Category: History

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

A Trifecta Kind of Day

Maybe good things come in threes

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 8th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

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

In ascending order of importance:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup. Good things come in threes.

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…–Trump Audio recording eliminates any defense he had

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 31st, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The denouement of Trump’s defense in the documents scandal came from a New Yorker story by Susan Glasser that, by itself, was utterly horrifying. The story details how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley opposed Trump, both openly and behind the scenes, to stymie Trump’s impulse to launch a full-scale military invasion of Iran.

Milley presumably realized that this would be the greatest military blunder in American history. Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea would all pale next to it. Those were all small, comparatively weak nations and time after time the US sank into a quagmire they eventually lost. Iran is neither small nor weak, and an attack there would almost certainly draw in the Russians. It probably would be the start of World War III. Milley went so far, according to the story, to surreptitiously tell the military to ignore any “illegal orders” that might come from the President.

The story utterly infuriated Trump (OK, for once I can at least understand why he would be pissed). But his endless need to self-justify and his thin skin led him to what perhaps was the most damning error he has made, post-presidency.

Per CNN, “President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.”

The story goes that two writers for Mark Meadows “autobiography” met with Trump at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. That autobiography contains an account where Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.” It’s anyone’s guess if Milley was contradicting himself, or this is just one of the obligatory scenarios the military delight in creating (“What happens if Lower Slobbovia invades Delaware? Or vice-versa?”) but Trump seized on it as proof Milley was lying.

Trump rattled some papers at the interviewers, and said that these were classified documents that showed the truth of the Meadows claims, and he would like to show them to the interviewers, but the documents were classified, so he couldn’t.

How do we know this?

Oh, lord, there are tapes, part XI. The interviewees, with Trump’s knowledge and consent, were recording the meeting. Trump either forgot, or was so irate he simply lost his temper, or both.

And Jack Smith has that tape. Lawdy, lawdy.

I can envision dozens of felony counts awaiting Trump just on the documents case. But for the first time, I think the DoJ has a prima facie case to persecute Trump for espionage. Combined with the probable indictments for the January 6th case (insurrection) and the Georgia vote count (election tampering) Trump’s most likely future will include dying in prison. This one tape demonstrates that Trump was lying about declassifying the documents, or that he COULD declassify them, or that he didn’t know he had them, or that he ever misused them in any way. This tape is more damning than all the Nixon tapes combined, including the infamous missing “14 ½ minutes.”

It came at the same time that Trump revealed just how far his contempt for the Constitution went by vowing to rescind the 14th amendment through executive order. Even Slappy Thomas would have trouble justifying that one. Trump is irked that the constitution specifies that anyone born in the territories of the US are American citizens, including babies who don’t speak English. (That would be most of them, I would hazard.)

He also threw his weight behind preventing the impeachment of Ken Paxton in Texas who was, of course, promptly impeached. It shows how weak his grasp on the party has become, even as the marching morons continue to chant his praises.

Trump legally, is a dead man walking. He won’t be a candidate in 2024 because he will be in prison. He may still claim to be a candidate, but his campaign will be as quixotically ridiculous as the one run by Lyndon LaRouche back about 30 years ago. The Republicans who, under Trump, let the lunatic fringe take over their party are in such disarray that they will have severe trouble coming up with any candidate at all. They may no longer even be a single discrete party at that point.

The voting on the debt ceiling limit is taking place as I write this, and its passage is extremely likely. For a small number of concessions, Biden got the Republicans to throw away the only real weapon they still possessed, eliminating the debt ceiling until after the 2024 election. Yes, Biden is smarter than the GOP—combined. I was of the strong opinion that Biden shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, but the implications of this agreement please even me. Biden lost a couple of minor skirmishes, but won the war. The same Republicans who had been howling that Biden was so senile and/or incompetent he couldn’t find his trousers just learned they lost their own pants in a poker match against him.

I’m starting to feel hope that America is going to survive Trump, and MAGA, and Qanon.

In any event, the next few weeks should be entertaining as all hell.

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“But Everyone Loves The Leader!” — Well, maybe not so much, it seems…

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 28th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Talk to a Trump supporter for more than a few moments, and the absurdities begin to pile up like newspaper wrappings and plastic bags in a blind alley. Trump is a victim of Antifa and George Soros. The communist leftist radicals plotted for years to bring him down. America was never richer nor more powerful than it was during his presidency. Trump built the wall and solved the border crisis, only to have the Democrats destroy it. Trump cured COVID. Trump exemplifies probity, patriotism and piety. It goes on and on.

It reminds me of some of the claims I’ve heard about North Korean strongmen: they can shoot a perfect 18 in a round of golf, impregnated one thousand virgins in a single night, and lift a starving and benighted nation to glory.

I’m sure most of you have seen examples of what I call Trump Tractor Art; hagiographic images that portray Trump as a hero, a leader, even as Jesus. Some of them made it onto those ridiculous NFT ‘trading cards’ that Trump was peddling last year.

I understand they’re selling “Trump dollars” now at an inflated price that have exactly zero value. A few years ago I gifted a friend with a Trump coin, which basically resembled a fifty cent piece only the presidential seal replaced the national one, and Trump replaced Kennedy. It was a brass alloy designed to be golden, and the quality was actually surprisingly good. I paid $4.99 for it. I’m a jokester, not an idiot. I’m kinda sorry I didn’t get one for myself: it was unique amongst the trolling-for-morons marketplace of MAGAland in that it wasn’t utter garbage and was reasonably priced.

