Decision Day 2024 — House and Senate up for grabs, along with our future

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 4th 2024

Kamala Harris is going to win. And fairly substantially. She will be our next president and with any luck at all, by next March Donald Trump will be just a bad memory.

But if you can vote, do so. Especially if you are in a state or a Congressional district that is even remotely close. Harris won’t be able to put many of her campaign promises into effect if Republicans control either House. At this point, I think the Dems have a good chance of taking the House back, but I’m not so sure about the Senate. Even with Mitch McConnell shuffling off to well-deserved obscurity, I expect whoever replaces him will be just as obstructionist and possibly a crazy MAGAt.

Some of the smaller polls are producing startling results. Texas might just dump Ted Cruz, and may even break for Harris, despite the best efforts of the fascist government in Texas to skewer and interfere with the vote there. North Carolina may go for Harris: a lot of voters there heard Trump’s claims of no government assistance in the wake of the hurricanes, looked around, and realized that Trump was lying. Many realized that the future will bring more natural disasters, and they need a government that won’t base assistance on how you voted in the last election. Harris is leading in solidly red Iowa by two points.

America needs a government that is competent, clean, and works on behalf of everyone in the country, and not just people waving Trump flags. Unless Democrats take the White House and BOTH the House and the Senate, that’s not going to happen.

Imagine a future where the news of the governance of the nation isn’t dominated by Marjorie Taylor-Green, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Mike Johnson, Elise Stefanik, Joni Ernst, Rick Scott, or any of the other nutball rabble that infest our governance these days. Yes, many of them will be re-elected or didn’t have to run this time, but if they are in the minority, it will put an end to the endless kangaroo court hearings, and Congress might actually become useful again. Instead of clownish hearings about impeaching Biden or punishing family members of his, we may instead hear about debate over housing assistance for young adults entering the workplace, expanded Medicare, and further efforts to rein in the corporations.

Fascist plutocrats like Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, and the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues will continue to poison the well, of course, and they will have the usual clown shows where some attention seeker in the GOP ranks will call for Harris’ impeachment three days after she takes office. That won’t change. But at least a solid win for the Dems will set them back, and reduce the threat they pose to our freedoms.

I expect that MAGA and QAnon will disintegrate after the inauguration. Trump won’t be their figurehead any more; at the very least he will have lost his clout, and in all likelihood he’ll be in prison or a rest home. Yes, America, like everywhere, will always have a significant population of nasty right wing nuts—bigots, greedheads, haters—but without the cult leader, they will crawl back to under the rocks where they belong.

Most importantly, control of court appointments must be taken back. Trump appointed three disgraces to the Supreme Court, and he’s even on record suggesting that his District Attorney (appointed, because there isn’t a prayer the Senate would confirm her) would be his pet corrupt Florida judge, Aileen Cannon. He’s also said he will make the loony Robert F. Kennedy Junior the nation’s ‘health czar’ and put the eerie Reinhard Heydrich clone Steven Miller in charge of immigration. Yesterday, he proposed to put the nation’s missile defense in the hands of noted rocket scientist Herschel Walker! Trump probably would like to have Mafia-type rule, but what he would achieve to control our lives would be an extremely malignant and incompetent idiocracy.

Last week Joe Biden made an ambiguous statement that interpreted one way, suggested he called Trump supporters at large “trash.” There was a lot of outrage over that, of course, but it’s significant that the outrage didn’t spread much outside of Trump’s most devoted followers. Many people who have known Joe Biden for years don’t believe he meant it that way (the remark, Biden says, was aimed at some of the trash who spoke at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally) and among those who did, there was considerable doubt that the supposed judgment was particularly harsh. It’s hard to give people the benefit of the doubt when they shout that liberals are communists, Democrats are scum, and want to impose their church doctrines on us all, not to mention nutball opinions about vaccines, reading material, women’s right to vote, eugenics, and “race science.” Some of these flat-earth nuts want us to doubt the Moon landings took place.

It’s time to put this idiocy back in its place. People have an absolute right to wrong-headed and illogical opinions, but they don’t have the right to impose them upon the rest of us. And yes, this includes religious-based opinions. Robert Heinlein once wrote “One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.” And a meme popular on social media states, “America is not a Christian nation. It is a nation in which you are free to be a Christian.”

So do vote. Even if you are in a state that is solidly blue or red, your vote could tip the balance in the House and Senate, and ensure that America remains America, and doesn’t become a corrupt and evil kleptocracy.

Fifty-to-One Odds and Ends — Did Bill Clinton give Harris the election?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 22nd, 2024

Vivek Ramaswamy was on CNN yesterday bemoaning the fact that Kamala Harris was smearing seventy million GOP voters as ‘weird.’ Even CNN has to fact-check that, noting that Harris had called Trump and Vance weird, which they are. For that matter, Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t exactly a poster boy for normal himself, but moving on…

I spoke to a Trump supporter yesterday who ranted about how Democrats were taking adrenochrome from the bodies of dying babies to keep Biden and the rest young. I pointed out that Biden didn’t look particularly young, and he retorted that Biden would be dead if he wasn’t taking the stuff. Branes. Smart. Logically he runs circles around us all.

Now, adrenochrome actually does exist. Its a result of oxidized adrenaline; 3-hydroxy-1-methyl-2,3-dihydroindole-5,6-dione C9H9NO3). It doesn’t come from the blood of babies, Christian or otherwise.

