Category: Politics

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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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Trump’s Terrors — Toujours, mon brèves et mon brefs, toujours!

Trump’s Terrors

Toujours, mon brèves et mon brefs, toujours!

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 22nd, 2025

Fearless Leader has officially executive ordered and deemed AntiFa to be a “Terrorist Organization.” Yes, with the capital letters. Scarier that way, you know.

I’ve never really considered myself a terrorist. My idea of a terrorist campaign would be sharply-worded letters to the editor, or snide memes posted for the edification of the local MAGAts. In moments of extreme rage, I have been known to cancel subscriptions. If I was working for Al-Qaida, I would probably be the bloke who writes the ads for the newsletter.

But I’ve been AntiFa since I was five years old, when I learned what fascists were. They were the nasties who were why some of my classmates had rickets, or were missing older brothers and dads. Prime Minister Churchill hated them, and by gosh, that was good enough for me. Down with fascists! Boo! Hiss!

So if I’m AntiFa (and the past seventy years haven’t offered any reasons to change that stance) does that mean that we now refer to them as just “Fa”? I don’t know. They aren’t very nice people. I don’t really want to be on a first-syllable basis with them.

The thing is, the more I learn about fascism, the less there is to like. I slowly evolved from “Hitler was a mean sort who bombed us and was horrid to his people” to learning about the death camps and death marches to the general horrors of authoritarianism.

Turns out that AntiFa was around back in the 30s. Not surprisingly, Germany, the 1930’s version of America Project 2025, had a communist-aligned group, the Antifaschistische Aktion. This was back when communism was fashionable, and people really believed the Soviet Union would become a Workers’ Paradise.

We learned to admire AntiFa terrorist organizations over the first few decades of my life. Of course, we had different names for them: The Resistance. The Underground. Freedom Fighters. The Irregulars. They blew up bridges and trains and best of all, bridges with trains on them. They were masters of sabotage, both passive and active.

If anyone bothered mentioning that the fascist governments considered them to be Terrorist Organizations, we probably just shrugged it off. They were fascists, after all. Bunch of bloody clots, that lot. Who cared what they thought?

Americans generally shared that view of AntiFa until the race riots and Vietnam protests came along, and the vicarious resistance heroes of World War 2 suddenly found themselves perched on the other side of a very uncomfortable fence. How dare those People demand equal rights, and why are those long-haired hippies be upset about being sent to die in the tens of thousands for no good reason at all? Repress! Repress! Repress!

The fascists, discredited by World War 2, saw an opportunity in America’s somewhat naive authoritarian streak, and began a long, systematic assimilation of the American right, beginning with the McCarthy era and the John Birchers and reaching its apex with the Trump coup. The AntiFa rebels of yesterday were now the settled and jealous establishment. And they prefer law and order to rebellion and idealism.

But there’s this one problem: most Americans, at heart, are still AntiFa. They don’t like authoritarians. They don’t like cowards and bullies and vicious hatemongers. In short, they don’t like fascists. And no number of executive orders is going to change that.

And fascists, no matter how much lipstick they slap on, are still pigs. It’s intrinsic to the philosophy, which is that a select few are superior to the unwashed masses. They are entitled to control, supress, and exploit. It’s the will of God. It’s for the fatherland. Resistance is useless.

This past week’s uproar over the removal of Jimmy Kimmel from his show, and the largely unsuccessful effort to deify the reprehensible Charlie Kirk (more on that in a moment) showed that cracks are starting to appear in the Trump coup as people finally realize exactly what it is they are facing.

Kimmel said this to get banned: “The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” He didn’t attack Kirk, or mock his death, or praise the assassin, no matter what the liars of MAGA say. Just that. That’s all it took to scare the fascists.

The reaction to Kimmel being taken off the air was easily the biggest spontaneous explosion of public rage since the George Floyd demonstrations—and it was both totally non-violent and in a form the right couldn’t infuse with violence. It may have been the biggest single boycott in American history. Millions of people canceled their subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu, and millions more sent protests to Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group. Sinclair in particular is a far right concern famed for having its television “journalists” chant fascist talking points word for word. People started compiling lists of companies advertising on the stations of either consortium.

Disney, out 4 billion dollars in stock value and millions of subscriptions, backed down and reinstated Kimmel. It remains to be seen if the authoritarians at Sinclair will broadcast him. It’s too early to declare victory, but the administration and Disney got a taste of what damage a determined underground can do.

Then there was the grotesque Horst Wessel rally masquerading as a memorial service for Charlie Kirk. Curiously, few of the speakers, including Trump, seemed to give a wet shit about old Charlie, but instead put on their best Nuremberg presentations. Of particular note was Steven Miller, who for some reason doesn’t have a large black swastika tattooed on his billboard-sized forehead.

He said, “We will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen. We stand for what is good, virtuous, noble.”

He continued: “To those who are against us? “What do YOU HAVE? You have NOTHING, you are nothing! You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are hatred, YOU ARE NOTHING! You can build nothing, produce nothing, create nothing. You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk? You have made him immortal.”

I’m sure it sounded better in the original German. It was, almost word-for-word, a translation of the speech Joseph Goebbels gave in a paean to dead Nazi nobody Horst Wessel.

It is no longer possible to disguise what these people are, and the threat they pose to all of us.

There’s a reason Trump calls AntiFa a “Terrorist Organization.” He fears us. We are AntiFa in our tens of millions, those who understand how important freedom and rights really are.

There are reasons we glorified The Resistance in the fifties and sixties. They were brave and steadfast in the face in ultimate evil.

We need to remember that, because Fascists don’t go away if you ask them nicely. Be prepared to resist. This week we showed that it can be done without violence or even defying the law (Executive Orders are not law). But we have to be firm. We have to be resolute. We have to be brave.

Nous sommes toujours la résistance!

 

 

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Sorry Charlie — But We Have Other Things To Discuss

Sorry Charlie

But We Have Other Things To Discuss

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 14th 2025

Charlie’s a good Nazi. That’s all I have to say about that.

Because our servile corporate media can’t think of anything else to talk about this week, let me fill you in on some of the other, apparently less important stories, going on right now.

