Category: History

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Biden’s Save — It’s Harris, and her support is wildly solid

Biden’s Save

It’s Harris, and her support is wildly solid

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 22nd 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Minutes after I wrote an essay arguing that Joe Biden should resign the Presidency, making Kamala Harris President and presumptive candidate in November, Biden made the announcement I was hoping he wouldn’t make; that he wasn’t going to run for reelection, and wasn’t endorsing anyone to replace him.

I muttered “crap” and hurriedly added a note to my piece, which had argued that Biden not running and not endorsing Harris would be the worst decision he could make. I noted the two previous times an incumbent had made that decision (Truman and LBJ) the Democrats lost badly in the ensuing election.

I went and took a nap (over 100 outside, but don’t worry: Trump says climate change is a hoax) feeling depressed.

And when I woke up an hour later, a seismic shift had occurred. Joe Biden from his COVID sickbed gave a roaring endorsement of Kamala Harris, and I watched in sheer amazement as the party coalesced around her in a way I’ve never seen Democrats do—not even in 2008, when the party was spellbound by the Obama magic. In the following 24 hours, an unprecedented $81 million in donations rolled in, followed by an announcement from the Soros family that they would be opening the fiscal floodgates to support Harris. An incredible 28,000 people signed up to actively campaign for her. In one day.

In the same period, every Democrat who might plausibly mount a run against Harris endorsed her. Even Joe Manchin, who considered an implausible run briefly, looked over the new political landscape and endorsed her. All but a handful of party leaders have fallen in line, with only the Obamas and Clintons yet to weigh in.

I wondered about that naptime that occurred between what I considered a disastrous move by Biden and the announcement that galvanized the party in a way never seen before. In just one day, they’ve come from trailing Trump in the polls to all but having put this to bed. What happened in that hour?

What I’m hearing is the original announcement was one that Biden and Nancy Pelosi reached. Pelosi was of the strong opinion that voters would not like what would amount to a coronation of Harris by Biden. And in normal circumstances, she probably would have a point. Americans are adverse to “smoke filled room” nominations, which is why the primary process came about in the first place. Although again, 1952 and 1968 showed what a party in disarray just months before an election because the incumbent decides not to run accomplishes.

Biden must have thought along similar lines, and I get the feeling he simply blind-sided Pelosi. Biden is old, and may sometimes be a bit confused, but he’s a long way from senile, and his political insticts are still sharp—as is his resolve. He understood that even if he felt up to the job, the ongoing doubts, exacerbated by right wing smears and propaganda, meant he couldn’t win, and nor could “player to be named later.” So he endorsed Harris, perhaps the most brilliant move of his career.

About an hour ago, Pelosi endorsed Harris. Her political instincts are every bit as good as they have ever been, and she’s one of the best in the business.

I fully expect to hear endorsements from the Clintons and the Obamas in the next day or so. Making this as close to a unanimous choice that the Democratic Party has ever come.

She’s a damned solid candidate, smarter, tougher, and a better person than Trump.

The Republicans are in a blind panic. They are in the position of the dog who caught the car. They worked hard to drive Biden out, but now they find their own propaganda working against them. Suddenly, the national focus is where it should have been all along—on Trump. Is he senile? Is he crazy? Is he evil? Is he stupid? Is he immoral? Is he dishonest?

Yes.

He’s everything they accused Biden of, and much worse. Defending Trump is not going to be fun.

Mike Johnson, the worst speaker in American history, declared he would sue the Democratic Party for a bait-and-switch on their primary voters. Quite aside from the fact that he lacks standing (even the Heritage Foundation stooges on the Supine Court would have trouble getting around that), the Dems do have the option of replacing the primary winner should he or she prove unfit at any time before the election. And like most such Republican schemes, Johnson’s brainstorm could backfire on him, because Trump IS unfit for office, and may blow up and do or say something so egregiously mental that even the Republicans realize he has to go. And unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have HAD their convention, the one with all the felons and people with sanitary napkins strapped to their ears, and have formally nominated Trump.

Oops.

The dirtbag contingent are in full flame mode, calling Harris “a DEI hire” (the new phrase for n*****) and brought up the old chestnut that she came to power by sleeping with Willie Brown*. Because Republicans can’t imagine a woman rising to power without giving blowjobs, which leads to questions about MT-G or Bobo or any of the harpies of the GOP.

Well, they speak well for the GOP, don’t they?

It’s still a long way to election day, and the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues is going to spend many billions to overthrow the election and stage a christofascist coup, so we aren’t out of the woods.

But I feel a whole lot better about our prospects now.

And once again, with deep feeling: Thank you, Joe Biden.

* Willie Brown was a legendary Speaker of the Assembly in California and then Mayor of San Francisco over a thirty year period. His was a colorful and extraordinary career. A typical highlight came when one Democratic member of the Assembly snarled that Republicans “were just a bunch of white men with tiny dicks.” Brown reluctantly punished her for her remark, but the following morning, Republican members of the Assembly came in to find little tins of Vienna Sausages on their desks. Nobody could prove it, but everybody knew: It was Willie Brown.

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President Kamala Harris — If Joe Biden steps down

NOTE:  I finished this essay just minutes before Joe Biden announced that he was not running for President, but not stepping down as President, or endorsing a successor.  I’m going ahead and publishing this essay anyway, as written, in the hopes it might influence people to urge Biden to make a stronger and more directional decision.

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 21st, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Ever since the debate I’ve been going back and forth in my own head about whether Biden should run for a second term. There’s no doubt in my mind that he is in better shape, physically, morally, mentally and psychologically than his opponent, but he has a disadvantage in that his supporters care if the president is fit to run the country or not, whereas Donnie One-Ear’s supporters are content merely to worship their idol.

If Biden were to step down, he would go down as the greatest one-term president in American history. He has served his term with immense competence, overcoming daunting odds to create the greatest legislative legacy since FDR. His policies have brought the country back from the brink of a depression to a roaring economy, and for the first time since Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ madness was inflicted upon the country, workers and the middle class are gaining ground. He has brought manufacturing back, made vast updates and improvements to the national infrastructure, and made inroads in smashing the corrupt system of permanent economic servitude known as ‘student debt.’ His legacy is secure, and no mountain of Republican lies can change that.

While a lot of people who think he should step down propose that he just announce he isn’t running again (as did Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman) it’s worth noting that in both instances the party left without an incumbent president went on to lose both the White House and Congressional supermajorities.

