Dick Cheney’s “Blame Obama” tour

Merriam-Webster defines the word “chutzpah” as, “Having personal confidence or courage that allows someone to do or say things that may seem shocking to others.” It derives from a Hebrew word hutspa meaning “insolence,” “cheek” or “audacity.”

There is no better word in any language to describe former Vice President Dick Cheney. Every time the sneering sack of soulless spin opens his mouth, the words that fall out are so maddeningly insolent, cheeky and audacious, he makes Darth Sidious sound like a Sunday school teacher.

The Tin Man of modern politics is now crisscrossing the country promoting the book he wrote with his daughter Liz, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Chaney said of the recent Iran deal, “I can't think of a more terrible burden to leave the next president than what Obama is creating here." He added that he thought Obama “was the worst president we’ve ever had.”

Chutzpah, anyone? This truckload of bullshit has me gagging. To have the audacity to call Obama the worst president in this country’s history after having served under the dimwit Bush who, according to actual historians is considered one of the worst American presidents, is unbelievable. The man whose boss was President during the worst terrorist attack this country has ever faced, who handed Obama a $450 billion dollar deficit when he left office (which ballooned to $1.4 trillion the following year), and who arrogantly and illegally started wars in the Middle East that Obama was left to clean up, this man has the audacity to pretend that all of this is Obama’s fault.

With his new book and interviews by the conservative media, Cheney is undertaking the arduous task of rewriting history. He knows Americans have notoriously short memories, and he’s capitalizing on that fact with his “Blame Obama” tour. And no one in politics does this kind of damage control better than Cheney. It’s up to the rest of us to remind Americans that the majority of the problems we face today, from a struggling economy to the eternal war on terror to abuses of the surveillance state, all have their genesis in the Bush era.

Cheney should be writing his autobiography with a crayon from a jail cell at a federal prison and not being showered with attention and accolades from the right wing media. In that arena, Cheney’s chutzpah is not merely indulged, but rewarded. What a world.

Dick Cheney thinks Americans are the April fools

Speaking to a crowd of Republicans recently, former Vice President Dick Cheney said that the Obama administration has been the worst in 70 years. He told them he expected the Iranian nuclear negotiations to fail and argued that America's traditional allies in the region have “all lost faith and confidence” in the U.S.

This is not an April Fools Day joke. I don’t think. This is the everyday foolishness spewed by the war criminal Cheney. He and his little lapdog Bush lied to the American people to gain support for war, illegally invaded Iraq, had no post-war plan, incited long-time rivals to war with each other, inspired the creation of ISIS, gave Saudi Arabia a pass although all but two of the 9/11 hijackers were from that country, lost billions of dollars in Iraq, broke international laws by torturing people, began the drone program, created the Patriot Act and Homeland security, which flung the door wide open to illegal mass surveillance, and then handed this hot mess over to Obama in 2008.

And Cheney has the audacity to claim that the Obama Administration is the worst in 70 years. Cheney and Bush and others should be in prison for war crimes, not running around the country trying to salvage their nightmarish legacy by shifting the blame to others. It’s like Hermann Goering traveling around Germany after WWII blaming the devastation of Europe on the allies. And, as an aside, Goering was a decorated fighter pilot during WWI, not a cowardly draft dodger like Cheney who was more than willing to send Americans to die in the Middle East.

Cheney, Bush and their merry band of neocons are evidently too big to jail, despite their horrendous crimes.

Justice is blind in America. Ha, April fools.

The mainstream media gets one right

It’s a rare moment in time when a member of the mainstream media goes off the corporate-approved script and speaks the truth to power. The New York Times did just that yesterday in an editorial calling on Obama to order a criminal investigation of top Bush administration officials who authorized torture after 9/11. And to its credit, the Times’ editorial was unequivocal. There was no hemming and hawing, no “equivalency” nonsense, no slippery rhetorical escape hatch for the accused. The editorial was short and sweet: Investigate the bastards.

