Category: Civil War

Posted on

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!

Posted on

Adolf Jesus Trump — Honks from heaven above

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 8th 2025

I could write a hundred essays about the incompetence, cruelty, corruption and sheer stupidity of Trump and his fascist minions, and the main reason I haven’t is simply because thousands of other people are all writing about it, and a lot of them are doing a better job of it than I could. I’m not going to make a difference of any sort if my content boils down to “What Thom Hartmann, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and Lev Parnas all said.” It’s all I can do to avoid writing in the same cadence with which Rachel Maddow speaks!

It doesn’t mean I’ve nothing to say; I just don’t want to be a “me too” voice in the crowd.

So I watch for something that may not get a lot of attention normally, but which I think is important and could really matter.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) gave me that opportunity yesterday when I found he responded to Christian Nationalist footpad Marco Rubio’s honks about how “’our rights come from our creator…” Kaine, who actually went to school and studied history, called Little Marco’s remarks “extremely troubling.”

If it had ended there, it would have been dismissed as a sincere but utterly ineffectual complaint from a member of a Congress completely neutered by Republican corruption and cowardice.

But then Dim Donald, that exemplar of Christian Nationalism, the figure who Adolf Jesus looks up to from his swastika-shaped cross, decided to jump in with both swollen feet.

He wrote. “Under the Trump administration, we’re defending our rights and restoring our identity as a nation under God, we are one nation under God and we always will be. The need for this commission has never been more clear than it was last week when the ineffectual senator from Virginia, a man named Tim Kaine, stated that the notion ‘our rights come from our creator’ is ‘extremely troubling’ to him. Isn’t that terrible, how he would say something like that? The senator from Virginia should be ashamed of himself, for many things! For many things, for things even beyond that, but in its own way, nothing is more important than those words, they were terrible words. We have to bring back religion in America, bring it back stronger than ever before.”

Donald has captured perfectly the essence of the philosophy of Christian Nationalism: the arrogance, the intellectual and moral dishonesty, and the towering hypocrisy. He IS the face of Christian Nationalism, right down to the child raping and wanton murder for political convenience.

For any Christians reading this, I’m not talking about your religion. I know a lot of Christians who are good, kind people who respect themselves and respect others. I’m talking about Christianity’s dark cousin, the vicious mean-spirited fundamentalists who in this incarnation call themselves Christian Nationalists. Christian Nationalism bears the same relationship to Christianity that National Socialism does to Democratic Socialism: that is to say, it’s nearly the exact opposite.

They love to claim a God that is responsible for the very rights they are trying to destroy: the right to chose representation; the right to freedom from religion; the right to personal bodily autonomy; the right to fair and equal justice. The “god-given rights” was a rhetorical flourish added to the Declaration of Independence over Thomas Jefferson’s strident objection, Ever since, they’ve done what religion always does and stolen credit for the good & ethical things humanity has come up with.

Want proof? Take a look at the list of rights Jefferson had in mind, and find anywhere in the bible where such rights are mentioned, let alone supported. You can find long lists of offenses for which people should be executed, such as eating shellfish or getting tattoos, and cheerful advice on how a woman should be forced to get an abortion if her husband claims she has been unfaithful, or advice on tearing children apart for making fun of a prophet, but not much about secret voting or freedom of speech. About the only ‘god-given’ right the Constitution had was the right to own slaves, and the Constitution got over that.

I’ve often stated that theocracy is the worst form of government humanity has ever invented. It demands obedience and blind belief to begin with, but unlike regular tyrannies, there is no Leader who must eventually take responsibility for his autocratic cruelty, but instead tyrants dressed as supplicants who can foist any accountability off on an invisible and silent god (and all gods are silent and invisible for the same reason unicorns are), making them much less accountable.

And since most holy texts are utterly horrifying, it’s assumed that any nearby deity will rubber stamp various and assorted atrocities.

Most fundamentalist leaders are utter phonies, and nobody with an inkling of history should be surprised that Donald Trump would be quick to seize the opportunities of being a Christian Nationalist leader. No belief required. Or ethics. Or honesty. Or even humanity. If he does it in the name of God, he can get away with anything.

The only thing more dangerous than a sociopath as a religious leader is a sincere sociopath as a religious leader. The nut who wants to carry out his notion of the will of God is pure schizophrenia legitimized by religious fervor. Fortunately, Trump is just your garden-variety thuggish con artist. That makes it easier to limit the damage he’s doing.