And as far as prolonging life goes, it’s kinda the opposite: it’s rated extremely toxic, and if taken orally will make you very, very sick and in all likelihood kill you. It would explain why you never hear of Qanon types, who believe morals are something to be inflicted upon others, actually taking the stuff themselves. Ivermectin is safer, but drinking or injecting bleach and shining black lights up your ass are still bad ideas. Add adrenochrome to that list under “Evolution in Action.”

The adrenochrome conspiracy theory came from the bowels of the Qanon conspiracists, and it is nothing more than an update of the Blood Libel. They’ve updated the villains of the piece (elites, Democrats, international bankers) but they mean “Jews.” “Drinking the blood of Christian babies” sounded a bit medieval for their tastes, so they took a sinister-looking chemical name (and one not usually found in babies) and made it generic babies, and sat back and waited for the pogroms to resume.

Yes, Harris was calling Trump and Vance weird, and not Republican voters in general weird. But there’s a lot of them that fit that description. Not seventy million, but millions, at least. There are tens of millions of normal decent Republicans. They’re pretty easy to spot these days: they’re either already ‘never-Trumpers’ or they are openly expressing doubts about Trump and his policies.

Last night the Democratic convention finished its third night with the formal selection of Tim Walz as the vice presidential nominee. Coach Walz is almost ridiculously homespun middle American, straight out of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon days. Last night may just be the night that Democrats took “real America” back from the Republicans. Only with the Republicans the down-home pose was a vulture capitalist trying to sound like a hillbilly, but with Walz, it’s the real deal. He really is the local coach, the guy who helps change your tires and pulls you out of a snow bank, the neighborhood “Good Sam.”

In the meantime, Trump was snarling to aides that he “hates all of them” – Harris, Walz, the Clintons, and Biden. Ann Coulter, who for some reason doesn’t live north of the wall in Game of Thrones, made a spectacularly pathetic effort to smear Walz’s kids, calling them ‘weird’ for crying with pride at the convention last night.

Even the entertainment showed the richness of the Democrats versus the paucity of the Republicans. “Rocking in the Free World”, a favorite of Walz’s, was played with the full blessing of Neil Young, who has stridently complained about Trump’s appropriation of the song. Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Sheila E and Maren Morris all brought the house down. Oprah spoke to loud cheers. Compare with the RNC, which had a couple of D-listers and played music over the vociferous objections and cease-and-desist orders from the creators of said music. Not just weird—sad.

But it was Bill Clinton, at 78 obviously not drinking many babies but still strident and clear, who came up with the most stunning stat of all, one that will outlive the warm glow of the convention and change the political and economic landscape of the campaign over the next ten weeks.

Donald Trump back about 15 years ago said “I don’t know why, but the economy always does better under the Democrats than it does the Republicans.” It was one of those extremely rare instances where he was describing an irrefutable fact accurately.

It’s true. Wages go up, production goes up, and for America’s plutocrats who have more money than they do common sense, yes, the markets go up as well. Everyone benefits under Democratic economic policies. It’s been that way since 1933. Even government spending is better—the last two presidents to produce a balanced budget were Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. Over nine out of every ten dollars in the national debt come from Republican policies and misadventures.

There aren’t many politicians around who understand economic matters better than Bill Clinton. He is arguably the smartest president we’ve had—not the best judgment, perhaps, but definitely smart.

In his speech, he said he encountered a stat that he couldn’t believe. He had to double check it. He had to triple check it. He was absolutely stunned.

When he recited it, I was equally stunned. I’m nowhere near Clinton’s level of knowledge and expertise, but I read and I pay attention. This was something that floored me.

Clinton said, “Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. I swear, I checked this three times; even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans 1.”

Over 98% of all new jobs were created under Democratic administrations. That is extraordinary.

The Democrats have almost all the major issues on their side—abortion, individual freedom, reining in corporate greed, supporting the workers and the poor. But if they want to make serious inroads into the decaying support Republicans get, they need to recite this fact—50 out of 51 million jobs—over and over. Nothing demolishes the myth that Republicans are better for the economy more thoroughly than that one.

Tonight: Harris accepts the nomination. If the evening goes as well as the first three have, this election is hers to lose.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier…–Trump Audio recording eliminates any defense he had

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 31st, 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

The denouement of Trump’s defense in the documents scandal came from a New Yorker story by Susan Glasser that, by itself, was utterly horrifying. The story details how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley opposed Trump, both openly and behind the scenes, to stymie Trump’s impulse to launch a full-scale military invasion of Iran.

Milley presumably realized that this would be the greatest military blunder in American history. Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea would all pale next to it. Those were all small, comparatively weak nations and time after time the US sank into a quagmire they eventually lost. Iran is neither small nor weak, and an attack there would almost certainly draw in the Russians. It probably would be the start of World War III. Milley went so far, according to the story, to surreptitiously tell the military to ignore any “illegal orders” that might come from the President.

The story utterly infuriated Trump (OK, for once I can at least understand why he would be pissed). But his endless need to self-justify and his thin skin led him to what perhaps was the most damning error he has made, post-presidency.

Per CNN, “President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.”

The story goes that two writers for Mark Meadows “autobiography” met with Trump at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. That autobiography contains an account where Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.” It’s anyone’s guess if Milley was contradicting himself, or this is just one of the obligatory scenarios the military delight in creating (“What happens if Lower Slobbovia invades Delaware? Or vice-versa?”) but Trump seized on it as proof Milley was lying.

Trump rattled some papers at the interviewers, and said that these were classified documents that showed the truth of the Meadows claims, and he would like to show them to the interviewers, but the documents were classified, so he couldn’t.

