Tag: Trump

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Breaking Logjams — A week of pleasant surprises

 

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
October 2nd, 2023
www.zeppscommentaries.online

A few weeks back, I posited that if just six Republicans could stand on principle and break with the party, the looming budget crisis could be averted. Given the grim lockstep cowardice the GOP had shown up until then, I figured six would be the best I could hope for, and that retribution from the rest would be so severe their own option would be to leave the party and become independents.
I’m happy to say I was wrong.
Six Republicans didn’t break ranks: a hundred and twenty six did. It may be quite a while before we learn the exact behind-the-scenes machinations that led to this (especially since the MAGAt crowd are still a clear and present danger to all who oppose them and want specific targets to punish) but a majority of House Republicans realized there is safety in numbers, and absolutely flattened the leverage the “Freedom Caucus” was holding over them, the House, and the country.
How pervasive was the defection? I was amazed to learn that my own congressman, a lunar-landing-denying dingbat from the heart of our infamous demented neighbor, Shasta County, was one of the defectors. That was not on my dance card. That wouldn’t have been on a Bernie Sanders masturbatory fantasy!
For those just getting back from a weekend recreation and are just now catching up on the news, the continuing resolution is for 45 days (until November 15th, meaning before the Thanksgiving break and with the pressure of the holiday season looming). It is, however, a “clean” resolution. No spending cuts, in particular none of the draconian cuts to child care, law enforcement, and the IRS that the demented Trumpenfascists of the MAGA crowd wanted. Funding for Ukraine was excluded, but both Houses vow to take it up separately, and since the measure will enjoy majority support in both Houses and in both parties, I doubt Zelenskii is losing any sleep over that.
With 126 defectors, even Kevin McCarthy felt brave. He was one of the defectors. I wonder if he had to resist the impulse to blow a raspberry at Matt Gaetz as he voted. Given the Republican level of decorum in the House, it wouldn’t have been out of place.
Gaetz is swearing he will move to kick McCarthy out of the Speakership, even though anyone with the simple ability to count to 218 realizes that putting someone he likes in as Speaker is mathematically impossible. In fact, he may not even be able to kick McCarthy out: there are rumors flying that he and the Democratic Party members are confabulating, discussing scenarios where a large chunk of Democrats may actually vote to defeat the motion to vacate and let McCarthy keep his job. Part of that, of course, will mean taking a more centrist position, but between the 126 Republicans who have clearly signaled that they have had enough of the vicious and destructive MAGAts, and a number of Democrats would would sooner have to deal with a sane opposition party, McCarthy might get to keep his job.
One especially tasty rumor making the rounds is that the quid pro quo for Democratic support might include votes to expel some or even all of the Freedom Caucus. This Trump Rump group includes some of the most unsavory and unpatriotic members of Congress, including Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, and Paul Gosar. The best of the 45 or so members are merely repulsive. The worst are traitors. About a dozen of them asked for pardons from then-President Trump in the wake of the January 6th insurrection, a prima facie admission of guilt and more than adequate grounds for expulsion.
Expelling just a few of these people would, in the short term, break the back of the GOP, but by destroying the power of the MAGA caucus, also put them on the road to recovery. And yes, that’s a good thing: any democracy needs at least two opposing parties that are willing to negotiate with one another. It’s a fundamental element the fascists in the MAGA crowd overlooked in their lust for power.
If the Dems want to, they can get GOP support and start moving the budget negotiations forward. Or they can let them shoot themselves in the foot one more time before the next elections, and ride a populist wave to majorities in both Houses and the White House. The GOP have never won one of these extortionist showdowns, and in the last two, got clobbered. Seems the senile old man in the basement somehow outwits the entire Trump brain trust, every time.
This vote also shows that Trump’s power is rapidly crumbling. Last weeks’ court finding of massive fraud and the resultant suspension of his business license in New York state did extreme damage to his finances, and the expected avalanche of plea bargains in Georgia and Washington have begun. Trump is going down, and there’s nobody in the party to take his place. DeSantis? Gaetz? Taylor-Greene? Don’t make me laugh.
It’s a ray of hope. America may escape the worst crisis it has faced since the Civil War.
In other news, the death of California’s celebrated Senator, Dianne Feinstein (RIP, Di), put Governor Newsom in a difficult position. He had three estimable candidates to choose from, all of whom were planning to run for Senate next year. Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff, and Katie Porter. Further, he had vowed to put a black woman in the Senate In The Event Of. That would have been Lee, my own preference.
But Newsom surprised pretty near everyone and chose a different black woman, EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler. Butler, a fundraising giant in the Democratic party and a labor leader, is a moderately-left Democrat who falls about half-way between Feinstein and Lee politically. She’s also LGBTQ, which Newsom probably considered as his repudiation of the hate-filled far right of the GOP.
Butler was named with no preconditions, which means she is free to run as the incumbent next year, or not. She’s a close ally of Kamala Harris, and is likely to boost Harris’ chances going forward.
The Senate remains fairly stable. It passed the CR by a 91-8 vote the other day, showing solidarity against the fascist right. This is a good thing.
As for the next few weeks in the House, well, pass the popcorn. It probably won’t be constructive, or polite, but it will be massively entertaining.

