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Written with Witt — An expansion on liberal principles

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Written with Witt

An expansion on liberal principles

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 30th, 2025

 

Lori Gallagher Witt writes:

I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let’s break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

Long time readers know that I’ll sometimes take a laundry list of talking points that some right winger has posted, usually in lists of ten. I take that list and address the points in sequence, eviscerating them. Most of the them tend to be pretty mindless, not because the author is stupid, but because the author thinks his target audience is. The results are like shooting fish in a barrel for me. It’s rare that a point is raised that requires pondering, let along ones that require research in order to rebut. It’s the writing equivalent of a cheap date.

Something different appeared this week. A list, written by one Lori Gallagher Witt, and for some reason it has been attributed to Ron Howard, the movie director. While the attribution is plausible—Howard is forthcoming about his opinions and I doubt he would take exception to the contents of the list—Witt is apparently the person deserving of the credit.

While the lists I’ve used in the past are usually grievances and/or utter falsehoods, Witt’s collection is basically a statement of principles; it reflects how she believes our society should be. It’s a very American sort of document, and even in these dark times would have the support of a large majority of people who read it.

Of course, there is a contingent who will declaim the document as being “socialism” or even “communism.” Many are ignorant and brainwashed, and have no idea what either term actually means. (Unfortunately, nobody ever told them what fascism actually is, either) But most are a privileged group who regard efforts at diversity, equality, and inclusion with gimlet eyes and respond with such fear mongering tactics as “if all are equal, nobody is rich” or “your hard work subsidizes the unworthy.” Most aren’t even trying to protect profits—they have simply lost perspective and want to endlessly extend their power and wealth. And every social reform, according to them “costs jobs” or “takes away your job” or “puts the undeserving above you hard-working people.”

So I’m working with a complementary response, wherein I’ll try to give short and effective elaboration on the points that hopefully will aid in convincing others to implement them. It’s one thing to express principles; in the political arena, you have to promote them in such a way that derails the inevitable attacks and provides a foundation for those principles.

Even if you are familiar with Witt’s list and agree with all of it, read on. Hopefully I can provide some ammunition for defending them and deflecting the attacks. Witt’s points are in italics.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

The primary attack on this is that the government will be giving the idle and the poor your hard-earned money. The foundation for that isn’t based on a concern for your well-being, it rests on the basic idea that anyone incapable of contributing to the economy, whether because of age, infirmity, or lack of skills, is of no value. In short, no person is worthwhile if they can’t be monetized. It is the psychotic cruelty of Ayn Rand’s libertarianism, one that devolves to the old slander against Inuits that the elderly should be left on ice floes to die.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

I’m always amazed at people who grouse that their taxes might go up a couple of thousand dollars even when it means they save twice that or more in health insurance premiums. For those lucky enough to be working for a large company that provides health insurance as part of your “benefits package” that “luck” comes at a cost; not only is the company using funds that might actually go to your salary, but you’re also absorbing the costs and time needed to deal with the health insurance companies. The company isn’t doing it for free; someone has to pay. You’re being double dipped.

Privatized health coverage is fantastically inefficient. In addition to the 30% in profits the shareholders expect, there’s the fact that every company has their own forms, their own rules, and countless, usually competing, divisions for implementing those. It’s a massive burden on the actual health providers, physicians and hospitals.

In addition, there’s the corporate charter of every insurance company, which requires the company to maximize profits while reducing expenses. YOU, the client, are an expense, so they aren’t doing this for your benefit. Entire divisions are paid to find ways to deny or reduce the benefits you’re already overpaying for.

Universal not-for-profit medicare, conception to grave, would save over a trillion dollars a year. That money would work to your benefit, rather than vanishing into the off-shore accounts of wealthy parasites.

Finally, you would end up with a healthier, longer-lived society.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

Student loans are a huge and vicious racket, second only to health insurance. Basically, it turns the vast majority of people with marketable skills into wage slaves. There’s no escaping the debt, and often the exorbitant interest rates eat up a large part of what normally would be a comfortable salary. Bankruptcy is not permitted. So if someone graduates with $50,000 in annual interest payments and can’t find work that pays six figures, all they can do is watch the debt—and interest on the debt—grow and grow and grow. It’s turned millions of ambitious young lives into nightmares.

Privatized schools are often a racket—remember Trump University—and church-funded schools are an entirely different sort of racket, one that gives religion an unwonted ability to control and suppress young minds. As Witt notes, other countries can provide universal education. There’s no reason America can’t, but for greed and lust for power and control.

4. I don’t believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don’t want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

There is a huge difference between “wanting to work” and “being able to work.” The bureau of Labor Statistics lists those unable to work in the following categories: “ill health or disabled; retired; home responsibilities; going to school; could not find work; and other reasons.” That’s a sizable chunk of the population.

Put it this way: right now we have what the economists term “full employment” with the official unemployment rate at 4.1%. But the percent of the overall total population who are employed is 59.7%. That means that under ideal circumstances, the economy humming and booming, over 40% of the population is unable to work. Nor is that unique to America: it’s true of all civilized societies. And with baby boomers retiring coupled with a dropping birthrate (last year was the lowest birthrate in American history) that ratio is going to worsen.

Are we a decent people? Do we understand that people who can’t work aren’t lazy, but just people caught in various human afflictions, be it age, parenting, or infirmity?

Are we a society that exists to serve the economy, or an economy that exists to serve the society? If the latter, expect a great deal of privation and misery and a parasitic class of unimaginable wealth. You know, like France in the 1780s, Russia in the 1910s, or America now.

5. I don’t throw around “I’m willing to pay higher taxes” lightly. If I’m suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it’s because I’m fine with paying my share as long as it’s actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

Few people know that the average private pension has overhead (mostly administrative costs) ranging from 15-30% of their revenues. Or that about a third of them go bust anyway. Social Security’s administrative costs are less than 1%, and it’s been going strong for nearly a century. It is the greatest deal in American history. Raising the income limit on SS paycheck taxes would ensure it goes on for as long as there is an America. Given the profiting and inefficiency costs of most privatized services, an alternative of raising taxes is almost always a way of saving money. Government has a much higher rate of return than private industry.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn’t have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

It’s a fact of a capitalist economy that inflation is built in. Without inflation, a necessary mechanism to spur growth is missing. It’s the ultimate ‘necessary evil.’

In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.25. It’s $7.25 in quite a few states now. So if a 40 hour week paid $50 then, to have the same purchasing power today, that paycheck would have to be $530.35, according to the CPI calculator. The minimum wage, just to meet the standards set in 1963 for a lowest-paid full time worker, would be $13.25 an hour!

