The Nation Newspaper

Category: Brian Browne

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part two)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part two)

    He who leads by impulse escorts his people from one calamity to the next

    There is something terribly wrong when the two remaining candidates for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are the moral inadequacies now before the electorate. Neither one of them seeks anything beyond self-aggrandizement. They would rather expend the greatness of an entire nation in order to satiate their appetites.  Searching for noble principle in either of them is as futile as hunting for a snowflake in an active blast furnace. Basic goodness has melted from them long ago.

    That either of them is poised to become president jeopardizes America more than any threat from ISIL or other foreign enemy. Their media hirelings will proclaim the coming election is a battle for America’s soul, its very future. That is a lie. Should these two be the only choice on the menu, then America has no choice. The battle has been waged and it has been lost. If either Trump or Clinton come to reside in the White House, America would be reduced and the world made a more dangerous place because of it. Decay of the national purpose and institutions of governance would be the order of the day. The place they would take America is not the place those who fought and died for America had in mind when they made their sacrifices.

    Trump would send the nation cascading to Hell, boasting all would be fine because he had enough money to make a deal with the devil to sell ice to all the inhabitants below and build a golf course/water resort for the wealthiest among them. Clinton would whisper all would be fine because an old friend was assigned to tending Hell’s backdoor. That friend owed her a favor and would allow her to secret in air conditioners. Distinct styles and different routes leading to the destination: calamity then ruination.

    The most obvious deficiency is Mr. Trump’s although both contenders are equally dangerous but in different ways and means. This flailing man is a walking sarcophagus of prejudices and biases that refuse to die. His campaign thrives on the fears and hatreds that till the souls of the mean and petty. He has said evil things about almost every minority, all faiths but the one he claims, and about women. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, then hatred perhaps is one thing Trump loves more than money.

    The man has shown himself to be grossly ignorant of the most basic tenets of both foreign and domestic policy. He claims that his expertise as a businessman well suits him to rebuild the economy. This is his most solid claim to office; yet, if it is anything, it is but spittle and mud. Just because a man is expert at fashioning hubcaps does not mean he knows how to design an engine or even drive the car. Trump’s prowess as a real estate dealmaker does not automatically make him adept in macroeconomic policy. Thus far, much of what he has proffered as economic policy has been effluent.

    Trump is an untalented hurdy-gurdy man too much in love with the ramshackle noises he makes. He hears a symphony. Most reasonable ears hear the sound of falling rocks. He is the public affirmation of the caution that vast wealth can be as much a debilitation as an attribute. If America wants to be great again, an essential task must be the construction of an insuperable wall between Trump and the White House.

    Clinton’s situation is more nuanced but also parlous. Superficially, she appears to be the right answer for the moment. Yet, the only real difference between her and Trump is one of veneer.

    While he is brash and abrasive, she has a polished appearance and speaks with a professional restraint. Yet, her deeds reveal an impetuous streak and a heart as disdainful of democratic practice as Trump’s.

    The danger Trump poses is clear and bulbous. He relishes showing us he is an epic collision in the making. Both believe themselves more than us mere mortals. As such, both would undermine American democracy more than perfect it. Both might bring the world to the cliff’s edge, to leave it hanging on a razor-thin balance.

    Clinton’s words profess compassion. Her long resume pretends competence. Her deeds are the problem. Her accomplishments are more hollow than she would rather they be. This relegates her to argue the mere holding of office is sufficient accomplishment regardless of what occurred while there.

    Because she has been around so long and has held many posts, we have been induced to believe her and believe in her. Yet, to believe in her is to believe she is what she is not. Secretary of State was the last major office she held. She turned the State Department into a place of erroneous policy as in Libya, Syrian and Ukraine. She treated the august department as her personal fiefdom. She proved to be a sly manager who mishandled sensitive public resources as if they were her own and treated the public trust as if nonexistent.

    While Trump is a daylight assault with an axe, Clinton is a nocturnal bacillus whose attack comes subtly from within while our defenses are down and slumbering.

    Hillary Clinton’s run for office has now become a moral dilemma for her allies. One cannot back her yet support good governance and the rule of law at the same time. In clinching the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton has achieved two firsts. She is the first woman to clinch the nomination of one of the two major parties. That a woman has done so is long overdue. That it is Clinton will be recorded as one of America’s bittersweet occurrences. It is to bestow a true honor on one of the most counterfeit personalities of this or any era.

    She is also the first presidential candidate of any major party to enter the election race under criminal investigation for serious breaches of national security. As to which ‘’first’’ will history lay her greater remembrance looms as an open question.

    For those unversed in diplomacy and national security matters, the storm about her use of a private email account and server seems unintelligible or petty. For those knowledgeable about American national security matters, what she did is of utmost seriousness; it was criminal in nature and should disqualify her for office. It reveals a frightening disdain for the rule of law and the intelligence of the people, both warning signs that democratic good governance may not be Clinton’s strong suit. I consider myself in this latter group.

    This is important to all. If she can be so callous regarding the nation and the constitution she professes to love, grave dangers lurk for those nations that win her ire. Remember Clinton publicly joked about how Qaddafi was tortured and killed as if sodomizing then illegally executing an opposing leader is the stuff of jokes instead of the crime that it was. Such dark levity is unbefitting a world leader. In Libya, she pushed the Obama Administration to work in concert with regional terrorists to upend a secular leader who had long ago ceased being a threat to any measurable American interests. She championed this avenue more as a function of pique than of sage policy. After witnessing and joking about the destruction she, Clinton turned her back and left that nation to rot and ruin. If indicative of her purported competence, then we are in palpable trouble for the Libyan caper is a picture book example of foreign policy by guttural impulse.

    Clinton has never encountered a war she did not like yet she has proven to be a truant housekeeper after the damage has been wrought. She has thirsted for every American war in the past twenty years. If she had her way, what happened in Libya would have repeated itself in Syria. Judging by her published emails, she pines for an excuse to war against Iran. Russian and American military might would be in nose-to-nose proximity on the steppes of the Ukraine due to her lack of geopolitical prudence and blind arrogance. A Clinton presidency is like to cart the world closer to a major war of untold consequence.

    Because of the leadership and personality flaws the scandal reveals, perhaps a bit of explanation about the national security and legal implications underlying her email scandal may help the reader understand the gravity of Clinton’s derelictions. For this is not an artificial fuzz over the sloppy handling of inconsequential emails such as what friends exchange between themselves. This concerns the wanton and perhaps willful misuse of emails that contained some the nation’s most closely guarded national security considerations.

    As Secretary of State, her official communications belong to the people and to the United States government, not to her. They were meant to be restricted to encrypted official channels for archival purposes and, more importantly, to safeguard information from foreign snooping. The use of a private server trashed both goals.

    Clinton acted as if her want to control access to her official communications was of greater weight than the true ownership rights and national security concerns of the government that employed her. She acted as if the government was her agent and servant instead of the other way around. In treating sensitive government documents and work product as belonging exclusively to her, she behaved imperiously, like spoiled royalty doing the nation a favor rather than a citizen grateful for the privilege to serve her country.  The lack of character which she has exhibited in the matter is revealed in a quick examination of the claims she has made to dance around her culpability.

    Claim 1: The State Department approved the private setup. This claim has proven bogus. In an official report, the Department claimed it never was asked to approve the private server and if so would not have done so. Clinton lied.

    Claim 2: Her private arrangement was consistent with those of her predecessors. The only other Secretary to use a private email account was Colin Powell. However, he never contemplated a private server and did not exclusively use the private email account for official business. He also had the imprimatur of the Department for his limited use of private email. His rather limited official use of that account came during a completely different era regarding the use of emails for government business. At that time, the Department did not have an unclassified email system as during Clinton’s tenure. Again, she lied.

    Claim 3: The private server and account were done merely for convenience purposes.She did not want to have to constantly flip between a government and a private system. This does not wash.  If she did not want to operate two systems, the wisest route would have been to opt for the government device solely.

    For instance, she was prohibited from using her private device in her office because that office was considered highly classified space. Whenever she wanted to deal with emails during office hours, she had to leave her office suite. Thus, we are left with the incongruous sight of the Secretary walking about the building, followed by security and other officers, as she went to another room or floor to treat emails. This might have happened several times a day. This does not seem convenient. It does not even make sense. A government devise usable in the comfort of her office and at home would have been inherently easier and wiser.

    Her staff even refused Department attempts to give her a government-issued secured device because they wanted to maintain Clinton’s privacy. The position is as indefensible as it is corrupt. She has no privacy right to hide official communications from the very government that employed her to handle those communications.

    Even if she opted for the private route, convenience would have pointed to only the creation of a private account. Setting up a private server in her residence is actually significant extra work. There is only one plausible reason to resort to a private server: to control access to the material, in effect obscuring from government what belonged only to it. On this point, either she lied or her judgment is so obtuse that she should not be trusted again with high public office.

    Claim 4: The server was secure because armed Secret Service men guarded the residence. Having an armed guard standing on the porch might prevent a physical assault against the location. Yet, it is beyond explanation how a gun at the front door deters a computer hacker who can accomplish his theft from the other side of the planet. A gun at the porch was no more a defense to hacking the infernal machine than putting an oar in the car helps a person drive cross a bridge over a wide river.

