Cheney Draws Tiny Crowd in Davenportby Connie Corcoran Wilson
The King of the Evil-doers couldn’t GIVE away tickets – does anybody STILL think that Bush will take Iowa? Connie Wilson does a smashing job of pulling Cheney’s statements to pieces.
Click on "more >>" to see all the fine photos and to read about how Connie's book is being removed from bookshelves in the QC because of her political slant!
October 30, 2004
It was appropriate that Dick Cheney showed up in Davenport at Halloween. He’s certainly scary enough, even without the benefit of a costume. Cheney and company came from Columbus, Ohio; Nazareth, Pennsylvania; and Zanesville, Ohio…battleground states all.
Introduced by his wife of 40 years, Lynne, the Cheneys brought their three small grandchildren with them, and Mrs. Cheney shamelessly played the “fear card” that the Republican Party has been using to woo the female vote they need to win the election. Her words: “When I think of this election, I think of my kids and grandkids and their safety and security.” (And this is the same woman who complained, saying that John Kerry was “not a good man” because he mentioned the Cheney’s out-of-the-closet gay daughter, Mary, in a very tactful answer to a debate question.)
A group of Deaniacs joined Billionaires for Bush to protest the
Cheney visit. One of their signs reads, "Health care is already
affordable." Another reads, "Education is NOT for everyone."
I love the "Thurston and Lovey" look of the couple in the front.
Connie captured this photo at Peabody's, down the street from
the Cheney event in Davenport.
Actually, no, Mr. Cheney. I am not “ready to rumble.” I think that “rumbling” is now and remains a very bad idea. The next song was “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor….another very old song to pump up the crowd.
In the spirit of Halloween, some of the scarier things I heard at the Cheney rally were these:
1) The prayer (by Pastor Carl Roberts of the Bettendorf Christian Church): “We’re thankful that we have servants like pResident Bush and Vice pResident Cheney. We believe that they are the best men for the job at this time.” (Speak for yourself, Pastor.)
2) “I’m sick of Democrats mocking our pResident, aren’t you?” Actually, it is more the entire world that is “mocking” our “pResident.” The reason? Aside from being voted the “scariest villain in a movie this year” by Europeans, (a nod to Bush’s appearance in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”), he is quite possibly the worst pResident we have ever had. Most of the civilized world regards him as a loose cannon and the greatest threat to world peace (an actual poll result, in Europe, “greatest threat to world peace: 70% said “George W. Bush”). If you tried to script a president who appeared more foolish, uninformed and unintelligent (despite his legacy Yale degree), a movie audience wouldn’t believe that someone this ignorant, uninformed, arrogant and out-of-touch could be elected. (And, actually, class…does anyone really believe that he was elected in 2000?)
Two more Cheney protesters outside the tiny Cheney event
in Davenport Saturday. The one sign reads, "We are
creating enemies faster than we can kill them." Chilling.
3) “We’ve made America better, stronger and safer.” Yikes! Do these guys really believe this?
4) “The price of freedom is not cheap.” No, it certainly is NOT cheap, when you set off a jihad with all Arab nations and spend us in to oblivion. Now we have the FBI investigation into the no-bid Halliburton contracts. The fiscal irresponsibility of this Administration has never been equaled. No other president in history has taken a surplus so large and squandered that AND taken us deeper down the rabbit-hole into so much additional debt that our children and grandchildren will have difficulty digging out from under it in their lifetimes.
But the biggest crime of the “incumbent” has to be the unprovoked war with Iraq, which has cost the lives of over 1100 Americans and one hundred times that number of Iraqis. Innocent civilian contractors are being seized and killed. Innocent wives, like the recent CARE worker (who had lived and worked in Iraq peacefully for thirty years or more), are suffering now because George W. Bush and the boys obviously do not have a clue.
5) “The best defense is an offense against terror.” So far, all Bush’s misguided “war on terror” had done is serve as an Al Qaeda recruiting film, spend us into debt, and kill thousands. The best defense would have been to think the war through a bit more carefully, rather than simply using the WTC bombing as an excuse to do what had been planned from the first two Cabinet meetings, according to former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, who was present.
I hate to post a picture of the evil-doer on the blog -
brings down the vibes - but Connie's the one who
was forced to sit there and listen to his long list of
lies. The lying liar. Anyhoo, here, Lynne Cheney
uses her three grandkids to play the scare card.
You know, as hubby said, vote Bush or you'll be
struck down by terrorists. Boo!
As for the number of new jobs being created, the economy only created 65,000 private-sector jobs per month in the third quarter. Overall job growth fell well short of the level needed to keep up. In total, the economy has lost 1.6 million private-sector jobs under George W. Bush, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economy lost 9,000 manufacturing jobs in the third quarter, which brings the total of manufacturing jobs lost under “W” to 2.7 million (also a Bureau of Labor statistic).
And how far “ahead of the curve” was our pResident when he was warned about an impending flu vaccine shortage, some say as long as three years beforehand.
7) Cheney, talking about the WTC bombing (which is the only issue the Republicans want to talk about, as they continue to dwell on the past and avoid talking about the problems of our future that “W” has created): “He (‘W’) didn’t wait and see. He knew this kind of war would not be won by indecision.”
You know what, Dick: I wish he HAD “waited and seen.” I wish he had been patient and taken into account all factors, rather than not even reading his briefings. He would have seen that taking us to war with Iraq, when most of the hi-jacking terrorists were Saudis, made about as much sense as if FDR had invaded Mexico after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (as Senator Kerry pointed out during the debates). A little more alliance-building might have been a good thing, too, as we are now out there on that limb almost all by ourselves, and the terrorists are busily sawing it off.
But, as the song lyric went (sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”), “If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq. If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq. If the terrorists are frisky, Pakistan is looking shifty, North Korea’s much too risky: bomb Iraq!”
