Tag: abortion

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The Dark Age — Once again, dear friends…

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 6th 2024

First, I want to apologize to my readers. I really blew it on my forecast on how this election was going to turn out. I’m especially sorry to those who took my forecast in good faith—I’m sure it added to the pain you are feeling now, and I deeply regret that.

I’ve been contemplating overnight and this morning over how I—and others, including the Harris campaign—so totally got it wrong.

I don’t have any real answers and indeed, more questions than I began with. How could such a large number of Hispanics support Trump? He’s made it clear that they are one of his target groups; when he says “illegal immigrants” he’s including Hispanics born here, or naturalized. They’re part of the twenty-two million people he wants to mass deport. He isn’t doing it to “save the economy.” He’s doing it because he’s a bigot, pandering to other bigots.

I don’t understand the self-professed Christians who supported him. He is the antithesis of everything they supposedly stand for.

And most of all, I don’t understand the women who voted for Trump. In seven states, freedom of reproductive choice was on the ballot, and many women in those states voted for reproductive freedom and then went ahead and voted for the man who destroyed that right in the first place!

I underestimated the power of the aggrieved anger that the right wing media—mostly run by plutocrats who wanted to use the mob to destroy the safeguards the constitution has to protect that same mob—and there was one thing I did get right; the economy is extremely strong, but it hasn’t really reached the lower middle class and the poor, even as conditions were beginning to improve.

A friend of mine once told me that revolution and revolt was most likely, not when things were at their bleakest, but when things were starting to improve. He told me that some forty years ago, and a close look at major upheavals throughout history confirms this to be true. Not always, but usually.

I have friends in the scientific community, so I was already aware of an on-going effort to save and secure date In The Event Of. Efforts will be redoubled; some of the incoming administration regard such data as either blasphemous or economically inconvenient.

America is heading for a scientific dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

The Ukraine will be on their own now, along with the states surrounding the genocidal Netanyahu. Trump wants to end NATO, which will give his buddy Putin license to invade much of eastern Europe, and he won’t stop there. The NATO nations need to start gearing up for a war footing NOW. There may be a general war in Europe within two years. The middle east will become a sea of flames, and before his mad reign ends, Netanyahu will have slaughtered millions. Other major nations currently not involved, such as Canada, Japan, India and China—may step in.

America is heading for a geopolitical dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

Project 2025 is alive and well, with all its draconian plans. I was compiling data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics today for a Trump-loving client, and it occurred to me to advise him that when this annual task comes due next year, neither I nor the BLS may be around.

America is heading for a governance dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

Putting tariffs on most foreign imports and deliberately destroying over half the agricultural production force isn’t going to lower costs or put food on the table. Destroying nearly all federal jobs is going to create a huge labor surplus. States attempting to fill the huge gaps left will have to double, triple, quadruple taxes.

America is heading for an economic dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

Trump will pursue his mad aim to encourage profligate use of fossil fuels, dooming the already inadequate efforts to mitigate climate change. The world has already entered a catastrophic zone: America is now a major part of the problem.

America is heading for an environmental dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

With the Department of Education gone, public schools will fall prey to the same people who have already benefited from spreading misinformation, disinformation, and slowing the spread of scientific and historical knowledge. Thousands of books will be banned “for the children” and eventually, movies and other forms of communication. Literacy will fall, both by design and through sheer incompetence.

America is heading for an educational dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

Rights will rapidly contract and then vanish altogether. People will be told that the era between 1865 and 2025 was an aberration in American culture, and that life under our caring despots who safeguard our morals and thoughts is what the Founders really intended.

America is heading for a humanitarian dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

Here in California, and other deep blue states, talk of secession is mounting rapidly. It may, in the end, be the only way we can protect ourselves from the libertarian and fundamentalist quagmire that Trump plans. It would mean dissolution of America, and/or civil war. A peaceful way back may not be possible.

America is heading for a dark age, but there’s no reason to drag the rest of the world into it.

To the rest of the world: help us where you can, but remember our leaders will be inimical, and this sort of madness can be contagious.

We’re on our own.

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Three Days To Go — Tension is actually decreasing

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 2nd 2024

This is probably the next-to-last piece I’ll write before election day, and believe me, I’m really looking forward to having things to write about other than American politics. For one thing, once the election is settled, I can sit down and consider my Solstice essay. It’ll probably be a doozy this year. Something about addled old farts who use words like “doozy”, perhaps.

With the election just three days away, I’m feeling considerable optimism. Trump’s campaign behavior is part of it; he’s acting like he’s already lost, and boy, does he know it. He was supposed to attend last night’s Penn State football game in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, and abruptly canceled that. This is the campaign equivalent of spitting on babies and waving a Soviet flag.

His rhetoric is getting increasingly unhinged and violent, and he keeps saying things that would be political suicide for any candidate who isn’t a cult leader. As women arise en masse to protest the Dobbs decision, he’s prattling on about how he will protect women “whether they like it or not.” He’s still loudly fantasizing about shooting opponents, particularly former members of his own administration.

The voting patterns show considerable reason for optimism. It’s startling enough that over 62 million Americans have already cast ballots. (And of that 62 million, less than a dozen were cast by non-Americans, if previous voting patterns hold true). But of that 62 million, 56% were women.

It reflects a trend of new voter registrations over the past year, where over 55% of registrants were female.

