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.

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.

Destroying America to save it

“Okay everyone, let’s huddle. So here’s the game plane. We’re going to bring congressional business to a grinding halt. We don’t pass anything the president wants. Then we’re going to do everything in our power to sabotage the country’s economy. At the same time, we will throw mud at the president at every opportunity. Whether it sticks or not doesn’t matter, the media will shout “Benghazi” as many times as we want them to. As the country goes to hell-in-a-handbasket, our candidates will point the finger at Obama. Fortunately, polls tell us uninformed voters will blame everything on the president. Muhahahaha.”

Think this is simply a cynical partisan attack on Republicans? Not really. According to Thom Hartmann in his Salon article, Republican’s deadly political strategy, ruining our country hurts the Democratic Party, a meeting was held on January 20, 2009 where the above strategy was mapped out as the Republican game plan for the Obama years. Republican leaders like Newt Gingrich and Pete Sessions have admitted this was the wrecking ball approach they took once Obama was elected.

If this doesn’t make you angry you don’t have a pulse. The Republican party is willing to destroy America in order to save it. There needs to be another word in the dictionary for this, because cynicism simply isn’t strong enough. It’s criminal, in my mind, but, as Hartmann points out, it’s also proving effective. Voters in this country are so ill informed about the workings of Washington (thank you, national news media) that the only name that comes to mind when looking to assign blame for policy failures is Obama.

Republicans have consciously trashed the economy and thwarted any policies that could help alleviate the financial pain and suffering of millions of Americans for no other reason than to hurt President Obama’s reputation and win seats in the mid-term election. Let that sink in. Destroying America’s economy and blaming Obama has been the Republican strategy all along. Why is this not treasonous?