security chat is somehow better than inviting the editor of the Atlantic. Apparently one guy there was awaiting confirmation to his government post!

But never mind all that. One person was conspicuous by his absence: Le grand citrouille, King Pumpkin, the Donald.

You seen scenes where a major military operation is underway, and they release photos of the president and his cabinet all sitting around, looking tense and serious as they rescue hostages or grease bin Laden or whatever.

Not in this case. The closest to presidential leadership is when one of the participants says vaguely that he thinks Donald approves of what they’re doing here. Evidence suggests that Trump had no idea what was going on. To paraphrase the famous Watergate investigative question: “What did he know, and does he know that he knew it?” It seems pretty clear that the President of the United States was absent simply because he had nothing to offer.

Trump himself seems to have no idea what the scandal is about, and is mostly reduced to his boilerplate deflection and denial, some of which may actually be valid. It’s pretty clear he has no idea what Signal is, but having discerned that something called Signal was involved, he has declared it defective and wants people to look into it. After all, it let that Goldberg, who was mean to him in the past, in. Something must be wrong with Signal.

He’s variously tried claiming the transcript was a hoax (that backfired: Goldberg released more to show it wasn’t) and that the Democrats were to blame somehow, and that no secrets were discussed. (Several of the participants have tried making that claim, stopping just short of saying the dog ate their homework.) He is, in a word, clueless.

He doesn’t even have the wit to address the specifics, but is just generally doing The Donald, the things he always does when he’s feeling defensive. He’s the old guy with the cane batting at imaginary insects.

He finally realized that there was something to all this confusing ‘signal’ stuff and described the event as a ‘glitch’ and boasted that it was the first glitch in the two months of his administration. A sardonically amused Rachel Maddow that evening spent a full half hour running down the glitches so far. She didn’t pad it or speak slowly. It’s an impressive pile of glitches, worthy of Inspector Clouseau.

But no worries: Trump will have Clouseau’s real-life equivalent, Inspector Hegseth, in to determine what, if anything, happened.

In addition to the blatant incompetence, malice and possible treason, public discourse needs to include whether Trump has any control over this gang of fascists, crooks and subversives or is just their little smiley face for the public. Are the lights on? Is anybody home?

The next day we learned that a) four US soldiers were missing in Lithuania and b) nobody had bothered to tell Trump about it.

If you need more evidence of how feckless, reckless, and anti-American this junta is, consider the following exchange between Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut and alleged Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

HIMES: Do you think it’s responsible for you, as head of the intelligence community, to retweet posts from individuals affiliated with Russian state media?

GABBARD: That retweet came from my personal account.

HIMES: Personal account? You’re the Director of National Intelligence, not an Instagram influencer. There’s no such thing as “personal” when you’re elevating Kremlin propaganda.

GABBARD: I have the right to share information—

HIMES: Information? You mean Russian disinformation. You sit in high-level intelligence briefings, then turn around and boost the same narratives Moscow is pushing. Should we just CC the Kremlin on your next meeting and cut out the middleman?

GABBARD: This is just an attempt to smear me—

HIMES: Smear you? You lied under oath in a Senate hearing yesterday, claiming you knew nothing about classified information, while sitting in Signal chats where war plans were discussed. You retweet Kremlin-backed sources, then act shocked when people question your loyalties.

GABBARD: I’m focused on national security—

HIMES: National security? While pushing Russian propaganda and pretending you’re clueless about intelligence leaks? If a Democrat had done half of this, you’d be screaming treason on national TV.

GABBARD: This is about free speech—

HIMES: Free speech? You’re the President’s top intelligence advisor, not some random guy on Twitter. Every word you amplify has consequences. And right now, you’re handing America’s enemies exactly what they want—straight from your “personal account.”

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904907517261705605

Speaking of Twitter, I’m a bit surprised Musk wasn’t one of the participants. I suppose he’s too busy destroying the United States, though. That can keep a man busy, you know.

Or maybe he’ll join the chat when they discuss bombing Toronto. Hopefully the Russians will leak that before it happens.

 

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Heil Trump! — Leni Riefenstahl should have filmed the speech

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 5th 2025

I only watched the first half hour of Trump’s speech last night. I understand he raved and ranted and lied for a full 100 minutes, which puts him in line with other windy despots, such as Castro or Hitler or Mao. I’ve always wondered why dictators feel a need to orate at such length. Do they enjoy holding a captive audience? Or is there a deeper insecurity at work here? Braggarts often are compensating for something.

