Hunter’s Point — Game Set Match

Hunter’s Point

Game Set Match

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

January 10th 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Hunter Biden probably doesn’t have a personal theme song. Mostly that’s limited to politicians and /or megalomaniacs. Bill Clinton had “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” Calvin of cartoon strip fame usually made his up on the spot, and it was, of course, about him. All six year olds are megalomaniacal.

Since Hunter isn’t a politician and there’s no evidence to suggest he’s a megalomaniac, he may be one of those rare individuals who does something so outstanding and the public assigns a song to him.

After yesterday’s brutal fiasco of a open committee meeting where he did nothing worse than show up with lawyers, sit quietly except to note he wished to testify publicly, and then quietly left when Marjorie-Taylor Greene stood to assault and defame him.

The chaos this simple act caused was riveting, and if you ignore the fact that the Republican bozos are amongst the highest elected officials in the land, hilarious.

Nancy Mace fumed that Biden was taking advantage of ‘white privilege.’ “You are the epitome of white privilege coming into the Oversight Committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a Congressional subpoena to be deposed,” Mace told the president’s son. She had to ignore the fact that he was there offering to be deposed to testify in public.

When called out for such an asinine claim, (and I’m not making this up) Mace said, “I come from a district where rich and poor is literally Black and white, Black versus white on most days. My largest jail in my district, which is the largest jail in the state of South Carolina, has had seven or eight deaths in the last two years. I was there with our Black and African American council members trying to get the right thing done. And I’ve stood with those Black families because I know the differences that they see day to day in their life. And I try to do the best that I can.”

Yes, Nancy, you take real good care of your darkies. It’s just like they’re part of the family. But that doesn’t really explain how Hunter Biden was exercising white privilege, especially in front of Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.

Speaking of which, Armpit Maggie wasn’t amused by Biden’s snub. Ranting like a high school mean girl, she yelled at the departing Biden, “Excuse me Hunter! Apparently you’re afraid of my words! Wow, that’s too bad!” Mags, I don’t think that one is going to be included in “Great Speeches of the Twenty-First Century.” Biden didn’t explain the timing, but it’s known that Greene displayed a couple of dick pics, supposedly of Hunter, that were stolen from his laptop. It’s what you expect from Armpit Maggie.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) noted the deep Republican hypocrisy behind Biden refusing to testify in private: “Here is the subpoena to Scott Perry, who didn’t comply. Here is the subpoena for Mark Meadows… he did not comply. Here is the subpoena to Jim Jordan, who did not comply.” Moscowitz also showed subpoenas for former GOP Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). He added he would vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt if the same was done for every Republican he listed. Oddly enough, no Republican took him up on that.

The Republicans looked so stupid that Charlie Kirk wondered if they were secretly leftists.

Which brings me back to having a theme song for Hunter Biden. After all, you rarely see a fiasco like yesterday’s meeting where the instigator did nothing more than show up as demanded and politely offer to testify in public.

So theme song for Hunter: “Send in the Clowns.” Here’s a partial list of the lyrics: “Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, You in mid-air. Send in the clowns. Isn’t it bliss? Don’t you approve? One who keeps tearing around, One who can’t move. Where are the clowns? Send in the clowns?…Where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year…” [Credit: Frank Sinatra, Written by: Stephen Sondheim, Album: Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back] Sondheim couldn’t have possibly imagined the state of the 2024 Republican party, but he sure got their theme, didn’t he?

Which leads me to a second item As the Constitution stipulated, Congress must invite the President to give an annual State of the Union Address each year. Normally, the invitation is for some time around early-to-mid February. And separation of powers, don’t you know? The president can only do so at the invite of Congress. This year, the invite is for mid-March. Why such a late date? Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson remembers how Joe Biden flat-out owned the Republicans in the last year’s address. It was embarrassing. And he knows Biden openly calls Trump a threat to democracy. So he has scheduled the speech to occur AFTER the “Super Tuesday” primaries, thus assuring that Trump will be the nominee of the GOP, whether he has the legal right or not. It’s the sort of sneaky dishonesty you expect from zealots and fascists.

