Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog and Democratic Afrosphere.
Take two paragraphs from two Washington Post articles together and you understand exactly why President Barack Obama is acting like a wishy, washy wimp on the torture photos. (Yes, I said "torture" and I'm not going to adopt the media's euphemism of "harsh treatment")
The Washington Post reported in the first article today,
Cheney Seizes Spotlight,
. . . former vice president is most visible critic of Obama's policies and most forceful defender of Bush's record. WaPost Article Number One
So, instead of going into retirement and giving his failing heart a rest, ex-vice president Dick Cheney has become Washington's foremost pro-torture lobbyist, and he supports himself, at least in part for this, on his pension paid for U.S. taxpayers.
However, Dick Cheney's bloviating can't have any effect on policy now, right? Because he had the lowest approval rating of anyone in the Bush administration, whose overall favorability rating was 29% at the end of their administration. So who would listen to Dick Cheney now?
President Barack Obama does, and worse, he heeds what Dick Cheney says. Here's the second headline in the Washington Post today:
Obama Rethinks Detainee PhotosPresident has "great concern" about the impact that releasing abuse photos would have on troops.
The only conclusion I can draw from all of this is that, although a clear majority of us voted against Dick Cheney's policies in November, we're still going to be living under Dick Cheney's policies in May and June and for so long as the wimpy and malleable Barack Obama is president. It's disgusting, that's what it is!
Although all but 29% of us wanted Dick Cheney to just go the fuck away, and we were even willing to forego his prosecution in exchange for his absence, we now are getting something completely different. Obama is REWARDING Cheney for going on television and preaching in favor of torture. And that means that we have NOT seen the end of Dick Cheney. Instead, we've exalted him to the position of the most effective spokesman for the policies we voted against last November.
Let's give Cheney the Congressional Medal of Honor while we're at it, so every Republican will follow his example. We want every Republican to stand before the public, make absurdly self-serving pronouncements in favor of past illegal acts and war crimes, and then their pronouncements will be adopted as policy by none other than President Barack Obama.
If you think about it, the same thing happened two weeks ago, when the Republicans staged doofy "tea parties" across the United States and then Obama immediately announced that he was going to cut the Federal budget by one hundred million dollars. Screaming wins with Obama, if you're a Republican doing the screaming. I only hope that Democrats can learn to have as much effect on Obama's policies as Dick Cheney is having.