In an absolute genius move, the Harris campaign ran an ad letting women know that their vote is absolutely secret, and not only do they have no obligation to vote as their husbands demand, but they have the right to lie about how they voted. Apparently Republicans really hate the idea that women can have a secret ballot too, and Newt Gingrich stood up to huff loudly that Harris was encouraging women to lie to their husbands. Newt Gingrich. You remember old Nootie, of course. Played a seminal role in turning the once-proud GOP into mindless obstructionists for corporation, now on his fourth wife, cheated on one wife while she was dying of cancer. Outside of Trump himself, about the last person on Earth to be lecturing women on marital fidelity and lying to their spouses. It’s a bit like being lectured on diplomacy by Triumph the Insult Dog.

In Pennsylvania, the state whose number one football team Donald just pissed on, new voter registrations ran nearly 3-1 for Democrats, and independents got more new registrations than Republicans.

The unedited version of the “grab them by the pussy’ tape from the 2016 election showed up on TikTok, and millions of users too young or too disengaged in 2016 are seeing it for the very first time. Chris Hayes thoughtfully played the entire tape on his MSNBC show last night, and it’s every bit as appalling as the edited excerpts we’d all heard before suggested. I imagine it’s wildfiring through the rest of social media now.

Two of Trump’s campaign stunts, both on the level of Mike-Dukakis-in-the-tank, backfired. There’s a meme rocketing around social media now that show Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sitting together, laughing their heads off. The captions read [Joe] “I made him drive a garbage truck!” [Kamala] “I made him work at a McDonalds!” I posted a image of Trump in the garbage truck and labeled it “From the Department of Repetitive Redundancy Department.” It failed to impress Trump supporters, I’m sorry to say.

Mainstream media are still playing the silly horserace game, of course. CNN and the NY Times played up a weak jobs report from yesterday as a “devastating blow” to Harris, apparently unaware of the fact that it normally takes about six months for changes in the economy to seep into the public consciousness, and longer if the economy is doing well and people only know what Fox News tells them. The gain of “only” 22,000 jobs for the month will have absolutely no effect on the vote.

The plutocrat press is learning that making newspapers into rich man’s toys isn’t working out: the Bezos-owned Washington Post has lost over 300,000 subscribers over their public self-neutering, and the LA Times, with a much smaller circulation, has lost some 50,000.

Even the Supreme Court, resolutely fascist, has backed away from further opportunities to tamper with the election. They denied cert on several GOP-backed suits following the Virginia case.

I suspect that a lot of Republicans are not going to vote for Trump, and many will vote for Harris. Millions, perhaps. Enough to seriously tilt the scales. It helps that over 600 Republicans of note, including some 200 from the Trump administration, over 100 retired line officers, and dozens of retired Congressionals, have all come out for Harris, including the Cheneys and Schwarzenegger. Harris has gotten endorsements from such Republican bastions as the Economist and the Houston Chronicle.

It’s important to remember that a lot of the Republican disaffection stems from the fact that Trump himself is an incompetent, addled, vicious and dishonest pig. That may or may not affect their votes down ticket, depending on how closely aligned with Trump the candidates are. Congressional votes may hinge, not on never-Trumpers, but on discouraged voters. And, of course, the millions of women voting to take their rights back. They don’t see old “grab them by the pussy” as their preferred protector, it seems.

Finally, a lot of self-identified Christian voters have finally realized that Trump is not a divine test of godliness or whatever the fuck, and are going with the candidate who isn’t a serial adulterer, rapist, con artist, liar and dementia patient. It’s a good look on them.

It’s too early to be complacent, mind you. Trump will challenge the results and put up a huge fight to try to de-legitimize the vote. He’s already said he would. Just like he did in 2020. So expect a battle.

But Trump isn’t fighting for you. He’s fighting for himself. And he knows he has everything to lose.

 

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Walzing to a Win — Vance dance slick, but hobbled by Trumpentruths

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 1st, 2024

On the surface, tonight’s vice-presidential debates harkened back to debates prior to the Trump era. Both candidates were articulate, reasonable-sounding, and civil. If you stripped the content of the debate of all context, they seemed evenly matched. Give Vance credit: he came across as human, a feature he has struggled with since he was nominated.

But he was badly crippled by the fact that he had to present the general lunacy of Trumpentruths. Thus, he had to spout utter absurdities as “Trump saved the ACA” Really? Nobody remembers Trump’s campaign to repeal it, a drive that was stymied in the final minute by a dramatic midnight thumbs-down gesture by a dying John McCain? Walz, thinking fast, immediately brought up that seven years later, Trump only has a “concept of a plan” to deal with health care.

He had to mirror Trump’s waffling on the issue of bodily autonomy. So he had to simultaneously pretend that Trump ended abortion while saying that the public wanted the states to determine a woman’s right to abortion. Walz parried it beautifully, noting that fundamental rights should not be subject to geography. It was the perfect response to the GOP pretense that it’s a states’ rights issue: the constitution supersedes states in the matter of establishing rights, and no state may suborn a national civil right.

On health care, in addition to the ACA blunder, Vance tried to argue that costs of health care needed to be distributed, and not the sole domain of government. He managed to say it in such a way that he wasn’t saying people should depend on churches for health care.

Vance had to evade answering the yes-no-no question, “Is the climate changing?” His response went, “One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change … let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.” He fluffed the question, saying that the all-powerful Harris should have reduced pollution by bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, saying (falsely) that the US has the cleanest economy in the world. He claimed, again falsely, that solar panels are all made in China, although when pressed, he muttered that the parts that go into solar panels were made there. Under Biden, of course, manufacturing jobs have been returning to the US (Harris may have supported him, doubtlessly did, but vice presidents don’t have any particular authority on this). He tried saying that Trump did not consider climate change despite the fact that Trump is on record, repeatedly, for making that very claim.