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The Mugshot — Churchill, by Kubrick

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 24th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The Trump mugshot was a shot seen ’round the world. Few who have seen it have been able to avoid interpreting the lowered-head scowl of Trump, seen variously as being in a fit of psychotic rage, scared to death, or defiant.

A meme all over social media mentions “the Kubrick glare,” or “the Kubrick stare.” It’s a favorite way the famed director Stanley Kubrick had of portraying one of his lead actors in a state of decompensation and sheer malice, described as “a heavy-browed look of insanity”. Think of Jack in The Shining. Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. For the first two actors mentioned (Jack Nicholson and Malcolm McDowell) they became career-defining images, and doubtlessly those demented glares contributed to the success of their films.

It probably wasn’t the look Trump was aiming for. His followers insist the look is one of defiance, and I suspect that was what he had in mind. And he based that on another iconic and world-famous photograph of a politician, the “Thundering Lion” image of Sir Winston S. Churchill.

The picture shows a seated Churchill glowering at the camera, and many people have inferred, from the time the photograph was taken (December 30th, 1941) that Churchill was trying to project courage and defiance.

Indeed, Churchill wanted to project that. While Britain had successfully fended off the planned German invasion (The Battle of Britain, aka “The Blitz”) some six months earlier, Churchill knew that he had to get the Americans to join in because otherwise the respite was only temporary. So he went to his ally, Canada, (at that point already actively fighting alongside Britain for two years) to harden resolve in the Canadian parliament, and by extension, persuade a reluctant US Congress.

Churchill did give a characteristically marvelous speech to the House of Commons, a speech famed in itself for his disparaging comments about the Petain regime in semi-occupied France. (“When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, ‘In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.’ Some chicken! Some neck!”) But it is that image that is instantly recognized over 80 years later. (The signed original hung in Ottawa’s famed Château Laurier until December of 2020, when someone stole it.)

But defiance wasn’t what Churchill was trying to project when Yousuf Karsch snapped his shutter. It was more along the line of baffled, incredulous outrage over a sudden act of temerity against the Prime Minister.

Churchill had one of his stogies going, and Karsch didn’t want the smoke obscuring the image. He asked Churchill if he would set the cigar aside. Churchill refused. So just before the camera went off, Karsch darted in and snatched the cigar right out from Churchill’s mouth! What the camera caught was a look of amazed shock on Churchill’s face.

Yes, cameras lie. The image became synonymous with British resolve and cemented Churchill’s image as a heroic figure facing down the Nazi foe. You can recreate the photo just by walking up to any random baby and snatching the num-num from its mouth. Although if mum is nearby, you risk, in the words of some unfortunate French general, getting your “neck wrung like a chicken.”

Churchill himself admiringly remarked Karsch could “even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed,” which led, somewhat inexplicably, to the title of the photo.

I think Trump was trying to recreate the image of defiance that Thundering Lion evokes. But like most things Trump, he got it ass backwards. Churchill wasn’t feeling resolute at that instant; he was about to have a tantrum.

Trump wanted to project resolve and defiance. Instead, he looks like he’s about to have a tantrum. Someone stole his num-num.

I suspect that Trump practices a lot of his facial expressions in the mirror. A lot of sociopaths do, in an effort to appear more human and less unco. Trump, however, didn’t practice this one very much. That, or he was so rattled at having his mug shot taken (the emotional equivalent of some commoner ripping a cigar out of his mouth) that he wound up looking like a man who had just plotzed and was hoping his Depends would contain the odor.

It wasn’t his Churchillian moment. It was, if anything, his anti-Churchillian moment. Whatever that grimace was, it wasn’t calm determination. It was the opposite of calm determination. It was a man about to lose his shit.

It was the Kubrick stare, only he wasn’t acting.

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Like Nixon Flinging Poo — Trump’s demise is ultimately low comedy

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 25th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Back nearly fifty years ago, my buddy Grunt and I were sitting around in my room/converted garage and just shooting the shit. It was late July, 1974, and it was becoming obvious that the Nixon presidency was drawing to a close. Like nearly everyone, we were wondering What Would Happen Next.

Grunt was of the opinion that Nixon would not go quietly, and gleefully painted a lurid picture of a naked or near naked Nixon, clinging frantically to the top of the highest flagpole over the White House, howling obscenities into the wind as he swayed back and forth, shrieking and flinging his poo at the army helicopters that circled around him.

