Dick Cheney, War Criminal. We Deserve Your Silence

Recently, Dick Cheney appeared on ABC's "This Week", followed up by a surprise visit to CPAC, and a mild heart attack. Many well wishes went out to the former Vice President, even some from those who disagree with him politically. While I don't wish for his death or infirmity, it's difficult for me to consider why anyone of any sound moral character would publicly send well wishes to this reprehensible disgrace of a person. He's undeserving of them. Dick Cheney should be a national pariah. Dick Cheney should be in jail.

When I saw an except of Mr. Cheney on "This Week", I wondered what would have been the reaction if a similar platform had been given to Hitler, or Pol Pot, to brag, as Cheney did, about their endorsement and culpability in war crimes. And for those with the stunted intellect to argue that waterboarding isn't torture, I suggest they peruse this article. While it's unlikely to change such minds, I can hope that it might simply make them puke.

Mr. Cheney's patriotism is as phony as Sean Hannity's machismo. It wasn't enough to lie us into war and cause the needless deaths of thousand of Americans and ten of thousands of Iraqis; Mr. Cheney advocated policies that put us on par with the Nazis and the Khmer Rogue. It wasn't enough to taint our reputation as a society of laws; Mr. Cheney has reveled in recalling his part in perverting our system of justice, his conversation sometimes sounding like the sociopaths who are featured in life-in-prison documentaries. Despite his nearly pathological penchant for being wrong, he's given a stage, amplification, lights, cameras, and the opportunity to add his disreputable, debased, and debunked two cents on our national security. Why?

The Bush Administration's choice to use torture, to fabricate a despotic, objugatory, legal netherworld, to act out the revenge fantasies of frightened adolescents who've watched too many hours of "24", has done nothing other than to hamstring and trap us, and give our enemies exactly what they wanted: an America that abandons its norms, values, and way of life. Mr. Cheney and the Republican (and Democrat) acolytes who've supported some type of extralegal process to adjudicate these suspects, fight against criminal trials in civilian courts because torture has queered the cases, and like the cowards they are, rather than admit this truth, they obfuscate, demagogue, and grandstand. And Dick Cheney beams proudly about the fact he's savaged our legal traditions and wiped the bottom of his shoes on the Constitution.

It's fairly obvious by now there will be no one from the Bush Administration held accountable for these actions. For the most part, the principals have gone on to bigger and better. Jay Bybee is a federal judge. John Yoo, a professor and editorial writer. George W. Bush is writing a book, and Mr. Cheney gloats about breaking the law. If there's no other justice to be delivered, can we at least not give deference or respect to these individuals who've smeared our national image and left us this terrible conundrum? Can we not give them unchallenged opportunities to continue to spread their lies about foiling plots that were never remotely close to fruition? Can we please, in the name of decency, not give them the newspaper columns or the broadcast airtime to boast about torture, a war crime, a crime in and of itself, being effective and necessary?

Can we please be spared the shameless reprobate Dick Cheney.

Fail. Lose. Fail.

President Obama and the Democratic leadership still don't get it. They've finally decided to cut away from the joke of getting Republican support for the Health Care Reform bill, perhaps even using reconciliation to fix some unpalatable aspects of the Senate version. Their ballsiness and bravado is at least eight months late.

It may well be that political scientists will someday study Mr. Obama's approach to getting this legislation passed and determine it to be one of the worst political endeavors ever undertaken by the Democrats. They've thoroughly hosed this one up.

This mishmash of protectionism and social safety-net finds little support among the American people. The Republicans have successfully demonized it, and their disciplined slow-walk has resulted in a public perception of the Democrats as being, yet again, impotent, inept and utterly tone-deaf to the will of the public.

The Right hates the cost and the expansion of government, the Left sees it as yet another blatant bow to corporatism as evidenced by the deals with Big Pharma and the absence of the public option.

When this is all analyzed at some future date, it will be the failure to enact a true public option that will insure that this bill is a political loser. Poll after poll showed, across the board, Americans were willing to embrace a bill that contained a true public option: an option that allowed you, if you were dissatisfied with your insurance company, to buy into something like Medicare. Is there anyone who doesn't think such an option wouldn't work as a significant check against the excesses of the insurance cartel? This bill gives us mandates, and no such choice. I don't know what members of Congress think, but I believe that equals a whole lot of throw the bums out, and the Republican bums aren't voting for this.

Washington as a whole is an expert in misreading the tea leaves of national sentiment. They've done it yet again, and may have insured the Obama presidency will be a failure. How does that happen with large Congressional majorities and the smartest guys in years, being in power? The future may have to answer that one, too.

Mr. President, I'll Gladly Eat More Crow...

...if you continue what you'd done over the past few days.

President Obama showed today, by going into the lion's den, he is a capable and highly skilled political leader. The format with the Republicans in some ways resembled the UK's questions for the Prime Minister, and was just as compelling for those who follow this type of discourse. Obama used his intelligence ans unflappability to show, in their own forum, how petulant and revisionist the Republicans are. He commanded the debate by pointing out the hypocrisy and inconsistency in the Republicans assertions, particularly about the stimulus and health care reform. He took the GOP to the woodshed and gave them a spanking.

Obama operated from the standpoint of the incontrovertible and left the opposition with no valid truthful response. Moreover, he made no demands that the Republicans simply fall in line for his proposals, he simply asked them to engage in the process of politics, versus obstruction. It was masterful, and the GOP has to feel on notice: Obama is more formidable than we may think. I'm thankful for that.

Mr. President, I'm ready for more crow.