(*For all verses, buy my book at www.ConnieCorcoranWilson.com, or from the shelves at Border’s bookstore in Davenport. But hurry! The manager of Borders has taken it OUT of their system and only put it back IN the system for a 30-day trial period. I would certainly appreciate the opportunity for many, many more people to be exposed to these oh-so-true verses, written by a Professor far wittier than moi, but performed at various anti-war rallies by Yours Truly. So, go buy the book, or it disappears. This has been a public service announcement. Thank you.)
8) “The pResident is committed to seeing that freedom prevails in the war on terror.” As I recall, another stubborn Texas President was “committed to seeing us win” long after it had become apparent to everyone else in the world that our troops were in an untenable position in Vietnam. Iraq is the Vietnam of this generation.
9) “This is a conflict we did not choose, but it is one we will win.” A debatable statement, Mr. Cheney. You and “W” chose it during your first two Cabinet meetings, for your own selfish reasons. It was not…repeat NOT…a response to the WTC bombings, as they were not caused by Iraqis. I’m thinkin’ you may be 0 for 2 on this statement.
10) “John Kerry is a man who will say and do anything to get elected.” Funny. That was my impression of your boss. And it gets dirtier as Cheney uses a “down home” analogy to mock Kerry’s recent goose hunting excursion (not everyone goes hunting with the Supreme Court justices, Dick): “My friends, we have a saying in Wyoming: you can put lipstick on a pig, but at the end of the day, it’s still a pig.” If I were Dick Cheney, I would not be putting “pig” images in to the minds of the voters, because, of the four candidates running, only one fits this porky image, and it isn’t John Kerry.
11) “He’s led us very well.” This is a reference to Bush, I assume, although we all know that you are the puppet-master, Mr. Cheney. And I disagree that he “has led us very well.” He’s hardly led us at all, except down wrong tracks. Most of the time, he was vacationing or letting you do all the heavy lifting.
12) “Our job is not to take national opinion polls. Our job is to defend America.” First of all, I would submit that Karl Rove and the troops are polling like crazed weasels. And second, as John Edwards recently said in Iowa City, “Who’s minding the store?” All of the Republican leaders are out campaigning, so that pretty much lets us know that you are not doing “your job.”
13) “pResident Bush understands the war on terror and has a plan. Senator Kerry does not.” Even George Herbert Bush warned against taking the US into Baghdad (in his book) because it would be an untenable occupation and there would be no exit strategy. Did his son listen? Obviously not. And now his “VP” says he “has a plan.” I’ll just bet he does. And I’ll bet it involves invading some other country that is sitting there minding its own business and stretching our troops so thin that the next comment Cheney makes won’t remain true.
14) “We have the finest military the world has ever known.” No one is faulting our brave men and women in uniform for the good job they did initially in invading a country that wasn’t responsible for the World Trade Center bombing. However, even “the finest military the world has ever known” can, eventually, be stretched to the breaking point. Can you say, “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire?”
15) “Our goal is to defeat terror, and, with George Bush’s leadership, that is what we will do.” Cheney then compounds this mis-statement by saying that “W” is “clear and consistent.” George W. Bush has never stated anything clearly, and his consistency merely represents being consistently wrong.
16) “We will use the great power of the presidency to serve great purposes.” Oh oh! I feel some Constitutional rights slipping away. Perhaps the best retort to this statement comes from a great President (unlike the bumbler we have now), Thomas Jefferson, who, in 1801, during his first inaugural address, said, “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle. That though the will of the majority in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions…But every difference of opinion is not a difference in principle. We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.”
17) Cheney didn’t say much about the environment during his “WTC/Terror” filled speech. How could he? This nation, under George W. Bush’s leadership, abandoned the Kyoto Protocol. It fell to Russia (!) to actually “save” it. Dick Cheney has also helped sell out both his home state of Wyoming and his own daughter.
According to the October issue of “Mother Jones” magazine, on May 18, 2001, a day after unveiling an energy plan hatched secretly with the energy industry, Bush signed Executive Order 13212, which has allowed fast-track gas-drilling permits across the Rocky Mountain West, most particularly in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana and Utah. For example, the 7-million acre Upper Green River Valley in western Wyoming was fair game, under Cheney and “W.” As a result, a number of wildlife species are becoming endangered, when 850,000 of 928,000 acres (in the BLM Pinedale office) are being set aside for the energy industry and barred from public use. Wyoming governor Dave Freudenthal became the third Western governor in under a year to protest the Bush administration’s policy of unregulated gas extraction (p. 72, “Mother Jones” October issue). He stated, “Auctioning off these leases before environmental review will only serve to further jeopardize sage grouse habitat, big game migration corridors, crucial habitat and other important resources.”
Visit the Monster Slash website to see a great video on the Bush/Cheney destruction of the environment. Once you watch the video, sign the petition and you'll get to see another video.
Theodore Roosevelt, during his 7th annual message to Congress (1907) had a response for this kind of behavior: “To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought, by right, to hand down to them amplified and developed.”
And we all know how incensed Lynne Cheney became at John Kerry’s sensitive (and sensible) response, during the debates, to the gay union(s) question. Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay, supports his boss’s desire to float a Constitutional amendment further restricting her rights as a person pursuing an alternative lifestyle. He was also one of only four congressmen to vote against Head Start, Meals-on-Wheels and an extension on assault weapons.
Now let me list the few statements that Dick Cheney made during his October 30th appearance at the River Center in Davenport that I could actually agree with:
1) “In this time of national crisis, America needs a president we can count on to get it right.”
2) “We have a clear choice. The stakes are very high, both for America and for the rest of the world.”
And let me close with this Presidential quote, from Theodore Roosevelt (1918): ”To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