    Sadly, her personal server was extremely vulnerable. Her network lacked encryption. For a brief period, it lacked even the firewall and other lower-level security features employed by medium and small private businesses that do not handle sensitive documents. Establishing her server in order to avoid government retention of her records seemed to be her sole concern. Her obligation to safeguard important information was treated as a damnable nuisance. Again, she has lied or exposed herself as a supreme dunce.

    Claim 5: No wrong was committed because no document was marked classified. This is as disingenuous as an argument can get. When she became Secretary she underwent training about classified information. She signed a formal oath that classified information could be marked or unmarked and that the mishandling of such is a criminal violation. She went into the job with eyes open. She cannot now profess a dumb blindness.

    What makes information classified are not the markings but the content. Documents are not classified just because they are marked so. They are marked so because they are classified. The classification arises from their substance. The markers just acknowledge what already exists.

    Over 1000 emails she returned have been found to be classified. Refuting her claim that the documents were “retroactively classified,” there is no reasonable explanation that can be offered how such documents would be classified now but were not when initially transmitted. Sensitivity of a message generally moves in inverse relationship to the passage of time. The older the message, the less sensitive. For her to argue the emails were not then classified but now are lacks credence. She knows better than to make this argument but she makes it anyway.

    Claim 6: She is innocent because she bore no criminal intent. Neither fact nor law gives her succor. Under the several applicable criminal statutes, she can be held feloniously liable for the wrongful and willful transmission of classified material or for being grossly negligent in the handling and storage of the same. There is ample intent of willful violations.  Roughly 20 emails have a classification of top secret or higher and over 60 as secret. Unless all of these 20 documents fit into a mitigating narrow exception that grave emergency dictated the use of the unclassified system, then at least two people committed a crime, the sender and serial receiver thereof, the latter being Clinton.

    The sender would have to deliberately transfer information from a secured device to put on Clinton’s unsecured private network. Such a deliberate trespass has almost no defense and is clearly punishable. Clinton would have known this criminal process was being done for her benefit if not at her explicit behest. She condoned the misdeed over the course of her tenure. This is an intentional breach of national security, a felony. The penalty for this is a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for each violation.

    She also kept these emails on her unsecure private server for several years. By any objective legal measure, this would have to constitute the grossly negligent storage of classified material. To compound this, she placed the material on an unsecure thumb drive which is another violation.  She then gave the server and thumb drive to her attorney who lacked any security clearance. This comprises another set of violations. Worse, it seems that she also used two companies to monitor her server. These companies had no clearance, another set of violations.  One of the companies made back-up copies of the emails and stored them in an unsecured location, two more sets of violations. Keep in mind that every email, ranging from the 20 top secret to the over 1000 classified, is a distinct violation that carries a potential prison term of 10 years. You can figure the potential maximum time behind bars. My calculator does not count that high.

    If America seeks to continue to portray itself before the world as the land of the rule of law, then it must apply the law fairly and equally even against its most favored and privileged citizens. The Clinton national security scandal will test the legal system in an open and blatant way. If she is allowed to walk, penalty free from her misconduct, then you should realize that the American legal system is an object of barter and that justice is considered a rare but not a valuable commodity. Already the major media outlets have been found out. They downplay the scandal because they work for the same big money, vast military establishment that brings us the Clintons. If Clinton is called to answer for what she has done, perhaps just perhaps the United States would have taken an important step in reasserting the destiny its noble documents and republican doctrines claim for the nation. Next week, we explore how all of this may undermine President Obama’s legacy if he fails to exercise judgment.

     

    08060340825 sms only

     

  • The Clinton convention: Killing what was left of the left

    The Clinton convention: Killing what was left of the left

    Politics is the art of lying with all sincerity

    The just-concluded Democratic Convention made history on two accounts.

    On the positive side, a female gained the nomination of a major American political party. For the nation touting itself as the world’s oldest and best democracy, this achievement is too late in the making. In some ways, it is more redress than progress. That a female candidate now follows a Black one parallels the history of the 1960s when the Civil Rights Movement opened the door to the Women’s Right Movement.

    On the negative side, the convention was nothing short of the burial of the Democratic Party as the home of progressive American politics. During the convention, abundant paeans were raised to the paragon of conservative Republican virtue, Ronald Reagan.  Franklin Roosevelt, the most progressive and the greatest Democratic president in the nation’s history, was barely spoken of. He was orphaned from the party he raised to prominence. That party divorced itself from the ideals and spirit that transformed America for the better after the Great Depression.

    Roosevelt’s name and legacy was acknowledged more by the protesters outside the hall who lamented the funeral of progressive ideals taking place within the edifice. Give credit to the organizers of the event. Rarely has a funeral been so artfully concealed and cheerfully executed before the eager but undiscerning eye of an entire nation. However, a burial it still was.

    The liberal Democratic Party is no longer. Before our eyes, that transformed itself into what the Republican Party used to be forty years ago. Due to the excesses of Donald Trump and the Tea Party before him, today’s Republican Party is atavistic, an eruption ofsmoldering prejudices and an angry heave to pull the nation back into a past that seemed more convivial to working class White America.

    The helm of the Republican Party has been turned over to a cackle of political berserkers. They have pulled their party to the extreme right while the Clinton-Obama establishment has navigated their party into channels once worked by Republicans. America remains in the gravitational pull of a constrictive economic situation. When truly progressive policies are most needed, the Democratic Party has failed to produce someone who might champion a progressive solution.

    At its convention, the Democratic Party accomplished what technically is a marvelous feat of political imagery. They succeeded in persuading a large swath of the American population that returning Hillary Clinton to the White House augurs reform. While ecstatic conventioneers feted this “old new,” they barely noticed the casket filled with the party’s progressive legacy being walking out the side door.

    The people have been enticed into a great misperception that likely will come to injure them. A superficial change in personality and gender has been dressed as if it matters more than the pedigree of a candidate’s policy or leadership abilities. The convention was a masterful show at making the superficial appear profound and in marking anyone who questioned this conflation as acutely peevish or hopelessly naïve. Those who insisted on faithfulness to the ideals that made the Democratic Party a liberal platform were depicted as failing to be pragmatic and responsible.

    In combination with the backward evolution of the Republican Party, this metamorphosis of the Democratic gathering means the two major American parties have made a great turn rightward. This period may come to be recorded in American history as the “Regressive Era or the Great Regression,” in stark contrast to the period roughly 100 years ago known as the Progressive Era. The rightward steps of both parties reveal the extent these political organs are captive to Money Power and its allied corporatist, militaristic interests.

    Poll after opinion poll affirm the majority of Americans favor liberal positions on overall economic policy and foreign affairs. Yet, someone who faithfully holds to these progressive stances has no genuinely welcome political home at the moment. Both major parties push further to the right against the well-measured wishes of the populace. Because of this increasing divergence, political parties and their conventions must erect a grand show. They have to make people believe they are getting what they want and need. The reality is the people are given temporary emotional stimulus to make them enthused and happy enough to welcome into their very bosom the long-term injury to their interests that is about to come due to the narrow policies of both parties.

    Against this backdrop, the Democratic convention was a political masterstroke. It was as nearly a perfect subterfuge as one can get. However, there was a moment when the convention might have taken on the aspect of a runaway train. The convention opened to a rocky start because of unauthorized leaks of party emails showing party officials had connived to throttle Bernie Sander’s campaign. That officials obviously favored the Clinton campaign violated their duty to be neutral managers of the process. Not to fear.

    Party chairwoman Wasserman Schultz was quickly removed once it became clear that her presence would be a point of open contention, precipitating a nasty floor fight. Such ructions would have been to the unalloyed glee of Donald Trump. Stepping in was veteran operative Donna Brazile. This made no sense.

    Brazile was notoriously more pro-Clinton than Wasserman Schultz. However, where Wasserman Schultz has a grating personality, Brazile is charming and likeable. She is also Black. Few White Sanders advocates would dare “boo” Brazile out of fear of being derided as racists. The brewing rebellion within the convention hall was artfully doused. The problem was not so much resolved as slid under the table.

    Moreover, Brazile was adept at convention engineering. She managed the floor aggressively, ensuring against large scale disruptions that would make a bad television spectacle. For her transgressions, Wasserman Schultz was appointed chairperson of the Clinton campaign. For Sanders supporters, this was a blunt poke in the eye.  Clinton apparently thinks most Sander’s people will eventually back her because they have no alternative. Consequently, she need not make any material concession to them. If events at the convention are indicative, that position may be wrong.

    When Clinton was nominated, hundreds of Sanders’ supporters walked out. When Sanders earlier tried to convince his supporters to back Clinton, his entreaty was greeted with rowdy opprobrium. Still, many Sanders advocates will back Clinton. However, it appears a sizeable portion will never reach that decision. In a tight race, they might make a difference. Clinton may come to regret her brusque disregard for their views.

    Where the Republican convention had the rough and tawdry atmospherics of a professional wrestling event, the Democratic edition was refined and smooth. With much of the Republican establishment boycotting his nomination, Trump was reduced to being a one-man show. Where more conventional politicians would have been deflated, his massive ego probably enjoyed the outcome that made him the main actor, the center stage and the spotlight rolled into one.

    Conversely, the Democrats presented a phalanx of heavy hitters. All their speeches were well crafted and professionally executed. However, something was missing.  For all their obvious political astuteness, no one said anything memorable. What they said has already been forgotten. Their words were but for the moment.When the moment slipped passed, so did their words.