NATO has invoked Article 4 in the wake of the Russian drone attack in Poland. The Russians claim the incursion of 19 drones, many of them armed, into Polish air space was “unintentional.” The Poles shot four of them down, and the Russians seemed disinclined to object to that. Article 4 isn’t a declaration of war (that’s Article 5) but it’s the equivalent of when a skunk starts tapping his forepaws and lifts his tail. It means “Back off. Now.” Putin clearly thinks that America is too cowardly and weak to call his bluff because he knows the American president is too cowardly and weak. But even without America, the EU has an economy 40 times the size of Russia’s and a military that, while not as huge, uses well maintained equipment and ordinance from the 21st century. Also, if Putin is hoping Trump will support him when the chips are down, he’s living in a fool’s paradise.

Some idiot MAGA wannabe named Tori Branum put in a SWAT call to ICE to raid a Hyundai plant and the Icicles promptly rounded up some 475 people, 300 of which were actual Korean nationals there on Visas to train American workers. Only one didn’t have his papers in order, and there’s no evidence he did so intentionally. South Korea is furious. They got their workers back, but none of them want to return to the plant in what many of them doubtlessly now think of “that shithole country.” It may cost the US a half trillion dollars in planned investments, and Japan and Vietnam are both openly rethinking making manufacturing plants in the US. That idiot congressional wannabee and the cowboys at ICE just negated the whole rationale behind the tariffs.

A district court just ruled that Trump doesn’t have the Constitutional power to levy tariffs unilaterally. That was clear to anyone who knew anything at all about the law and separation of powers, but it came as a huge surprise to the Pedodent, who is screaming that it will cost the US (imaginary) trillions in revenue. Now, the Supine Court may make one of its secret rulings that Trump can continue the tariffs for a few decades while they pretend to think it over (now their favorite ploy for supporting the Unitary Executive, or what historians refer to as “the dictator”).

In a bit over two weeks, funding for the government runs out. This is a crisis we’ve seen far too often, dating back to Newt Gingrich and his scheme to blackmail America, but the difference this time is that because of Trump’s gratuitous and illegal use of Rescission (reallocating or just flat-out stealing budgeted funding) there’s no point in passing a budget and so the Democrats can’t be arsed unless and until someone puts a choke collar on the Trumpster.

In Brazil, where corporate interests haven’t totally neutered the government, the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was found guilty of plotting a military coup. Four out of the five Supreme Court justices tasked with judging the former leader found him guilty. He got over 27 years in prison. Hey, remember when we had a real supreme court that didn’t have six fascist clowns in black dresses? If the Suck-ass Six had been trying Bolsonaro, they would have put him back in office while they spent twenty years claiming to decide if he should have been voted out.

Netanyahu may have finally overstepped with the fascist right that support him, bombing Qatar. Supposedly they were bombing Hamas terrorists with those magic bombs that never hurt innocent people. The Qataris were not amused, and for a wonder, neither was the United States, usually head supplicant to Benji.

California, which still maintains American values, made it illegal for peace officers to wear masks or conceal their identities. In pre-Trump America that may have seemed a no-brainer, but now that Trump has his own secret police made up of January 6 rioters, mercenaries and other bottom-feeder thugs in masks, it’s become necessary. Steven Miller, poster boy for Gay Nazis Who Pretend to Like Jews, is planning to double down on ICE raids in Los Angeles. If they show up with masks, I hope the LAPD arrest them. Not holding my breath, but Californians are going to be asking them hard questions if they don’t.

Meanwhile, we’re hearing the word “Stagflation” more and more. Those of us alive in the 1970s remember it well: 15% annual inflation combined with 8% unemployment, the result mostly of the “oil shock” when OPEC doubled oil barrel prices. Ah, good times. The Republicans (!!!) tried the experiment of government control of wage/price freezes (Whip Inflation Now) which compounded the disaster. Republicans are weird. They hate all the good things about socialism (universal healthcare, schooling, child care,etc.) but when the heat is on, they embrace all the worst elements of communism (wage and price freezes, hiding unfavorable statistics, and economic coercion of corporations). Oddly, they insist socialism and communism are the same thing.

Meanwhile, farm workers, documented or not, are avoiding the fields because of ICE raids, and tariffs are driving the costs of all imported foods up. In July, the wholesale price of produce jumped 38%. Yes, in just one month. And we’re just now coming up on the main harvest time, and tariffs are just starting to bite. Job growth was already starting to slow when Trump took office as the Biden boom ran its course.

So there’s all that to consider while nervous talking heads on TV try to suck up to the MAGAt extremists. Just so you know, there’s more to talk about other than some asshole whose only redeeming feature is that he got shot, or as I like to call him, “2025 School Shooting #46.”

Oh, yes. Release the Epstein files!

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Jerk Release Program — Child rapist 20 year sentence reduced

Jerk Release Program

Child rapist 20 year sentence reduced

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 12th, 2025

Just days after Trump’s corrupt lawyer/slash DoJ assistant attorney general met privately with convicted child sex felon Ghislaine Maxwell, then serving twenty years for child rape and child sex trafficking, she got moved to Club Fed, a luxurious minimum security prison reserved only for the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful criminals.

Now Maxwell’s on a work release program. The sort of thing someone gets if they get a speeding ticket and can’t pay the fine.

Frankly, I don’t expect her to live long, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Someone’s going to kill her—one of her nearly a thousand victims, perhaps, or relatives of same. Or one of millions of Americans who feel death is about the correct penalty for child rapists.

Or, of course, at the orders of Donald Trump. There’s a saying, attributed to Arabia, that goes, “It is unwise to know the secrets of a king.” And Maxwell has known Trump extremely well for many decades; there cannot be any possible doubt in her mind as to what a loathsome and vicious creature Trump is, and she also no doubt suspects he had something to do with the death of her partner, Jeffrey Epstein. I’m sure Trump would love to order her murdered.

I have absolutely no doubt that she has tons of evidence of her exploits, and Trump’s role in them, stashed away somewhere very safe and secure, held in abeyance by a “dead man’s switch.” She probably told Todd Blanche, Trump’s fixer, that someone, somewhere, had the files and other evidence, and they would remain hidden only for as long as she stayed alive.

It wouldn’t have worked with the Biden administration because there wouldn’t have been any evidence to incriminate them. While there were doubtless some Democratic politicians who availed themselves of her young charges, none had the power to entrap the US government into such a sleazy and sordid deal as the one Maxwell was able to wrangle with the once-proud Department of Justice. Yes, Clinton is on a lot of people’s lists of perpetrators involved with all this, but he’s been out of office for twenty-five years. There’s very few Democrats who won’t agree that if he was involved, then they should throw his ass in jail, too.