But the Constitution doesn’t say the president has to show up in person to deliver the speech. Thomas Jefferson, who had a terrible stutter and, not surprisingly, hated public speaking, delivered his speech by mail. Most Presidents in this media age love the almost always beneficial exposure they get from the speech. So people think it’s automatic.

But the president can, quite literally, mail it in. …Or they can have someone give the speech for them.

I think it would be kinda fun if Joe Biden decided not to address Congress, but sent, in his stead, Hunter Biden.

Wouldn’t that be FUN? There ought to be clowns…

SOTU 2023 — Biden—his time

SOTU 2023

Biden—his time

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 7th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

I had been kind of ignoring the State of the Union address in recent years. They were pretty bland and formulaic under most presidents—yes, folks, the state of the union is strong and gawd bless the troops. And under Trump, as with most things under Trump, it was a grotesque travesty.

But I had a feeling I might want to watch this, and boy, am I glad I heeded that sense.

Biden staged a masterwork in challenging the GOP in the most conciliatory way possible. It was amazing to watch. He started out lavishing praise on the GOP for all the bipartisan legislation that got passed (some of which only had a handful of GOP votes and caused considerable discomfort amongst the Republicans, who really hate to be seen as cooperating with the Democrats in any way, shape or form.

Then he put the Republicans on the spot by making them sit on their hands while reciting facts that brought thunderous applause from Democrats and the vast majority of Americans watching: the twelve million new jobs, the lowest unemployment since 1969, the rise in working class pay, the explosion in domestic manufacturing jobs, the CHIPS act, the IRA, the COVID relief measures. Republicans had to show they oppose all those things.

Then he spoke about the deficit, which has been falling at record levels since he took office, and noted that a full quarter of the national debt had been racked up under “my predecessor.” While he hid it extremely well (I don’t want to play poker against Joe Biden) this last caused the MAGA caucus to lose their little minds and start screaming at him.

He didn’t try to shut them down, but then, why should he? HE wasn’t the one being embarrassed by them. Instead, he invited them to stop by the White House and he would give them the facts and figures.

He was able to goad the Coo-Coo Caucus a couple of more times, on abortion rights and gun control, and there were loud shouts of “order!” which is was interest to note came, not from Democrats (THEY weren’t embarrassed by these fools, either) but Republicans.

Biden, with surgical skill, went on to recite a number of issues where the majority of Republicans at least tacitly agree with him (debt ceiling, pay for school teachers, etc.) and and really worked the intraparty divisions that exist within the GOP. Biden put his thumb in the gap and twisted, mentioning securing the border and stopping fentanyl.

Watching Kevin McCarthy was a treat. Yes, I just said that. He isn’t a good poker player, and his growing discomfort over the antics of the MAGAts eventually turned into an open glare after the fifth or so outburst from the “Toilet Training is for Sissies” contingent.

So Biden managed the very neat trick of taking the role of “Together, we can make it work” and simultaneously opening the rift between the crazies and the rest of the country wider. And there was no duplicity involved, which is the amazing thing. He did it simply by saying what he had accomplished, what he wanted to accomplish, and why he wanted to do so, and watched as Voltaire’s prayer was answered. “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.” Biden defeated the zanies and zealots with the one weapon they cannot counter: sweet reason and even temperament.

It made for the most entertaining SOTU since the days of Clinton, and while the zanies aren’t going to shrivel up and blow away, Biden has done a tremendous job of defanging them by making the show their fangs in response to friendly overtures.

Listening to Huckabye now. She is a hero because her mom survived cancer, and Trump was the greatest leader in history, and Biden has surrendered to a Chinese balloon. She isn’t staging a great comeback. Trump was a great hero. OK, Huckster. Whatever. Not one word about policy or goals; just the usual pseudo-patriotic pablum mixed with the usual god-flogging. America is in danger and god hates us, waaaaugh!

