Tag: Dick Cheney

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (March 26, 2015)

CREDIT: Reuters | Lee Celano

Reuters | Lee Celano

Robert Durst

HBO struck gold with the six-part documentary, The Jinx:
The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Especially during the jaw-dropping finale, when the alleged triple-murderer was heard off-camera, muttering to himself into a hot microphone what sounded like a confession. Durst’s arrest the day after the show’s finale created such white-hot news coverage that I don’t think I’d be revealing any secrets to offer a short synopsis. Durst is the estranged heir to one of the richest real-estate firms in New York, which manages 1 World Trade Center, among other high-rent properties. His personal wealth is estimated at $100 million. In 1982, Durst’s first wife disappeared and her body was never found. Though suspected of murder, Durst remained free until the investigation was reopened in 2000.

The day before Durst’s closest confidant was to be interviewed about the case by prosecutors in Los Angeles, she was found murdered execution-style in her home. Fleeing to Galveston, Texas, Durst rented a $300-a-month room and disguised himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, Durst was arrested for killing his 71-year-old neighbor and dismembering the corpse, which he placed in several garbage bags and scattered in Galveston Bay. Celebrity attorney Dick DeGuerin, who not-so-successfully represented David Koresh during the Waco standoff, admitted that Durst cut up the body, but said that it was postmortem, after a struggle over a gun. The jury decided that Durst acted in self-defense when the gun went off, so the slicing and dicing was moot, and he got off. They never found the head.

Durst agreed to take part in hours of interviews with filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, ostensibly to deflect blame and set the record straight. In the series’ final episode, after being confronted with damning evidence, Durst retired to the men’s room, forgetting he was still wearing a live microphone and said, “There it is. I’m caught. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” The day after the final episode aired, Durst was arrested in a New Orleans hotel with $40,000 in cash, a loaded revolver, his passport and original birth certificate, an over-the-head latex mask, and five ounces of pot.

He will most assuredly be arraigned in Los Angeles for murder, so if you enjoyed the documentary, just wait until the trial. Some of the greatest entertainment L.A. produces comes from their live broadcasts of criminal trials. Look at what they’ve given us over the years: O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, the cops who beat Rodney King, Phil Spector, and Dr. Conrad Murray. But the Robert Durst show will be the trial of this early century. This will be too salacious not to televise.

HBO’s ratings were far too good not to continue this series. We know that we live in a violent country and that there are killers who walk among us — some of them mass murderers. The Durst case took over three decades to unravel, which proves that justice is sometimes late in arriving, but you never know when it will come knocking at your door.

The authorities already know the identities of some others who have committed terrible atrocities, and yet they walk free. Their names are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, and Tenet. They met in secrecy, concocting a story to sell to the American people about why the Iraq War was absolutely necessary on the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, a term of their own invention.

They invaded and occupied a nation that had not harmed us, then sent over the U.S. Viceroy, “Jerry” Bremer, who disbanded the Iraqi army and barred former members of Saddam’s political party from government, thus throwing hundreds of thousands of men out of work. These two dumbass decisions led directly to insurgency, chaos, sectarian civil war, and the birth of ISIS. The cost of the Iraq War is immeasurable in both dollars and human lives. So where are all the warmongers now? They’re all wealthy and serve on corporate boards and think tanks. Some are professors at prestigious universities. Bremer lives in Vermont, painting rural landscapes while dabbling in French cuisine. Cheney made a fortune in “blind trust” stocks from no-bid contracts to Halliburton and its subsidiaries. The rest advise the current Republican Party. No one but Cheney’s flunky, Scooter Libby, ever faced criminal charges concerning the war, but rumblings about legal recourse have been growing louder across the globe.

In 2012, the Malaysian War Crimes Tribunal convicted Bush, Cheney, and six others in absentia for war crimes. Torture victims told of mistreatment by U.S. soldiers and contractors who used some of the same practices that Japanese were executed for after WWII. Transcripts of the trial were sent to the International Criminal Court, which may never act, but the Durst case proved there’s no statute of limitations on atrocities.