I suspect Trump effectively put the National Capitol under martial law because he knew this work-release was coming, and he wanted to try to distract the public. I think he has very badly miscalculated, based just on the initial responses I’ve seen on line.

Trump’s relations with his cult following were already badly strained before this. Most were betrayed by his flip-flop on the Epstein files, and this is going to blow that deep unease sky-high. It comes at a time when the general public is deeply fed up and disgusted with his incompetence, his cruelty, and his obvious lack of interest in anything other than scamming more money.

The military are deeply unhappy with him. Many suspect—correctly—that he doesn’t have the national interest in mind, and regard this week’s meeting with Putin with serious apprehension. His stunt of imposing federal troops on Washington DC on the transparently false excuse of a crime wave is going to result in American soldiers being taunted and booed by their fellow Americans. Further threats to deploy troops in New York and Chicago, following the fiasco in Los Angeles, have further angered military leadership.

And with the on-again off-again tariffs finally in place, and the farm labor force effectively scared out of the fields, the economy is going to take a huge hit and prices are going to explode. People who were whining about 12% inflation in 2016 better brace for 20% inflation starting now.

The possibility that Trump may be brought down by a coup is increasing to levels not seen in America since the crisis of 1933. That was a time when the economy was in utter collapse, and nearly a third of states were using scrip and barter, because they didn’t expect the dollar to be around for much longer.

People were pissed at the incompetence and lack of willingness by the Hoover administration to fix the economy back then, and it was several years, and one half-assed coup attempt, and a strong economic recovery on the strength of the New Deal, before the government was out of the woods.

Now, we face similar factors, combined with a deep and rapidly growing moral disgust with the government. Trump is every bit as incompetent and ineffectual as the hapless Hoover was, but at least people respected Hoover as a human being. Trump is moral filth, and his followers are now realizing it, and they, and an appalled military, realize that Congress and the Court are too compromised by the moral rot and cowardice to solve the matter.

Trump must go, or America dies. There’s no middle road any more.

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Written with Witt — An expansion on liberal principles

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Written with Witt

An expansion on liberal principles

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 30th, 2025

 

Lori Gallagher Witt writes:

I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let’s break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

Long time readers know that I’ll sometimes take a laundry list of talking points that some right winger has posted, usually in lists of ten. I take that list and address the points in sequence, eviscerating them. Most of the them tend to be pretty mindless, not because the author is stupid, but because the author thinks his target audience is. The results are like shooting fish in a barrel for me. It’s rare that a point is raised that requires pondering, let along ones that require research in order to rebut. It’s the writing equivalent of a cheap date.

Something different appeared this week. A list, written by one Lori Gallagher Witt, and for some reason it has been attributed to Ron Howard, the movie director. While the attribution is plausible—Howard is forthcoming about his opinions and I doubt he would take exception to the contents of the list—Witt is apparently the person deserving of the credit.

While the lists I’ve used in the past are usually grievances and/or utter falsehoods, Witt’s collection is basically a statement of principles; it reflects how she believes our society should be. It’s a very American sort of document, and even in these dark times would have the support of a large majority of people who read it.

Of course, there is a contingent who will declaim the document as being “socialism” or even “communism.” Many are ignorant and brainwashed, and have no idea what either term actually means. (Unfortunately, nobody ever told them what fascism actually is, either) But most are a privileged group who regard efforts at diversity, equality, and inclusion with gimlet eyes and respond with such fear mongering tactics as “if all are equal, nobody is rich” or “your hard work subsidizes the unworthy.” Most aren’t even trying to protect profits—they have simply lost perspective and want to endlessly extend their power and wealth. And every social reform, according to them “costs jobs” or “takes away your job” or “puts the undeserving above you hard-working people.”

So I’m working with a complementary response, wherein I’ll try to give short and effective elaboration on the points that hopefully will aid in convincing others to implement them. It’s one thing to express principles; in the political arena, you have to promote them in such a way that derails the inevitable attacks and provides a foundation for those principles.

Even if you are familiar with Witt’s list and agree with all of it, read on. Hopefully I can provide some ammunition for defending them and deflecting the attacks. Witt’s points are in italics.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

The primary attack on this is that the government will be giving the idle and the poor your hard-earned money. The foundation for that isn’t based on a concern for your well-being, it rests on the basic idea that anyone incapable of contributing to the economy, whether because of age, infirmity, or lack of skills, is of no value. In short, no person is worthwhile if they can’t be monetized. It is the psychotic cruelty of Ayn Rand’s libertarianism, one that devolves to the old slander against Inuits that the elderly should be left on ice floes to die.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

I’m always amazed at people who grouse that their taxes might go up a couple of thousand dollars even when it means they save twice that or more in health insurance premiums. For those lucky enough to be working for a large company that provides health insurance as part of your “benefits package” that “luck” comes at a cost; not only is the company using funds that might actually go to your salary, but you’re also absorbing the costs and time needed to deal with the health insurance companies. The company isn’t doing it for free; someone has to pay. You’re being double dipped.

Privatized health coverage is fantastically inefficient. In addition to the 30% in profits the shareholders expect, there’s the fact that every company has their own forms, their own rules, and countless, usually competing, divisions for implementing those. It’s a massive burden on the actual health providers, physicians and hospitals.

In addition, there’s the corporate charter of every insurance company, which requires the company to maximize profits while reducing expenses. YOU, the client, are an expense, so they aren’t doing this for your benefit. Entire divisions are paid to find ways to deny or reduce the benefits you’re already overpaying for.

Universal not-for-profit medicare, conception to grave, would save over a trillion dollars a year. That money would work to your benefit, rather than vanishing into the off-shore accounts of wealthy parasites.

Finally, you would end up with a healthier, longer-lived society.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

Student loans are a huge and vicious racket, second only to health insurance. Basically, it turns the vast majority of people with marketable skills into wage slaves. There’s no escaping the debt, and often the exorbitant interest rates eat up a large part of what normally would be a comfortable salary. Bankruptcy is not permitted. So if someone graduates with $50,000 in annual interest payments and can’t find work that pays six figures, all they can do is watch the debt—and interest on the debt—grow and grow and grow. It’s turned millions of ambitious young lives into nightmares.

