Month: September 2022

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MYOB — Republicans have curious way of promoting freedom of information

MYOB

Republicans have curious way of promoting freedom of information

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 23rd, 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Watching Donald tie himself in knots over the classified materials found at Mar-A-Lardo is funnier than hell if you overlook the elements of criminality, national betrayal and possible treason. Donald’s latest approach is that he declassified documents using the power of his mind. If Uri Geller could bend keys with his mind as easily as Donald bends the truth with his, um, mind, Uri would be a billionaire by now. It’s fascinating watching Donald and his little flock of D-list lawyers claim that the documents were declassified and thus Donald’s property but refusing to make the same claim in front of Judge Dearie, Trump’s choice to be “Special Master” that the idiot Aileen Cannon thought could protect Donald. Dearie already let it be known that if the documents weren’t classified, he was wasting his time, and if they were, Donald had already lost.

Donald also claims that it’s really nobody’s business why he took the documents or what they were. If they are unclassified he can say they’re none of our business, and if they’re classified he can’t discuss them with us because they’re classified. Paging Doc Daneeka!

With a massive fraud case brought by the state of New York looming and likely to utterly destroy the Trump financial empire, you might think that Donald and his sons would try to come up with something better than MYOB in their under-oath dealings with the state DA’s office. But no; they pled the fifth, Donald and Junior over 900 times between them. Keep in mind that this is a CIVIL suit, not a criminal one. (Although that’s likely pending). In a civil suit, unlike in a criminal trial, pleading the Fifth is considered evidentiary, in other words, something the jury can consider as an effort to hide culpability. They can go, “Aha, this bozo is hiding something!”

I’ll note that in Congressional investigations, Hillary Clinton didn’t plead the fifth once. All of those investigations, including the nine hours of testimony the Republican House put her through.

Needless to say, the large majority of Americans see this for the mendacious nonsense it is. You would think that other Republicans would look at this and back away. But no.

Hershel Walker, who bragged of his charitable giving, when faced with the utter lack of evidence that he did anything of the sort, took the Donald defense. It was nobody’s business, he declared, who he gave the money to or what it was for. Fortunately for Hershel, he’s just trying to backtrack on some campaign bullshit. Donald tried that defense at trial, and it cost him millions of dollars and he’s banned from charitable associations in New York. Seems he was stealing donations from kids with cancer. Whatta sweet guy!

One goof running for Congress in Ohio, a J.R. Majewski, had been boasting of flying many missions into Afghanistan, which would be commendable, except the AP looked into the claims and could find nothing in his military record to show such activities from Majewski, who apparently actually worked at a supply depot in Qatar, far from Afghanistan. Majewski, not content with 48 hours of ‘stolen valour’ stories in the media, came out and claimed his missions were classified and that’s why they aren’t on his record. Hmm. Well, doesn’t that mean he broke the law by discussing those missions in the first place? Or is he lying again?

I know, I know. It’s none of my business.

Republicans as a whole have decided that they are not going to participate in debates over the next five weeks before the election. Bad enough that moderators ask questions they don’t want to answer like “Who is the President of the United States?” or “Shouldn’t billionaires contribute more of what America gave them back?” or “Did the Moon landings really happen?” But their opponents might point to erroneous statements, false claims, investigations for fraud and criminal activity, and past criminal proceedings.

Why, they done rehabilitated themselves. Ain’t nobody’s business if they are criminals or con artists or raving far-right loons. They don’t have to explain themselves to a bunch of randos known as “the voters”!

Even Newt Gingrich, father of the modern puddle of vomit that is today’s GOP, is snarling that anyone who asks why the January 6th Committee wants to talk to him about his role in the coup “has a learning disability.” People with such disabilities shouldn’t be rude to their betters by asking awkward questions, right? Especially those reporters.

The House Republicans blocked a bill that would have revealed the sources of dark money flooding campaigns.

It’s nobody’s concern who’s buying up your country.

Mind Your Own Business.

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Power Around the Dragon — Hollywood brings them out, doesn’t it?

Power Around the Dragon

Hollywood brings them out, doesn’t it?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 18th, 2022

zeppscommentaries.online

I could be writing about Trump’s possible (likely) treason, and the increasingly vicious tactics of his brownshirt followers. I could discuss Ukraine’s resurgence against the Russians. That would cheer most folk up. I could talk about the looming catastrophe in the UK, where they named as prime minister someone who physically and ideologically looks like the discards from Margaret Thatcher’s embalming. Hell, I could even talk about how the Dodgers might win 113 games this year, but how they had an unfair advantage because they play in the same division as the San Francisco Giants.

Instead, I’m going to talk about two sort-of competing television extravaganzas, and the flat-out weird response some of the viewers have had.