In much of the tractor art emitted by Trump sycophants, he bears an unnerving resemblance to The Homelander, arch-villain in Garth Ennis’ HBO production of The Boys. Given Trump’s personality problems, the notion of a Trump with superpowers is horrifying. Vain, brittle, narcissistic, delusional and devoid on any personal ethics or morality. I’ve wondered in the past if Garth Ennis drew some of his inspiration for The Homelander from Trump. A similar emotionally damaged human with superpowers was Alan Moore’s “Kid Miracleman” and while his physical appearance was drawn from David Bowie, his empty malevolence seemed familiar more to that of Trump’s.

Which brings me to a claim a Trump supporter made recently that stopped me in my tracks in utter disbelief. The claim was that Trump was far more popular before he decided to run for president and he sacrificed that to the howling mob of haters who opposed Trump because he was strong and noble and pure. Or something.

The thing is, a lot of people saw Trump for what he was long before he decided to run for president. His notoriety was such that he became a frequent target in such well known daily comic strips of the 1980s and 1990s as “Bloom County” and “Doonesbury.” Berkeley Breathed, the creator of Bloom County, quit mocking Trump for the simple reason that he wanted people to smile and feel better, not worse. (Reports that Trump hit him with a cease-and-desist order, while certainly plausible enough with the thin-skinned Trump, turned out to be myth.) Garry Trudeau had no such qualms, and made Trump a mainstay in his strip from the early eighties right up to this morning’s strip. He even had Trump running for president in 2000. The idea was that a man so vile and vulgar would get a rabid following but end up flaming out in scandal. This was back in the days when it was believed that rank-and-file Republicans at least possessed some of the integrity and values that they loved to inflict upon others. Then, as now, Trump was vile, he was vulgar, and he was ridden with scandal. He was a cheat, a liar, a bigot and vicious as hell in the 1980s, and everyone knew it.

Even he knew it. Shock-jock Howard Stern asked him about running for President back about that time, and he said that with his history with women and the law, he could never get elected.

Just his history in the court system revealed a man who cheated his customers and clients, didn’t pay his bills, and ran endless scams. He even had to settle on cheating a children’s cancer charity, and is forbidden from being involved in such charities in New York state. His relationship with the courts is one of using an army of lawyers to obfuscate and delay, and eventually to get away with a vast panoply of misdeeds, not through justice, but through attrition.

One of his most infamous moments came with the 1989 case of the Central Park 5. A young woman, Trisha Meili. was viciously assaulted and raped and left for dead while jogging in Central Park. The assault was so vicious that to this day she has no memory of it, having lost 80% of her blood, sustained significant brain injuries, and was left tied up to die. Suspicion immediately fell on a group of black children who had been nearby, youths aged 14 and 15 who had been hassling but not really threatening people in the park. Police coerced confessions from the bewildered kids, and Trump blew $85,000 on a full page ad that read, in part “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer… Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will…. How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their Civil Liberties End When an Attack On Our Safety Begins!”

He wanted the death penalty brought back specifically to punish those kids. (Then, as now, he was wholly ignorant of the Constitution and its prohibition against Bills of Attainder and ex post facto enforcement of laws.) That would have been bad enough, but the totally mismatched DNA (which the NY pigs called “inconclusive”) was found to match that of a man who confessed to the crime, Matias Reyes.

That was in 2001, twelve years later. The kids, now adults, were released and several won large suits against NYC due to the massive miscarriage of justice they suffered. (Reyes never was tried for the rape and near-murder of Meili, due to the statue of limitations. Oddly, Trump didn’t weigh in on that injustice, perhaps because Reyes isn’t black.)

Now, most demagogues would be content to slither under their rocks and pretend their calls for the execution of five kids was due to bad information at the time. Not Trump. He snorted, “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.” Under duress, and of course, police station confessions are a favorite tool of dictators world wide. Stalin was very fond of those.

Trump likes to deflect, claiming without evidence that the kids “mugged” dozens of other people in the park at the time. He’s let it be known that he would have liked to see those five boys executed ANYWAY, regardless of whether they committed the crime or not.

So no, Trump was NOT ‘more popular’ then. He may not have been as unpopular, but that’s not quite the same thing. He was widely derided, scorned, even hated, and he gave ample cause.

We didn’t like Trump than, and we don’t like him now, and no amount of myth-building amongst his dwindling band of followers is going to change that.

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Hawks and Owls — GOP continues lemming plunge

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 18th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I wonder which will happen first? Will the Republicans’ extremism that sometimes slops over into outright treason and fascism cost them enough votes to neuter them, or will they destroy the country first in a mindless attempt at extortion?

Of course, things aren’t going well for them. They lost two mayoral elections Tuesday, both in deep red areas, one under the purview of Ron DeSantis, and the other in the district to Lauren Boebert. Both had been considered locks for the GOP.

Speaking of Bo-bo, she’s getting divorced, and that’s already turning into a white trash rodeo, Palin-style. Maggie Armpits is also getting divorced. Family values and all that.

The GOP is clinging to George Santos because they need his vote so desperately, and the Dems gleefully maneuvered them into voting against expelling the con artist. The Republicans think they can strike back by voting to expel Adam Schiff, because two actions are always the same no matter what. Just like having Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court is exactly the same as having Thurgood Marshall.