The CPI tends to understate the actual costs for people on the bottom economic rung. Rents have increased by about 50% over and above the median income since 1980, and close to 300% compared to minimum wage. So someone who might be spending 25% of their paycheck for lodging would be spending 75% now.

The wealthy and corporations were taxed much more heavily. Investors expected a lower, albeit more stable ROI. And the sixties were the greatest economic boom for the working class in economic history! The whole country flourished! The rising tide truly did lift all boats.

Finally, every time the minimum wage has been raised, there has been a surge in economic activity. People with more money to spend will spend it. Against all expectations, restaurants are often the biggest beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is – and should be – illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I’m not “offended by Christianity” — I’m offended that you’re trying to force me to live by your religion’s rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That’s how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don’t force it on me or mine.

We’re living in an era of religious overreach, one that threatens to turn us into a grubby, corrupt, inefficient and cruel theocracy. While claiming to only be “saving the lives of unborn babies” (philosophical twaddle flat out disputed by their own Bible) they’ve passed a huge volume of laws in various states that abrogate the rights of women to control their lives and their bodies. It was never about children—it was about control. Christian Nationalists are Christian fascists. They’ve always been around, a toxic form of Christianity, and always have been a threat to freedom.

Like government and corporations, religion is a “good servant but a terrible master.” The founders wanted a government responsive to the people that existed to curtail the power of the church and the aristocracy. Not just a wall of separation, but a demand that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” in terms that make it the only phrase in the Constitution that cannot be amended. They believed that everyone has a right to their religion, and that everyone also has a right not to be subject to any religious power.

8. I don’t believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

Rights aren’t a zero-sum game. “Letting others have rights” doesn’t detract from your rights. Quite the opposite: if the rights of all are respected, your rights are stronger. If they aren’t, yours are on the chopping block. And no, it’s not up to you: people have those rights, regardless of your opinion. Grow up and recognize that. Note this one: I refer to it two more times further on.

9. I don’t believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they’re supposed to be abusing, and if they’re “stealing” your job it’s because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

Calling people “illegals” is a Naziesque phrase revealing a Naziesque mind-set. They haven’t even broken any law coming here, despite what the haters claim. But they DO contribute over a trillion dollars a year to the national GDP, and they do pay taxes because the people employing them don’t want to get in trouble with the IRS. So they’re already getting cheated without small-minded people trying to deny their humanity—or the huge benefit they create for America. Oh, and the crime rate among undocumented aliens is much lower than among native-born Americans.

10. I don’t believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It’s not that I want the government’s hands in everything — I just don’t trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they’re harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

Everyone agrees regulations can be a pain in the ass. But nearly everyone has had their lives saved by regulations at various times, many times over. Take autos: there’s all sorts of safety regulations for vehicles, many of which the auto manufacturers fought tooth and nail against, such as seat belts and airbags. In 1921, the first year such statistics were kept, there were 24.09 fatalities for every hundred million vehicle miles traveled. In the most recent year, 2023, there were 1.27 such fatalities. Without safety rules and regulations, the annual death toll could easily be twenty times higher now than it actually is.

As for food safety, just read Upton Sinclair’s “The Urban Jungle.”

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I’ve spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

Doctor Lawrence Britt in 2003 wrote “The Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism.” I’ve referred to it many times over the twenty years since I first read it. If you haven’t already read it, please do so.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, economic, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that’s causing people to be marginalized.

See my reply to point 8.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

If Trump consolidates power, he WILL come for your guns. The clowns who brayed they were America’s “Second Amendment solution” to the rise of a dictatorial regime have gone missing in action now that we actually have one. But all it will take will be one assassination of a member of the Trump regime, and the great clamp-down will begin, and yes, it will be very bloody. But gun owners, spare me your posturing; your chance came, and you chickened out.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you’re using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

I have no problem with laws designed to prevent bullying, intimidation, or abuse. If you do, you should ask yourself what sort of person you really are.

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

Clean energy, and a clean economy, make for efficient energy and economy. The billions the filthy fuels industry spent on lies about climate change and for raising illiterate monsters like Trump aren’t being spent for your benefit. Corporations are not your friend, they are not here to serve you, and they are, by the terms of their charters, psychotic. Giving them trillions of dollars to mold a society to their ends is the height of stupidity. And we subsidize those trillionaires, because without those subsidies, they couldn’t compete with wind and solar. For decades we subsidized them just because they thought it would be nice to have the extra money. They didn’t even need it up until very recently.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

Again, see point 8. Either rights are absolute for all, or they are absolute for none.

“I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I’m a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn’t mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don’t believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.”

Agreed.

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Donald Has Always Been a Pig — He’s only getting worse as his mind crumbles

Donald Has Always Been a Pig

He’s only getting worse as his mind crumbles

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 20th 2025

Back on October 14, 2016, just four weeks before the American voters lost their minds and elected Donald Trump president, Time Magazine reported this:

‘CNN uncovered a 2004 interview with Donald Trump and Howard Stern in which the two men discuss Lohan, who was 18 at the time. The men talk about Lohan’s appearance and how “wrecked” and “troubled” she was at the time. Stern asked Trump, “Can you imagine the sex with this troubled teen?” Obviously, Trump could. He responded, “She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed. How come the deeply troubled women, you know, deeply, deeply troubled, they’re always the best in bed?”’

Lohan was 18 at the time Trump said that, going on to complain about her freckles, which he apparently found unattractive.

Oddly, Lohan was supporter of Trump in the early days of the new administration, telling a British outlet, “I don’t agree with his policies and the things that he’s doing, but at the end of the day he is the president right now, so what’s the point in picking on someone instead of just seeing what they’re capable of or not capable of?” However, aside from some mild trolling in 2017 that Trump might want to talk to the website Lohan was shilling for—lawyers.com—she hasn’t spoken about him since.

The same CNN article went on to disclose another statement by Trump that partially previews one of Trump’s more bizarre statements in 2025: that he wanted to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship.

“In a later interview with Stern in February 2007, Trump, then best known for NBC reality show The Apprentice, also made derogatory remarks about longtime nemesis Rosie O’Donnell.

“I’d pay a lot of money for that not to happen,” Trump responded to Stern asking whether he would reconcile with Rosie O’Donnell if she performed a sex act on him. “That’s one of the most unattractive people,” he said.”

As support for Trump continues to crumble amongst his once-adoring fans, I’m hearing, more and more, “We had no idea…” No idea he was dishonest. No idea he was authoritarian. No idea he was a chauvinistic pig. No idea he was a thief. No idea he was the monster he really is.