How do we know this?

Oh, lord, there are tapes, part XI. The interviewees, with Trump’s knowledge and consent, were recording the meeting. Trump either forgot, or was so irate he simply lost his temper, or both.

And Jack Smith has that tape. Lawdy, lawdy.

I can envision dozens of felony counts awaiting Trump just on the documents case. But for the first time, I think the DoJ has a prima facie case to persecute Trump for espionage. Combined with the probable indictments for the January 6th case (insurrection) and the Georgia vote count (election tampering) Trump’s most likely future will include dying in prison. This one tape demonstrates that Trump was lying about declassifying the documents, or that he COULD declassify them, or that he didn’t know he had them, or that he ever misused them in any way. This tape is more damning than all the Nixon tapes combined, including the infamous missing “14 ½ minutes.”

It came at the same time that Trump revealed just how far his contempt for the Constitution went by vowing to rescind the 14th amendment through executive order. Even Slappy Thomas would have trouble justifying that one. Trump is irked that the constitution specifies that anyone born in the territories of the US are American citizens, including babies who don’t speak English. (That would be most of them, I would hazard.)

He also threw his weight behind preventing the impeachment of Ken Paxton in Texas who was, of course, promptly impeached. It shows how weak his grasp on the party has become, even as the marching morons continue to chant his praises.

Trump legally, is a dead man walking. He won’t be a candidate in 2024 because he will be in prison. He may still claim to be a candidate, but his campaign will be as quixotically ridiculous as the one run by Lyndon LaRouche back about 30 years ago. The Republicans who, under Trump, let the lunatic fringe take over their party are in such disarray that they will have severe trouble coming up with any candidate at all. They may no longer even be a single discrete party at that point.

The voting on the debt ceiling limit is taking place as I write this, and its passage is extremely likely. For a small number of concessions, Biden got the Republicans to throw away the only real weapon they still possessed, eliminating the debt ceiling until after the 2024 election. Yes, Biden is smarter than the GOP—combined. I was of the strong opinion that Biden shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, but the implications of this agreement please even me. Biden lost a couple of minor skirmishes, but won the war. The same Republicans who had been howling that Biden was so senile and/or incompetent he couldn’t find his trousers just learned they lost their own pants in a poker match against him.

I’m starting to feel hope that America is going to survive Trump, and MAGA, and Qanon.

In any event, the next few weeks should be entertaining as all hell.

Three Crises — Any one of which can kill you

Three Crises

Any one of which can kill you

April 16th, 2022

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

There are three situations that are edging closer and closer to flash points that could create immense damage and in one instance, kill a sizable percentage of the human race.

The first is Putin and the Ukraine. The invasion and war has not gone well for Russia. Ukraine not only failed to fall in days to a Russian blitzkrieg, but the blitzkrieg itself flopped, something that was self evident the moment we saw that forty-file long convoy of tanks and other mechanized units along that two-lane highway. Poland and France didn’t fall because the Germans approached in single file. And at that, the Russians got off lightly; Ukraine could have turned it into a “highway of death.” As it stands, reports are that Russia has lost a full 10% of their overall military might in the seven weeks that they have tried to smash Ukraine.

Adding to Putin’s woes is the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian navy. While the military impact is negligible (the Russian flotilla in the Black Sea was there to look intimidating, since there was little in the way of practical military applications to be brought to bear. Turns out you can’t sink a country) the morale damage was massive.

Additionally, and of far greater impact strategically and tactically, Putin’s declared aim of pushing back on perceived encroachment by NATO on Russian borders has backfired massively. Finland, historically a thorn in the side of the Russian bear, is expected to petition for membership in the pact in the next couple of weeks, and Sweden is likely to be not far behind. Putin has made it clear that nearby nations not servile to Russia that aren’t in NATO are targets.

So speculation that Putin may resort to nukes both as part of his campaign of terror against Ukraine and his efforts to intimidate the west is growing. There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin has the requisite viciousness. Is he that insane, though?

The west, including the US, must make it clear that nuclear strikes against Ukraine or anywhere else is a line that cannot be crossed without dire and immediate consequences. We’ve managed to avoid a nuclear holocaust partially through dumb luck (we’ve had some really scary close calls, and those are just the ones we know about) and partially through the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. Any country that launches nukes dies. Much, and perhaps all of the world dies with it. Putin must be reminded of this, and be aware that a first strike will result in global nuclear war on the grounds that all is lost anyway. The last thing the world needs or can tolerate is a dictator that gets away with a nuclear strike. Perhaps, once again, we can step back from the abyss. Putin must know that we aren’t bluffing because we can’t afford to bluff.

The second is the behavior of the fascist right in America. Have you ever heard the term, “blood libel?” It’s a hateful story that first grew in medieval Britain and has spread throughout much of the world over the centuries. The most common variant is that Jews capture and kill a young Christian boy at Easter in order to put his blood in matzo balls. Supposedly, if Jews do this each year, in a different land, they will get the Holy Land back. If you’re thinking about 1947 and the State of Israel and how that might have diffused the libel then you don’t know conspiracy theorists very well. They still believe Jews drink the blood of virgin Christian boys. Who needs a reason when you’ve got a hobby?

The thing about conspiracy theorists is that they are gullible and easy to manipulate. To them, the world is a dark and dangerous place, filled with looming, sneering villains who stop at nothing to augment their power. Giving them “secret knowledge” of such horrors both allays and augments their fear and credulity.