Mind you, this was back when presidents were supposed to be dignified and present a good example to the nation. Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman were considered shockingly undignified at the time. We thought Nixon was the worst, most blatant criminal to ever occupy the oval office. But at least he tried to hide his wrong-doings. And he even had a moral basement. For instance, as the looming indictments and impeachment grew, he and staff forbade themselves to use the word “pardon” in any context (Gerald Ford didn’t get the memo, apparently) not just because it looked bad, but it crossed a line most of Nixon’s staff were not willing to step over.

It was a different era. Since then, we’ve had Reagan, Bush the lesser and Trump to show that the adage that “anyone can grow up to be president” includes fools, morons, scofflaws and people so poorly trained in social skills that they wouldn’t be able to hold a job pumping gas. People might want an Abraham Lincoln, but they’ll settle for a Zaphod Beeblebrox. Two heads are better than one, right?

But back in 1974, Grunt’s view of the demise of Nixon was outrageously funny. (There may have been some beer involved.) It was about as outside the realm of expected actions as the Pope hitting the local pub, getting pissed and doing a Knees Up Mother Brown whilst wearing an Andy Capp cap. Jerry Lewis playing Atticus Finch.

I should ring Grunt (we talk about once a month anyway) and get his take on the demise of Trump. I know he’s delighted. I never saw him more openly angry then he was when, in the summer of 2016, we discussed the chance of Trump becoming president. We both knew the possibility was real.

But it would be unfair to expect Grunt to match his soliloquy on Nixon. At least, as far as being outrageously and unexpectedly funny. Grunt still has matchless verbal skills.

It’s just that every night now, Trump climbs the Truth Social flag pole and starts screaming and flinging his poo. He screams delusional bluster about how indicting him “will destroy the Joe Biden presidency” and calls for Congress to destroy the FBI, the District Attorneys, and every other legal force that might inconvenience him. He makes open threats, and openly promises pardons to the violent filth that turned out on his behalf on January 6th. He’s showing all the dignity and gravitas of one of the meth clowns in wifebeaters waving 40s who got hauled in on Cops. Mack Sennet comedies usually ended with more gravitas and probity. Trump has reduced American politics and governance to a pie fight.

Grunt won’t be able to match his effort which I remember so vividly a half century later.

Sorry, Grunt. It’s not you. It’s the world that’s changed.

What is truly depressing is how much of America Trump pulled down around him. Oh, his supporters have always existed, and they were always deplorable. Trump just made it easier for them to crawl out from under their rocks. But the GOP has become a self-doomed disgrace. When Trump falls, they will implode. They worshiped Trump, and he gave them the moral equivalent of syphilis.

Will the media have a similar fall? Faux will never recover from the role they played propping up Trump and lying on his behalf. But what about CNN and MSNBC, who even now put in hours pretending the Trump presidential campaign is a real thing and he might be president again? It’s a lie, one that drives up ratings, and they know it’s a lie. They can bloviate all they want about how popular Trump is amongst Republicans, but that is only a quarter of the voting population. The rest want to see the end of him in overwhelming numbers. Sixty percent of voters reject Trump under all circumstances. No candidate can overcome that.

Will the media do their own version of Nixon’s demise as Trump collapses? After all, once he’s in prison and finished, how are they going to attract viewers? More indictments are coming, possibly this week, and some are the sort that will finish any political credibility Trump has remaining. Even his followers are beginning to wise up. Prince Charming just wants to sell Springfield an elevated monorail, and whatever Jesus is doing, even the Jesus that wants to gas transgenders, he isn’t hugging Trump.

It’s a sign of how frantic the right is becoming as they become ever more loud and violent and vicious, hoping to detract from the fall of Trump and hoping that something in their message will appeal to Americans. It explains the flat-out Naziesque cruelty of people like Ron DeSantis or Gregg Abbott, or the increasingly ludicrous Hunter Biden scandal or the Barbie foofooraw. (Yes, Barbie. The doll. Apparently she’s an agent for Pink China.)

Expect lots of monkeys on lots of flagpoles throwing lots of poo.

But watch carefully: Three quarters of the population will be still, and silent, and thoughtful, carefully watching the end of Trump and his diseased movement. They, not the poo-flingers, are what matter.

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The Dwindle Swindle — Despite media impressions, the far right is collapsing

The Dwindle Swindle

Despite media impressions, the far right is collapsing

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 9th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There’s a meme making the rounds on social media these days that addresses the true state of Trump’s popularity. There are variations, but it basically goes like this: “As an experiment, I had my daughter wear a ‘Trump 2020’ T shirt to see what sorts of reactions the shirt might provoke. So far she’s been cursed at, spit upon, and had garbage thrown at her. I’m wondering what the reactions will be like when she leaves the house.”