Speaking of the “all things being equal” mentality, Armpits is whining that “white nationalism” is the same as the N word, because ‘slaveholder’ means exactly the same thing as ‘enslaved.’

Trump is claiming the Durham report proves that he tried to stop Biden from committing war crimes or something. Trump’s buddy Putin has his mercenaries firing on his own troops and he just fired the scientists who developed their hypersonic missiles because, like the jet planes under Hitler, it failed to change the course of the war. Stay in your bunker, Putie. Someone will be by shortly to scrape you up.

Then there’s the Jordan ‘hearings.’ How many courts could a kangaroo court if a kangaroo could quartz courts? The clowns in the little car are the only part that makes any sense. It seems the dawg ate Gym’s homework.

In Arizona, election and reality denier Kari Lake called her star witness, Jacqueline Onigkeit, She was supposed to establish improper verification of voter ballots. She did the exact opposite. The Arizona Republic bemusedly reported, “As a witness for the defense, Onigkeit was dynamite. The problem is, she was supposed to be the star witness for Lake.”

But of course, there is the budget blackmail that is still ongoing. Republicans are hoping Democrats will cave before they have to murder the country, and Biden doesn’t look to be in a caving mood. The crazier boobs of the Republican Party are hoping that they can stay with their tried-and-true approach to governance: Fuck things up, and leave it for the Democrats to fix. This would be more of the same, piled higher and deeper.

Racking up bills is always more enjoyable than is paying them, and for many years, Republicans have gotten away with the lie that the Dems rack up the bills. Don’t believe me? Here’s something my friend Isaac in the Weasels posted this morning: It shows that over nine out of every ten dollars in the debt is from Republican policies and misadventures. It’s only gotten worse since it began with Reagan. It also shows the Democrats tried to staunch the flow of Republican largess to the rich. Read it and weep:

Here’s a look at the budget deficit each president since Lyndon Baines Johnson inherited from his predecessor, and what the budget deficit was when he left office.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (D)
Assumed office November 1963: $5 billion deficit
Left office January 1969: $3 billion surplus
Reduced the deficit by $8 billion

Richard Nixon (R)
Assumed office January 1969: $3 billion surplus
Left office August 1974: $6 billion deficit
Increased the deficit by $9 billion

Gerald Ford (R)
Assumed office August 1974: $6 billion deficit
Left office January 1977: $54 billion deficit
Increased the deficit by $48 billion

Jimmy Carter (D)
Assumed office January 1977: $54 billion deficit
Left office January 1981: $79 billion deficit
Increased the deficit by $25 billion

Ronald Reagan (R)
Assumed office January 1981: $79 billion deficit
Left office January 1989: $153 billion deficit
Increased the deficit by $74 billion

George H.W Bush (R)
Assumed office January 1989: $153 billion deficit
Left office January 1993: $255 billion deficit
Increased the deficit by $102 billion

Bill Clinton (D)
Assumed office January 1993: $255 billion deficit
Left office January 2001: $128 billion surplus
Reduced the deficit by $383 billion

George W. Bush (R)
Assumed office January 2001: $128 billion surplus
Left office January 2009: $1.4 trillion deficit
Increased the deficit by $1.5 trillion

Barack Obama (D)
Assumed office January 2009: $1.4 trillion deficit
Left office January 2017: $665 billion deficit
Reduced the deficit by $735 billion

Donald Trump (R)
Assumed office January 2017: $665 billion deficit
Left office January 2020: $3.7 trillion deficit
Increased the deficit by $3 trillion

Joe Biden (D)
Assumed office January 2021: $3.7 trillion deficit
Fiscal year 2022: $2.775 trillion deficit
Fiscal year 2023: $1.376 trillion deficit
Reduced the deficit by $2.3 trillion (so far)

So in the past 60 years, only one Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, had a larger budget deficit in his last year in office than he inherited from his predecessor. All six Republican presidents had larger deficits in their last budgets than they were handed at the start of their term.

In other words, Republicans love to spend taxpayer money. And yet so many gullible voters have swallowed the GOP line that it’s the Democrats who are spendthrifts, the basis for McCarthy’s current threat to refuse to pay the nation’s bills — something Republicans never did as Trump was adding $8 trillion to the national debt in just four years.

Yes, the party of Trump, DeSantis, Greene, Santos, Luna, Boebert, Lake and Jordan is going to save us all for irresponsibility and financial ruin. Oh, did I say “for.” Cough. I’m aFreud I made a typo…

Let me put it as plainly and as bluntly as I possibly can: if you think the Republicans want to help you, and help the country, and the Democrats don’t, well, you’re a fucking fool.

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We’re Not From the Government — And We’re Not Here to Help

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 6th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

In the wake of the latest mass shooting in Texas, Greg Abbott, putative governor of that benighted state, blamed the shooting on the government.

My comment on Facebook was “Someone notify this stupid bastard that in Texas, HE is ‘the government.’”

I drew a good response from one fellow who wrote, “That’s one of the strangest things these aholes are allowed to get away with when addressing their base; ‘It’s somebody else’s problem. Sure you elected me to fix the problems, but that still doesn’t make them my problems.’”

Well, that’s not by accident. I wrote back, “Ever since the Kochs hit on the realization that the only way they could seize power was to divorce government from the people. Thus elected Republicans would pretend that they were the freedom fighters and ‘government’ the enemy they struggled against, And as they made government less representative, less helpful, less honest, they would say, ‘See? Our self-fulfilling prophecy has come true!’ Only fools elect people to government who want to destroy government.”