That’s illustrative in another way: in both cases, the prior president died in office (Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) and both Johnson and Truman, running on their predecessors’ policies and platforms, were elected with huge majorities against fundamentally weak Republican candidates.

Biden announcing he won’t run again would be a mistake, and we would probably see a floor fight at the convention followed by a sweeping loss. I’ve no doubt that would be the last meaningful election America would ever see. If Trump gets back in office, we are finished.

But if instead, Joe Biden resigns the Presidency, then Kamala Harris becomes President. Not ‘acting president’ or ‘president pro tem’ but THE President. She would be the incumbent (and eligible to run for two full terms in addition to the months remaining in Biden’s first term) and effectively the head of her party. If she decides to run (and it’s nearly impossible to imagine a circumstance where she wouldn’t) the Democratic Party would have little choice, politically or tactically, but to back her and nominate her and a running mate at the convention, three weeks from now.

If she runs on Biden’s platform, and has the full-throated support of Biden, then the Democrats would be united. Even the Democrats mooted to be possible presidential candidates, such as Gavin Newsom or Adam Schiff, would have little recourse but to support her.

The only President to resign office was Richard Nixon, and he did so in disgrace. With Biden, it would be an act of heroism and personal character, putting the interests of the country ahead of his own ambitions. He would be a hero. And if he, along with Obama and the Clintons, is actively campaigning for her, then Biden’s final official act will be one of pure courage and genius.

Which leaves one question: Is Kamala Harris up for the job?

Often the vice presidential nomination is a matter of naked political calculation. The putative goal is a “balanced ticket” wherein the VP candidate is strong in a region where the presidential candidate is weak or appeals to a constituency not keen on the presidential candidate. Harris wasn’t the result of such; she is from California, which was already a given for Biden, and is liberal-centrist, like Biden. The bigots will say she’s a ‘minority hire’ or some other such crap, but honestly—does anybody know a Repucican black person and/or a woman who said, “I was going to vote for Trump, but Harris is a DEI, so I’m switching?” Yes, there are black people and women who support Trump. But you only need to watch them for a few moments to see they aren’t quite right. None of them are going to switch for Harris.

With the possible exceptions of Al Gore and puppet master Dick Cheney, most VPs don’t have memorable terms. John Nance Gardner once remarked of his job as VP that it was “Not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Basically, the VP has three jobs: cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, certify the electoral college count, and wait for the president to die. In most of the history of the Republic, that made the job an utter sinecure.

What about the rest of her career? Well, stellar. As a district attorney she was tough on crime, but had compassion. She opposed the death penalty in all cases, sometimes in the face of intense political pressure. In 2005 she created an environmental crimes unit, and a hate crimes unit. She vigorously persecuted marijuana traffickers, but very rarely persecuted end users, and didn’t seek prison time on such offenses. On violent crime, she was suburb, achieving an 87-percent conviction rate for homicides and a 90-percent conviction rate for all felony gun violations.

She was elected State DA in 2010 in one of the closest elections in state history (it took three weeks to determine she was the winner, but won reelection in 2014 by nearly 58% of the vote, showing strong public consensus behind the job she was doing.

She went after the mortgage mills that nearly destroyed the economy in 2008, and clawed back over a half billion dollars in false claims from two major Medicare swindler companies. She backed and then utilized the Homeowner Bill of Rights which eliminated egregious abuses by the banks and saved not only thousands of people their homes, but homeowners around the state billions of dollars.

She consistently has fought major corporations and banks for the rights of consumers and employees and the public at large. Her record as state DA is utterly amazing, and leaves me with no doubt that she can stand nose-to-nose with Donald Trump, call him a liar and a crook, explain why he’s a liar and a crook, and send him away crying like a little bitch. She’s far more a man than he’s ever been.

Harris, backed by Biden and the rest of the Democratic party, is what we absolutely must have if Trump and the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues who back him are to be defeated.

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The Trump Shooting — Chaos and confusion reign—don’t let it rule you

The Trump Shooting

Chaos and confusion reign—don’t let it rule you

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 14th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Perhaps the most depressing thing about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump yesterday was that I was utterly unsurprised. I would have been equally unsurprised if the intended target had been Joe Biden, or even Robert F. Kennedy Jr. All three men, and indeed any politician of any notoriety at all, have enemies by the thousands or even millions, and with 600 million guns in the country, a lot of those enemies are heavily armed.

I was surprised that anyone meeting that criteria could get close enough to get some shots off. The Secret Service are very good at their job, and despite the fact that hundred and perhaps thousands of armed people fantasize about shooting one politician or another, the last really close call was Ronald Reagan, 43 years ago. (Gabby Giffords didn’t have SS protection when she was shot.) While there are legitimate questions about how this happened at all (at least one member of Trump’s audience says he spotted the shooter on a neighboring roof and tried to warn SS and police personnel on the scene and was ignored) the fact is there are weapons of war out there that can hit a three inch target from three miles away. In this instance, preliminary reports are that the shooter used an AR-15 (or “AR-type rifle”), which certainly has the range but isn’t particularly accurate.

Some reports are that Trump wasn’t grazed by a bullet, but by a shard of glass from a teleprompter the shooter did hit. That seems plausible. Even at 300 yards, getting nicked by an assault rifle bullet should produce enough hydrostatic shock that Trump would end up with a permanent case of what boxers used to call “Cauliflower Ear.”

It’s a sign of the utter confusion surrounding the event that even now we don’t know how far away the shooter was. In baseball, Statcast can tell the crowd the precise distance and velocity of a home run before the ball even lands. Estimates began at “300 to 400 yards” and now are around 150-200 yards. The latter seems more likely, partially because the bullets did come so close, and partially because it’s a lot easier to spot a man with a gun at 150 yard than it is at 400 yards. Let alone hit him with return fire almost immediately, as apparently happened when the Secret Service returned fire. (And in the moments since I wrote that, the Guardian produced a aerial photo showing where Trump was, where the shooter was, and where the SS snipers were. The shots came from 120 meters away, about 133 yards).

We don’t know much about the shooter. His name was Thomas Matthew Crooks, he lived nearby, he was twenty years old, and registered as a Republican. That last might surprise some folks, but remember that some of Trump’s most vociferous critics and strident foes are Republicans. For all the adoration of his fans, the man is very widely hated.