Vance had to bash immigrants since that’s the centerpiece of Trump’s Naziesque hate campaign. He tried blaming immigrants for the high cost of housing, but had to back off when Walz noted that immigration was dropping. I would have noted that few immigrants are financially able to buy a home.

Confronted with the fruits of his hate campaign against Springfield, Ohio, he tried saying that the only reason they were there was because Harris (apparently the most powerful vice president in history) let them in under a special refugee law. They did in fact enter under such a law—one signed by Donald Trump. Oh, and at the invitation of Springfield, which needed labor.

Finally, and this was where Vance successfully knocked himself out, he tried the pretense that Trump did not want to overturn the 2020 election, and wanted only a peaceful protest at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. He couldn’t handle the question that he had stated that if he had been vice president instead of Mike Pence, he would have rejected the electoral vote citing “questions” and thrown it to Congress. (In the event of a legitimate tie in the electoral college, Congress could vote on who won. And it isn’t a straight up-and-down vote: each state gets one vote, and in 2021, the outgoing Congress had a majority representation in 27 states. They might have overturned the election had Mike Pence not done his job.)

A lot of people have said that Trump made a poor choice when he selected JD Vance as his running mate. But watching him squirm and battle to toe the party line, the absurd Trumpentruths that have turned the GOP into an anti-American and savage cult, I think it wasn’t Trump who made the bad choice for a running mate. It was JD Vance who made the poor choice for a running mate.

Vice Presidential debates rarely shift votes, and it’s unlikely this one did. Walz won, both on presentation and debate points. It wasn’t the utter carnage of the first two presidential debates, and won’t get a lot of attention.

But watching Vance, and how slick and mentally agile he was, I realized how fantastically dangerous this soulless man would be if he elects to run in 2028, armed with his own Trumpentruths.

 

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Trump On The Ladies — Girls, he’ll show you how to be women

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 25th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

From CNN today:

“I always thought women liked me. I never thought I had a problem. But the fake news keeps saying women don’t like me,” Trump said in Indiana, Pennsylvania. “I don’t believe it.”

The former president claimed women are “less safe,” “much poorer” and are “less healthy” now compared to when he was president and vowed to end what he described as their “national nightmare.”

“Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector,” Trump said.

Women, he added, “will be happy, healthy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Well, now, can you little darlings all just calm down now? Uncle Donald is here to protect you from the emotional and hysterical weight of being women, and is going to take care of you all just like your daddies did.

And stop fussing about abortion, for Pete’s sake. Half of you won’t have kids anyway, being over fifty, or under 10, or, you know, ugly. Especially you libbers. Never was such a pack of hairy, ugly wimmin like that. Donald’s gonna get you into the beauty parlor, get you fixed up, make you feel worth while as human beings.

OK. I get accused of having a sick sense of humor. And yeah, that’s true. That gets me in more trouble then just about any other facet of my generally lamentable character.

But in this Age of Trump, there’s a problem with having a sick sense of humor. Events have a way of topping even my darkest comic imaginings.

Trump says he will make women happy, healthy, confident and free. Whew! That’s genius, I couldn’t match that. Andy Kaufman couldn’t match it. Sam Kinnison couldn’t match it. George Carlin would be gobsmacked. I read that, and concluded that either I took far too many drugs in the seventies, or I didn’t take enough.

Even by the standards of Trump and the GOP, this is grotesque. Trump the rapist. Trump the serial adulterer. Trump, the bozo who delighted in humiliating his first wife with his much publicized affair with Marla Maples. Trump, who packed the Supreme Court with religious fascists and crowed loudly when they rescinded a woman’s right to an abortion. Trump, who boasted about being able to “grab them by the pussy.” Trump, who smears and insults nearly any woman who dares challenge him, whether as a political opponent or a reporter asking questions.

As gaslighting goes, it’s unparalleled in its sheer brazenness and scope. Of course, for Trump, it’s just another Monday. At other times, he’s proclaimed himself the great white hope for African Americans, saying he did more for them than any president including Abraham Lincoln. His top example of black people who support him is a howling nut who proclaimed himself “a Black NAZI” and referred to MLK Jr. as “Martin Lucifer Coon.”

Nobody stands for science more than Trump, you know. He had an uncle who attended MIT. Take that, Neil Degrasse Tyson! So when he talks about windmills causing cancer, sharks electrocuting boaters, and climate change being a hoax by AOC to force us all to live in caves, why, he’s speaking as the world’s greatest authority on African Americans, women, sharks, and pets who get eaten. Or something. It’s scientifical, you know.

I imagine that next he’ll address his expertise and compassion for the lives of Asian-Americans and point out he saw all the Charlie Chan movies as a kid.

It’s getting harder to tell how much of this stuff is dementia, and how much is just the same snake-oil bullshit that’s floated Trump through his entire wastrel life. But in the end, that doesn’t matter: Either way, he is totally unfit for office. If he was your grandad, you would be taking away his car keys by now, and keeping a discreet eye on his debit card purchases.

And if you still support Trump at this point, there is something very, very wrong with you.

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Harris Brought The Mop — Trump can try claiming he cleaned the floor…

Harris Brought The Mop

Trump can try claiming he cleaned the floor…

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 10th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

That had to be the most one-sided debate I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching debates since 1960.