Then, when justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream, I know of a cozy, tropical prison down in Cuba that’s just perfect for detaining war criminals. Imagine the ratings if they televised that trial.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (October 1, 2014)

CREDIT: Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

John Boehner

So now they expect you to reward them. The most unproductive, polarized, ineffective, and despised Congress in American history has abandoned the nation’s business in order to focus on convincing you that they are worthy of your support for reelection. After a five-week summer recess and a grueling eight days back in session, the congressional Republicans just said, “Fuck it,” and lit out for the territories, leaving trivial matters such as war and peace to wait until after the mid-term elections.

Indulge me in a hypothesis: Let’s say that you are the personnel manager of a large hospital, and right in the middle of a measles outbreak, all your employees decided to return home to prepare for their performance reviews. When they came back after the epidemic had worsened, would you rehire them?

And yet, the noise on the right has grown so deafening, they think they’re winning. Republicans are as confident as Mitt Romney on election night. The hammer-locked Congress, led by the fearsome tag-team of “Blubbering John” Boehner and Mitch “The Obamacare Assassin” McConnell, don’t even realize that their strategy of destroying the president at the expense of the country hasn’t worked. Even after Obama’s reelection and Eric Cantor’s loss, they still didn’t get the message and continued with their destructive agenda.

The goose-stepping Congressional Republicans have obstructed, delayed, blocked, and filibustered every single initiative offered by the president, costing countless numbers of desperately needed jobs, and now they want your vote. Republicans have loudly criticized the president for taking executive actions and then they leave town during an international crisis, abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities.

The British Parliament’s debate was fascinating, but Congressman Bubba from Birmingham can’t be called away from his fish fry. There are donors’ hands to shake. Can you imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin were elected in 2012? We’d be dropping nukes on the Kremlin screaming, “We’re all Ukrainians now,” although recent events have shown we may have used the Palin family fistfight diplomacy first.

While Obama was securing a unanimous vote by the UN Security Council to crack down on foreign fighters joining ISIS, only the second U.S. president in history to chair such a committee, right-wing media exploded in outrage over his salute to a marine while holding a coffee cup. Fox News went wild with indignation, even though this militaristic gesture of saluting while exiting a helicopter was initiated only 30 years ago by the Hollywood warrior, Ronald Reagan.

Then, the usual Fox suspects exulted at the resignation of Eric Holder, like the 7th Cavalry claiming a scalp, while vilifying the attorney general for his presumed “racial favoritism.” Holder once said that when it comes to discussing matters of race, we are “a nation of cowards.” His choice of words may have been combative, but he was right. Or, maybe half-right. We don’t discuss race across color lines, but that never stopped the Caucasian Party from discussing it among themselves.

To believe the GOP, you’d think that roving gangs of displaced Acorn volunteers and welfare cheats were conspiring to vote under false names to steal the next election. Just listen to their rhetoric: A Fox News host said that Holder was, “one of the most dangerous … men in America,” who, “ran the Department of Justice much like the Black Panthers would.” The morally bankrupt Dick Cheney claimed Obama “would much rather spend money on food stamps … than defending our troops.” And Old Faithful, Palin, telling a recent audience how to combat liberals who “scream racism just to end debate,” uttered this gem: “Well, don’t retreat. You reload with truth, which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Her verbal bomb fell about two blocks short of its target. For the sake of sane government, these right-wing obstructionists are richly deserving of being swept from office. If they can’t win fairly, they cheat. They demand new documentation as a condition for voting, they restrict days and hours to make it difficult for the poor to vote, they gerrymander districts to ensure a Republican majority, and they lie. All the time.

In these dark days, what we are witnessing is the last gasp of white supremacy in this nation. That’s what all this “we want our country back” stuff is about. But the GOP is willing to burn down the country club before they’ll admit any of these mixed-race aliens into their midst. Largely based in the South, the Republican Party is now the last bastion of the old Confederate mentality. Regardless of who controls the Congress in 2014 or even wins the presidency in 2016, this is the last spasm of the philosophy of white entitlement. 