The speech was interrupted several times by chants of “USA! USA!” from the Republican side. One hears it often at international sporting events, and it’s usually good natured if a bit tiresome. But there was an edge, a bellicosity to the chant here that made it sound more like “Sieg Heil!” All that was missing was the stiff-armed salute. It’s a pity the camera angle couldn’t pick out faces of those saluting the dictator: I wondered how many wore the same joyous truculence of the true believer, and how many sneaked nervous glances about, too aware of the penalties for inadequate enthusiasm. (I wonder if anyone in the room looked for the same thing and had the wisdom to realize that the true believers would be the greater threat to Trump than the shivering cowards. When Trump’s programs implode and the public fury rises, they will turn faster and harder against Trump.)

“Never be the first to stop applauding” – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Trump got into the issue of waste in Social Security. Apparently he hoped a long list of patently untrue claims would give him some credence, but as usual, he over embellished, breaking down “recipients” by age groups—110 to 115, 116-125, and so on up to 350. That last one amused me: apparently someone filed for social security benefits either in 1675 or at the age of 260, when Social Security actually came into existence. I watched Mike Johnson shaking his head sorrowfully over that, and recalled that the man is a Bible literalist, which means he really believes Methuselah really lived to be 969. Maybe he thought the SS recipient in question was actually one of Noah’s children, and was just lying about his age in order to pick up girls. Was he first paid in ducats or florins?

Of course, there are no checks going out to people older than about 113. The December 2024 Social Security stats show that a bit over 89,000 people got payments, in line with the census report from 2020 which showed 88,000 in that age group. The database is in COBOL, which uses numbers like 150 to indicate that the person in question is dead.

But Trump has two audiences he wants to reach: those who are in on the con as part of his drive to flat-out steal the Social Security trust fund, and utter fools. If you believe him but don’t know which group you’re in, you’re in trouble.

Trump babbled about the “woke agenda” of course. Among other items that he considers woke: “biodiversity,” “transgenic mice,” and “discriminants.” As I said, his main audience is morons.

At least one Democrat, Rep. Al Green (D, Texas) stood and shouted “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” and “He has no mandate!” Mike sent the palace guard to evict him. It’s a pity the rest of the Democrats didn’t join him.

Still, Trump woke up this morning to a new crisis, which probably took the sheen off what he doubtlessly considered a wildly successful oration: the Supreme Court ruled that he must honor the contracts made from funds allocated by Congress to outfits such as USAID.

The ruling, which in any sane time would have been a 9-0 no-brainer, was dissented by Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. Alito wrote the dissent, saying he was “stunned” that judges might think it is the duty of judges to adjudicate contracts under the rule of law. That is, after all, only the reason judges exist in the first place, and obviously is just some woke liberal crap and must be struck down. I wonder if any of those four have considered what may happen if they managed to rule against their own raison d’être. Of course, their masters at the Heritage Foundation probably have golden parachutes ready for when they finish selling out the country and there is no longer any reason for silliness like “Constitutional Law.”

But it puts Trump right up against that red line: does he abandon his efforts to dismantle the government by fiat, or does he defy the Court? Either way leads to the end of his government, either as a legitimate government or a government at all.

For all of us, the red line is here. And if he crosses it and defies the courts, then either Trump must go, or America does.

Your choice what to do next.

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The United States versus America — The time is coming to choose sides

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 19th, 2025

I picked up a follower on Blue Sky the other day (I must be in double digits by now!) whose page reveled in his love of country and patriotism. He had pictures of himself in uniform, along with pictures of wheat fields and sunsets and dogs and all the other things that make America special in the eyes of hyper-patriots.

Nothing to take offense to, but I was mildly curious. I’m skeptical of hyperpatriotism for the same reasons I’m skeptical of overt religiosity or guys who scream about “impure women” or whatever. All are signs of fundamentalism, a mental disorder I’m at best uncomfortable around. My writings and posts don’t attract such people, other than the ones who want to scream about what a degenerate I am. One of the nice things about Blue Sky is that people like that tend to weed themselves out in pretty short order.

But I was curious. What did my new-found friend think about events over the past month? I scrolled through his past few weeks of posts. Not one word about any current event: nothing about the abandonment of Ukraine, or a psychopathic South African billionaire and his pock-faced juvenile delinquents rummaging through all the national secrets and finances. Nothing about the immense damage Trump has already inflicted on the country, both domestically and in foreign affairs.

I didn’t block or mute the guy, but I did elect to not follow him back. (Some people think the number of followers they have validates them, and that’s fine. I measure my reach by the number of people I elect to follow BACK. This eliminates all the people who want to sell me land, drugs, or bitcoin, the illuminati, or who want to sex me all night long for the cost of a penicillin shot.)

