JFK Assassination Forum
Off Topic => News - Off Topic - Weird & Wacky => Topic started by: Steve M. Galbraith on May 06, 2021, 12:40:33 AM
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This is a principled and courageous stand, one that likely ends her career in the Republican Party. Or the current manifestation of whatever the hell it is now. She could have tried to finesse this, to do a "McConnell"; but she didn't.
From her Washington Post op-ed: "The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution."
"Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.…"
"The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people."
"History is watching.... Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be."
There is no defense for what Trump did and what he continues to do.
Full piece here (registration required): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/05/liz-cheney-republican-party-turning-point/
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This is a principled and courageous stand, one that likely ends her career in the Republican Party. Or the current manifestation of whatever the hell it is now. She could have tried to finesse this, to do a "McConnell"; but she didn't.
From her Washington Post op-ed: "The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution."
"Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.…"
"The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people."
"History is watching.... Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be."
There is no defense for what Trump did and what he continues to do.
Full piece here (registration required): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/05/liz-cheney-republican-party-turning-point/
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If “Profiles in Courage” was written ten years from now, I think Lynne Cheney would have deserve a chapter on her.
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If “Profiles in Courage” was written ten years from now, I think Lynne Cheney would have deserve a chapter on her.
True. The Kennedys give out an annual "Profiles in Courage" award - it has a distinctly liberal view or perspective on "courage" - and Cheney deserves it for this year. Mitt Romney got it last year for his pro-impeachment/conviction vote against Trump.
The problem though is not just Trump and his crazy and dangerous views but his supporters who believe this nonsense. The conservative writer Jim Geraghty at National Review writes this today:
"Not only is Trump popular, but at least half of those who identify as Republican believe what he says, even in the face of mountains of counterevidence. The same Ipsos poll found that 55 percent of Republicans said the 2020 election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging,” and the same percentage agreed with the statement, “The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad."
That last part is simply astonishing. Fifty-five percent of self-identified Republicans agreed that the January 6 riot was "led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad"? What?
Good lord. I'd be less shocked if they said they believed it was led by Martians.
And it's Liz Cheney not Lynne <g>. Lynne is her mother, the wife of Dick Cheney. I made the same mistake but corrected it.
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And columnist Peggy Noonan explains the "thinking" of the Congressional GOP today:
"They [i.e, the Congressional Republicans] know she [i.e., Cheney] is right. They know Mr. Trump lost the election and Mr. Biden won. Most of them know it’s not good if embittered generations of voters turn on the system and come to feel no fidelity to democratic outcomes. They just don’t want her to say it. They don’t want to antagonize constituents who believe the election was stolen. They think Ms. Cheney is doing so, pointlessly. They think the way out is to be quiet and hope the fever passes. Here is a fact of our current political life: The fever never passes. It has to be treated. By not pushing back they create more crazy."
"Be quiet and hope the fever passes." Yep, that's what they want to do. This is quite similar to the conservative movement in the 1950s when William F. Buckley confronted the Bircher far right who thought among other things that Eisenhower was a communist. You have to confront these ideas not wish them away.
The question is, who will be this generation's William F. Buckley?
To be sure, the Democratic party has a similar problem with this "woke" left movement who also reject the legitimacy of American institutions if they lose elections or don't control that institution. But that's another discussion for another day. And Republicans can't simply say, "What about the left"? That's not a response, that's a dodge.
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From today's Washington Post (5/8):
"Even if she [Cheney] is cast out of power in the House, she has made clear that she will not stop, promising to take her argument against Trump to the campaign trail in Wyoming, where he garnered 70 percent of the vote in 2020. She has told others that blocking Trump from leading the party is a fight she sees as just beginning, no matter how Wednesday’s vote goes."
If she truly thinks Trump is a danger, if she truly believes that the falsehoods about the legitimacy of the election must be challenged, if she truly believes that the Republican Party has to cleanse itself of these fantasies then what should she do? Just give in? Leave the party? Not fight for what she believes?
The problem isn't that Cheney is causing this split, is making controversial statements: the problem is that many Republicans consider her obviously true statements controversial. She's not causing the problem here, she's not preventing a healing from what happened that January 6th, she's not dragging the party back to that day: Trump is.
The fury then is directed not at Trump, not at what happened on January 6th, not as his statements about it and the election but at her.
As Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
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She’s no hero in my book.
Maureen Dowd on Cheney:
Let’s acknowledge who created the template for Trump’s Big Lie.