The other day on Facebook, I wrote to one person who was astounded that a contractor refused to do business after seeing a Trump sign on the property, “It’s no longer ‘just politics’; if you still support Trump at this point, it speaks to what sort of person you are, your principles, your decency.” I was nice enough to refrain from pointing out that the Trumpkins on the Supreme Court had upheld the right of business owners to refuse to do business because of sexual preference, or political opinion.

I have no use for the “no idea” people. We’ve known for many, many years exactly what Trump was. He is not only the most hated man in America, but he may just be the most hated man in American history. There’s a coffee cup design that’s popular right now: shows a jaundiced-looking cat above the caption, “Is He Dead Yet?” Nobody ever needs to ask to whom the cat is referring. Hint: It isn’t Jon Arbuckle.

I’ve had people tell me with a perfectly straight face that before Trump entered politics, he was wildly popular and beloved by all, and he sacrificed all that to serve the people. No, really.

Clear back in 1987—yes, 38 years ago!–Trump was cannon fodder for notable comic strips such as Bloom County (Berkeley Breathed) and Doonesbury (Garry Trudeau). I’ve included a couple of copyright violations here, for which I hope to propitiate by linking to Trudeau’s marvelous collection, “Yuge!: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump (Volume 37)”

1987. That was before Trump’s disgraceful calls for the executions of the Central Park Five and before when Trump repeated that demand after the five had been exonerated. That was before Marla Maples, and the squalor of his life revealed. It was before 9/11, before he mocked a disabled reporter, before he raped E. Jean Carroll, and before he became America’s maddest, most vicious, and possibly final President.

In a more recent 1991 sequence, Trudeau had his vacuous TV personality/reporter Roland Hedley interviewing on-the-street New Yorkers about Trump’s hoped-for financial demise. “Curious locals have gathered on the street!” he intones. “Tell me, sir—what will you miss about The Donald’s lifestyle?” Interviewee One replies “Hard to say. There so much that’s repellent about the guy, the boasting, the piggish consumption, the squalid personal life…” Interviewee two interrupts, “How about the hideous décor of his casinos?” “Nah,” One replies, “Who cares about décor? His squalid personal life was the most offensive thing about him!” “It was not! The worst was the hideous décor!” The crowd breaks out in a “Tastes great!” “Less filling!”-type chant while Roland grins at the viewpoint and says, “New Yawkers! They never agree! What are you gonna do, Peter?”

In one panel, the crowd is shouting “JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!” and Roland says, “Peter, the excitement is palpable here tonight…”

Donald Trump is a morally bankrupt pig, and he always has been. If you don’t believe that, you are either a massive fool or there is something very deeply wrong with you.

And he’s only gotten worse, and is a greater danger to all of us.

If you think it’s still “just politics” I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. You’re disgusting.

And if you are unlucky enough to know such a person, get them a copy of Trudeau’s collection. Watching them read it will make it worth the fourteen bucks!

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The Epstein Girls — Child sex trafficking scandal widens—again

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 13th 2025

“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.

“Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration?

“They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so‑called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.

“Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files.”

Well, OK then. I am grateful for Truth Social, because Trump is doing a better job of destroying himself through what he writes there than any of his detractors could manage.

The quote above is from last night, Saturday the 12th, and there’s quite a bit to cover. As everyone knows by now, the Epstein scandal first began to erupt in 2008 (when he was accused of sex trafficking and solicitation of a child for sex, but got an illegal sweetheart deal from U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who went on to become Trump’s sham Secretary of Labor) and he only served 13 months in the federal pen.

In 2019 it emerged that not only were victims not informed of the deal, but were barred from suing Epstein for having been raped as children. Ever since then, there has been a growing movement to uncover the full extent of Epstein’s child-sex-slave cabal, and the powerful and prominent American leaders who frequented it. Trump supporters were particularly vocal about it, claiming that it was organized and run by Obama, the Clintons, and Joe Biden.

I’ve little doubt the rumors were orchestrated by the Trump people, both to defame leading Democrats and to give the whole story an air of ridiculous conspiracy theory, which Trump supporters inevitably did. Remember how Hillary’s child sex slave operation was run from the basement of an unassuming pizza joint? The one that not only lacked a child sex slave operation but even lacked a basement? Or the claim that Obama orchestrated the sweetheart deal for Epstein, even though George W. Bush was still president?

Trump supporters are so viciously nuts that normal people wouldn’t ally with them, even on a credible story about orchestrated child rape and the subsequent coverups. Most people don’t find Trump cultists much of an improvement over child molesters.

Pam Bondi managed to blow the scandal up while at the same time putting Trump in an impossible situation. She said on her first day in office as Attorney General that she had the Epstein files “on my desk” and would be releasing them soon. What was subsequently released was nothing more than a rehash of information that had already been made public. Unrest continued to grow, a forest fire the MAGAts lit in hopes of burning out the opposition.

I can’t guess whose idea it was for Bondi to claim the files never existed in the first place (I do suspect that an increasingly demented Trump ordered it) but it pretty much blew the whole thing wide open, and put Trump supporters in the preposterous situation of having to insist the files existed and the government had been covering them up since 2008, right up to now, or that they never existed at all, even after Biden, Obama, and Clinton wrote them. To everyone’s amazement, many Trump supporters spotted the logical flaw.

In an effort to shut down one element of the Epstein scandal, the administration issued what they said was proof about the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death; video footage that purported to show that nobody had entered or left Epstein’s cell the night he supposedly committed suicide. Only it took just minutes for forensic investigators to determine the supposedly raw footage had been tampered with in multiple spots with Adobe Premiere. So the video only proved that the administration was lying about what happened that night.

Trump, clearly shaken and on the defensive, berated reporters for continuing to obsess over the Epstein non-story, and that backfired, adding more fuel to the fire.

Then came last night’s post, which pretty much proved that whatever his complicity, Trump has been lying about Epstein, and his well-publicized relationship with him, all along.

MAGAts love to believe that Trump gave up adulation and widespread respect in order to “serve the country.” But by the late 1980s Trump was widely seen as vulgar, dissolute, vicious and an amoral buffoon. He was seen as such an immense turd that child rape would almost be a step UP for him.

It’s taken far too long, but it looks like his past has caught up to him, and his cult is about to implode.

 

 

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The Kerr County Flood — A tragedy, and a warning

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 6th, 2025

 

First, my heart goes out to the friends and family of all those who perished in the horrible flash flood along the Guadalupe River in Texas yesterday. That so many were young children only adds to the grief that we all feel.

In two hours, the river flow rose from about 500 cubic feet per second to over 100,000, a staggering increase. Even in the flood-prone Texas hills, this was extraordinary.