One anonymous police report is that they found bomb-making equipment but for now we should just assume they found a set of wire cutters in his garage.

Congress is already demanding a full investigation into how this could have happened, and while some of those congressionals are simply grandstanding, it is a very legitimate point. This. Should. Not. Have. Happened. Somebody screwed the pooch.

There are calls for national unity in the wake of the shooting, and no doubt most of them are being made in good faith. But some aren’t. Mike Lee of Utah thinks we should show our support for America by dropping all criminal charges and convictions against Donald Trump. Get a few stitches in your ear, it’s a get-out-of-jail card, amiright?

Some are misguided. Speaker Mike Johnson compared this to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. That event didn’t do much in the way of unification: a third of the land (the Confederacy) erupted in wild jubilation, and Lincoln’s shooting is celebrated in some quarters even today.

There’s a lot of bad actors and opportunists out there spreading misinformation and disinformation. Beware any report that seems suspicious, or is simply too good to be true. It’s very unlikely, for instance, that Crooks was a transgendered DEI hire who was secretly banging AOC and hated Jesus. He don’t even know if his motives were political.

So stay calm, call out the professional liars and opportunists, and remember that the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one.

And reflect on the fact that it’s hard to maintain stability in a land with six hundred million guns. We’ve got to do something about that.

 

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The Hottest Day in History — After a cool, tranquil start

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 6th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There really isn’t anything to suggest today is unusual. It’s 6:30, full light, and it’s 53 with a very slight breeze from the north. Perfect dog-walking weather, or so the dog, ancient but always eager, thinks. There’s a faint scorched smell in the air this July 6th, but it’s not residue from fireworks. They’re banned here, and residents, mindful of the fire situation, were happy to comply.

The faint odor is left over from the day before, until today the hottest day the town has ever recorded. For a few minutes yesterday, late in a bronze afternoon, it ticked 106.1, unheard-of in this mountain town.

It’s cool, it’s fresh, humidity is low. Thunderstorms are not in the offing, and there’s a mercy. Five miles away, the still-large snowfields of Shasta glisten in the morning sun. They look pristine, but weeks of heat have turned them into cornsnow, and the streams and rivers are all very cold white water.

It’s supposed to be 107 today, and experience suggests the forecast is a bit conservative. But the cool nights are a pleasant surprise; forecasts had us getting nights in the mid 60s, hideously hot for us. Nearly everyone in town depends on “mountain air conditioning”–using exhaust fans to suck the warm air out of the homes and replace them with fresh, cool night air. So after a silent mountain night, the house is fresh and cool.

There is birdsong, but this late in the year it’s subdued. A few whipoorwills and cheeseburger birds stake claims already taken, and in the distance a logging truck grunts its way up the hill.

There shouldn’t be a sense of gathering force, but I know better. In a couple of hours the morning sun will feel uncomfortably harsh. Insects will be silent, birds waiting under leafy canopies.

The heat is coming.

I think about the state of the world. Things there, too, have been unnaturally hot, a symptom of an underlying change. In the United States, the fever has been tumultuous. The Supreme Court has utterly abdicated its role as guardian of the constitution and ruled that yes, the president (or at least one particular president) is above the law. There is a historical precedent, even if the order is a bit different.

Then, as now, it won’t end well.

Biden seemed vague and confused during the debate as Trump mindlessly shouted the same prefabricated lies he has been shouting all along. It was painful to watch, but this, too, had a historical precedent, a warning from the past.

There was once a man who ran for high office. He was a criminal and even though he professed great love and patriotism, he led a violent effort to depose the government. He was hoarse, a hateful shouter who knew that you only needed to keep your lies simple and repeat them, over and over. He “uncovered” groups who were different, and could be scapegoated, and he could lie viciously about them. He worked up a social frenzy and convinced followers that they need only punish these groups and remove them from society and everything would then be fine.

After his conviction, he ran for office again. He was an absurd figure, short, dumpy, and not particularly bright. But he convinced his followers he was like unto a god, and there were hundreds of images of him, tall, muscular, chiseled, a stern, steely-eyed leader whose very presence challenged the sun itself. He, and only he, could restore lost greatness and respect to his land, and he could solve all problems. Sane people saw him as a bad joke, but his followers worshiped him. If he told them white was black, then by gawd white was black, although some moderates would argue it was a dark gray.

He didn’t win his election, getting only 32% of the vote, a plurality. But he came close enough that he could steal the rest, and all that lay in his path was one old man, a colossal figure in recent history, still a hero to many, but old, so very old.

The man bullied him mercilessly as his followers swarmed through the streets, beating political opponents and savaging members of the groups the man has scapegoated. The old hero gave in, and gave the man the role of leader.

Here’s where the order was changed. The man took power first, and then had the laws changed so that any “official act” he committed was legal. Once that took place, it was over. No more elections, and freedoms vanished in a growing morass of horror and lawlessness.

The Enabling Acts gave Hitler all the power he wanted and more, and yet they were nothing more than a change in the law that said any of his official acts were protected and he could not be punished for them.

The old hero he wore into submission was Paul von Hindenberg, a truly old man who died just a couple of years later. He wasn’t alone: before Hitler was done, some 45 million other people died.

The order has changed this time. The Supreme Court has passed its version of the Enabling Acts already, but Trump has yet to come close enough to seize power. Between him and that is an old man. Not as old as von Hindenberg was in 1932, and not nearly as feeble. But Trump and his brown shirts are working feverishly to cast him in that role, hoping, as always, that they can manufacture truth from lies.

Even the politicians and journalists who are shouting for Biden to drop his opposition to the new Leader haven’t paused to wonder why they aren’t shouting for Trump to step down. After all, the man is a criminal, a liar, a thief, a moral and ethical wastrel, and his only redeeming qualities are his incompetence and his short life expectancy. How does an evening of confusion in the face of shouted lies stack up against that?

We know what Trump and his followers want. Like Hitler, they make no secret of it, appealing to the same vile, vicious cretins that lie in the underbelly of any society. They betray in the name of patriotism, defile in the name of their god, and want simple answers to questions that don’t have answers.

But unlike the weather, this is reversible. Trump and his Nazis can be stopped.

It’s starting to warm up out there. The air is cool, but the sun is not fooled. It will put us to the test this day.

The morning chores are done, the garden is watered, pets are seen to, careful provisions for shade and water made. The house is cool, and even if we lose electricity, we should be comfortable and safe.

