Cheney, off to war

or Homer Simpson questions Steven Hawking’s intelligence

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

09/02/04

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/homer.htm

Dick Cheney apparently forgot that he got five deferments during the Vietnam war, and eventually knocked up his wife so he wouldn’t have to get a sixth. He forgot that he contemptuously claimed to have more important priorities, like making money.

This was while Kerry was getting shot at, saving lives, and generally being a hero.

Now, Cheney – the same Cheney who spent much of the past three years cowering in bunkers in undisclosed locations – has declared that Kerry is ill-suited to lead America at these times of challenge. Folks, for Cheney to say Kerry is ill-suited to lead America in a time of war is like Homer Simpson saying that Steven Hawking is weak on math, or Peewee Herman saying that Randy Johnson throws like a girl.

Mind you, these are the same people who stuck the simian commander in chief in a flight suit with a wildly stuffed codpiece, and paraded him around on the deck of an aircraft carrier so Fox News could swoon over what a great wartime general/philosopher the dim and befuddled Putsch was.

So Cheney, who is kept artificially alive with a spark plug because his old dead heart just wants to sit and shiver like Rush Limbaugh getting a draft notice, wants to say that Kerry, the same age but capable of skiing and windsurfing, isn’t as fit to lead. Kerry should challenge Cheney to race up the Capitol steps.

The chickenhawk brigade will live in infamy for their sheer audacity. The Smearvets, now badly discredited, continue their insane attacks. Never mind that the latest Smearvet, a retired and now disgraced Admiral, suddenly decided Kerry was lying about his war record, but while making this declaration, forgot to mention the $40 million in contracts the Putsch administration had just awarded him.

At the convention, some moron passed out bandaids with purple hearts on them. The idea was to mock Kerry (they insist on pretending that Kerry didn’t get injured, awarded himself his medals, and was generally as disgraceful as a wastrel son of privilege who is unfairly given a cushy state-side assignment so he doesn’t have to take any real risks), but the upshot was that it mocked every vet that ever was injured in the line of duty. The uproar was so fast and vehement that Karl Rove, no paragon of morality and fair play but very politically astute, quickly ordered the bandaids out of the convention hall and disassociated the party from them.

The GOP has been playing footwork that would make Mohammed Ali groan with envy in their efforts to draw a distinction between themselves and the dirtbags in the Smearvets, and the crasser elements in their loony coalition of fascists, right wing weirdos, and religious fruitloops. Putsch, who likes to accuse Kerry of flip-flopping, is now suddenly against 527s, the tax code designation given to independent political groups that depend on public subscriptions to push for particular causes or candidates. Just six months ago, when the vast majority of money was still going to right wing GOP 527s, Putsch described them as "American as anything can be." Now that the Democrats enjoy the larger amount of support as a pissed off public flexes its economic muscle, he’s agin ‘em, and wants them all banned.

He couldn’t even handle a simple ramp-up interview en route to the convention. In response to a softball tossed underhand by an MSNBC reporter, asking him if the war on terror could be won, he departed from script and said, "No, it can’t." His answer actually made pretty good sense; he was saying that this wasn’t a case of fighting another nation which has a discrete capital city and leadership, a visible army, one which can come to a peace table and formally surrender. It was a sensible, and for Putsch, profoundly thoughtful answer.

Naturally, the GOP hated it, and the howls began immediately as Democrats chortled with glee at the flip-flop. So Putsch flip-flopped back the next day, averring that America has won, is winning, will win the war on terror. "America has never been safer" he said, from behind 37,000 armed guards, tank traps, air surveillance, and First Amendment Zones. "This war might go on for thirty years." But we’ve won, y’understand. Never doubt America.

The GOP is going to need every bit of slanted news coverage and innuendo they can get from Aieles, Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon. "60 Minutes" will be having Bill Barnes, the former Texas Lieutenant Governor who got Putsch his position in the Texas Air National Guard and who is now deeply ashamed that he did that. (Just imagine if, instead of flying over Juarez whorehouses and snorting coke, George had wound up shot down during a bombing mission over North Vietnam. Just imagine...) Bob Dole was caught on tape damning the Smearvets for their shabby tactics, and Bob Kerrey, co-head of the 911 Commission, demanded he be quoted as saying, "Fuck them" about the Smearvets.

Republicans are nervous. My local state rep invented a ridiculous story of a demonstrator running up while they were leaving a Broadway theater and spitting in his wife’s face – twice? Why the wife? And how would a demonstrator know who Sam, a freshman nobody in the state senate, was when a local resident like me would have trouble picking him out of a line up as my state senator? I got a whine from one Republican today because I was talking about Frances, a category 4 hurricane that was strengthening and (at the time) headed directly at Miami. That could make it the worst storm in US history. He thought I was talking about it to distract from the Republican convention. Nonsense. I just found an even bigger blowhard, is all.

Outfits like Faux and Drudge and Scaife’s papers are experts at making major events unhappen while they pound away endlessly at trivia and outright fabrications. To this day, most people don’t realize there was no "Whitewater scandal" involving the Clintons, other than the fact that they got took. They were among the victims. There was no travelgate, Vince Foster did in fact commit suicide (due, in part, to the vicious attacks launched by the same people who tried to make political points on his death), and filegate was nothing.

You can search in vain for stories about sex scandals involving prominent Republicans and Chinese spies, or complicity in a multi-billion dollar energy rip off, or the fact that Putsch lied us into an unnecessary and unjusified war. Those stories didn’t happen, and millions of marching morons have forgotten about them, distracted by the endless blare of the Smearvets and idiotic brays of "courage" from draft dodgers against war heroes.

They say that the trouble with a Democracy is that people pretty much get the type of government they deserve.

I look at the incredibly low opinion the right wing smear machine has of the American people, the endless faith they have in the people’s gullibility and inattention, and the serene confidence that they can always prevail by appealing to people’s hatred, fear, and bigotry, and repeating stupid lies endlessly.

If their low opinion is justified, then they will finish wrapping up America as their own little present to themselves.

And Americans will live their lives ruled by people like Dick Cheney.