    Bernie Sanders talked more about defeating Trump than lauding Clinton. Sanders fulfilled his job to the bitter end. That Sanders, for all of his progressive pretense,would support Clinton was preordained. Having whipped up the passions and support of the left wing of the party, his job was to turn them to Clinton.

    His task was to make them go right when what they worked for was to get Bernie the win or make Clinton veer left in the process. Their labor proved to be in vain. Sanders sought to lead them like a Judas goat into the slaughterhouse. Many went. However, hundreds walked out of the convention in protest. These hundreds represent a good slice of the 13 million people who voted for Sanders during the primary. The mainstream media did not take much note of this walkout. As previously mentioned, it may be an overlooked but important indication that many progressives will not follow the party to the right. They would rather venture the wilderness than be duped into slaughtering their ideals on the abattoir of what others call political compromise and pragmatism.

    The biggest loser at the convention was Senator Elizabeth Warren. Weeks before, Warren let ambition get the better of her. Warren had been seen as a chevron of the progressive moment, even more than Sanders. That she as a woman and an even more ardent public critic of Money Power only added to her appeal. Had she run against Clinton, Sanders would not have dared enter the race. Warren had a better chance of derailing Clinton. That was last year.

    After the California primary, Warren gave Clinton a full-throated endorsement that denied their years of material differences on major economic policy matters. She went about attacking Trump with the alacrity of a junkyard dog. Clinton had hoodwinked her by dangling the possibility of the Vice Presidential slot before Warren’s nose. This revealed the true person, someone more politic than principled. Having endorsed Clinton too fast and forcefully, Warren discredited herself among her support base. Clinton then went rightward by picking a runningmate even more conservative than Clinton was. Warren had been seduced to venture out on a limb then saw it off behind her.

    Again, Clinton thought in subduing Warren and Sanders she would cause the entire progressive wing to collapse into her machinery. It would not work that way. Warren’s address was uninspired. It was as if watching a fading image of what Warren used to be. Her appeal to progressives had already evaporated. Without that appeal, she had neither ballast nor utility. Warren had become a spent force who was talking to the wall.

    Two of the best speeches were delivered by the family Obama, with Michelle outdoing her husband. She gave the best address of the convention. President Obama gave a pointed critique of Trump’s policies while offering an optimistic assessment of America in contrast to Trump’s claim that America was crumbling. While a good performance, it was not the president at his best. It was much like a consummate actor performing a role required of him but one he did not completely want to play.

    Ironically, the best speech of the four days would come from a nonpolitician. Michelle Obama is as much a fountain of talent andpersonality as her husband. Had not the Clintons walked the road of both spouses seeking high office, the Obamas would have been a better choice. Michelle spoke with eloquence and a burning passion. No speech was better or more moving. The address revealed that Michelle has the instincts of a politician. Well known is her personal dislike for the Clintons. Her eloquence and passion was burning because it must have set her conscience alight to have to render such a fine endorsement for so amoral a political personality.

    The only speech to rival Michelle’s was the brief intervention of the chairman of North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP. The speech was rousing in its expression of the ideals of the party. The sad thing was that the good reverend was talking of the party Clinton and hers structure had come to bury not to promote.

    Bill Clinton’s speech was a wandering bit of nostalgia. He attempted to soften the public image of his wife by recounting their courtship. Given his later record with women, his account did not come across as romantic or endearing. Instead of humanizing his wife’s image, Clinton’s tale had a cloud of uneasiness hovering over it. He seemed to be giving a primer on how a young man can evolve into a stalker or sexual predator while keeping his professional career intact.

    Candidate Clinton gave a workmanlike, professional intervention. It had a few smart quips but no great words or sentiments; she made no mistakes. She also failed to express any profound vision. In some ways, her talk was underwhelming given that she had just made history. But her prosaic address was apt.  The theme of her campaign was revealed. She is pitting her experience and alleged cool demeanor against the erratic, irascible Trump. While she says that Trump is trying to win the presidency by stirring fear that the nation is failing, she will try to win by whipping fear against Trump himself. She asks the American electorate would they rather see her in control of America’s unprecedented military power or see Trump. Clinton may not like the answer many America’s are prepared to give.

    Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine’s address was anodyne. But for the sprinkling of Spanish at intervals in the address, it was utterly forgettable. He was redolent of a newly-minted law professor giving his first lecture on the tax code.

    A few things frightened me about the convention. There is something terrible amiss when Ronald Reagan is revered as a political model and father figure for the party rather than Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. Toherald Reagan is to discard the best traditions of the party. Even worse, the convention was rife with a militarism uncommon to the Democrats. There was too much talk of confronting perceived enemies and standing up for allies. Russian leader Putin was constantly being painted as an omnipresent boogeyman much as Iraq’s Hussein was before his expiry in a wrongful war. Trump was being castigated as weak in national defense.

     

    Things have gone awry when Democrats lustily thump the martial drums and are stirred toward jingoist chanting. Another war may not be far away. When Democrats deride Republican pacifism, we better head for the fallout shelter. Things have been spun around so that they have become what they ought not to be. The Clinton-Kaine ticket is by far the best the Republicans can offer. Too bad they had to use the Democratic Party to make ithappen.

    Going into the convention, Clinton trailed Trump in the most recent national polls. Clinton should regain the lead with this visually successful but substantively hollow gathering.

    Barring an unforeseen miracle, either Clinton or Trump will be the next president of the United States. As such, America will failitself and the world. Humanity will likely rue the day either of the two begins to exercise the vast power of that office. Both are suspect and dangerous, albeit in different ways. The American electorate is faced with deciding between a rabid jackal and a venomous snake, a self-absorbed lunatic versus a cool assassin. A reasonable person’s fears would be different but equally substantial regarding each.

    Trump would make an ugly hash of domestic policy. However, if taken at his word, he would be less confrontational regarding foreign policy. Clinton is better on domestic policy. However, taken at her word, she would move the world closer to general conflagration. A vessel of neocon thought, Clinton adheres to an unprecedented dual containment policy against Russia and China. Contravening the tenets of balance of power geopolitics that has kept an uneasy peace for decades, she wants to march significant American military assets right to the doorsteps of these great powers. She and her fellow neocons expect these proud nations to submit, thus maintaining American global hegemony in perpetuity. This contravenes all we know about history and common sense.

    Donald Trump is a danger to his nation and thus the world. Hillary Clinton is a danger to the world and thus her nation. We have entered troubled times.

     

    08060340825 sms only

     

  • Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    Trump’s Republican convention: Anomaly or realignment

    The Republican Convention is over. As the curtain descended on the event, Donald Trump and his supporters wereflush with pride at what they had accomplished. Even those who oppose the man must concede he had engineered one of the most improbable feats in American political history. A political novice but one with vast media savvy and a keen sense nose of the popular mode, Trump just completed a hostile takeover of one of America’s major political parties.

    That he did so within the space of a year and against the entire power structure of the party as well as against the party’s vociferous conservative wing makes his feat more astounding. That he is more mountebank than majestic, more showman than statesman renders his achievement disappointing. That his mind often sidetracks into an undisciplined procession of bigoted fears and presumptions makes his ascendancy a matter of danger to the nation he seeks to lead and to all that the nation might seek to do and touch under his stewardship.

    Visually, the convention looked much like Republican conventions that came before. Conventioneers were predominantly middle-aged White conservatives. In a feint toward diversity, organizers tried to sprinkle the roster of convention speakers with minorities. It was a Potemkin display. The simple fact was that minorities were rarities on the convention floor.  Signaling Trump’s abysmal support among Blacks and his lack of deep concern about it, this session had fewer Black delegates than the last two Republican gatherings. Showcasing a few Black speakers was token symbolism engineered by the brash salesman himself.

    It was the tenor of the convention that proved different from recent sessions. It was more rough-hewn than even those conventions where the Republicans were unitedin the singular cause of defeating a certain black man from becoming president, then trying tohalt his reelection. The harsher tonality was not because they are more incensed at Hillary Clinton than they were at Barack Obama.

    The animus toward Obama was so visceral that it consumed whatever rationality they had. It came from the depths of disbelief that their racist concept of the world was being undone in such inglorious and open detail. There dislike for Clinton is acute but nowhere near that reserved for Obama. They disdain Clinton like one does a bad neighbor. The hate they directed towardObama is of the special type reserved for a killer of a loved one or a wicked servant who had the nerve to abscond with the family treasures.

    The reason for the change in tone is that Trump succeeded in uprooting the more sophisticated party establishment, replacing them with the working-class Whites who rallied to his support from the beginning of his unlikely trek to the nomination. Demonstrating this break with the establishment, four of the last five Republican presidential candidates, including the two Presidents Bush, refused to attend Trump’s coronation.

    They remain insulted he has stolen their beloved party from under their noses. Chased from the palace, these patricians now languish in the unaccustomed position of hiding in the underbrush, having to engage in heretofore ineffective sniping and guerilla warfare against the usurper.  They have pledged not to support him. As much as they dislike Clinton, they dislike losing their party to this insulting pretender even more. They will not help him in any manner. Many of them will privately support Clinton, for she is closer to traditional Republican positions on trade policy and foreign policy than is Trump.

