This is a rant. I don't write many diaries, but I am about to explode. This diary is about Dick Cheney. I am suppressing the desire to use really bad words to describe Mr. Cheney because I see that done a lot on this site as if our F-words will strike him down in his tracks and he will never speak again. That will never happen so it is fruitless.
What I want to say is that Dick Cheney is like a cancer. He actually is more like a metastatic cancer. What that means is that you can try to discount what he says (the tumor) and make some progress perhaps, but then he (the tumor) pops up in another venue more virulent and aggressively deadly than the last. And he is not going to go away.
We can pretend that what ol' Dick says does not matter. After all, he has the lowest approval ratings of any former V.P. ever. But we would be wrong. Why are we wrong? Here's why.
We are wrong in saying that what Dick Cheney says does not matter because since he has been out of office, the MSM has decided to elevate his status higher than when he was actually in office. Chuck Todd now postulates that he really wanted to run for President but didn't and now he is trying to act like a former President. And lo and behold, then the MSM treats him as if he is a President, only not a former President. They are treating him like he is the current President. Plus they are lending credence to what he says even though it all has been thoroughly debunked. Holy cow! How did that happen? Why is Cheney still out there? There are several reasons as follows:
The first reason is that Barack Obama said from the gitgo that he wanted to look forward, not backward, and wasn't interested in prosecutions. Hmmm. This was a green light for ol' Mr. Cheney. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. He can say whatever he wants. He can do whatever he wants. He knows Obama is not going to do anything about it. Plus Cheney knows that the media is going to hang on every word he says. They did it for 8 years. Why should that change? They love the ol' message, "You're either with us or you die."
The second reason is that Obama appeared to back track on a couple of things the very week Dick Cheney made the rounds of all the networks on his torture campaign. Obama backtracked on the photos and he announced that he would continue military commissions much to our consternation. Was this coincidental? No one knows. But the Republicans ran with the idea that he was listening to Dick Cheney and that he caved. Did he have to announce all that on that very week? I think not. This signaled weakness and the media and Cheney pounced. So did the Republicans.
The third reason is Obama has chosen to ignore this cancer and has let it spread and become more deadly. Now he has lost control of it and it is threatening to ruin his Presidency. He has to have his minions out there on every network exposing this Vice-President for what he is. He needs to have them say that what Dick Cheney is doing is 100% political and that he is 100% wrong. He needs to start talking about the crimes of the Bush Administration in no uncertain terms. He needs to hold out more strongly that there might be prosecutions. He needs to be more assertive and aggressive. You can't eliminate metatstatic cancer with first line chemotherapy. You have to hit it with the big guns.
The MSM loves all this. They love the Nancy Pelosi thing also. They love fights and controversy. They are the reason there can be no bi-partisanship in Washington. They fuel and feed off of discord and hatred and meanness and dissent. They are the enablers people like Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and all the other evil doers in the Republican Party. It is sad. It is beyond sad. But it is a fact and Obama needs to be smart enough to know that they love it and feed off of it. He needs to stop that cancer from spreading by being more forceful and in his own way telling Cheney to STFU or else.
It's not over. I still have hope for Obama. I am willing to give him a lot of time. But I can tell you something right here and right now. If his foreign policy ends up looking just like Bush and Cheney's in 4 years, I will not support him for re-election. If his support of civil liberties looks like Bush and Cheney's in 4 years. I will not support him for re-election. If he capitulates to Big Business and the Insurance companies and the Drug Companies like Bush and Cheney in the next 4 years, I won't support him for re-election. Not that I will ever, ever support a Republican. I just won't be there for Obama in 2012 like I was in 2008 (Lots of money and time).
I managed to get through this rant without a single F-word (I am not counting STFU because, well, I just am not). Sorry if this is a bit disjointed. I am really mad and I need to submit before I lose it completely.