So: all in all a satisfying evening.

One thing for sure: the people who caught the SOTU in order to hate-watch are going to find it a whole lot harder to dismiss Biden as senile or foolish. He’s neither, and he’s smarter than most of you.

Has Manchin had His Moment of Zen? — Can he rise above the GOP?

Has Manchin had His Moment of Zen?

Can he rise above the GOP?

May 29th 2021

Joe Manchin, Senator from West Virginia, is probably the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. In an evenly split Senate, his decisions on such things as the infrastructure bill and the filibuster can possibly make or break the Biden presidency, and for that matter, the country itself.

Manchin has opposed ending the filibuster rules in the Senate, and while there is all sorts of conjecture as to why he supports this democracy-defeating relic of the ante-bellum days, it’s safe to say that self-interest isn’t one of those reasons. With the filibuster, he’s just another pointless vote in a Senate controlled by 41 of the Senators and 28% of the voting population. Without the filibuster he’s the deciding vote on most legislative items, minor and major, including all judicial nominees. Being the deciding vote is a dream of any congressional; he can parley his vote into advantages for his district and his constituents, and if he’s reasonably straightforward and honest in his dealings, he can use his place in the sun to career-boosting things such as plum committee assignments or support for a future presidential bid. For the next 18 months, getting rid of the filibuster would be very much to Manchin’s advantage.

Until yesterday, he had adamantly opposed changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster. He argument was that if things weren’t done in a bipartisan manner, the interests of the general population weren’t being served. This is a view that required utter blindness to the behavior of Republicans who are openly contemptuous of bipartisanship and regard “reaching across the aisle” as a sign of weakness.

Manchin’s delusion may have come crashing to Earth yesterday. That was when the Senate finally voted on whether to establish a commission to study the events of January 6th. The House has already voted on it, passing what should have been a no-question-about-it resolution with the support of only 35 Republicans.

Manchin regarded a Congressional inquiry into the events of that day as essential and seemed confident that there were at least 10 Republicans with the honor and courage to vote for the bill. After weeks of intense negotiation, mentored by Manchin, it was decided that rather than the usual arrangement of majority party getting 50% +1 in membership and agreeing that tie votes would defeat a passage of a report, the Republicans reneged when the vote came down, with only 6 of them voting for what they had agreed upon.

Republican reasons for their vote varied from not wanting to anger the monster from Mar-a-Lago to covering up complicity with the insurrectionists to avoiding embarrassment to the party to the simple, savage Gingrich-type glee of simply cheating the Democrats by pretending to negotiate in good faith and then shafting them on the vote itself.

The scales fell from Manchin’s eyes. He released a statement that evening, saying in full,

Before January 6, 2021, an attack on Congress and Democracy at our Capitol at the hands of our own citizens was unimaginable. In the 240 plus years of our great nation’s history, we have never seen an attack of this nature. Not even during our nation’s horrific Civil War did this happen. This was our chance to have a bipartisan commission that would allow for an impartial investigation into the events of that horrific day so we are better able to prevent another attack on our nation. Let me be clear – Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate accepted the proposed changes from Republicans because a commission of this nature must be bipartisan to be successful.   

This commission passed the House with a bipartisan vote. The failed vote in the Senate had six brave Republicans, but that was four short of the ten necessary to advance the legislation. Choosing to put politics and political elections above the health of our Democracy is unconscionable. And the betrayal of the oath we each take is something they will have to live with.

To the brave Capitol police officers who risk their lives every single day to keep us safe, the Capitol and Congressional staff that work around the clock to keep Congress running, even the reporters who work hard to deliver Congressional news to the American people and every American who watched in horror as our Capitol was attacked on January 6th – you deserve better and I am sorry that my Republican colleagues and friends let political fear prevent them from doing what they know in their hearts to be right.”

He was later quoted as telling reporters,”This job’s not worth it to me to sell my soul.”