Kamala Harris took control quite literally in the first seconds by striding across the stage, past the traditional half-way mark right up to Trump’s podium and Trump himself and stuck out her hand for the traditional handshake. A very reluctant Trump returned the shake, his normal physical dominance lost to her assertive pose.

After that, the debate was along the lines of Abraham Lincoln versus a speak-n’spell toy. It was well-known that Trump did little or no debate prep, instead preferring to keep to the salesman’s patter that he uses in lieu of campaign speeches. The result was the same lies, absurdities, and utter lack of focus that has been the hallmark of his efforts to stay out of jail.

Earlier today, I had suggested that Kamala Harris mug for the camera at his responses, and she did, with a devastating effectiveness. She’s a master-class prosecutor, and knows exactly how much a lifted eyebrow or a head tilt can do during defense’s closing argument to sway a jury without getting called out by the judge or opposing lawyer.

Trump did a fantastic job of self-destroying. When challenged by the surprisingly competent moderators on his claim that the world laughed at the US under Biden (and he seemed confused about who he was running against) to name an example, he could only come up with…Victor Orbán. Ouch.

He tried claiming that John McCain voted against continuing the ACA (Obamacare) when it was his very famous thumbs-down at midnight in the Senate that scuttled Trump’s scheme to end it.

He challenged Harris to go to the White House to “fix the border crisis,” saying, “She’s been there for three-and-a-half years. They’ve had three-and-a-half years to fix the border. They’ve had three-and-a-half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do, but you haven’t done it and you won’t do it because you believe in things that the American people don’t believe in.”

Well, maybe he thought she was Joe Biden, or in Congress, since only Congress can pass bills, and only a President can sign a bill into law. Trump, of course, returned over and over to immigration for purposes of hate mongering. And finally, he went there: the most absurd right wing moral panic since litter boxes in school bathrooms: immigrants in Springfield eating ducks and cats.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” The moderators called him out on that, leaving him sputtering.

He bombed on abortion, first repeating his utterly false claim that nearly everyone wanted Roe V. Wade “returned to the states,” waffled hopelessly on his own stance on abortion, and repeated his favorite blood libel, that women were aborting babies that were already born.

He ranted about NATO, and Harris deftly laid a trap for him, saying that if he was in office, Putin would be in Kiev, eyeing the rest of Europe. Including Poland. Harris sweetly added the 800,000 Polish American voters in Pennsylvania would be interested to hear that.

Meanwhile, Harris was pitch perfect: knowledgeable, unflappable, confident. She dominated Trump from the get-go and never let up. All the shouts and all the lies couldn’t save him. “I have talked to many military leaders, many of whom worked under you, and they say you are a disgrace.” Strong words, and Trump had no response.

“I have to tell you, if it weren’t so dangerous, it reminds you of an old man yelling at the clouds. That was his thing: ‘Get off my yard,’” said Tim Walz, the vice-presidential candidate. Grandpa Simpson was definitely in the house, with Trump repeating himself obsessively and with a total lack of self-awareness.

I will say to Trump supporters that after tonight’s performance, and if you watched it, and you still support Trump, There. Is. Something. Very. Wrong. With. You. No reasonable or fair minded person could support enabling that shambling psychotic ruin of a human being to have the nuclear codes.

Moments after the debate, in an unexpected coda, Taylor Swift posted her unalloyed support for Kamala Harris, pointedly including a photo of herself holding her lovely cat. Swift is childless, of course, and I doubt she’s planning to serve her cat to the local immigrant family.

Now there’s a paragraph I didn’t envision myself writing on any of the previous debates I’ve seen. The wonder of it all.

Still a long way to election night, and many efforts to undermine and defray the vote await us. But tonight, in a no-doubt-about-it way, was Harris’ night. She has a plan. Trump, in his words, “has the concept of a plan.”

Trump utterly disgraced himself.

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Biden’s Big Night — As Kamala tans the hide of Trump

Biden’s Big Night

As Kamala tans the hide of Trump

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 20th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Political conventions after the last contested convention in 1980 have tended to be yawn fests, in particular those where the nominee is already the incumbent president. Everyone marvels at the (largely imaginary) accomplishments of the administration, chant ‘four more years,’ dutifully vote, and then go back to the hotel to schmooze and get laid.

And in this century, if something does happen that’s unusual or vivid, I can just go watch the video on YouTube and get caught up.

I’ll often have a convention on the screen but in the background, since there are often people I want to listen to, either because I respect them or I’m at least curious (one young black senate hopeful in 2004 caught my attention, fellow named Barack Obama).

This year I didn’t turn on the GOP cult fest at all, figuring that Trump and his stooges gaslight, lie to and lie about me and everyone else enough as it is, and I don’t need the aggravation. I wasn’t even curious about Vance, figuring (correctly) that he was just a corrupt creep. Even if I had never heard of him before, anyone wanting the job as Trump’s mini-me had to have something seriously wrong with them. I expected a dishonest hatefest, and that’s exactly what they delivered.

With the Democratic convention, I figured to pay attention when Joe Biden spoke. I’d heard the rumors swirling around, mostly from the right, that Biden was forced out of the race very much against his will. Some of the crazier members of the GOP whispered that Biden being ousted was somehow unconstitutional. Like the GOP has any respect for the Constitution.

Certainly the Democratic Party would put on a show, mostly heartfelt, honoring Biden as a revered party elder and an unusually effective president. They wouldn’t have to fake that at all.

I’ve been watching Biden since about 1980, and my take is that he’s a good actor with an excellent poker face (both very nearly prequisites for a political career) but essentially honest. His only real scandal was the plagiarism flap in 1980, and he dealt with that by dropping out of the race and apologizing. At the time I felt it spoke well of the man; he admitted his wrong doing and atoned.

