Cheney Quotes

The soul would have no rainbow, had the eyes no tears.

Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American.

...love is a chemical imbalance, too. That perilous highs and desperate lows and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart.

I have some bad news. Bjork cannot be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her.

[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin.

You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders." (Larry King Live, May 11, 2009)

Stories don't always have to end happily.. Sometimes it's just enough that they end.

Wait, Richard Cheney, as in Dick Cheney? You're a vampire named Dick Cheney? Somehow, that makes you seem more evil.

The Robin and the Sparrow" Said the robin to the sparrow, “I should really like to know, Why these anxious human beings Rush about and worry so.” Said the sparrow to the robin, “Friend I think that it must be, That they have no Heavenly Father, Such as cares for you and me.

I actually stopped talking. I actually listened. So I knew that I wasn't all the way manic, because when you're all the way manic you never listen to anybody but yourself.

I have never learned to hate. Don't let my first lesson come from you.

True beauty is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it.

Was drug induced happy still happy? Was it the right kind of happy? Did it count?

The cruelest curse of the disease is also its most sacred promise: You will not feel this way forever.

I did not mean to sodomize Dick Cheney.

Ashleigh’s a manipulative liar,” Jenny said. “She makes Dick Cheney look like Mr. Rogers.” “That is an ugly thing to say about Dick Cheney!” Dr. Goodling snapped. “And my daughter, as well.

So many men treat their wives badly, or indifferently, or with barely contained impatience. Josh doesn't mind-- no that's not right--he insists on openly showing his love and respect for me.

Enhanced Interrogation is Dick Cheney changing a word, Dick Cheney comes up with a new word to cover his ass!

Elected officials who believe their own political survival is more important than anything else threaten the survival of our republic, no matter what they tell themselves to justify their cowardice.

When Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld conflate what is good for Lockheed, Halliburton, Carlyle and Gilead with what is good for the United States and indeed the world, it is a form of projection with uniquely dangerous consequences.

Without the darkness, how can we ever hope to understand the light?

You only truly believe that which moves you to action.

It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land: enough! This moment, this election is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough.

People died on January 6 because of Donald Trump’s lies. Had it not been for the actions of courageous members of law enforcement, many more lives likely would have been lost.

Complacency delivered us into the hands of evil greedy men like Cheney.

Draft-dodging is what chicken-hawks do best. Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh (this capon claimed he had a cyst on his fat ass), Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General John Ashcroft—he received seven deferments to teach business education at Southwest Missouri State—pompous Bill O’Reilly, Jeb Bush, hey, throw in John Wayne—they were all draft-dodgers. Not a single one of these mouth-breathing, cowardly, and meretricious buffoons fought for his country. All plumped for deferments. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani? Did not serve. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Did not serve in the military. (He served the Mormon Church on a thirty-month mission to France.) Former Senator Fred Thompson? Did not serve. Former President Ronald Reagan? Due to poor eyesight, he served in a noncombat role making movies for the Army in southern California during WWII. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing. Did Rahm Emanuel serve? Yes, he did during the Gulf War 1991—in the Israeli Army. John Boehner did not serve, not a fucking second. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY? Not a minute! Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS? Avoided the draft. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ—did not serve. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn, R-TX—did not serve. Former Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV? Did not serve. Jack Kemp? Dan Quayle? Never served a day. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. These are the jackasses that cherish memorial services and love to salute and adore hearing “Taps.

I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do my fellow being; let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

There are people who fantasize about suicide, and paradoxically, these fantasies can be soothing because they usually involve either fantasizing about others' reactions to one's suicide or imagining how death would be a relief from life's travails. In both cases, an aspect of the fantasy is to exert control, either over others' views or toward life's difficulties. The writer A. Alvarez stated, " There people ... for whom the mere idea of suicide is enough; they can continue to function efficiently and even happily provided they know they have their own, specially chosen means of escape always ready..." In her riveting 2008 memoir of bipolar disorder, Manic, Terri Cheney opened the book by stating, "People... don't understand that when you're seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there's an out--even if it's bloody, even if it's permanent--makes the pain bearable for one more day." This strategy appears to be effective for some people, but only for a while. Over longer periods, fantasizing about death leaves people more depressed and thus at higher risk for suicide, as Eddie Selby, Mike Amestis, and I recently showed in a study on violent daydreaming. A strategy geared toward increased feelings of self-control (fantasizing about the effects of one's suicide) "works" momentarily, but ultimately backfires by undermining feelings of genuine self-control in the long run.