Did the Founders consider this when they wrote the Constitution?

Of course they did. They recognized that in order to have a viable representative Democracy, there were two major social forces that had to be curbed and held in check: The aristocracy, and the churches. James Madison, considered the chief architect of the Constitution wrote some twenty years later, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.” While he was working on the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris (and an early supporter of what eventually became the French Revolution) petitioned Madison strongly for a bill of rights, one of which would include what amounted to a 100% real property estate tax in order to prevent the rise of an aristocracy like the ones he saw enslaving England and France. (Unfortunately, that one didn’t make the list.)

Churches are still churches, and no matter how well-intentioned, breed malevolent zealots. The aristocracy goes by a wide variety of names: Royalty, plutocrats, corporations, fascists, ‘captains of industry,’ and more recently, “disrupters” and “libertarians.”

Both are fueled by authoritarian impulses, and want, among other things, unswerving loyalties from the masses, a captive audience, and a complete lack of accountability.

Madison and Jefferson, along with most of the Founders, saw the twin threats to freedom for what they were, and resolved to keep them contained.

The results were mixed; many states sneaked through laws against blasphemy and enforced cruel dictates against behavior that didn’t hurt anyone. The aristocracy caused one civil war in support of slavery, the ultima thule of capitalism. They’ve crashed the economy dozens of times, including one that very nearly destroyed the country. They, too, have pushed for cruel and repressive laws, and demanded authority they neither deserved or could handle responsibly or fairly. But overall, the dream of Jefferson and Madison kept those forces of tyranny somewhat in check.

In the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, with the reputation of fascism and capitalism in ruins with the American public, the wealthy elites formed an alliance with the one authoritarian power nexus that working people didn’t instinctively recognize as an adversary: Religion. The preachers, stymied by popular skepticism toward cross-wavers in power, were quite willing to accept an allegiance with the plutocrats. The plutocrats needed help in convincing people that the government was inept, overbearing, and an enemy of the people. They knew the only effective way to do that was have their preachers teach that government is evil. They had jovial clowns like Ronald Reagan to quip, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” and to persuade people that turning over the tax revenue to the super-rich would somehow help the poor.

What they needed was some sort of high-octane moral issue. The ones that galvanized the public, such as civil rights, the environment, and education, weren’t what they had in mind. They wanted angry pitchfork wavers who wouldn’t threaten profits or strengthen the labor pool.

They hit on abortion, an issue of importance only to the type of loons who felt dancing should be a criminal offense, those, and the Catholic Church, which still hadn’t gotten over Galileo.

After that, all they needed was an extreme propaganda network that could block truth and promote lies. Enter Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch, the world’s greatest merchants of hate.

The message was a drumbeat: government bad and evil, profits and gawd good.

So when Abbott blames a mess he contributed to making on “the government,” nobody should be surprised. Republicans have spent generations working to make government weak and ineffectual, and then bitterly blaming it for not being strong and effective. Although when pressed to make government strong and effective, say through gun control laws, effective laws against monopolies and dishonest business practices, or protect the rights of minorities, they claim this would make government overbearing and tyrannical. It’s a three-card monte of a philosophy.

They want government limited to only defending their interests, and only a fool thinks the interests of billionaires or televangelists coincide in any way with the interests of the average person.

All autocracies, whether theocratic, or fascist, or (usually) both rapidly become corrupt, cruel, and detrimental to the security and safety of the society they have sought to enslave.

Need proof? Looks at the studied viciousness and cruelty of the anti-abortion freaks now that they’ve been unleashed. Look at the corrupt members of the Supreme Court that unleashed them. Look at the blossoming corruption in the financial sector, and the next coming crash.

Authoritarians are authoritarians, and waving crosses and flags doesn’t make them “more American.” They are the antithesis of what America is meant to be about. They are not your friends, they are not your protectors, and they will make your life hell if they take over, just as has happened throughout history.

America is not immune to this nonsense; they’ve just had the incredible good fortune to be guided by people who saw religion and landed wealth for the threats that they are.

Until now.

 

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The Debt Ceiling — Republicans hate black males, but love blackmail

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 29th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Imagine that you are the owner of a small business. Tax time is approaching, and you’ve spent much of the previous month conferring with your tax accountant agency, ensuring that they have all the proper documentation and a full assessment of all credits and liabilities. Your main preparer has told you will will owe a certain amount on your income, but that comes as no surprise. Just part of the cost of doing business.

But then, a week before the tax deadline, your preparer comes to you with an offer he thinks you can’t refuse. He’ll send in the documents and a check, but only if you fire 10% of your employees, raise prices for your customers, and buy lower quality raw materials for your product. And he wants you to hire only people who attend his church. Or he’ll withhold the tax documents, leaving you to face a load of penalties, a possible audit, and damage to your credit.

Under the law, that is extortion. It’s a felony. The accountant would face many years in prison for pulling such a stunt. He’s abusing your legal obligations for his own gain.

The Republicans in the House are pulling that type of stunt right now. It’s not the first time they’ve used a constitutionally dubious provision in the law to threaten to ruin the credit of the United States. They’ve been doing it, always during Democratic administrations, going back to when it was the brainstorm of the vicious and feckless Newt Gingrich during the Clinton administration. He was the first to hit on the idea of blackmail as official legislative policy. (He and the Republicans tried a similar stunt with the budget, and that blew up massively in their own faces when the country discovered that holding the budget hostage included shutting down Social Security checks, national parks, post offices and many other beloved government functions. Newt, beaten badly on that and facing personal scandal, backed down.