    The party is fractured into three parts. Trump is the champion of a divided rump of a party. The extreme conservativeelement bears an antagonism equal to that of the establishment. Abrasive Texas Senator Ted Cruz was booed when attendants realized his long speech at the convention would fail to include even a short, perfunctory endorsement of Trump. Cruz thought he had been cheated of a nomination he was destined to hold. His father and other right- wing extremist preachers had specially anointed him, prophesizing he would be the next American president.

    Cruz stood at the podium casting himself as the conscience of the party and as the leader of the conservative wing. His passive revolt and implicit rebuke of Trump did not take. Even the Texas delegation erupted against him. The clumsy attempt sparked a raucous denunciation of Cruz; it actually strengthened Trump’s hand by making him appear magnanimous in allowing Cruz to speak at the convention. Cruz, on the other hand, seemed petulant and small-minded. Trump may have lured the self-absorbed Cruz into a self-ambush of the Texan’s own making. Trump knew Cruz would not endorse him. In all likelihood, he slyly turned that against Cruz by instructing loyal delegates to shout down Cruz at the operative moment.  As Cruz as discovered once again, Trump’s foes underestimate at their own peril his cunning and ability in tactical political infighting.

    Trump further undermined both rival camps by selecting Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence is as conservative as Cruz on most issues but does not carry the same negative personal baggage as Cruz, the Texas diva. Thus, Pence is well respected by the establishment as well. While speaking little to the general electorate, this pick will blunt some of the intramural animus against Trump.

    In his speech, Trump painted a picture of America in crisis at home and abroad due to weak leadership. His speech came against the backdrop of tragic racially-influenced shootings between police and Black men as well as an accelerating pace of lethal terrorist mayhem abroad. Reminiscent of Republican nominees going back forty years to Richard Nixon, he labelled himself the “law and order” candidate who backed the police be they right or wrong. That phrase — law and order — has been the racist substitute since shouting epithets such as “nigger” were no longer deemed acceptable politics. The phrase flashes the same crude message as it did four decades ago. Trump cared little for the historic racial connotations of what he said. He was speaking to White America and the few token minorities too confused to know better or too mercenary to care that they were endorsing a worldview inimical to those most like them. They had already purchased a ticket on the Trump ship; they intend to ride it for all it is worth and as long as the journey lasts.

    At first, Trump’s strategy would seem counterproductive. Alienating minorities seems to limit his potential support base. However, it may have expanded that base. Trump perhaps correctly believes trying to get minorities to his side on large numbers is a lost cause. Appealing to them will give him no more appreciable returns with that voting segment than had he alienated them. However, in alienating them, he just might succeed in getting racist, conservative working class Whites whose economic status has been declining for years and who had checked out of political participation. His calculation has proven adept regarding the numerical dynamics of the Republican Party. We will soon discover if his strategy holds true with the general electorate as well.

    Yet, much of this is vintage Republicanism. Where Trump sealed the compact with this working class aspect of the electorate is his break with Republican traditionalism on economic and foreign policy. The party has always championed free trade. Not Trump. His railing against the trade agreements such as NAFTA and the proposed TTP echoed the sentiments of the American working class. They have seen manufacturing and other well-paying jobs disappear partially because of these agreements. Trump has pledged to abrogate such treaties and bring manufacturing and industrial jobs back to America in the process. In this, Trump has positioned himself as more pro-labor and a better advocate for the economic welfare of the blue-collar worker than his Democratic Party counterpart. Clinton is saddled with her husband’s authorship of NAFTA and her ambivalent waffling on TTP. Trump hopes to chisel at what has usually been a part of the Democrats’ support based by bringing more White, mostly male, workers to his side. Thus far, he is making headway. Among White male voters, he leads Clinton by 31 percent.

    Trump also has abandoned Republican foreign policy tenets. Although his positionsare vague and constantly shifting, he is not sold on the utility of NATO and seeks a more conciliatory policy toward Russia. Unlike Clinton, he wants to work with Russia to resolve the Syrian imbroglio. Trump has managed to appear move dovish on key foreign policy points and on the use of force in the projection of American interests than have Clinton and the traditional Republican establishment. Clinton is more in harmony with Republican national security traditionalism than is Trump. Trump hits hardest in his absolute loyalty to the war on terror as opposed to the neocon primacy of focusing on rival governments and states, the latter view shared by Clinton and the Republican establishment.

    Overall, Trump’s foreign policy is an inconsistent hash of tough-guy bluster mixed with an unexpected restraint in the use of force redolent of balance of power thinking that used to animate American foreign policy thinking. However, on foreign policy, he understands average Americans are more afraid of an ISIS attack in their hometown than of a Russian invasion of New York, let alone distant Estonia.

    Americans by and large are perplexed that for all the expenditure on wars abroad, they have been made to feel under siege by terrorism. More and more Americans are disenchanted with establishment foreign policy that seems to be itching to fighting Russia when that nation appears no threat. Meanwhile, the establishment seems not to act as seriously as they should against the terrorist threat.  Not having been part of the foreign policy establishment, Trump has not been blinded by its presumptions because he did not help write them nor even had to ingest them as articles of faith.  He was free to notice the public is war weary and terror afraid.

    Regarding trade policy and national security, traditional political alignments appear to be faltering.  The views of Trump and the most leftward progressive wing of the Democratic Party, represented by Bernie Sanders, ironically converge on these issues.

    What has taken place is a realization on both ends of the political spectrum that the establishment elite, compromised of elements of both parties, has constructed a policy structure that visibly disadvantages the average person in favor of the Financialized elite. Money Power and allied nonfinancial mega-corporations have come to control too much.  From the left and right, people are rebelling against the fear that a new financialized aristocracy is being formed on their very backs. They fear democracy is slowly eroding in substance; burdened by their stagnant wages and diminishing lifestyle, soon they will fall on the wrong end of a system of debt peonage rendering most of them no better off than the modern equivalent of sharecroppers.

    Trump succeeded in leading this rebelling within his party because its establishment had been weakened by the Tea Party and by being out of power for 8 years. Sanders failed because the Democratic establishment remained strong. Sanders’ movement is fact is the Democratic version of the Tea Party insurgency. He will likely suffer the same fate; his movement will gradually be consumed and diffused by the party hierarchy.

    The nation’s establishment has to be sweating a bit. If we count those on the left who follow Sanders and those on the right who adhere to Trump on economic issues, the majority of Americans favor sweeping change in economic policy that would undermine the financialization of the economy the establishment has nurtured.  Differences over social policy and cultural issues such a racism, abortion, gay marriage and gun control are what prevent the populist left and right from joining league to fight for economic justice and equality.

    With Clinton as its champion, the establishment will try to focus this election on these and other social issues. They will also go to any length to depict Trump as a mad buffoon. Whenever he embarks on one of his frequent tirades or protracted asides he shall fed this narrative about him.

    At the moment, Trump is at rough parity with Clinton for the election. If the vote were held today, it would be close. He would have roughly 45 percent chance of winning. That is disturbing. Some of this is due to his appeal to the White population. Some of this is due to Clinton’s flaws. Trump and Clinton are the most disliked candidates their respective parties have even fielded. This indicates that may people may not vote out of disgust at both candidates on offer. The lower the overall turnout, the better become Trump’s chances.

    Because of the dislike for Trump and Clinton, the Libertarian and Green candidates are attracting voters in possibly decisive numbers. The Libertarian logs a following above 10 percent, most of whom would normally vote Republican. The Green candidate commands 5 percent at the moment. Most of these people would vote Democratic if they vote at all.The race might hinge on whether voters who now back one of these minor candidates in protect will return to their traditional folds and in how what numbers.

    While Clinton should win this election, it may not be as easy as many think. There are sizeable variables.Along the path home, there also exist many a stoneon which she might trip.

    What we can safely say at this moment is that Trump has succeeded in turning the party into a vehicle for right-wing populist expression, at least for this election cycle. Such outbursts have occurred periodically in American history dating back to Andrew Jackson and the ascendance of the Democratic Party in 1828. These eruptions are usually short-lived; the erstwhile rebels quickly assimilate into the mainstream.

    If Trump loses the election, this experiment will surely end. If somehow he wins, it may begin to crack the national establishment in an unprecedented, fatal way. If that was to the only thing he cracked, it would do a service to American and humanity. The trouble with Trump is that he personifies uncertainty and ignorance. (He has forever destroyed the myth that wealthy people are endowed with greater wisdom than the more modest segments of the population.)

    Too many of his views seem to emanate from an outhouse than from a vibrant intellect. Many of his domestic policies border on the outrageous. His ability to check his combative nature seems too weak to place at his disposal such a quanta of destructive power that the president commands. He will break far too much and repair far too little if allowed to occupy the White house. To keep America and the rest of the world safe from his mercurial antics it would be condign to build a wall around Trump.

    But that would leave us to the equally steep danger of Clinton who seems to be itching for an imprudent showdown with Russia. If she remains true to her foreign policy constructs, the world angles closer to awful conflagration.We have entered a somber period where greater conflict appears to be descending as if a dark cloud signaling a coming typhoon.

    08060340825 sms only

  • An American summer: When justice disappears

    An American summer: When justice disappears

    When gauging the law, be not surprised that you shall find more words than justice. 