All you need to do is invent an unspeakable act by a minority or adversarial group and then promote the hell out of it.

Claims that the Clintons and various other liberals run child sex rings have been making the rounds since about 2015, which was about when Trump and Putin decided America needed Trump. Supposedly, the sex ring was run in the basement of a pizza parlor. Never mind that the pizza place in question didn’t have a basement—weren’t you paying attention when I asked if you knew what conspiracy theorists were like? One guy even went in there with a semi-automatic and shot up the place.

Republicans have been deliberately electing—there’s no other phrase for it—the most vicious and stupid trash they can find to public office. People too stupid and too gullible to know they are being played, or the worse variant, the ones who know the truth and are part of the plan. That’s why the Jackson nominating process was smeared with political porn about how she was “soft on child pornographers” and why some of the louder specimens of the trash-American GOP have been calling teachers and supporters of Ukraine “child abusers.” Blood libels are great for the libelers, since they can pretend to a position of “protecting the children” while simply sinking to about the same level as a child molester.

The third flash point rapidly approaching is the climate. The physical climate. True to the models, as it gets warmer on average, it is also becoming wilder and more unpredictable. Antarctica saw temperatures last month that went a full SEVENTY DEGREES above normal. Yes, that’s Fahrenheit, but still… This time of year the normal day time high in New York City is 63 degrees. In order to replicate what happened in Antarctica, it would have to reach 133. In Mid April. Let’s not even think about July or August.

We all remember the heat dome that hit the Pacific Northwest last summer, sending temperatures as high as 118 in British Columbia. That was only 40 degrees above normal.

In addition to all the myriad problems we’re expecting in the near future, heat domes seem to be a New Thing, and a potentially hideous one. Few cities in the world are prepared for temperatures in summer that are 40 degrees above the local norm. The death toll could be in the millions. Kim Stanley Robinson, in his recent novel “Ministry of the Future” had a three week heat wave strike India that was only 15 degrees above normal, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Suddenly we have to consider possibilities like 145 in Los Angeles, 120 in London, 145 in Sydney. We aren’t prepared for it because we can’t prepare for it.

In the meantime, the oil plutocrats—many are the same people who underwrite the blood libel crowd and are profiteering off the Ukraine war—are doubling down on fighting any effort to reduce fossil fuel consumption. And yes, that includes the oil companies that run those expensive ads about how green and responsible they are. They’re corporations; they exist to lie to us for profit. They are what prop up the disgraceful anti-American whores in congress, and they have think tanks devoted to the nomenclature used by conspiracy theorists and Putin about how “woke” child molesters spread “fake news” and the press cannot be trusted.

They are authoritarians, and they are herding us towards the edge of some very large cliffs, thinking they can control the situations and profit from them at the same time.

But it’s all coming to a head, and no, they won’t be able to control it when it does.

Unfortunately, nobody will be able to.

Gaeteradez — Right Wingers drink from wrong cup

Gaeteradez

Right Wingers drink from wrong cup

April 10th 2021

Could Joel Greenberg end up destroying the American right for a couple of generations?

It’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Greenberg is a real piece of work. He came to public attention when hit with 14 charges on federal felonies, including trafficking of children. If just half of the things alleged against him could be proven in court, he would never get out of jail. The first charge, framing a political opponent and thus winning a campaign, was pretty awful. The second, even sleazier indictment, states that Greenberg “used his access to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office to take surrendered driver licenses before they were shredded. [He] also used his access to DAVID to run searches that were not for any permissible use .. . As a result of those searches [he] obtained, disclosed transferred, and used personal information of individuals whose personal information was in a motor vehicle record, including individuals with whom [he] was engaged in “sugar daddy” relationships.”

Matt Gaetz, the besieged Congressman, and Greenberg were close associates (Gaetz contributed the maximum allowed to Greenberg’s sleazy campaign for the tax collector’s job) and there’s at least one eye witness account that the two were seen together in the tax collector’s office (Greenberg was its elected department head) rummaging through various state IDs that had been turned in and were intended for shredding.

But for all his apparent viciousness, Greenberg isn’t exactly the rock of Gibraltar when it comes to personal courage and resoluteness. When he violated bond following his arrest on all those charges, according to the Tampa Bay Times, “Former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg claimed to have explosive devices and threatened to harm himself while negotiating his surrender with deputy sheriffs in early March, which delayed for hours his arrest for violating his bond conditions, newly released records state.” Well, isn’t that exactly the sort of situation you would want to see your tax collector in? Even for Tampa Bay it seemed a bit over the top. The county tax office motto isn’t “Come and git me, coppers! You’ll never take me alive!”

In the meantime, the number of charges against him rose to 33, which according to the Times included “stalking, identity theft, wire fraud, bribery, theft of government property, conspiracy to bribe a public official, creating fake IDs and sex trafficking of a minor.” The Tax Collector’s office under his purview handed out three million in contracts to people who had attended Greenberg’s wedding.

At this point, it’s all somewhat minor. Greenberg would still be unknown outside of Florida were it not for the fact that Gaetz was in any way involved. (Gaetz steadfastly maintains his innocence.)

Now it seems Greenberg is going to cop a plea, and given the number and size of the charges against him, he’s going to have to give up the whole zoo if he wants to see daylight again.

But Greenberg isn’t the only buddy of Gaetz who is involved in all this. Dr. Jason Pirozzolo, a hand surgeon and marijuana advocate, traveled with Gaetz to the Bahamas. The trip was on Pirozzolo’s dime, and allegedly included escorts, including some who may have been underage.