That doesn’t sound like a man who has any trust or respect left for the Republicans in the Senate, does it? Whatever else you might say about him, he was honestly appalled by the events of January 6, and wants a reckoning. And he’s clearly tired of McConnell’s vicious little fascist games.

Biden was expecting something like this. He simply put his infrastructure bill in the 2023 budget intact, realizing that Republican “negotiations” were in bad faith, and just coincidentally, creating a space for a different major bill to be presented under Reconciliation, such as SR1, the Voting Act. He knows what the Republicans have in mind for us, and that they must be stopped.

I believe that Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer were waiting for the Republicans to take a last big bad-faith step like this. Public outrage is high over this vote—I wrote on Facebook that if your representative voted against this committee, you were being represented by a coward, a liar, a hypocrite and in all likelihood, a traitor, I didn’t get a single negative response.

If Schumer moves this coming week to abolish the filibuster—which only requires 50 votes, ironically—I believe Manchin will vote for it. After working hard to give the Republicans full representation on the committee in order to ensure a truly bipartisan result (he hoped!) he has to feel outraged and betrayed, and like all of the rest of us, deeply skeptical of Republican patriotism and basic decency.

We are at our make-or-break moment.

The Rise of the Codgers — or, Casey Kasem saves the universe

September 13th 2019

I didn’t bother watching the debate last night because I’m thoroughly fed up with the ‘loaves and fishes’ approach in which each candidate gets fifteen minutes to discuss eight or nine separate items in answer to questions the moderators pose, not to shed light, but to to show ‘impartiality’ by being the sort of assholes who put bugs in jars to ‘make them fight.’

But I’ve been hearing plenty about one incident; Joe Biden was hit with a gotcha question and fumbled the response. Perhaps not a ‘hold the presses!’ moment, but once the uproar died down, it lay bare a problem Joe, along with all the other major candidates for president this year, share.

One of the moderators asked Joe about an intemperate remark he made in 1975. Now, I’m sure you all remember 1975: disco, Whip Inflation Now buttons, endless rumors that the Beatles were getting back together, and Jaws. Cassette players were the hot new thing, and people speculated that it may cut into the popularity of vinyl LPs and turntables.

Joe’s remark, made a mere 44 years ago, was pretty vile. He was asked then about reparations, and said he would “be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” The moderator, who apparently had never read a news story since then, wanted to know what Biden had to say about that now. Biden decided to deflect, admitting that “…there is institutional segregation in this country.”

So far, so-so. He wasn’t going to address reparations, but he was at least willing to admit that race remained a central problem in the country.

I sure wouldn’t want to be held to account for some of the stupid stuff I said in 1975. Or even stuff that wasn’t particularly stupid at the time, but was just the sort of crap people said back then. So I understand how Joe handled it, am even a bit sympathetic.

But then, Joe got more tangential, arguing that black kids should have better educational opportunities, and saying that parents needed to play a bigger role in home instruction. To that end, he said, “Play the radio, make sure the television… make sure you have the record player on at night.”

OK, some people are saying that the deflection and trivialization of the issue was racist, but I don’t think that’s the case here: it was just Joe running his mouth and being a numbnuts. The answer was facile, and would have been condescending if Joe were able to understand he was talking down to people.

Well, Joe is the safe and uninspiring candidate. If you want to be safe and uninspired next year, he’s your man.

But his answer, aside from being tone-deaf and simplistic, revealed a bigger problem that Joe shares with Trump, Warren, and Sanders: they’re all codgers.

They’re all older than Reagan was when he first ran for president, and Reagan’s age was an issue—as was the fact that he had pretty severe dementia going on in his second term. More and more people are arguing that in addition to being a narcissist and a sociopath, Trump is also suffering from dementia, an argument that get more persuasive every time the man opens his mouth (or taps his phone) and utter nonsense spews out. Bernie obviously had a bad case of laryngitis going on last night, leaving me to wonder what kind of voice he would have by the end of the primaries. Warren was the only one of the four who appeared vigorous and up-to-date.