On a similar note, Dick Cheney has been on a media campaign for the last few weeks trying desperately to put the lid back on the box of torture charges. For all his sneering and cranky expletives, many of Cheney’s statements on the subject have been labeled mostly or completely false by fact-checking organizations. Saddam Hussein did not have a 10-year relationship with al-Qaeda. And yes, detainees captured under the war on terror are covered by the Geneva Convention.

I applaud the New York Times editorial board having the courage to call for an investigation into our government’s use of torture. I wish that Obama had the same level of courage to actually carry out what justice demands, but I wouldn’t put any money on that bet. Who knows? Maybe he’ll surprise me too.

Cheney the Heartless

What words can you use to describe a man who swears that torture works, when there is not a shred of evidence to corroborate that claim, says that given the opportunity he’d torture people again, and who blithely dismisses the fact that innocent people were tortured and murdered in America’s name? Could it be…Satan?

Dick Cheney isn’t Satan, but he is one of the most despicable humans on the planet. On top of his disgusting, full-throated defense of torture, the man was absolutely eager to throw his former boss (in title only) George Bush under the bus by letting the world know that he was fully aware of every dark and dirty deed committed by the CIA.

Obviously, Cheney the Heartless is playing the only card he has in his deck. He has no choice but to aggressively defend his actions despite the insanity of that position. He committed international crimes against humanity, but he also knows that there is little to no chance that the current administration will do anything about it. For all his failings as a human being, and maybe because of them, Cheney is unmatched at political maneuvering and manipulation. Because torture was allowed to continue by Obama, the current president has no appetite to seek a path to justice that could eventually find its way back to him.

With the appointment of George Bush as President in 2000, Cheney and his merry band of neocons took advantage of their long desired opportunity to mold the executive branch into their warped image. The attack on the Twin Towers conveniently provided them with the opportunity to give the President new and unprecedented powers and at the same time send troops into the Middle East to settle old scores and take control of oil-rich lands. All of it has proven an utter disaster for this country and the rest of the world.

No, Dick Cheney isn’t Satan, but he has done more than any other single person to destroy all that was once seen as good about America, and turn this country into lawless, war-loving international pariah.

Cheney's bold move to rewrite history

“Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”

No single sentence could so accurately encapsulate the tenure of George Bush than this one.

• Missed or ignored warnings about potential terrorists plans
• Worst attack on American soil happens under his watch
• Makes case for war based on lies and false assumptions
• Invades country that has no ties to terrorism and no WMDs
• Kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
• Nearly 5,000 Americans lose their lives
• Completely misreads post-invasion needs of the country leaving millions in misery
• Post-invasion American overseers lose billions of dollars
• Allows torture and indefinite detention without trial
• Vacuum in Iraq emboldens terrorists and incites sectarian violence
• Dismisses then stalls investigation into 9/11, then sets up commission with predetermined outcomes
• Opium production rises in Afghanistan after the American invasion
• U.S. backed Maliki government mired in graft

The irony is that the above statement wasn’t from some liberal commentator about Bush, but comes from a recent Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal by Dick Cheney trying to shift blame for the failures of the Bush Administration onto Obama.

Cheney to Obama: “I shit on the floor and you didn’t clean it up.”

This cannot go by without comment. Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz are conducting an all out frontal media assault on Obama for abandoning Iraq and failing to keep the peace. A man who by all international standards of justice should be sitting in jail for war crimes and his little parrot are given air time and column inches to attack Obama for a disaster he inherited. This is not merely madness, it is hubris on a galactic scale. It’s a slap in the face to every American and a thumb in the nose to rest of the world.

And it’s not only Cheney who is being given a bull horn by the media but other nincompoop neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, members of the Bush administration who were colossally wrong about every aspect of the Iraq war. Still think the media has a liberal bias? Write to the papers that publish Cheney's editorial and call the television stations who air his lies and tell them how wrong this all is.