Dick Cheney did not announce it before he did. Are they even members of the same party?
I think of Donald Trump as a political lightweight.
I think of Donald Trump as a political lightweight.
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dick Cheney. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
Hillary Clinton And Dick Cheney Out Selling Books
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| Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Dick Cheney slams Obama in his bio, causing controversy
Saturday, December 07, 2013
Mandela's Passing
"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." - Mandela
I was at a clinic, not for medical reasons. And Mandela was all over TV, and I asked, “What happened? Did Mandela die?” Mandela has passed away at the ripe old age of 95, and we have seen this was coming for months now: the Obamas paid their respects in person.
Mandela had Pele status when I was at high school. He was this mythical figure behind bars. You never expected the Berlin Wall to fall. You never expected Mandela to come out. But come out he did. Heck, he became president. Prisoner to president was a long journey for this son of a tribal chief.
Mandela, Gandhi, Lincoln. America elects a president every four years, but it has not elected another Lincoln.
Mandela did the political thing he set out to do. And South Africa is a leading second tier economy, but many blamed him for not having taken South Africa through a radical economic transformation. Too many blacks were still unemployed. Too many white South Africans still had too much wealth. What was Madiba thinking?
That economic mantle has fallen to his successors. The least they could do is transform South Africa and give it China like growth rates. That future economic transformation is less challenging than ending apartheid was. Apartheid was downright ugly.
Gandhi inspired MLK. Mandela inspired Obama. All of them will inspire generations to come. This world still struggles with issues of race, ethnicity and identity.
27 years is a long time. It is practically a lifetime. He was behind bars for 27 years. He spent his best years behind bars. Like his daughter said, he was a great leader, but not a great father. An absent father is not exactly a great father.
Gandhi never tried violence. Mandela did not start out violent, but during one phase he was open to violent methods: "There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people."
And he never regretted the support at one point he received from Gaddafi of Libya. When much later Bill Clinton showed up to see him as President Of The United States, at the press conference Mandela reminded him of his past ties with Gaddafi with a smile, and said, “If someone has problems with that, they can go jump into the pool!” Clinton could not contain his laughter. Because Clinton knew, he never got to meet Gandhi, or Lincoln, or MLK, but here he was standing right next to Mandela. He was honored. He was touched. He worked hard to become a family friend.
Dick Cheney and Margaret Thatcher opposed imposing sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s, but sanctions worked. Economic sanctions are a powerful tool, as we are learning on Iran.
I never got to meet him. But you knew he was somewhere there out on the planet. And now he is gone. There is no one like him left. It is like, Michael Jordan was on the courts. And then he was no longer playing. Mandela is no longer breathing. You feel the pinch, the loss. His life’s work long done, he just needed to be. I guess he could have pushed to 100.
"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison," a free Mandela said in 1990. For many his struggle and his imprisonment are easier to understand than his forgiveness after 1990. He never set out to create a black South Africa.
He also knew to retire. Too many African heads of state go on and on and on. Mandela retired in 1999. He passed on the torch to the next generation of African National Congress leadership.
"Don't call me, I'll call you," he said to the world in 2004.
He was also a rabid soccer fan. In fact his last public appearance was at the 2010 World Cup held in his country. He said he felt like he was “15.”
His life is a lesson that there is hope under the darkest of circumstances, and that one must carry on the duties of justice, one must struggle, one must forgive, one must soldier on. His life is a message for equality, and not just racial equality. His life is also a lesson in leadership that can be carried on to other domains like business and sports.
Oh, to be able to say you were on the planet the same time Mandela was.
BBC: Obituary: Nelson Mandela
Wikipedia: Nelson Mandela
CNN: Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid icon and father of modern South Africa, dies
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Gaddafi Helped Mandela
Image via WikipediaIt is important to maintain perspective. I have always believed in democracy, and I have never thought of it as some kind of a western thing.
The day 9/11 happened I compared it to the start of something along the magnitudes of the Cold War.
Gaddafi is like Castro in that he saw a lot. He saw colonialism, the Cold War, the aftermath, the War On Terror. This guy stayed in the news for half a century.
I was doing school in Kathmandu. We were amazed about this guy who seemed to drive Reagan crazy. Who i-s this guy? We read up on him.
One of the details that has to be noted is that Gaddafi helped Mandela when nobody helped Mandela. Dick Cheney was opposed to imposing sanctions on the apartheid regime and I don't think he has ever course corrected that stand.
