Hans Howe

by Hank Kisor @ The Reluctant Blogger

I’ll be 77 this summer, and not a day goes by that there isn’t a reminder of the perils of aging. Most of them, of course, are the normal ailments one suffers when one gets older. But lately I’ve become more conscious of external dangers. A few days ago I was nearly run over from behind at the local park by a couple of small-child cyclists pumping the pedals as if the Devil was after them. They called “On your left!” but of course I couldn’t hear them. Trooper reacted, but not in time for me to step aside on the path. The kids swept by uncomfortably close aboard, and Debby said, “You’ve got to do something.”

So I did.

I now walk clockwise around the park path against most of the traffic, which normally follows a counterclockwise course. That way I can see my nemesis before it strikes me down.

I’ve also put a cyclist’s rear-view mirror on my sunglasses so I can watch for unseen dangers behind me. Looks dorky, but it works.
In “Catch-22” Yossarian constantly added to a list in a notebook of all the horrible things that could kill him. By the end of the novel he had filled every page.

I’m getting there, too.

Posted by HENRY KISOR
https://henrykisor.blogspot.com/2017/02/what-you-dont-know-is-behind-you-could.html

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“In 1519, when forces led by Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés arrived in Mexico, the native population was estimated at about 25 million. A century later, after a Spanish victory and a series of epidemics, numbers had plunged to around 1 million.”

http://www.nature.com/news/collapse-of-aztec-society-linked-to-catastrophic-salmonella-outbreak-1.21485

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The Dems, along w their allies in the MSM and the IC, are committing a cardinal political error these days; they’ve driven their troops in an hysterical charge without giving them a feasible, attainable goal.

Impeachment is not going to happen, given the complexion of the House n Senate. In a while, outrage fatigue will set in, morale will bottom out, and if the Dems hope to rekindle the outrage they’ll have to come up with ever more outrageous outrages.

Lyndon Johnson used to describe moving the electorate to do something as akin to the technique he used on the U.S. House – driving cattle. First you speak softly to ’em, even sing to ’em a little. You find the lead cow and put a bell on her, set her going in the direction you want the herd to go; pretty soon other cows’ll start following her. Then you get your outriders and dogs to start squeezing the herd from the sides and pick up the pace a little. Your corral is maybe 5 or 6 miles away, remember, so you better’ve strung some fence to make a funnel. When you’re within a mile or so you get your dogs nipping, crack your whips, bring in the stragglers, and stampede ’em.

What the Dems are doing is starting the stampede within the first mile, there’s no bell cow to lead ’em, there’s no corral and no guide wires, they pay no attention to your dogs cuz they’re moving too fast to even see ’em. Pretty soon your cattle are scattered all over hell n the high country and it’ll take you forever to round ’em up again.

And your main chance, the 2018 election? Long n forever gone.

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I am lifting a lot of a comment by ‘different clue’ from the SST Blog operated by Col. Pat Lang.
IMO worth reflecting on, at length.
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different clue said…[in comments at
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/02/harper-a-coup-detat-underway.html]

I have generally avoided copy-pasting chunks of writing from other places into my comments here. But Naked Capitalism’s co-blogger Lambert Strether wrote a few days ago a comment in semi-parallel with this post, and of enough value in my mind; that I will copy-paste it here in case it may be considered valuable enough to deserve to be published.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Lambert Strether February 14, 2017 at 2:50 am
Sketching some first thoughts, because the situation is overly dynamic and has a lot of moving parts–

Yep, the sharks smell blood in the water. (The tank is the Beltway, however.) Some links on Flynn:

WHY ARE NINE SOURCES COMING FORWARD NOW ON FLYNN’S CONVERSATIONS WITH RUSSIA? EmptyWheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/02/10/why-are-nine-sources-coming-forward-now-on-flynns-conversations-with-russia/

Michael Flynn Resigns as National Security Adviser NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/donald-trump-national-security-adviser-michael-flynn.html?_r=0

This to me is the important story, from (Kushner’s) Observer:
http://observer.com/2017/02/donald-trump-administration-mike-flynn-russian-embassy/

“In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.

“Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears.

“What’s going on was explained lucidly by a senior Pentagon intelligence official, who stated that “since January 20, we’ve assumed that the Kremlin has ears inside the SITROOM,” meaning the White House Situation Room, the 5,500 square-foot conference room in the West Wing where the president and his top staffers get intelligence briefings. “There’s not much the Russians don’t know at this point,” the official added in wry frustration.

“None of this has happened in Washington before. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn’t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago. Until Team Trump clarifies its strange relationship with the Kremlin, and starts working on its professional honesty, the IC will approach the administration with caution and concern.