Christians are going to have to stand up to Trump’s ecumenical bullying and take their religion back. They have to join everyone and rise up to bring Trump and his toxic crowd down.

 

Posted on

Gavin the Grinner — He who smirks lurks, a danger to the sanctimonious

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 23rd, 2025

“I have trouble buying the argument that Americans have lost their moral perspective. Let’s be honest—who’s being accused here? Isn’t it true that older Americans are the backbone of Trump’s support? And aren’t older people the least likely to suddenly shift their values? If that’s the case, then who exactly is it that supposedly “changed”? Did we suddenly forget God? Start stealing from our neighbors? Did we run to the riots and loot the stores? No—we didn’t. Something else is going on.”

A right winger who normally isn’t very rational wrote that. He’s one of those sorts who thinks anyone who doesn’t support Trump is living in a “moral cesspool.” Not that he would ever generalize, right? But he raises a good point here, I think, one that we should stop and think about.

A lot of people, myself included, say things like “America lost its collective mind” or “The US abandoned morals” in electing Trump, and then electing him again. There is a built-in unfairness to that characterization, of course. Sixty-five percent of American adults did not vote for Trump in either election, and current polls show 62% of respondents think he’s doing a lousy and even criminal job.

And while I might seriously question the values and ethics of anyone who supports Trump, even there would be a few caveats. While a number of Trump supporters are aware of at least some of the myriad failings and nihilism of Trump, many simply disbelieve the reports, or are so low-information they have simply never heard about them.

To pick a seemingly minor example: the number of people sputtering with rage and disgust at California Governor Gavin Newsom’s brilliant take-down of Trump’s ‘style’–the erratic, over-the-top and often nonsensical posts, and the vast library of tractor art showing a buff, tall, noble Donald Trump in a variety of heroic poses doing manly things. They honestly seem to have no idea that Trump himself had been doing exactly that for ten years now, and Newsom was parodying (and mocking) him. Given that this silliness is the beating heart of Trump’s voter outreach, it seems preposterous that so many of his followers knew nothing of it, but here we are.

The cognitive dissonance is encouraged by the paid liars at Faux News and Newsmacks, who feign shock and outrage that an important personage like the Governor of (shithole, failing!) California would stoop to such immature, goofy, even insane antics. After a few dozen such repetitions, their viewers manage to forget all those posts on Truth Social and the often Groucho Marxist executive orders. Trump is noble, mature, reasonable, and measured. It’s that silly little Newsom who created this horrible style!

The dissonance goes well beyond that. Every day, I get mail from people who declaim that California is a horrible place, overrun with drugs, homeless, gangs and “illegals,” and these are people who happily live in California. I always ask them why, if it’s such a shithole, why they just don’t move to a prosperous, well-run state such as Mississippi or Oklahoma, and they inexplicably erupt in rage. At least, the few who even try to answer that one. You should see their faces when I point out the rural California county I live in actually has a higher over-all crime rate than does Washington DC.

People who cheer the locking up and/or deportation of “illegals” always hate when I tell them that using that term to describe groups of humans makes them sound like goddamned Nazis. What a dehumanizing thing for me to say! Unlike Nazis, all we want to do is defend our noble fatherland against vermin poisoning the blood of loyal patriots! They steal, they cheat, they’re like rats! They dwell in their ghettos and conspire to world domination. We’re nothing like the Nazis, who targeted weak groups of people to hide their corrupt Nazi deficiencies!

Voltaire supposedly uttered the phrase, “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” The far right have spent billions of dollars flooding the American consciousness with absurdities and flat out lies, repeated endlessly, for years.

The result is that many people who see themselves as sane and decent, and who, without the endless Nazi propaganda, would probably be sane and decent. But they have been persuaded to commit atrocities in the name of sanity and decency. People who revere their right to appear in court to contest a speeding ticket have no problem with forcibly deporting people—some of whom didn’t even have their papers in order—to a horrific skein of concentration and death camps in places like El Salvador and Uganda. The same people appalled by a brief encounter in public between an Attorney General and a President under investigation on an airport tarmac see no problem with a criminal president and his vicious stooge of an Attorney General saying proudly that “We are liberating American cities to crack down on crime, especially by those filthy ‘illegals’.”

They also believe in Trump and his propaganda machine, who work endlessly to convince them to excuse even the most vicious and heinous actions against their scapegoats, against their country, and even against themselves because they, and not the alien and subhuman rabble, stand for all those things.