It was her father, Dick Cheney, whose Big Lie about the Iraq war led to the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Liz, who was the captain of her high school cheerleading team and titled her college thesis “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers,” cheered on her dad as he spread fear, propaganda and warped intelligence.
From her patronage perch in the State Department during the Bush-Cheney years, she bolstered her father’s trumped-up case for an invasion of Iraq. Even after no W.M.D.s were found, she continued to believe the invasion was the right thing to do.
“She almost thrives in an atmosphere where the overall philosophy is discredited and she is a lonely voice,” a State Department official who worked with Liz told Joe Hagan for a 2010 New York magazine profile of the younger Cheney on her way up.
She was a staunch defender of the torture program. “Well, it wasn’t torture, Norah, so that’s not the right way to lay out the argument,” she instructed Norah O’Donnell in 2009, looking on the bright side of waterboarding.
She backed the futile, 20-year occupation of the feudal Afghanistan. (Even Bob Gates thinks we should have left in 2002.) Last month, when President Biden announced plans to pull out, Liz Cheney — who wrote a book with her father that accused Barack Obama of abandoning Iraq and making America weaker — slapped back: “We know that this kind of pullback is reckless. It’s dangerous.”
For many years, she had no trouble swimming in Fox News bile. Given the chance to denounce the Obama birther conspiracy, she demurred, interpreting it live on air as people being “uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/liz-cheney-donald-trump.html
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Liz Chaney? Her father was responsible for the US intervening in a needless decades long war that cost thousands of US lives, countless of Iraqi lives (perhaps millions) and cost trillions of dollars. All for nothing based on a fake narrative for a big payoff to Dick Cheney's cronies. Did she ever condemn him in heroic role as the arbiter of right and wrong? No? But Trump is the devil because he doesn't play nice with others and holds them accountable for incompetence and corruption.
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Liz Chaney? Her father was responsible for the US intervening in a needless decades long war that cost thousands of US lives, countless of Iraqi lives (perhaps millions) and cost trillions of dollars. All for nothing based on a fake narrative for a big payoff to Dick Cheney's cronies. Did she ever condemn him in heroic role as the arbiter of right and wrong? No? But Trump is the devil because he doesn't play nice with others and holds them accountable for incompetence and corruption.
George Bush made the decision to go into Iraq. With the authorization from Congress, a Congress which also agreed that Iraq had WMD and that Saddam needed to be removed.
You think Cheney lied us into war? To reward Halliburton? How did he convince the Democrats like Biden to go along with this? Did he have a meeting with them on the Grassy Knoll too? How far down into conspiracy land are you going to go, Richard? Did Cheney con Tony Blair too?
The Robb/Silbermann Report concluded that: "The Intelligence Community's performance in assessing Iraq's pre-war weapons of mass destruction programs was a major intelligence failure. The failure was not merely that the Intelligence Community's assessments were wrong. There were also serious shortcomings in the way these assessments were made and communicated to policymakers."
It wasn't Cheney and the "necons". It was a major intelligence failure across the board. Did they exaggerate the threat, express more certainty then was warranted? Yes. Did they ignore contradictory evidence? Yes too. But they didn't make the claims out of whole cloth.
Back to the issue: The election wasn't stolen - Trump had a chance to present his case to the courts (including in front of some judges he appointed) and repeatedly failed; and the January 6th riot wasn't done by leftist agitators trying to embarrass Trump. The fact that Trump continues to promote these falsehoods - maybe he truly believes them - is simply irresponsible and dangerous. Period. These issues transcend partisan or party politics. Or should. This tribal thinking is going to destroy us.
And what does Liz Cheney's failure to condemn Dick Cheney have to do with what is being discussed? You sound like Keith Olbermann here.
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George Bush made the decision to go into Iraq. With the authorization from Congress, a Congress which also agreed that Iraq had WMD and that Saddam needed to be removed.
You think Cheney lied us into war? To reward Halliburton? How did he convince the Democrats like Biden to go along with this? Did he have a meeting with them on the Grassy Knoll too? How far down into conspiracy land are you going to go, Richard? Did Cheney con Tony Blair too?
The Congressional Military Industrial Complex(the name President Eisenhower gave them) is bipartisan and includes close allies like the UK and Israel.
The efforts at regime change in Iraq began during the Clinton administration. He used covert warfare while Bush used conventional war to take Saddam down. Hence why many Dems went along with the Intel and the efforts to start an unnecessary war.