Ultimately, leaders will come along who see the value of diversity and replace the agenda-driven, politicized, corporate-owned justices on the Supreme Court and restore honor to the term “public servant.” No time soon, however. The Fox News demographic may be aging, but not fast enough. Die-hard viewers of the corporate propaganda outlet still think Obama is the anti-Christ.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Dick and Liz Cheney

The last time Liz and Dick created this much fuss in the press, it was on the set of Cleopatra, back in the 1950s. I wish I were speaking of Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, but unfortunately, I’m referring to former Vice President “Deadeye” Dick Cheney and his mind-melded daughter, Fox News contributor and failed Senate candidate, Liz Cheney.

The Cheneys “co-authored” an editorial in the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal called “The Collapsing Obama Doctrine,” in which they stated, “rarely has a U.S. President been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” I don’t often read the WSJ since I lost my money in the Bush Recession, but when I read that particular sentence, I had to lean back in my chair and take a few deep breaths at the deaf, dumb, and blind hypocrisy of the head designer and chief promoter of the Iraq War.

Even Fox News’ Megyn Kelly seemed incredulous during an interview on a network that’s usually obsequious to Liz and her dad. When Cheney was asked if the same question might be directed at him after such previous statements as “we would be regarded as liberators in Iraq,” and “the insurgency is in its last throes,” he replied without a trace of shame: “We inherited a situation where there was no doubt in anybody’s mind about the extent of Saddam’s involvement with weapons of mass destruction. We did the right thing.”

No doubt in anybody’s mind? There was doubt in everybody’s mind who could see through Dick Cheney’s master plan to march this country into an unnecessary war. Now that American troops are gone and Iraq is dissolving into chaos, Cheney, along with his personal bad seed, is trying to deflect blame everyplace but where it belongs: in his bloody hands.

He lashed out against fellow Republican Rand Paul for stating that trying to blame Obama for the Iraq disaster was misdirected, and blasted Bill Clinton for whatever reason he could come up with. The Cheneys contended, “On a trip to the Middle East … we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel: ‘Can you explain why your president is doing this? … Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard-fought gains you secured in Iraq?’ Liz and Dick continued, “Mr. Obama … abandoned Iraq, and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.”

One shabby, lazy, old journalistic trick when you wish to forward an opinion but can’t get anyone to speak on the record is to write, “Some people say,” or, “It has been stated in certain quarters.” This allows you to imply defamatory quotes made toward your intended target without actually quoting anyone. It says as much about the Cheneys’ deception as it does about how corrupt the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial department has become under the ownership of NewsCorp.

Does anyone who was awake for the past six years believe that the Bush administration handed Obama a victory in Iraq? This evil war has cost 4,500 American lives, trillions of dollars, and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties, yet Cheney still considers it “the right thing to do”? The WSJ “take your daughter to work day” editorial continues: “Despite the threat to America unfolding across the Middle East, aided by his abandonment of Iraq, he (Obama) has announced he intends to follow the same policy in Afghanistan.”

If memory serves, Obama won election and reelection on the pledge that he would put an end to the Bush wars. In Cheney’s eyes, victory in Iraq means a pliable puppet government and a permanent U.S. military presence to safeguard the oilfields that were supposed to pay for his misbegotten war. Cheney declares, “Al qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent and they present a security threat not seen since the Cold War,” with the same assurance that he proclaimed, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”  

Many pundits on the right still take Cheney seriously, but he’s lost Glen Beck. On his radio show, the cherubic prophet of the apocalypse proclaimed: “Liberals said, ‘We shouldn’t get involved, we shouldn’t nation build.’ They said we couldn’t force freedom on people … You are right, Liberals, you were right.”

Fox News gave the Cheneys a second joint interview, perhaps to assuage hurt feelings caused by Megyn Kelly, only this time it was to announce the formation of The Alliance for a Strong America, a grassroots organization founded, according to Liz, “because we know America’s security depends upon our ability to reverse President Obama’s policies.” While Liz dressed in all black, Dick sported a white cowboy hat and an oilskin vest, causing them to appear more like American Gothic than Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. All that was missing was the pitchfork.