The polls show that Trump’s popularity is dropping at over 2% a week, which in the ideologically rigid present state of public opinion represents a vast and momentous shit. His polls on the economy have dropped 12% in two weeks, even though the economy really hasn’t reacted to his policies. But many idiots still measure the economy by the price of eggs, which is like picking the Superbowl winner by which mound of corn a chicken pecks at first. And the price of eggs is skyrocketing as bird flu decimates the laying hens.

The malicious ineptitude of the TrumpenMusk regime is starting to percolate through all the propaganda from newspits like Newsmax or the Washington Post. All the redcap morons are starting to realize they really mean the stuff they said in Project 2025, and do hope to wipe out medicare and social security and shift ALL the tax burden to the lower class while they totally raid the entire nation’s wealth. Right now they just see it in them cutting programs that matter to them; day care, product safety regulations, conservation, etc. In short, all the millions of things government actually does because it’s far cheaper and more efficient than the private sector could possibly manage.

For many years, the right wing has promoted the silly notion that you are a patriot if you love America but want to get rid of the United States. Instead of “United States” of course they say “government” and they lie constantly about how the government is wasteful (it is, but so are corporations; but a lot of their operations are ‘proprietary’ and so they aren’t transparent or responsive to public interest, and unfortunately it’s been nearly 250 years since Americans had to deal with power centers that were unresponsive to the public interest.) Government is oppressive, evil, eats kittens, yada, yada, yada.

What they don’t understand (and are prevented from understanding) is that the United States, the thing that makes America special, IS the Constitution, and the government which it founded. The separation of powers, the mandated responsiveness to the people, the protection of the oppressed, the Bill of Rights – that is what the United States is. That is what the rest of the world envied. Not fields and dogs and sunsets, because every fucking country in the world has those, and some are prettier. Without the United States, America is just another patch of land filled with squabbling and destitute peasants, no better than most and worse than some.

The Constitution—the heart and soul of the United States—exists with the express purpose of using government to defend the people from the depredations of banks, aristocrats, and churches. While it has had an imperfect record with these, it worked well enough to make America the greatest of nations for a long, long time.

Trump and Musk are the vile faces of an evil consortium of fundamentalist churches, rapacious corporations, and vicious plutocrats—all the evils men like Jefferson and Madison wanted to free the citizenry from. The reason Trump and Musk are dismantling government isn’t to save the taxpayers money—they have zero interest in that, and quite the opposite, in fact. They want to create a power vacuum and fill it themselves, and put every public need on a “make it pay” basis. Instead of a not-for-profit service such as social security or medicare, they want to run it on a 30% markup, and regard the actual services as outlays that need to be minimized for the sake of profit.

We’re rapidly approaching a point where all the dog and sunset-loving cardboard patriots have to decide if they love a rapidly diminishing America, or want to fight for the United States.

I know which line they may cross: when they declare that they are no longer obliged to observe court rulings. That’s where I begin to advocate the overthrow of Musk and Trump by any means possible. At that point, they are outlaw, and enemies of the United States.

If people want to keep the America they love, they may well have to take up arms on behalf of the United States.

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The Wednesday Night Massacre — The battle between Trump and America is joined

The Wednesday Night Massacre

The battle between Trump and America is joined

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 14th, 2025

Some of you may remember the Saturday Night Massacre. It was the turning point of the Watergate scandal in 1973, when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had taped his conversations in the Oval Office—which would likely include conversations pertaining to the break-in at Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate hotel and subsequent conversations about the cover-up of the crime and possible White House complicity.

The special prosecutor investigating the case, Archibald Cox, promptly issued a subpoena for the tapes. Nixon refused, and ordered Cox to drop the subpoena. Cox refused. Nixon then ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon then ordered the assistant attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. He refused and resigned. Finally, Nixon found a willing toady in the contemptible Robert Bork who said, in effect, oh, hey, master, no problem! Cox is gone. Bork went on to become a hero to the morally bankrupt conservative movement, even getting nominated to the Supreme Court before people remembered who he was.

The fiasco pretty much sealed Nixon’s fate. Americans hadn’t yet been subjected to 50 years of right wing propaganda designed to erode their confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and themselves. They realized that Nixon’s behavior was not that of an unjustly accused president, and his support plummeted.

Now here we are not one month into the most criminally capricious and ethically destitute administration in US history, and an even bigger massacre has taken place.