But the Republicans knew a good blackmail ploy when they saw it. Simply threaten to withhold mandated action and demand things that could never ever pass legislatively, such as cutting veterans’ benefits or food stamps or school funding, and leave the Democratic administration to take the blame for it since it would be his signature on a non-bill no member of Congress could be held responsible for.

In 2011, the Democrats called their bluff, and the early stages of a fiscal avalanche that is default began. It cost the country an estimated $2.4 trillion (yes, trillion, with a “tr” – 2,400 billion) and provoked a mild but long-lasting recession.

Republicans can’t govern. Even when they had a Speaker who wasn’t a beholden wimp, and a reasonable majority, they couldn’t get a budget passed, but had to punt the ball down the field, in the form of a “continuing resolution” which basically rubber-stamped the previous years’ budget onto the next one. Between the inflexibility and inflation, it amounted to a slow strangulation of the economy. But, knowing the majority of voters hated what they wanted to see done, they didn’t dare put it out there in black and white, but instead, simply tried to blackmail the country.

They’re at it again, and between the civil war that exists between the zealots and the banksters, and the tiny amount of votes they have in the House (5) they can’t even really say what it is they want. The poison-pill laden extension McCarthy managed to get through by just two votes took a meat-cleaver approach: The plan would cut a wide swath of government spending to last year’s levels, a decrease of about 9%. From that point, growth would be capped at 1% annually over the next 10 years. More of that slow strangulation Republicans so love, and nobody’s fingerprints on the pain. One of the few specifics was to cut the $80 billion or so left from funds to battle COVID, although the Administration has already earmarked that money, reallocating it to veterans’ health care and medical research. It would eliminate Biden’s $400 billion student debt relief, a program Republicans hate because it is popular and prevents the cost of education from making a life-long fiscal slave of the student. It cuts increases to the IRS because the IRS is inconvenient to plutocrats, who resent having to give 1% of their income to the country that wet-nursed them. It would repeal incentives for electric vehicles and sustainable energy because that might annoy the fossil-fuel companies that pay for those Republicans. And they would mandate work for people on Medicare or food stamps because employers would welcome would-be workers who are destitute, desperate, and with no options. It’s the capitalist dream, you know.

None of these poll well, but the Republicans don’t really care about cutting the deficit. (If they did, they would repeal the Trump tax cuts and the huge incentives paid to oil companies, and reduce funding for military allocations, but they won’t.) They just want to threaten the country to weaken Biden, and hope that whether he accepts the blackmail or he doesn’t that he, and not the Republicans, will be blamed for the ensuing fallout.

It’s tawdry, it’s cynical, and it’s a betrayal of the country. It’s the entire Republican package, rolled up into one sleazy political gambit that less than 1/100th of one percent of the country would benefit from.

Ask Biden to stand firm on his demand for a “clean” debt-ceiling raise. Allow no blackmail from these vicious sleazeballs.

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Tucker vs The Weasels –Then, as now, he neither knew or cared if he was telling the truth

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 25th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I have been thoroughly enjoying reading about the firing of Tucker Carlson, and the widespread consternation on the far right over the slap down of their little tin god. I doubt he’s gone from the public eye; he’s fucked up several previous jobs with MSNBC and CNN and bounced back. If Fox had a yellow-dog clause forbidding him from working broadcast for a rival for a set amount of time, he’ll either enter politics or try to set himself up as a religious leader. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the last of that dirt bag.

But for me, it isn’t just the weary disgust I have for the vicious paid liars at Fox and the loony-toon shouty-boys on the web or lurking in the corners on Newsmax or OANN. My hatred and disgust for Carlson is personal.

As regular readers know, I’m a member of a group known as the Lying Socialist Weasels. This group was established by a group of Usenet liberals some 30 years ago. There was a Usenet user, a Reagan supporter named Brett Kottman. He was in the habit of screaming that any critic of Reagan, no matter how mild, was a “lying socialist weasel!”

So we formed a club. The Weasels included some of the leading voices in online liberalism at the time: Howie Klein, Bartcop, Milt Shook, Milt Brewster, Glen Yeadon, Isaac Peterson, Jim Kennemur and, well, me. I wasn’t a founder: I was the first of the second-generation Weasels, invited in by Jim. Several of us are Weasels to this very day. Usenet has dwindled to a wasteland of Nazis and child molesters, and the Weasels all drifted away. But not from one another. We’ve added many wonderful people since then, and at least four of the originals are still alive, active and involved with the group both online and in email.

One of our most prominent members was a fellow named Steve Kangas. Steve had a website, Liberalism Resurgent, which stood out as one of the most literate, informed, and conscientiously factual websites around. Some of the Weasels were bigger names and more influential, but we all looked to Steve when we needed to fact check ourselves or simply learn more on nearly any given topic.

On February 8, 1999 Steve died under the most mysterious of circumstances. His body was supposedly found in a restroom on the 39th floor of a Pittsburgh skyscraper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, billionaire and funding father of what we were already referring to as the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. It was only feet away from Scaife’s office. His body was allegedly found at two AM that morning, long after the tower had closed for the night.