Privatized schools are often a racket—remember Trump University—and church-funded schools are an entirely different sort of racket, one that gives religion an unwonted ability to control and suppress young minds. As Witt notes, other countries can provide universal education. There’s no reason America can’t, but for greed and lust for power and control.

4. I don’t believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don’t want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

There is a huge difference between “wanting to work” and “being able to work.” The bureau of Labor Statistics lists those unable to work in the following categories: “ill health or disabled; retired; home responsibilities; going to school; could not find work; and other reasons.” That’s a sizable chunk of the population.

Put it this way: right now we have what the economists term “full employment” with the official unemployment rate at 4.1%. But the percent of the overall total population who are employed is 59.7%. That means that under ideal circumstances, the economy humming and booming, over 40% of the population is unable to work. Nor is that unique to America: it’s true of all civilized societies. And with baby boomers retiring coupled with a dropping birthrate (last year was the lowest birthrate in American history) that ratio is going to worsen.

Are we a decent people? Do we understand that people who can’t work aren’t lazy, but just people caught in various human afflictions, be it age, parenting, or infirmity?

Are we a society that exists to serve the economy, or an economy that exists to serve the society? If the latter, expect a great deal of privation and misery and a parasitic class of unimaginable wealth. You know, like France in the 1780s, Russia in the 1910s, or America now.

5. I don’t throw around “I’m willing to pay higher taxes” lightly. If I’m suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it’s because I’m fine with paying my share as long as it’s actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

Few people know that the average private pension has overhead (mostly administrative costs) ranging from 15-30% of their revenues. Or that about a third of them go bust anyway. Social Security’s administrative costs are less than 1%, and it’s been going strong for nearly a century. It is the greatest deal in American history. Raising the income limit on SS paycheck taxes would ensure it goes on for as long as there is an America. Given the profiting and inefficiency costs of most privatized services, an alternative of raising taxes is almost always a way of saving money. Government has a much higher rate of return than private industry.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn’t have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

It’s a fact of a capitalist economy that inflation is built in. Without inflation, a necessary mechanism to spur growth is missing. It’s the ultimate ‘necessary evil.’

In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.25. It’s $7.25 in quite a few states now. So if a 40 hour week paid $50 then, to have the same purchasing power today, that paycheck would have to be $530.35, according to the CPI calculator. The minimum wage, just to meet the standards set in 1963 for a lowest-paid full time worker, would be $13.25 an hour!

The CPI tends to understate the actual costs for people on the bottom economic rung. Rents have increased by about 50% over and above the median income since 1980, and close to 300% compared to minimum wage. So someone who might be spending 25% of their paycheck for lodging would be spending 75% now.

The wealthy and corporations were taxed much more heavily. Investors expected a lower, albeit more stable ROI. And the sixties were the greatest economic boom for the working class in economic history! The whole country flourished! The rising tide truly did lift all boats.

Finally, every time the minimum wage has been raised, there has been a surge in economic activity. People with more money to spend will spend it. Against all expectations, restaurants are often the biggest beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is – and should be – illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I’m not “offended by Christianity” — I’m offended that you’re trying to force me to live by your religion’s rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That’s how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don’t force it on me or mine.

We’re living in an era of religious overreach, one that threatens to turn us into a grubby, corrupt, inefficient and cruel theocracy. While claiming to only be “saving the lives of unborn babies” (philosophical twaddle flat out disputed by their own Bible) they’ve passed a huge volume of laws in various states that abrogate the rights of women to control their lives and their bodies. It was never about children—it was about control. Christian Nationalists are Christian fascists. They’ve always been around, a toxic form of Christianity, and always have been a threat to freedom.

Like government and corporations, religion is a “good servant but a terrible master.” The founders wanted a government responsive to the people that existed to curtail the power of the church and the aristocracy. Not just a wall of separation, but a demand that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” in terms that make it the only phrase in the Constitution that cannot be amended. They believed that everyone has a right to their religion, and that everyone also has a right not to be subject to any religious power.

8. I don’t believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

Rights aren’t a zero-sum game. “Letting others have rights” doesn’t detract from your rights. Quite the opposite: if the rights of all are respected, your rights are stronger. If they aren’t, yours are on the chopping block. And no, it’s not up to you: people have those rights, regardless of your opinion. Grow up and recognize that. Note this one: I refer to it two more times further on.

9. I don’t believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they’re supposed to be abusing, and if they’re “stealing” your job it’s because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

Calling people “illegals” is a Naziesque phrase revealing a Naziesque mind-set. They haven’t even broken any law coming here, despite what the haters claim. But they DO contribute over a trillion dollars a year to the national GDP, and they do pay taxes because the people employing them don’t want to get in trouble with the IRS. So they’re already getting cheated without small-minded people trying to deny their humanity—or the huge benefit they create for America. Oh, and the crime rate among undocumented aliens is much lower than among native-born Americans.

10. I don’t believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It’s not that I want the government’s hands in everything — I just don’t trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they’re harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

Everyone agrees regulations can be a pain in the ass. But nearly everyone has had their lives saved by regulations at various times, many times over. Take autos: there’s all sorts of safety regulations for vehicles, many of which the auto manufacturers fought tooth and nail against, such as seat belts and airbags. In 1921, the first year such statistics were kept, there were 24.09 fatalities for every hundred million vehicle miles traveled. In the most recent year, 2023, there were 1.27 such fatalities. Without safety rules and regulations, the annual death toll could easily be twenty times higher now than it actually is.

As for food safety, just read Upton Sinclair’s “The Urban Jungle.”

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I’ve spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

Doctor Lawrence Britt in 2003 wrote “The Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism.” I’ve referred to it many times over the twenty years since I first read it. If you haven’t already read it, please do so.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, economic, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that’s causing people to be marginalized.

See my reply to point 8.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

If Trump consolidates power, he WILL come for your guns. The clowns who brayed they were America’s “Second Amendment solution” to the rise of a dictatorial regime have gone missing in action now that we actually have one. But all it will take will be one assassination of a member of the Trump regime, and the great clamp-down will begin, and yes, it will be very bloody. But gun owners, spare me your posturing; your chance came, and you chickened out.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you’re using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

I have no problem with laws designed to prevent bullying, intimidation, or abuse. If you do, you should ask yourself what sort of person you really are.