I know my history. I know what to expect, how to prepare.

How about you?

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Exodus — The great exit that wasn’t

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June21st, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.com

Just about everyone likes Cecil B. DeMille’s second attempt at a movie about the exodus, the one with Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston. The special effects for the time were amazing, and Brynner and Heston had tons of fun chewing the scenery. It’s a great movie, and belongs in the same category as Lord of the Rings or Princess Bride.

If you protest that those two were action/fantasy fictional movies, then yes, they are. So is The Ten Commandments. Yes, there was (and is) a nation of Egypt. And yes, there was a pharaoh named Ramses II, considered the greatest of the pharaohs, During his 66 year reign, he changed the face of the Egyptian empire with many great and heroic constructions.

Sixty six years is a helluva long time to be a ruler (in recent times, Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, with modern amenities and medicine, and a fraction of the burdens of rule). During those years, there were doubtless many plagues, just as there have been over similar periods of time throughout Egypt’s 5,000 plus years of history. He had indentured labor for many of his projects, and there were slaves, although the conditions of servitude were much closer to the Roman variation than the American one. Slaves had rights, and often were manumitted and/or granted full citizenship after a set period of servitude.

So the movie got that part right, and thus has a better track record than the bible does.

There’s nothing in the record to indicate that Egypt ever had Israelite slaves. Ever. Yes, Israelites did sometimes go to Egypt, usually because Egypt provided a secure escape from the many enemies the Israelites fought and usually lost to. The bible claims Egypt held 600,000 Israelite slaves who were men over the age of twenty. Which would mean at the very least 1.5 million Israelites were supposedly enslaved by Egypt, and all left at once under Moses, and then spent forty years wandering around the Sinai desert. That’s quite a mob to have wandering around in a land with no food and hardly any water. I doubt a single scorpion survived. Yes, scorpions are edible. And keep in mind that after 40 years, even the children would be getting a bit long in the tooth to endure blisteringly hot days and freezing nights without good shelter, some decidedly worn-out clothing, and a steady diet of bugs.

So: The Exodus? Never happened. Pure fantasy.

But it has the main story element of the so-called ten commandments, the ones that zealots like the governor of Louisiana want to inflict upon us, in a party led by a criminal who probably can’t tell you what three of the commandments are. Supposedly Moses went up a mountain to talk to a burning bush (God) and God gave him two stone tablets (various translations identify the stones – three, rather than the popular two – as either sapphire or lapis lazuli). He came back down, and found the Israelites partying and carrying on and supposedly made a golden calf (quite a trick in deep desert lacking gold or fuel for a really hot fire). He throws the tablets down, shattering them. Later, after he and God have knocked back a few and gotten reflective, God gives Moses a long list of commandments, including the first set. All have the same weight as the first bunch, and there are hundreds of them. It’s immediately followed by instructions that a big cairn of raw rock be made, and any priest who climbs it should be put to death because the crowd, looking up at him, might see his balls. The next chapter deals with the care and feeding of slaves, and when it is appropriate to execute an ox, and sometimes the owner of the ox. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, all that stuff. And it goes on and on and on, listing thousands of offenses and various remedies and penalties. (MAGAts should be aware of these two commandments: 21 Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

22 Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.) Amazing list of things you can be put to death for and/or an abomination in the eyes of God; heating your home on the sabbath, eating shellfish, wearing mixed blends, disobeying your parents. Some of the rules are pretty sensible, including the dietary restrictions, which for the most part are designed to head off food poisoning. Most are pretty ridiculous and draconian, and probably were back then, too. None, however, involved giant fingers reaching out of the clouds (apparently the Sinai desert is a very cloudy place) and writing in tablets of sapphire.

God and the Israelites were both pretty feckless about these holy edicts. The first edition got destroyed when Moses lost his shit. The second was put in the ark of the covenant, made famous in those Indiana Jones movies, but they, erm, lost the ark. Or it got stolen. Or maybe Pharaoh Ramses put a boot jack on it for repeated illegal parking. Some damn thing or another. Anyway, it’s gone the way of Ozymandias. Don’t look upon my works but despair anyway.

Now, the ten commandments that the zealots want to inflict upon us (but never themselves) are based on the story as outlined above. It carries the same moral and logical authority as how Superman or Spiderman got their powers, or how Baba Yar curdled the milk in all of Russia.

Ignoring the “thou shalt have no other gods before me” drivel, the remaining six are, at best, solid laws for any society and at worst good guideposts for decent behavior. But divine word of God they are not.

Leaving aside the promise of the founders that no one in America should ever be subjected to the whims of a religion underpinned by the power of the government, there is the fact that given the mythic nature of the ten commandments, schools may as well put up plaques detailing how Santa Claus delivers all those toys, or what orifice the Easter Bunny uses to make those chocolate eggs.

Religion and politics are toxic to one another, and should never be intertwined. Religion claims eternal truths (and has neither) and politics is always mutable and flexible, often to a fault, but as far removed from the fantasy of eternal truths as you can get.

The governor of Louisiana is a zealot and a fool. His disservice to the children of Louisiana should not be allowed to stand.

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10 (again), Naturally — Revisited 23 years later

Twenty three years ago, in the wake of the Combine shootings, we were dealing with the nonsense of hanging the Ten Commandments in classrooms.  It was a stupid and destructive idea then, and it is now.  I wrote a piece mocking the idea (the Columbine shooters see the poster, realize that killing people is wrong, and go away) and then, on reflection, wrote WHY the Ten Commandments are wildly inappropriate for an American classroom.  Here’s what I wrote, nearly a quarter century ago:

10 (again), Naturally
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson 2/12/00

Back in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, various right wing politicians and/or religious whacks were jumping up and down saying that if only the 10 Commandments were posted things like the shooting wouldn’t happen. The idea was absurd and idiotic, and I wrote a Usenet post (the previous article in this section) ridiculing it. I thought that after a few weeks, it would die a well-deserved death.

The religious right, however, thrives on absurd and idiotic Crusades, and a depressing number of politicians are perfectly willing to throw away the rights of Americans in order to pander to these noisy and overbearing cretins. Now we have various states seriously considering putting the 10 Commandments up in the schools, arguing that it will promote morality and good behavior. Presumably this would be the same sort of morality and good behavior that has been the hallmark of Christianity over 2,000 wars, when they alternated between murdering, torturing and discriminating against non-Christians and the other option, which was that of murdering, torturing and discriminating against the wrong type of Christians.