    This week I wanted to examine the Brexit referendum. Sadly, three racially–tinged shootings in the United States redirected my focus in that direction. I also remembered my unfinished business regarding the Clinton email scandal. Let’s treat the Clinton matter first. Superficially, it is unrelated to the likely legal consequences of the fatal police shootings of the nonthreatening black men. Dig deeper and a connection is found. It is a connection that reveals how the rule of law is distorted to grant immunity in practice to certain classes of people while criminalizing innocent people who reside outside the favored community.

    In my last submission, I projected a 70 percent probability the FBI would recommend indictment of Hillary Clinton for violating federal law regarding the handling of classified information. I was wrong. The FBI did not recommend indictment; however, neither did it exonerate her. If the FBI had been able to declare her innocence the issue would be completely resolved and I would eat a full course of humble pie. I confess I must eat a slice of it as my projection was wrong. Yet, the rationale behind it remains sound. This dichotomy between result and rationale would not exist but for the leaven of privilege that has become part of what is intentionally misnamed the American justice system. That system is replete with laws, rules, and enforcement processes. However, justice is unevenly infused into its dynamics.  The Clinton matter is a subtle lesson about a justice system betraying its name to act as a confirmation of the rule of the establishment over the rule of law.

    In excusing Clinton of criminal responsibility, the FBI Director rendered one of the most curious and twisted public statements ever to come of out his institution. His legacy shall be this breach of duty but such is the price one pays to be part of the elite.  The elite treat each other by a special set of rules to which the outsider and outcast are not entitled to even know. There exists an informal aristocracy within American democracy. The power of that aristocracy expands by the day as that of true democracy wanes in turn.

    Recommending no charges against Clinton, Director Comey offered “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.” That evidence of violations leads to a decision to stand down is evidence that something other than blind justice was directing this process. In most other cases, evidencerising to such a cognizable level would be deemed enough to pursue and ensure an indictment. Instead, Comey decided to ignore the potential evidence and the potential that an indictment could uncover even more such evidence as is the fashion in every other case. His reason for this departure from the norm was astounding.

    When questioned by irate Republican Congressmen during his formal testimony on the matter, Comey acknowledged a string of clearly false statements by Clinton regarding her handling of classified material via her unsecured, unapproved private server. Yet, Comey dismissed the falsehoods. He did so, he offered, because he weighed every possible inference of circumstantial evidence in favor of Clinton.

    Again, this is extraordinary. In deciding whether to prosecute almost all other criminal cases, the FBI never weighs the evidence in the best light for the potential target. If in every case, the FBI weighed circumstantial evidence in the best light for the potential defendant there would be very few cases to prosecute. They could only go after those caught with the murder weapon in hand or those glib enough to confess. But we know this is not so.

    Last year, a Black CIA agent was prosecuted and convicted to a three-year prison sentence. One of the charges was obstruction of justice for alleged destruction of a single email. There was no evidence Sterling deleted the email let alone did so intentionally. Uncontroverted evidence points to Clinton destroying hundreds of work-related emails that should not have been erased. Sterling goes to jail and Clinton continue the road to the White House. The double standard is confirmed. Law enforcement and justice move in opposite directions.

    To clear Clinton, Comey had to commit damage to the rule of law and justice. He engaged in linguistic twists that made the artful dodger look like a statue.  The applicable law makes a person criminally liable for the grossly negligent handling of classified material. The FBI Director claimed that Clinton practiced”extreme carelessness” in dealing with the material.(During his Congressional question andanswer session, Comey almost let his guard down. He started to use the words in the statute. Realizing he almost let the cat out of the bag, he walked that cat back quickly. )

    This is the weakness part of the inherently weak defense of his decision. It will haunt Comey the rest of his professional career. Put your hands on any legal or lay dictionary to find the definition of “gross negligence.” A widely accepted definition is a “carelessness which is in reckless disregard… It is more than simple inadvertence but it is just shy of being intentionally evil.”  The Collins Dictionary defines the legal definition of “gross negligence” as “extreme carelessness.” In both legal and lay worlds, the terms are synonymous. They are used interchangeably in legal cases and statutes. Different words, same meaning. Yet, the FBI Director used this different term in hopes of obscuring that fact. He lied by telling the truth in a misleading way.

    Comey engaged in this verbal legerdemain in an attempt to hide that he well knew Clinton violated the plain meaning of the law. To abet Clinton’s escape, he had to do two main things. First, he disavowed she “intended” to break the law.  To make this claim he made the unprecedented move of speaking as if he were her de facto defense attorney proposing a theme that will exculpate her. He grabbed the stupidity defense as that was the only one available. During his Congressional testimony, Comey asserted that Clinton was unsophisticated in the use of classified documents and was not abreast of classification standards nor could she recognize the sensitive nature of material unless marked as such by a subordinate.

    This is ludicrous. Any rookie Foreign Service officer masters the basics of classified material within a month on the job. Here the FBI Director tells the nation that America’s top diplomat failed this most rudimentary task during the fullness of her four-year tenure.

    As such, Comey was asserting that she was so ignorant of the core functions of her job that she could not have formulated the intention to do wrong because she was too ill-informed to know what wrong was.This rationale has cleared her of criminal liability. Yet, it is a damning political blow to have a senior government official basically conclude that she was fundamentally incompetent. A senior member of the Obama administration just published that she was too ignorant to be a properly self-regulated secretary of state. This shoots a gaping wound in the campaign narrative portraying her as the most experienced and able candidate to appear on the scene in recent memory. To free her of criminal liability, the FBI director had to deem her a major league bumbler. Now many are wondering, if she was not sufficiently agile to manage the basics of the State Department, how can she cope with the vastness of the presidency?

    Even with all this, Comey was not finished mauling the rule of law. To be sure of getting Clinton out of the jam, Comey finally ignored the statutory language prohibiting the grossly negligent handling of classified material. He did this by claiming the FBI had never used that provision of the statute against anyone. Such a statement is illogical. This type of case is inherently rare. Emails have not been part of government practice for more than twenty years. It is not surprising that Clinton’s case does not fit the exact fact pattern of other prosecutions.

    If we take Comey at face value, then he just unilaterally declared a portion of the law invalid. Here, he traveled outside his league as it is not the role of the investigator to decide which law is constitutional. His role is to uphold those laws until a court tells him to desist due to constitutional infirmity.  Not only wasit beyond his ken to assume this function that solely rests in the province of the courts, his statement undermines law enforcement. A clever wrongdoer may now model their behavior on Clinton’s  and based on Comey’s own  words, he would be precluded from pursuing charges because he believes that section of the law is inoperative.

    However, we need not take Comey at face value. What he said was palpably untrue. Last year, a naval officer was indicted and convicted for placing classified material on his private computer that he may work from home. The offending officer also took hard copies of classified documents home, again to finish work. There was no finding of evil intent to damage the government or pass the information to a third party. This case is similar to Clinton’s. In one, the FBI prosecutes although the person had no intent to do anything wrong with the documents. In the other, the FBI turns its face to act as if nothing happened.

    What happened is the rule of law was made to take a back seat.  Like the naval officer, what Clinton did should have been subject to indictment. However, she was given a pass. It was given not because she was a Clinton. If such favor was reserved for only her, perhaps it would not be so bad. However, the problem is deeper and more systemic. Such favor, in varying degrees, is bestowed throughout the system, just as equal doses of disfavor are heaped on those seen as outcasts.

    Clinton was let go not because she did not break the law. She was let free because her wrongdoings were not done with the intent to undermine the establishment but to perpetuate it. She is a high priestess of the established order; thus, she would not be excommunicated for misconduct that broke the law but did not threaten that order.

    The lesser personalities who have been convicted for like crimes were punished not for undermining national security by giving state secrets to foreign powers. These others were prosecuted and penalized because they were deemed to have become unmoored from the established order; they might have used the information to influence the American political scrum of antiestablishment against establishment forces.

    This reasoning behind Clinton’s de facto legal impunity is important because it washes into other aspects of law enforcement. The same reasoning that allowed Clinton to escape is the same thought process that allows police officers to shoot Black men void of any criminal consequences.

    In their roles, the police are thelesser clerics of the establishment. Yet, in their local ambit, they hold the same privileged position Clinton and a few others hold at the national level; they all are guardians of the estate. Thus, in their environment, they are cloaked with the same immunity given to Clinton. Whether they do right or wrong, they are always right. The law will be twisted and misread to excuse their misconduct. It will be said they did not have the criminal intent to do wrong. It will be thusly said sothe status quo is maintained.

    In America, particularly its southern states, the history of the police is one of racial suppression. During slavery, patrols manned by poor Whites were formed in nearly every locale. These groups functioned to intimidate the Black bondsmen into submission and abject fear. After slavery, states instituted the Black Codes, a system of harsh discrimination and brutality merely a hair’s breadth different than slavery. The police were the happy enforcers of the dreadful Codes. Long bred into the institutional culture of American policing is racial animosity and violent suppression.

    The picture of armed White men, either the legendary cowboy or the heroic soldier figure, is engrained in the American mind as part of the national mythology. This picture causes little discomfort, save to Blacks and Native Americans who have suffered greatly at the end of those white hands but whose views are summarily disregarded in any event.