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

Clean energy, and a clean economy, make for efficient energy and economy. The billions the filthy fuels industry spent on lies about climate change and for raising illiterate monsters like Trump aren’t being spent for your benefit. Corporations are not your friend, they are not here to serve you, and they are, by the terms of their charters, psychotic. Giving them trillions of dollars to mold a society to their ends is the height of stupidity. And we subsidize those trillionaires, because without those subsidies, they couldn’t compete with wind and solar. For decades we subsidized them just because they thought it would be nice to have the extra money. They didn’t even need it up until very recently.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

Again, see point 8. Either rights are absolute for all, or they are absolute for none.

“I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I’m a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn’t mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don’t believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.”

Agreed.

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After July 3rd, 2025 — Comes the independence movement

After July 3rd, 2025

Comes the independence movement

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 4th, 2025

Between the infiltration of fascists on the Supreme Court (name the traitors: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney-Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh) and in Congress (too many to name, but almost unanimously Republicans, and willingness to either commit or bow to treason almost unanimous amongst those Republicans), there was only one result possible. The United States of America never stood a chance.

The passage of the hideous, ironically named “One Big Beautiful Bill” is the capstone to the collapse of America. Yes, it is cruel, vicious, and designed to punish the poor and weaken the middle class into insolvency. It increases the already hideously disproportionate disparity of wealth and power of the top 1% to levels that far exceed those of pre-revolutionary France or Russia. That comes at the cost of a trillion for health care for the people, hundreds of billions more to feed the poor, and education. It will make the US a scientific, intellectual and educational backwater. It will, in time, eliminate accessible health care for most of the population, and weaken and degrade public, secular schools into irrelevance.

But the very worst part is that it erects the most efficient and oppressive police state in the history of the world. It provides more funding for the hated and vicious ICE secret police force than the US Marines get. Coupled with Elon Musk’s vast, comprehensive data theft of virtually every government record on everyone in America, it makes for a vast and omnipresent police state that would make Josef Stalin groan with envy.

Even now, I see people, mostly Democrats, chirping that the Republicans have really fucked up this time, and how we’ll make them pay in the off-terms next year. These people are fools: the Republicans have absolutely no intention of holding free and fair elections. None.

Some people take hope that the bill just signed into law delays some of the worst, most rapacious elements of the shredding of the social safety net until after November 2026, and point to that as a sign the Republicans are nervous about those elections.

Nonsense. They just want to hold what will be utterly fraudulent and meaningless elections to make sure their apparatus of control is rock solid and that they need never worry about any election going forward.

Oh, there will be an election. It will even look fairly convincing, in that Republicans will at least lackadaisically campaign, and if the people controlling the vote count are even half-way competent, the results will all fall into a convincing 10 point range for most of the Republicans. There may come a time when they can run unopposed and win 99% of the vote, like in the Soviet Union, but for now they have to pretend there’s still a United States and it is still a democracy of the people. As long as people can PRETEND the country is still theirs, they are less likely to rise up, you see. To that end, Republicans will wave many flags and pound a few Bibles in order to keep their believers glassy-eyed.

But they don’t intend to allow the people to have a meaningful voice. The bill Trump just signed had an approval rating of just 29% during the final hours of debate. No bill still pending before Congress was ever more unpopular. Ever. And when you have people like Joni Ernst sneering “We all have to die sometime” to people complaining that their children can’t get necessary medical care, or the psychotically racist Laura Loomer talking about deporting all 65 million native Latinos with a grin from the president, you know they have stopped pretending. Trump spent yesterday complaining about how farmers were at the mercy of “Shylock” bankers and crowing that he was going to throw a trashy UFC bloodfest on the White House lawn. They’ve quit pretending. They can’t be arsed giving a shit. They’ve won, and they know it.

But they still fear us. They know that if the people withdraw consent, and simply and peacefully refuse to cooperate, they cannot maintain power. The Soviet Union, the most efficiently oppressive regime in history, fell with hardly a shot being fired simply because the citizenry of the USSR withheld their support and peacefully resisted.

I’ve said before that once-a-month demonstrations aren’t going to cut it. People are going to have to go out every day and protest, and there’s certainly no shortage of things people can protest. The worthless corporate media will largely ignore it, but the internet is building its own fourth estate. Corporate news is rapidly falling into the same niche as Pravda and Izvestiya did in the Soviet Union and RT does today.

The government will make it harder and harder to defy. They may make demonstrating illegal, and even defiance of any sort. Who’s gonna stop them? Clarence Thomas? Mike Johnson? The law will be what they say it is, and it won’t be there to protect you.

But there are hundreds of ways to resist. They still need you, and even though they’ll never admit it, they need the support of the people in general.

Make Trump supporters feel unloved. Don’t miss an opportunity to discuss the failings and deceptions of the Trump regime. Make Trump supporters doubters, and eventually adversaries. When dealing with officials, drag your feet in every way possible. Do it legally, do it peacefully, but do it. And if they try to outlaw resistance, find less obvious ways of resisting, but never stop resisting. The apparatchiks of the Trump regime are human, and will slowly succumb to social pressure. Make them feel unloved.

Trump is a dying man. He isn’t plausible as the face of the fascist revolution now, and it’s only going to get more and more strained as his mind, never much to begin with, erodes. While we don’t know who will replace him, he won’t have whatever cult following Trump still retains at that point, so keep the pressure on, and make it unceasing. Most of Trump’s closest clique are weak and amazingly stupid opportunists, and they will make a lot of mistakes. Make them pay.

This regime can be brought down in ways in which the founders of the United States would approve. But be prepared to be stubborn and unyielding. Make them feel unloved.

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Da Week Dat Wuz — Things rapid enough for ya?

Da Week Dat Wuz

Things rapid enough for ya?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 15th, 2025

 

The past ten days have been about as wild as it gets. It reminds me of an observation the then-prestigious Times of London made in late April of 1945, in the wake of Roosevelt’s death, the collapse of Germany, and Hitler’s suicide: “Events seem to be happening with extreme rapidity.”

We’ve seen huge impromptu demonstrations in Los Angeles (and spreading rapidly to other cities), an assassination (with the assassin, apparently a Trump supporter, still on the loose), a Senator manhandled and briefly arrested at a press conference for asking a question, a planned demonstration that its organizers claim attracted 12 million people nationwide, a war in the middle east threatening to engulf the world (like most conflicts there do at one point or another) another war between two nuclear powers that has only grudgingly slowed down to hurling insults, a landmark court decision determining the limits on presidential ability to call out the national guard, and increasing chaos surrounding the fate of what may be the most problematic budget bill in American history.