Speaking from Wyoming, where Liz steamrolled her own sister while cozying up to the ultra-right in her losing Senate bid, the new Cheney “alliance” looked more like an attempt to shore-up Liz’s rabid-conservative bona fides for another run for Congress. Cheney claimed the group’s purpose is “to restore America’s power and preeminence” in the world. “President Obama has repeatedly misled the American people about the attacks in Benghazi and the true nature of the threat we face.”

Oh. I get it now. Benghazi. This is about fund-raising for the next election. “Benghazi” is like catnip for right wing pussies, and I mean that strictly in the “fat cat” political contributor sense of the word. But when it comes to Liz Cheney’s credibility, this silly drama can’t come close to matching a Shakespearean production co-starring Liz and Dick that I would much prefer seeing: The Taming of the Shrew.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: Fords and Cheneys

It was a good week for schadenfreude, which, literally translated from the German, means “harm-joy” and as commonly used in English, means taking pleasure from the pain of others.

Who in Memphis, for example, isn’t taking a little pleasure from the pain, or at least embarrassment, that Toronto is suffering from the public antics of its inflatable, pumpkin-headed mayor, Rob Ford. Ford, who has admitted to smoking crack and whose behavior in various press conferences and council meetings indicates that he’s still hitting the pipe, has become a household name and the target of Saturday Night Live skits and late-night comedians. (The late Chris Farley must be writhing in his grave at the missed opportunity to mimic the man he was born to mimic.)

At any rate, Rob Ford’s behavior makes the Nashville perorations of Memphis’ Ophelia Ford (no relation, except spiritual) look tame, indeed. When Toronto’s city council moved to limit Ford’s powers, he likened the move to the U.S. invasion of Kuwait. He also cussed out the press and inadvertently tackled a female councilwoman in one of the most weirdly hilarious videos to ever hit the internet. He then went on the Today show and told host Matt Lauer that he had a “weight issue” that he was getting treatment for and that he wasn’t going anywhere. “They’re not going to find another Rob Ford,” he said, which is pretty much irrefutable.

And speaking of schadenfreude, how about Liz and Mary, the battlin’ Cheney daughters? Liz, the elder sibling, who sports a blond bouffant hairdone, looks a lot like her mother, Lynne Cheney. Mary looks more like Dick. (Please, please, forgive me.) Anyway, Liz, who is straight, recently moved to Wyoming from Washington, D.C., in order to launch a primary challenge to incumbent Republican senator Mike Enzi. To assuage concerns that she might somehow be perceived as “progressive” by the Tea Party wing that dominates the GOP in Wyoming, Liz took a stand against gay marriage. This did not sit well with sister Mary, who is gay and legally married to a woman named Heather Poe.

Mary issued several statements castigating Liz, first asserting that her sister had often visited her family and had never had a problem accepting her marriage to Heather, then later issuing a statement saying her sister was on “the wrong side of history.” Mary, of course, conveniently neglected to mention her own history, which includes working to elect and re-elect numerous Republicans who not only opposed gay marriage but even opposed gay rights.

Father Dick Cheney then stepped up in support of Liz, even though he himself has come out in favor of gay marriage — in essence, choosing politics over his own ethical beliefs. Big surprise, I know. But it does assure that the Cheney family Christmas will be a little tense this year.

Merry Schadenfreude, y’all!

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

CREDIT: by Roy Cajero

Living Day-to-Day

I was outraged at the sympathy given to illegal aliens by Bianca Phillips (“Living Day-to-Day,” August 7th issue). Illegal aliens and their employers should face the repercussions of the laws they are breaking. What part of “illegal” do people not understand? Yes, life is a constant struggle for those breaking the law and who are on the run from authorities. Hopefully, the difficulties that these illegal aliens are experiencing will discourage them from breaking the law by entering the United States or overstaying their visas.

My good friend and ex-boyfriend is Hispanic. His parents immigrated to the U.S. legally, worked hard, raised three children, and now have grandchildren going to college. The immigrants who come here illegally are a slap in his family’s face, taking their jobs, getting free health care, and not paying taxes on income earned.

