Tag: campaign

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Tonight’s Debate — Hero versus Zero

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 10th 2024

Tonight’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will probably decide who the next president will be. For Trump fans, there is hope: if he wins, you’ll never have to endure another presidential campaign again. People like Leonard Leo, Elon Musk and Jared Kushner will be deciding your rulers from now on. No more silly elections where weak and foolish nobodies can push the movers and shakers of society around.

That, in a nutshell, is what is at stake here. Do you want to keep your country, or turn it over to people who have no problem with turning Donald Trump loose on you? Plutocrats in Germany faced a similar situation in the early ‘30s. It didn’t end well. Nor would it end well here.

So here’s what Harris needs to do tonight. Don’t attack Trump personally other than to call out his lies. Start the debate by pointing out that every lie Trump tells will be listed and refuted by her campaign the following morning. Every single one. Feel free to needle him: mention his criminal convictions and policy failures.

Second: refute the right wing talking points, rather than Trump’s inevitable lies. The border is not in crisis. Immigrants aren’t creating a crime wave of any sort. Inflation has halted. Unemployment is good. The military is strong. Energy production is the highest it’s ever been, including oil. Oh, and as a personal favor, could you assure people that Canadians aren’t sneaking over the border to eat your cats? I would like to be able to order cat food online without getting a visit from the FBI.

Hammer policies, but don’t drown the viewers in details. There’s only a half dozen that really matter to voters. Tell them that on immigration, you will ask the new Congress to take up the border bill that Trump scuttled. On the economy, talk about jobs. You’re in great shape there. Mention the number of jobs—millions–created by the Inflation Reduction Act. Assure people you will submit a national reproductive freedom act to get the zealots out of our beds. Press for an end to the slaughter in Gaza. Remind people that in a situation very similar to America’s, Netanyahu stays out of prison only for as long as he is conducting his ‘war.’ Let people know that Netanyahu no more represents the spirits and ethics of Israel than Trump does America. Both are criminals willing to sacrifice country for personal gain.

Promise to move forward on global warming. It’s too late to avoid serious damage, but it’s not too late to avoid self-annihilation. Although you’ll probably want to give that a more positive framing.

Point out that much of the GOP leadership of former years have endorsed you, or at the very least refused to endorse Trump. You have people like Liz and Dick Cheney who realize that you are better than Trump. He is not a Republican, he is not a conservative. He is a fascist. Much of the GOP leadership, including a huge swath of Trump’s administration, prefer you to more of him. And no, that is not normal. It’s a sign that every responsible and patriotic conservative, no matter how different their policies, put America ahead of Trump and what he represents. The Guardian just reported that “Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Donald Trump’s White House communications director, and Olivia Troye, who was homeland security adviser to Mike Pence and a top aide on the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, will speak out against Donald Trump and for Harris ahead of the debate, the campaign said.” Nobody has ever heard of defections like those before, ever. Trump is widely hated within his own party.

Even though your mike will be muted as he speaks, don’t be afraid to mug for the camera. He’s going to say some ridiculous things. Don’t hesitate to laugh, roll your eyes, and make “what-in-the-fuck-is-he-talking-about?” gestures. Don’t make the mistake of taking him seriously. He hasn’t earned it, and never will. Let America know you don’t see him as a worthy opponent, because he is not.

There’s a lot riding on this. You can do it.

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The Trump Grump — Claiming Harris-ment?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 14th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I had fun (or some equivalent word that carries the same meaning as “enjoying getting a root canal”) watching the Trump/Vance show with Mark Robinson in North Carolina today. No, I wasn’t in North Carolina. It’s August, and I’m not nuts. That’s just where the rally was.

Now, Robinson himself is a real piece of work. He attained his political philosophy from reading the gospel of Saint Limbaugh of the Rushes, and just sort of went downhill from there. He is true to those teachings, I’m sad to say. He’s opposed to abortion under all circumstances, unless one of those circumstances happens to be that Mark Robinson is the daddy. He denies climate change, and wants marijuana consumption to be a felony. He prattles on about the Rothschilds and “international bankers” which is a red flag to any Jew. Robinson also wrote: “this foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash,” and “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” (Caps are his, a grammatical twitch he shares with Trump.)