Again, not that significant a story, except for this: soon after, then-President Trump made an unscheduled trip to Florida. The only people to greet him on this unpublicized trip were…Gaetz and Pirozzolo. Why would Trump want to meet with those two? Did he perhaps have a bunion on his thumb?

And there’s Roger Stone. Granted, pick any significant Republican scandal over the past 50 years and his name is likely to pop up in there somehow. He should be fighting to stay out of jail right now except Trump gave him a preemptive pardon.

There are reports that Gaetz asked Trump for a blanket pardon sometime before January 20, but no actual evidence has emerged, and both men deny it. Trump may even be telling the truth, since the aides who handled pardons were keeping the more politically disastrous away from Trump’s attention.

So Greenberg is copping a plea, and it’s one likely to completely engulf Gaetz, who’s already in a position where his political career is toast and he’s just fighting to stay out of federal prison.

Now, Gaetz doesn’t strike me as the sort who is going to take one for the team. He could conceivably be facing a future of being a rich white boy who is a child sex offender in federal prison, which by all accounts is not an admirable situation to be in. So he may decide to cop a plea, as well?

Against whom?

Well, Pirozzolo is a possibility. He hasn’t been formally accused of anything yet, other than being a buddy to Gaetz and a mover and shaker in Florida politics. Ron DeSantis appointed him to Greater Orlando Airport Authority on the recommendation of Gaetz.

But for a man in Gaetz’ position, Pirozzolo may be a rather small fish to fry for the feds. He’s going to need a bigger shark, to coin a phrase.

This in turn leads to Stone and Trump. What did they know and when did they know it?

Stand by. This whole thing could get much bigger.

And how would it destroy the right? Well, for years they’ve been screaming that the rest of America were involved in child sex slave operations, were corrupt, lied, and were criminals.

Now, it seems, the calls were coming from inside the house. How is Qanon going to react to the news that the people they (sometimes literally) worshipped were the same one they were warning us all about?

More to come.

Biden Our Time — Good Trumps Evil

Biden Our Time

Good Trumps Evil

January 21st 2021

At 9:01am PST yesterday I posted a one-word post on Facebook.

The post said, “WHEW!”

It might be the only all-caps post I’ll ever make, since I regard people who post in all-caps to be total idiots. I am quite capable of attaining truly sublime levels of idiocy without artificial aids from my caps-lock key, thank you very much.

We all expected things to turn weird and disgusting between the election and inauguration day, and of course things did. And yes, there were a lot of grim things. COVID continued to explode, with the death toll now well over 400,000, and the Trump regime bungled the vaccine rollout. Trump gleefully sabotaged Open Skies and other treaties, giving a gleeful Vladimir Putin an entire basket of tactical Easter eggs. They had an insurrectionist attack on the Capitol and comprised, for the most part, of meth heads trying to play soldier and absolutely lunatic conspiracy theory freaks. Even more troubling, we discovered that much of the Republican party would rather destroy the United States than share power with those of the wrong race, or the wrong religion, or who were simply guilty of not being rich.

If one good thing came of the Trump regime, it was that he forced America to look in the mirror, and learn that it’s really no better than any other country, and can no longer pretend to be a shining beacon of reason and ethics. Not that it ever really could, but the facade had been torn away.

I don’t envy Joe Biden. He took office yesterday facing a national crisis every bit as great as the one Franklin Roosevelt faced in March of 1933. FDR only had to face the First Great Depression. Biden is facing the Second Great Depression, along with the pandemic, the worst since 1919, and an opposition that is anything but loyal; a large chunk of the GOP leadership are seditionists at best, traitors at worst.

I’m sure I’ll oppose Biden on some items, sometimes vehemently. But unlike his predecessor, I won’t be questioning his loyalty, his courage, or his good intentions. That’s a huge improvement right there. Trump is filth. Biden is not.

I’m having grim fun watching the GOP writhe and twist. The militias have come face to face with the fact that no coup can succeed without popular support. Power comes, not from the barrel of a gun, but the will of the people. It’s something the fairy-tale stories about overthrowing evil kings and the like often miss; no regime happens in a vacuum. You need, at the very least, the support of one third of the population, and at least another third willing to not take up arms against you. When 3/4s of the population are openly disgusted with you and want to throw you in jail (or under a guillotine) then your cause is lost. Most people hate the so-called militias, with their open embrace of Nazism and white superiority. Theirs is the philosophy of war, of death camps, of genocides. A large majority of Americans are better than that, and won’t fall to that level except under the circumstances that led to the French Revolution, the Soviet revolution, the Putsch and rise of Hitler, or the final disintegration of the USSR. We aren’t there yet, and with any luck, we won’t be.

The QAnon conspiracy nuts have to come to grips with the fact that Trump isn’t going to be a God-Emperor here to save us from the utterly imaginary depredations of the Clintons, Obama, or the lizard people. Quite a few of them hit a wall of reality beginning on the sixth of January and crashed and burned with the sight of Biden taking the oath of office. Q himself apparently stopped posting shortly after the election. Many will just find a new form of insanity to embrace, but quite a few are wailing that they were misled and lied to, and that their new religion failed them. I imagine Christianity must have faced a similar setback when Jesus’ prediction that many of those living would see his return failed to come to pass. In other words, don’t expect QAnon to just go away. The ability to rationalize is deep amongst the deluded and the insane.