He was too centrist for me politically (a view I still held in 2020) but all in all, a decent man. I supported Sanders in 2020, but had no trouble switching to Biden, especially given the vile alternative.

So my main reason to tune in was to catch the Biden speech.

Somewhat to our surprise, we found ourselves riveted from the opening gavel. The Guardian’s Sam Levin described it thusly: “Speakers from red states gave personal accounts of the impacts of abortion bans. Hadley Duvall, from Kentucky, described how she was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant at age 12: ‘I can’t imagine not having a choice. But today, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans.’ She noted Trump’s previous remarks calling abortion bans a ‘beautiful thing’: ‘What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?’

“Speakers also repeatedly tied the Trump and the Republican agenda to Project 2025, the roadmap for a second Trump administration crafted by former Trump officials. Mallory McMorrow, a state senator from Michigan, held a copy of the Project 2025 document and assailed the plan to ‘turn Donald Trump into a dictator’. Congressman Jim Clyburn called Project 2025 ‘Jim Crow 2.0’. Biden noted that the project calls for the dismantling of the US department of education.”

David Smith and Kira Lerner reported, “Jamie Raskin, a representative from Maryland who served on the January 6 committee and led Trump’s second impeachment, said reelecting Trump would bring America ‘back to the days of election suppression and violent insurrection’. He suggested making Harris’ victory so large that even Trump and his allies can’t try to steal the election.

“Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky who was a vice-presidential contender, focused his speech on Harris and Tim Walz’ support for reproductive rights. Republican abortion ‘policies give rapists more rights than their victims’, he said. And Senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia spoke about the need to protect democracy, invoking his faith to denounce Trump.

“I saw him holding the Bible, and endorsing a Bible, as if it needed his endorsement. He should try reading it,” Warnock said. ‘It says, do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God. He should try reading it. It says, love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Kamala Harris showed up unexpectedly and said, “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation, and for all you will continue to do, we are forever grateful to you. Thank you, Joe!” She wore a tan suit, notoriously a red flag to the professional scandal-mongers of the GOP.

Hilary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave vivid barn-burner speeches, a women of the party’s recent past passing a torch to a woman of the party’s future and both lavishing praise on the woman of the moment, Kamala Harris.

Then it was Biden time. His daughter, Ashley, took center stage and gave a moving account of the life with her father and expressing her deep pride, leaving the place (including Joe Biden) in tears. Then first lady Doctor Jill Biden, in an amazing silver dress, orated, praising her husband and his work.

Then it was Biden’s turn. He gave the speech of his life! There was nothing of the tired and sick old man who failed to shut down the psychopathic Trump in the debate. He expressed his deep pride in his accomplishments, his faith in Kamala Harris, and his love and respect of country. There was nothing defensive in how he described his record, and his support of Harris was full-throated and enthusiasic. He seems to like the role of honored elder who is stepping back for the good of the country and feels he has left it to capable hands. He blistered the liar Trump and his cultish followers, and told America to vote or lose everything.

He may have needed persuasion to drop out of the race, but he wasn’t forced. He did it, just as he did in 1980, because it was the right thing to do and for the good of the country. It cemented his legacy of being one of the American greats.

Meanwhile, he is still president, and will be until January of next year. He negotiated a complex six way prisoner swap with Russia, and is actively involved in a possible ceasefire in the Gaza genocide, and helping Ukraine’s efforts to drive out the invading Russians. The economy, the best one in over 50 years, is running smoothly, a result of his efforts to rein in predatory capitalists and encourage domestic investment and manufacturing.

I don’t know if Republicans were thinking of digging up that 44 year old scandal about plagiarism. It would be moot now, I suppose. But Trump ruined that approach for them anyway, posting a faked video of Taylor Swift seemingly endorsing Trump. What he hoped to gain from it other than being cruel is a mystery, but it’s a far worse dishonest theft than Biden’s scandal. Swift is probably furious, and her millions of fans are ready to ride Trump out of town on a rail. In a campaign marked by endless stupid and nasty moves, this one of Trump’s hits a new low in the sewer pipes of his mind.

So: the party is united, Joe has been honored and will keep on working, and tonight should be fascinating as hell.”

It’s “Republicans for Harris” night, staring members of the Trump administration and former leaders of Congress.

This will be fun.

 

 

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The Arizona Ruling — Religious fascists cower before the shit storm they have created.