In the background behind much of this was the constant incompetence and stupidity of the Trump administration. To paraphrase the late great P.J. O’Rourke, “What in most administrations would be considered roadblocks in this administration is usually the road.” You have the Speaker of the House calling for an arrest of a governor (of California, no less) for disagreeing with a President about the illegal deployment of troops. Note that it wasn’t the governor breaking the law in this instance.

The month began, as so many weird and crackpot things do, with Trump’s Truth Social account, which reposted an utterly demented conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had, in fact, been assassinated in 2020 and replace with something called “a robotic clone.” Um, does that mean the original Biden was a robot, and if so, why clone it when you can just swing by Radio Shack and build a new one?

It remains unproven that Trump was upset when someone posted “TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out” in the Wall Street Journal. But that didn’t stop the most idiotic and corrupt Attorney General in American history (yes, even worse than John Mitchell) from stating that anyone calling Trump a TACO would be arrested, thus creating a viral meme that threatens to be bigger than the dumb blonde arguing with a white cat, or even “Hitler finds out.”

A rumor made the rounds that FIFA was considering pulling the World Cup out of the United States. People knew it was a joke when it was reported FIFA was upset about the corruption and ineptitude of the administration, which is a bit like hearing the drummer for Blue Cheer requesting the band play a bit more quietly. No, FIFA isn’t pulling the World Cup.

Trump and Elon Musk had a breakup that was done with all the class and dignity of a drunken hair-pulling brawl amongst the girls backstage at a seedy strip club. Trump’s endlessly fascinating association with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein came up during their quiet discussion.

Trump had his grand military parade yesterday, and it had about the same spirit and verve of baseball fans leaving a stadium after a three-hour rain delay turns into a cancellation. Trump just sat there and reminded everyone of the old Leslie Gore song, while a girl, presumably a niece or something, chewed on a miniature American flag behind him. One headline snarked “By the tens, Americans turned out to cheer for Trump’s birthday.” Even the troops seemed unenthusiastic, with several groupings not even marching in step. It’s one thing to be proud and military; quite another to be used as a prop in a Marx Brothers movie.

I’ve been saying for several weeks that we’ve seen the high water mark of what historians might end up calling “the Trump madness.” We’ve already seen the twin towers of his economic policy—tariffs and the Ayn Randian wet dream in his “Big Beautiful Bill”—effectively collapse.

Trump’s Hitlerian dream of ridding America of “vermin” now seems to be falling apart. He thoroughly pissed off and dismayed his most stridently racist supporters by floating the idea of a “gold card” for Visas that could be purchased for just five million dollars by any Russian plutocrat or Columbian drug lord willing to put up the money. Trump seemed to think most agricultural workers and hotel maids had a few million or so laying around, and that this scheme would generate five trillion or so.

And now it seems, with demonstrations spreading and Trump’s standing in the polls deep underwater on his biggest political strength—throwing out eleven million people—ICE is being ordered to rethink their priorities. A memo was released by a ranking Gazpacho officer, Tatum King, that said, “please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels…other case types/investigations such as human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are ok, however we are not pursuing non-criminal collaterals.”

It’s unlikely that Jesus came to Trump in his sleep and told him “Try to act like a fucking human being.” More likely Trump was dismayed by the spread of the demonstrations, his loss of support on what had been his centerpiece campaign stump item, and, most likely of all, intense pressure from the corporations and special interests that exploit and make billions on immigrant labor—hotel and restaurant chains, Big Agriculture, and other parties that profit from the near-slavery conditions imposed on people trying just to survive. Many of them are, of course, Republicans, because humans exist to make money for their betters, right? Trump was seriously interfering with that.

It’s a hard and very welcome slap on Steven Miller’s gleaming pate, but there’s no shortage of little shit states with mad dictators who would welcome someone with Steve’s unique personality and talents. He’ll find his own little Holocaust to run and do fine. Meanwhile, I bet the administration is already Photoshopping him out of the group pix already.

I don’t expect things to calm down, but I do think Trump and his minions will continue to see their power ebb.

At least, one can hope.

 

ADDENDUM: Trump just tweeted this: “Our Nation’s ICE Officers have shown incredible strength, determination, and courage as they facilitate a very important mission, the largest Mass Deportation Operation of Illegal Aliens in History. Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People. ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.

“These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland! I want our Brave ICE Officers to know that REAL Americans are cheering you on every day. The American People want our Cities, Schools, and Communities to be SAFE and FREE from Illegal Alien Crime, Conflict, and Chaos. That’s why I have directed my entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.

“Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of ANYONE who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States,” he concluded. “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”

So make of that what you will. I wonder if Miller wrote it. “Remigration” sounds like something Hitler might have come up with.

 

 

 

 

 

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Blood Twatter Feud — Bitch-bois slap-party on line

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 6th 2025

Political feuds are common throughout American history. The most famous is the one that resulted in an actual blood duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, with fatal results for Hamilton. There’s plenty that resulted in violence and bloodshed: Matthew Lyon vs. Roger Griswold, for instance, started when Griswold spit tobacco juice in Lyon’s eyes. Then there was John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, which blew up when Jackson blamed his wife’s death on a smear campaign by Adams. Riots ensued. There are instances of Congressionals pulling guns on one another in Congress, although no actual shots were fired. Preston Brooks nearly caned Charles Sumner to death in 1856, exacerbating pre-Civil War tensions. One fellow named “Bowie Knife” Potter managed to avoid some duels by demanding Honor be settled by hand-to-hand combat with…you guessed it, Bowie knives. That was a bit too personal for politicians accustomed to politely shooting at one another from 20 feet.

While often fueled by genuine personal hatred, some of the quarrels could get downright poetic. John Randolph, who engaged in several blood duels, once said of Henry Clay that he was “like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he both shines and stinks.” FDR, frustrated by GOP obstructionists who opposed Lend-Lease while simultaneously calling him a warmonger, derided the three main characters in a speech in which he intoned repeatedly, “Martin, Barton…and FISH.” After the first such intonation, with finger jabbing, the audience joined in gleefully. It was politically devastating for the three congressmen in question.