Joe’s codgerhood really came to the fore with the ‘record player’ remark.

First off, how many households with young children even HAVE a record player? Could a typical five year old know how to operate a record player, or would he be trying to jam the disk in a slot in the side, because he remembers seeing an old movie where people did that with their “CD players”?

For those of you born after 1968 who bother reading a codger like me, you played a record by dragging a needle along grooves in the disk. This created vibrations in the needle, which were converted to electrical impulses. It was all very 19th century. The sound quality was actually pretty good, and you could tell the gender of “Bing”, “Doris” and “Frank” if the record wasn’t warped.

Even “radio” is dated. It’s what my grandfather used to call “the wireless” (nothing to do with the internet or computers) and your grandpappy called “the ray-dee-oh”. It’s still around, and you can buy radios that pick up signals right out of the air broadcast mostly by religious nuts, scammers and neo-nazis.

Well, at least Joe knows they play music on the television, but then, MTV has been around since the early 80s. I’m not sure what Joe would make of a Roku player; I have a vision of that one ancient Star Trek movie, the one with the whales, where Scotty is trying to talk to a computer mouse.

The incident is trivial. I’ll talk about “winding a clock” or “looking at the road map”. I’m a codger myself. ‘Course, I’m not running for president, and compared to any of the three Democrats running, I would be a shit choice. (Compared to the incumbent, well let’s just say I’ve dropped turds that would make a better president than him).

My own speech is peppered with anachronisms. Hell, I still wear a wrist watch. (I took Douglas Adams’ hint and got a digital watch. It’s pretty cool.) This doesn’t mean I’m ready for ‘assisted living.’

Nor does it mean any of the Democratic frontrunners are ready for what we used to call “the old folks’ home”. Joe might be a numbnuts, but he was a numbnuts in 1975, too, and if he isn’t showing much in the way of progression, at least he isn’t showing signs of mental decline.

So don’t read too much into the ‘record player’ thing. It isn’t a red alert; it’s just a reminder that all these guys are within hailing distance of their 80th birthdays, and it’s gonna catch up to them, sooner rather than later.

It’s time for us baby boomers to let loose of the reins (a dated reference to a type of self-driving device before Tesla) and pass the torch (which was not carbon-friendly or LED) to the next generation, who by now have to be feeling a bit like Prince Charles, late middle-aged with nothing to do except wait for us to kick off.

It’s not like we did such a wonderful job of running things.

There’s a lot of potentially great leaders in their 50s and even 40s out there. The Constitution thinks the right persons would be ready to be president by age 35.

A codger will probably win the presidency next year. But hopefully, he or she will be the last of the codgers, and we’ll then start considering candidates born after the rise of the cassette tape.

Biden His Time – Trump’s gone fishing

May 12th, 2019

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani called Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, “independent, brilliant and honest.” Translated from Giulianese into Realspeak, that means that Barr is a servile flunky, dull-witted, and corrupt. Translating Giuliani is pretty easy, as it turns out. Just take whatever he says and invert it. Black is actually white, up is down, and Trump is wisdom and integrity personified.

But then after about five minutes of speaking, Giuliani’s 32 kilobits of RAM is depleted, his buffer is empty, and the inadvertent truths start tumbling out. His eyes go blank, he starts sweating profusely, and Fauxnews suddenly has to go to commercial.

He is the face of an administration that exists on typos, lies and cruelty. He’s a perfect match.

So why is he yakking about the Barrbarous One, anyway?

Well, Rudy managed to get his tail in a real crack this week. He planned to travel to the Ukraine as part of a mission to dig up dirt on the present leader of the Democratic thundering herd, Joe Biden.

Well, not Joe, actually. His son, Hunter. Hunter Biden.

