Category Archives: Cheney

ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS RIGHT – AGAIN

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I am watching Republican Senator Mitch McConnell tell the Jim Leher Newshour that the details of a squabbling senate might be too confusing for Americans to understand. To be exact, he said that the “parliamentary tangle is somewhat confusing for your viewers.” The tangle he references is the Republican effort to block an up or down vote on whether or not the senate supports the troop escalation proposed by President George W. Bush.

Sorry to disappoint you Senator but at this point I think most Americans know most of you on capitol hill are a bunch of greed-soaked liars who will do anything, including sacrifice the lives of young Americans,Iraqis and Afghans so you can remain in power. And why the lust for power? My guess? Money – as much as you can get.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of political leaders treating us like a mindless bunch of Lemmings (my apologies to the poor plummeting rodents). Too often both sides of the aisle are more concerned over their ability to retain their political posts then stopping the killing.

Vice President Dick Cheney, for one, should be in jail. He is not at all delusional as Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently claimed. Cheney is a liar without conscience. He is about money and greed and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the young men and women being killed in the middle east. Moreover, he is a wimp. The five deferments he received to avoid going to Vietnam were sought because, he said, he had other priorities. What were they? He wanted to go to school (actually he knew going to school would help keep him out of Vietnam). The last deferment was a hardship deferment. What was the hardship? His wife was 10 weeks pregnant. There are so many tempting lines here about Cheney’s distaste for pulling out that I’d better flee to the next paragraph.

You think Cheney or Bush give a damn about those killed and brutally wounded? Think about this. A 70,000-square-foot state-of-the-world rehabilitation center for returning veterans recently opened in Texas. It’s called the Center for the Intrepid and was funded by the donations of 600,000 Americans with a wonderful assist from radio talk show host Don Imus. Cheney and Bush didn’t bother to attend the opening. Could it be they have a conscience? Could it be they maybe feel guilty and have a hard time facing the men and women who’ve lost limbs or been horribly burned? I don’t think so. After all, Cheney’s old haunt and the source of millions for him, Halliburton, a Texas-based oil company, was asked to donate to the rehab center. They refused. Oh, by the way, Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract in Iraq in excess of $7 billion.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Most men can handle adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Obviously the same holds true for women. Just look at Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be the Speaker of the House in our country’s history. What’s the early read of power’s impact on her? She’s demanded and will receive a military plane to fly her back and forth to her home district. Lincoln is right – again, and again, and again, and again.

OUR AMERICAN DICTATORS

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George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are our American dictators.

These are two messianic, misguided, self-absorbed men. Bush says he is “the decider” and when asked about the impending Congressional resolution opposing the troop build up, Cheney said, “It can’t stop us.”

This delusional duo believe their will reigns supreme. Never mind the will of the congress, never mind the will of the people, never mind the experienced guidance of our military leaders, never mind the bi-partisan study offered by the the Iraq Study Group. The last thing Bush and Cheney represent is democracy.

If you don’t agree with me, maybe you”ll agree with a man who said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.” As we now know, the American people along with the world community were given anything but the real facts in order to bring about the Iraq War. The man I just quoted also said, “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent” and “(n)early all men can handle adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Bush and Cheney were given power and it poisoned them, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, power released the poison within them, and now it threatens to poison us.

Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, the man I was quoting is Abraham Lincoln. He was all about Democracy. In fact he died for it.

STRENGTH FROM KING, NOT BUSH

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There was a rare instance of unfettered presidential honesty in George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech last night. Take note and be grateful because it doesn’t happen often anymore. To his credit, Bush refused to be restrained by political spin artists and in no uncertain terms came from the very center of his soul when he addressed the deadly carnage inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He never mentioned it.

Bush is a reminder that racism and classicism are alive and well, that the poorer you are, the darker your skin, the more disabled you are, the less you count. He is a reminder us that the struggle for civil rights in our country is, sadly, far from over.

Tragically, Bush is a reminder that far too many of us have forgotten the dream so majestically set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

To be fair though, many business and political leaders have their own dreams. For instance, they have dreams rooted in greed, dreams rooted in the lust for power, dreams whose success rests on a willingness to send the poor and socially vulnerable off to fight and die. While we might not use suicide bombers, we have a society designed in a way that assures that the military is largely comprised of the economically less fortunateand most vulnerable. Were there even an iota of honesty in Bush’s we-must-fight-the-terrorists-or-we-will-all-die scenario, then why aren’t his daughters actively involved in the fight? If not in the military, why not in some volunteer effort to support the troops? Mary Todd Lincoln made it a point to visit wounded Civil War veterans on a regular basis.

The dream pursued by Bush is absent the presence of equality for all. It is absent the basic tenet that all members of the human family have the right to be who they are safely in the world around them. In truth, the Bush dream is missing one key element: the American Dream.

If New Orleans had fewer people mired in the merciless grip of poverty, the government’s assistance response would have been faster, more comprehensive and far more effective. If there had been more whites and less blacks and Hispanics when a category 3 hurricane (with a storm surge of a category 5 hurricane) ripped into New Orleans on August 29, 2005 flooding 80 percent of the city, the response would have been better. On April 18, 2006 the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals reported 1,464 people had died. Thousands lost their homes and livelihoods. Bloated bodies of the dead were seen floating everywhere. Yet not so much as a syllable in the Bush speech.

Now I would be hard pressed to say anything about Dr. King that has not been said before. He has been a member of my heart since I was a small boy. Yet, as a boy, and later as a young man, I was disconnected from King’s accurate recognition that the power of love combined with non-violence required a form of intellectual, emotional and spiritual strength that not enough of us aspire to.

Now I am certainly no choir boy and have never been in the same room as perfection. Even though as a boy I intellectually and even emotionally believed and understood King was right, I wounded others with emotional and physical violence and dishonesty. Even though it has been many years since violence has had a home in my character, the memories of the pain I caused others can halt me in my tracks and fill me with pain and heartbreak.

It takes strength to turn the “ship” around for a person or for a country. It takes strength to step into the light of honesty and tell the truth. It takes strength to apologize, to admit you are wrong or made a mistake. There is no shame in doing this. In fact, there is a kind healing that takes place in the gentle glory and sweet joy to be found in world of honesty. But it takes strength to get there. All too often we get the message that admitting a wrong or a mistake or apologizing are acts of weakness. Well, if they are, then why are they so hard for so many to do?

If we let King’s accurate view of the human character die, we ought to be ashamed. King dreamed of the day when his children would be “judged by the content of the character, not the color of their skin.” But the dream does not end there. The dream believes in the possibility of a day when we are judged by the content of our character, not whether we are rich or poor; by the content of our character, not whether we are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist; by the content of our character, not whether our country or any country has oil; by the content of our character, not whether we are male or female; by the content of our character, not whether we are gay, lesbian, straight or bi-sexual; by the content of our character, because society has learned that our value is in our humanity, and nowhere else.

Keep the dream alive.