Why Change Horsemen in Mid-Apocalypse? Dick Cheney can feign being indignant all he likes. He can sit on his stool in swing states for the next two weeks and pretend that he represents anything other than utter fear and contempt for the intelligence of the American people. At the end of the day, the people are seeing through the lies
By Anthony Wade
If you were to listen to Dick Cheney and watched the media coverage this week it is quite obvious that fear is the basis and substance of their message at this point. Dick Cheney, top horseman, started the week by trying to scare everyone into voting for his ticket. Then he had a fluff piece of an interview with the shrillest voice of faux news, Sean Hannity. The transparency of these two events should make it obvious to all voters that the promises of this administration are completely vacuous.
While stumping in the battleground state of Ohio , Cheney could not talk about the promise of America 's future. He could not discuss jobs because he has lost over 800,000 of them in the first four years. He could not talk about healthcare because 4 million people have lost their healthcare under his administration. Faced with the realities of not having anything tangible to offer the Ohio residents, Cheney offered them what he always has enough of, pure, unadulterated fear.
A few months ago, Cheney made the error of saying that the US was more likely to be attacked again under a Kerry presidency. He quickly backed off of that statement when the public outcry was loud. Now, that there is precious little time left, apparently the outcry is now irrelevant.
Cheney did not only raise the issue of another attack again, but specified the type of attack and then linked its likelihood to a vote for Kerry. His positive message of hope for this country was:
"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us - biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans,"
Wow, that's an inspiring message of optimism. But fear not citizens, Cheney did provide you with the solution to these fears, don't vote for John Kerry. This coming from a man who sought and received five deferments when it was his turn to fight for this country, citing "other priorities". This coming from men who could not protect us from the flu, but now would like us to think they can protect us from bio-terrorism. Please.
Bush-Cheney have nothing left to offer us except fear. Their stump speeches are all about Iraq , not this country. Their focus is spent on convincing you that you need to afraid, very afraid. Not content to play the boogeyman in Ohio , Cheney then traipsed off to a fake news interview with the resident whore of artificial journalism, Sean Hannity.
Appearing on Hannity and Colmes, minus Colmes, Dick Cheney basically got to pimp his ticket to viewers under the guise of a news interview. Asking no probing questions, Sean set up Cheney to distort the truth for the viewers. The main themes were the despicable democrats, bringing up social security and voter fraud. Mind you, there were no questions about Bush's statement where he used the term "privatization". Instead, Hannity just pretended that it was a "scare tactic" by the left, instead of the fact that Bush is the one who actually used the term. On voter fraud, Hannity did not ask any questions why the GOP paid $600,000 to Nathan Sproul so he could run voter registration drives in battle ground states where he instructed his operatives to destroy democratic registrations. Instead, Sean again implied that the left were trying to scare African American voters. Dick Cheney could not agree more of course.
Despite the lack of sanity from Hannity, and the fact that earlier in the week Dick Cheney had told Ohio voters to vote for him or die, Cheney's response to the voter fraud and social security concerns was:
"Those kinds of tactics that are designed to frighten people clearly are unacceptable."
Cheney then characterized the attempts of democrats to point out what Bush has said and how republican operatives are trying to defraud the election process as "shameless scare tactics".
What??? Let's put this in context, in the world according to Cheney:
Good = Saying a vote for Kerry results in a nuclear bomb being detonated in your city.
Bad = Saying the GOP is trying to suppress the minority vote, when they are.
There are reports of multiple voter fraud and suppression by republican operatives. I did an article about it that can be found here:
http://opednews.com/wade_101504_election_theft.htm
Since then, there have been more stories about confirmed voter suppression. A republican local politician in Pennsylvania recently tried to MOVE 63 polling sites in minority neighborhoods. There is only one logical rationale for this and that is to confuse the voters and disenfranchise their votes. Thankfully the request was denied. Then, Bush's own Attorney General John Ashcroft filed an 11th hour brief in Michigan to oppose a civil rights group attempts to have provisional ballots count for voters who vote in the right city, but the wrong precinct. The Attorney General was promptly swatted down because there was no merit to the request. The move was transparent, as Ashcroft was trying to disenfranchise minority voters. Yet to Cheney, to even talk fairly about this is "shameless scare tactics", even though he has no problem raising the specter of a nuclear strike in one of our cities if we were to vote for Kerry.
Hannity pretended to then play fair by having Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) on after the fluff piece to "respond to the interview" with Cheney. His opening question? To ask her if John Kerry's mentioning Mary Cheney was appropriate. Ahh, nothing like fair and balanced. When the Senator started by referring to the "interview" as an infomercial for Bush-Cheney, Hannity responded by saying "I think you are a lousy Senator" and then berated her until the segment was over. Thanks for the journalistic integrity Sean.
This is what American voters have to deal with down the stretch. There is little attention paid to substantive issues. Just this week there was the observation made that Condi Rice and Tom Ridge have been touring the country, to stump for Bush. Where is the media outcry? Condi Rice is supposed to be the National Security Advisor for this country yet she has enough time to flit around the country for political concerns??? Isn't she supposed to be working? Aren't there security concerns facing this country she should be attending to? Is this how Bush protects us? Tom Ridge , who once said, "we don't do politics at homeland security", is supposed to be in charge of protecting our homeland, not his boss's job. Is this how Bush is keeping us safer? Why isn't the media asking these questions?
Dick Cheney can feign being indignant all he likes. He can sit on his stool in swing states for the next two weeks and pretend that he represents anything other than utter fear and contempt for the intelligence of the American people. At the end of the day, the people are seeing through the lies. Saying vote for me or face a nuclear weapon in your city is akin to saying why change horsemen in mid apocalypse. That is their slogan. It is all they have left to run on.
Anthony Wade is co-administrator of a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
Anthony Wade's Archive: http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm
Email Anthony:
takebacktheus@gmail.com