In the latest Crusade, the arguments are that the 10 Commandments apply to everyone, that they govern nothing more than everyday decent behavior, and that it won’t make anyone except evil doers uncomfortable, All three claims are false, and it’s easy to show why.

For starters, let’s do what right-wingers hate more than anything, and go right to the source. Well, one of the sources, anyway. The bible I have on hand is The New English Bible, the one used by Anglicans. Groups that consider that to be evil, profane and blasphemous are invited to put up their own editions up on
their own sites and explain why their versions won’t work, either.

1. You shall have no other god to set against me. (In other versions, this appears as “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”). So right away, kids who happen to be Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, Hindu or atheist (about 2.5 million children) are being told by school authorities that their  ome religious beliefs are wrong, wrong, wrong, and eeevil. Great way to start the school week, you gotta admit. For those fundamentalists out there wearing the blank looks, try turning it around. Imagine if your local school put up a big sign that read, “Want to be normal and decent, kid? Then stop believing all that cosmic sky muffin rubbish your church keeps stuffing down your throat!” I bet that would cause a bit of a stir at the next church meeting.

2. You shall not make a carved image for yourself, nor in the likeness of anything in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. (“Thou shalt make no graven image”) Most people have never thought this one through, but in order to be consistent, the schools will have to shut down art and photography classes. People in art and photography are making “graven images.” Most people think this simply means you shouldn’t make any idols, but that’s not what it says. It says, “in the likeness of anything.” The school will have to get rid of books with pictures in them, and in the case of many schools, the mascot. It’s hard to see how this will augment scholastic achievement, let alone morality, but hey! It’s the holy word, and all that. Better tell the more religious kids who are wearing crosses to get rid of them. “Graven images,” don’t you know? (Part 2b). You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous god. I punish the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But I keep faith with thousands, with those who love me and keep my commandments. Girls, tear down those Leonardo Di Caprio posters. Guy, that Michael Jordan poster is outta here. Not only do they mean you hate God, but your great great grandchilden will be punished for it.

3. You shall not make wrong use of the name of the Lord your God; the Lord will not leave unpunished the man who misuses his name. (“Thou shalt not take the name in vain” and other variants.) Indisputably,10 (again), Naturally this one has enriched our language. Phrases like “good grief” “blimey” “jumpin’ Jehosephat” and “zounds” all come from people making end-runs around this assurance that misusing the name will get you busted for an eternity. Of course, high schoolers will be particularly impressed with this admonition to curb their tongues, and will be extremely inventive in their compliance We might get a whole new host of interesting, albeit obscure phrases, which are bound to be more poetic than the succinct, but prosaic “you suck, dood!” Well, OK. Maybe we can keep that one, just because it encourages kids to develop their language skills. But how do you pronounce a song title like “G-d damn the Pusher Man,” anyway?

4. Remember to keep the sabbath day holy. There is, later on in the bible, a big long list of things that violate the Sabbath, such as heating your house, but in the interest of concision (after all, these were going on stone tablets, which that old fart Moses had to port down a mountain afterward) this  commandment settles for saying that it applies to you, your son or daughter, your slave or slave girl, and your cattle or the aliens within your gates. Disregarding for the moment the indecision over what the sabbath actually is
(generally it gets placed anywhere between sundown on Friday-which can get confusing at certain times of the year in northern Canada, Alaska, Russia or the Scandianian countries-and 12:01 am on Monday), eventually some smart ass kid is going to note that the NFL teams pay those players to punt one another on Sundays, and therefore are working on the sabbath, and they’ll have to ban weekend football. Whereupon American civilization will really collapse, except in Texas, where it already collapsed. We used to have what were called “blue laws” which forbade business of various kinds on the sabbath. We got rid of them because they were stupid and unfair. But now we want to teach the kids that we were wrong to get rid of them.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you (in forty years, give or take). That one, right there, should eliminate about half the conversations going on in any given high school in any given day. (Be honest-you used to whine about your parents when you were in high school, too. Admit it!) Of course, school authorities telling valley-girl wannabees that they should honor their mothers and fathers might just answer that age-old question: Just how far can teenagers roll those eyes, anyway? You’ll just have to trust me on this: no matter how many threats are made, and promises of a shortened life notwithstanding, this one just isn’t going to impress the kids very much.

6. You shall not commit murder. Whew! Well, this one seems safe enough, doesn’t it? “Don’t kill anyone”
In some cultures, that might seem like a rather low expectation to inflict on the kids, but this is Charlton
Heston’s NRA America. Of course, the definition of “murder” is subjective; in a well-known example,
Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses consider any taking of human life to be murder. Abortion opens the issue
of what a human life is. And in most bibles, it says, “thou shalt not kill” which some take to include
“justified” homicides such as occur in war, or American prisons. But for now, the 10c crowd are perfectly
willing to have the message of the day be, “Show you’re good Christians, kids. Don’t kill anyone today,
OK?”
7. You shall not commit adultery. Since few high-school students are married, this is expected to have little effect on dating patterns. As for the broader definition that adultery means “screwing around with anyone other than your wife,” kids for years have gotten around that by very narrowly defining sex. “Third base” also known as “The Stinky Pinkie” isn’t sex, and therefore not adultery. The only people who didn’t understand the distinctions Clinton made in regards to Lewinsky were the ones who didn’t get any in high school.

8. You shall not steal. This one is pretty hard to take any issue with. Clear, concise, unambiguous, and in mesh with nearly all religious and ethical philosophies. In fact, there’s only one real problem. America isn’t a religious and ethical philosophy. It’s a capitalist system. This commandment does not properly prepare our children to go out and thrive in our business community, does it?

9. You shall not give false evidence against your neighbor. This should eliminate the other half of the conversations in high school. My, but those kids are so quiet! Of course, kids whose parents are inveterate Clinton-haters and who consider him responsible for murders in Arkansas and Vince Foster and so on are going to be in a bit of a jam: How do they get their parents to listen to them about this one without violating commandment #5? This, at least, should get Rush Limbaugh knocked off the air. The 10 Commandments make the First Amendment moot, any way.