In all, the future secretary of defense and wartime vice president[, Dick Cheney,] would receive five deferments during the Vietnam War, protecting him from service during his draft-eligible years.

Is there any weapon like Love?

It gets harder as times go by, because memory is the first casualty of manic depression. When I'm manic, all I remember is the moment. When I'm depressed, all I remember is the pain. The surrounding details are lost to me.

The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death

The memory of sustenance is a terrible thing. Far worse, I think, than actual starving. Starving just kills you. Longing can gnaw away at you forever.

please remember what’s at stake. Remember the men and women who have fought and died so that we can live under the rule of law, not the rule of men.

Happiness is fine, in its season, but happiness out of season is a sure harbinger of doom.

If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life.

People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, and his great hair. I say to them, 'How do you think I got the job?

Trust is as fragile as fairies’ wings and almost as hard to find.

I only know that my greatest victories have always been surrenders.

The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.

Few things are strong enough to survive that deadly clash of mania and depression. Certainly not love. Love is far too fragile: it is a picture window, just begging to be shattered.

Now, Doc—“ “Yes, Shiloh?” She interrupted with exaggerated sweetness, and fluttered her eyelashes. Shiloh grinned. “I dunno, I musta gone crazy there for a minute. I was actually going to try to talk you out of something. But don’t worry, I’m okay now.

The world has given me a good life since then, I won't deny it, but sometimes I hate the world, anyway. Dick Cheney, that apologist for water boarding and for too long chief preacher in the Holy Church of Whatever it Takes, got a brand-new heart while I was writing this - how about that? He lives on; other people have died.

True beauty, I realized,is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it.

There’s a very fine line, indistinguishable at times, between charismatic and crazy.

Selene," Cheney cupped my face, "if this is the beginning of a confession, let me assure you I am not naive. You're a beautiful woman, and I have little doubt you have had a lot of boyfriends during our time apart. Please feel free to NEVER tell me about any of them. And if you never utter the name Michael again, it would be much appreciated." His eyes flashed at his name.

If we do not condemn these lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct—and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.

I believe that Donald Trump’s decision to attack the lawfully certified Electoral College results and to ignore the rulings of our courts was an assault on the structural constitutional safeguards that keep us free.

So strong is the lure of power that men and women who had once seemed reasonable and responsible were suddenly willing to violate their oath to the Constitution out of political expediency and loyalty to Donald Trump.

Cheesecake. Are you shitting me? Who invented that? Probably Jesus of Nazareth. Or maybe Louis Pasteur. It makes me physically sick to think that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, yet the name of the inventor of cheesecake isn’t tattooed on Dick Cheney’s face.

The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president… except one.

Esper believed he had been fired in part because he had made it clear that he would not stand for any use of the military to contest the outcome of an election.

Donald Trump had to be impeached and removed from office. He was a clear and present danger.

Other times, we dads are presented as the “enforcer” Vice President, the Dick Cheney.

I know he [Richard] went hunting. Maybe well get lucky, and he'll shoot himself in the head. Or maybe a buddy will pull a Dick Cheney.

THIS IS THE STORY OF the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: We're not going to have a supreme court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonio Scalias and Samuel Aleatos added to this court. We're not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance. We are not going to do that. We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut. We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on. We are not going to redefine rape. We are not going to amend the United States constitution to stop gay people from getting married. We are not going to double Guantanamo. We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or Housing at the federal level. We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents. We are not vetoing the Dream Act. We are not self-deporting. We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January. We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever. We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it. We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. and we said no, last night, loudly.