It was announced that Steve had shot himself at 2am in that restroom, 2,000 miles from his Nevada home and in the headquarters of a man who had every reason to hate and fear the careful factuality of Liberalism Resurgent. In direct contravention of Pennsylvania law, there was no autopsy. There was a rumor that Steve had somehow managed to kill himself by shooting himself twice in the back of the head. The following day, a man later associated with Scaife turned up at Kangas’ parents home and removed the hard drives from Steve’s computer.

Enter Tucker Carlson, then a silver-spoon nobody writing for VRWC flagship magazine The Weekly Standard, jumped in. He began a campaign of defamation against Kangas, claiming, among other things, that Kangas was heavily armed (Kangas was a champion of gun control) and that he carried on his person that night a copy of Mein Kampf (unlikely under pretty much any circumstance.) Both claims are still on Steve’s Wikipedia page, with no corroboration, of course.

A couple of former Usenet Nazis celebrate Steve’s death every February. These are people who love Trump and can’t bring themselves to spell “Jew” with a capital ‘J.’ They weren’t celebrating Steve carrying Mein Kampf. Even for them, that was a bridge too far. Didn’t stop old Tucker, though.

He also argued that Steve was intrinsically suicidal, self-loathing and with absolutely horrible self-image. Uncharacteristically, he actually offered a factoid to support this claim. He reported that on Usenet, Steve often referred to himself as a “weasel.”

Yes, Steve was a Weasel. A Lying Socialist Weasel. He was quite proud of that, and respected us as much as he respected himself.

Had Tucker spent five minutes reading the posts of people Steve communicated with, he would have learned that amongst Usenet liberals, “Weasel” was the exact opposite of disparaging. But he wasn’t there to report: as he does to this very day, he was there to hate-monger, divide, and smear. He was a disgusting parody of a reporter then, just as he is to this day.

He’s one of the big reasons why America is the septic mess it is today. There’s a number of reasons why even Kangarupe Murdoch finally decided he was too vicious, too out-of-control. Some say it was his role in promoting, knowingly, the lies leading the the disastrous defamation suits against Fox. Some say it was sexual harassment and creating a toxic workplace. Reports of a possible defamation suit from Ray Epps that the January 6th participant was supposedly an undercover agent for the FBI, a theory that Carlson has been promoting. One of the more arresting theories is that Murdoch broke off his short-lived engagement when he realized the woman was extremely religious, and Tucker just happened to pick right then to start trying to lead his audience in prayer. Who knows? Maybe Kangarupe realized that Zealots are extremely dangerous allies. Well, it’s a nice idea, right?

Tucker is gone, for now, but his stench lingers over the body politic.

But for us Lying Socialist Weasels, its a good time to lift one to Steve, and say, “This one’s for you, Mister Kangas.”

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A Good Day — Rule of Law sustained

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 4th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The Trump indictments got all the press, but the really big news today was the vote for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. There, an American moderate liberal defeated an individual heavily funded by a clandestine coalition of right wing groups that I’ve come to think of as the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues. Janet Protasiewicz is projected to handily defeat Dan Kelly, a right winger with ties to election deniers, anti-vaxxers, and who is on record advocating an end to all abortions.

Nearly all of Protasiewicz’s funding came from residents and the state Democratic party. Kelly’s money, some $30 million, came from groups and individuals outside of Wisconsin, with only $200,000 coming from in-state.

The election gave control of the Supreme Court back to non-fascists. You don’t need to tell me it’s utterly insane that supreme court judges are elected in contests in which powerful political interests control the funding (and far too often, the outcome) of elections. It is utterly insane. Not that the Senate is that big an improvement.

But for now, at least, Wisconsin residents are no longer at the mercy of dishonest fundamentalist hacks pretending to be judges. That puts them ahead of the country as a whole.

The list of indictments made for strangely easy reading. The same charge was repeated 34 times: Donald J. TRUMP, Defendant. THE GRAND JURY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK, by this indictment, accuses the defendant of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE, in violation of Penal Law §175.10, committed as follows: The defendant, in the County of New York and elsewhere, on or about February 14, 2017, with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, to wit, an invoice from Michael Cohen dated February 14, 2017, marked as a record of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization.

In each of the subsequent 33 charges, only the dates and check recipients/numbers changed. Each was a felony under New York State law. It wasn’t the actions Trump committed that were illegal. It isn’t illegal to bang a porn star if she is a consenting adult. It’s not illegal to try to hide that you did. It isn’t even illegal to buy her silence. Where Trump fucked up was in the accounting; he gave false information on where the money came from, who it went to, what it paid for, and how it was disbursed. As Dick Nixon could tell you, it wasn’t the crime (and in this case it wasn’t even a crime); it’s the coverup. And Al Capone could tell you that if they can’t prove you killed dozens of people and committed many other violent crimes, they can always get you on the bookkeeping.

In the case of Trump, it’s the facts behind the indictments that could leave him hanging out to dry.

Frankly, despite the bluster from Trump and his minions, I expect that he’ll eventually work some kind of plea bargain on this. It’s a white collar series of crimes, and incredible as it may sound, he’s a first time offender. It’s entirely possible he could get a suspended sentence and several years probation. It wouldn’t be too extraordinary in this situation. America may be one of the most savage nations on Earth when it comes to punishing people who steal bicycles or shoplift, but they’ve always had a warm fuzzy spot in their flinty little hearts for people who use pens to steal millions. The old saying has it, “Steal a loaf of bread, go to jail. Steal a million dollars, go to the Senate.”

