August 4, 2017
Dear Everyone:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
If you’re thinking, “Ah,
Shakespeare,”
think again. This was
written by Sir
Walter Scott, who was born a century and a half later than Will.
Why did they write so much poetry back then?
Simple: They didn’t
have cable TV.
There are two primary reasons to avoid getting “tangled” up in the “web”
of deception. The first is
trying to keep all the lies straight.
“What did I know and when did I know, or not know, it?”
The second is that once someone starts trying to untangle the
strands in that web, just about anything might pop up.
Consider Richard
Nixon, erstwhile
President of the United States (POTUS), who allowed some associates
to engage the services of some
remarkably
inept burglars to plant listening devices in the
Watergate
headquarters of his
rival political candidates.
Big oops there. A couple of
intrepid reporters working for the
Washington
Post started digging and, Woopsie-daisy!
Nixon became the first (so far) POTUS to resign from office.
And for those of you not fully steeped in Ancient History, there is the
case of a POTUS named
Bill Clinton.
Someone decided to investigate the possibility that Bill, with
his wife,
Hillary, had been involved in some rather questionable real estate
dealings having to do with a certain
Whitewater Development Corporation.
In the end, nothing was really found.
Hillary even called it a “vast right-wing conspiracy”, whatever
that means.
But an
Independent Counsel named
Kenneth Starr
started following some of those tangles until he ran across a rather
starry-eyed young
intern whose
own mother had recommended keeping a somewhat
unsavory souvenir of an encounter with Bill’s lack of self-control.
Another oops.
Now we have the
Family Trump, who seem to be a tad bit out of practice in the
deception department.
Seriously, these people are in real estate, which is barely a step up
from used car salesmen.
You’d think they would be better at lying.
Apparently at some point during
Donny the Trumpet’s
Presidential Campaign last year, someone contacted
Donny Junior
with a
promise of “dirt” on Trump’s opponent, to be supplied by the
Russian
Government. You might
think Junior would be too smart to fall for something so obvious, but
you would be wrong. He
leaped at it with all the glee of a five-year-old set loose in a candy
store. He even invited his
brother-in-law
and Trump’s
then-Campaign Chairman to the
meeting.
To their dismay, the “representative”
of the Russian Government started talking about
facilitating the adoption of Russian orphan babies by American couples.
Evidently these neophytes had no idea that “orphan babies” was
code for possibly lifting economic sanctions that had just been brought
to bear on Russian businesses by the
Obama
Administration. They
quickly became bored and bailed out of the meeting as soon as possible
(ASAP).
Fast-forward to the present time and some intrepid reporters found out
about the emails travelling between the interested parties and
Woopsie-daisy! Again!
Junior and the brother-in-law are claiming that a) they didn’t do
anything wrong; b) they had no idea that what they were doing (i.e.,
colluding with a foreign government to interfere with the Presidential
Election) was a “bad thing”; and c) “that’s all there is to it!”
Which it obviously isn’t.
This reminds me of the last time I served on a jury.
A police officer “observed” a known drug dealer turning his
vehicle into a shopping center parking lot without using his turn signal
and promptly arrested the miscreant.
More importantly, the officer could easily see “in plain sight”
that the dealer had “drug-making paraphernalia” in the back seat of his
car.
Did the dealer know that changing lanes, and/or turning a corner,
without signaling was against the law?
Did he even care? Did
he bother to look in his rearview mirror before making the fateful turn?
It doesn’t matter.
When last seen, the dealer was convicted and on his way to sentencing.
So Junior and Company are either stupid or arrogant.
In the meantime, Donny is crying “Witch
Hunt!” as loudly has he can.
But that isn’t stopping the Independent Counsel from issuing a
number of subpoenas requesting many, many financial records from Trump’s
many, many financial enterprises, as well as those of his whole family.
Oops. Again.
Which leads us to the Lesson for Today:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to
deceive!” is another way of saying, “If you’ve got something to hide,
stay the heck out of politics!”
Love, as always,
Pete
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