10, You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, his slave, his slave-girl, his ox, his ass, or anything that belongs to him. (Notice the air of authenticity gained from the British spellings, just like the ones they used in Sinai back then!) Madison Avenue and retailers discovered, to their delight, that no segment is more avidly or vapidly acquisitive than high school kids, or are as willing to spend more than they can afford on such. Thanks in large measure to the determined efforts of clothing and sports equipment manufacturers and their advertising flacks, high school culture is a roiling mass of envy, greed and acquisitiveness, steeped in oneupmanship and class distinctions. Given the amounts of money involved, it’s no wonder Wall Street Republicans are starting to back away more from the religious crowd. It’s a long-held American custom to drop piety like a hot potato when it becomes bad for business. Kids will also be unenthused when they discover that wanting new Nikes violates this commandment.
Another argument the Religious Right likes to use for plastering the 10 Commandments up before the numb faces of our poor kids is that American law depends from the commandments. This is purest codswallop. (“Codswallop” is another neat evasion of commandment #4). Let’s look over the 10, somewhat more briefly, and see what corollaries appear in American law.
1 though 4 are right out, dealing as they do with behavior toward a specific deity. American law doesn’t recognize any specific deity.
5- The sabbath. Courts have noted that schools and businesses have the right to close on any day they choose, but that others don’t have the right to make that choice for them. Which is why the NFL plays on Sunday, and why TV stations and supermarkets can stay open these days.
6- Honoring the old folks. A great idea, but not one easily enforced. The law can stop you from cheating, beating, or otherwise abusing your parents, but it can’t make you honor them. Given what utter turds some parents can be, there’s situations where maybe it doesn’t even qualify as a good idea.
7-Murder. American law recognizes the Biblical stance against murder. Of course, every other religion and philosophy in the world believes that murder is wrong, so this is hardly unique to Christianity, is it?
8-Stealing. Same as #7.
9-False witness. It’s illegal to give false testimony against another person in court, and libel/slander laws cover willful and malicious false representations of people. But technically, saying “All lawyers are thieves” is false witness, since there ARE honest lawyers who don’t steal. But it is something covered by the First Amendment, and to tell the truth, I would sooner live in a culture where casual but harmless calumnies are tolerated than one where you can be punished for running your mouth.
10-Coveting. Can you imagine a law in America demanding that people stop wanting more than they have? Can you, for even an instant? I can’t. Such a commandment isn’t just unenforceable, it’s flat out Unamerican.
So: out of 10 commandments, we have two that are specifically implemented into American law, and one that has partial secular parallels. Out of 10 inviolate rules, only 2 1⁄2 actually translate into law. So much for the 10 Commandments being the foundation of American law. If the 10 Commandments were a pack of ladyfingers, you would want your money back.

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Taxing Trump — Making America Tariff-ic Again

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 16th 2024

zeppscommentaries.online

Donald is bad enough when he isn’t sounding like Grandpa Simpson on meth. It’s deeply alarming when this 78 year old dimwit prattles on about batteries and sharks. He has somehow concluded that an electric powered boat is far more hazardous in an accident because of the batteries, and you would get electrocuted before the sharks get you. Never mind that all boats with engines have batteries anyway, or that the sharks would get electrocuted, too. Windmills murder birds and cause cancer, it seems, although Trump tower has killed its share of birds and listening to Trump might make you wish you had cancer.

It’s when he drifts from the evils of conservation to the virtues of economic policy where he gets truly terrifying. Its bad enough when he rails about the national debt (40% of which came from his tax policies) or the horrible cost of “illegal” immigrants (who actually ADD about $1.3 trillion a year to the US economy) but now he’s decided that he, and he alone, can fix the cost of paying for the United States to be a going concern.

His proposed solution to our fiscal woes? Eliminate all federal income taxes. You know: our national revenue. Libertarians have come up with variations on that over the years going on the lunatic notion that the best way to cut household expenses is by quitting your job. It’s a reasonable idea: in fairly short order, you’ll no longer have any household expenses. Or any household.

But even Donald understands that government has to pay for stuff. So he proposes to fund the government through tariffs.

Tariffs are basically a tax on imported goods. Donald likes to pretend that the tariffs are a tax on importers, and not the American people, and hopes that none of his brain-dead supporters will stop to consider that importers will raise their prices to compensate, and those increased prices WILL be assayed against the consumers in America. Donald has spoken of a 10% across the board tariff on all imported goods. The US imports about $4 trillion a year, so that would be $400 billion in tariff revenues.

For 2025, the White House projects that revenue from income taxes will be about $2.6 trillion. Payroll taxes are about $2.2 trillion, and corporate taxes would be about $467 billion. (Fifty years ago, corporate taxes were about 60% of federal revenues—and corporations did just fine!) Call it $5.267 trillion in revenues.

It’s not real likely that Donald will keep payroll taxes, since destroying Social Security and Medicare has long been a republican dream. And if you have a calculator capable of multiplying by zero, you can get a good estimate of the chances he’ll want to keep corporate taxes going.

Now, the astute observer may have noted that $5.267 trillion is a larger number than $400 billion. In fact, it’s about thirteen times bigger.

Which means cuts would have to be made. One mandatory payment is interest on the national debt, of which over 80% was created by Republican policies and misadventures, and half of THAT by Donald Trump alone. Those interest payments are about $967 billion a year.

Let’s see: $400 billion minus $967 billion leaves…hmmm.

OK, so we cut EVERYTHING, and we are still in the hole by $567 billion a year. Tch. No military, so social programs, sell the capitol building, get rid of all regulatory agencies, no federal economic development, none of these public schools nonsense. Churches can take all that over, right? There’s about 70 million people who get social security, and for a large majority of them, that’s all that separates them from homelessness and starvation. Churches are gonna be busy, busy, busy.

Some people might take a negative view of that, being people and all. Banks will have huge on-paper wealth from all the homes they’ll foreclose on by the millions until they find out the homes can’t be sold because everyone is broke. Then they all crash, including the ones Donald owes money to. He’ll like that.

Well, Donald does have a solution. Bigger tariffs on countries he doesn’t like, which is pretty much all of them except Russia. He has already suggested a 50% tariff on all cars from China. Given how much he loves countries south of here or in Africa, expect him to levy huge tariffs there.

But there’s a fly in the ointment. Other countries might take exception, and impose tariffs of their own. The technical term for this is “trade war” and it’s destroyed many economies.