They’re both prequels, one to Game of Thrones (GoT) and the other to the Lord of the Rings (LotR). Both have massive budgets and a plethora of special effects. HBO’s House of the Dragon (HotD) features everyone’s favorite family of firebugs, the Targaryens. It stars Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, and Rhys Ifans. Amazon has Rings of Power (RoP), with a mostly British cast, and the story takes place over thousands of years long before LotR. For the TV series, thousands of years is compressed to several dozen years, meaning a few corners got cut.

Four episodes in, I think RoP is the better of the two, but that’s not saying much. Remember how GoT sagged and stumbled in the final two seasons? HotD seems to be following that sad legacy, only without the memorable characters still alive in the final years of GoT. So far, none of the characters (except Matt Smith, who should have stayed a Doctor) are particularly memorable, and even Smith sees the wheels come off his role in a painfully awkward and utterly unnecessary sex scene with the princess, his teenage cousin (Ew…) For some reason, this grim encounter makes the now-retired-virgin princess decide to rape the captain of the guard. I don’t see things looking up from there. The dialogue is strained and wooden, to the point where it reminded me less of GoT and more of Star Wars’ second trilogy. Honestly, they could add Jar-Jar Binks and it would be an improvement. RoP has better acting and dialogue, but feels horribly crowded, as if they were trying to compress the entire Harry Potter series into one 24 page comic book.

So as you might imagine, I’m not writing in the role of a fan-boy outraged by attacks on my precious.

While I enjoy the spectacle of the series, which is where most of the budget went instead of good writers, the spectacle of the fen is even wilder, but lower budget and much less enjoyable.

Fans are howling in outrage because of the shows’ casting choices. Some of the actors aren’t white, or of pure European culture, or woke. This includes Elves, Trolls, Dwarves, Harfoots (Harfeet?) who were the pre-production run of Hobbits before they found New Zealand and settled down, along with Lannisters, Targaryens, Crab people, and the Snakes.

I can almost see the objection when it comes to the Targaryens, who all sport Johnny and Edger Winters’ style platinum-blonde hair. Mind you, none of the actors have that hair color in real life; they all either dye or sport wigs. Yes, even Daenerys. That doesn’t bother the dumb mouth breathers; they don’t care about the hair color. It’s the color of the skin that has them biting rocks and screaming incoherently whilst flinging their shit through the bars.

Anyone who thinks members of a royal family are all the same color don’t know much about history, European history in particular. The only reason the royal families have full sets of DNA at all is because politics required outmarriages to foreign potentates, including North Africa, Egypt, Turkey, and other locales. At least one of Henry VIII’s wives had skin darker than that of Mohammad Ali. The powerful families in George RR Martin’s universe aren’t any better behaved than royals in real life, and you can bet there’s all sorts of dotted lines and the occasional virgin birth cluttering up the royal genealogy. And swans. Lots of swans. So it’s utterly unremarkable that there should be a certain amount of variety.

As for elves, hobbits, faeries, etc: Listen, you shambling idiots. They are IMAGINARY. They don’t really exist. They have physical characteristics, of course. Dwarves are short and built like brick shithouses. Elves have those ear thingees. Harfeet have big hairy feet. Faeries have wings. Cardassians have vulvae in the middle of their foreheads. But rarely, if ever, is skin color or accent mentioned. Which means the show runners have free latitude to pick the best actor, as opposed to the best white actor.

Racism is silly on the face of it, since there really is no such thing as human races. Tolkien lived in an era when it was believed races had certain defining characteristics (blacks were of inferior intelligence, Japanese industrious, whites dumb bastards who vote for people like Trump) and it may or may not have informed the characteristics of the races with which he populated Middle Earth. But those races weren’t human—they were all imaginary. Even more imaginary than the traits bigots of the time attributed to others. Japan has hundreds of fables about the lazy farmer, or an indolent son, or a layabout wife, to demolish the notion that all Japanese were hard-working and driven. Sometimes the lazy character was the hero in the story!

The other big objection is that Tolkien based Middle Earth on “European culture.” It’s even been suggested that Mordor was modeled on Nazi Germany.

OK, good point.

European culture is real, you know. Anyone who has traveled to Europe knows that the Norwegians and the Italians are identical. Same appearance, same language, same culture, same religion. You can’t tell one from the other. Likewise the Flemish and the Turks. Identical, right down to the shoelaces.

Obviously, European culture is as real as dwarves, orcs, dragons or intelligence in Trump world.

So my message to the crowd screaming about how “woke” the shows are is this: Grow up, you idiots. It’s fantasy, just as your views on race and culture are fantasy, only much less obnoxious and self-serving. Find something better to worry about, such as why nobody wants to sleep with you.