“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it filth. And if you don’t like that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.” He also wants to end the separation of church and state in public schools.

OK. He seems nice. He’s a big part of Trump’s outreach to minorities, you know. He was Trump’s second choice for that job, but then it came to light that his first choice, Uncle Ruckus, was a fictional character.

The Trump campaign billed today’s rally as being a major policy address on the economy. Trump addressed that with the laser-like focus that we’ve all learned to associate with him, telling the small crowd he was “not sure” he agreed that the economy is the most important issue of the election. I guess he got the news that inflation was 0.2% for the past three months, and that the polls showed people had more faith in the Democratic Party to manage the economy—the first such result in nearly twenty years. So suddenly the economy is no big deal. Trumpkins, write that down. It will be on the final exam.

Trump said he would cut gas and energy prices in half. No, really. He said that. But that noble determination and vision that is the Trump trademark caused him to add, “If it doesn’t work out, you’ll say, ‘Oh well, I voted for him. I still got it down a lot.’” No, really. He said THAT, too. Gas production is at record heights right now, and gas prices are lower than they were in 2021. I begin to understand why Trump doesn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of economics.

A few years ago, Trump said, “The economy always seems to be better under Democrats than it is under Republicans. It shouldn’t be, but it is.” That was before he entered politics and still had most of his marbles.

He doubled down, quite literally, on the tariffs he wants to impose. It had been a 10% tariff on all imports. Now he wants it to be 20%.I devoted an entire essay to that notion a couple of months ago, detailing what a catastrophic mess it would make of the economy. All I said then, times two.

He also said the day he takes office there will be the biggest economic boom. “It will be a boom,” he promised. Um, yeah. OK.

Trump also praised his sit-down with Elon Musk, saying it was “one of the most successful shows ever done”. Watching him discuss climate change with the nepo baby who runs Ex-twitter brought to mind the phrase “Beavis and Butthead try to work the microwave.” If stupidity could alleviate climate change, those two would have us in an ice age by now.

Trump also stopped to mock Harris’ laugh. He’s on safe ground there: Nobody has ever seen him laugh, and I’m not convinced he understands why people laugh. Perhaps he thinks it’s from an itchy nose, or a sort of cough only the uncouth engage in.

The rest of his “policy statement” was the usual mish-mash of lies and smears.

Meanwhile, Shady JD continued his own particular charm offensive. Today’s offering was his opinion that the role of post-menopausal women was to be baby sitters. After all, if they can’t pump out babies, of what use are they?

While Vance hasn’t agreed to it yet, Tim Walz and CBS News have agreed to a vice presidential debate on October 1st. Walz said, “I’ve got to tell you. I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,” The chesterfield jokes, admittedly unfair, are slowly dying down and will go away. Or you might say, “Sofa, so good.”

Trump is trying to lay the groundwork for challenging Harris’ candidacy, arguing that switching candidates in mid campaign is unconstitutional. It’s not, of course. In fact, the constitution doesn’t mention political parties at all. Quite a few of the Founders were hoping political parties wouldn’t arise in the first place, and originally, it was set up so whoever got the second-most votes in a presidential election automatically became the vice-president. George Washington considered the costs of having to hire a food taster and suggested an alternate approach might be tied. But Trump is lining up ways to seize office no matter how the vote goes. And he has some of the most powerful scumbags in the country behind him.

So even though things are going Harris’ way for now, don’t let down your guard. Even if Trump is an insensate drooler by election day, there are some who want him as a figurehead. Be vigilant.