Now, Hunter isn’t an angel. He got popped for cocaine in 2014 and got kicked out of the Naval Reserve as a result. He also joined the board of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, owned by Mykola Zlochevsky. Burisma in general and Zlochevsky in particular have been under a dark cloud of official suspicion of corruption for years, culminating in the Serious Fraud Office of the British government seizing some $23 million in Zlochevsky’s assets.

However, doing a fraud investigation on a Ukraine company is a bit like fishing for a particular turd in a septic tank. It’s dark, and there’s nothing to make a particular turd stand out. The Crown, confronted with systematic intransigence from the Ukraine government, eventually abandoned the investigation, unlocking the assets and paying the legal bills. That removed the legal liability, but not the suspicion. To give you some idea of how bad things are in the Ukraine, Zlochevsky, president of a natural gas company, had been the Minister of Ecology under the now-exiled Viktor Yanukovych.

It’s nearly as bad in the Ukraine as it is in Trumpistan, the former United States.

It doesn’t help that Hunter has close associations with Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street outfits. That doesn’t reassure as regards his business ethics and scruples. He’s was also banging his late brother’s widow after the brother, Beau, died. He proclaimed his love publicly, but this still had a fairly high element of creepiness about it. They broke up earlier this month, just about the time Daddy announced he was running for President. Pure coincidence, I’m sure.

Since the Ukraine activities ceased, he founded a hedge fund in China called Bohai Harvest RST, and the three billion dollar fund has involvement in various unsavory activities, such as mass surveillance and harassment of Moslems in China.

So it’s not too unreasonable to have questions about the activities of Hunter Biden.

But there’s never been any evidence that Joe Biden was involved in any of this. Indeed, as this was going on, his other son, Beau, was dying of brain cancer, which ensured Joe’s attention was elsewhere.

But the Ukraine thing was four years ago. Investigations went nowhere, and that particular turd eventually decomposed.

But now this month, Giuliani planned to go to the Ukraine in hopes the present Ukraine government could dig up some dirt on Joe Biden. It’s illegal to solicit campaign interference from a foreign government, but Giuliani probably looked at Trump and figured that if the President does it, it must be legal, and blabbed his intentions to the press.

I think the poor fool was honestly amazed at the reaction he got. In any event, he hurriedly canceled the trip, blaming Democrats and, weirdly, the Ukrainians.

Well, lo and fucking behold, here comes that Lion of Liars, the Parson of Persiflage, the Trumpty of Dumpty, Captain Pissmop himself, who declares grandly that Hunter Biden’s activities in the Ukraine need to be investigated, and is ordering his Attorney General, the “independent, brilliant and honest” William Barr, to open an investigation.

Yes, four years after the fact, and long after other investigations had closed on the matter.

Trump obviously feels that nobody should be near the White House who may have solicited illegal campaign meddling from foreign governments and been involved in shady financial dealings in the countries run by such governments. Why, to Trump, such a horrible situation was totally unthinkable.

So that’s why Giuliani was suddenly calling the sluggish William Barr “independent, brilliant and honest.” He needs some cover, and having Trump’s pet oaf of an A-G throw shade at Biden by attacking his son struck him as wise and patriotic (remember to translate from Giuliani to realspeak, now).

The remarkable speed with which Trump came up with the notion of having Barr investigate Hunter Biden tells us this: Trump originally told Giuliani to go to the Ukraine and get dirt from their government on the son of the now-leading Democrat he might have to face in 2020. If Trump hadn’t already known about it, he would have done what he usually does when Rudy does something exceptionally stupid and unexpected, and just left him to twist in the wind. The fact that he overreacted so quickly tells us he’s looking to cover his own ass, at least to the extent that he’ll give Rudy enough cover that Rudy won’t panic and blow the whistle on Trump.

And we think the Ukraine is corrupt.

If I ever run into Robert Mueller, I’m going to have to ask him what bait he uses to go fishing in the Trumpistan septic tank for a particular turd.

Well, Mueller will be appearing before Congress later this month. I don’t guess he’ll have any thoughts on Hunter Biden, but he will tell us about life in Septic Washington.

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