 

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EIIR — Nobility that didn’t need a crown

EIIR

Nobility that didn’t need a crown

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 8th, 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

It’s going to be strange. Elizabeth was monarch since before I was born. As a kid, she seemed to be everywhere: her image peered over every classroom. Her face was on every coin and bill. Her insignia initials, EIIR, Elizabeth 2 Regina were on the stamps (as was she) and the cap of my dad’s naval uniform.

She oversaw the most tumultuous period of all of Britain’s history. Since 1066, England has seen periods of more violence, of more tragedy (the 17th century alone) but never a 70 year period of more change. During that convulsive and often strange and challenging time, she managed to be the soul of an entire nation. It was a fantastically difficult role, and she was often beset on all sides, but right to her final day, she carried out her duties and was, in the strongest sense of the word, a true trouper.

She grew up not expecting to be Queen. She was the eldest daughter of the second son of George V, and seemed to be just another spear-carrier royal, close enough to the throne that she would appear at various official functions such as royal weddings or Epsom Downs, but far enough out of the limelight that she could, if she wished, shop for herself at her local grocers’.

That changed in 1936, when she was 9. Her grandfather died, and her uncle Albert became King Edward VIII. But Edward wanted to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, and the nation found it unacceptable that the monarch and head of the state church would marry a twice-divorced Yank. While not widely known at the time, England dodged a bullet: Uncle Albert was a big admirer of Adolf Hitler and when he married Simpson in 1937, they took their honeymoon in Nazi Germany.

His brother, now George VI proved to be a very different sort of royal. Far from being a Nazi sympathizer, he was second only to Winston Churchill in stiffening British resolve against the mad dictator.

At the age of ten, Elizabeth was suddenly the heir to the throne. It wasn’t supposed to happen, and what’s more, it happened during one of the darkest moments in British history, an existential threat to end the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was doubtlessly very high on Hitler’s list of planned executions once he held London.

At the age of 14, Princess Elizabeth addressed the nation for the first time over the BBC. It became clear instantly that she had inherited her father’s courage and resolve, and her piping but lucid teenage voice galvanized the nation. It was 1940, and many believed England was doomed.

During the war she worked full-time as a mechanic in the Royal Army motor pool. This was an era before the notion of ‘photo ops’; she really did work as a mechanic, and the overalls and oil-and-grease stains were real, and legitimately earned. She exemplified the spirit of “we’re all in this together” that raised British spirits.

Hitler was defeated, and the greatest period of change in British history began. The once mighty British Empire was now the British Commonwealth, and major possessions—America, Canada, Australia, and most recently India—had declared independence. It was a shell of its former self, and in the first dozen years of Elizabeth’s reign, nearly all of the remaining colonies left. The map of the world, once dominated by the characteristic pink tones of the Empire, was changed beyond recognition.

My parents bought a television set—nearly a month’s salary—just so they could watch Elizabeth’s coronation two years after it happened, on an 11 inch black and white screen. It was one of the very first things broadcast in Canada, and while I don’t remember that, I remember the TV set.

Since she ascended, England saw the discovery of DNA, the four minute mile fell, the ITV was formed, the first nuclear power plant was built, the death penalty was abolished, homosexuality was decriminalized, abortion was legalized, and the Concorde became the first supersonic commercial jet. That was just in the first 15 years of her reign. In 1971 the very money changed, going from pounds, shillings and pence to the 100 pence to the pound we have today. The continuity, of course, was her visage on the reverse of every coin struck.

Elizabeth was the face of Britain during the Troubles, andwhen the UK joined the Common Market (later the European Union). National Health was thoroughly ingrained in the culture, and England led in such developments as in vitro fertilization. Charles married Diana, one of the most jubilant and popular moments in all of England’s history. The Chunnel was an item of trust, removing the barrier the Channel always posed to thwart European depredations. Dolly was born and Diana died. The millennium happened.

In 2002 Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret, died as did her mother, the much-beloved “Queen Mum”. Scotland decided to Remain, but the UK voted to Leave, the disastrous ‘Brexit’ vote.

Then came the pandemic, and the near-total collapse of the British economy.

Throughout it all, she was the one constant. Her image on the money was updated every 12 years or so to allow for the passage of the years, but she was always there, and her voice was a part of every British Christmas.

To give you some idea of the length, if not the breadth of her reign, her first Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill, was born in 1874. Her nineteenth and final PM was Liz Truss, born in 1975.

She was one of the few monarchs in history to voluntarily relinquish some of the royal powers, allowing England to escape some of the shackles of the dead past.

She was subjected to attacks on all sides, particular the trashy tabloid press. It would have destroyed a weaker person.

I’m a republican, ideologically opposed to monarchies and monarchs. But I always had love and respect for her, not because of the jewelry, but because of who she was.

And I admit, even as I am very dubious about King Charles III, I’ll be intensely curious to see what next year’s coins look like in Canada and the UK. I’ve never seen that face change before.

She was far better than the system that produced her.