Social media has brought a lot of political squabbling, previously largely out of sight in the cloakrooms, out in public and often at about fifth-grade level. While it’s only fair to note that the large majority of tweets put out by representatives are at worst civil, some would be more at home in a school playground. Marjorie Taylor-Greene had been in the habit of closing a confrontational tweet by calling the recipient a psycho until someone noted she didn’t have to sign her tweets.

So the present meltdown between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has plenty of historical precedent. But in this instance, both men have a mixture of self-grandiosity, contempt for everyone else, and a drug-fueled lack of inhibitions. And both own their own social media platforms, so the only constraint on which they write is…themselves. If their falling out was widely predicted, the nastiness of it, as well, was quite foreseeable, although both men have people around them who might at least try to stop them from going to Defcon Five immediately.

The results have been more like a really nasty breakup in high school, where he’s running around calling her an ugly slut and stupid, and she’s telling her friends she ought to sleep with the football squad just to show him she at least can ‘make the team.’ No winners in those sorts of situations.

Given the unearned and undeserved power both men wield, and the absolute lack of constraints either have, the results are like a couple of kindergartners who are having a tantrum while holding flamethrowers. It’s both amusing and horrifying to watch.

Speaking of which, yes, blood feuds are illegal, and I have no problem with that. Besides, I doubt either man could load a gun without blowing their own feet off. Hell, I doubt either could pour piss out of a boot if you wrote the instructions on the sole.

Both are capable of doing immense damage to one another and to the country as a whole. Both have used their wealth for the purpose of perverting power and influence to their own ends, and at the expense of the county. About the only thing more destructive and dangerous to the United States then the escalation of this fight would be a resolution of the fight wherein they rejoin and continue to rape the United States.

The GOP, superficially at least, are aligning with Trump. The ever-servile Mike Johnson said, “I’ll tell you what, do not doubt and do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of this generation and probably the modern era.”

Of course, not knowing when to quit, he also said, “I don’t argue with [Musk] about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.” Perhaps they should: both have a recent history of gaudy and expensive contraptions that roar off the pad and explode in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly.” The Big Beautiful Bill is about as flightworthy as Musk’s last few launches.

Frankly, I hope they do destroy one another. Yes, it will cause immense damage to the country, but not nearly as much as what they’ve already done. Trump is destroying democracy and American freedom and wants to be a dictator. Musk wants cyber control of all citizens and to turn the entire country into a debtor-slave economy. Neither will make America great, and will ruin the lives of tens of millions of people.

So a pox on both of them.

Meanwhile, sit back and watch the show. This is better than Diddy Combs and R. Kelly duking it out with running chainsaws in a closet.

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This Week’s Pravda — Talking points for non-thinkers

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 29th 2025

Every one in a while some right winger gets up on its hind legs and tries to pretend it can think.

Almost always it’s a cut-and-paste job from some flak at the Heritage Foundation or similar propaganda pit, as this one is. This one has all the elements one might expect: punching down while howling ‘victimhood,’ combined with ludicrous rationales, scapegoating, and flat-out lies. Propaganda 101. Let’s look at this week’s crop, shall we?

1. Accept the fact that this is the leadership that we working, middle class Americans wanted. We are pulling the economic weight in this country and we are tired of pulling the weight of those that do not contribute.

Chances that the author of this piece is anywhere near middle-class are pretty slim. But like all libertarians, he conflates society with a business. Businesses can be efficiently heartless and throw their unproductive elderly and infirm off on an ice floe to die. But societies don’t work that way. Societies take care of the elderly, children, the chronically ill and the otherwise disabled. We aren’t Nazis. The Nazis were very efficient. But you wouldn’t want to live and die under them.

2. If you haven’t already, get a job. Every business in the country is hiring. And you get paid for the work you do. And the harder you work and the more you learn, the faster you will advance and the more you will earn. It’s an amazing concept.

Unemployment is at 4%. That means nearly everyone who can work is, and there aren’t many jobs to be had. I know they are talking about work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but the fact is that 65% of them ARE working, and the rest can’t. The “amazing concept” is just cruelty and unconcern.

3. Understand that if you are a citizen or a legal alien that you are not going to get deported! I don’t care what CNN says.

Flat out lie. Right now there is a four year old American girl whose guardians are frantically fighting her deportation because she has an illness that will kill her in days without treatment available only in America. There are dozens of instances of people, both American born and with green cards being sent to Donald’s for-profit gulag in El Salvador. Are we supposed to believe those dozens of court cases concerning illegal deportation the government is losing aren’t real?

4. Tariffs are a bargaining chip. When you are in business you make deals, and sometimes you have to play hardball. That’s how you get the deals you desire.

TACO Donald is playing hardball with a Nerf ball, it seems. His tariffs are wild, capricious, illogical and have cost the country hundreds of billions. Now a court has slapped him flat, ruling that he has no authority to levy tariffs in the first place. But immense damage has been done. In the eyes of the world, America has become a bad joke.

5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects you from discrimination by age, sex, race, etc. DEI openly violates this. Democrats want you to believe the opposite is true because they value your vote more than your quality of life.

All DEI ever did was ensure that jobs didn’t go to unqualified white males. Republicans hate the Civil Rights Act and want to get rid of it. You can’t justify “DEI” to erase the roles of women and other minorities in history and science. They even tried to erase Jackie Robinson’s military history and mention of the Tuskegee Airmen. It’s a reinstatement of Jim Crow bigotry, nothing more and nothing less.

6. It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money. You absolutely should give a damn about how it is spent.

Let’s see here. Four point three trillion in tax cuts, 101% of which goes to the wealthy. A tax INCREASE for those making $17,000 a year. Meanwhile, $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and a drive to make Social Security more “efficient” by making it harder to claim benefits. They claimed widespread fraud and audited 110,000 “suspect” cases. They found two—yes, single digit two—cases of suspected fraud. I’ll replace item six this way: “It’s your money, and the government is taking it from you and giving it to the rich.”

7. We are not the World Bank. If other countries need help they should raise their own finances. I don’t recall receiving any hurricane relief money from India or China.

And now we aren’t getting any hurricane relief from the United States, either. Trump cut off aid for last year’s storms in North Carolina. Oh, and he wants to close FEMA. But foreign aid, which made up less than one percent of the budget, was an invaluable tool for maintaining American influence and support throughout the world. Yes, China is more than happy to step in and replace us.

8. Drill baby, drill. Want to know why? Because we have it. Are electric cars the future? Not in their current form. There is way more oil in the ground than lithium, and guess where most of that is? China. Want food prices to come down? Then energy costs have to come down. And that means oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. Unicorn farts won’t power a factory.