Bryan Zepp Jamieson
April 10th 2024
www.zeppscommentaries.online

The Guardian tried to cover Trump’s ever-shifting stance on abortion rights again today, and wound up trying to pretend this was a coherent response:
Asked if Arizona’s ruling went too far, Trump replied: “Yeah, they did. That will be straightened out. As you know, it’s all about state’s rights. It will be straightened out. I’m sure the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason and that it will be taken care of, I think, very quickly.”
The Guardian managed to miss that the ruling that caused this week’s shitstorm was an exact example of what happens when the laws regarding abortion are left to “state’s rights.” Arizona’s supreme court absurdly upheld a law passed by the territorial legislature in 1864, back before Arizona was even a state, that outlawed all abortion other than to save the life of the mother. Other states are considering even disallowing that one life-saving restriction as part of their holy crusade.
But it gets worse. Trump has frequently brayed that he made the overturning of Roe vs. Wade possible. The Guardian failed to mention that.
The Guardian utterly ignored a video Trump made LESS THAN TWO DAYS EARLIER in which he said, “They [Democrats] support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month. The concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth. And that’s exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.”
That would be disgraceful coming from a drunken misogynistic wife-beater in a sleazy bar pissed on cheap whiskey. It would even be disgusting coming from an even lower life form, an evangelist drunk on Jesus. This is coming from a thieving, lying sewer rat of a man who wants to be President again.
How much do you have to hate women to even believe that they would cheerfully terminate their pregnancies in the ninth month? Or even the third month? As for women getting abortions “after the baby is born” that’s a lie on the level of “Jews drink the blood of Christian babies.” It’s a disgrace, and no person saying such a thing can lay any claim to decency. Trump certainly cannot. Trump is trash. This proves it.
It misrepresents what Roe vs. Wade stipulated. There’s a reason—and it’s not medical—why people speak of “trimesters” in pregnancies. No sudden change occurs at the end of 90 days, or 120 days. It’s just that Roe vs. Wade laid out restrictions states could impose on the fundamental right to an abortion: In the first trimester, governments could place no restrictions on women’s ability to choose to abort pregnancies other than imposing minimal medical safeguards, such as requiring abortions to be performed by licensed physicians [per Wikipedia, cited]. In the second trimester, increasing risks to the mother’s health gave states a compelling interest that allowed them to enact medical regulations on abortion procedures so long as they were reasonable and “narrowly tailored” to protecting mothers’ health [per Wikipedia, cited]. And finally, in the final trimester, “From the beginning of the third trimester on—the point at which a fetus became viable under the medical technology available in the early 1970s—the Court ruled that a state’s interest in protecting prenatal life became so compelling that it could legally prohibit all abortions except where necessary to protect the mother’s life or health [per Wikipedia, cited].
Do I even have to say that no state has ever allowed the killing of an infant under any circumstances? Women-hating drunks might believe it. Religiously insane zealots might believe it. And Donald J. Trump may believe it. But it is not true.
Even as many Republicans are suddenly realizing that they went too far in trying to appease the zealots and alienated a huge majority of voters, a lot of them who were fulsomely “pro-life” last year are suddenly “pro-choice” or “let the states decide.” The first is hypocritical. The second is disingenuous as well as hypocritical.
At the time Roe vs. Wade was delivered, only five states had it generally legal (and doctors were free to refuse for any or no reason). In 13 states it was legal in cases of risk to woman’s health, rape or incest, or likely damaged fetus. In 31 states it was legal in cases of risk to woman’s life. And in Pennsylvania it was illegal under all circumstances, a draconian and murderous stance that several states are now avidly pursuing.
A lot of Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They were “pro-life” before, but now they either want states like Arizona or Pennsylvania or Alabama to decide what rights, if any, you can have, or they have pretended to cave entirely and say Arizona went too far. Trump, of course, stands for both sides of that giant back-step.
Republicans are not to be trusted. Zealots are definitely not to be trusted. (Their own bible approves of abortion when infidelity is suspected). And Trump was never trustworthy to begin with.

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Republicans versus America — The far right is nowhere near American values

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 7th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

 

Even as the NY Times blatted on about Trump leading in tossup states according to their latest “let’s scare the shit out of everyone and boost ratings” poll, another poll from the somewhat more reputable NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist organization painted a vivid picture of just how far out of step Trump, MAGAts, and Republicans in general are with the rest of the population.

The most glaring example is that of abortion. 84% of voters said abortion should not be criminalized. (Support for the right to abortion has strengthened significantly since the Dobbs decision. At that time, about half the population agreed that all first trimester abortions should be legal and on demand. It’s closer to two-thirds now.) However, over 35% of Republicans want abortion to be a crime. Both for the woman and the doctor. It’s clear that outside of the fundamentalist hate bubble, the vast majority (93% of non-Republicans) of people support a woman’s right to choose.

Another huge chasm exists between the far right and normal America. While 51% say all “illegal” immigrants should be subject to immediate deportation (which would cause an economic crash were it to happen), 84% of Republicans subscribe to that hateful lunacy. They also believe such falsehoods as that undocumented workers cost the country money (in reality, the country gains an estimated $8 trillion a year from their labor and taxes) and that they cause crime (crime rate among aliens, both documented and not, is lower than the citizen population, and far lower rates of violent crime). However, with the economy booming, fascist propaganda organs go on endlessly about “the open border” (it isn’t) and “the immigrant problem” which bears a startling resemblance to Hitler’s “Jewish problem.”

Over three out of four Republicans whine that white people are the victims of racism. Only one in four people outside the GOP hold that self-pitying view.

Therefore it’s probably no surprise that over six in ten Republicans believe people should be allowed to have military-style assault weapons. They don’t care how many children get turned into hamburger, even when it’s their own children. They need to be safe from their racist oppressors. It takes a really special type of emotional and psychological cowardice to feel that way.

While only four in ten Republicans believe religion should influence government policy, that puts them well above the 16% of the rest of us who feel that way. And I’ll bet that most of that 16% are going on the assumption that laws against murder or theft have a purely religious basis.

