Columnist – John Sammon
I would like to point out a brand new political phenomenon in the United States that no one to the best of my knowledge has noticed and pointed out before. It’s totally new, unique, and disgusting.

I’m perhaps the only one who spotted it.

That is, a crooked politician, who lied, cheated, and schemed, in the old days, left office (thank God), and let history judge their conduct. They retired back into private life and pretty much kept their mouth shut.

Not any more.

Now, for the first time in American history, the disgraced political figure leaves office with perhaps 20 percent support from Americans, and goes on the stump, waging what amounts to a sort of bizarre, after-the-fact political campaign in which the two-bit crook justifies their prior actions while in office, lying, cheating and scheming.

Bush did it in the last days of his presidency, and now Dick Cheney is. Cheney, because of his new public visibility defending torture, branding the present administration as disloyal, and calling the limp investigation against him as an evil political stunt, has even been mentioned recently as a possible Republican candidate for president.

A lying, conniving, draft-dodging, conscienceless, immoral fat man with a pacemaker as president? Miracles, or tragedies I guess you might call them do happen. Look at the intellectually-challenged Bush. He became president.

The old days of going quietly back to the farm after defeat and disgrace are over. Even Richard Nixon went to his beach house in California and shut up.

In the last months of his presidency, Bush appeared again and again to do spin on what was fast-becoming-history to announce that he really was a great president after all. In a losing attempt to appear humble, abused and misunderstood, Bush piously and unconvincingly even said he had “a few regrets.” For example, the White House drapes were left spotted. Nothing substantial was regretted, and no where near the regret I had that he ever became president in the first place.

That’s a good question. How does a bad man become president?

How did Bush become president? How did Nixon become president? For the same reason it’s possible for Cheney to become president. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, HALF OF THEM, ARE STUPID!

Bush and Cheney of course, among their numerous crimes, lied the American people into the Iraq War by saying that Iraq possessed weapons it didn’t have, and intended to use a nuclear bomb it didn’t have, to attack the US, which it didn’t intend to do with the bomb it didn’t have.

Republicans don’t care that Bush and Cheney lied.

For a Republican, it’s okay to lie if you’re a Republican. Their loyalty is to the party and their exclusionary ideology, not their country, or the truth. When something is proven to be a lie, a Republican will just fabricate another reason to justify it.

When the weapons of mass destruction were proven to be false, Republicans said the war was about “nation building” and establishing “democracy” instead. If those proved false, they could come up with more reasons.

Republican voters never called them on this. Republicans never criticize members of their own party. In fact, most still favor and justify Watergate, including those few informed enough to know what it was. They surely haven’t learned from it.

This is in keeping with the New Republican Party, the party of extremists, ideologues and reactionaries. If they’ve learned one thing, and they learn very slowly or not at all, it’s that once you lie, keep lying. KEEP LYING! No matter what. There are always at least 30 percent who will buy it.

Lincoln, who must be spinning in his grave at Cheney’s current antics, was wrong when he said you can fool some of the people some of the time.

The new saying is, you can fool an acceptable percentage of fools all the time, and the truth is whatever I say it is.

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