Just to say evil Islamics did it, that's so lame, and we know it. We see those official close-ups on the screen. The shifty liar's look, the twelve-stepper's gleam in the eye. One look at these faces and we know they're guilty of the worst crimes we can imagine. But who's in any hurry to imagine? To make the awful connection? Any more than Germans were back in 1933, when Nazis torched Reichstag within a month of Hitler becoming chancellor. Which of course is not to suggest that Bush and his people have actually gone out and staged the events of 11 September. It would take a mind hopelessly diseased with paranoia, indeed a screamingly anti-American nutcase, even to allow to cross her mind the possibility that that terrible day would have deliberately been engineered as a pretext to impose some endless Orwellian 'war' and the emergency decrees we will soon be living under. Nah, nah, perish that thought. "But there's still always the other thing. Our yearning. Our deep need for it to be true. Somewhere, down at some shameful dark recess of the national soul, we need to feel betrayed, even guilty. As if it was us who created Bush and his gang, Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld and Feith and the rest of them--we who called down the sacred lightning of 'democracy' and then the fascist majority on the Supreme Court threw the switches, and Bush rose from the slab and began his rampage. And whatever happened then is on our ticket.

Like other aspiring autocrats, Donald Trump cannot succeed alone. He depends upon enablers and collaborators. Every American should understand what his enablers in Congress and in the leadership of the Republican Party were willing to do to help Trump seize power in the months after he lost the 2020 presidential election—and what they continue to do to this day.

Imagination is tapping into the subconscious in a form of open play. That is why art or music therapy, which encourages a person to take up brushes and paint or an instrument, and just express themselves, is so powerful.

In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution. And that oath must mean something.

Oh, the gardens of the future that we are all sowing every day!

We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.

But instability like mine needs considerable distance to pass for mere quirkiness.

Comprendí que la autentica belleza no reside en la ausencia de fealdad sino en su aceptación.

These flies were half the size of my fist. They came at you and stuck to you with a single-minded purpose you had to admire. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but we still slapped and kicked and karate-chopped ourselves until we reached an uneasy truce.

Not prayer nor Bible verse, nor scholarship nor wit, nor grant under seal nor statute law can alter the fact of villain blood. Not all his craft and guile can make him a Howard, or a Cheney, or a Fitzwilliam, a Stanley or even a Seymour: not even in an emergency.

These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished. I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. “You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!” He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’ Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.

In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution. And that oath must mean something. Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

In the cold war, the CIA was condemned by the American left for what it did. In the war on terror, the CIA was attacked by the American right for what it could not do. The charge was incompetence, leveled by such men as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Say what one may about their leadership, they knew from long experience what the reader now knows: the CIA was unable to fulfill its role as America’s intelligence service.

She is wonderful,” Cheney said a little breathlessly. “But I can see that long rides on her would be tiring. She doesn’t just walk along, does she?” “No,” Shiloh said in a low tone, his eyes alight. “She dances.” He was staring directly at Cheney, and she lowered her eyes and blushed.

The bayou certainly has a wild beauty of its own, although it is undoubtedly hostile to man,” Richard Duvall mused. “But then, many things that are quite beautiful are hostile to man.” “Like women?” Shiloh suggested.

At least when I was an adult, I had a name for what was wrong with me: manic depression. It's easier to make sense of things - even very disturbing things like sexual acting out and suicidality - when there's a big, fat label slapped on top. But as a child, I knew nothing. I had no diagnosis. All I had was a vague and gnawing awareness that I was different from other children, and that different was not good. Different must be kept hidden.

What do you mean 'warn me'?" Why did they both think I was going to claw her eyes out? The old me must've been psychotic." "I told you she has a soft spot for me." "Yeah, and I have a soft spot for tater tots, but that doesn't require me to warn people." "I think I can safely say she doesn't feel about me like you feel about tater tots," Cheney said, unsuccessfully trying to suppress his amusement. "I don't know, I really like tater tots," I mumbled. Cheney's laughter filled the room. "I stand corrected. Apparently your love for fried potato nuggets is much deeper that I gave credit.