I have to laugh at Pablo Davis’ (director of Latino Memphis) statement that “many of these people are leading lawful lives and their only crime is the way they entered the country. Some even entered legally and simply overstayed.” Would that be similar to entering Davis’ residence without his consent and deciding to stay? Would entering a bank during normal operating hours and simply refusing to leave after banking hours be legal? The person would quickly be deported to 201 Poplar.

One of the “victims” Phillips interviews is 20-year-old Gabby Castillo, who moved here with her parents (illegally) when she was 6 years old. She complains that she has to register at college as an international student and pay three times as much and that she does not get any federal money. How many people born here or here legally would like to go to school, get federal money, and further their education? She has the audacity to complain about crushed dreams when people like her parents are taking jobs away from legal immigrants and people born in the U.S.

Yes, the United States is a nation of immigrants — legal immigrants. The United States is also a nation of laws. If we do not abide by those laws, there is anarchy. If you are here illegally, you should be deported.

Harris Coleman

Memphis

Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes’ death is a great loss to the Memphis community, as well as to the music world. I live in North Memphis, and I can remember as a child when Hayes lived on Birch Street and would walk to Mrs. Aikers’ store on Jackson Avenue. He was not as famous then as he ended up being, but he was a good neighbor who looked out for the kids on the street.

What a great talent — and a voice that will never be duplicated. Bless the Hayes family and rest in peace, Isaac. You will be missed, and your music will never fade away.

Cathy R. Porter

Memphis

Big Oil

In the year 2000, oil was $22.10 a barrel. President Bush’s conservative friends and Vice President Cheney had a secret meeting with Big Oil executives. Five years later, oil was $55 a barrel and the president was forced to pump from our strategic reserves to try and save his GOP friends in the “do nothing” Congress from election-year defeat.

Now it’s 2008, the last year of the Bush/Cheney rip-off for Big Oil. Exxon just made an $11.6 billion profit — in a single quarter. The GOP and their presidential candidate, John McCain, are repeating the mantra that we need more offshore drilling leases for the oil companies. They fail to mention that by the end of this month, there will be oil company bids on more than 40 million acres of offshore sites in the Gulf of Mexico going unused.

The companies can’t explore what they have now, much less if all our coastlines were leased suddenly for drilling.

The Republicans had the presidency and controlled both branches of Congress for six years without demanding more refineries and drilling from oil companies. Now they say drilling is the only answer. Why didn’t the president start buying oil for the reserve before it hit $110 a barrel? Why did the Republicans want to allow solar tax credits to lapse? Why are they opposed to giving renewable-energy companies tax breaks like the ones they insist on for the oil companies?

Think again about how we got from $22-a-barrel oil to $120-a-barrel oil in eight years. It wasn’t an accident.

Jack Bishop

Cordova

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Farewell to Blather

There is a passage in Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms in which the protagonist — an American ambulance driver serving on the Italian front — goes AWOL and observes of the ongoing carnage that was World War I that he didn’t “go to it anymore.” That’s sort of how we felt about the visit Monday to DeSoto County by Dick Cheney. Cheney was in Mississippi to promote the 1st District candidacy of Southaven mayor Greg Davis, the Republican nominee in an election to replace Roger Wicker.

And we didn’t go to check out Cheney. Not because we don’t have readers in northern Mississippi. We do. We hear from them and revere them. But we could have recited in our sleep Cheney’s mindless and meaningless salvoes on Davis’ behalf: “Americans need to keep more of their own money … stand up for the unborn … priority of the United States is to protect and defend … .” Etc., etc. All well and good, except that these bromides are unrelated to any goal pursued by an administration that in nearly eight years of flagrant waste and dangerous misjudgment has squandered American blood and treasure and human potential needlessly.

But that’s not the main reason why we didn’t go to hear Cheney. We’re really just disgusted with the way that war … er, that congressional race has been run. The last straw was the barrage of recent ads attacking Davis’ Democratic opponent, Travis Childers, as the exponent of some wholly imaginary “Obama-Childers” tax plan. Not that Childers was any paragon of forthrightness in his mealymouthed insistence on the obvious — that he and Barack Obama had never met, much less plotted tax agendas together.