Even as they continue to search for twenty-seven missing young girls, the finger-pointing and blaming has also reached flood stage levels. Some of it, course, is idiotic on the face of it. Yes, the flood and resultant tragedy really did happen. No, cloud seeding wasn’t involved. And if you think God did it to punish people who bother you, you need to get a new god. That one’s worthless.

But the more I read about this event, the less blame there seems to be to be meted out. Let’s start with the camp: yes, it was in an area that was prone to flooding. Indeed, in the century that the camp had been there, it had flooded several times, although resulting only in minor property damage and no loss of life.

A lot of people have been blaming the National Weather Service, citing either lack of competence or staff shortages. A local report indicates that the NWS did do the sort of forecasting and warning that could be reasonably expected of it.

According to KXAN in Kerr County:

“[T]he NWS provided additional details on its notification timeline for the Kerr County flood, including:

  • The National Water Center Flood Hazard Outlook issued on Thursday morning indicated an expansion of flash flood potential to include Kerrville and surrounding areas.
  • A flood watch was issued by the NWS Austin/San Antonio office at 1:18 p.m. on Thursday, in effect through Friday morning.
  • The Weather Prediction Center issued three Mesoscale Precipitation Discussions for the excessive rainfall event as early as 6:10 p.m. Thursday indicating the potential for flash flooding.
  • The National Water Center Area Hydrologic Discussion #144 at 6:22 p.m. on Thursday messaged locally considerable flood wording for areas north and west of San Antonio, including Kerrville.
  • At 1:14 a.m. Friday, a flash flood warning with a considerable tag (which denotes high-damage threats and will automatically trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts on enabled mobile devices and over NOAA Weather Radio) was issued for Kerr County.
  • The flash flood warning was upgraded to a flash flood emergency for southcentral Kerr County as early as 4:03 a.m. Friday.
  • The 5:00 a.m. National Water Center Area Hydrologic Discussion #146 on Friday included concern for widespread considerable flooding through the day. The Flood Hazard Outlook was also upgraded to considerable and catastrophic.
  • A flash flood emergency was issued for the Guadalupe River at 5:34 a.m.”

KXAN also reported “For instance, directly under Vesper at the local NWS office is a key position – warning coordination meteorologist (WCM) – that has remained vacant since April. The role was most recently held by longtime employee Paul Yura, who took an early retirement package offered to agency workers as the administration worked to reduce the budget and personnel number at the NWS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” They noted that there were 5 other vacancies in the 21-person staff, including the Senior Hydrologist who took early retirement. The hydrologist is the person you want to speak to when you want to know how MUCH it’s going to rain.

It’s impossible to say how much the absence of those two positions factored into seeing the danger and warning against it, but they did get the word out and in a timely manner.

There’s hardly a place on Earth that is immune to natural disaster. I live in a place that many consider idyllic, but wildfire is a constant worry, ten foot snowstorms are an occasional problem, it reached 109F a year ago today, oh, and did I mention the volcano? No place is completely immune.

Living in hilly country, I know how difficult specific forecasting can be. Microclimates are a major bugger factor in any forecast, and my county has more climate zones than Canada. All of Canada. One time I couldn’t get in to my office, eight miles away and at the same altitude, puzzling clients who couldn’t figure out why three inches of snow could be a serious problem. Only it was five feet here, and the highway was still closed. Supercell storms are tricky as well: on flat ground, one spot may remain bone dry while a mile away they get three inches of rain in ten minutes.

I can’t speak to the timeliness of local emergency response authorities, but I will note there wasn’t much time, and I doubt a single one of them thought, “Oh, let’s let a bunch of seven-year-old girls drown. It will look great on the town’s tourism flyers!”

So quit blaming, people. This is just one of those fucking awful things that happen, and all the preparation in the world can’t insure you’ll be safe. As the saying goes, “Nature always bats last.”

That said, a warning: The ongoing depletion of scientific, response and forecast facilities is going to whip around and bite us on the ass. We’ll miss a Cat 5 hurricane, assuming it’s still just a tropical storm and not have the facilities to spot the bombogenesis or the last minute veer that smashes a major city. Second, the climate is changing, and at an accelerating rate, and ‘once-in-a-century’ events are going to happen with increasing frequency and with increasing severity. Storms, including snow storms, will get worse. Temperatures will fluctuate more wildly, especially on the high end. Many massive weather-related disasters await.

And in places like Texas, where people hate gummint red tape, usually motivated by profit, people will build where they shouldn’t, in areas more prone to flood, fire, earthquake or tornadoes than others.

These things will happen, many will die, and if we want to cast blame, we will need to start by looking in the mirror first.

And remember—Nature always bats last.

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After July 3rd, 2025 — Comes the independence movement

After July 3rd, 2025

Comes the independence movement

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 4th, 2025

Between the infiltration of fascists on the Supreme Court (name the traitors: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney-Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh) and in Congress (too many to name, but almost unanimously Republicans, and willingness to either commit or bow to treason almost unanimous amongst those Republicans), there was only one result possible. The United States of America never stood a chance.

The passage of the hideous, ironically named “One Big Beautiful Bill” is the capstone to the collapse of America. Yes, it is cruel, vicious, and designed to punish the poor and weaken the middle class into insolvency. It increases the already hideously disproportionate disparity of wealth and power of the top 1% to levels that far exceed those of pre-revolutionary France or Russia. That comes at the cost of a trillion for health care for the people, hundreds of billions more to feed the poor, and education. It will make the US a scientific, intellectual and educational backwater. It will, in time, eliminate accessible health care for most of the population, and weaken and degrade public, secular schools into irrelevance.

But the very worst part is that it erects the most efficient and oppressive police state in the history of the world. It provides more funding for the hated and vicious ICE secret police force than the US Marines get. Coupled with Elon Musk’s vast, comprehensive data theft of virtually every government record on everyone in America, it makes for a vast and omnipresent police state that would make Josef Stalin groan with envy.

Even now, I see people, mostly Democrats, chirping that the Republicans have really fucked up this time, and how we’ll make them pay in the off-terms next year. These people are fools: the Republicans have absolutely no intention of holding free and fair elections. None.

Some people take hope that the bill just signed into law delays some of the worst, most rapacious elements of the shredding of the social safety net until after November 2026, and point to that as a sign the Republicans are nervous about those elections.

Nonsense. They just want to hold what will be utterly fraudulent and meaningless elections to make sure their apparatus of control is rock solid and that they need never worry about any election going forward.