    The portrait of an armed Black man is not part of the revered national mosaic. It conjures visions of slave rebellions and radical Black militants with big afros seizing control of the nation. This is why conservative Whites can’t stand the docile Obama. He has done their bidding in a most inoffensive way. Yet, the bare fact that he holds power brings to mind a slave rebellion notwithstanding the fealty with which this servitor has advanced their interests. Their hatred is so dense they cannot see past it. It is a pulsating, irrational entity. It erupts in fear and hatred at the slightest provocation. They loathe the statement “Black Lives Matter” simply because it is an assertion of Black people claiming a humanity independent of the inferior one they would give us. Because of this guttural disdain of skin color, two Black men are dead who should not be.

    In Louisiana, small-time street hustler Alton Sterling was selling CDs in front a convenience store with the owner’s permission. A report came to the police that he had a pistol. That was basically his death warrant. When they came to the scene, Sterling was not brandishing the weapon. They could not tell if he had one. He was not doing anything ostensibly illegal. Still, the police rushed him. They asked no questions.

    A mere telephone complaint about a Black man by an anonymous caller wasa sufficient prompt to leap into thoughtless reaction. Veracity of the complaint becomes immaterial. For too many policemen, a Black man is a felony. A Black man holding a weapon is a compound sinin need of harsh, even fatal, absolution.

    A tandem of officers pounced.The bewildered Sterling was pinioned by their weight and the painful holds under which they placed him. He squirmed as is human nature when in extreme physical duress. But he did not seem to actively resist. Then one officer felt the gun in his pocket. That was enough to turn the ordeal into a deadly encounter. Sterling had not reached for the weapon. He could not; he was held down. Yet, an officer unloaded six bullets into the subdued man.

    The police then illegally confiscated the video tapes of the store’s cameras, even arresting the storeowner who witnessed the sordid encounter. The store owner has filed a lawsuit against the police. Thankfully he lives to do so.

    A few day later the police would prove they lack of contrition regarding the suspicious homicide. Hundreds of officers outfitted in quasi-military gear would quash peaceful protests in the city. In one instance, swarms of police descended on a home where people were peacefully assembled to discuss the issue and plan future protests. The police forcibly seized women from the house, dragging them into the street where they were arrested for loitering.  For exercising their rights of free speech and assembly, they were falsely charged and beaten. The police who committed these crimes were saluted by their peers and commended by municipal leaders for keeping the peace.

    In Minnesota, Philando Castille was fatally shot while committing the non-crime of reaching for his driver’s license. He was shot by the very same policeman who asked him for the license during a traffic stop for an alleged broken taillight. Castille sealed his fate with an innocent mistake. He told the policeman that he was in possession of a firearm for which he had a legal permit. The permit did not matter. A Black man with a gun in front of a racist policeman is a Black man about to suffer a corpse’s remorse. The moment he moved was the moment the undertaker also stirred, sensing he would have to make room for another lifeless body.

    By the way, there was no broken taillight. The cop fabricated the excuse to stop Castille. The officer subsequently claimedto have stopped the vehicle believing Castille matched the description of a robbery suspect with a “broad nose.” How the cop came to view Castille’s nose while driving behind him remains a mystery to me; perhaps it is one of those magical things only police officers can do with regard to surveilling Black men. Even if the officer somehow got a frontal look, the mere description of a broad nose is insufficient foundation for a stop. In that case, he would be justified in pulling his weapon on half the Black male population. Perhaps that is the point.

    Castille somehow forget his life was endanger the moment the office confronted him. He forgot the recent cases of John Crawford and Tamir Rice. Crawford and Rice lived in Ohio where it is lawfully to openly carry a weapon. They were to die in Ohio for doing what the law of that state said they could. Crawford was in a store carrying a gun he had picked up from a store counter to purchase. The police shot him within six seconds of arriving in the store and one second of encountering Crawford. Twelve year old Rice was in a playground; he was shot dead within two seconds of the police speeding up to him in their patrol car. No questions were asked. No chances were given. A Black male with a gun is an abomination to be exterminated. He is not to be humanized by asking him anything or giving him a chance to exit with his life still his own.

    The two Black males were not charged with any crime because they were innocent of any crime. Yet the police were exonerated. They did not intend to kill these Blacks without reason, it was concluded. It just happened that way. The officers were careless, even extremely so, but should not be punished for it. In this, they are beneficiaries of the same defense as Clinton.

    We are left to wonder how innocentBlack males can be intentionally shot for doing nothing wrong yet the shooter not have done something criminal. The outcome befuddles logic and justice. When it comes to the criminal system, itappears that Justice is not blindfolded to be impartial. She is blindfolded so that the only thing she sees as criminal is Blackness.

    The police are usually not sanctioned because their actions, though wrong, supported the established order and their victims were seen as somehow threatening that order.

    Most likely, the policemen involved in the recent shootings will not be punished. This will angry a Black community on edge by too many such tragedies. Already, an off-balanced former army reservist mowed down five policemen during a sniper attack in Dallas. The crazed Black man said it was an act of retribution for Sterling and Castille. What he did was evil and wrong. Those policemen did not deserve to die. Whiteness is no more a crime than Blackness. The Dallas policemen had done nothing wrong. But neither had Castille, Sterling, Crawford, Rice, Martin and the list goes on. In a sense, the bullets that downed these innocent black men were the bullets that killed the Dallas officers. Improper violence begets more violence. If justice is not meted out fairly in the courts, some people will attempt to achieve it in the streets. Indiscriminate excess and death stand in the offing.

    If America is not careful, it may be entering a long, hot summer where racial positions harden and race becomes a dominant theme in the autumn presidential elections. Such is the price to be paid when justice is consistently sacrificed to maintain a status quowhich should no longer exist.

    • 08060340825 sms only

     

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)

    He who thinks himself invincible is his foe’s next conquest

    Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.

    The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.

    Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.

    The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

    Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.

    Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.

    The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.

    Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’

    That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the  genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.

    Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.

    Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.

    The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.

    FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.

    Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.

    The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.

    Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.

    If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.

    Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.

    If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.

    Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.

    Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.

    In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.

    If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.

    While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.

    Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.

    The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.

    If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.

    Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.

    This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.

    Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.

    08060340825 sms only

  • Ali, trump and clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)

    Ali, trump and clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (the finale)

    He who thinks himself invincible is his foe’s next conquest

    Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.

    The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.

    Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.

    The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

    Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.

    Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.

    The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.

    Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’

    That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the  genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.

    Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.

    Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.

    The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.

    FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.

    Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.

    The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.

    Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.

    If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.

    Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.

    If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.

    Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.

    Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.

    In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.

    If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.

    While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.

    Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.

    The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.

    If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.

    Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.

    This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.

    Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: the greatest, the baddest and the saddest (Part Two)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: the greatest, the baddest and the saddest (Part Two)

    He who leads by impulse feasts his people on calamity

    There is something terribly wrong when the two remaining candidates for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are the moral inadequacies now before the electorate. Neither one of them seeks anything beyond self-aggrandizement. They would rather expend the greatness of an entire nation in order to satiate their appetites.  Searching for noble principle in either of them is as futile as hunting for a snowflake in an active blast furnace. Basic goodness has melted from them long ago.

    That either of them is poised to become president jeopardizes America more than any threat from ISIL or other foreign enemy. Their media hirelings will proclaim the coming election is a battle for America’s soul, its very future. That is a lie. Should these two be the only choice on the menu, then America has no choice. The battle has been waged and it has been lost. If either Trump or Clinton come to reside in the White House, America would be reduced and the world made a more dangerous place because of it. Decay of the national purpose and institutions of governance would be the order of the day. The place they would take America is not the place those who fought and died for America had in mind when they made their sacrifices.

    Trump would send the nation cascading to Hell, boasting all would be fine because he had enough money to make a deal with the devil to sell ice to all the inhabitants below and build a golf course/water resort for the wealthiest among them. Clinton would whisper all would be fine because an old friend was assigned to tending Hell’s backdoor. That friend owed her a favor and would allow her to secret in air conditioners. Distinct styles and different routes leading to the destination: calamity then ruination.

    The most obvious deficiency is Mr. Trump’s although both contenders are equally dangerous but in different ways and means. This flailing man is a walking sarcophagus of prejudices and biases that refuse to die. His campaign thrives on the fears and hatreds that till the souls of the mean and petty. He has said evil things about almost every minority, all faiths but the one he claims, and about women. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, then hatred perhaps is one thing Trump loves more than money.

    The man has shown himself to be grossly ignorant of the most basic tenets of both foreign and domestic policy. He claims that his expertise as a businessman well suits him to rebuild the economy. This is his most solid claim to office; yet, if it is anything, it is but spittle and mud. Just because a man is expert at fashioning hubcaps does not mean he knows how to design an engine or even drive the car. Trump’s prowess as a real estate dealmaker does not automatically make him adept in macroeconomic policy. Thus far, much of what he has proffered as economic policy has been effluent.

    Trump is an untalented hurdy-gurdy man too much in love with the ramshackle noises he makes. He hears a symphony. Most reasonable ears hear the sound of falling rocks. He is the public affirmation of the caution that vast wealth can be as much a debilitation as an attribute. If America wants to be great again, an essential task must be the construction of an insuperable wall between Trump and the White House.

    Clinton’s situation is more nuanced but also parlous. Superficially, she appears to be the right answer for the moment. Yet, the only real difference between her and Trump is one of veneer.

    While he is brash and abrasive, she has a polished appearance and speaks with a professional restraint. Yet, her deeds reveal an impetuous streak and a heart as disdainful of democratic practice as Trump’s.