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GOP is Trumped — Disintegration is snowballing

GOP is Trumped

Disintegration is snowballing

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

March 24th, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

There’s a “train-crash” fascination to the on-going destruction of the Republican party. The other day the House caved on the latest appropriations $1.1T bill, and Armpits Maggie promptly filed a motion to vacate, the GOP rule that allows the party to dump their own speaker at any time and for any reason. Should the vote occur, then religious nutbag Mike Johnson and his “head-of-lettuce” tenure will go the way of Kevin McCarthy. And of course, even with a unanimous party-line vote, the GOP doesn’t have enough seats to refill the position. Two hundred and eighteen votes are required from the full House, and they only have 217 seats. That will drop to 216 in April.

That’s assuming the vote is even held. However, there is a procedure called “motion to table” which allows the House to decide if a motion should reach the floor for a vote in the first place. Yes, it’s repetitive and redundant, which makes it perfect for fans of repetitive redundancy.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who likes Mike Johnson about as much as he likes toe fungus, has an idea. A handful of Dems could vote for the motion to table, along with the large majority of Republicans, and that only needs a majority of the quorum, so at most 216 votes to pass. Mind you, they won’t be voting FOR Mike Johnson. They would simply be voting not to vote at all.

But Mike Johnson would have to make a deal. First on the agenda would be for Republicans to step aside and permit the $95b aid package to Ukraine to go through. Second would be to permit a full floor vote on the border bill that Trump scuttled a couple of weeks ago. And if it were up to me, I would add a third stipulation: shut down the Biden impeachment inquiry. Lev Parnas blew the inquiry, already a bad joke, sky-high. Johnson might actually see that as a favor, since it’s reached the point where the only people being damaged by it are Republicans. But it would mean that the House would actually have to do real work, like voting on legislation and formulating plans to move the country forward. So maybe it would not be such a gain for the GOP, unless of course they decide they need to distract from Trump rather than serve him.

Trump himself is disintegrating rapidly. His latest stunt was to boast that he had the cash to cover the real estate fraud judgment against him while at the same time insisting that he doesn’t have the assets or the ability to have the judgment underwritten. We’ll find out tomorrow how that is going to turn out. It’s not impossible that Trump could face criminal counts of fraud and perjury from this going forward.

The latest was the merger between Truth Social and Digital World Acquisition Corporation. The media are loudly braying that this merger would give Trump an on-paper valuation of three billion dollars, but in reality it will do nothing of the sort. Truth Social is a toy social network, with active membership around 850,000 and dropping. DWAC is pure smoke and mirrors, selling only memes, with their entire valuation based on the number of mouse clicks they get. Does that sound like something worth three billion dollars to you?

But Trump can’t cash out his shares for six months after the deal goes into affect. And lenders aren’t going to look at the initial IPO price and assume Trump has three billion in stock; they’re going to look six months ahead, to when Trump would have to repay their loan with interest, and see if the stock has retained even 1/6th of its value.

And it won’t. Neither company has anything tangible to offer, and I predict the IPO will be one of the most disastrous in market history—and it won’t recover. Why should it? It could lose 80% in its first day of trading, and I wouldn’t care to bet it even had penny stock status by mid October.

The latest with Trump is that his handlers are trying to keep him out of the public eye as his mental and intellectual deterioration continues to snowball. Instead, they’re releasing videos of speeches and rallies he held in 2020 and even 2016, and hoping the media won’t notice. Even American corporate media would have to take note of that, especially since the speeches would be referring to “Crooked Hillary” or talking about getting out of Afghanistan.

Further, handling Trump, even in his dotage, is a challenge. Compos Mentis or not, he’ll want to babble to live cameras about how smart he is and how everyone loves him and will vote for him to kick that wicked President “Gangly” Lincoln out of office once and for all. So he’ll be appearing on OANN and Newsmax, and posting all-caps messages on Truth Social, and Democrats will be gleefully recording and using all of them. Trump has already come out in favor of slashing Social Security and Medicare, and wants a nation-wide 15 week abortion ban, which is political suicide.