It wasn't Cheney and the "necons". It was a major intelligence failure across the board. Did they exaggerate the threat, express more certainty then was warranted? Yes. Did they ignore contradictory evidence? Yes too. But they didn't make the claims out of whole cloth.
It was Dick Cheney and the Neocons who laundered disinformation about Saddam's connection to the 9/11 attacks through the NY Times and other Media outlets. That was one of the "Big Lies" used to sell the war to Americans.
And Liz Cheney continued to promote the WMD stuff and defend the decision to invade years after it was clear that there were no WMDs and the war was geopolitical blunder.
The war in Iraq helped Al Qaeda expand and created ISIS (the founders of ISIS were Iraqi insurgents who were jailed by the US at Camp Bucca).
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George Bush made the decision to go into Iraq. With the authorization from Congress, a Congress which also agreed that Iraq had WMD and that Saddam needed to be removed.
You think Cheney lied us into war? To reward Halliburton? How did he convince the Democrats like Biden to go along with this? Did he have a meeting with them on the Grassy Knoll too? How far down into conspiracy land are you going to go, Richard? Did Cheney con Tony Blair too?
The Robb/Silbermann Report concluded that: "The Intelligence Community's performance in assessing Iraq's pre-war weapons of mass destruction programs was a major intelligence failure. The failure was not merely that the Intelligence Community's assessments were wrong. There were also serious shortcomings in the way these assessments were made and communicated to policymakers."
It wasn't Cheney and the "necons". It was a major intelligence failure across the board. Did they exaggerate the threat, express more certainty then was warranted? Yes. Did they ignore contradictory evidence? Yes too. But they didn't make the claims out of whole cloth.
Back to the issue: The election wasn't stolen - Trump had a chance to present his case to the courts (including in front of some judges he appointed) and repeatedly failed; and the January 6th riot wasn't done by leftist agitators trying to embarrass Trump. The fact that Trump continues to promote these falsehoods - maybe he truly believes them - is simply irresponsible and dangerous. Period. These issues transcend partisan or party politics. Or should. This tribal thinking is going to destroy us.
And what does Liz Cheney's failure to condemn Dick Cheney have to do with what is being discussed? You sound like Keith Olbermann here.
Facts are facts. Hundreds of thousands of people or perhaps millions are dead due to Dick Cheney based on a falsehood that he perpetuated. Trump kept us out of foreign wars. The first president to do so in decades. Liz Cheney is just another tool of the establishment. She hates Trump because he exposed the hypocrisy of the establishment politicians like her father. Keith Olbermann? Isn't he another Trump hater? What is worse? Being an obnoxious guy or getting people killed? Trump is not a nice or likeable person. But he never started a war.
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Facts are facts. Hundreds of thousands of people or perhaps millions are dead due to Dick Cheney based on a falsehood that he perpetuated. Trump kept us out of foreign wars. The first president to do so in decades. Liz Cheney is just another tool of the establishment. She hates Trump because he exposed the hypocrisy of the establishment politicians like her father. Keith Olbermann? Isn't he another Trump hater? What is worse? Being an obnoxious guy or getting people killed? Trump is not a nice or likeable person. But he never started a war.
The fact is that George Bush declared war not Dick Cheney. You think the Democrats in Congress that authorized the use of force - people like Biden and Kerry and Hillary Clinton - believed Cheney? They made their own decisions based on the evidence presented to them by the intelligence community.
And they said - not Dick Cheney - that Iraq still had WMDs and a WMD program. Did they all lie too? Bush? Biden? And all the others? Tony Blair? Other governments?
I still don't know what Dick Cheney and the Iraq War has to do with Liz Cheney's views on this issue of Trump's falsehoods about the election. How does one follow the second? If Liz Cheney had been against the war would that make her views on Trump and the election correct? What is the thinking here?
So Liz Cheney supported the Iraq War and therefore her views on Trump are wrong? That's illogical to me.
And Trump kept us out of wars (not really, he sent troops into Iraq to take on ISIS; but never mind) therefore what he says about the election and January 6th are fine? That's also illogical to me.
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I don't get why Cheney losing her leadership job is such a big deal. She voted to impeach Trump. Most Republicans disagreed with her decision.
Why are so many people still shocked that Trump is still political force within the GOP?
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I don't get why Cheney losing her leadership job is such a big deal. She voted to impeach Trump. Most Republicans disagreed with her decision.