I have often wondered what a Gaddafi like political animal functioning in a democratic set up might look like. Because the world does need people who will speak to the west on their own terms.
I am thinking Imran Khan might emerge that welcome voice, someone who is a democrat, a son of the soil, intelligent beyond belief, and someone who simply can not go corrupt.
Gaddafi was a dictator like Saddam was a dictator. I would not put Castro in the same basket. Castro was never a mass murderer. And the US could learn from some of what Cuba has done in education and health. Castro exported many a doctor to Third World countries over decades.
A new world order asks for personalities like Imran Khan who will ride the world stage on behalf of their peoples, democratically elected, and subject to peaceful recall once every few years.
Imran Khan
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Maloney Lied Repeatedly In Radio Debate
Image via WikipediaMaloney spoke a string of lies in her radio debate.
She said she does not own BP stocks, she never has. Factually correct. Her family by now has sold all BP stocks it owned. When the Maloney family owned BP stocks, it was in her late husband's name, not hers.
By that logic, Maloney's net worth is zero dollars. She has not made any money. But the truth is her net worth is 20 million dollars. A-l-l of that came from Wall Street. I don't begrudge her wealth. I wish more of the same on as many others as possible.
But to suggest your family owning BP stocks had nothing to do with your voting the Dick Cheney votes on the oil industry in the early 2000s is hogwash. This is Charlie Rangel behavior.
Maloney's 20 million dollars are relevant in that she played a key role in undoing the regulations in 1999 that made her family a lot of money but that gave America its Great Recession a decade later.
Maloney has been accused of having hosted fundraisers with Wall Street PACs right when she was working on Wall Street reform. In the radio debate she said her congressional staff did not organize those fundraisers she attended. Factually correct. But the truth is she has separate staff for fundraising. Her fundraising staff organized those fundraisers that violate the basic ethics rules of Congress. Is that a problem or is that a problem? Did Maloney lie in saying her people did not organize those two fundraisers?
This is Charlie Rangel behavior.
"She lied," Reshma Saujani said. Saujani was pointing out the obvious. But the Maloney trolls are saying for Saujani to point out that Maloney was lying borders towards the "negative."
Looking the other way while wrong is being done, is that positive? That is not positive, that is irresponsible.
Maloney has lied repeatedly.
The biggest lie though was Maloney saying she had authored "70 bills." What she did not say was she got only three of those passed, one was to do with renaming a post office.
Wall Street Journal: Maloney, Saujani In Primary Debate: "Congresswoman Maloney has failed New Yorkers. She has failed to lead, failed to offer a single new idea in this race, failed to serve responsibly and ethically," Ms. Saujani said in her opening statement. "She says that I'm running a negative campaign. Carolyn, all I'm doing is telling the truth." .... Calling for a House ethics investigation into Ms. Maloney's conduct, Ms. Saujani accused Ms. Maloney of holding fund-raisers with lobbyists for the financial-services industry while negotiating legislation to reform Wall Street..... Ms. Saujani accused her of lying: "You said that your staff and you were not involved in those two fund-raisers. I'm holding the invitations right now and they say checks can be mailed to Maloney for Congress. It's this type of lack of ethics and integrity that people are tired of." ..... Ms. Saujani was scheduled Tuesday night to hold a fund-raiser at the home of Alan Jones, managing director of Morgan Stanley.
New York Tech MeetUp
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Charlie Rangel: Motherfucker
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI have tried to stay away from the Rangel drama, but it is no longer possible. This motherfucker now stands squarely in my way when he had other, better options. Charlie Rangel has become a political suicide bomber, and he knows exactly what he is doing.
The Rangel Drama
Motherfuckers like Charlie Rangel don't have legacies. They don't have places in history. He is too dumb, too shallow, too superficial, too much of a crook to have a place in history, he is too much of a sideshow. He is a fucking nobody. People like me decide what Charlie Rangel's place in history is going to be. Charlie Rangel is a motherfucker. That is his place in history. There, I just decided.
Capitalism has to have its creative destructions. You have to destroy a few banks to create the clean tech, bio tech and nano tech companies of tomorrow. That is the nature of the beast. Democracy, capitalism's twin brother/sister, also has to have its creative destructions. That is the nature of the beast. You have to necessarily destroy Charlie Rangel to create Barack Obama. We created Barack Obama in 2008, but we did not destroy Charlie Rangel before that. That was a mistake. We started the work on destroying Charlie Rangel in 2008. Now is the time to complete the task. This guy needs to disappear from the stage already.