Oh, there will be an election. It will even look fairly convincing, in that Republicans will at least lackadaisically campaign, and if the people controlling the vote count are even half-way competent, the results will all fall into a convincing 10 point range for most of the Republicans. There may come a time when they can run unopposed and win 99% of the vote, like in the Soviet Union, but for now they have to pretend there’s still a United States and it is still a democracy of the people. As long as people can PRETEND the country is still theirs, they are less likely to rise up, you see. To that end, Republicans will wave many flags and pound a few Bibles in order to keep their believers glassy-eyed.

But they don’t intend to allow the people to have a meaningful voice. The bill Trump just signed had an approval rating of just 29% during the final hours of debate. No bill still pending before Congress was ever more unpopular. Ever. And when you have people like Joni Ernst sneering “We all have to die sometime” to people complaining that their children can’t get necessary medical care, or the psychotically racist Laura Loomer talking about deporting all 65 million native Latinos with a grin from the president, you know they have stopped pretending. Trump spent yesterday complaining about how farmers were at the mercy of “Shylock” bankers and crowing that he was going to throw a trashy UFC bloodfest on the White House lawn. They’ve quit pretending. They can’t be arsed giving a shit. They’ve won, and they know it.

But they still fear us. They know that if the people withdraw consent, and simply and peacefully refuse to cooperate, they cannot maintain power. The Soviet Union, the most efficiently oppressive regime in history, fell with hardly a shot being fired simply because the citizenry of the USSR withheld their support and peacefully resisted.

I’ve said before that once-a-month demonstrations aren’t going to cut it. People are going to have to go out every day and protest, and there’s certainly no shortage of things people can protest. The worthless corporate media will largely ignore it, but the internet is building its own fourth estate. Corporate news is rapidly falling into the same niche as Pravda and Izvestiya did in the Soviet Union and RT does today.

The government will make it harder and harder to defy. They may make demonstrating illegal, and even defiance of any sort. Who’s gonna stop them? Clarence Thomas? Mike Johnson? The law will be what they say it is, and it won’t be there to protect you.

But there are hundreds of ways to resist. They still need you, and even though they’ll never admit it, they need the support of the people in general.

Make Trump supporters feel unloved. Don’t miss an opportunity to discuss the failings and deceptions of the Trump regime. Make Trump supporters doubters, and eventually adversaries. When dealing with officials, drag your feet in every way possible. Do it legally, do it peacefully, but do it. And if they try to outlaw resistance, find less obvious ways of resisting, but never stop resisting. The apparatchiks of the Trump regime are human, and will slowly succumb to social pressure. Make them feel unloved.

Trump is a dying man. He isn’t plausible as the face of the fascist revolution now, and it’s only going to get more and more strained as his mind, never much to begin with, erodes. While we don’t know who will replace him, he won’t have whatever cult following Trump still retains at that point, so keep the pressure on, and make it unceasing. Most of Trump’s closest clique are weak and amazingly stupid opportunists, and they will make a lot of mistakes. Make them pay.

This regime can be brought down in ways in which the founders of the United States would approve. But be prepared to be stubborn and unyielding. Make them feel unloved.

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The End of America — Supreme Court shuts down judicial review

The End of America

Supreme Court shuts down judicial review

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 27th 2025

The Supreme Court just destroyed the independent judiciary in the United States, eliminating the one legal recourse available to defy Trump’s capricious and tyrannical executive orders. The decision putatively rests on the issue of whether birthright citizenship is a constitutional right or not (it is, no matter what the bigots on the right claim). Instead, it focused on whether lower courts can rule on the constitutionality or the legality of presidential executive orders or not. By the usual six to three margin, this badly-compromised court ruled that they, and only they, can determine if any rule or law is constitutional or not.

Trump is crowing that it’s a ‘monumental victory’ for him. Why wouldn’t he? Basically, any executive order he writes has the force of law now, unless the Supreme Court says otherwise: and his six pets on the court aren’t going to do that, are they?

While the landmark Supreme Court case of Marbury vs. Madison established the principle of judicial review in 1803, the power of lower courts to rule on the constitutionality of law actually predates it, dating back to Hayburn’s Case, in 1792, in which Congress denied pensions to a “meritorious and unfortunate clafs of citizens.” The ruling found that Congress acted improperly, and that the law was ex officio in all 15 states.

Amy Coney Barrett, revealing her deep lack of understanding of the law, wrote “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” ignoring the obvious constitutional fact that such authority is neither Congress’ right to give nor deny. That was understood in 1792, and codified by the only authority that could do so: the courts themselves.

The fascists on the court grant “the government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”

With the dishonest and cowardly smirk that is the bedrock of fascism, the court allowed a stay of thirty days before Trump can begin throwing birthright citizens into his death camps overseas, but made it clear the Supreme Court was the only place the stay could be lifted—and the court won’t reconvene until October.

No court can strike down a law or executive order, no matter how cruel, illegal or capricious it might be—and we already know where the Trump regime stands on that, don’t we?

It means ALL disputes that have a constitutional basis can only be decided by the Supreme Court. And back in the days when all nine justices were acting in good faith to uphold the Constitution, they already faced a workload that limited their ability to respond in a country that turns out tens of thousands of new laws every year, state by state, or a capricious and irrational president who signs executive orders that are whimsical and recklessly disregard the rights of those affected.

The right wing supermajority on the court can simply deny cert, (refuse to take up) any challenge to any executive order or act of legislature, no matter how badly it hurts people. And they will. They’ve essentially ruled that they have absolute authority to abrogate their authority absolutely.

Without meaningful right of appeal, how long do you suppose it will be before Pam Bondi urges Trump to sign an XO mandating five years in prison and $100,000 fine for referring to Trump as TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out? Don’t laugh: Bondi has already made a threat along those lines. So you defy the XO and the local sheriff comes around and arrests you. The local court isn’t going to rule the law is stupid and unconstitutional. And you called Trump “TACO” out loud in front of witnesses, so pleading innocent isn’t going to help you. Superior courts cannot rule thusly. Only the Supreme Court can hear your appeal on constitutional grounds. And they don’t want to hear a bunch of whines from convicted criminals, do they?

So basically, the United States of America has come to a close. And what is coming has already made clear that it’s is going to be closer in tone and spirit to Nazi Germany than to your usual grubby little dictatorship.

I’m doomed. Many of you reading this will be, too. But the only thing worse would be to simply kneel and remain silent and hope it delays the fall of the ax. I‘m going to keep on writing these until they come for me.

If you want America back, you’re going to have to fight for it.

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Da Week Dat Wuz — Things rapid enough for ya?