Why are so many people still shocked that Trump is still political force within the GOP?
How would you respond to this observation by Jonathan Chait (certainly no conservative)?
Chait: "When Cheney’s liberal critics place her support for democracy alongside her other positions [e.g., the Iraq War, waterboarding], they implicitly endorse the same calculation made by her conservative opponents: that the rule of law is just another issue."
I have no idea what her views on the Iraq war or waterboarding or any other ancillary issue have to do with the far more important issue of the rule of law, of the fundamental questions of the legitimacy of the election and of the outrageous and unacceptable assault on January 6th.
If she was against the war then does that make her views on Trump and the election valid? They suddenly become correct?
Her views on Trump stand or fall on their own. People making political calculations here - weighing her views on Iraq and waterboarding versus her views on the rule of law - and then making a judgment as to whether to support her or oppose her are absolutely missing the challenge she and we face. There's nothing to weigh, no "on the other hand" judgment to consider.
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How would you respond to this observation by Jonathan Chait (certainly no conservative)?
Chait: "When Cheney’s liberal critics place her support for democracy alongside her other positions [e.g., the Iraq War, waterboarding], they implicitly endorse the same calculation made by her conservative opponents: that the rule of law is just another issue."
I have no idea what her views on the Iraq war or waterboarding or any other ancillary issue have to do with the far more important issue of the rule of law, of the fundamental questions of the legitimacy of the election and of the outrageous and unacceptable assault on January 6th.
If she was against the war then does that make her views on Trump and the election valid? They suddenly become correct?
Her views on Trump stand or fall on their own. People making political calculations here - weighing her views on Iraq and waterboarding versus her views on the rule of law - and then making a judgment as to whether to support her or oppose her are absolutely missing the challenge she and we face. There's nothing to weigh, no "on the other hand" judgment to consider.
It doesn’t matter what I think of her support for the Iraq war or her defense of Waterboarding.
If we believe in Democracy then we have to accept the political outcomes when they don’t go our way. Republicans (at least most of her colleagues in the House) no longer want Cheney as one of their leaders. The Republican members of Congress have to answer to their constituents whom mostly support Trump. That’s representative Democracy in action.
I believe Cheney did the right thing but in politics, doing the right thing isn’t always rewarded…
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I don't get why Cheney losing her leadership job is such a big deal. She voted to impeach Trump. Most Republicans disagreed with her decision.
Why are so many people still shocked that Trump is still political force within the GOP?
It's a big deal only to Trump haters in the media because they can frame this in a way that they believe is negative toward him. Almost no one outside the Beltway cares. This is the same media that hated her father like he was Darth Vader. Maybe with some justification. Meanwhile the wheels are already coming off the Biden administration. There are gas lines down South. Shortages of almost every product (lumber, gas, chicken wings, furniture, washing machines etc). You name it and it is out of stock. Inflation and wide spread price increases. Crime is rampant. The Middle East in aflame. But the media is worried about Liz Cheney establishment politician? LOL
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It's a big deal only to Trump haters in the media because they can frame this in a way that they believe is negative toward him. Almost no one outside the Beltway cares. This is the same media that hated her father like he was Darth Vader. Maybe with some justification. Meanwhile the wheels are already coming off the Biden administration. There are gas lines down South. Shortages of almost every product (lumber, gas, chicken wings, furniture, washing machines etc). You name it and it is out of stock. Inflation and wide spread price increases. Crime is rampant. The Middle East in aflame. But the media is worried about Liz Cheney establishment politician? LOL
And you think the Liberal Media exaggerates?
Given your clarity with seeing the JFK conspiracy claims for what they're worth, it's kind of disheartening you're on the same page as Cakebread and Fetzer. Strange bedfellows.
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And you think the Liberal Media exaggerates?
Given your clarity with seeing the JFK conspiracy claims for what they're worth, it's kind of disheartening you're on the same page as Cakebread and Fetzer. Strange bedfellows.
It's not a conspiracy to see the Media for what it is today.
The current business model is for Media outlets to target audiences based on political alignment. Liberal outlets are putting more Liberal Spin on the News and Conservative outlets are putting more Conservative Spin on the News.
I'm on the Left politically but I can't stand watching CNN or MSNBC most days. They no longer even attempt to be Objective. Fox News is guilty of that too and they were one of the first to dive into the current business model of the media...