Eric Adams is the mayor of New York City, and he is a piece of work. He was, at best, a shady cop for many years, and rose to captain. He retired, got elected to the state senate, then became Brooklyn borough president, and then ran for mayor, winning handily against an inept vigilante.

Adams’ ethics, if he ever had any, vanished, and by 2024 he had been indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He was the first mayor to face federal charges while still in office.

Then Trump got elected, and set about destroying rule of law. After Matt Gaetz flamed out, he picked his second-best alternative, Pam Bondi, to run the Justice Department. (Yes, she was sloppy seconds to Matt Gaetz, so don’t get your hopes up.) The DoJ immediately became what Trump claimed it was when it was prosecuting him: corrupt, incompetent, and politicized. (Trump ALWAYS accuses others of being what he is himself).

Trump needed scapegoats who couldn’t fight back to blame the country’s problems upon, and immigrants are his version of the Jews under Hitler. He was delighted that Eric Adams shared his views and wished to punish people in order to make it look patriotic. Eric Adams wouldn’t be much use in prison. So he told Bondi to make the charges go away, just like he did with hundreds awaiting trial for January 6th, and she passed word down to one of her flunkies, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, to make the case go away. Emil, no hero, passed word down to one Danielle Renee Sassoon, who was appointed the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York by Trump just the month before. Bove claimed that the charges against Adams, a Democrat, were politically motivated. (The charges were brought under Merrick Garland during the Biden Administration.) Bove no doubt presumed that Sassoon would be as corrupt, nuts and/or servile as all Trump’s other appointments.

Well, turns out she isn’t.

She wrote a seven page letter detailing why she could not follow Bove’s orders to drop the case against Adams, and resigned effective immediately. Starting to sound familiar?

It turned into an avalanche. According to an MSN report, “According to a person briefed on the matter, after Sassoon refused to dismiss the case, the Trump administration directed John Keller, the acting head of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, to do so.

“Keller also resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with the matter said. Kevin Driscoll, a senior official in the department’s criminal division, has also resigned, one of the people said.

“Three other deputies in the Justice Department’s public corruption unit – Rob Heberle, Jenn Clarke, and Marco Palmieri – also resigned on Thursday over the orders to dismiss the Adams case, a person familiar with the matter said.”

Wow. This already makes the Saturday Night Massacre look like an office spat over nuking popcorn in the microwave and stinking up the place. Seven resignations on principle, and counting.

An army of skunks couldn’t stink up the place the way Trump has.

More resignations are expected as all the decent people get out, leaving the Justice Department (and our dependence on a fair and just legal system) in the hands of obedient strutting swine and toadies. Good luck, America. I’ll probably end up in Gitmo for writing this.

Mind you, the massacre 52 years ago took place when lack of evidence made the entire Watergate case a matter of “he said she said.” Many people sided with Nixon in good faith. That’s not the case here.

Bove’s order to Sassoon made it clear that there was a fiddle in the case. Again, according to MSN: “Sassoon said the memo Bove wrote directing the case be dropped makes clear Adams is being granted leniency in exchange for assisting the federal government with its immigration priorities, citing a meeting Jan. 31 that she, Bove, Adams’s attorney and members of her office attended.

‘Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,’ Sassoon said in the letter Wednesday.”

Rachel Maddow reported that the order was to dismiss the charges against Adams “without prejudice” which, Maddow explained, meant that they were to be suspended rather than dropped entirely, and would be left hanging over Adams’ head for as long as he was in office and carrying out Trump’s pogrom against immigrants for him. No hint of coercion there, right?

It’s been 52 years since the Saturday Night Massacre. Since then, Americans have been subjected to a half century of endless propaganda designed to erode American confidence in democracy, freedom, justice and self-respect. The Massacre effectively ended Nixon. Will this end Trump? With a corrupt Court and servile, cringing Republican congress? Will the public finally rise up against this criminal?

When the right decided to avenge Watergate and end the American experiment, they probably didn’t think it would culminate in Donald Trump, already known back then as a vicious and unreliable clown.

But their cause is a broken and twisted one, so it’s no surprise their hirelings are broken and twisted people.

All the decent people in the Justice Department are getting out. What remains are swine and lower than swine.

Good luck to all of us

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Let the Lunacy Begin! — Chaotic Trump’s chaotic start

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 30th 2025

“A 100 metre-wide asteroid has triggered global planetary defence procedures for the first time after telescope observations revealed it has a chance of colliding with Earth in 2032…Based on measurements gathered so far, the asteroid has a 1.3% chance of smashing into Earth on 22 December 2032, or put another way, a nearly 99% probability of barrelling past without incident.”