Da Week Dat Wuz

Things rapid enough for ya?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 15th, 2025

 

The past ten days have been about as wild as it gets. It reminds me of an observation the then-prestigious Times of London made in late April of 1945, in the wake of Roosevelt’s death, the collapse of Germany, and Hitler’s suicide: “Events seem to be happening with extreme rapidity.”

We’ve seen huge impromptu demonstrations in Los Angeles (and spreading rapidly to other cities), an assassination (with the assassin, apparently a Trump supporter, still on the loose), a Senator manhandled and briefly arrested at a press conference for asking a question, a planned demonstration that its organizers claim attracted 12 million people nationwide, a war in the middle east threatening to engulf the world (like most conflicts there do at one point or another) another war between two nuclear powers that has only grudgingly slowed down to hurling insults, a landmark court decision determining the limits on presidential ability to call out the national guard, and increasing chaos surrounding the fate of what may be the most problematic budget bill in American history.

In the background behind much of this was the constant incompetence and stupidity of the Trump administration. To paraphrase the late great P.J. O’Rourke, “What in most administrations would be considered roadblocks in this administration is usually the road.” You have the Speaker of the House calling for an arrest of a governor (of California, no less) for disagreeing with a President about the illegal deployment of troops. Note that it wasn’t the governor breaking the law in this instance.

The month began, as so many weird and crackpot things do, with Trump’s Truth Social account, which reposted an utterly demented conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had, in fact, been assassinated in 2020 and replace with something called “a robotic clone.” Um, does that mean the original Biden was a robot, and if so, why clone it when you can just swing by Radio Shack and build a new one?

It remains unproven that Trump was upset when someone posted “TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out” in the Wall Street Journal. But that didn’t stop the most idiotic and corrupt Attorney General in American history (yes, even worse than John Mitchell) from stating that anyone calling Trump a TACO would be arrested, thus creating a viral meme that threatens to be bigger than the dumb blonde arguing with a white cat, or even “Hitler finds out.”

A rumor made the rounds that FIFA was considering pulling the World Cup out of the United States. People knew it was a joke when it was reported FIFA was upset about the corruption and ineptitude of the administration, which is a bit like hearing the drummer for Blue Cheer requesting the band play a bit more quietly. No, FIFA isn’t pulling the World Cup.

Trump and Elon Musk had a breakup that was done with all the class and dignity of a drunken hair-pulling brawl amongst the girls backstage at a seedy strip club. Trump’s endlessly fascinating association with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein came up during their quiet discussion.

Trump had his grand military parade yesterday, and it had about the same spirit and verve of baseball fans leaving a stadium after a three-hour rain delay turns into a cancellation. Trump just sat there and reminded everyone of the old Leslie Gore song, while a girl, presumably a niece or something, chewed on a miniature American flag behind him. One headline snarked “By the tens, Americans turned out to cheer for Trump’s birthday.” Even the troops seemed unenthusiastic, with several groupings not even marching in step. It’s one thing to be proud and military; quite another to be used as a prop in a Marx Brothers movie.

I’ve been saying for several weeks that we’ve seen the high water mark of what historians might end up calling “the Trump madness.” We’ve already seen the twin towers of his economic policy—tariffs and the Ayn Randian wet dream in his “Big Beautiful Bill”—effectively collapse.

Trump’s Hitlerian dream of ridding America of “vermin” now seems to be falling apart. He thoroughly pissed off and dismayed his most stridently racist supporters by floating the idea of a “gold card” for Visas that could be purchased for just five million dollars by any Russian plutocrat or Columbian drug lord willing to put up the money. Trump seemed to think most agricultural workers and hotel maids had a few million or so laying around, and that this scheme would generate five trillion or so.

And now it seems, with demonstrations spreading and Trump’s standing in the polls deep underwater on his biggest political strength—throwing out eleven million people—ICE is being ordered to rethink their priorities. A memo was released by a ranking Gazpacho officer, Tatum King, that said, “please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels…other case types/investigations such as human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are ok, however we are not pursuing non-criminal collaterals.”

It’s unlikely that Jesus came to Trump in his sleep and told him “Try to act like a fucking human being.” More likely Trump was dismayed by the spread of the demonstrations, his loss of support on what had been his centerpiece campaign stump item, and, most likely of all, intense pressure from the corporations and special interests that exploit and make billions on immigrant labor—hotel and restaurant chains, Big Agriculture, and other parties that profit from the near-slavery conditions imposed on people trying just to survive. Many of them are, of course, Republicans, because humans exist to make money for their betters, right? Trump was seriously interfering with that.

It’s a hard and very welcome slap on Steven Miller’s gleaming pate, but there’s no shortage of little shit states with mad dictators who would welcome someone with Steve’s unique personality and talents. He’ll find his own little Holocaust to run and do fine. Meanwhile, I bet the administration is already Photoshopping him out of the group pix already.

I don’t expect things to calm down, but I do think Trump and his minions will continue to see their power ebb.

At least, one can hope.

 

ADDENDUM: Trump just tweeted this: “Our Nation’s ICE Officers have shown incredible strength, determination, and courage as they facilitate a very important mission, the largest Mass Deportation Operation of Illegal Aliens in History. Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People. ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.

“These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland! I want our Brave ICE Officers to know that REAL Americans are cheering you on every day. The American People want our Cities, Schools, and Communities to be SAFE and FREE from Illegal Alien Crime, Conflict, and Chaos. That’s why I have directed my entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.

“Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of ANYONE who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States,” he concluded. “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”

So make of that what you will. I wonder if Miller wrote it. “Remigration” sounds like something Hitler might have come up with.

 

 

 

 

 

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Blood Twatter Feud — Bitch-bois slap-party on line

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

June 6th 2025

Political feuds are common throughout American history. The most famous is the one that resulted in an actual blood duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, with fatal results for Hamilton. There’s plenty that resulted in violence and bloodshed: Matthew Lyon vs. Roger Griswold, for instance, started when Griswold spit tobacco juice in Lyon’s eyes. Then there was John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, which blew up when Jackson blamed his wife’s death on a smear campaign by Adams. Riots ensued. There are instances of Congressionals pulling guns on one another in Congress, although no actual shots were fired. Preston Brooks nearly caned Charles Sumner to death in 1856, exacerbating pre-Civil War tensions. One fellow named “Bowie Knife” Potter managed to avoid some duels by demanding Honor be settled by hand-to-hand combat with…you guessed it, Bowie knives. That was a bit too personal for politicians accustomed to politely shooting at one another from 20 feet.

