On Donald Trump
Trump is fundamentally a student of his father’s, with advanced lessons from Roy Cohn. He’s learned the New York way of schmoozing, exaggerating, telling people what he thinks they want to hear, being very slippery and blatantly lying seemingly about even things there’s no reason to lie about, in order to show disrespect to people he wants to hurt. From Cohn, a strategy mix of intimidation, implicit blackmail, clandestine forbidden sex, hard partying, international intrigue, seduction, and hard-nosed threats.
And that’s worked remarkably, even unbelievably well for Trump.
Until now. The Presidency is not a real estate empire or a mafia family. The nomenklatura, or institutional bureaucracy or what Erdogan and Trump like to call “The Deep State” are notoriously entranched and hard to control. A far more proficient sociopathic President, Richard Nixon, found this out to his dismay, as did Bill Clinton to a degree. Though the latter, by his Elmer Gantry/Huey Long talents, survived.
Bill Clinton and LBJ were extroverted people persons and were great at gladhandling/manhandling people to get what they wanted from Congress and the bureaucracy. Obama, an introvert, was less successful.
But Trump as President of the USA is disastrous. He is not unintelligent within certain parameters, but his judgment seems to be impaired much of the time, he seems to have limited medium term recall which he covers for by lying and his credibility with the apparatus is less than zero. Calling them out by name to insult them doesn’t help either. And backstabbing the NRA live on TV? That was in a way delightful but at the same time I have to go whaaat is thaaat? I can’t think of a worse thing he could have done politically to undermine his base and get a lot of heavily armed people very nervous and defensive than by publicly suggesting that arms should be seized from US citizens by law enforcement. “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” I mean he actually said those words quote unquote. Is this a will to self-destruction like Hitler in his bunker? The entire world hopes not! Is it all a theatre of the absurd he simply does. not. care? Is he an agent provocateur dancing to the tune of Putin’s “chef?”
I don’t know.
But we are all going to find out.
Interesting times.
Copyright © 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Hillary Clinton is in jeopardy of felony charges
Hillary Clinton is facing possible indictment on Federal felony charges of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material under 18 U.S. Code § 1924.
Clinton’s secret basement server’s sysadmin, Bryan Pagliano, has been granted immunity from prosecution by the Justice Department in order to testify against her. DOJ doesn’t grant immunity unless they feel certain a crime has been committed and there is a reasonably good chance of a conviction.
Pagliano is or was reportedly a GS-15 who was moonlighting for HC and did not report this engagement to his superiors nor did he report the income she paid him under the table.
Now they are both in deep, deep shit. But Brian has the get out of jail free card, but only if he brings down Hillary. She’s fucked, to put it bluntly. Whether she is charged, or convicted, or not.
The statute says nothing about whether the information was classified when it was first retained. If it was classified at any point, and it was on her server in her basement, and she was aware of this at any point, Clinton is in jeopardy of being found guilty of probably multiple felony counts.
Most likely scenario is HC pleads guilty to a single felony charge, and gets a non-custodial, or home-confinement sentence. As was done with General Petraeus and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.
Her best outcome is to get a pardon from Obama before he leaves office, joining such notable patriots as Admiral Poindexter and John Ashcroft. That will still destroy her career and injure the Democratic Party.
If Clinton was someone lower in the bureaucracy she would be facing heavy time, like John Kiriakou, William Binney, Jeff Sterling, Chelsea Manning, Susan Lindauer, Barrett Brown, Thomas Drake, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, and Shami K. Leibowitz. And others.
Pagliano is the dude on the right.
Copyright © 2016 Henry Edward Hardy
America, Land of the Un-brave, Home of the Un-free
America, Land of the Un-brave, Home of the Un-free
Yesterday I got on the 73 bus from Harvard Station. This bus goes toward Watertown where two of the “terrorist suspects” were picked up yesterday. Almost immediately the driver breathlessly got on the radio and reported a “suspicious person”. “He is watching all the buses and writing down something on a clipboard”.
I thought this interesting so I got off at the next stop (which the driver missed till I reminded him) and walked back. I sat down next to the “suspicious person” and observed him. Sure enough he had a printed form on a clipboard and was watching every bus and looking at everyone on board writing something down about it. He was mid 50ish, short greyish hair, light complexion, blue slacks and a green windbreaker.
I told him, “The driver on my bus called you in as a suspicious person so you might be getting a visit from the MBTA cops in a few minutes. I assume you work for the MBTA and are counting people on the buses to help them estimate usage?”
He sighed and said “Yes that happens a lot to me. I don’t mind the hassle personally, I can deal with it, but what bothers me is seeing my America turned into a police state. They keep announcing ‘if you see something, say something’, its like ‘1984’”.
I said, “This isn’t my America. My America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And to the extent that we are no longer brave, we become no longer free. This is more like Communist China, where everyone is supposed to spy on everyone else.”
Previous Scanlyze stories on ‘terrorism’.
Copyright © 2010 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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