Obama - It Doesn't Seem Like He's Going To Get It

Tonight, in his State of the Union address, President Obama is expected to call for a three-year freeze on discretionary spending. Despite the economy continuing to stagnate, Mr. Obama has decided, counter to the best economic minds in the country, to curtail government's role as the spender of last resort, and go along with the proposal made by his election opponent, John McCain.

Every time I hear some Republican politician, strategist, spokesperson or shill suggest that the president move to the right and adopt GOP ideas I wonder if Mr. Obama asks himself what I ask myself: When was the last time Republicans were right about anything?

Republicans have been wrong about trickle-down economics, they've been wrong about Iran, and torture. They were wrong about family leave and wanting to let individuals invest their Social Security savings in the stock market. They've been on the wrong side of history on civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. Over the past 30 years, on the biggest issues, the Republicans have been consistently wrong, and yet the spineless ConservaDems, Blue Dogs, and the conflict-averse president can't wait to kowtow to them. Mike Pence goes on TV and lies that the Republicans have tried, in good faith, to work with the president, and is not even mildly rebutted by the often bombastic Dylan Ratigan. Those two can be substituted by a dozen other GOP pols or news-biz hosts, and you'd witness the same thing; near lapdog compliance with the right-wing's narrative.

Despite polling to the contrary, the Democratic loss of the Massachusetts' Senate seat has been spun by the Republicans and the malleable media to be a referendum on Obama going too far left. The facts, as stated by the results of the survey, are the opposite; the majority feels that Obama has not gone far enough.

This latest rush to embrace another bad Republican idea continues to assure such facts will not interfere with Obama's insistence of fealty to the Republicans and the ConservaDems. "Fighter", indeed.

Mass. Grave

The chickens have come home to roost.

The utter stupidity by the Obama Administration is dwarfed only by those media hacks who believe Coakley's loss is because the country's gone more to the left.

The thing Obama still doesn't seem to get is his election was a bold action by Americans who, using politics as their mirror, wanted bold action in return. Meekly begging for a non-arriving bi-partisanship is not bold. Turning the bully pulpit over to Max Baucus is not bold. Talking tough to Wall Street bankers while giving them the gentlest of handjobs under the table is not bold. And away go your independents.

Running away from repealing DADT, caving in to Joe Lieberman, abandoning the public option, and ratcheting up the fighting overseas loses you the base. When the Democrats called over the weekend looking for my help, I said "Fuck 'em!" I can't fight beside those who don't, and I know I was far from alone. The White House has the names and numbers. Why don't they do a poll and see how many Dem volunteers sat this one out? I bet that'll open some eyes.

If the White House is dumb enough to move further to the right, they deserve the rout they'll encounter this Election Day.

The Bottom Line

The Senate has finally passed what Progressives rightly consider to be an unpalatable piece of legislation purported to be health care reform. Having long ago grown tired of the facile bromides about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and this was the best the Democratic president was going to get from his majority-Democratic House and Senate, I once again join in the chorus calling "bullshit".

How is it that, when they want to give the rich the biggest tax breaks in the history of this country, the Republicans don't give a flying fuck about the comity of the Senate, manage to get it done, with Democrats on board. When it comes to doing something to help the average American, the legendarily timid Democrats, knowing full well they'll never have 60 votes, go through the process of coming up with a bill so riddled with compromises, Tiger Woods couldn't fuck all the holes in it.

And the joke seems to be "Yeah, it's bad now, but we'll fix it". How? Do you expect to have 60 reliable, rock-willed Democratic caucus votes someday? Uh, huh. Right.

The White House and Harry Reid just don't get it.

I'm here to tell you that the millions of people who spent the last years working hard and doing their best, only to see the financial system ruined, their 401ks nearly eliminated, or totally exhausted, because they had or have no job, and the values of their homes decimated, are pissed. They're pissed about a Wall Street that remains unpunished and unrepentant. They're angry at a party that promises reform and delivers yet another windfall to one of corporate America's most insidious cartels. They've had enough of the lack of balls and the lack of leadership from President Obama and Senator Reid. They're pissed, and they won't soon be forgetting. I know, because I'm one of those folks.

I want Blanche Lincoln, Harry Reid, Ben Nelson, and Joe Lieberman to know I, and millions of others, won't be forgetting. Count on it.

ConservaDems - Some of you will pay

Here's how.

I live in Georgia, one of the reddest of the red states. Although we give it the best of the old college tries, for the foreseeable future, we can't get a Democrat elected to the Senate. So, while I volunteer here in Georgia, my money goes where it can make a difference. In 2006, that was Connecticut, where Progressives were able to bounce Traitor Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic nomination for the Senate. Unfortunately, CT has no "sore loser" rule, and Bad Penny Joe was able to pull enough of a Count Dracula meets Xaviera Hollander act to get back into office. I write this to let our intransigent ConservaDems know that such things do happen, and I'm not alone.

It looks quite likely that this year my money will be going to Arkansas, and against Blanche Lincoln. Since we do not have a leadership that seems capable of punishing wayward Democrats, I believe it's up to us as voters and contributors to take on the task, and kicking Blanche to the curb is lining up to be job one.

I know Fire Dog Lake is committed to this, and I will be following their lead. We have to make sure ConservaDems understand that votes have consequences. Traitor Joe wound up on my hit list for his cloture vote on the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill; Blanche, and probably others, are going on for their stance on the Health Care Bill which has become the Massive Windfall to the Insurance Cartel Bill.

I look forward top FDL and other informed progressives' advice on how to spend my limited resources wisely. I just hope Arkansas doesn't have a "sore loser" law.