Trump wrapped up the delegates needed for this summer’s convention, making him the nominee. (Biden did the same, only much more quietly and in a more orderly fashion, and didn’t threaten to kick anyone who didn’t support him out of the party, because Biden has a functioning brain.)

But between his legal and medical problems, I’m only offering one in four odds that by election day, Trump will still be the candidate of the GOP. The party itself, to all intents and purposes, may have ceased to exist by then.

If three Republicans in the House quit or change their designation and leave the caucus, Hakeem Jeffries might well be Speaker and Democrats may control the House before they have to certify the election results, and there’s now a very good chance that may happen as the lunatic right, led by Trump, cause sane conservatives to desert the party in drove.

Say what you will, but it’s not going to be boring. Or routine. Or normal. Or even particularly sane.

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Oklahoma Crude — Repulsa in Tulsa a Fiasco

sadclownTrump

Oklahoma Crude

Repulsa in Tulsa a Fiasco

June 21st 2020

South of the equator, yesterday was the day of the Winter Solstice. So cheer up, fellas! You’re over the hump. Don’t lose hope. (Note to self: don’t mention that for the rest of us in the northern hemisphere, it’s all downhill from here.)

I was keeping a wary eye on the news yesterday, since the Trump campaign kick-off rally took place in Tulsa, OK. There was a confluence of so many factors that I was concerned that it could prove a flash point leading to a very large social explosion.

It may well have been on the minds of all those gathered: the Trump supporters, the protesters and counter protesters, and the police. Aside from a few minor incidents, the event concluded peacefully, which was a credit to all sides. Even the ones who might have been looking for trouble seemed to have second thoughts.

Trump was determined to stir the shit, and brought his full arsenal of race-baiting, xenophobia, and defamation of any who oppose him to the show. But he gazed around the half-empty stadium, doubtlessly thinking of his campaign’s boasts that a million people had expressed an interest in attending (only 6,275 did, according to the stadium gatekeepers), and gave his two-hour speech in a listless monotone, and just fifteen minutes in, his enthusiastic audience of true believers were beginning to look openly bored. Outside, the stage for the planned-for overflow rally was being dismantled (the campaign seriously expected between 100 and 300 thousand people to flood into Tulsa for this event) and millions of viewers were gifted with the eerie sight of a twenty-four foot screen in the parking lot showing Trump addressing the audience inside, with an audience of exactly nobody. You would think that there might be some old guy, taking his dog out for an evening stroll, who stopped to see what the asshole was saying while his dog relieved itself, but no. Just one lonely, bored tech whose job it was to make sure nobody stole the screen or the equipment running it. And he wasn’t even watching it.

Trump, apparently determined to keep the public attention focused on his mental and physical health, ranted for 15 minutes about the news noting his difficulties maneuvering down the ramp at the West Point ceremony (It didn’t help that someone found an old video of Obama ascending the same ramp with the carefree grace of a teenager). Trump then essayed to show his audience that yes, he could indeed drink a glass of water using one hand. The audience cheered—one of the few things they really had to cheer about on this sad night—but everyone watching on television could see it was a tiny 6 ounce glass, half-full, and even then his movements were slow and considered. If it was a sobriety test, he would have failed. He went on to rant about poor old lazy and demented Joe, apparently unaware that the Biden campaign had just put out an ad showing Biden jogging, where he pauses to tell the camera, “I would like to see Trump do this.”

Trump also made the extraordinarily stupid boast that he asked for testing for the coronavirus to be slowed down, leaving people to wonder if he really thought less tests meant less cases. That’s a bit like eating 4,000 calories a day, convinced that so long as you don’t step on the scales, you aren’t putting on weight. It’s magical thinking, and about the lowest and most self-destructive form of magical thinking there is. This should be in every Democratic ad between now and November, if they have any sense at all.

Speaking of which, one online correspondent told me that the sparse turnout may have saved thousands of lives. Given the exponential nature of contagion, I’ve little doubt that he’s right. Horowitz, of course, had the mot juste: “Coronavirus disappointed by small turnout.” Trump’s campaign slogan ought to be “Donald: Because he’s killed a lot less people than he might have.”