    The danger Trump poses is clear and bulbous. He relishes showing us he is an epic collision in the making. Both believe themselves more than us mere mortals. As such, both would undermine American democracy more than perfect it. Both might bring the world to the cliff’s edge, to leave it hanging on a razor-thin balance.

    Clinton’s words profess compassion. Her long resume pretends competence. Her deeds are the problem. Her accomplishments are more hollow than she would rather they be. This relegates her to argue the mere holding of office is sufficient accomplishment regardless of what occurred while there.

    Because she has been around so long and has held many posts, we have been induced to believe her and believe in her. Yet, to believe in her is to believe she is what she is not. Secretary of State was the last major office she held. She turned the State Department into a place of erroneous policy as in Libya, Syrian and Ukraine. She treated the august department as her personal fiefdom. She proved to be a sly manager who mishandled sensitive public resources as if they were her own and treated the public trust as if nonexistent.

    While Trump is a daylight assault with an axe, Clinton is a nocturnal bacillus whose attack comes subtly from within while our defenses are down and slumbering.

    Hillary Clinton’s run for office has now become a moral dilemma for her allies. One cannot back her yet support good governance and the rule of law at the same time. In clinching the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton has achieved two firsts. She is the first woman to clinch the nomination of one of the two major parties. That a woman has done so is long overdue. That it is Clinton will be recorded as one of America’s bittersweet occurrences. It is to bestow a true honor on one of the most counterfeit personalities of this or any era.

    She is also the first presidential candidate of any major party to enter the election race under criminal investigation for serious breaches of national security. As to which ‘’first’’ will history lay her greater remembrance looms as an open question.

    For those unversed in diplomacy and national security matters, the storm about her use of a private email account and server seems unintelligible or petty. For those knowledgeable about American national security matters, what she did is of utmost seriousness; it was criminal in nature and should disqualify her for office. It reveals a frightening disdain for the rule of law and the intelligence of the people, both warning signs that democratic good governance may not be Clinton’s strong suit. I consider myself in this latter group.

    This is important to all. If she can be so callous regarding the nation and the constitution she professes to love, grave dangers lurk for those nations that win her ire. Remember Clinton publicly joked about how Qaddafi was tortured and killed as if sodomizing then illegally executing an opposing leader is the stuff of jokes instead of the crime that it was. Such dark levity is unbefitting a world leader. In Libya, she pushed the Obama Administration to work in concert with regional terrorists to upend a secular leader who had long ago ceased being a threat to any measurable American interests. She championed this avenue more as a function of pique than of sage policy. After witnessing and joking about the destruction she, Clinton turned her back and left that nation to rot and ruin. If indicative of her purported competence, then we are in palpable trouble for the Libyan caper is a picture book example of foreign policy by guttural impulse.

    Clinton has never encountered a war she did not like yet she has proven to be a truant housekeeper after the damage has been wrought. She has thirsted for every American war in the past twenty years. If she had her way, what happened in Libya would have repeated itself in Syria. Judging by her published emails, she pines for an excuse to war against Iran. Russian and American military might would be in nose-to-nose proximity on the steppes of the Ukraine due to her lack of geopolitical prudence and blind arrogance. A Clinton presidency is like to cart the world closer to a major war of untold consequence.

    Because of the leadership and personality flaws the scandal reveals, perhaps a bit of explanation about the national security and legal implications underlying her email scandal may help the reader understand the gravity of Clinton’s derelictions. For this is not an artificial fuzz over the sloppy handling of inconsequential emails such as what friends exchange between themselves. This concerns the wanton and perhaps willful misuse of emails that contained some the nation’s most closely guarded national security considerations.

    As Secretary of State, her official communications belong to the people and to the United States government, not to her. They were meant to be restricted to encrypted official channels for archival purposes and, more importantly, to safeguard information from foreign snooping. The use of a private server trashed both goals.

    Clinton acted as if her want to control access to her official communications was of greater weight than the true ownership rights and national security concerns of the government that employed her. She acted as if the government was her agent and servant instead of the other way around. In treating sensitive government documents and work product as belonging exclusively to her, she behaved imperiously, like spoiled royalty doing the nation a favor rather than a citizen grateful for the privilege to serve her country.  The lack of character which she has exhibited in the matter is revealed in a quick examination of the claims she has made to dance around her culpability.

    Claim 1: The State Department approved the private setup. This claim has proven bogus. In an official report, the Department claimed it never was asked to approve the private server and if so would not have done so. Clinton lied.

    Claim 2: Her private arrangement was consistent with those of her predecessors. The only other Secretary to use a private email account was Colin Powell. However, he never contemplated a private server and did not exclusively use the private email account for official business. He also had the imprimatur of the Department for his limited use of private email. His rather limited official use of that account came during a completely different era regarding the use of emails for government business. At that time, the Department did not have an unclassified email system as during Clinton’s tenure. Again, she lied.

    Claim 3: The private server and account were done merely for convenience purposes.She did not want to have to constantly flip between a government and a private system. This does not wash.  If she did not want to operate two systems, the wisest route would have been to opt for the government device solely.

    For instance, she was prohibited from using her private device in her office because that office was considered highly classified space. Whenever she wanted to deal with emails during office hours, she had to leave her office suite. Thus, we are left with the incongruous sight of the Secretary walking about the building, followed by security and other officers, as she went to another room or floor to treat emails. This might have happened several times a day. This does not seem convenient. It does not even make sense. A government devise usable in the comfort of her office and at home would have been inherently easier and wiser.

    Her staff even refused Department attempts to give her a government-issued secured device because they wanted to maintain Clinton’s privacy. The position is as indefensible as it is corrupt. She has no privacy right to hide official communications from the very government that employed her to handle those communications.

    Even if she opted for the private route, convenience would have pointed to only the creation of a private account. Setting up a private server in her residence is actually significant extra work. There is only one plausible reason to resort to a private server: to control access to the material, in effect obscuring from government what belonged only to it. On this point, either she lied or her judgment is so obtuse that she should not be trusted again with high public office.

    Claim 4: The server was secure because armed Secret Service men guarded the residence. Having an armed guard standing on the porch might prevent a physical assault against the location. Yet, it is beyond explanation how a gun at the front door deters a computer hacker who can accomplish his theft from the other side of the planet. A gun at the porch was no more a defense to hacking the infernal machine than putting an oar in the car helps a person drive cross a bridge over a wide river.

    Sadly, her personal server was extremely vulnerable. Her network lacked encryption. For a brief period, it lacked even the firewall and other lower-level security features employed by medium and small private businesses that do not handle sensitive documents. Establishing her server in order to avoid government retention of her records seemed to be her sole concern. Her obligation to safeguard important information was treated as a damnable nuisance. Again, she has lied or exposed herself as a supreme dunce.

    Claim 5: No wrong was committed because no document was marked classified. This is as disingenuous as an argument can get. When she became Secretary she underwent training about classified information. She signed a formal oath that classified information could be marked or unmarked and that the mishandling of such is a criminal violation. She went into the job with eyes open. She cannot now profess a dumb blindness.

    What makes information classified are not the markings but the content. Documents are not classified just because they are marked so. They are marked so because they are classified. The classification arises from their substance. The markers just acknowledge what already exists.

    Over 1000 emails she returned have been found to be classified. Refuting her claim that the documents were “retroactively classified,” there is no reasonable explanation that can be offered how such documents would be classified now but were not when initially transmitted. Sensitivity of a message generally moves in inverse relationship to the passage of time. The older the message, the less sensitive. For her to argue the emails were not then classified but now are lacks credence. She knows better than to make this argument but she makes it anyway.

    Claim 6: She is innocent because she bore no criminal intent. Neither fact nor law gives her succor. Under the several applicable criminal statutes, she can be held feloniously liable for the wrongful and willful transmission of classified material or for being grossly negligent in the handling and storage of the same. There is ample intent of willful violations.  Roughly 20 emails have a classification of top secret or higher and over 60 as secret. Unless all of these 20 documents fit into a mitigating narrow exception that grave emergency dictated the use of the unclassified system, then at least two people committed a crime, the sender and serial receiver thereof, the latter being Clinton.

    The sender would have to deliberately transfer information from a secured device to put on Clinton’s unsecured private network. Such a deliberate trespass has almost no defense and is clearly punishable. Clinton would have known this criminal process was being done for her benefit if not at her explicit behest. She condoned the misdeed over the course of her tenure. This is an intentional breach of national security, a felony. The penalty for this is a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for each violation.

    She also kept these emails on her unsecure private server for several years. By any objective legal measure, this would have to constitute the grossly negligent storage of classified material. To compound this, she placed the material on an unsecure thumb drive which is another violation.  She then gave the server and thumb drive to her attorney who lacked any security clearance. This comprises another set of violations. Worse, it seems that she also used two companies to monitor her server. These companies had no clearance, another set of violations.  One of the companies made back-up copies of the emails and stored them in an unsecured location, two more sets of violations. Keep in mind that every email, ranging from the 20 top secret to the over 1000 classified, is a distinct violation that carries a potential prison term of 10 years. You can figure the potential maximum time behind bars. My calculator does not count that high.

