Letter to Liz Warren’s campaign:
Letter to Liz Warren’s campaign:
Liz is my Senator and I started out supporting her. Now I am leaning Bernie or frankly, any Democrat but Liz. My disenchantment started with Liz wiffle-waffling over Medicaid for All. Is she for it or against it now? Having some third system for a transition as Liz has reportedly proposed is a trillion dollar opportunity cost which can and should be avoided.
Why can Liz not say anything nice about socialism? I am a union member and DSA member, and Liz’s program is a socialist program. Why can she not acknowledge democratic socialists such as Eugene Debs, Upton Sinclair, Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin and Victor Berger? We don’t want ‘Bernie Lite’ and we definitely do not want another entitled, neoliberal, rightist candidate like Hillary Clinton. I’m so disappointed, and looking forward to a progressive challenger from the real Democratic party of the people when Liz runs again for Senate.
I was a credentialed voting state delegate to the 2018 Democratic convention. I welcome your response.
best,
Henry Edward Hardy
Copyright © 2020 Henry Edward Hardy
Trump Appears to be Unfit for Office
Trump Appears to be Unfit for Office
This is not normal. It isn’t normal for the President of the United States to call himself a “very stable genius.” Repeatedly. It isn’t normal for the President to refer to his own supposed, and indeed, hypothetical, “great and unmatched wisdom.”
It isn’t normal to threaten to destroy an allied country, NATO member Turkey, if they do what the President just told the Turkish President they could do.
It isn’t normal to call respected senior members of Congress traitors, or call for impeaching them, as if that was a thing under the Constitution. It isn’t.
I disagree profoundly with Mr. Trump’s behaviors and statements. I can’t offer an opinion about Mr. Trump’s policies or beliefs, because he blows every which way with the opinion of the last person he talked to, or the last thing he saw on TV or some crazed internet trollery.
Donald Trump is manifestly unfit for office. These past few weeks he’s eclipsed Richard Nixon and even the madness of King George and is saying things every day which are not only manifestly untrue, and self-contradictory, but which one sees and wonders where does this end?
Mr. Trump should not have access to anything which could be harmful to himself or others, much less nuclear weapons and a military which spends as much as the next ten military powers combined.
It is time, long past time, to remove Mr. Trump from office by legal means, whether that be by the 25th Amendment, Impeachment & Trial, or the ballot box. The sooner, the better.
letter to the New York Times, Trump’s Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy’ and ‘Frightening,’ Official Told Whistle-Blower
Copyright © 2019 Henry Edward Hardy
Comments on Stephens article in NYT on Democratic Party issue positions
Comments on Stephens article in NYT on Democratic Party issue positions
The practical facts about immigration is that criminalizing it doesn’t stop it.
What it does is present the United States with a conundrum; imprison, intern and/or deport tens of millions of people, many or most of whom have American citizens in their immediate families, or see the rule of law trampled through non-enforcement of an unenforceable & morally reprehensible law.
The alternative to withdrawing from Afghanistan is to keep US forces there forever. How is that in US interests? The US attempt at nation building has been such a notable failure that the US has seen fit to exclude its own puppet government from the peace negotiations.
How is a state of permanent, unwinnable war preferable to peace?
The authorization for use of military force in Afghanistan was premised on the constitutional article regarding letters of marque & reprisal, an anti-pirate clause. Well, the Al Queda “pirates” have been defeated and UBL is long gone. And so should the US be from Afghanistan.
How is it that Mr. Stephens apparently believes that free, taxpayer-supported public education for all is economically unsustainable in the US, though countries such as Germany & Sweden apparently find a way to accomplish this. How bout less spending on permanent wars & dominance of the entire world through economic & military interventions?
Regarding health care, once again, how is it that Stephens believes that the US can’t do what Europe and Canada can in providing free, quality healthcare for all?
Who is Robert Mueller?
Who is Robert Mueller?
Unlike Cadet Bone Spurs, Mueller served in Viet Nam in the 3rd Marine Division. He received A Bronze Star with a V for rescuing a wounded Marine under fire in 1968. Later he was wounded in action and then returned to combat duty. He was decorated twice with the Navy and Marine Corp Commendation Medal with a V.
He was US Attorney for Northern California, and then Asst. US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Mueller served as the senior litigator in the homicide section of the DC US Attorney’s Office.
He was appointed as Deputy Attorney General of the United States by President George W Bush in 2001, and later that year, was appointed by Bush as Director of the FBI. Mueller served as FBI Director for 12 years.
In 2016, Mueller was awarded the Thayer Award, which is given to one person per year by the US Military Academy at West Point.
In 2017, Mueller was awarded the Baker Award for excellence in the intelligence and national security activities of the United States government by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
People don’t generally plead guilty to federal felonies if they are innocent of all charges. And they certainly do not plead and then cooperate with investigators if they in fact, have no knowledge or participation in any alleged illegal activities. They generally plead to one charge and cooperate with investigators in order to avoid more and greater and even more serious charges.
Rick Gates: Conspiracy and making false statements
Michael Flynn: Making false statements
George Papadopoulos: Making false statements
Richard Pinedo: Identity theft
Alex van der Zwaan: Making false statements
Manafort is facing 23 charges that we know of, 5 from the Washington DC Grand Jury and 18 from the Alexandria, Virginia Grand Jury
18 Russian Nationals and three Russian companies have been charged with federal crimes by the DC Grand Jury so far.
In all his career there’s never been any allegation of either favoritism, nor insanity, nor stupidity, nor political bias against Mueller.
Copyright © 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Thoughts on policy toward North Korea
So the UN has put even more stringent sanctions on North Korea. I don’t see where that is going to force North Korea into abandoning its nuclear and ICBM arsenal and development. At best the sanctions slow the nuclear program by limiting access to hard currency.
Maybe, maybe, a more adept US administration could persuade North Korea into joining the Test Ban Treaty. They could commit first to no atmospheric testing, which would essentially cost them nothing since they haven’t been conducting atmospheric tests. However, more competent administrations have tried and failed to contain North Korea using negotiated agreements.
Absent a US-Russian-Chinese agreement to go in and denuclearize North Korea by force, the US has to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state and has no intention of denuclearizing, ever.
North Korea looks at states like Ukraine and Libya which did denuclearize, and later saw their governments overthrown by US-backed coups, and this doesn’t look like a good scenario to them.
Engaging in a florid war of words with the North Koreans, with insults like “Little Rocket Man,” is a spectacularly bad and unwise strategy. They are on the paranoid side of insecure, so we should be as stolid and predictable and imperturbable as possible. Enduring a million “dotards” is better than enduring a single nuclear strike on the US or its allies.
China is most concerned with a break-up of NK with loose nukes and a huge refugee crisis on their borders, and that would be a horrible situation. The US needs to not squeeze NK so hard that it collapses into warlords or a Mad Max-like anarchy.
The best option I can present is make the best of a bad situation. Treat them like Pakistan, more or less. If the US simply refuses to give NK a seat in the club of nuclear powers, it loses all chances of NK ever adhering to customary law, and it invites NK to make some kind of demonstration, which could go hideously wrong in a number of ways.
Copyright © 2017, 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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