Other findings in the poll, as reported by NPR:

Strong majorities said:

  • Americans should not have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track (79%)
  • A president should not be immune from crimes committed as president (75%)
  • Religion should not influence government policy (75%)
  • Corporate greed is a major cause of inflation (72%) – a majority of Republicans said so, too
  • Biden won the 2020 election (71%)
  • People should not be allowed to own military-style assault weapons (61%)

There was another poll last week that showed the striking power of GOP propaganda. Only about 1/3 thought the US economy was doing well. That by itself is amazing, given that the US is enjoying the biggest economic boom since the 1960s, spurred in large measure by the economic recovery bills Biden and Pelosi were able to shepherd through Congress in 2021-3. But respondents were then asked how they viewed the economy in their own state. The responses there measured reality a bit better, with majorities—sometimes near 70%—saying that the state economy was doing well. In about half the states where this was asked, the state economy, while doing well, actually lagged behind the national economy. I saw an amazing example of that on Fox News last week. Over 300,000 new jobs were added in February, half again what was forecast. Some propagandistic bimbo posing as a reporter announced that unemployment fell to 3.8%, which she described as “the second highest unemployment rate in two years.” Never mind that was also the lowest two-year rate of unemployment in the country’s economic history. Economists consider 5% “full employment.” Faux has to pretend unemployment is a administration failure, even when it is a glittering success.

Even as the Supreme Court pretends to mull over whether a president should be held unaccountable for any and all crimes he commits as president, 34% of Republicans agree with that lunatic notion. I would imagine that number might drop if they mean Biden has the legal right to order Trump to be taken out and shot. Or that any and all charges against Hunter Biden should be immediately dismissed because he was acting as Biden’s agent. There’s a reason people think Trump supporters are stupid.

No, actually, there are MANY reasons people think Trump supporters are stupid. We only covered a few of them today…

 

 

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“The Lady Said ‘No’” — Voters reject abortion and book bans, zealot rule, and Trump

“The Lady Said ‘No’”

Voters reject abortion and book bans, zealot rule, and Trump

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 9th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Off-off-year elections usually don’t make the front page, other than in the local areas and handful of states where they occur. Normally there’s little reason to care if some state you never plan to live in wants to amend their constitution, or a congressional district is voting to replace a deceased member of the House. In normal times, school board elections are of little interest, even in the school districts in which they occur. It’s not uncommon for a winner to be elected with less than 5% of the eligible vote, even when the local high school football team is losing. Normally a typical voter wouldn’t be able to name a single member of his own State Supreme Court, or even if the members were elected or appointed. Said voter might remember something or other about someone running for judge unopposed. Fratzweiner, something like that. Boy judge or girl judge? Can’t remember if a vote was cast or not.

But these are fraught times, with America facing an ongoing coup from the far right. And as has happened before in history, the haters of democracy and freedom are trying to use those very foundations of society in order to rid themselves of democracy and freedom. So voters were confronted with religious zealots who want to ban abortion, books, and even science. They had to choose between little Trump clones and never-Trumpers. There were even candidates who openly stated that the voters should have no role on the candidates or issues upon which they were running for votes.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars from right wing propaganda pits (aka the National Associations of Zealots and Ideologues) and thousands of air-time hours spend by the Lord Haw-Haws and Tokyo Roses from the far right, and the threats, open and implied, from Trump and the MAGAts, the voters slapped down the far right resoundingly.

In Ohio, voters amended the state constitution to ensure the right to safe and legal abortions by a whopping half-million votes, 56.6% to 43.4%. Only a long-overdue measure to legalize cannabis for personal use was more popular (it got 57% of the vote). In Kentucky, the Democratic governor Andy Bashear, who was elected by a 5,000 vote margin in 2019, walloped his opponent, Daniel Cameron, by 67,000 votes. Cameron pretended to be a “moderate” on abortion, offering a horrible ‘split the baby’ compromise of banning abortion after 15 weeks. Worse, he tried to be a McConnell corporate fascist AND a Trump neo-Nazi at the same time, which only exacerbated the rift between Republicans who want to destroy the United States and Republicans who merely want to own it.

Even infamous Shasta County followed the trend. I was a bit surprised they had results, given they were insisting on hand-counting votes at last word (the state had ordered them to use the machines, which may be the totals reported unofficially). But then, only 6,000 votes were cast. In any event, Casey Bowden, a moderate who said he’s focused on giving teachers confidence to do their jobs, handily beat Camille King a “parental rights” advocate by a 58-42 margin.

In Kentucky, Democrats not only maintained control of the Senate, but took back the House.

Two states bucking the tide were Mississippi, where being related to Elvis Presley wasn’t enough (Republican Tate Reeves beat the Tupelo Honey 51-47) and Maine, which resoundingly rejected creation of a public-owned electric utility.

But mostly it was rejection of authoritarians and Republicans in general across the board. Moms for Liberty, the anti-trans book-banning hate group had been an ascendant force in 2022, and now found themselves on the losing end in over 60% of the school board races they participated in. Quite a few of the losers were running as incumbents.

Republican reaction was about what you might expect. Trump blamed McConnell in particular and RINOs in general, even though Trump-backed and Trump-supporting candidates performed even more dismally than the “mainstream” Republican candidates. MAGAts claimed the GOP was too moderate and needed to bear down on electing Trump, eliminating separation of church and state, banning abortion AND birth control, and imprisoning criminals, including refugees, Palestinians, and members of the FBI or IRS. One GOP candidate in NY who lost by a 70-20 margin howled that all Jews should leave New York City immediately because the Nazis had won. Mental health may have been an issue there.

The New York Times trying to game the elections with an amazingly fortuitous Siena polls just days before the election that claimed Trump was leading Biden in six key states, all of which Biden had won in 2020. Siena is a privately owned college (by the Franciscans) and I was unable to find their methodology beyond a claim that 600 where interviewed in each state, and a bland assurance that it was evenly spread to reflect the population at large, neither of which inspire much confidence in the accuracy of the poll.

