“Oooh…the
storm is threatnin’
My
very life today
Gimme,
gimme shelter
Or
I’m gonna fade away
Oooh…children
It’s
just a shot away
It’s
just a shot away, shot away, shot away”
-----The Rolling Stones “Gimme
Shelter”
Liz
Cheney is facing a tough re-election.
Wyoming’s sole congressperson has found herself on the right side of
history and the wrong side of the fascist base of her party. In 8 days, she
faces a primary challenger, endorsed by Caesar Disgustus, and is by all
accounts well behind in the polls.
She
should be on her way to easy re-election.
Once the third most powerful ReSCUMlickan in the House, Cheney has been
ousted from her leadership position. She
had angered the ‘Freedom Caucus’ or, more accurately the ‘Fascist Caucus’, of
the House organized by Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows over her vote to impeach Disgustus. But when she decided to accept appointment and
was made Vice Chair of the Select Committee investigating the January 6 coup
d’état her fate was sealed. She had
earlier survived a vote of no confidence but by late Spring of 2021 the entire
party was in open revolt.
Originally,
in the immediate aftermath of the attempted overthrow of the government of the
United States, the leadership of both houses of Congress envisioned a
bi-partisan bicameral committee, that is composed of members of both the House
and Senate, as the Watergate and 911 committees were constituted to investigate
how it happened, who organized it, who funded it and to what ends. Rescumlickan leaders originally supported the
measure. But as polls began to
demonstrate the blind loyalty the great unwashed have for their deranged leader
with his messianic complex. ReSCUMlickan
‘leadership’, according to pattern, began to waver. 60 days into the aftermath and the opposition
on both sides were well off the reservation.
McConnell,
after having endorsed the idea, quickly moved to quash it, hoping that time
would wash the blood stains from the social fabric. McCarthy, quickly demonstrating his
spinelessness by beating quick retreat down to Mar-a-Lago to kneel and service
the Golden Swine, appointed the firebrand Jim Jordan and another Congressman
who, though obscure, is known to make a farce of serious proceedings. Jordan, for his part, is schooled at ignoring
the facts having failed to act on serious sexual molestation charges brought to
his attention when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University.
Speaker
Nancy Pelosi was having none of it. Having
authority as Speaker to reject the appointments by the opposition she moved to nix
McCarthy’s obvious attempt to turn the proceedings into a cheap media
spectacle. Ever the petulant twit, McCarthy
withdrew all his nominees. Pelosi responded
by naming two Republicans to her committee, now composed only of members of the
House, since McConnell had filibustered Senate participation. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of
Illinois accepted her invitation to join the investigation, both had voted to
impeach the son-of-a-bitch.
This
was the last straw as far as the fascists were concerned. McCarthy quickly called a meeting of his
caucus and Cheney was unceremoniously stripped of her position. Both she and Kinzinger
were likewise relieved of their committee assignments. McCarthy, in an act of unbelievable political
stupidity had at once enabled the appointment of two sober and determined
members of his own party to be placed on the committee but had insured that
they would have no other functions than voting on the House floor and
investigating the serial crimes of tRUMP and his minions.
But
now Cheney faces further retribution at the polls. Kinzinger has chosen not to seek re-election,
the Democratic Illinois legislature having redistricted Adam into a clearly
Democratic jurisdiction. Cheney elected state-wide in Wyoming which, because of
its population has just one representative in the House is facing almost
certain defeat. Liz, the most prominent
Republican standing in opposition to tRUMP—she has vowed to do everything in
her power to see to it that he never enters the White House again—has been censured
by the Wyoming ReSCUMlickan Party. Her defeat has become a major obsession with
tRUMP, as the rejection of her party and the campaign against her in the
primary has had their effect. The most
recent polls have her down by 20 points.
Enter
Dick Cheney. The former Vice President,
the “Darth Vader” behind the uncertain leadership of Dubya, the man who many—myself
included—believe hijacked Bush the Lessor’s presidency; the man who brought
back torture and Gitmo, the man who took money from Halliburton even as he
handed out billions in no bid contracts as 40 billion dollars disappeared
without a trace during the Iraq war.
Cheney proved a villain in service of an idiot.
But
even the most villainous occasionally seek redemption. In this case it was Cheney who organized the
open letter published in The New York Times and The Washington Post and
signed by every living former Secretary of Defense demanding that the military
not interfere on behalf of Disgustus should he declare the election a fraud and
attempt to seize power. That is, warning
the military of its constitutional responsibility to the republic and to not
participate in a coup d’état. Cheney,
with the Department of Defense then in the hands of a tRUMP lackey appointed as
Acting Secretary in the hope of just such an outcome, drew upon the example of
former Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger.
It was Schlessinger who, as Nixon was facing certain impeachment and
conviction, instructed the military not to obey any orders from the White House
and that all military action must come through him. Cheney, seeing that the then Acting Secretary
had no such backbone, implored his colleagues to join him an a very public
statement as a warning to both the military and the country about how close we
were to tRUMP trashing the constitution and seizing power. For this action, the country will be forever
grateful.
Now
he has taken to the airwaves in Wyoming defending his daughter and calling out
tRUMP as a liar and a fraud, actions and words that should have been shouted,
from 2015 onward by every so-called ‘leader’ in the ReSCUMlickan Party. Where is Romney, Collins, Murkowski, not to
mention McConnell and McCarthy? Why are
they not defending this woman? Instead,
they quiver and quake, terrified that if they take to the ramparts, they will
be in harms way.
And
isn’t this the sum of it? Terror, the
great unspoken elephant in the room. The
fascists always employ terror when they cannot get their way. Terror of political displacement; terror,
perhaps, for their very lives.
‘An’
Br’er Putin, he jus’ laugh and laugh.
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