The the ‘sane’ part of the GOP, the ‘good Germans’ are popping up all over the place. “Oh, I never supported Trump.” “I just went along because I was afraid.” “I was just following orders.” Suddenly, they want to talk about unity, negotiation, and compromise. There may even be some who are acting in good faith, but it’s a sure bet that most are just trying to salvage what they can for the ruins of their party, and are probing Biden and the Democratic Party for any signs of weakness. A favorite seems to be “Well, 74 million people voted for Trump and you can’t ignore them.” The reality is 81 million people voted for Biden, and unlike Trump won’t be out to viciously take revenge on the Trump voters. Biden isn’t going to refuse aid to red states, and he isn’t going to address the pandemic only in states that voted for him. He isn’t Trump. He isn’t a monster.

To the Trump voters I say, “Biden is here to govern, not rule. He isn’t going to make you second-class citizens because of how you voted. He isn’t going to turn America into a Soviet wasteland, no matter what the high-paid liars on the right wing media say. He is going to make changes, and you may not like all of them, but if you have any honesty, any decency, you’ll reserve judgment and see what the changes mean in your lives, your work, your schools, your health care and your country. You don’t own America, but America exists to serve you, and Biden seems to be totally aware of that.

“We tried your way, and it was a catastrophe. Trump was the worst president in our history. Expect better with Biden.”

January 6th 2021 — The Coup-Coo Brigade Strike

January 6th 2021

The Coup-Coo Brigade Strike

Various people today have declared that today’s assault on the Capitol of the United States was a date that would “live in infamy”.

My mum wouldn’t have been too thrilled to hear that. If she were alive, this would be her 102nd birthday. She wouldn’t have been chuffed at having her special day listed along with December 7th or September 11th.

She wouldn’t have been too surprised if she were around to hear how the story came about. From the 80s up until her death a few years ago she took the measure of Donald Trump and considered him an utterly vile man, amoral, rude, and vulgar. Since my own view of Trump was about the same, I used to watch the members of my family who liked Trump squirm uncomfortably should anyone mention his name within her earshot. Her profound deafness in her final years was no protective wall; like many people in her position, she had a knack for hearing key words in a conversation. Discussing Bridge, or British terms for flatulence, could provoke an outburst.

She was old. She wasn’t stupid. Trump was trash, and she knew it.

Today’s events, and Trump’s role in them, wouldn’t have surprised her. It didn’t surprise me. It’s a wonder it surprised anyone, really. Trump had been saying right along that he didn’t accept the results of the election, and would encourage his inane clown posse to fight on his behalf. Indeed, the reason Congress was vulnerable to such an attack stemmed from the notion that Congress could somehow overcome the will of the states (not to mention the people) by disrupting the normally ritualistic tabulation of the electoral college votes. Stooges and seditionists in Congress planned to object and drag out the proceedings in a forlorn hope that somehow they could get Congress to abandon the vote.

While this was going on, Trump stood in the speech and told his tin-foil hat brigade to march on Congress and that he would march with them. They began marching, and Trump promptly scurried off to the Führerbunker formerly known as the White House.

In a weird way, he may have actually done the nation a favor. On several levels, really.

First the events of today unleashed a tidal wave of anger and rage against Trump and the “Stop the Steal” movement. Suddenly it stopped being one of those loony things the crowd that believe the Queen is a lizard or that Hillary ran a pedophile operation in the basement of a pizza shop, and became a genuine insurrection against the country. Even people who like Trump were taken aback by today’s events. “Support the President.” Doesn’t matter how trashy or crazy the president is, and Trump is part of a rather long list of Presidents who didn’t belong in office. But supporting the president no matter what is a thing—until that president tries to overthrow the government of the US. You have to go back to antebellum days to find one of those. “Support the President”? Well, OK. “Destroy the Country?” Not so much.

Trump is finished. There are rumors that the Cabinet is considering 25th amendment removal of Trump before he does yet more damage. Congress may take up an unprecedented move to impeach, and if they do, it’s likely that Trump will be convicted. A wave of resignations in his administration has already begun. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have all suspended his account.

His supporters that don’t feel they can abandon him are going to ridiculous lengths to rationalize the events of today. One Trumper I spoke to this morning denied any knowledge of the assault on the Capitol, and when I told him to switch on his TV, airily replied “Why? There’s nothing I can do about it.” Several Trumpers, including the idiot A-G of Texas, proffered the theory that all the thousands of protesters waving Trump, Confederate and even Nazi flags were actually all Antifa in disguise, a false flag operation.

I’m listening to the debate in resumed hearings tonight, and it’s clear that support for Trump has effectively collapsed. I suspect that holds true in much of the country. I’m watching the Senate vote on debate on objections to the electoral vote count, and this morning 11 senators were expected to sustain the objection, but I think there’s only five “ayes” now.

Even Qanon crazy Loeffler switched sides. (The final vote was 93-6).

Another thing that may benefit the country in the long run is that the insurrection today was a cold shot of reality. Americans believed it could not happen here. I was raised in England, two big civil wars, endless religious strife, and war after war after war, not only with the other nations in the British Isles, but with much of Europe. Insurrections, regicides, riots—all part of the glorious tapestry that is England. England regards itself as a great nation, fully cognizant of the fact that it has unrest and violence as part of its legacy. I was born in Canada, one of the most genuinely peaceful and stable nations on Earth—one with a long and not entirely vanished history of violence against First Nations people. The Riel rebellion, the FLQ crisis, and even major riots over hockey games. Canadians KNOW they aren’t “better than this.” It’s part of history.