But boy, I bet it sold newspapers and got lots of visits to the NYT website! Long time readers will recall that the Times flat out lied about the results of a in-depth survey of the vote count in Florida in 2000, and of course cheer-led and lied about the run-up to war with Iraq a couple of years later. An “independent” poll showing spectacular if problematic results gives them hits and plausible deniability, all at once. Win-win!

But it seems the voters weren’t interested in such efforts to pump up Trump and the GOP, and resoundingly rejected both.

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Zealotry Aborted — Kansas shows America not ready for religious fascism

Zealotry Aborted

Kansas shows America not ready for religious fascism

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 5th 2022

The only thing about the Kansas vote to reaffirm the state Supreme Court upholding the right to abortion that surprised me was the amount it won by: 59-41. I figured it would pass, but I wasn’t expecting the blowout margin.

Poll after poll has shown that the usurpation of the Constitution by the zealots on the federal Supreme Court is wildly unpopular, and free states are hustling to encode abortion rights if needed, and vowing to provide such rights to enslaved women in the zealot states. That’s why Kansas wasn’t a surprise so far as the result went. Abortion, and separation of church and state, cross partisan lines. It’s one thing to say that Kansas is one of the reddest states in the union; but not all Republicans march in lockstep with the preachers and demagogues that dominate that beleaguered party. And independents in particular will break ranks when it comes to maintaining rights and freedoms.

Kansas all but invented the term “prairie populism.” Often deeply religious, and conservative, but also strong-willed and independent. They may like and respect their Sunday preacher just fine, but they aren’t about to let him dictate how they should vote, or what rights the church can take away that the Constitution promises.

Kansas is one of the most heavily propagandized states in America, with all radio and much television devoted to reactionary Protestant broadcasting, or the endless lies and undermining of freedom that stems from hate radio. I figured that there were maybe 5% of the voters there brainwashed enough to cut off their own noses to “own the libs.” Well, it’s happened before. Look at the obviously incompetent, unfit, and inept trolls in Congress who got there despite having nothing—nothing at all—to offer other than snark and clownish defiance.

I’m happy to see that I was wrong, by about 7% of Kansas’ population. I figured abortion rights would win, but I was expecting a 52-48 margin. That it went the way it did is cause for considerable optimism.

One phenomenon that may have underlay the result was the open, gleeful, and acquisitive viciousness and cruelty that the zealots and the fascists of the GOP displayed. A few days after the Supreme Court (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Comey Barrett) decided to kick the rights of hundreds of millions of people under the nearest Bible, a nightmare scenario emerged, of a ten year old rape victim who had to travel to a neighboring state for an abortion. Any reasonable or rational people would look at that situation and consider making the new law less strident, more humane. There is no situation in which any government, no matter how god-burdened, should force a ten-year-old to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

The Washington Times is one of the shabbier exercises in propaganda journalism given birth by a different set of Zealots, the Moonies, although they dumped the rag a few years back, but it’s still a rag. That exercise in dysfunctional journalism cast doubt on the story, writing, “If there was a 10-year-old girl out there who had been impregnated, certainly there’d be a criminal investigation into her rape.

“But Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said this week that there was “not a whisper” of evidence to back up the story. ‘The bottom line is it is a crime if you’re a mandated reporter to fail to report. It’s also the fact that in Ohio the rape of a 10-year-old means life in prison,’Mr. Yost said on Fox News.” Yost either had no idea what he was talking about and didn’t bother to fact check first, or he was flat-out lying. The rape and rapist had been reported, and he is awaiting trial. But that didn’t stop zealots from sending death threats meant for the girl for the crime of getting raped and being a political embarrassment to them.

And then there’s the lies. Several “justices” on the Supreme Court lied, blatantly and with malice, declaring before the Senate and while under oath that Roe Vs. Wade was “established law” and they would respect stare decisis, which is the legal notion that precedent should determine legal decision making in a case involving similar facts. They lied, and got appointed under fraudulent circumstances.

All the anti-abortion crowd who said they just wanted to limit abortion, and didn’t want to interfere with contraception or a woman’s right to private medical counsel immediately started passing pre-written laws contradicting those stances. Some states are even trying to make it illegal to go to another state for an abortion, or even protest against the law.

Religious zealots believe that they have to be cruel in god’s name either because a) god is cruel, or b) god is kind, but wants to test his followers by making them be cruel. Zealots also believe that it’s ok to lie to “unbelievers” (everyone else) in the name of god. The zealots and corrupt toadies on the Supreme Court have unleashed this miasma of humanity loose on the land, and hideous stories of repression, cruelty, and oppression are emerging every where.

It’s how theocracies—all theocracies—work. The starry-eyed idiots who declare that life would be perfect if we put [god, allah, jesus] in charge miss an important fact: god isn’t running the show. It never has. It doesn’t exist. What a theocracy is is a group of politicians who find god to be the perfect figleaf for their own corruption and viciousness. God is the trump card that ends debate. You end up with The Church running the country, and it’s accountable only to an imaginary doormat that says whatever it is The Church wants it to say and says so on its behalf. It’s the ultimate scam, the Saudi Arabia, the 14th century Europe, and Cromwell’s England. The lowest misery of history, repeated over and over.

Kansas voters may or may not have figured that out. But a significant number of them realize that these people, these zealots, are not to be trusted, and allowed to run loose, will destroy America and everyone in her.

The naked face of religious and fascist zealotry has been exposed. People who wanted to believe are turning away.

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