The First Time I Heard The Obama Name
Putting Malia and Sasha into the White House has been a bigger deal than putting Barack and Michelle Obama into the White House. Putting Malia and Sasha into the White House does for the self esteem of young black children across America, and across the continent of Africa, and perhaps for many children in Latin America and Asia that I would not know how to do with a trillion dollars to spend on the project. Having a great leader helped, but countless people like me put countless hours into Obama 08 to bring that about. And I am not letting this guy take away from that achievement. The heck with Charlie Rangel.
Michelle Obama Is Just Fabulous
I Stand With Michelle: Iowa Must And Can Be Won
You can not win elections as many times as Charlie Rangel has and not see what your idiotic stand now is doing to Barack's effort to keep the House. Rangel is doing this on purpose. This motherfucker never really made peace with the fact that some time in 2004 Barack Obama became a bigger deal than him. The fuck with this guy.
White politicians in New York City who stand by this crook are being racist. They think playing nice to Charlie is playing nice to black people. Instead of doing the hard work of working through their racial prejudices and racial stereotypes and glass walls and ceilings that keep black people away, these whities have long been accustomed to thinking of Charlie Rangel as some kind of a racial short cut. Be nice to Charlie and you are clean, you are not racist. White politicians in New York City who stand by Charlie are racist people who think blacks as a people are crooks and Charlie Rangel somehow represents them. I have walked around and asked in Harlem. Most people never heard of the Rangel name. Obama, on the other hand, is another story.
Rangel And Maloney Need To Vacate The Premises And For The Same Reasons
Obama, Reshma
JFK, Nixon
For every JFK, there is a Richard Nixon. Charlie Rangel is the black people's Nixon. The guy is a crook. His ways have always been corrupt. How dare this pig equate my president with Dick Cheney? How dare he! My guy's very run for the presidency was about his having opposed the Iraq War from the start.
Cut Him Loose, Completely
Rangel was not able to get in the way when he had all the power and we had none, although he tried. He sure is not getting in our way when now we have all the power and he has none. If the American people had mistaken Barack Obama for a Charlie Rangel, they would never have elected him in the first place. I count on the American people's judgment to not mistake a Barack Obama for a Charlie Rangel. But the president has to keep doing what he has been doing. He has to make it absolutely clear Charlie Rangel is responsible for his own bad behavior, and that he wants him to step down and go away, sooner the better. He has to do it more forcefully as necessary.
Depriving My President Of A House
Charlie Rangel has one and only one goal left. The final mission of his political career is to deprive my president of a House. He failed in his mission to deprive my guy of the White House. What the fuck is the House?
Barack Obama has done wonderful things in his first two years. He has achieved FDR status after he passed health care reform. He is going to continue to do wonderful things. But losing the House now would jeopardize the next two years of his presidency. It would jeopardize his plans to work on comprehensive immigration reform next year. And Rangel knows this. I would know a thing or two about Rangel's stance on immigration.
Send this guy back to Uganda where he came from. He does not belong in the capital city of the world.
DL21C
And while we are on the topic.
I consider DL21C an enemy organization. That organization has two options. It can dismantle itself, or I am going to dismantle it. It is not necessary for me to do it. But I am going to do it for fun. And I am in no hurry to do it. Pre-digital organizations have no place in the Obama era. I am going to take that organization apart like it were an old computer, which is what it is.
What is this? Gangs Of New York? Eliminate the leader and take over his organization? I don't think so. I put blood, sweat and tears into nurturing the Obama crowd in this city. My gums were bleeding when you had me inside.
If any DL21C person ends up with any kind of a leadership role in town for Obama 2012, I am boycotting all Obama 20102 events in Manhattan. You got to know who your people are.
The First Time I Heard The Obama Name
Reshma 2010, Obama 2010
I did not expect Reshma 2010 to join Obama's national effort to keep the House and the Senate before September 15, but now our hand has been forced. I went through some tough times for Barack. Having Charlie Rangel for breakfast is going to be easy to do. Now I am going after Rangel like no Republican before me. That motherfucker is not getting in the way of my president and his House. So help me God.
Keeping The House And The Senate
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