He already has taken major political damage. His supporters swarmed New York City by the dozens, outnumbered by anti-Trump demonstrators, police, and reporters. Marjorie-Taylor Greene tried to seize the Trump banner, no doubt visualizing herself in Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (what a mental image. Ohmigawd, woman, cover up! Bad enough that we have to see your PITS!). She lasted all of ten minutes before a hooting and whistling crowd, before retreating to her SUV and scurrying off in disgrace.

Trump and his wastrel sons made threats against the Judge and his daughter, and continued attacks against DA Bragg and his family. Trump, at least, could end up in jail on contempt charges if he keeps that shit up.

More important, the vote tampering cases in Georgia and the federal case surrounding January 6th present a far greater threat to Trump. He may settle this first case so he can help fight in the two bigger ones coming.

But settling will damage him beyond repair politically. Outside of his own small circle and the dead-enders on Truth Social, there had been mostly a silence, simultaneously awkward and thoughtful, from the far right.

They are finally realizing that neither reality nor history are on their side. The Great Crumble of the GOP may have begun.

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The Indictment — Individual One meets his fate

The Indictment

Individual One meets his fate

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 30th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

After tossing a nasty curve yesterday by announcing the Grand Jury would be taking most of April off, Alvin Bragg put a scorcher right over the plate, announcing that the jury had found grounds to indict and the indictment would be issued. While nearly everyone was expecting an indictment, the timing took most people by surprise – including, critically, Trump and his minions.

According to CNN, Trump “faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.” Nobody knows what the exact counts are, so anyone declaiming that the indictment was “a miscarriage of justice” or “upholds the rule of law” is blowing smoke out their asses. I’m guessing that evidence to back the charges is likely to be pretty solid but that’s all it is; a guess. We’ll know more along about Monday or Tuesday.

Ron DeSantis, the ridiculous governor of Florida, already announced that he would not allow New York to extradite Trump. Given the constitutional mandate in such manners, DeSantis just placed one of his dainty white elevator boots on the wrong side of insurrection. That he didn’t even bother with learning what Trump has been charged with makes him look silly, futile and weak. But he has to play up to his anti-American base, the same clowns who are banning books, destroying education, and trying to outlaw entire lifestyles, philosophies and political opinions. When you are speaking for trash, it’s hard to sound classy, or even sane.

Trump is expected to turn himself in voluntarily for processing – fingerprinting, getting his Miranda, all that. He has tried to rile up his base by demanding he be cuffed and perp-walked, but unless he pulls some kind of stunt, he will not be, since the charges, while in some cases are likely serious felonies, are all non-violent and first offenses. American cops are notoriously deferential to wealthy white people, especially if there isn’t cause to break a few windows to play up to the public. I did suggest that if Trump did pull something that required him to be cuffed (unlikely, I admit, since Trump isn’t the sort to defy someone with a gun) that some fuzzy pink handcuffs of the sort people use on bondage-play sex games be used. The dignity of the occasion must be observed, you know.

The rest of the GOP circus are obediently lining up to defend their lord and master, of course. In a party as thoroughly sold-out and cowardly, did anyone expect anything else? Most still don’t dare defy Trump; some are doubtlessly hoping the indictment will give Trump a boost in the polls and thus shine some light on them for supporting him.

That notion may seem odd, but there is historical precedent: when the Republican GOP impeached Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky thing, his ratings climbed. In fact, the day the Senate acquitted him, his rating were the highest he reached in two terms.

The two situations aren’t the same, though. People – including many of the people who wanted Clinton disgraced and forced from office – knew that the impeachment was purely a political animal, and that the charges – lying about getting a blow job from a consenting adult – just weren’t that serious.

When the charges are released, you’ll note that “banging a porn star” won’t be among the charges. Stormy Daniels is an adult, and nobody disputes that she gave consent. Thus, it isn’t a crime.

Had Bill Clinton taken a hundred thousand dollars and had his lawyer pay Monica for her silence, and then misrepresented where the funds came from and what they were for subsequently, he would have been convicted by the Senate, expelled from office, and might even have done some jail time, since those, unlike casual sex, are felonies. White collar crime, to be sure, but still felonies. That’s the big difference between what Clinton was facing and what Trump is facing. Clinton was guilty of indiscretion. That’s not even a misdemeanor. It doesn’t even rise to the level of a parking ticket.

When the counts are enumerated, any ‘bounce’ Trump may enjoy over the weekend should dissipate fairly rapidly. If CNN is right and there are more than thirty counts pending, that should make a pretty daunting array of legal instruments brought to bear against Donald.

Also keep in mind that indictments in the Georgia vote-tampering case and the events of January 6th are still pending. That’s a bigger pair of avalanches looming over Trump.

I also think the open racism and threats that some of Trump’s supporters are making will undermine him, as well. Describing Alvin Bragg, the DA, as “George Soros funded” is not only untrue, but is a dog whistle. Anyone saying that is actually saying “dirty joos that secretly run the world are controlling a puppet DA.” It’s shabby, it’s tawdry, it’s disgraceful, and most people are better than that. The threats – including the white powder sent to the DA office will put a lot of people off.