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It's not a conspiracy to see the Media for what it is today.
The current business model is for Media outlets to target audiences based on political alignment. Liberal outlets are putting more Liberal Spin on the News and Conservative outlets are putting more Conservative Spin on the News.
I'm on the Left politically but I can't stand watching CNN or MSNBC most days. They no longer even attempt to be Objective. Fox News is guilty of that too and they were one of the first to dive into the current business model of the media...
I agree with you about CNN and MSNBC. They're editorializing the news, like Fox News. I don't consider those as news channels per se.
The three big networks and PBS offer some actual news, with less opinion but some bias no doubt depending on the reporter/producer and subject.
The PBS station I get runs BBC World News America which I record as a series and scan through most nights. They were reporting on the surge in India a full week before the US network news.
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And you think the Liberal Media exaggerates?
Given your clarity with seeing the JFK conspiracy claims for what they're worth, it's kind of disheartening you're on the same page as Cakebread and Fetzer. Strange bedfellows.
Not a good analogy. Many CTers are Biden supporters. If I were a fanatic Trump-hater, then I would be bedfellows with Rick Plant, Martin W., and John I and many others. Which of the following is an exaggeration: inflation, gas shortages, increases in violent crimes, increased illegal immigration, wide spread shortages of many consumer products?
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Virginia just declared an emergency based on the fuel shortage that is spreading across the South while Old Joe naps. To compound matters, there are fewer truck drivers to deliver fuel because Old Joe is paying everyone to take an extended vacation with trillions of tax dollars. Things are really unraveling fast. Time to pull your money from the stock market. Maybe he will deliver a Jimmy Carter-like "malaise" speech blaming the American people for his failures. It is 1979 all over again.
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Not a good analogy. Many CTers are Biden supporters.
JFK CT'ers seem to be mostly bi-partisan. I haven't seen evidence that the JFK research community has the partisan divides that we see with other more recent Conspiracy Theories.
9/11 truthers for example seem to be more often Left-leaning. The QAnon thing was mostly rightwingers but I do personally know a few Dems who bought into it.
Oliver Stone and Roger Stone are pretty far apart politically but both agree that LBJ was involved with Kennedy's murder...
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Virginia just declared an emergency based on the fuel shortage that is spreading across the South while Old Joe naps.
Biden didn't make Colonial shut down. Nor did the ransom hackers want that.
Wonder why the US infrastructure takes weeks to reopen a pipeline. Trump spent nothing on infrastructure; remember the cold snap in Texas and Cruz winging off to Cancun? These are time-bombs because of Republican indifference.
To compound matters, there are fewer truck drivers to deliver fuel because Old Joe is paying everyone to take an extended vacation with trillions of tax dollars. Things are really unraveling fast. Time to pull your money from the stock market. Maybe he will deliver a Jimmy Carter-like "malaise" speech blaming the American people for his failures. It is 1979 all over again.
Wonder why the attack came out of Russia? Look for North Korea to act up next.
Sure, none of this happened when Trump was kowtowing to Putin and Kim. BTW, we all got to see Trump's performance during a crisis last year.
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Biden didn't make Colonial shut down. Nor did the ransom hackers want that.
Wonder why the US infrastructure takes weeks to reopen a pipeline. Trump spent nothing on infrastructure; remember the cold snap in Texas and Cruz winging off to Cancun? These are time-bombs because of Republican indifference.
Wonder why the attack came out of Russia? Look for North Korea to act up next.
Sure, none of this happened when Trump was kowtowing to Putin and Kim. BTW, we all got to see Trump's performance during a crisis last year.
Imagine the hue and cry in the media and among the leftist politicians if Russia had hacked the pipeline while Trump was President resulting in widespread gas shortages and Trump had said, as Old Joe did, that he didn't believe Putin was responsible! They would have started the impeachment yesterday with all manner of conspiracy theories such as Trump is a traitor being blackmailed by Putin. But instead we got weepy commentary from CNN about Cheney. Someone they detested before Trump as spawn of Satan. Now she is a hero. And crickets on anything else, war in the Middle East, inflation, floods of illegal immigrants. It was all Liz all day. Why? Because that is a story they believe they can frame in a way that makes Trump look bad. Their sole objective for four years and counting. Again, I'm not a big fan of Trump himself and can understand why many don't like him as a person. But who cares if he is an ego maniac? What you want from a President is not a nice guy who naps most of the day but someone who gets results.