Tag: Dick Cheney

Irony

(from the Ancient Greek ???????? eironeía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to discrepancy between two levels of knowledge.

Yesterday was a marvelous day, on many levels, with some great people newly sworn into Congress, on both the Senate and House sides.  …

The irony …

Of watching Dick Cheney administer the oath of office to the Senators of the 111th Congress.

 The indictment criticizes VP Dick Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds

interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers.

Vice-President Cheney Indicted!

Associated Press

 McALLEN, TX — A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers.

The indictment criticizes Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees by working through the prison companies.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into abuses at the federal detention centers.

Another indictment charges state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. with profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies.

The indictments were first reported by KRGV-TV.

There have been numerous reports of torture and abuse in private prisons.  Looks like Cheney just can’t stop himself!

Elections are over!  Still, Sarah Palin is in the news every day.  

Palin urges GOP governors to keep Democrats honest

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer  – Thu Nov 13, 6:18 pm ET

—–MIAMI – Sarah Palin called on fellow Republican governors to keep the new president and his strengthened Democratic majority in check on issues from taxes to health care as she signaled she’ll take a leadership role in a party searching for a new standard-bearer.

Addressing the Republican Governors Association meeting Thursday, this year’s GOP vice presidential nominee – and an oft-mentioned candidate for 2012 – revisited some aspects of the bitter campaign and talked about the role of the governors in the coming year. After losing the White House and several seats in the Senate and House, the party is engaging in some soul-searching about its direction. . . .

The title alone blows me away!  While the Repugs have lied, cheated and stolen for all of these past eight years, Palin is now the criterian?

Follow me . . . .

[ed note: I’m still gagging on the R-word but here goes]

From Wiki:

A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. They are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela after apartheid, is generally considered a model of Truth Commissions, rarely if ever achieved in other parts. As government reports, they can provide proof against historical revisionism of state terrorism and other crimes and human rights abuses. Truth commissions are sometimes criticised for allowing crimes to go unpunished, and creating impunity for serious human rights abusers.

The bolds are from the Wiki entry, the italics are mine.

I’m not sure where to begin on this. My revenge fantasies leading up to the election were starting to get out of hand. I felt like Photoshopping middle-of-the-forehead entry wounds with trails of blood down the faces of our war criminals – traitors to not just the Constitution but to all that’s decent in humanity. And then pasting the posters on public walls. I may get rendered just for sharing this thought dream. They still have ten weeks to go. Fuck it.

My big problem with revenge is people like Ghandi and Mandela and MLK, Jr. They all took the personal beatings, torture and imprisonments in stride. They all brought about tremendous positive change for all of humanity. They are powerful role models for doing what is right morally. If I ask myself what would they do then I have to confront my very reasonable desire for some exotic revenge for the members of the Bush regime and all their enablers. It would please me no end to have each of them waterboarded, humiliated, debased and thrown into Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and the Black Prison in Afghanistan for very long amounts of time. But that would just make me like them. I refuse to be one of their kind.

Just received this via email from David Swanson.

National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (www.iraqpledge.org)

Contact:  Joy First 608 239-4327 [email protected] or Max Obuszewski [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   November 7, 2008

CITIZENS WILLING TO RISK ARREST TO BRING INDICTMENT OF BUSH AND CHENEY

WHO:  The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR) is a nationwide network of individuals and organizations committed to peace and justice, utilizing the nonviolent practices and disciplines of Gandhi and King through nonviolent civil resistance.

WHAT:  Gathering at the Department of Justice to request a meeting.  In September, members of NCNR sent a letter to Attorney General Mukasey, asking to meet with him to discuss the indictment of Bush and Cheney for war crimes.  Attorney General Muaksey has not responded (See the letter below).

WHEN:  At noon on November 10, 2008, members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance will go to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC with a copy of the letter and again ask for a meeting with Attorney General Mukasey to discuss indicting Bush and Cheney for war crimes.  If they are refused, some members of the group will be moved by conscience to risk arrest.

WHERE:  DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 950 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC.  

WE WILL BE MEETING ON THE CONSTITUTION AVENUE SIDE OF THE BUILDING AT NOON.

WHY:  Obama has won the election, and now more than ever we need to continue our work calling for peace and justice.  We must continue to demand that the new president ends the occupation of Iraq and does not escalate military action in Afghanistan.  We also must call for justice and demand that Bush and others in his administration be held accountable for the deaths of over a million innocent people from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and almost 4,200 US soldiers.  

Just wondering. It’s a remote possibility at this point but it’s still a possibility. Given the concerted effort to suppress the vote in so many districts and states, it becomes more possible. That YPM scam of registering some voters as Republicans and un-enrolling others has been going on for quite a while now. And in quite a few states. Add in a healthy vote count due to hacked voting machines. Set up a lot of police roadblocks on Nov 4th in minority areas, a la FL 2000. It still seems totally impossible for McCain to win. But what if?

He’s showing signs of Alzheimer’s (6 out of 10 so far). Melanoma once is bad, twice is very bad. Three times, it’s a miracle to survive. Four times??? So we get President Palin, the very first PILF. And her husband Todd of teh AIP. Heh. Actually, the two of them might make us yearn for the good old Bush/Cheney years. Think about it.

What would this country look like in 2012?

What would the world look like in 2012?

Just askin’.

Vote early. 😉

Satya.

Joby Warrick at The Washington Post has an article today confirming what many of us have suspected for some time: the CIA asked for and received written approval for its “enhanced interrogation” program, which notoriously includes the use of techniques like waterboarding. Condoleezza Rice confirmed in hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that she and other White House “Principals” had been briefed on the CIA’s torture program in early 2002. (ABC News had broken the story first, last spring.)

According to Washington Post article today, CIA director George Tenet pushed for the written confirmations of support, wary of legal entanglements for CIA personnel involved in the abusive interrogation program. He first asked and received the CIA’s get-out-of-jail card in June 2003, and then again after the Abu Ghraib story broke in mid-2004.

The spy novelist John Le Carre invented a word perfectly suited for Richard Bruce Cheney and George W. Bush — “politopath,” a merger of “politician” and you-know-what.

In a few hours, we’ll reach the beginning of the end of the Cheney-Bush regime, the final hundred days. It ought to be a milestone marked by glee, yes? But knowing how soon we won’t have this pair of politopaths to kick around anymore places me somewhere between an aneurysm and a sigh. Because the puppet master and his perpetually adolescent companion will get to abandon their posts, unpunished for hundreds of lies told, hundreds of people tortured, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians killed, hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, trillions of dollars of debt incurred.

Unimpeached, much less tried, they will get to emerge from their eight years of assault on the Constitution and display of royal prerogative with their pensions intact and most of their rap sheets classified. No orange jumpsuits for them, no isolation units where guards videotape their every trip to the shitter, no hard labor, no electronic shackles. Two aging war criminals will soon clean out their desks, torch their hard drives, say farewell to the pleasures of the unitary executive and pal around forever with the feral plutocrats whose vaults they so prodigiously filled during two terms of plunder and rapine.

Like the reckless CEOs who’ve walked away from the wreckage of their companies with tens of millions in salaries, options and bonuses, the ruthless Mister Bush and Bunker Dick seem destined to roam free. Starting on that January afternoon of a hundred days from now, even the suggestion that they – and others on their team – should pay for their misdeeds will be shouted down in wwwLand and elsewhere. Old news, the megamedia will declare. Vendettas erect obstacles to bipartisanship, Democratic Party leaders will proclaim. Too many crucial matters other than justice to worry about, the so-called pragmatists will say. Just as they have said since I wrote A Thousand %$#@#&!!%$# Days 900 days ago.