“I previously warned the Trump administration not to go to war with the nation’s spies, and here’s why. This is a risky situation, particularly since President Trump is prone to creating crises foreign and domestic with his incautious tweets. In the event of a serious international crisis of the sort which eventually befalls almost every administration, the White House will need the best intelligence possible to prevent war, possibly even nuclear war. It may not get the information it needs in that hour of crisis, and for that it has nobody to blame but itself.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“So factions within the intelligence community have gone on strike (so much for “democratic norms”) A few things.

1) Chuck Schumer issued the same threat (“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this”). So we’re looking at, as it were, full spectrum dominance within the political class by the “intelligence community.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfEqh8sdQ70

2) So far as I can tell from the Schindler article linked above, Flynn fucked up, maybe on about the level of Petraeus or Democrat Sandy Berger, who hid classified documents in his pants and smuggled them out of the National Archive. (Of course, a lot of people in the Beltway were very happy to see Flynn fuck up, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. And while we’re at it, can somebody please point me to a fully paid-up member of The Blob who isn’t crazy pants? Or corrupt? And isn’t the Logan Act a dead letter?)

3) To me, looks like a well-executed play in a game-plan that intelligence community slash Democrat factions have been running since at least mid-summer. (At this point we remember that “American statesman” Leon Panetta was Obama’s chief of state, head of DoD, and head of the CIA. So I would be very interested to know who appointed WaPo’s nine anonymous sources.) Clinton calling Trump a Russian stooge in the debates was one play, the 25-page “dodgy” dossier was another play (now, apparently, SIGNINT is “confirming” parts of it, so that’s still on the boil), the call for “faithless electors” to be briefed in the (farcically bad) JARA memo was another play, this is another play. No doubt impeaching Trump or getting him to resign by peeling off “moderate Republicans” would be a touchdown).

4) Note that Clinton made her charges of Trump treason in the debate in as direct a fashion as possible, so voters have aleady had the chance to take all this into consideration, at least at a high level (and since we can never see any of the intel, the high level is all we ever will see.) So, if the winning play in the gameplan is removing Trump from office, we’re seeing the intelligence community reversing an election result.

5) If the intelligence community can (a) vet a Presidential candidate after he is elected but before he takes office, and (b) can reverse an election result based on evidence the public cannot see, then the intelligence community is, in essence, a new fourth branch of government not accountable to the people in any way. Anybody who thinks the military will go back to the barracks after staging a coup is delusional. In the same way, anybody who thinks the intelligence community will go back to its SIGINT and HUMINT is delusional. Once they have achieved this change in the Constitutional order, it will never be undone.

6) It’s been amazing to see what liberals have been willing to throw away for Clinton’s sake. Apparently, having a vehemently pro-life Pence as President isn’t a problem for them. Nor is turning the intelligence community in a Praetorian Guard and giving them veto power over voters’ choice of a President a stumbling block. And it can’t be that they really believe Trump is a fascist, else for example Trump’s nominee to the VA wouldn’t be approved 100-0. So it’s all about their power and their rice bowls, plain and simple (and, I would argue, the war with Russia that The Blob wants, which amounts to the same thing). It would be wonderful to spot a good faith actor in this mess, but frankly, I’m stumped.

7) So this is what a legitimacy crisis looks like when liberal Democrats foment it. It would be entertaining if it weren’t so horrific and sad.

8) Of course, all the Democrat establishment really had to do was:

a) Get 10 Democrats on the road doing Town Halls, just like Sanders is doing, talking about universal programs that deliver concrete material benefits, especially to the working class

b) Make voter registration a core party function.

That would do it. Boom, Senate 2018, Presidency 2020. Rather than do something simple that connects with voters, they’re fomenting a slow-moving soft coup and a change to the Constitutional order from inside the Beltway. Swell. Just swell.

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I too view this as an unfolding IC/Borg-driven “bloodless assassination” of President Trump under way in open view. I am a little confused as to why Obama would care to be involved. Isn’t he content to spend his remaining decades golfing on the beach and counting his money as it keeps rolling in?

About Soros . . . this looks bigger than Soros to me, and much deeper and wider-spread. If there were no Soros, I think the only difference would be fewer or maybe no pink kitty caps.

About Pence . . . he apparently was willing to say that Flynn “lied” to him. If that is not really true, that makes me wonder if Pence is a “silent partner” in this bloodless assassination plan against President Trump . . . instructed to look Eagle Scoutly, Straight Arrowly, and await further instructions while being ready to assume the Presidency.

Obviously, the Clintonites would prefer a President Pence, or even a President Ryan, over the President Trump they now face.

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