And Faux News, historically Trump’s biggest promoter, have self-negated their cause with the evidence showing their dishonesty and hypocrisy regarding Trump. So I don’t see anything more than a ripple of support from the general public, one quelled by the tsunami of fake rage, threats, and general viciousness from the performance artists of the right. Their act is deader than Vaudeville but they haven’t realized it yet.

But they’ll do what damage they can, oblivious to the fact that most of the damage will be against Trump.

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Perp-traitors — Donald and his legions about to perpwalk

Perp-traitors

Donald and his legions about to perpwalk

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 19th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There’s all sorts of crazy rumors flying around this weekend as the possible indictment (and yes, possible actual arrest) of Donald J. Trump is likely to occur Monday or Tuesday. Armed neo-Nazis will surround Mar-a-Lago and open fire on US Marshalls. Other groups will storm the New York court issuing the indictment. And of course, there is talk of storming Congress because, you know, Congress welcomes peaceful tourists. Why, Josh Hawley was so happy to see them he ran out to greet them, you know.

Assuming they actually do arrest Trump for the crimes his lawyer, Michael Cohen, already carried out and served time for at Trump’s behest, I expect scattered protests and lots of angry rhetoric on cesspools like Truth Social and Twitter.

But that’s about the extent of it.

My reasoning is simple enough: Trump’s star has dimmed considerably in the two years since the storming of the Capitol. The events of January 6 shocked those moderate supporters among independents and Republicans. Since then, there have been the 1/6 Committee hearings, which reminded most people of how Congress does when it actually works right (and we have the McCarthy-Greene-Jordan circus going on now to remind them of what Congress is like when fools, nuts and crooks are running the show).

There’s been the endless parade of right wing outrage staged over such things as green M&Ms, furries in the schools, drag queens, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. While Fox and Trump purposefully cultivated fools, they drew in a significant number of people who, while credulous and easily convinced of the evil of Democrats, knew damnfoolishness for what it was. Litter boxes in school restrooms? Bugs Bunny in a dress is a bigger threat to children than the thousands of pedophile priests? Those are bigger threats than mass shootings or climate change?

Putting zealots on the courts has backfired massively. Most Americans—including most Republicans—are frightened and angry at the ongoing assault on the rights of women, African Americans, undocumented aliens and other minorities. The notion that there are zealots on the courts who want a Christian version of Afghanistan or Iran is horrifying, and anyone who knows history knows that is exactly what they envision, with the best of motives. Serving God is a hard thing, you know. The unfaithful must pay a price.

They will also notice that promises to arrest and convict {Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, dozens of other Democrats} have never ever amounted to anything. Certainly nothing like the NYPD and Secret Service sitting down and planning how to turn Trump over to the police when they come to serve the arrest warrant. (The Trump people aren’t cooperating with the police, of course.)

The significance of the endless feigned outrage is finally wearing thin. Banks didn’t fail because libertarian tech bros who exploited them were woke; they failed because Trump and the Republicans stripped away rules that prevented such exploitation. Trains didn’t derail because Democrats didn’t care about rural white communities; they derailed because Trump stripped necessary safety regulations imposed during the Obama administration. Those weren’t peaceful tourists; those were terrorists and Nazis. The lies are getting ever more shrill and more transparent.

But the main reason Trump’s hoped-for revolt is going to fizzle is because the revelations from the Dominion lawsuit revealed once and for all that the whole “stolen election” lie upon which the storming of the Capitol and the outrage of Trump supporters rested was in fact a sham and a complete fabrication, and the propagandistic filth posing as “reporters” for Faux News knowingly and maliciously perpetrated the lie, aware that it was a lie, and aware of the damage it might do to the country.

There has always been a hard core of MAGAts who were absolutely unswerving in their support of Trump and the Big Lie. They truly believed the election was stolen. They were certain that it was orchestrated by Biden, George Soros, Hugo Chavez and drag queens. They made up perhaps 20% of the people who voted in 2020. That’s a sizable number, but similar numbers believe in faeries, that we’ve never been to the Moon, or that Ivermectin is the only treatment for COVID. Keep in mind that statistically, 20% of the population has an IQ below 90. That isn’t unrelated; many of these people are pure stupid and will die stupid.

But the Dominion findings have managed to penetrate even that rock of impermeable idiocy. In the weeks since the stories of what Tucker really thought of Trump and why Murdoch allowed this to happen and the rest, a full 21% of viewers who trusted Fox News no longer do. That’s a seismic shift in belief. (One of the weirder findings in that poll were the 23% of Fox viewers who didn’t trust the station to begin with.) There aren’t many substitutes for Faux: OANN and Newmax face oblivion, done in by their own excesses. That leaves just the howling nuts on talk radio and Youtube.

Even amongst the steadfast, there have to be doubts creeping in. When Tucker tells them they have to get out and save their country by facing the police and national guard, how many of them would now do so unreservedly? They know that over a thousand people have been convicted in the wake of 1/6, and thousands more convictions await. They know they won’t take the authorities by surprise this time, and Trump and his planted traitors won’t be available to blunt the response of authorities, or promise pardons to those who would betray their country.

Some will even think it through, and realize that fighting for the lies that Trump and Fox told them meant they actually were betraying their country. And they would then realize that Trump is an infinitely stupid hill to die upon.

I expect protests and angry rhetoric, and that’s fine. Those people have the right to protest and declaim.

But in the end, it will be an empty rattle, as devoid of authenticity and reason as the frantic lies spewed by Faux News.

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