And you know what happened next in my dream? Dick Cheney and I said the same thing at the same time: "Well, we had a Cold War to win." And then I screamed at him: "I KNEW you would say that! You ALWAYS say that!" But then, since Cheney and I made the same remark at the same time, I realized he owed me a Coke. So I said, "Jinx! You owe me a Coke!" And Vice-President Dick Cheney smiled sheepishly. *Shudder*... I don't even DRINK coke. I tastes like robot sweat.

KBR won its coveted role in Iraq while it was a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Dick Cheney ran before the 2000 presidential campaign. KBR was later spun off from Halliburton, but by then, it was well entrenched with a virtual monopoly over basic services for American troops in Iraq. At the height of the war, KBR had more than fifty thousand personnel and subcontractors working for it in Iraq, making the company’s presence in Iraq larger than that of the British Army.

In Georgia on December 1, election official Gabe Sterling held an extraordinary press conference in which he pleaded with the president personally to stop inciting threats and violence: “[S]top inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed and it’s not right.

Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections.

any official who attempted to utilize the military to overturn an election would be personally accountable for a grave attack on the republic.

Go fuck yourself!

Love energy can revolutionize any part of life. If we are open to it, we can observe the potential energy of love in everything. That is the root of optimism.

It is a testament to the sharp beauty of a life lived in extremes.

I wanted simple and sane. Barring that, I wanted nothing. I wanted numb.

she said in a voice so low it could have been wearing spike heels and still skittered under Dick Cheney’s credibility.

Burr would not be the last vice president to shoot a man, but he was a better shot than Dick Cheney,..

It was the sixties, exactly, all we wanted to do was to smoke a lot of dope and ball a lot of chicks. Vietnam, excuse me? Why would I wanna go get my ass shot off in some stinking rice paddy just so Nixon can have his four more years? Screw that, and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. All the big warmongers these days who took a pass on Vietnam, look, I'd be the last person on earth to start casting blame. Bush, Cheney, Rove, all those guys, they just did what everybody else was doing and I was right there with 'em, chicken as anybody. My problem now is how tough and gung-ho they are, all that bring it on crap, I mean, Jesus, show a little humility, people. They ought to be just as careful of your young lives as they were with their own.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

But if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024, we must do everything we can to defeat him. If Trump is on the ballot, the 2024 presidential election will not just be about inflation, or budget deficits, or national security, or any of the many critical issues we Americans normally face. We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic. As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.

McCain, the former Vietnam War POW, had won the moral victory and marched away. Cheney sliced out the only part of the bill he really cared about, and it looked as though McCain did not even know.

Separating fact and fiction in Inca history is impossible, because virtually all the sources available are Spanish accounts of stories that had already been vetted by the Inca emperors to highlight their own heroic roles. Imagine a history of modern Iraq written by Dick Cheney and based on authorized biographies of Sadam Hussein published in Arabic, and you'll get some idea of what historians face.

Editing. This never-ending maze through which I run, searching soulful nooks for the faintest shimmers of solace or escape. There is no such comfort. I tread this treacherous path of shadows, this menacing labyrinth that never stops beckoning. I'm like a woman whose soul is possessed, standing on the edge. It wants me. Calls to me. Consumes my every thought. Closing my eyes, my arms open wide. Submitting, I fall in.

We may have disagreed on pretty much everything else, but Nancy Pelosi and I saw eye to eye on the one thing that mattered more than any other: the defense of our Constitution and the preservation of our republic.

By December 1, Donald Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, had had enough of what he later called “bullshit” election claims. Barr told the Associated Press that the Department of Justice had been investigating the allegations of fraud, and “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” This made Trump so angry that he reportedly threw his lunch at a wall in the White House.

Prisons are big business and have become deeply entrenched in America’s economic and political system. Rich and powerful people, including former vice president Dick Cheney, have invested millions in private prisons.15

So I ask you tonight to join me. As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom.

The world has given me a good life since then, I won’t deny it, but sometimes I hate the world, anyway. Dick Cheney, that apologist for waterboarding and for too long chief preacher in the Holy Church of Whatever It Takes, got a brand-new heart while I was writing this—how about that? He lives on; other people have died. Talented ones like Clarence Clemons. Smart ones like Steve Jobs. Decent ones like my old friend Tom Kennedy. Mostly you get used to it. You pretty much have to.