The US exports about $3.3 trillion a year. Losing a chunk of that to an economy already reeling from an economic slow-down of over $10 trillion a year and tens of millions starving isn’t going to be very helpful. The good news is it can’t do that much more damage.

Ever seen the Mad Max movies? Consider them to be the blueprint for Donald’s Five Year Plan.

If Trump gets elected, buy all the salt, spices, bullets and cat food you can. You’re gonna need it.

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Guilty x 34 — It’s official—Trump is a felon

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 30th 2024

As soon as I heard that the jury in the Trump trial had reached a verdict, I glanced at the clock and realized that a) the jury had found the case to be a slam dunk and b) the use of the singular in the word “verdict” suggested strongly that the result was unanimous on all counts.
And in fact, that’s exactly how it turned out: guilty on all 34 counts.
They may be relatively low-level felonies, and on first offense jail time is rare. But Judge Merchan is going to be considering the demeanor and behavior of the multiple felon during the trial, the number of felonies committed, and whether he showed any remorse or contrition. Merchan is also going to reflect on the attacks on his family and court officials and gauge the viciousness of the convict, and he may even consider the sad spectacle of Republican congressionals lining up outside the court in a blatant effort to intimidate.
I don’t think judicial leniency is in the works.
Sentencing is several weeks away, and of course Trump is going to appeal. So we won’t be seeing him in an orange jumpsuit any time soon.
Trump’s sycophants are already churning out disinformation. I saw a claim that Trump had not been allowed to know what he was charged with until the trial is over. Obviously that would be a massive constitutional no-no, but I remember reading the charges, in detail, on the day Trump was arraigned many months ago. Perhaps Fox News forgot to mention it and so Trump didn’t know. He just showed up at court to cool off and catch forty winks, right?
One of the reporters covering the story noted that when the jury filed in to render its verdict, not one of them looked at Donald Trump. And I remembered the scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird” when Atticus tells Jeb that a jury that has found a defendant guilty they don’t meet his eye. Of course, that trial was a miscarriage of justice. This one wasn’t. The jurors can stand tall and look everyone in the eye.
I think this is a seminal moment for the country. Not only does it show that nobody is above the law, but it is a body blow to the fascist movement that has been backing Trump. They can claim the trial was rigged, and surely will, but the testimony and proceeding are all there in the public record. I carefully kept a copy of Judge Merchan’s jury instructions, which are an apotheosis of judicial fairness and acumen. In my estimation, Merchan is more of a judge than Roberts, Scalia, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch and Coney-Barrett, combined.
But there is this: Donald John Trump is a felon. He is a criminal. That is engraved in stone. And while many of his supporters won’t care about that, any more than brownshirts cared that Hitler was a jailbird convicted of insurrection. If anything, their support for Trump will get tighter, because trash always clumps under pressure.
But many of his followers, the ones who suffer from lack of information rather than lack of ethics or values, are inevitably going to hear of today’s verdict, and say, “Hold up. He’s a criminal?”
Trump’s odds of winning in November were already very slim. They are nonexistent now, and I’m quite sure the GOP is debating the destruction of an inevitable civil war amongst the right wing against the certainty of an electoral bloodbath if this felon is the candidate.
I’ll close with this: Truth Social learned a verdict had been reached, and as divorced from reality as the inmates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, quickly celebrated with this:
“LATER, LOSERS!”

 

 

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Going to the Dogs — The party of mutt sluts

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 5th 2024

The saga of
Kristi Noem and her dead puppy keeps staying in the news. It isn’t
because gleeful Democrats are hyping the story. It’s because Noem
herself won’t back down, and just keeps digging herself into an
ever-deeper hole. First she tried implying that she didn’t know
the story survived the first draft and shouldn’t have been in the
book. The classic Scooby-Doo “If it weren’t for you meddling
kids” defense. That blew up when it came out that she did the
audiobook herself—including the happy tale of the demise of
Cricket. The initial “farmers have to made hard choices” excuse
died stillborn when she wrote, “I really hated that dog.”

Now
she’s pointing to Biden’s German shepherd, Champion, who
reportedly bit a dozen or so Secret Service agents. She’s saying
that Biden should have shot the dog. She didn’t say if Biden
should have dispatched Champion live from the oval office, or in
front of a joint session of Congress (it really could have been an
excellent opportunity for Biden to turn to the Republican side and
say, “If the Supreme Courts says I have absolute immunity, you lot
are next.”). Maybe Biden could have discussed responsible pet
ownership while in the backdrop behind him, a couple of vengeful
secret service agents stuffed a yelping Champion into a running wood
chipper. It would have given Biden true Sarah Palin cred, you know?

But
Noem, Republican to her empty core, refuses to back down, still
hoping she can turn it into a campaign where she is the innocent
victim of “woke” libs. Maybe she could have took a flamethrower
to a couple of live kittens just to show she can’t be bullied by
lunatic leftist pansies and commies.

But
even Donald Trump, yes, Donald Fucking Trump, wondered aloud what was
wrong with her. It takes real talent to make him feign being
appalled. This is the guy who ripped off a children’s cancer
charity, right? His standards are...flexible.

To
be sure, his reaction is performance art. He’s probably watching
to see if she survives the political storm, and even though she
didn’t get invited to Donald’s meat parade of Veep picks for
billionaires, she’s probably still on his list. He doesn’t care
how vile she is. In fact, he prefers vile. He just wants to know
how mindlessly loyal she would be. His last Veep toad was such a
disappointment, you know.

His
fans, while shrinking, are even more vehement. They adore it when he
behaves like a pig. That’ll show those libs! They push for worse
and worse behavior from GOP candidates, since viciousness, cruelty,
rudeness and pure arrogant stupidity are seen as virtues among those
deplorables. After all, those are what Trump expects from his
closest minions. Michael Cohen wasn’t his main lawyer for twenty
years because Cohen was a nice guy. He was as dirty and nasty as any
mafia torpedo. His autobiography could have just as easily been
titled “...But Take the Cannoli.”

Meanwhile,
Republicans keep vilifying refugees, immigrants, Muslims,
African-Americans, and now students. Never mind that America’s
Nazi population have all gravitated to the GOP; Republicans are
attacking all critics of Netanyahu as being “anti-Semitic” even
though most of them value Israel for the demented Bible-based
Revelation belief that the state of Israel must exist in order for
the Rapture to occur. Jews are just God bait in their eyes.
Netanyahu isn’t their friend, but he is chum. Trump praises people
who are Nazis as “very fine people” and attacks critics of Israel
and in his base, at least, gets away with it.

