That Dick is more busy now than he was in office. Dick Cheney, of course. He’s such an egomaniacal creep that he thinks continuing his tour of torture touting (not to mention his continual fear-mongering) will somehow make it okay. Or make it legal. I don’t think he’ll succeed at either.
Each time it comes up, Dick says the torturing -- excuse me, “enhanced interrogation techniques” (ahem*bullshit*ahem) -- worked and saved lives. But I haven’t heard any journalist make this point yet: So what if it worked -- it’s still *wrong*. AND illegal. (By the way, “wrong” and “illegal” aren’t necessarily synonymous.) If Dick wanted to “save lives” so badly, maybe he could have used some of his considerable fortune to add to the bounty for Osama Bin Laden. But in the realm of things that work: Brainwashing every living man, woman and child on the planet (the Scientology method), or monitoring every waking and sleeping moment of every single private individuals’ lives so that nothing of any kind whatsoever can ever be accomplished in privacy (the Big Brother or Patriot Act method), or even confining each living individual to a solitary holding cell so that there is no chance for any two individuals to ever come in contact and therefore no one would ever kill anyone. All of these would work, too, Mr. Cheney. But, like torture, they’re *wrong*. Let me explain why they’re wrong, and wrong in particular for the United States.
Life. Few things are more valuable than life. But guess what? Some things *are* more valuable than life. Principles, particularly the principles upon which this nation was founded. Why do we fight wars? To save lives? Or to safeguard principles? Both… but we’re willing to sacrifice lives for the purpose of preserving our principles. The founding fathers knew this. They were risking their collective necks for an idea, a concept… and they deemed it worthwhile. More worthwhile and precious than life itself. The idea was that men should be free from tyranny, and from governments who abuse their power. Flash forward to the Bush-Cheney administration, where the cowards in charge feared so much more for their safety that they were willing to throw principles out the window. “It worked, it saved lives,” is so invalid an excuse on so many levels.
What kind of life is it if we have to torture to preserve it? What kind of lesson are we teaching our children if we decree that it’s okay to do so? And what kind of world are we making? Safer? Safer for who? Only for the people in charge… maybe. What disturbs me the most is that anyone so far removed from understanding the core ideas that founded our nation can actually rise so high in the government. The real problem is fear, that people fear so much they allow someone like Dick Cheney to take control for their protection. No coincidence that he’s such a fear monger, is there? Right now, people need a strong reminder that there are things even more valuable than life. Let Dick keep it up… With every sentence that escapes his twisted lips, he’s arming prosecutors with more and more leverage to prosecute him. And they must. They must.
I know I can only speak for myself here, but I have to say that I don’t want my life saved if it means a Dick can come along and torture people. For that matter, I don’t want something like the Patriot Act so involved in “protecting” me, either. I’ll take a few chances for my freedom to remain intact, thank you very much. Dick.
The Emerald Quill
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Words To The World #7
Dear Mr. Obama: I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Palin wouldn’t have been so bad. You call this an economic stimulus???
Remember the good ol’ days, when George W. Bush was the president, and his economic stimulus plan gave $600 back to every single taxpayer? Not that it was enough -- the economy under his administration still slipped off the plate. But hey, it was an effort to inject a little money motion into a sluggish economy, and he did it twice. I got $1,200 offa that guy!
Now we have Obama’s “big, new” economic stimulus plan. As a single taxpayer, I’ll be getting… $500?!? Hey, uh, wait… since when do Republicans do more for the little guy than Democrats who have sworn to save the middle class?
Here’s an idea that I heard some economy guys worked out during all that bailout stuff right before the election. Someone figured that for the same $700 billion dollars, every tax paying American could be given something in the neighborhood of $25,000! Now I’m not a math guy, so I can’t check the numbers on this. But if there’s even any half truth to that estimate, I could still be looking at $12,500 -- and you can bet I’d use some of that kind of bread to feed the economy. Me, and a lot of other Americans. (Imagine all of that money going back to taxpayers, significant portions of which would have been used to pay off bills. Would that not have helped the financial industry? Seriously…)
Let’s be realistic. For most Americans today, $500 doesn’t even begin to help. It’s practically an insult. Something that would be helpful might be the approximate amount of running the average household for a month. And you know what? If they can blow $700 billion dollars on a crooked, mismanaged financial industry, they should be expected to be able to do at least that much for the taxpayers whose hard-earned cash they used to do it. It doesn’t have to be $25,000, or even $12,500 -- but it damn sure ought to be more than $500. That’s pathetic.
So Obama’s plan appears to keep the status quo -- we’ve bailed out wealthy corporations, but the individual only gets a few crumbs to shut him up.
I’m still hopeful that it’s not all he has planned to help us out, but now I’m starting to be afraid of getting my hopes too high. Maybe they already were -- I thought I voted for change. I didn’t think that meant getting back pennies on the dollar…
The Emerald Quill
Remember the good ol’ days, when George W. Bush was the president, and his economic stimulus plan gave $600 back to every single taxpayer? Not that it was enough -- the economy under his administration still slipped off the plate. But hey, it was an effort to inject a little money motion into a sluggish economy, and he did it twice. I got $1,200 offa that guy!
Now we have Obama’s “big, new” economic stimulus plan. As a single taxpayer, I’ll be getting… $500?!? Hey, uh, wait… since when do Republicans do more for the little guy than Democrats who have sworn to save the middle class?
Here’s an idea that I heard some economy guys worked out during all that bailout stuff right before the election. Someone figured that for the same $700 billion dollars, every tax paying American could be given something in the neighborhood of $25,000! Now I’m not a math guy, so I can’t check the numbers on this. But if there’s even any half truth to that estimate, I could still be looking at $12,500 -- and you can bet I’d use some of that kind of bread to feed the economy. Me, and a lot of other Americans. (Imagine all of that money going back to taxpayers, significant portions of which would have been used to pay off bills. Would that not have helped the financial industry? Seriously…)
Let’s be realistic. For most Americans today, $500 doesn’t even begin to help. It’s practically an insult. Something that would be helpful might be the approximate amount of running the average household for a month. And you know what? If they can blow $700 billion dollars on a crooked, mismanaged financial industry, they should be expected to be able to do at least that much for the taxpayers whose hard-earned cash they used to do it. It doesn’t have to be $25,000, or even $12,500 -- but it damn sure ought to be more than $500. That’s pathetic.
So Obama’s plan appears to keep the status quo -- we’ve bailed out wealthy corporations, but the individual only gets a few crumbs to shut him up.
I’m still hopeful that it’s not all he has planned to help us out, but now I’m starting to be afraid of getting my hopes too high. Maybe they already were -- I thought I voted for change. I didn’t think that meant getting back pennies on the dollar…
The Emerald Quill
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