Trump’s lies about the election had led to the violent assault on the Capitol. People had died. His ongoing attacks against the integrity of our elections were undermining our democracy, and could lead to still more violence. We had to find a way to defeat these fake stolen-election claims that had captured so much of the Republican Party. People had to hear the truth.

These were some of the same people who had protected my family when the threat we faced was from al-Qaeda terrorists. Now they were protecting me again—this time in the face of threats from our fellow citizens, mobilized to violence by an American president.

Biden did not just support the war. He served as Bush and Cheney’s Senate gatekeeper and whip, guaranteeing a majority vote for the war in the upper chamber while controlled by the opposition party. If Biden had any moral courage at all, he could have stopped that war.

According to economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who served as assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, Dick Cheney used his two terms as vice president to fill environmental agencies, including the FDA, with corporate-friendly executives. Jeffrey

People always mean well, but they don’t understand that when you’re seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there’s an out—even if it’s bloody, even if it’s permanent—makes the pain almost bearable for one more day.

It’s a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can’t doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can’t wait to start looking.

But I am scared. Everybody's scared." "You know what I mean, like scared scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin with. But with everything you've done nobody's going to doubt you." Then she made a somewhat frantic speech about a website she found that listed how certain people had avoided Vietnam. Cheney, Four education deferments, then a hardship 3-A. Limbaugh,4-F thanks to a cyst on his ass. Pat Buchanan, 4-F. Newt Gingrich, grad school deferment. Karl Rove, did not serve. Bill O'Reilly, did not serve. John Ashcroft, did not serve. Bush, AWOL from the Air National Guard, with a check mark in the "do not volunteer" box as to service overseas. "You see where I'm going with this?' "Well, yeah." "I'm just saying, those people want a war so bad, they can fight it themselves. Billy Lynn's done his part.

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress.

Later, I would learn that when the Speaker was deciding whether to appoint me, her staff pulled together a list of the 10 worst things I had ever said about her. Speaker Pelosi took one look at the list, handed it back to her staffer, and asked: “Why are you wasting my time with things that don’t matter?

Members believed Trump should be impeached, but they feared a vote for impeachment would put them—and their families—in danger. We were now entering territory where the threat of violence was affecting how members voted, preventing them from voting to impeach the president who had already unleashed violence.

Like MacMillan and the clique of teachers and the coaches who all went to the same church and barbecued at one another's houses, much of the country's small-bore civil servants were itching to do some repressing of their own. Millions of Dick Cheney wannabes swelling the ranks, enjoying their little authoritarian fiefdoms.

When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the United States, and invading and occupying their country, without their country attacking or threatening the US, become completely discredited? When will the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs and CIA torture renditions become things that even men like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will be too embarrassed to defend? Australian/British journalist John Pilger has noted that in George Orwell’s 1984 ‘three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Today’s slogan, war on terrorism, also reverses meaning. The war is terrorism.

It's important to bear in mind that I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrentless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineer a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 1000,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

And by lying about how close the insurgents had come to harming Cheney, the U.S. military sank deeper into a pattern of deceiving the public about many facets of the war, from discrete events to the big picture. What began as selective, self-serving disclosures hardened into willful distortions and, eventually, flat-out fabrications.

There was at least one exception to this description of the [Energy Task Force] papers as uninteresting. One document later obtained by Judicial Watch showed that Cheney's energy task force was studying Iraqi oil fields, and the companies that had drilling rights on them, as early as March 2001, two years before the invasion of Iraq.

we see cardiac diastolic dysfunction in almost every case... there are patients whose diastolic dysfunction is so low/poor that they would fit well into a cardiac ward awaiting transplant... The whole idea that you can take a disease like this [M.E./Chronic Fatigue Syndrome] and exercise your way to health is foolishness. It is insane.