Finally, there were the images of the Donald alighting from the Marine helicopter on the grounds of the White House in the predawn hours. Exhausted, haggard, obviously depressed, he had his tie undone and hanging from around his neck like a suicidal rattlesnake, and his pose could only be described as ‘abject.’

Fingerpointing for this undeniable fiasco began at once. Brad Parscale, man most likely to be unemployed by Monday night, opined that the campaign based its inflated projections of attendance on thousands of K-Pop fans on TikTok who reserved most of the tickets and flooded the “interested in attending” page. Someone finally noticed the hideous optics of a professional campaign getting scammed like that by a bunch of teenagers in Korea (you don’t put a $25 deposit on reserving a ticket, for crissakes?) and decided that some 300,000 committed Republicans were going to show, but were scared off by AntiFa(scists) and BLM protesters. There were about 300 anti-Trump protesters there, consisting of the usual suspects—school teachers, college students, and (shiver violently as I say the words) people who hate fascists. If they really scared off 300,000 Republicans, then they made the Battle of Thermopylae look weak by comparison. The Trump campaign just blamed the poor attendance on widespread cowardice within the party. That should play well with his supporters.

Trump looked like a cornered rat, and you know what they say about cornered rats. He, and his party and followers, are going to be more dangerous and extreme going forward, now unable to entertain the belief they are an unstoppable popular front.

One indication of this came in the form of an unbelievable full page ad in the Nashville Tennessean. In fairness, the paper did immediately repudiate and pull the ad once the blow-back began, saying, “The ad is horrific and is utterly indefensible in all circumstances. It is wrong, period, and should have never been published. It has hurt members of our community and our own employees and that saddens me beyond belief. It is inconsistent with everything The Tennessean as an institution stands and has stood for and with the journalism we have produced.”

Fair enough. But the ad was beyond belief, written by some end-times crackpot who claimed that “Islam” was going to explode a nuclear weapon in Nashville sometime during the month of July. Quite aside from the hateful nature of the speech, there’s the fact that not everyone in Nashville is that tightly wound, and an ad like that could cause a panic.

There’s never a shortage of end-times crackpots around. I know several personally. Generally, they’re harmless. But some have both money and malice. And it’s not unusual for papers to have various nuts show up, money in hand, demanding that the local paper vouchsafe whatever demented and paranoid fantasies they have to the populace. Generally, papers have enough sense to tell them to bugger off.

Someone in a position of responsibility at the Tennessean thought publishing this was a good idea. Maybe it would get a few Moslems lynched. Maybe it would help Trump. Someone thought something this extreme and foolish would help the cause.

The right is crowded with people like that, and they are starting to panic.

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The first attack of the 2020 campaign – Bierman begins with shots at Warren with only 671 days to go

January 2nd 2019

Well, it’s 2019, and the shameless hypocrisy, dishonesty and flat-out delusion that caused the insane right that took over the GOP to continue with a business-as-usual approach, even as their party leader plunges like a meteorite, loud, flashy, messy but doomed to end badly.

A writer for the Tribune News Service, one Noah Bierman, wrote an opinion piece cleverly disguised as a news story, supposedly reporting on Elizabeth Warren’s new year eve announcement that she was forming an exploratory committee, which is poli-legalspeak for announcing she’s running for president.

Bierman bothered with exactly one quote from Warren’s 4½ minute announcement: “We can rebuild America’s middle class, but this time we gotta build it for everyone.” Apparently none of the remaining 4:27 seconds was worthy of mention in Bierman’s judgment.

He begins with mention of Warren’s age, and at this point, that’s fine. He mentions that Trump, Biden and Sanders are all older, and that a lot of Democrats and Independents think it’s time for a “generational change.” Nothing to take issue with there. But it was the first thing in Bierman’s news queue after a perfunctory and uninformative two paragraphs on the announcement itself, followed by the usual vacuous horse-race “process analysis” of the race itself.