There are good, bad, and indifferent Republicans. There are good, bad, and indifferent Democrats. And there are real issues in Mississippi, as in Tennessee — most of them local, economic in nature, and urgent. Dwindling incomes, the worsening housing crisis, the drastic decline in local and state government revenues, the erosion of social services at a time when they are needed most. To which emergencies, politicians like Cheney and the political-ad warriors to the south of us have offered little more than the proverbial sound and fury that signifies nothing. We choose not to go there.

Maybe Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen is on the right track and maybe he isn’t, with the budget-slashing economies he announced to a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Monday. But Bredesen at least was focusing our attention on real issues and attempting a serious makeover of governmental priorities. Would that our local governments would do as much, instead of consuming an entire afternoon, as the Shelby County Commission did on the selfsame Monday, in arguing over, and then discarding, a score of formulas for determining the number of years that elected county officials should be permitted to serve.

There were good, bad, and indifferent proposals and good, bad, and indifferent justifications for them, but they all came to naught — as well they might, considering that the real urgencies threatening local government and an apprehensive local population were ignored in the process. This shadow-boxing can’t go on forever.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Bruce Parrott | dreamstime.com

Please bear with me until the large-animal tranquilizer I just took kicks in. It had better hurry up and take effect because if I look at one more newspaper, see one more television news broadcast, or visit one more Web page that chronicles the condition of George W. Bush’s colon, I think I am going to have a nervous breakdown. Yep, it seems like every time I look up I am looking down his, well, uh, I guess there’s no other way to put it, butt. This is even worse than when Dick Cheney had some sort of foot surgery a couple of years ago and the news kept reporting on it and showing his big white flabby feet. Must all of this be a matter of public record? Can the man not have a colonoscopy in private without the world having to know about it? I know that White House “probes” are often controversial, but really, can’t we be spared this one? Surely, there is more to report on than this, like the newly enhanced interrogation program on which Bush just signed off, which probably includes making suspected terrorists read about his colon. (I know if I had to put up with it much longer I would tell all.) I guess it had to make the news because he gave up his presidential power during the roughly (ha ha, I said “roughly”) half-hour surgery. And I’m not sure which is scarier: being barraged with stories about W’s colon or the fact that Dick Cheney had complete control of the country for that length of time. At least, much like the president usually is, Cheney was relaxing at his vacation home during the operation. And, apparently, Bush had a pretty good time during all this as well. Every account reports that he was “in good humor” right after having the tube inserted into his colon, and that shortly afterward he put on a pair of jeans, had breakfast with another man, and then went for a walk with his dog and the man. Sounds like an average day on Fire Island to me. And funny, isn’t it, that his wife Laura wasn’t around for this? She was conveniently away visiting her mother for her birthday. Wife gone, anus probed, breakfast and walk with another man? Wearing jeans and probably his cowboy boots? Dick in charge and relaxing at the beach? Is this the early 1980s all over again? Does this give “Camp” David a whole new meaning? And that genius of geniuses Ann Coulter has the nerve to make remarks about John Edwards? At least he got his wife pregnant more than once. But enough of this. I am just displaying tunnel vision (ha ha, I said “tunnel”). But it does give me hope. If someone was able to get George W. Bush loosened up enough for this, maybe someone can convince him that he needs to resign from his job, take his shingle down from the Oval Office, and head back to his ranch for good and just play cowboy — or play with the cowboys. And for heaven’s sake, start drinking again.

Maybe if someone would give him a DVD of Blazing Saddles and make him watch the scene where all the characters are sitting around the campfire drinking and eating beans and passing gas he would take the idea and run with it. He would be so good at that, and I think people would actually like him. And he needs to be good at something, because he has proven that he’s not so great at what he is doing now. Maybe there would be a different kind of light at the end of the tunnel. But keep the colon healthy, George. Even if it is just for 31 minutes, we do not want the Dick in charge. No ifs, ands, or butts.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Dick Cheney’s Tortured Logic

If you’re paying attention at all anymore to the shenanigans of this administration, you learned this week that Vice President Cheney has declared he doesn’t consider the vice president’s office to be a part of the executive branch of our government.