Despite the efforts of the for-profit media to prop up the Trump campaign, the fact is that polls show that fully 60% of all voters don’t want Trump back in the White House under any circumstance. The Marist National Poll for National Public Radio and PBS NewsHour was conducted in March, before the 72 indictments were issued. According to Newsweek, “The Marist poll found 76 percent of Republicans do want Trump to run for a second term, with just 21 percent disagreeing, indicating he has a good chance of clinching the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. By contrast, 89 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents don’t want Trump to run again, nor do 41 percent of those identified as ‘white Evangelical Christians,’ a group that has become increasingly lukewarm towards the Republican front-runner.” Even Fox News reported on the poll.

That 60% reject Trump out of hand would seem insurmountable. But not to the ratings-hungry media, to whom Trump is catnip.

Yes, the Trumpster has a big lead among Republicans. But Republicans only make up 36 million out of the 127 million voters who have to declare party affiliation, running well behind second-place independents. And that was in mid 2022. Their numbers have shrunk since then as the party has been taken over by fringe lunatics on the far right who push such wildly unpopular ideas as banning abortion and birth control, bringing back segregation and child labor, and getting rid of Social Security and minimum wage.

Yes, Trump could win the primaries, even though he’ll be on trial for at least some of that period, and will in all likelihood be facing hundreds of new indictments for anything up to and including insurrection and sedition. Depending on the nature of those documents he stole, and who he showed them to, he might even be facing charges of actions injurious to the national interests (the closest possible charge to treason in peacetime). The general election would be the biggest slaughter in presidential elections since 1936.

It is fun watching the right—the ones sane enough to spot the looming disaster—race in panicked circles. Maria Bartiromo, who has at least learned to lie about entities that won’t sue her such as the FBI and DoJ, told Ron DeSantis (NSDAP-Florida) that he couldn’t win because the DoJ and FBI were out to destroy him. That would be the Deep Statetm. The one that is trying to destroy Trump. (How do you destroy Trump? Let him speak.)

I’m not exactly clear on how the Deep State will finish Trump by destroying his main rival in the primaries, but I’m sure Maria has it all figured out. Jewish space lasers and electronic mind control devices hidden in COVID vaccines, no doubt.

Trump keeps self-sabotaging, and in increasingly stupid ways. His lawyers keep deserting him because he is the client from hell who can’t keep his mouth shut and keeps self-incriminating. He cheats and betrays his allies at the faintest sign of what he considers disloyalty, real or imagined. He breaks promises blatantly, publicly, and for no good reason. For example, he went into an eatery on his birthday and promised food for everyone there, and then promptly left, leaving angry patrons and a dismayed restaurant staff hanging. I can only surmise that he thought the media would only cover the generous promise and not follow up, even though, given his track record, reporters would be doing exactly that in search of a juicier news story.

The far right is similarly self-destructively confused. Moms For Liberty (AKA ‘Twatzies’, ‘Ku Klux Karens’ or ‘Housewives for Hitler’) spearhead the Moment of Hate campaigns against the LGBTQ community, trans-gendered kids in particular, and have become the face of book banning. The various Nazi militia groups that formed the backbone of Trump’s attempted coup on January 6th vacillate between calling for a nationwide uprising and pretending they had nothing to do with Jan 6 and what’s more, Trump deluded them into it. Republican politicians keep trying to out-Nazi one another, the most visible (but not necessarily the worst) being Ron DeSantis. His reign in Florida is so grotesquely fascistic that hundreds of thousands have already fled the state, and millions more are seriously contemplating it. Even the Floridians who don’t mind his authoritarianism, bigotry and cruelty are becoming aware that he is going to destroy Florida’s economy. (If German corporations had stood up to Hitler instead of trying to use him to their own ends, Hitler would have been just a small footnote in history. US Corporations take note.)

Like a gravely wounded predator, the far right is in a frenzy, chewing on its own entrails. They have the potential to be fantastically dangerous, but in the end, they are self-doomed.

Remember the 60% of voters reject Trump poll, and ignore the contrived horse race media self-promotion. The fact is, a large majority of people don’t want Trump, or his deplorable following.

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Trying Times — MAGAts are having the week from hell

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 20th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Well, it’s not a very good day for MAGAts. First, Trump had an absolutely catastrophic interview with, of all people, Brett Baier at Fox News. The following morning, the date and location for his trial was announced: “This case is hereby set for a Criminal Jury Trial during the two-week period commencing August 14, 2023, or as soon thereafter as the case may be called. A Calendar Call will be held at 1:45 p.m. on August 8, 2023. All hearings will be held at Alto Lee Adams, Sr. United States Courthouse, 101 South U.S. Highway 1, Courtroom 4008, Fort Pierce, Florida 34950, with modifications to be made as necessary as this matter proceeds.”