There’s a soft totalitarianism coming into play,” Michael Steele professed. He spent two years leading the GOP as chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Modern-day conservatism meant lower taxes, less government, free markets. What we are witnessing now is a deconstruction of that.… I think the rational side is losing, if not having already lost. “For a party that’s all sensitive about the Left canceling them, they do a pretty good job of canceling their own,” he added. “That’s why the hammer came down so hard on Liz Cheney—to send a message of fear. No one wants to be targeted the way she’s been targeted, which makes this period we are in perhaps the most dangerous.

According to James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans, once a year in the 1980s, the Reagan administration flew Cheney to a secret bunker to practice rebuilding the government if the Soviets destroyed Washington. Cheney's role, Mann reported, was to use his White House chief of staff experience to run the government in the name of any surviving cabinet member who made it to the bunker. The Reagan plan ignored the Presidential Succession Act, a 1947 law that put two top congressional leaders higher in the line of succession than cabinet secretaries. The program also made no plan for reconstituting Congress, because "it would be easier to operate without them," a participant told Mann.

Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us. Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP. Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber. And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!

those safeguards require that men and women of goodwill—Americans elected to positions of public trust—put their duty to the Constitution

a free society that abandons the truth—that abandons the rule of law—cannot remain free.

Ronald Reagan spoke of a nation that was “hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair.

I knew from my time overseas, a free society that abandons the truth—that abandons the rule of law—cannot remain free.

He was quite possibly the least-qualified nominee to become secretary of defense since the position was created in 1947.

As I sat back down, Raskin was still opposite me, looking down at his phone. “Liz,” he said, “there is a Confederate flag flying inside the United States Capitol.

The simple conclusion: Congress does not have the authority to undo an election by refusing to count state-certified electoral votes. Period.

That is a crucial point: A significant number of House Republicans thought they could ignore the Electoral College result and find a way to reinstall Trump as president.

Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede a political campaign that he had resoundingly lost was un-American and dishonorable, and it had devastating consequences for our country.

which was instead filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Chris Krebs called the event “the most dangerous 1 hour 45 minutes of television in American history.

The whole idea that you can take a disease like this and exercise your way to health is foolishness. It is insane.

Madison was also developing another idea: that the absence of clashing ideas and competing interests leads to overreaching and corruption.

It may have sounded like no to a glass of wine, but in truth it was no to a great many things. And yes to a great many more.

Gök gürültüsü iyidir, etkileyicidir ama asıl iş gören şimşektir" Mark Twain

I'm [Paul O'Neill] an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me.

Bridges are only kindling, I thought. I decided to torch this one. I

A man always has two reasons for the things he does—a good one and the real one.

Records, like the little children of long ago, only speak when they are spoken to, and they will not talk to strangers.

Your mustard seed is enough.

We have guaranteed freedom, security, and peace for a larger share of humanity than has any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been.

His eyes narrowed. “Is this where the elephants come in? Because there was something about elephants in that French book.

Back in the ‘80s when I was being used to lay the groundwork for NAFTA10, I understood the close relationship between Salinas, Cheney and Bush, Sr. It was pre-determined years in advance that Salinas would take the office of President of Mexico while Bush became President of the US and Brian Mulroney Prime Minister of Canada so the three could usher in NAFTA.

The boar held a VCR reote control and cackled maliciously as he watched a video of U.S. politicians grinning with their one-time budy Saddam--Dick Cheney, Gulf War-era Secretary of State James Baker, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, to the tune of "Taking Care of Business." And then the viewers saw themselves in a mirror emblazoned with the words "You are a witness.

I have tremendous affection and admiration for many of you, most of you, in this room. I know that we all came to Washington to do important work for the nation. History has chosen every single one of us, and history has put us all here together at this moment of challenge for the country. Our nation needs this Republican Party as a strong party based on truth so that we can shape the future. To do that, we must be true to our principles and to the Constitution. We cannot let the former president drag us backward and make us complicit in his efforts to unravel our democracy.

When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he attempted to overturn the results in order to seize power illegally and remain in office. When the violent mob he had mobilized laid siege to our Capitol, he watched the attack on television and refused for more than three hours to tell the rioters to leave. Donald Trump’s actions violated the law and the oath he swore to the Constitution.