His reasoning? He presides over the Senate. There’s 231 years of American history overturned, folks. Who knew? But what’s more interesting is the reason for this tortured “logic”: A standing executive order requires that all offices of the executive branch submit regular reports to the National Archives on how they are safeguarding classified documents.

This seemingly reasonable requirement is apparently too much of an intrusion on Cheney’s lust for secrecy, so he came up with his ludicrous defense. What’s even more ludicrous is that it’s working — thanks to weasel-boy, aka Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who hasn’t even bothered to respond to the National Archives’ request for a ruling on the matter.

Cheney’s fingerprints are all over this administration’s misdeeds: lying to build a case for war with Iraq; the “torture memo”; presidential “signing statements”; warrantless wire-tapping; ordering the outing of a CIA agent and letting his buddy “Scooter” take the fall. (Not to mention, he shot a man in Texas, just to watch him die.)

Republicans have been going along with this farce for six years. It makes me wonder how they’ll feel when the president and vice president are not Republicans. Will they regret allowing the executive branch to establish such unilateral power?

It’s a bad idea, no matter who’s in office. This republic was founded on the principle of three co-equal branches of government. The way it’s set up now looks a little different:

Executive

Judicial

Legislative

Dick Cheney

It’s way past time for the citizens of this country to rise up and take back our government. These are impeachable offenses. What’s it going to take to wake up this Congress? Someone giving Dick Cheney a blow job?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo | J. Scott Applewhite

Well, I thought I had made it go away. I stopped reading Google news. I almost stopped reading all newspapers. I stopped watching the television broadcast news. I almost stopped listening to other people’s conversations. But then, like a bad sinus infection that never really goes away, it came back. I didn’t mean

for it to happen. I walked into my den Sunday morning and the television was on and it happened to be on one of the political talk shows, and, while I was certain that it would be focusing on the trials and tribulations of Don Imus, it was a show featuring an interview with none other than Vice President Dick Cheney. It was totally surreal. And it was not surreal because he had been on Air Force One burning a lot of fuel a few days before to go to some kind of weird fund-raiser to make his case for MORE WAR, MORE WAR, MORE WAR. It was surreal because a bird slammed into the plane’s engine while it was landing in Chicago, which can make said engine catch on fire. Anyone else might have been hurt. But not the Dick! The man can have a heart attack once a year and still be fine, albeit with no heart. Well, now, I take that back. He did stop on the way back to Washington with his daughter Liz to shop for one of his granddaughters and, in the process, took time out to let someone take photographs of the spree. I can’t fathom, however, why he was purchasing, according to the Associated Press, a “doll with a Western cowboy hat and get-up.” Now, that is sweet. His plane’s engine gets smacked by a bird (poor bird), he gives a mean speech about the Democrats (who aren’t much better than he is these days), and he still has time to buy one of his granddaughters a cowboy doll. May I remind you that this is the vice president of the United States, the country in which most of you live and whose government rules control much of your life? The only country in the world where someone from Europe is a desirable tourist but someone from one foot south of the Texas border is an “alien.” But now back to cowboy dolls for little girls. Does this seem odd to anyone else? Is Cheney’s nose so far up the ass of someone we all know and not love that he must shove upon his innocent granddaughter a doll in the psychological likeness of “brang ‘im to me did ur aliiiiiive” George Bush? Or maybe it was supposed to represent a border-patrol cowboy trying to save us from them terrible aliens! Or a contract worker hired by a company that Cheney owns! Maybe it was a cowboy doll that keeps people from shooting each other and it was just a damn bit too little too late! At any rate, seeing him on the television show was startling in a way, because normally he stays hunkered down in the basement trying to dodge all of the terrorist rockets that are flying our (or his, I should say) way through the sky every waking moment of the day. And he actually said that he had not spoken to his boyfriend Scooter since Scooter got popped for outing the CIA agent and was sentenced to prison. May I remind you that Scooter was the chief of staff for the vice president of the United States and that, yes, his name is Scooter? Maybe he was buying that cowboy doll for Scooter to ease his guilt and so Scooter could have a little companion while in lockup. A little cowboy to keep him company in his time of trouble. Better than being married to the white-collar man with the most cigarettes, I guess. But can you imagine being in prison and having someone shout your name and it is Scooter? Scooter the Pooter! Make me another shooter! How sad. How sad for us all. But at least the Dick bought the cowboy doll and had it photographed. Ow! (I just slapped my own forehead.) Now I know why he bought the little girl a cowboy doll. It wasn’t for THAT granddaughter!