Aileen (the Loose) Cannon will be presiding, and much as she may want to get Trump off the hook, it doesn’t seem likely that she could get away with anything other than a negotiated plea bargain (and even if Trump had enough sense to accept a deal, Jack Smith is unlikely to let him get away with a slap on the wrist.) Her other escape avenue would be to have Trump submit to a competency hearing. In the wake of the Baier interview, a case really could be made for that.

I can just picture MAGAts in their flags and star-spangled panties and such declaring, “He may be a drooling idiot, but by God, he’s OUR drooling idiot.” Voters with three digit IQs who don’t have six or more psychiatric markers might have second thoughts about him.

Then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, they announced a plea bargain in the case against Hunter Biden. According to the Guardian, “Biden, 53, was charged with illegally owning a firearm in 2018 after lying about his drug use when he purchased a gun. Biden was also charged with failing to file and pay taxes in 2017 and 2018, which are misdemeanor offenses. Documents from the Justice Department confirm that Biden will enter a pre-trial diversion agreement for the firearm offense.” Biden probably won’t serve any jail time, although the firearms agreement is likely to result in probation and he may lose the right to vote for a while. But the laptop and the missing 19 tapes and the “special whistleblower” nobody can find all just went away, leaving only the ineffectual nuts to howl their conspiracy theories into the void.

Since I started writing this about a half hour ago, Trump said: “Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!” Well, if the system didn’t have serious flaws, Trump would have been in prison many years ago, so there’s that.

James Comer called Biden’s charges a “slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery”. OK, bubbles. Prove it. Oh, you’ve spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars already, and have nothing to show for it? Aw, poor Jimmy. Bit a wooden leg and now his teeth hurt.

Mary Millar, howling nut from Illinois, wrote, “Hunter Biden is receiving a sweetheart deal from the DOJ that shields ‘THE BIG GUY’ Joe Biden from the Biden foreign bribery operation. The cash & diamonds he didn’t pay taxes on came from CHINA, RUSSIA & UKRAINE. No FARA foreign agent charges? TWO SYSTEMS OF JUSTICE!” All the scattershot all caps accusations really make for a convincing case. Yup. Shore do.

I note none of them want to mention that the DA who signed off on the plea deal, David Weiss, was a Trump appointee. Ironically, he wasn’t asked to step down when Joe Biden’s administration started because he was already handling the Hunter Biden case, and it was felt that asking him to resign under the circumstances would be seen as partisan.

So let the nuts scream. The Hunter Biden “case” is dead.

I suspect the saner Republican are all secretly feeling a sense of relief over all this. The Trump trial might loosen his grip on the party and they were facing the prospect of a candidate who 60% of all voters absolutely hated. Granted, the rest of their field is dominated by kooks and vicious Nazis, and they are probably just going to have to suffer a pasting come November, 2024, but they pretty much brought that upon themselves. Trump was already a liability before the Baier interview—now he’s flat-out radioactive.

Trump’s confused and crazy lies were bad enough—even worse than the CNN ‘town hall’ that nearly destroyed that channel. But I can’t imagine how he thought he could go on Faux and announce the 2020 election had been stolen. Baier had 787 million reasons to flatly contradict him, and he did.

And for the first time, Trump actually looked scared. I think he is finally realizing the wheels of justice are not going to let him walk away unscathed.

The trial is going to be complicated. I know a lot of people wanted the trial televised, but I don’t see how that’s possible. I want them to televise whatever they can of it, but there are legitimate complications.

The 37 counts all involve Trump’s mishandling and possible abuse of national security files—some listed as top secret, and even the ones listed as “confidential” have information that could put national interests and assets at risk. But it would be impossible to give Trump a fair trial (which he has an absolute right to) without letting the jury know the exact nature of those documents.

That means the jurors and court officials will all have to have at least temporary national security clearance to handle top secret information. They will probably have to sign an agreement that if they discuss ANY of that with anyone, they will end up in a cell next to Donald’s and probably be there after he dies.

They’ll also have to set up a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) in order to keep the contents of the evidence and testimony pertaining to such evidence secret. They have no choice: the jury MUST know the exact nature of the secrets.

But all the rest can and must be public. MAGAts will never read the transcripts because they have to stay safe in their psychotic little bubble, but fortunately, the large majority of Americans aren’t MAGAts, and they want and deserve to know exactly what is going on, and how a verdict was reached.

And don’t forget: there’s still the felony indictments for the New York tax scheme trial, and pending findings for January 6th and the efforts to overturn the Georgia election.

Trump really is going to be “too busy” for once, and his monkeys are going to wear themselves out screaming about it.

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37 Counts — Florida grand jury nails Trump to the wall

37 Counts

Florida grand jury nails Trump to the wall

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 12th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The indictment is utterly damning. I know that pundits world wide have been saying that very thing thousands of times on the vast majority of news outlets around the world, but that’s only because it is so self-evidently true.