While often fueled by genuine personal hatred, some of the quarrels could get downright poetic. John Randolph, who engaged in several blood duels, once said of Henry Clay that he was “like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he both shines and stinks.” FDR, frustrated by GOP obstructionists who opposed Lend-Lease while simultaneously calling him a warmonger, derided the three main characters in a speech in which he intoned repeatedly, “Martin, Barton…and FISH.” After the first such intonation, with finger jabbing, the audience joined in gleefully. It was politically devastating for the three congressmen in question.

Social media has brought a lot of political squabbling, previously largely out of sight in the cloakrooms, out in public and often at about fifth-grade level. While it’s only fair to note that the large majority of tweets put out by representatives are at worst civil, some would be more at home in a school playground. Marjorie Taylor-Greene had been in the habit of closing a confrontational tweet by calling the recipient a psycho until someone noted she didn’t have to sign her tweets.

So the present meltdown between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has plenty of historical precedent. But in this instance, both men have a mixture of self-grandiosity, contempt for everyone else, and a drug-fueled lack of inhibitions. And both own their own social media platforms, so the only constraint on which they write is…themselves. If their falling out was widely predicted, the nastiness of it, as well, was quite foreseeable, although both men have people around them who might at least try to stop them from going to Defcon Five immediately.

The results have been more like a really nasty breakup in high school, where he’s running around calling her an ugly slut and stupid, and she’s telling her friends she ought to sleep with the football squad just to show him she at least can ‘make the team.’ No winners in those sorts of situations.

Given the unearned and undeserved power both men wield, and the absolute lack of constraints either have, the results are like a couple of kindergartners who are having a tantrum while holding flamethrowers. It’s both amusing and horrifying to watch.

Speaking of which, yes, blood feuds are illegal, and I have no problem with that. Besides, I doubt either man could load a gun without blowing their own feet off. Hell, I doubt either could pour piss out of a boot if you wrote the instructions on the sole.

Both are capable of doing immense damage to one another and to the country as a whole. Both have used their wealth for the purpose of perverting power and influence to their own ends, and at the expense of the county. About the only thing more destructive and dangerous to the United States then the escalation of this fight would be a resolution of the fight wherein they rejoin and continue to rape the United States.

The GOP, superficially at least, are aligning with Trump. The ever-servile Mike Johnson said, “I’ll tell you what, do not doubt and do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of this generation and probably the modern era.”

Of course, not knowing when to quit, he also said, “I don’t argue with [Musk] about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.” Perhaps they should: both have a recent history of gaudy and expensive contraptions that roar off the pad and explode in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly.” The Big Beautiful Bill is about as flightworthy as Musk’s last few launches.

Frankly, I hope they do destroy one another. Yes, it will cause immense damage to the country, but not nearly as much as what they’ve already done. Trump is destroying democracy and American freedom and wants to be a dictator. Musk wants cyber control of all citizens and to turn the entire country into a debtor-slave economy. Neither will make America great, and will ruin the lives of tens of millions of people.

So a pox on both of them.

Meanwhile, sit back and watch the show. This is better than Diddy Combs and R. Kelly duking it out with running chainsaws in a closet.

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This Week’s Pravda — Talking points for non-thinkers

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 29th 2025

Every one in a while some right winger gets up on its hind legs and tries to pretend it can think.

Almost always it’s a cut-and-paste job from some flak at the Heritage Foundation or similar propaganda pit, as this one is. This one has all the elements one might expect: punching down while howling ‘victimhood,’ combined with ludicrous rationales, scapegoating, and flat-out lies. Propaganda 101. Let’s look at this week’s crop, shall we?

1. Accept the fact that this is the leadership that we working, middle class Americans wanted. We are pulling the economic weight in this country and we are tired of pulling the weight of those that do not contribute.

Chances that the author of this piece is anywhere near middle-class are pretty slim. But like all libertarians, he conflates society with a business. Businesses can be efficiently heartless and throw their unproductive elderly and infirm off on an ice floe to die. But societies don’t work that way. Societies take care of the elderly, children, the chronically ill and the otherwise disabled. We aren’t Nazis. The Nazis were very efficient. But you wouldn’t want to live and die under them.

2. If you haven’t already, get a job. Every business in the country is hiring. And you get paid for the work you do. And the harder you work and the more you learn, the faster you will advance and the more you will earn. It’s an amazing concept.

Unemployment is at 4%. That means nearly everyone who can work is, and there aren’t many jobs to be had. I know they are talking about work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but the fact is that 65% of them ARE working, and the rest can’t. The “amazing concept” is just cruelty and unconcern.

3. Understand that if you are a citizen or a legal alien that you are not going to get deported! I don’t care what CNN says.

Flat out lie. Right now there is a four year old American girl whose guardians are frantically fighting her deportation because she has an illness that will kill her in days without treatment available only in America. There are dozens of instances of people, both American born and with green cards being sent to Donald’s for-profit gulag in El Salvador. Are we supposed to believe those dozens of court cases concerning illegal deportation the government is losing aren’t real?

4. Tariffs are a bargaining chip. When you are in business you make deals, and sometimes you have to play hardball. That’s how you get the deals you desire.

TACO Donald is playing hardball with a Nerf ball, it seems. His tariffs are wild, capricious, illogical and have cost the country hundreds of billions. Now a court has slapped him flat, ruling that he has no authority to levy tariffs in the first place. But immense damage has been done. In the eyes of the world, America has become a bad joke.

5. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects you from discrimination by age, sex, race, etc. DEI openly violates this. Democrats want you to believe the opposite is true because they value your vote more than your quality of life.

All DEI ever did was ensure that jobs didn’t go to unqualified white males. Republicans hate the Civil Rights Act and want to get rid of it. You can’t justify “DEI” to erase the roles of women and other minorities in history and science. They even tried to erase Jackie Robinson’s military history and mention of the Tuskegee Airmen. It’s a reinstatement of Jim Crow bigotry, nothing more and nothing less.

6. It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money. You absolutely should give a damn about how it is spent.

Let’s see here. Four point three trillion in tax cuts, 101% of which goes to the wealthy. A tax INCREASE for those making $17,000 a year. Meanwhile, $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and a drive to make Social Security more “efficient” by making it harder to claim benefits. They claimed widespread fraud and audited 110,000 “suspect” cases. They found two—yes, single digit two—cases of suspected fraud. I’ll replace item six this way: “It’s your money, and the government is taking it from you and giving it to the rich.”

7. We are not the World Bank. If other countries need help they should raise their own finances. I don’t recall receiving any hurricane relief money from India or China.

And now we aren’t getting any hurricane relief from the United States, either. Trump cut off aid for last year’s storms in North Carolina. Oh, and he wants to close FEMA. But foreign aid, which made up less than one percent of the budget, was an invaluable tool for maintaining American influence and support throughout the world. Yes, China is more than happy to step in and replace us.

