CHENEY AS ATTACK DOG

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has assumed the role of the new Republican attack dog. I’m glad he’s around to remind us of what the Republican Party really stands for. First and foremost, it stands for torture. Let’s face it, some spinners can split hairs, but waterboarding and other stuff they did was torture and we all know it. Further, Cheney’s Republican Party promotes such extreme executive power that a President can put people in captivity indefinitely, often with little more justification than the notion, often based on false, flimsy or unreliable evidence that they might be dangerous. You might recall that this kind of despotic power that was popular among medieval kings who could throw anyone who rubbed them the wrong way into a dungeon—forever. History teaches us that this is why we had the Magna Carta, why representative government emerged in enlightened societies, and why countries like the Good Old U.S.A. treasure our democracies and their rights and freedoms. Further, Cheney’s Republican Party stands for a kind of America that is reviled around the world for an arrogant, idiotic, isolating and ineffective foreign policy. So thanks Dick, you can cite 9/11 as much as you want, cry wolf all you can, smear the “new America” President Obama is creating all you want. Some Americans may have a short memory, it’s true, but most of us remember voting for Barack Obama, and we remember why we did. You see, Dick, that “new America” we’ll have during the Obama era, that’s the old America we loved and cherished before you and that yo-yo from Texas came along.