To quote what she told the world in 1940, 82 years ago:

Before I finish I can truthfully say to you all that we children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage. We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war.

We know, everyone of us, that in the end all will be well; for God will care for us and give us victory and peace. And when peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.

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Let’s Go, Brandon! — Biden takes MAGA behind the woodshed

September 4th, 2022

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The whole world knows that Biden called out the MAGAts—the Trump supporters who cling stubbornly to the lie that the election was stolen and Trump is the legitimate president. That all elections are rigged except of course for the ones Republicans win. (Ok, there was one case where a Republican won and charges of rigged election were brought up—by another Republican in the race who lost). He called out the violent clowns who terrorize poll workers and school boards, and who loudly proclaim that they and only they have rights, and liberals are just pedophile snowflakes.

MAGAts are disgusting anti-American people, and Biden was right to call them out.

While the reaction in the vast right wing media circus was predictable (scalded cats, meet outraged nuns who just found a porn magazine) it was somewhat muted and not as convincing as it might otherwise have been. After all, these are the people who thundered endlessly for years over such silly made-up crap such as Whitewater, the Arkansas assassinations, Vince Foster, tan suits, Grey Poupon mustard, Benghazi, “her emails” and, horror of horrors, Sandy Duncan taking home A classified file. They turned the once-reputable Kenneth Starr into a porn writer in an effort to get Bill Clinton on Monica. And of course they embraced all the fruitloop theories propounded by Alex Jones and the trash far right, about how liberals are “groomers” and want to ban Christianity and on and on and on.

Given how readily they slip into moral outrage on a moment’s notice, you might think the explosion that greeted Biden’s speech would have shook the world.

Granted, it is a holiday weekend, and that may have muted them a bit. It may be that they’ll wait until the survivors return from the last holiday of the summer before demanding Biden’s impeachment and/or execution, and claim that the 4% of the country that support him are commies and/or pedophiles (honestly, can any of these morons even SPELL “pedophile”? Or know what it is? OK, I spell it paedophile, but I was raised in England and Canada, and there is no cure.)

Or could it be that more and more Republicans are realizing that Donald Trump is a really stupid bet for 2024, or the future of the party?

Biden certainly knows that. He very carefully pointed out that most Republicans no longer support MAGA if they ever did, and that is a number that is dwindling rapidly. Even the true believers who are convinced the impeachments were hoaxes and that January 6th was a false-flag operation staged by AntiFa (and you have to be pretty stupid and/or mental to believe those things to begin with) are beginning to realize that the secret files that the FBI seized at Mar-A-Lago are clear and compelling evidence that major felonies were committed by Trump, up to and including treason. Trump himself has been increasingly shrill and desperate, his wild and often contradictory reactions less and less plausible, and the efforts of more and more Republicans to distance themselves from this vast, mushrooming nuclear scandal ever more apparent.

Even Doctor Oz, who is running one of the most tone-deaf campaigns in the country, has shown enough sense to try to back away from Trump, which he did at that pathetic rally in Philadelphia last night.

One of the most striking things about that rally came in the wee hours, when Trump took to his failing “Truth Social” to declare, “Thank you to everyone who attended the Rally last night. It was a two-hour speech, and the only disappointment was that they were screaming, ‘Please, please, go longer.’ They love our Country, and I love them!” It was such a pitch-perfect evocation of Groucho Marx’ Dictator that I was prompted to write, “Remember, Donald Trump shoots a perfect 18 on every round of golf, impregnates a thousand virgins a night, and won the War of 1812.” The leader is infallible, medals for everyone, yes.

Despite the billions spent by the autocratic aristocracy (one clown gave $1.6 billion to the Federalist Society to aid their never-ending search for corporate buffoons and religious nuts to put on the courts) and the millions of man-hours in the echoverse of right wing media, Trump’s support is diminishing, and the GOP is dwindling with him. I won’t be surprised along about late October to see more Republicans openly breaking ranks with Trump and essentially declaring themselves to be “Biden Republicans”—not vicious nuts who want to destroy democracy. Oh, they won’t call themselves that; that would be a death sentence. But they would be using that very demarcation to persuade voters that they are sane, respect rights, and don’t want to destroy the United States. It may even help, a bit.

Trump will still be twisting in the wind at that point. The Department of Justice won’t indict him on the grounds that it’s too close to an election that Trump isn’t even running for office in. It’s moments like these when I wonder if the colonists are really ready for self-rule, but then I look at the messy national suicide that is Britain, and I just hush mah mouf. I don’t think England is ready for self-rule, either. Someone call the Saxon suicide watch line.

Trump will continue to lose ground both legally and politically, and between him and the Dobbs decision, which unleashed the theocratic lunatics on America, the Democrats should do quite well in the November elections.

Trump, of course, will blame it on lack of resolve by his followers. That’s what failed megalomaniacs always do.

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