Aside from the fact that oil production was at an all time high under Biden and prices still went up, there’s the fact that the multinational corporations do it for profit, and not for gas at $1.98, as Donald is claiming it is. Filthy fuels are still on their way out, and even though Tesla fell apart under the misrule of Elon Musk, other companies have surpassed Tesla in economy, range, price and reliability. And we’ve found large reserves of lithium in the US.

9. The economy and the security of the country are far more important than your feelings, get over it.

If everyone is broke and nobody trusts or respects the government any more, then you’re going to find yourself on the outside looking in. The one thing libertarians never understand: the economy exists to support the society. The society doesn’t exist to support the economy. Get over it.

10. There are men and there are women. Simple as that.

I’ll pass on the biology debate for now. Biology isn’t my strong suit, but I can still mop the floor with the ignorant bigot who wrote that. Human gender is far more fluid than most people realize, and human sexuality is another entire universe. Visit any large porn site to learn just how quaint and parochial your interests really are. Remember; the social rules of East Podunk are not the natural laws of the universe. I suspect the only thing the author knows about women is that he can’t get one.

11. Education is to establish a learning core that prepares a child for the real, working world. Anything else is wrong.

So we should only educate people to be mindless drones in service to the economy? If you think education is failing you now, wait until you are dealing with people who know even less, but aren’t happy with your rule!

12. Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States and he won in a mathematical landslide. Get over it.

Trump won by 1.6% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him. In an election not owned by billionaires, gerrymandered to death in the House, and with Jim Crow-like restrictions on so-called “voter fraud” Trump would have been laughed off as a bad joke back in 2015.

Copied from another post.

Of course. People who can’t read or think are the TARGET, not the source of this malarky!

 

Posted on

One Big Beautiful Bukkake — Plutocrats Plan Our Gangbang

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 26th, 2025

While everyone has been distracted by Trump’s demented and often Naziesque antics, the true fascist mien (cough) of the GOP has been revealed for all to see. Donald is just using his often-cartoonish viciousness and cruelty to keep his most mindless followers hooting in joy as the GOP contemplates its long-held dream of raping America to death.

The House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (so named by Donnie, who knows how to engage the most stupid people around) by only one vote. I wish I could say that the handful of Republicans who opposed it did so on some sort of moral or ethical principles, but the sad fact is they hate the bill because it doesn’t go far enough. They’re worried about the estimated $4.3T in debt it will add to the existing GOP-created flood of red ink. But rather than eliminate the estimated $4T tax cut that would go to the billionaires, they want to completely eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

You? Oh, your taxes would go up. Not a lot, but then, forty years of Reaganomics hasn’t left you with much to tax, has it?

One estimate is that 99% of the tax cuts would go to those making more than $4M a year, while people making $17,000 or less would see a tax increase of $1,000 a year. You don’t mind giving up your health care and pension so Bezos can send another bevy of trophy wives into the stratosphere in a giant phallus, do you? Sure, just as long as it owns the libs.

Nobody really knows how many nasties are hidden in the bill. Here’s the ones we’ve found so far.

It extends the “state of emergency” Trump declared over the wholly imaginary Venezuelan invasion of the United States. This means among other things that he can unilaterally declare martial law, and delay or even cancel elections.

The bill has a provision to federalize elections (they are mandated to the states by the Constitution) which means that Trump’s utter corrupt and politicized Department of Justice under Kristi Noem would have complete control over who could vote, how they could vote, and even eliminate the secret ballot in the name of fighting “voter fraud.”

It completely neuters the courts, mandating that the administration can ignore any court edict for up to a year, and protecting all members of the administration from contempt of court rulings—the one weapon the courts have to enforce compliance. There has never been a country without a strong, independent judiciary that was worth a shit, and America would be no exception.

Back when I was a kid, they used to teach about the “Spoils System” wherein new administrations could replace government functionaries with their own people. Needless to say, massive corruption and incompetence was built into such a system, and the Pendleton Law was passed in 1883 creating a non-politicized civil service.

This bill would restore the spoils system. Good luck getting that permit you need if you voted for the wrong guy in the last election! Need a copy of your birth certificate? Don’t forget to bribe!

Protests and protesters could be tracked and penalized, no matter how peaceful and legitimate. Freedom of speech becomes an empty mockery. It includes individual lawful protest. This essay, completely legal and legitimate in May of 2025, could put me in prison next year. Ex Post Facto wouldn’t exist under Trump. He already has a track record of punishing people for actions that were lawful at the time—many still are lawful, but that doesn’t stop Trump.

ICE, already America’s Gestapo, would see its budget increase by twelve-fold to $43B a year by 2029. By then they will probably have run out of undocumented people to throw in the Gulags and will be branching out to arrest anyone with brown skin or a last name ending in a vowel.

Mind you, most of this has no foundation in US law, and much of it is flat out unconstitutional. But no worries: the courts won’t be allowed to stop it. Read back to see the shit status of countries without a meaningful court system.

As is widely noted, the bill would absolutely devastate all social safety net programs (the ones that Elon and his Randroid thugs haven’t already destroyed, like Meals on Wheels or the Weather Service). It’s no exaggeration to say that starvation would become a serious problem in America.

For the second time in a week, some right winger decided to refute our fears about the bill by citing AI: in this instance, Elon Musk’s apartheid joke of an AI, Grok. I’m still laughing.

That “One Big Beautiful Bill”? No worries. Elon’s bastard cyberchild has a simple answer: it doesn’t exist. And I quote: Existence of “One Big Beautiful Bill”: There is no record in my knowledge of a bill by this name or with these specific provisions being proposed or debated in the U.S. Congress as of my last update.

Oh, well. I guess I need to go back and unwrite this sucker. Would Elon lie to me?

Elon isn’t the only one pretending it isn’t really there. The bill holds off most of the very worst provisions until 2029, after the next (and possibly final) presidential election.

Now, it won’t survive the Senate, which means that the whole thing is still a long way from becoming law. I predict the next budget bill will be yet another Continuing Resolution, which is a polite way of saying “Let’s hang the country very slowly.” We’re not dead yet, in other words.

But for anyone who cares to look, it’s a naked look at what the plutocrats who control the GOP have in mind for us. If enough of this monster passes, there’s no turning back.

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