America is better at regrowing its spiritual hymen better than any other nation on Earth, aside from the French who consider whoring an alternate virginity. For a generation, at least, Americans will be cognizant of the danger presented by extreme and even insane political movements.

If this beast rises its head again, perhaps they won’t have politicians coddling them, cowardly presidents leading from behind, or police taking selfies with the nuts because the nuts wave Confederate flags.

Perhaps American will learn to recognize, and adjust for their own humanity.

The Abyss Stares Back – If Friedrich Nietzsche wrote comedy, America 2020 would be it

The Abyss Stares Back

If Friedrich Nietzsche wrote comedy, America 2020 would be it

October 17th, 2020

Well, nobody said the home stretch of the 2020 election was going to be boring. OK, so we all thought the polls would be a lot closer now than they are, portending as they do an utter bloodbath for the GOP. And of course we all worried about how many dirty tricks Trump and the GOP had. Some were predictable: the Hunter Biden “bombshell” in which a computer turned up at some repair shop on which there was supposedly a whole bunch of emails that said stuff like “Hey, my dad wants you to have a bunch of military secrets if you’ll just fire this one judge.” Some of the emails were tracked back to a Russian disinformation outfit, but what really made the whole thing moot was that the right-winger truther who owned the repair shop said the computer, along with two others, were dropped off by someone who could have possibly been Hunter Biden on April 12th, 2019, but the firmware on both the computer BIOS and the hard drive showed that the system had been manufactured on April 19th 2019, a week after Hunter dropped it off. My god, the man can TIME TRAVEL! He’s an existential threat to the entire universe, and you libtard sheeplings are just sitting around making Guiliani jokes!

Voting fuckery is widespread, of course. Abbott, the fascist running Texas, arbitrarily decreed that each county should only have one dropbox. Other GOP states reduced the number of polling places, resulting in line of voters in scenes one expects in fascist banana republics. Like the sort the GOP wants to turn all of America into. In California, GOP outlaws set out phony dropboxes.

Trump has openly said that one reason he wants the godstruck vacuity Barrett on the court by the election is in case he needs the court to rule that those silly old votes don’t matter, and the GOP gets to appoint electors in order to ensure a Trump victory. Given the size of the popular blowout the polls forecast, such a move would result in a popular revolt and even possibly a civil war, but Trump figures he has command over the military, and should the Pentagon decide that they promised to spend some quality time with their cats rather than gunning down Americans, he also has a pack of heavily armed street nazis.

It’s not clear what the military would do in the face of a coup. Trump is commander in chief; but his orders would be illegal if not flat-out treasonous. The street nazis would be faced with a situation where even if they did prevail, they would have absolutely no popular support, even among most Trump supporters. And a hundred million or so people looking for ways to ambush and kill them. They might be vicious crazy bastards, but they aren’t stupid. The leaders know they can’t possibly hold power with a coup that has absolutely no popular support.

Trump himself may be aware of that, or at least suspect it. He joked the other day about leaving the country if he lost the election because losing to “Sleepy Joe” would be so embarrassing. Trump very famously does not joke, but he does have plenty of reasons to flee if he loses. There’s a tidal wave of criminal and civil proceedings awaiting him the minute Biden is sworn in as President, along with many angry creditors, including quite possibly organized crime.

He may well owe hundreds of millions of dollars to Russian interests, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Putin has assured him that if he defects with most or all of America’s military and strategic secrets, Putin would take care of all those nagging debts and set him up in a dacha on the Black Sea. Trump would certainly be willing to entertain such an offer, especially if Putin assured him he would be a hero, nay, a GOD to the peoples of all the Russias, and they would praise him and lionize him for the rest of his life. Oh, and think of all the American liberals who would be sooooo pissed off if he did that!

That would leave Mike Pence as acting president, and he would be an extraordinarily unpopular leader of a country in chaos, head of a party reviled by 70% of the population as traitors. Pence will try to present himself as an expression of God’s Will, and when that falls apart, he’ll resign. The Senate will note that Trump didn’t formally resign, and vote that treason and fleeing the country are not impeachable offenses. It’s not like the GOP will have anything to lose at this point, and chaos might result in a long-hoped-for corporate takeover of the country. Except the country would be disintegrating at that point, with several powerful blue states voting to secede. The Senate will then convict Trump, accept Pence’s resignation, and dump the whole mess in Pelosi’s lap. That may be enough to avert collapse, assuming the Qanon nuts don’t just assume that Pelosi is an intergalactic lizard with a taste for human babies who wants to take their guns. Which she is, of course. The tail is a dead giveaway.

Now, people have said that I’m too conventional, too cautious in my political forecasts, and that may be true. I didn’t even mention North Korea invading the state of Washington, or proof that there is no such thing as COVID-19 coming out. Those could muddy the waters, sure. But I live and die by Occam’s Razor, and manage to look unshaven despite that.

So there’s your immediate future, America. Jokes by Friedrich Nietzsche, screenplay by Garth Ennis, directed by David Cronenberg.

Get a good night’s sleep, folks. You’re gonna need it.

Ja-Qs! Well, Ex-Qs me! It’s a Sign Qanon!

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 5th 2018

I had a client once who loved conspiracy theories. Not in the abstract; he didn’t collect them as amusing oddities; he earnestly believed each one, and strove to work each into his own, very peculiar theology. Cover up at Area 51? Check! CIA putting chemicals in the air to make us docile? You betcha! The Queen of England and the Bush family were secretly extraterrestrial lizard people? Let’s have them drop drawers and check for tails! He came up with a few of his own: the Pharaohs of Egypt were all secretly Jewish. (He self-published a book about this, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why they would be secretly Jewish, or what advantage this gave them, or anyone.) He adored David Icke, and fairly routinely lost money to cults and online scams vowing to reveal hidden truths.