Yes, it’s 49 pages long, but it’s double-spaced and with a lot of images and lists, I would be surprised if it contains 8,000 words. Perhaps a dozen pages single-spaced and without images or annotations.

So perhaps a twenty-minute read. And the language is clear and straightforward, lacking either legalese or obfuscation. The laws cited are clear and direct, and the evidence that demonstrates violation of those laws is about as clear as it can possibly be.

Of course, Republicans are refuting it. The very worst of them are making veiled and sometimes not-so-veiled demands for violence and insurrection. Some of them, including a couple of Congressmen, might expect visits from the FBI in the not too distant future. Clay Higgins, in an act bordering on treason, tweeted, “President Trump said he has ‘been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.’ This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this,” he wrote. “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.” Andy Biggs tweeted, “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye.” I doubt either of them will actually lead any kind of armed protest, but if they did, and got arrested by National Guardsmen or Police defending the courthouse, I wouldn’t shed a tear.

Gym Jordan made the amazing claim that Trump declassified the documents before he stole them, which Trump himself directly contradicts on tape. Some of the more-ordinary-but-still-bloody-stupid Republicans are whining about “witch hunts” and how Trump is being persecuted by a “weaponized DoJ.” Most of them aren’t smart enough to come up with their own talking points and get their pretense at knowledgeability from the likes of Tucker Carlson and OANN.

Mind you, these are the same Republicans who demanded the death penalty for Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Katherine Gun, Erin Brockovich, and Julian Assange. They screamed “Lock her up” because they believed Hillary Clinton had secret documents on a server and, with no evidence, that she leaked them. They want a full investigation of Joe Biden over documents, but curiously not for Mike Pence who, like Biden, had some classified materials in his possession, and like Biden, notified the Archives as soon as he realized he had them. Unlike Trump, who concealed them and lied about it.

We don’t know who Trump shared the documents with. We know he liked to boast about possessing them, and we know he had suspicious relationships with the leaders of Russia and Saudi Arabia, neither of whom are friends of the United States. We know that the boxes were in areas that weren’t even remotely secure, and we know that Mar-a-Lago was a favorite target for spies familiar with Trump’s fecklessness and corruption.

We also know some of the material in the wrong hands could do immense damage to the United States, and to intelligence and military personnel involved with any of the secret activities the documents detailed.

We also know that Trump will stop at nothing for money or power, and personally, I have no doubt he will gleefully sell us out and do damage to the country for material gain.

Trump’s arraignment is on Tuesday, and I plan on writing another piece after that occurs. While I won’t try to predict the actual court proceedings themselves, I will predict what will become of the crowd that are calling for demonstrations and resistance on Trump’s behalf.

Nothing much.

Oh, a few hundred might turn up, and they might be noisy and even bellicose, but they will be out-numbered, not just by police but by counter-demonstrators chanting “Lock him up.”

The Trump MAGA movement has been slowly deflating over the past year. All the predicted horrors of a Biden tyranny failed to come to pass, and indeed, the economy is in amazingly good shape. We aren’t at war, not even with the Republicans who want war against Americans. Gas stoves aren’t banned, and nor are ICE vehicles. They will be phased out, but that’s called “progress.” Horse and carts didn’t get banned, either, but you don’t see them on the freeways.

Further, Trump’s self-pitying screeches and bellows are getting boring beyond belief. Even his followers are getting bored. It doesn’t help that he turns ANY occasion into a chance to whine about his alleged victimhood. Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Easter, any time people stop to think about things that really matter to them, here’s Donald, whining, trying to make it all about himself. The schtick is as dead as Vaudeville.

And there’s a growing realization that the law really is catching up to him. He was found liable in that defamation case. He has 31 counts arrayed against him in New York State on tax fraud. He has pending indictments under consideration for January 6th and for vote tampering in Georgia.

And Faux News is fully discredited because of it’s lying on his behalf. They still do lie, of course, but they’re a lot more circumspect about it. Like Trump, they still face massive legal sanctions for their behavior surrounding the 2020 election. As for some of the other right-wing flacks and outlets that tried to raise a revolution against democracy and America.

Finally, there’s the fact that a lot of Donald’s remaining followers are certifiable. A lot will stay away because of a conspiracy theory that the feds are holding the arraignment as a trap, with Trump as the honey pot. They’ll round up Trump supporters, the theory goes, and do unspeakable things to them to make them disappear. Something lurid, no doubt, and painful. MAGAts, let your imaginations run wild!

But Tuesday should be, for the rest of us, gratifying, and perhaps a bit amusing. And above all, reassuring. If the law can’t apply here, it is worthless.