And now, the notion, rapidly growing, that the child rape allegations are made, not by over two hundred victims and rafts of evidence, but by anti-Americans, probably Newsom and illegals, to defame a noble, proud man. Why, I bet they’re the real child rapists, so there!

As long as Trump and his billionaire backers can continue to mind-fuck the 30% or so of Americans who have fallen into this moral and mental abyss, that 30% will remain convinced that they are resolute and just, and those who oppose them are the ones in a moral cesspool. They don’t rob, they don’t steal, they believe in God, they believe in country.

It’s a solid wall of smug, self-satisfied sanctimony, but it has a key vulnerability.

When does the charm finally break? Credible reports of child rape haven’t done it. History shows that it sometimes requires the deaths of millions and the destruction of entire nations to manage that.

But not always. Mark Twain once said, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” Another quote comes to mind: “The tyrant fears laughter more than the assassin’s bullet.”

People like Gavin Newsom, Steven Colbert, South Park and many others have found that vulnerability in the humorless wall of right wing hate and lies. And it may be what saves America from itself.

 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

The End of America — Supreme Court shuts down judicial review

The End of America

Supreme Court shuts down judicial review

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 27th 2025

The Supreme Court just destroyed the independent judiciary in the United States, eliminating the one legal recourse available to defy Trump’s capricious and tyrannical executive orders. The decision putatively rests on the issue of whether birthright citizenship is a constitutional right or not (it is, no matter what the bigots on the right claim). Instead, it focused on whether lower courts can rule on the constitutionality or the legality of presidential executive orders or not. By the usual six to three margin, this badly-compromised court ruled that they, and only they, can determine if any rule or law is constitutional or not.

Trump is crowing that it’s a ‘monumental victory’ for him. Why wouldn’t he? Basically, any executive order he writes has the force of law now, unless the Supreme Court says otherwise: and his six pets on the court aren’t going to do that, are they?

While the landmark Supreme Court case of Marbury vs. Madison established the principle of judicial review in 1803, the power of lower courts to rule on the constitutionality of law actually predates it, dating back to Hayburn’s Case, in 1792, in which Congress denied pensions to a “meritorious and unfortunate clafs of citizens.” The ruling found that Congress acted improperly, and that the law was ex officio in all 15 states.

Amy Coney Barrett, revealing her deep lack of understanding of the law, wrote “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” ignoring the obvious constitutional fact that such authority is neither Congress’ right to give nor deny. That was understood in 1792, and codified by the only authority that could do so: the courts themselves.

The fascists on the court grant “the government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”

With the dishonest and cowardly smirk that is the bedrock of fascism, the court allowed a stay of thirty days before Trump can begin throwing birthright citizens into his death camps overseas, but made it clear the Supreme Court was the only place the stay could be lifted—and the court won’t reconvene until October.

No court can strike down a law or executive order, no matter how cruel, illegal or capricious it might be—and we already know where the Trump regime stands on that, don’t we?

It means ALL disputes that have a constitutional basis can only be decided by the Supreme Court. And back in the days when all nine justices were acting in good faith to uphold the Constitution, they already faced a workload that limited their ability to respond in a country that turns out tens of thousands of new laws every year, state by state, or a capricious and irrational president who signs executive orders that are whimsical and recklessly disregard the rights of those affected.

The right wing supermajority on the court can simply deny cert, (refuse to take up) any challenge to any executive order or act of legislature, no matter how badly it hurts people. And they will. They’ve essentially ruled that they have absolute authority to abrogate their authority absolutely.

Without meaningful right of appeal, how long do you suppose it will be before Pam Bondi urges Trump to sign an XO mandating five years in prison and $100,000 fine for referring to Trump as TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out? Don’t laugh: Bondi has already made a threat along those lines. So you defy the XO and the local sheriff comes around and arrests you. The local court isn’t going to rule the law is stupid and unconstitutional. And you called Trump “TACO” out loud in front of witnesses, so pleading innocent isn’t going to help you. Superior courts cannot rule thusly. Only the Supreme Court can hear your appeal on constitutional grounds. And they don’t want to hear a bunch of whines from convicted criminals, do they?

So basically, the United States of America has come to a close. And what is coming has already made clear that it’s is going to be closer in tone and spirit to Nazi Germany than to your usual grubby little dictatorship.

I’m doomed. Many of you reading this will be, too. But the only thing worse would be to simply kneel and remain silent and hope it delays the fall of the ax. I‘m going to keep on writing these until they come for me.

If you want America back, you’re going to have to fight for it.

Posted on

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

error

Enjoy Zepps Commentaries? Please spread the word :)