But since Bierman couldn’t be arsed mentioning it, it should be noted that Warren warned of a dark path America was on that meant “Our government is supposed to work for all of us, but instead, it has become a tool for the wealthy and well-connected,” and “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a bigger slice.”

This is important stuff. In fact, it defines the battle over who owns America.

But Bierman thinks the “Pocohantas” controversy is more important. It’s a rallying cry against Warren that he takes from a loathsome, low-brow bigot named Donald Trump. He doesn’t mention that for years, and in his alleged biography, Trump himself claimed to be Swedish, because he felt a German ancestry was disreputable. That’s pretty vile compared to repeating a family legend that they had some Cherokee blood a few generations back. Now, if Warren had said she was of Hawaiian descent rather than Cherokees because she found a Cherokee background embarrassing, then people better than Trump might have had cause to criticize. But that isn’t what she did. She wasn’t ashamed of her family.

Bierman thinks it was wrong of Warren to take a DNA test which suggested her family legend was correct. Ah, but it’s been so long since a politician actually produced evidence to support a claim that poor Bierman had no idea what to do. In the GOP, politicians don’t tell the truth, let alone try to demonstrate that what they are saying is true. ‘Taint American! What’s next? Science?

While stopping to point out Warren’s few legislative achievements, noting she was in the minority party without context, he then goes on to describe Warren’s struggle with the banks without detailing any of what the struggle is about, but marveling that she can raise money even though she’s critical of an industry that Bierman evidently thinks controls the political process. Bierman is curiously uncritical of that control, but seems to feel it’s just a part of nature. Let us all worship the Invisible Hand.

He goes on to note she got only 60% of the vote against an “unknown” in 2018 calling her support “tepid” and surmising that many of her own supporters don’t want her to be president. It’s true, in all likelihood, but omits the fact that most people think she can be far more effective and get more of her advocacy translated into law right where she is, in the Senate. She is minority chair Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection; and a member of these other powerful committees: Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Economic Policy; Securities, Insurance, and Investment; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Primary Health and Retirement Security. She can put a serious hurt on the Wall Street casino from there. Especially when you consider that whoever the next president is, or the circumstances under which that person becomes president, the office has been significantly weakened by the antics of the crazed fool presently residing in the White House.

Continuing to ignore her platform, Bierman finished up by gleefully quoting the Boston Globe editorial board, which labeled her a “divisive figure”. He didn’t mention why the Globe said that, which is fair, because the Globe itself didn’t seem to have a reason beyond the fact that she only got 60.8 of the vote, saying, “Those are warning signs from the voters who know her best. While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure. A unifying voice is what the country needs now after the polarizing politics of Donald Trump. “

At least they did mention Trump, the most divisive president since FDR or possibly Lincoln, and one of the new breed of Republicans who tries to be deliberately divisive.

In this case, “divisive” simply means “stands for something the banks and other massive corporations don’t want” and “easy to smear.”

Jess McIntosh, a former outreach coordinator for Hillary Clinton, spoke about a wider phenomenon in the media outside of the right wing smear machine: “In the very beginning, as we just start to see women candidates coming through, I want to be cautious that we don’t fall into the sexist trap of talking about their likability exclusively,” she said. “It’s not about running for prom queen, it’s about running for president, and we need to make sure we are treating the women in the race the same as the men.”

He could easily have been including Bierman in the list of reporters he was addressing. I don’t believe Bierman is one of the raging sociopaths of talk radio, and nor is he one of the sleek and sophisticated liars of Fox News.

I believe that he is a reporter who mistakes what corporations want for what America needs, and falls for the herd mentality memes that seem to attach themselves to any Democratic candidate. He mistakes process for substance, and criticisms of the person for criticisms of the policy.

It’s an abdication of what he needs to be doing as a reporter, and it’s the same family of omissions that made the Trump monster possible in the first place.

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