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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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The Settlement — How Fax Fux Fox

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 19th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

My kneejerk reaction to the news yesterday that Fox and Dominion had settled their defamation suit for $787.5 million was disgust. “Take the money and run,” I muttered to myself.

But then I told my knee to shut up and started thinking. First; the settlement is monumental, just huge. Has there ever been a settlement in a suit this big in history? There are class-action settlements that were far bigger, ranging from Enron ($7.2 billion) up to the 1998 Big Tobacco settlement of $206 billion.) But those were class-action suits, with plaintiffs in the hundreds (Enron) to the millions (Big Tobacco. This was one small company with 200 employees and annual revenues around $17 million a year. The biggest personal injury settlement I could find was for $60 million (a gas station manager injured by a train derailment). But even there, there was a permanent, crippling injury that would require lifetime care. A small company taking on a media giant usually, if it were very, very lucky, results in the media giant saying, “Here’s five million, kid. Now go away.”

So make no mistake: three quarters of a billion dollars is a titanic settlement, and shows just how hopeless Fox’s defense was just on the face of it.

Fox made one of the most witless efforts of putting a good face on it that I’ve ever heard of. Their official statement following the settlement read, “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Journalists reading it on air burst in to open laughter. “Highest journalistic standards?” Fox News? Oh, that ship has sailed, hit an iceberg, hit it ten more times, and then sunk without a trace!

The fact that Fox didn’t have to agree to tell their viewers they had deliberately and knowingly lied to them about the election all along bothered a lot of people, who surmise (correctly) that Fox will simply not even tell their viewers about the settlement or the circumstances that caused it to be so huge. And while there is no cult so corrupt, so ridiculous, and so compromised that it can’t keep and maintain its cadre of True Believers, Fox will experience attrition, for a variety of reasons.

The thing is, all that stuff from the discovery process is out there. The admission that the election theft claims were fabricated; the admission that they lied about the election in order to maintain ratings, the admission of open contempt for Donald Trump and his followers. They are claims made against Fox; they are admissions right out of Fox’s official representatives in the discovery process. There’s no unringing that bell.

It was a hideous (read ‘wonderful’) mistake on the part of Fox. As Robert Harrington over at The Palmer Report noted, “Fox made a huge mistake by not settling early. Had they come forward with the $787.5 million in the early days of the suit, they could have avoided all of the revelations of lies they told. Internal squabbling and nuggets like Tucker Carlson’s ‘passionate hatred’ for Donald Trump came to light as a direct result of the summary judgement. Had Fox News settled early none of those revelations would be general knowledge. According to Dominion lawyer Stephen Shackleford, there were no further shocking revelations to be told, no bombshells yet undetonated. In short, Fox screwed themselves with their own myopia.”

Some other right wing media outfits, hoping to supplant or even replace Fox, are telling their followers that Fox lied, but they won’t lie. (Obviously this doesn’t include OANN or Newsmax, who are facing their own lawsuits for lying about the election.)

You know that loudmouth in the bar, or the obnoxious uncle at the family gatherings who is always rabbiting on about how Trump is the “real” president? They are going to be talking to people who have indisputable evidence that Fox and the rest lied. Trump supporters have already all but vanished from social media outside of fringe areas like Truth Social and Twitter. There’s going to be a strong element of attrition as these people are finally facing reality.

The True Believers will become ever more insular and more cut off from mainstream society. But they will have muted themselves, reduced to agreeing with one another that everything is one vast conspiracy.

There’s a reason flat-Earth theories never gained any credence. There is just too much evidence. The “stolen election” cult will find themselves in a similar position. I suspect that, as with flat-Earthers, eventually a majority of “followers” will be con artists looking for easy marks amongst their indisputably stupid new-found brethren, and trolls who profess such a belief just to be annoying and aggravating.

Meanwhile, an avalanche of reality awaits. Dominion has suits pending against former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell—and now have the resources to press a full legal suit, even if the individuals named won’t be able to pay more than pocket change. Dominion might ‘settle’ for the admission of malicious falsehoods that they didn’t get from Fox.

And Fox itself faces an even bigger defamation next year from Smartmatic, which has their own huge discovery process going on now, and access to all of the discovery performed by Dominion. $2.7 billion. Fox won’t get away with a mere $750m on that one. They will have to settle, not just for a huge number, but for public admissions of wrong-doing. They may even have to shop Trump, who first launched the conspiracy theory that they “flipped” votes in Georgia and Wisconsin (Smartmatic had no machines in either state, or any contested state for that matter).

By then, Trump may be on trial for the Georgia vote tampering and quite possibly for his role in taking classified materials and then lying about it. His approval ratings, already in the twenties, may plummet to single digits by then, removing the one cudgel Fox and the rest might have to try and threaten and bluster their way out of it.

The settlement isn’t a death blow for Trump and Fox, but it has weakened them and left them open for the actions that will be a death blow.