This was back around the turn of the century, and the majority of conspiracy theories, and their adherents, were harmless cranks. My client, when he wasn’t sputtering utter drivel gleaned from some mimeograph with an eye of Mordur letterhead, was pleasant, intelligent, kindly and caring—as nice a person as you could possibly hope to meet.

But even before the rise of the toxic and vicious Alex Jones, and the systematic cruelty of his followers, conspiracy theories had a dark side. Many were racist, or at least bigoted, and some could be utterly vile. Tony Alamo took the same stance toward Catholics that Hitler had toward Jews, and with similar rationales. Conspiracy theories were a favorite element of demagogues, religious cults, and sociopaths. A local new age movement has definable links to Nazi groups, often with members of either being aware of the links between the two.

My client ran afoul of this dark element. He came in one morning with a self-written article he wished me to put up on his website. I glanced at it, and spotted the words “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Apprehensive, I gave it a quick scan. He was arguing that “Protocols” had been denigrated, not by the falsity of the claims, but by a vast hidden conspiracy of International bankers.

“You should drop this,” I said. “Nothing good will come of it.”

“I’m not afraid of Israel,” he declared stoutly.

I wasn’t worried about Israel either. But we had a fairly large number of mutual friends and acquaintances, and some of them were Jewish. I named some of them, and pointed out they would be hurt, and feel betrayed by the claim that this viciously anti-Semitic tract was factually based.

He considered, nodding slightly—either an affectation of showing deep thought, or a resting tremor—and drew a firm line with his mouth. Truth, no matter how unpalatable, must be upheld. This was hidden knowledge, and therefore must be True.

I could advise, but I couldn’t censor. I put the page up.

He caught hell for it, of course—not just from Jewish readers, but a lot of other directed sorts who knew hate speech when they saw it.

My client was hurt, depressed, and resolute. Hidden truths, he believed, were the most important truths of all. I’m happy to report that most of his friends understood that his page stemmed, not from some dark animus toward Jews, but from this odd psychological and intellectual tic of his. A few stopped talking to him, but it was generally understood that this latest page was a point on a continuum, and not a sudden dark descent into Nazism.

“Hidden” is key to understanding the psychology of the conspiracy theorist. It is the element that, in their eyes, proves the validity of the theory. If something is true, yet hidden, then clearly there must be a conspiracy involved! Conspiracy theorists don’t care much for mysteries, but they love secrets.

Every once in a while, a conspiracy theory turns out to be true: The CIA really did conduct mind-control experiments; the military really did do dry test runs of toxic gases in the NY subways, they really did spread contagion in Havana. The FBI really did track Martin Luther King and put spies in the anti-Vietnam peace movement. However: The instant a conspiracy theory is proven true, interest in it collapses. The attitude is “Yeah, it happened. Just proves government is evil. [Yawn]. But we still don’t know who murdered Princess Di!”

But since the turn of the century, something nasty has happened: conspiracy theories have become weaponized. They are more ludicrous, and at the same time more vicious. The followers are less amiable cranks and more meth-addled wannabee brownshirts. No longer content to dismiss nonbelievers as ‘sheeple’, they condemn, threaten, and sometimes even assault those who doubt their hidden truths. It is a confluence of several things; the rise of the web, the dark web in particular. A darkening of the public mood since 9/11, a greater willingness to embrace authoritarianism and savagery. And a flood of misinformation, either the paid-for variety of corporations and churches, or the general nuttiness of the truth seekers.

There are vile little sociopaths who adhere to the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, that the shootings never happened and the bereaved parents are just “trauma actors”–people paid to be professional victims by the media for interviews and ratings. They personify the aggressive viciousness of today’s nuts.

This dark web of conspiracy theorists has coalesced around some anonymous crackpot(s) claiming to be from the higher reaches of the “deep state,” striving to now destroy this deep state they served because Hillary or Infowars or some nutball thing. This entity goes by the name of “Q Clearance Patriot” and first showed up in the festering emotional swamps of 4chan. Q supposedly was highly placed government operative. This source has produced a panoply of conspiracy theories, both familiar (The Rothschilds, CIA stooges as foreign leaders) and strange—vast pedophile rings run by ranking Democrats and intelligence agencies, or that Mueller is secretly working with Trump to discredit Trump’s enemies. The people bathing in this raw sewerage call themselves “QAnon”.

Despite that last one, Trump is very warm to this pack of loons, and people wearing QAnon T-shirts are becoming more noticeable at his rallies. Yes, he’s encouraging them. Even worse, THEY are encouraging him. He’s actually subscribing to their craziness, or at least strongly pretending to.

Well, maybe not the Mueller one. I’m guessing he doesn’t view Bob Mueller as his hidden enabler.

It’s no surprise that Trump attracts such as supporters. We’ve long passed the point where any Trump supporter should be considered a fool, a crackpot, a crook, an enemy of the United States, or any combination of the above.

That Trump is openly encouraging them is troubling, and a sign of how desperate BLOTUS (Biggest Liar Of The United States) has become.

I suspect my client, if he was still alive today, would be appalled.

We have to make sure Trump’s desperation and recklessness in treating with these lunatics doesn’t become our crisis.

error

Enjoy Zepps Commentaries? Please spread the word :)