8. Drill baby, drill. Want to know why? Because we have it. Are electric cars the future? Not in their current form. There is way more oil in the ground than lithium, and guess where most of that is? China. Want food prices to come down? Then energy costs have to come down. And that means oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. Unicorn farts won’t power a factory.

Aside from the fact that oil production was at an all time high under Biden and prices still went up, there’s the fact that the multinational corporations do it for profit, and not for gas at $1.98, as Donald is claiming it is. Filthy fuels are still on their way out, and even though Tesla fell apart under the misrule of Elon Musk, other companies have surpassed Tesla in economy, range, price and reliability. And we’ve found large reserves of lithium in the US.

9. The economy and the security of the country are far more important than your feelings, get over it.

If everyone is broke and nobody trusts or respects the government any more, then you’re going to find yourself on the outside looking in. The one thing libertarians never understand: the economy exists to support the society. The society doesn’t exist to support the economy. Get over it.

10. There are men and there are women. Simple as that.

I’ll pass on the biology debate for now. Biology isn’t my strong suit, but I can still mop the floor with the ignorant bigot who wrote that. Human gender is far more fluid than most people realize, and human sexuality is another entire universe. Visit any large porn site to learn just how quaint and parochial your interests really are. Remember; the social rules of East Podunk are not the natural laws of the universe. I suspect the only thing the author knows about women is that he can’t get one.

11. Education is to establish a learning core that prepares a child for the real, working world. Anything else is wrong.

So we should only educate people to be mindless drones in service to the economy? If you think education is failing you now, wait until you are dealing with people who know even less, but aren’t happy with your rule!

12. Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States and he won in a mathematical landslide. Get over it.

Trump won by 1.6% of the vote, and less than a third of eligible voters voted for him. In an election not owned by billionaires, gerrymandered to death in the House, and with Jim Crow-like restrictions on so-called “voter fraud” Trump would have been laughed off as a bad joke back in 2015.

Copied from another post.

Of course. People who can’t read or think are the TARGET, not the source of this malarky!

 

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One Big Beautiful Bukkake — Plutocrats Plan Our Gangbang

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 26th, 2025

While everyone has been distracted by Trump’s demented and often Naziesque antics, the true fascist mien (cough) of the GOP has been revealed for all to see. Donald is just using his often-cartoonish viciousness and cruelty to keep his most mindless followers hooting in joy as the GOP contemplates its long-held dream of raping America to death.

The House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (so named by Donnie, who knows how to engage the most stupid people around) by only one vote. I wish I could say that the handful of Republicans who opposed it did so on some sort of moral or ethical principles, but the sad fact is they hate the bill because it doesn’t go far enough. They’re worried about the estimated $4.3T in debt it will add to the existing GOP-created flood of red ink. But rather than eliminate the estimated $4T tax cut that would go to the billionaires, they want to completely eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

You? Oh, your taxes would go up. Not a lot, but then, forty years of Reaganomics hasn’t left you with much to tax, has it?

One estimate is that 99% of the tax cuts would go to those making more than $4M a year, while people making $17,000 or less would see a tax increase of $1,000 a year. You don’t mind giving up your health care and pension so Bezos can send another bevy of trophy wives into the stratosphere in a giant phallus, do you? Sure, just as long as it owns the libs.

Nobody really knows how many nasties are hidden in the bill. Here’s the ones we’ve found so far.

It extends the “state of emergency” Trump declared over the wholly imaginary Venezuelan invasion of the United States. This means among other things that he can unilaterally declare martial law, and delay or even cancel elections.

The bill has a provision to federalize elections (they are mandated to the states by the Constitution) which means that Trump’s utter corrupt and politicized Department of Justice under Kristi Noem would have complete control over who could vote, how they could vote, and even eliminate the secret ballot in the name of fighting “voter fraud.”

It completely neuters the courts, mandating that the administration can ignore any court edict for up to a year, and protecting all members of the administration from contempt of court rulings—the one weapon the courts have to enforce compliance. There has never been a country without a strong, independent judiciary that was worth a shit, and America would be no exception.

Back when I was a kid, they used to teach about the “Spoils System” wherein new administrations could replace government functionaries with their own people. Needless to say, massive corruption and incompetence was built into such a system, and the Pendleton Law was passed in 1883 creating a non-politicized civil service.

This bill would restore the spoils system. Good luck getting that permit you need if you voted for the wrong guy in the last election! Need a copy of your birth certificate? Don’t forget to bribe!

Protests and protesters could be tracked and penalized, no matter how peaceful and legitimate. Freedom of speech becomes an empty mockery. It includes individual lawful protest. This essay, completely legal and legitimate in May of 2025, could put me in prison next year. Ex Post Facto wouldn’t exist under Trump. He already has a track record of punishing people for actions that were lawful at the time—many still are lawful, but that doesn’t stop Trump.

ICE, already America’s Gestapo, would see its budget increase by twelve-fold to $43B a year by 2029. By then they will probably have run out of undocumented people to throw in the Gulags and will be branching out to arrest anyone with brown skin or a last name ending in a vowel.

Mind you, most of this has no foundation in US law, and much of it is flat out unconstitutional. But no worries: the courts won’t be allowed to stop it. Read back to see the shit status of countries without a meaningful court system.

As is widely noted, the bill would absolutely devastate all social safety net programs (the ones that Elon and his Randroid thugs haven’t already destroyed, like Meals on Wheels or the Weather Service). It’s no exaggeration to say that starvation would become a serious problem in America.

For the second time in a week, some right winger decided to refute our fears about the bill by citing AI: in this instance, Elon Musk’s apartheid joke of an AI, Grok. I’m still laughing.

That “One Big Beautiful Bill”? No worries. Elon’s bastard cyberchild has a simple answer: it doesn’t exist. And I quote: Existence of “One Big Beautiful Bill”: There is no record in my knowledge of a bill by this name or with these specific provisions being proposed or debated in the U.S. Congress as of my last update.

Oh, well. I guess I need to go back and unwrite this sucker. Would Elon lie to me?

Elon isn’t the only one pretending it isn’t really there. The bill holds off most of the very worst provisions until 2029, after the next (and possibly final) presidential election.

Now, it won’t survive the Senate, which means that the whole thing is still a long way from becoming law. I predict the next budget bill will be yet another Continuing Resolution, which is a polite way of saying “Let’s hang the country very slowly.” We’re not dead yet, in other words.

But for anyone who cares to look, it’s a naked look at what the plutocrats who control the GOP have in mind for us. If enough of this monster passes, there’s no turning back.