'A dagger at the throat...' But who's holding it?
'A dagger at the throat...' But who's holding it?
It's the ones in suits & robes that concern me more than the ones in horned furry hats.
This is so wrong…
When I think of Dick Cheney (I try not to), I recall his curt response in the Spring of 2008, to polls showing growing opposition to the Iraq invasion. When asked about polls showing that two-thirds of Americans opposed the war, Cheney replied, "So?"
"You don't care what the American people think?" ABC News' Martha Raddatz asked the vice president. "You can't be blown off course by polls," said Cheney.
It was Cheney, the man from Halliburton, who pulled the strings behind Bush and engineered the invasion of Iraq. He was a war criminal who encouraged the torture of prisoners, especially the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. His company was the biggest war profiteer and Cheney himself made millions off the war.
Democrats obviously feel more comfortable standing next to a Dick Cheney than they do with progressive Democrats. And that, my friends, is their Achilles' heel.
Yes, I’m worried about the reemergence of D.T.’s Confederate-flag-waving, violence-prone cult followers — the ones that stormed the Capitol a year ago. But I’m much more concerned about those who dog-whistle the fascist thugs out every now and then when they’re needed or have them “stand down” and “stand by” when they’re not.
D.T.’s wealthy right-wing patrons, media influencers, and those Republican pols in the halls of power in D.C. and in the state capitols who wear the suits and judicial robes rather than horned furry hats. They’re the ones who planned or underwrote the so-called “insurrection” while they watched the chaos on TV from their hotel rooms.
Their chances of success are looking better each day, especially with the Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to pass a national voting-rights bill. At least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump’s false victory claim are running for statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of future elections.
The January 6 coup failed. But the ‘legal’ one, in 2000 succeeded.
I was working and voting in Florida back in 2000, the last time the SCOTUS validated the installation of a president who lost the popular vote and likely would have lost the election had all the votes in that state been counted. I still remember waiting in line for hours to vote only to find out that my vote and tens of thousands of others who voted for Gore and the Democrats, didn’t matter.
The Court approved the Florida Legislature’s certification of the Electors for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney before the ballot count was completed. Sec. of State Katherine Harris stopped the recount when Bush was ahead by a tiny margin of 537 votes but with 178,000 ballots left to be counted. Those ballots were concentrated in Jacksonville and other Black-majority towns. The Republican-controlled legislature chose the Bush electors, handing him the presidency by 5 votes in the Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote by more than a half-million votes.
Gore and the Democrats conceded for the sake of “national unity” (sound familiar?) and thereby helped open the door to a new Bush/Cheney era and decades of “eternal war” in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other horrors. The early concession was neither wise nor necessary.