Tag: government shutdown

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Cornered Rat — More dangerous to deal with

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 27th 2025

This week’s offensives against George Soros and the city of Portland reflect, not a disintegration of America, but a disintegration of the Donald Trump regime.

The Epstein files aren’t going away, and now, with the election of a new Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona (in a deep red district that went for Trump by 30 points!) Congress now has the votes to force a floor debate and vote on the matter.

Mike Johnson, perhaps the greatest coward in the history of Congress, has suspended congressional business for a week while frantically trying to delay swearing in newly minted Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. This would under normal circumstances, be the sort of chickenshittery you might expect from Johnson-without-a-Johnson, but what makes this far more remarkable is that it means Congress cannot do anything to avoid a government shutdown on October 1st. Trump is, incredibly, trying to make that part of his plan, which apparently involves firing most of the people that made government functional. While the shutdown would not affect Social Security or Medicare or Veteran Affairs (already damaged by Trump and Musk’s sweeping rape of the government) it would bring to a halt most of the government’s most loved elements—national parks and reserves, monuments, and most other non-essential functions.

We’ve been through this contrived “crisis” a dozen times or more since Newt Gingrich realized it was a great way to extort the country. And sometimes the government has shut down, and Republicans have taken it on the chin each time because the public, for the most part, realized who the extortionists were.

This time is different. Not only can Congress not come up with a last-minute solution to the crisis, but Trump’s answer is to fire all the non-essential workers, ensuring the crisis becomes permanent no matter what Congress does.

The Republicans rigged the “Big Beautiful Bill” to ensure that the most vicious fallout wouldn’t occur until after November 2026, and this will undo in one swipe the palatability for the stupid people who love Donald Trump.

Donald announced a military invasion of “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon yesterday. This will come as news to Portland residents, who probably thought their greatest adversary was forest fires—and this has been a relatively mellow fire season.

He also declared AntiFa a “domestic terrorism” organization. He needs to set up a new PAC: “Fascists against AntiFascism.”

He has also declared war on George Soros because decades of antisemitic “pro-Israel” propaganda from Faux News means most of his supporters have heard of Soros. But then, Soros is supporting Newsom’s redistricting battle after Texas’ Trump-sponsored move to steal five Congressional seats.

And last week was an unmitigated fiasco for Trump. First, there was the Jimmy Kimmel thing. The only thing stupider than losing to a comedian with twenty million followers is picking a fight with a comedian with twenty million followers in the first place.

Then there was the catastrophe of the UN address. Bad enough that Trump’s staff fucked up the teleprompter, which meant that the wingless Donald had to fly solo, but he went on to tell the assemblage their countries were all “going to hell”, and whined about the teleprompter, an escalator that stalled, and that the UN rejected a remodeling bid from Trump FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.

One Blue Sky wit wrote, “Lead your life in such a way that if the escalator breaks, it isn’t because someone wants to kill you.” Seems easy enough advice to follow, doesn’t it? Well, funny story…

So, Donald is on the ropes. He’s scared, he’s desperate.

That isn’t necessarily good news: cornered rats are considerably more dangerous than regular rats. Remember that.

But murderous desperation is showing up in Congress, too. Marjorie Taylor-Greene posted a tweet today telling her members that In the Event Of, she wants them to know she isn’t even remotely suicidal and any unexpected death should be met with a healthy skepticism. Now, MT-G is noted for histrionic persiflage, it is true, but this sounds more like someone who is genuinely frightened. I’ve little love for her, but I wish her a long and healthy life!

Meanwhile, another nasty clown in the GOP, one “John Gillette (R-Kingman), wrote on the social media site X that U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., was calling for the government to be overthrown and should be hanged. ‘Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged.. it will continue,’ Gillette said in response to a video of Jayapal.’’ [excerpt from Huffpost]

Jayapal’s ‘crime’? Calling for people to get out and demonstrate. That’s all.

I have a feeling that we are rapidly approaching a climax to the rise and hoped-for fall of Donald Trump. But I won’t breathe freely until he is out of office and in prison where he belongs.

Best of luck, everyone!

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Sixes and Sevens — An act of courage to save the country

Sixes and Sevens

An act of courage to save the country

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 24th, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I haven’t been writing political pieces for the past few weeks for the simple reason that the political scene in the United States has gone utterly mad. I don’t need to spell it out for you. You already know that a small group of febrile zealots and fascists have leveraged the slim margin the GOP have in the House to turn the place into an utter clown show, aided by the weakest and most ineffectual Speaker in the history of the Republic. You know how bad the situation is; they want a shutdown for all sorts of crackpot reasons; ban abortion, impeach Biden, and, oh, I don’t know—maybe make NASA come clean about the great UFO conspiracy, or hang General Milley, or something.

There IS a way around this, though, and I’ll bet at least some House Republicans are already contemplating the very same answer.

All it would take would be for a relative handful of the sane Republicans in the House to leave the party. Oh, they wouldn’t have to defect and become Democrats; there’s enough conservatives in the Democratic Party as it is. They could just declare themselves independents, and leave the Republican caucus.

For it to work, it would take just six out of the 160 or so Republicans who aren’t really part of the insane clown posse that calls itself MAGA. The math is simple: presently, there’s 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats. Two seats are vacant. If just six Republicans became independent, you would have 212 Democrats, 215 Republicans, and 6 independents. If the six voted with the Dems on the budget plans that already passed the Senate by huge margins (70% of Republican Senators voted for them), the shutdown crisis would be averted.

It would be an act of considerable courage. Quite aside from the inevitable threats against themselves and their families from the violent lunatics that Trump formed into a cult, it would probably be the end of the GOP as we know it. Oh, a new right-of-center party would eventually arise from the ashes, and the sooner the better because no democracy should be a single party, even if it’s ‘the good guys.’ The defectors would be vilified and harassed for years. Obviously, there is some safety in numbers—ask any minnow—and if 12, or 20—defected then that would diffuse the threats.

Now, some of you have probably realized that what I’m suggesting is that we nullify one splinter group that has undue influence in the House and replace it with another splinter group that has undue influence in the House. Those six, or twenty or however many ex-Republicans will effectively control all legislation, even determine not only who the next Speaker is, but which party he is from.

But here’s the main thing that makes this different: this group will self-select based on such criteria as common sense, sanity, desire to un-paralyze the House, and patriotism. Oh, I know most politicians regard patriotism much the same way as most priests regard faith; something to wave in front of the plebs to keep them glassy-eyed. But at the very least they realize that destroying the government in the name of America is bad for business and will probably get a lot of people killed. And they understand that the amorphous and diffuse concept of “America” is a very poor replacement for “The United States of America.” The US as a constitutional democratic republic is far better than the vague, cloying and usually idiotic notions the morons get when they get glassy-eyed over “America” which combines the worst of patriotism and faith.

It could work. It would work. Just six at a minimum. More is better. Yes, it’s a temporary fix, one that will allow the country to stagger forward to the next election when, hopefully, the voters will cast off the madness of the zealots and ideologues that have made “America” something very toxic.

I’m not going to soft-peddle this: it would be an act of remarkable courage by those who defect. They would make many enemies for what at best would be a transitory gain, and some, if not all, might get voted out in the next election, if only because if one party or the other gets a majority, their leverage is gone. I’m not asking them to return an overdue library book; I’m asking them to throw themselves on the grenade. History will view them kindly, for whatever that’s worth.

Are there a half dozen Republicans who have the integrity and guts to do the right thing? If just 2% of Republicans do that right thing, they will be remembered as saving the country from the madness of Trump and the malice of Putin.

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