And the rest of the “advocacy journalism” crowd just got an important lesson in accountability. Lie maliciously, get sued, get sued big time.

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Cornered Rats — At their most vicious and dangerous

Cornered Rats

At their most vicious and dangerous

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 9th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Despite, but largely because of a mounting tide of anger and disgust, the GOP have been doubling down on their most corrupt and unpopular items.

This past week Tennessee took the headlines by expelling two members, both of whom were black, for the ‘crime’ of protesting gun violence. A third member, who was white and thus incapable of committing a crime, was not expelled. This is the same ‘legislative body’ that previously tolerated the presence of pedophiles, rapists, and one member who was caught urinating on the seats of other members. That must be the ‘proper decorum’ that black representatives can’t uphold. In the past month, a member suggested that capital punishment include lynching. Lynching not as a capital crime, but as a state-sanctioned form of punishment.

Slappy Thomas was busted for covering up twenty years of lavish gifts and trips from a billionaire, aptly named Crow, who happens to be a Hitler admirer. Slappy’s defence was they was just good friends, and they had been doing this for years. Turned out Slappy’s cozened junkets were first noticed some twenty years ago, and he dealt with the potential scandal then by simply ceasing to file the legally-required reports. The liberal media had more important things to report on, like Obama wearing a tan suit and putting Dijon mustard on his hot dogs.

“Just good friends.” Because Hitler admirers always like to pal around with Negroes who are married to white women, right? Slappy is exactly what Hitler had in mind when he talked about the Master Race, you know.

The Trump indictment showed his waning influence and the growing realization on the far right that maybe they don’t speak for most Americans. Armpit Maggie turned up at the New York City demonstration, expecting to be the new leader for a sea of people outraged at the crucifixion of Trump. What she got was the usual small collection of nuts and weirdos, a motley collection dwarfed by large numbers of chanting, whistle-blowing counter-demonstrators. She retreated, in obvious confusion, within minutes.

The anti-freedom zealots had another wish granted by Trump when a religiously insane judge, one Matthew Kacsmaryk, ruled that mifepristone, a pill used in over half of all abortions in the US for decades, be taken off the shelved because when the FDA approved it over twenty years earlier, they didn’t factor in a right wing lunacy that women would be destroyed by the resulting grief and guilt of aborting that poor little baby. The blob squad simultaneously believe that most women will abort the day before the baby is due just on a whim, and never look back.

It’s the sort of demented thinking that demonstrates why religious zealots should never be allowed within a thousand miles of anything approaching actual authority over the lives of others.

The hate campaign against the LGBTQ community and, for gawd knows what reason, drag queens continues unabated. There are calls not only to cut them off from medical coverage and school activities, but to outlaw them altogether. Let’s see, I bet if we asked Thomas’ buddy Crow about that, he would be quick to mention the Enabling Acts, or the Nuremberg polices. But that was different: they were after Jews and Commies then, not fags and Mexicans. Totally different. Why, when the camps are made, they’ll use new and improved Zyclon C. Nothing at all like the Nazis. What’s more, they have God’s approval for all this. They’ll prove it by stamping “Got Mit Uns” on all their rifles and army belt buckles. Just fags and Mexicans. Not real people. Oh, and liberals Muslims Unionists the disabled Socialists pot smokers and Joos. But no real people.

The Republicans who have realized that their policies are unpopular (or, if you prefer, almost universally hated and despised) are dealing with it by removing those pesky voters from the equation. The GOP have been fighting for years to gut the Voting Rights Act (and finally succeeded) and gerrymander (see Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for details. And Florida. And Michigan. And Missouri…and on and on.) They are dealing with state referendums to protect abortion and other rights by making it difficult to impossible to get such referendums on the ballot.

In Wisconsin, a heavily contested election for the Supreme Count resulted in a big win for the candidate not underwritten by the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues. Janet Protasiewicz beat Dan Kelly by a whopping ten points. However, in an obscure state legislative race, the Republican won by 1.7% of the vote, giving the heavily gerrymandered body a supermajority. Republicans promptly vowed to impeach and remove Protasiewicz from office, presumably on the day she takes office, because you can’t have women running around aborting left and right and then killing themselves because of the shame. Tain’t Christian or something.

Right now, similar moves by authoritarians in France and Israel have resulted in weeks-long mass demonstrations and threats to topple the regimes. I can only hope the same thing would happen in Wisconsin if the state lege tried this particular stunt.

If it did, it might help prevent a similar convulsion nationwide. Americans won’t give up their freedoms and rights to zealots and ideologues without a fight.

The reason we’re seeing such blatant and horrific extremism is the Republicans know this is their last chance. If they can’t steal the country now, they may have to wait another 100 years for such an opportunity to come along.

They are desperate. They are cornered. They are at their most dangerous.

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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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