    If America seeks to continue to portray itself before the world as the land of the rule of law, then it must apply the law fairly and equally even against its most favored and privileged citizens. The Clinton national security scandal will test the legal system in an open and blatant way. If she is allowed to walk, penalty free from her misconduct, then you should realize that the American legal system is an object of barter and that justice is considered a rare but not a valuable commodity. Already the major media outlets have been found out. They downplay the scandal because they work for the same big money, vast military establishment that brings us the Clintons. If Clinton is called to answer for what she has done, perhaps just perhaps the United States would have taken an important step in reasserting the destiny its noble documents and republican doctrines claim for the nation. Next week, we explore how all of this may undermine President Obama’s legacy if he fails to exercise judgment.

     

    08060340825 sms only

  • Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part one)

    Ali, Trump and Clinton: The greatest, the baddest and the saddest (part one)

    Through haughtiness of leadership is a great nation first subdued. Decay is followed by defeat.

    Events celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali are much deserved; but no matter how grand the tributes, they speak only half. When all is said and done, Ali, born poor yet grew to be great, will be revered. Meanwhile, the two presumptive contestants for the American presidency whose names also share the title of this piece will do well just to be remembered.

    I grew up watching Ali. His boxing prowess was singular. He managed to transform the coarse sport into a work of art. But the most important blow he ever struck was done outside the ring. At the height of his athletic prowess and had everything within his grasp, he was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War.

    The war was not going well for it had been going on too long with no victorious end in sight. The country was growing uneasy; incipient grumbling would soon erupt into widespread protest. Already, the national establishment had been shaken by the Civil Rights Movement. For those guardians of the old order, change was approaching too fast and from directions that until then had not even existed. They wanted to stave any more fluidity. They wanted to quell Black radicalism and also build public support for the war.

    Having Muhammad Ali in army uniform and in their corner would serve both purposes. The establishment wanted to exploit Ali just as they did Joe Louis, the excellent Black heavyweight of a prior era. During WW II, Louis was put in uniform; but the only fighting he did was in the ring, performing insipid exhibitions to encourage support for the war effort and bolster troop morale. I dare not be too hard on Louis. It would be unfair.

    His era was one where Black Americans were fighting to overcome every racial barrier imaginable. We were even fighting to be allowed to join the armed forces that we might fight on behalf of the nation that did not want us except as servants. Thus, Louis saw his efforts as assisting America against fascism abroad while also helping Blacks against American fascist racism at home. In hindsight, it appears he was made to play the fool. At that time, playing that particular fool was the only reasonable play he could make.

    In the quarter century between Louis and Ali, much had altered. America, its role in the world, and the role of Blacks in America all had been revised by forces which no one fully understood, much less controlled. Ali would ensure that change would continue.

    When he was drafted, he could have accepted his fate as had Louis. He too would not have seen the frontlines nor held a firearm save as a publicity stunt. The only fighting would have been within the familiar confines of a boxing ring. After that, he would have been allowed to resume his boxing career as the darling pet of the governmental establishment. He would have retained all he had and profited materially even more so had only he obeyed.

    He did not. His conscious would not allow it. Where Louis helped defend America from fascist aggression, Ali could not see where America was defending anything worth defending in the Vietnam War. To Ali, America was aggressing against people who had done neither him nor Black America any harm. The American establishment pressuring him to don the army outfit was the culprit causing Black people more harm than anything the Vietnamese could ever muster. He saw no reason to fight people whose only transgression was that they were fighting for their freedom and dignity. If anything, he should support rather than oppose them. As a Black American, he was fighting for the same thing. He would be in moral dereliction should he fight to keep another man from that which he desired for himself.

    Ali refused to go into the army in 1967. He refused to do what the government demanded of him. We would not bend and take the easy way. He stood by his conscience. The establishment responded harshly. They stripped him of his title. He was suspended from boxing. Sentenced to a 5 year prison term, he managed to stay out of jail through his persistence to appeal his case to the Supreme Court. During this legal trek, he lived with the threat of prison, ever present and ever near.

    In 1971, reversing the lower court decision, the Supreme Court found that Ali’s stance as a conscientious objector to the war and his refusal to join the army were justified. He was exonerated.

    This was the thing I most remember about Ali. He could have taken the easy way by placing his beliefs in the closet that he could continue being champion and making money. He had grown up poor and put upon because of his poverty and color. To gain so much yet to give it all up just for a thought, is a high and noble price to pay. He risked imprisonment, poverty and his popularity because he dared not depart from his convictions. His beliefs defined him more than his possessions. The sum total of the man was much more than what could be seen or touched by physical hand.

    In the end, he was exonerated as he should have been. However, that outcome was far from certain.  That a Supreme Court of eight elderly White men would overturn his conviction says something redemptive about America and the rule of law (Justice Marshall, the lone Black on the court, had recused himself from the decision.) However, that Ali would be willing to forfeit so much because of a simple belief says much more about the character and courage of this Black man.

    As a youth, what I studied from Ali was how to throw a left jab and duck a punch. The skills came in handy growing up.  However, what he and others taught me was that a Black man can and should take a heroic stand when his conscience so dictates. (Around the same time, my father made the hard decision to move his family into a White neighborhood in central Florida. He was not a boxer by any stretch of the imagination, but he too had grown up poor and felt the sting of racism throughout his life. He had joined the fight so that his children could stand as he couldn’t when he was young and that they would not feel the racist sting as bitterly as he had.)

    As Black Americans, we have as much dignity and as much a right to stake a claim to political and religious freedom as any other American. We should not think that we are so inferior that we should be happy with merely getting by or going along with what others dictate. We have the right to be as independent-minded as the constitution of America says we can be. I never meant the man but this lesson was so intimate and close that I felt as if he were a member of my family. In a profound way, he was.

    Ali ceased being a negro. He became one of the first personifications of the post-Civil Right Movement Black man. He risked everything because of his beliefs. He put moral conviction before material fame and public accolade. In doing so, he made the nation better because he forced it to recognize the variance between its egalitarian principles and racist practice and to take steps to narrow the gulf between ideal and reality.

    I raise this observation not to deify the man after his departure. He was imperfect and his mistakes many. But he tried to do what is right even when it would dearly cost him. This made him more than a boxing champion. He remained a man of conviction and human fortitude throughout. He loved his fellow man. This was his greatest victory.

    While Ali was a man of character, the best that can be said about the two others named in the title of this piece are that they are characters.

    One must lament how low America has fallen in the nearly fifty years since Ali stood his courageous stand. That a young athlete less than 30 years old would show more fortitude and leadership courage than these two people over sixty years old who now vie to be America’s next president.

    For a moment imagine either Clinton or Trump in a situation where they must decide between holding to a principle or to their worldly fame and fortunes. We know how they would decide. They would toss conviction to the gutter, quickly taking the expedient route Ali declined. As such, this Black man with the Arabic name has honored the American creed than Clinton and Trump can ever do. He is more a true American than they will ever be. He is more an American leader and hero than they; what he did was the epitome of American heroism and respect for individual freedom of expression and belief. Neither trump nor Clinton would ever attempt such a thing.

    It would be inaccurate to claim that every American president has been a great or outstanding person. Most were mediocrities who benefited from political compromises best left unearthed. However, when America most needed leadership, it seemed that Fate smiled upon the nation. Presidents like Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt came to the fore. However, excellent leadership is not inbred. It is cultivated. With the rise of Clinton and Trump, Fate seems to have turned its back on America. Neither is anywhere nearly as august or great as the office they seek. They are both like unruly children who have absconded with their father’s shoes in hopes that somehow the boot might fit. Next week we shall see why this description is truer than those who believe that America still has the ability to promote good in this world would want the description to be.

     

    080060340825 sms only

  • Alabama speaker convicted of ethics charges, removed from office

    Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, a powerful figure in state politics, was found guilty at the weekend of using his elected office, along with his former post as chair of the state Republican Party, for personal gain, local media reported.

    After seven hours of deliberation, a Lee County jury found Hubbard guilty of 12 of the 23 felony ethics charges he faced, convictions that automatically removed him from office, according to Alabamanews.net.

    “This should send a clear message that in Alabama we hold public officials accountable for their actions,” state Attorney General Luther Strange said on his website.

    Sentencing for Hubbard is scheduled for July 8. He faces 20 years in prison, Alabamanews.net reported. Hubbard’s attorneys told the news website that they would appeal the convictions.

    Hubbard was indicted by a state grand jury in October 2014 on charges of using his elected office, along with his former post as chair of the state Republican Party, for personal gain.

    Hubbard helped guide Republicans to majorities in both houses of the state legislature in 2010 for the first time in 136 years before his indictment.

  • Al Qaeda leader pledges allegiance to new Taliban leader

    Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in an online audio message, pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, who was appointed last month after his predecessor was killed in a US drone strike.

    The veteran Islamist militant became al Qaeda’s leader after U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, and he is thought to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, having been based there since the late 1990s.

    “As leader of the al Qaeda organization for jihad, I extend my pledge of allegiance once again, the approach of Osama to invite the Muslim nation to support the Islamic Emirate,” al-Zawahri said in a 14 minute recording.

    During its years in power, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and it has been fighting an insurgency since to regain control of the country.

    The authenticity of the recording could not be immediately verified.

    HaibatullahAkhundzada, Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s deputies, was appointed a few days after Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone attack in a remote border area just inside Pakistan.

    Since al-Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor-turned-militant, succeeded bin Laden, al Qaeda has lost ground to Islamic State in the leadership of the global jihadist movement.