AIPAC
support Trump, of course.

What
Trump supporters don't understand is that supporting him doesn't
automatically make them safe in his New World Order. History suggests
the opposite, in fact. Strongman leaders know their truest believers
are gullible, feckless, erratic, easy to manipulate, and unreliable.
After all, they already betrayed their country once. So unless Trump
supporters can find a way fast to make themselves useful to the new
Fuhrer, he's just going to throw them away like used condoms. Read
recent history: the early years of Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. They
quickly filled the camps with their truest believers, and executed
many more. Look up “Night of the Long Knives.”

The
corporate execs who back Trump doubtlessly think they can control him
once he takes office. But Trump sees them as a useful prop. He
isn’t going to reciprocate their loyalty, and once his mass
deportations and tariffs create a Great Depression, he’ll blame
them bitterly for the chaos and deprivation his policies have caused.
If the Supreme Court has anointed him King at that point, expect him
to start hanging CEOs publicly.

Oh,
yes, and Republican office-holders can feel free to resume shooting
puppies in this Brave New World. It’s not like they’ll be good
for anything else under Glorious Leader. They will be justice of
Champions. And not playing proper Cricket to do so.

FOOTNOTE:
After I wrote this but prior to publishing it, I came across this,
from Sophia Cai, national politics reporter for Axios:

"Trump
says he loves Kristi Noem despite puppy killing controversy, per
Mar-a-Lago audio obtained by Axios," she reported Sunday.

“In the audio, Trump at a private luncheon commented on each of the following lawmakers, giving some insight into his thinking,” according to her published report.

The article reveals that Trump’s response to Noem was that the GOP governor is, “Somebody that I love. She’s been with me, a supporter of mine and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.”

See? Told you his outrage was fake.

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The Lichtman Factors — The winds favor Biden, but it’s a long way to shore

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 30th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There is a list of election factors, compiled by American University’s Distinguished Professor of History Allan Lichtman clear back in 1984, that he used to forecast the results of presidential elections.

He predicts the results of the popular vote, and thus has accurately forecast all ten of the last elections. In 2000 Bush wound up President through a corrupt decision by the Supreme Court, and in 2016 the Electoral College robbed both Lichtman and the American people.

I’m going to go down Lichtman’s list now (the factors are pretty self-explanatory) and give an overview of where we stand in relation to each factor. Since the election is a good six months away, I plan to revisit the list in October when most of the various bugger factors have sorted themselves out. For example, while Biden will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee, I think the odds are less than even that Trump will be the Republican nominee. It’s too early to tell how well the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues will do at corrupting and possibly ending democracy. (They are underwriting a group calling itself “We The People” which opposes Democracy. Think about that for a moment). And of course, a lot of unexpected but far-from-unlikely events could take place between now an then: a war, a economic crash, one or both candidates dies, etc.

Forecasting an election now is every bit as accurate as forecasting the weather for six months from now. In other words, utterly useless. But using Lichtman’s list, we can get a sense of the current trend, and that trend favors Biden. He is favored by keys 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 13 right now. If he enjoys that same trend six months from now, I would say he has the election all but wrapped up.

So, let’s look over that list:

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.

Obviously, the Dems lost ground in the last midterm and the GOP took the House. That’s a common thing in American politics, but this year the GOP are so inept and in such disarray that it’s possible that they could lose control of the House before the election. In some ways, they already have. The only reason Mike Johnson is still Speaker (or that we even HAVE a Speaker) is because the Dems are propping him up to avoid chaos. Which means the Dems expect support for some of Biden’s policies over the next few months.

2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.

Obviously this is the case for Biden. And if you want to argue that Trump is ALSO an incumbent, albeit one term removed, keep in mind that while the last of his in-party opposition has formally left the race, the “anyone-but-Trump” Republican vote is surprisingly strong, ranging from 25% to 33%.

3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

Obviously.

4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

“No Labels” is dead in the water, and RFK’s quixotic campaign is in real trouble now that Republicans realize that his reactionary and conspiracy-laden campaign is going to impact Trump’s base far more than it would Biden’s. One major bugger factor here is that if Trump is in prison or clearly mentally incapable, a conservative consensus for a third-party GOP alternative might emerge. Such would be a mainstream Republican such as Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney. No guesses at this time how such a shit show might play out.

5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

There are a few clouds on the horizon (last month’s GDP slow-down) but that’s always the case. This strongly favors Biden.

6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

If the Republicans keep running on the “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” chestnut, Biden should end up with 400 electoral votes. But he needs to beware the power of right wing propaganda.

7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

Strongly in Biden’s favor, and he has a slew of new policy changes coming over the next few weeks. And with Mike Johnson pinned, he may be able to get some of them through the House.

8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

This one could make or break Biden. Campuses are erupting over the slaughter in Gaza, and right wingers are anxious to exploit the unrest and create a “generation gap.” It could, in many ways, be a replay of 1968. Chances are Biden knows the costs of supporting Netanyahu, just as Lyndon Johnson knew continuing to escalate in Vietnam would cost him the presidency. Biden supporters, upset over the war, won’t vote for Trump. But they might not vote at all, which is just as bad. Biden has to navigate the choppy waters of defying Netanyahu without appearing to abandon Israel. Meanwhile, Trump is actively trying to foment social unrest and failing miserably.

9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

Gosh, where to begin? Why, that horrible Mister Biden didn’t even shoot his dog! Meanwhile, the Republicans may have a felon candidate running from a jail cell.

10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

Of course the known bugger factor here is Gaza. The pretend ‘border crisis’ will be flogged by every fascist in the GOP, but Biden just needs to remind voters, over and over, that the GOP themselves sabotaged their own solution to the border problems.

11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

Critical for Biden at this time. He must solve the Netanyahu/Gaza mess.

12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

Biden has both, but is leaning into the strong headwinds of fascist propaganda. He simply doesn’t get the credit he has earned.

13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

OK, give me a minute to stop laughing. There are many MAGAts who still believe Trump is Jesus, Jefferson and Reagan all rolled up into one, and really does shoot 18-under-par. But strongman popularity is pretty brittle, and Trump’s bubble is in the process of popping.

So there you have it. Right now, the election is Biden’s to lose.

But it’s still an eternity off. We’ll revisit this in October.

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