My response to that January 29th Guardian article was “Sure. Why the hell not?” Figure Trump will have been just reelected President for life and beyond on a unanimous vote from Congress and the Supreme Court. Most of the US will be an Ayn Rand hellscape where trillionaires amuse themselves by having captive workers put on sex shows. Churches will be clamoring for the newest bible from Lord Elon Musk.

An asteroid capable of wiping out a major city would be a welcome distraction.

Granted, it’s been a bit chaotic the past 10 days or so. Trump talked about shock and awe, which was one way of describing his blitzkrieg-style power grab.

First there was the blanket pardon. Trump is lazy and incompetent, and thought it was too cumbersome to vet all the 1600 or so people convicted for actions taken on January 6th. While questionable ethically (pardons are not supposed to be based on politics or transactional) most of the people pardoned committed minor offenses and some had even done their time. Others where vicious criminals, guilty of anything from sedition to child rape. The head of the Proud Boys was shopped by his own son, and rightly so. Now out, he’s threatening and trying to track down his son. Another died in a shootout with police, and another convicted of forcible child rape and sentenced to 17 years. Fortunately, more responsible adults have kept his ass in prison.

Then there was the since-rescinded spending freeze which caused 48 hours of utter chaos. Matthew J. Vaeth wrote the memo (given the secrecy and buffoonery of the administration, it’s impossible to guess if Trump even knew about it) even though he was only acting interim director of the Office of Management and Budget. But he was also one of the authors of Project 2025, and made his fascist impulses known in the memo, writing “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.” Just another howling Heritage Foundation right-wing nut.

It was blatantly unconstitutional, of course. Congress appropriates spending; the chief executive branch only administers it, and has no say in second guessing the Congressional budget. A few years back there was a move to give the president line-item veto power, and it was slapped down by the courts as unconstitutional.

Then there was the abjectly silly attempt to get government employees a seven-month buyout option, a bonus for early retirement. Again, totally illegal. This scheme sprung from the noble brow of one Elon Musk, who made a similar offer to Twitter employees when he bought the media, a first step toward turning it into the plane of Nazi vomit it is today. He even used the same title: “A Fork in the Road” for both memos. Musk wants to do for America what he did for Twitter. X it out and replace it with…well, a right wing shit pile.

Rachel Maddow noted that JD Vance, who once said, “So step one in the process is to totally replace — like rip out like a tumor — the current American leadership class, and then reinstall some sense of American political religion.”, was almost wholly backed in his unlikely political career by Peter Theil protégé Curtis Yarvin, who wants to rip out the entire government and replace it with a corporation. He concludes, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.”

Personally, I have a phobia of dictators, I admit it. Never turned out very nicely. And this clown is holding the strings of the vice President.

Trump’s enablers want a Unified Executive, which is a fancy way of saying “Dictator.” Trump may be a bit vague on that, but I’m sure he likes the sound of a scheme that means unlimited profit. He’s like a Ferengi from Star Trek, only not ethically limited by the Rules of Acquisition.

There’s the start of the mass deportation. The claim is he’s deporting criminals. In reality, most of those being deported have no criminal record, and contrary to what the hate mongers on the right claim, the act of being in the country without permission is not an actual crime. People who call them “illegal people” are, wittingly or not, just using the tired old Nazi tactic of dehumanizing their victims. And as for “anchor babies” (Barron Trump qualifies for that term), even this sad spectacle of a Supreme Court is going to find it hard to opine that the 14th amendment can be erased by an executive order from a nutball president.

That all said, there are two things going on for which Trump is not responsible.

He didn’t cause yesterday’s horrible mid-air collision in Washington, DC or even make it more likely. Yes, he forced the head of the FAA to resign, but that was just last week and couldn’t have affected day-to-day operations in the control towers. It was just pure bad luck. Trump, of course, tried blaming the crash on “Biden policies” because Trump is a morally empty dirtbag.

Nor is Trump responsible for the current price of eggs. That’s almost entirely because of the fast-spreading bird flu, which has resulted in the deaths of some 130 million hens. Trump is no more at fault for that than Biden was, but unlike MAGAts, I’m honest enough to not base a blame game just on which party is in the White House.

That said, expect produce prices to explode, since crops are rotting in the fields because of Trump’s pogrom against foreign workers. And I have little hope of any positive approach to bird flu, either.

Four more years of this craziness. At least.

Say! Is there any way to speed up that asteroid?

 

 

 

 

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