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: dreamstime.com | Alexandr Labetskiy

Okay, it is the first Monday morning of this thing called Daylight Savings Time, which means I just lost an hour

of precious sleeping time, and I can’t help but think this has corporate greed writ-ten all over it. I’m not sure exactly how, but I know it must. Why on earth else would it be happening? Somehow,
I get the feeling that people in Texas are responsible for this, and that makes it even worse. To think that my life is being controlled by Texas sends shivers up my spine. Or worse yet, it could be Florida. Well, I am revolting (save it, save it). Or at least I would like to revolt. Whatever happened to the spirit of people revolting? Isn’t that how this country was formed, despite the way it has turned out? Wasn’t that what the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party were all about? What has happened to everyone? I’m not talking about rioting or burning buildings or any other kind of violence, but why should we sit back and take marching orders from people just because they issue them? I was going to stay out of the Memphis Light, Gas and Water fray, just because it seems like such a mundane thing to complain about at this point and just writing or saying something would do no good, but now it is to the point of either paying my house note or having hot water and lights. Yep, I live on the “edge” of a very nice neighborhood, so, of course, I am being totally screwed like so many other people. So my question is, what would happen if everyone who owes MLGW money just simply didn’t pay it for a couple of months? Would they cut off the power of everyone in the city, save for the chosen few on their list of people not to cut off? Do they have the manpower to cancel the utilities of 800,000 people or thereabouts at one time? At least if they did, we would all be in the dark together and they might rethink their billing process. Oh, and speaking of which, have you noticed how they change the monthly billing date at their leisure? For years, mine was during the third week of the month, after the 15th of the month paycheck. Now it comes before that so they can collect a late fee if it’s not paid until after the 15th. I assume this is the case for some of the rest of you. I, for one, would be willing to join in a citywide revolt and not pay and just let them see what happens. Short of that, I want MLGW to call me and let me know when the meter reader will be on site so I can be there to witness it. I want to know how a 1,500-square-foot house with no dishwasher, one resident who is home only at night, and a thermostat that has never once been set over 62 degrees all winter could possibly generate $500 in power in one month. Are my cats turning on the lights during the daytime while I’m at work? (Well, that wouldn’t really surprise me, since they managed to open a window and tear the screen off of it just to sit three feet away from it wondering how to get back in.) I want an explanation, and I want it now. And while we are at it, the ol’ income tax filing time is right around the corner again. I have never been one of those people who thinks taxes are evil in every way, but if the government is going to take money out of my hard-earned income, why shouldn’t I have some say in how it is spent, like when a donor specifies to which charity his or her money goes and how it is allocated. Is one penny of my income tax going to pay the salary of Dick Cheney? Is it helping pay for all of the FEMA trailers to sit unused while people are still living on the Gulf Coast in tents? Does my income tax help make it possible for Condoleezza Rice to have her helmet hair styled? Does it help fund the debate about whether or not our soldiers must be trained and provided with necessary equipment before being sent into battle in a dangerous war that no one evens knows why we’re in? (I almost fell off of the sofa when I heard that there was actual argument about the proper training and equipment.) Because if the portion of my income Uncle Sam is taking from me is actually helping pay for any of that, then I am going to sue someone. I might just be the first person in the United States to hire a lawyer and sue George Bush and Dick Cheney on the grounds of causing me undue emotional stress for being forced against my will to fund the murder of people. Not to mention Condi’s hair. Talk about a crime against humanity.