It was one thing to say the president's politically appointed lawyers green-lighted domestic surveillance. It was another to claim a go-ahead from career civil servants, unbeholden to the White House.

One afternoon, I called two constituents who had long been supporters of mine. They lived in different parts of Wyoming and didn’t really know each other, but they had obviously been reading the same dangerous garbage online. They both began their separate calls with me asking whether I was aware that the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court was operating a child sex-trafficking ring in his basement.

Kevin also said something that everyone who was present on January 6 already knew: “Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There’s absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so.

Every one of us—Republican, Democrat, Independent—must work and vote together to ensure that Donald Trump and those who have appeased, enabled, and collaborated with him are defeated. This is the cause of our time.

Our first post-election call of 2020 was at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6. Following our opening prayer, we moved into leadership reports, where Kevin, Republican Whip Steve Scalise, and I briefed the membership.

Having told the truth for years as a first-rate reporter, Jason Leopold now comes completely clean about himself and also sheds light on his imperiled profession. A riveting account of just how hard the truth can be.

A system that attempted to extinguish the human spirit, innovation, freedom, and individualism could not survive. A governing theory that required force to keep its citizens under its control would eventually crumble.

I never performed for George W. Bush, and wouldn’t have. I disliked the man intensely. I thought he was a dunderhead, without intellect. And his father made certain that Dick Cheney was chosen as his VP. In my opinion Cheney’s one of the most evil men on the planet. Anyone who would vote against every environmental and equal-rights issue, as well as voting to keep Nelson Mandela in prison, is not of this earth and doesn’t deserve my support.

Tanınmış bir editör ve mühendis olan Thomas Commerfold Martin bir keresinde Tesla'nın doğduğu köyü Hırvatistan haritasında bulamayan Edison'un Tesla'ya ciddi ciddi hayatında hiç insan eti yiyip yemediğini sorduğunu anlatır.

Around 9:30 a.m., Secret Service agent Jimmy Scott told Cheney he needed to evacuate. Without giving the vice president a moment to consider, Scott and other agents hustled him out. “He put his hand on my shoulder and grabbed me by the back of my belt and propelled me out the door,” Cheney recalled. In a moment of reflex, and not wanting to be left without reading material wherever he was going, Cheney grabbed a copy of The Economist off his table on the way out.

Take George W. Bush: He was an unpopular two-term president. Three times, his approval rating dropped to 25 percent. [To be fair, he also had the highest approval rating of all time, very briefly. But that was immediately after 9/11 — and in the wake of domestic terrorism, a well-dressed mannequin’s approval rating might have hovered around 50.] During his last two years in office, he was hammered nonstop, periodically classified as the worst U.S. president since Ulysses Grant or James Buchanan. Yet was Bush a villain? No. He was not. He was never, ever calculating. He didn’t know the most (which is not to say he was dumb), and he didn’t care the least (which is not to say he was a paragon of empathy). He was just the guy who ended up with the job. The villain of his administration ended up being Vice President Dick Cheney, a frosty puppet master who radically expanded the powers of the presidency even though he was not the president.

Trump’s erratic behavior with respect to the NDAA and the Covid relief package came against the backdrop of his refusal to concede the election and his replacement of the top civilian leadership at the Pentagon with inexperienced loyalists.

up to us in our time to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.

The answer was Stellar Wind. The NSA would eavesdrop freely against Americans and aliens in the United States without probable cause or search warrants. It would mine and assay the electronic records of millions of telephone conversations—both callers and receivers—and the subject lines of e-mails, including names and Internet addresses. Then it would send the refined intelligence to the Bureau for action. Stellar Wind resurrected Cold War tactics with twenty-first-century technology. It let the FBI work with the NSA outside of the limits of the law. As Cheney knew from his days at the White House in the wake of Watergate, the NSA and the FBI had worked that way up until 1972, when the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed warrantless wiretaps. Stellar Wind blew past the Supreme Court on the authority of a dubious opinion sent to the White House the week that the Patriot Act became law. It came from John Yoo, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo wrote that the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures did not apply to military operations in the United States. The NSA was a military agency; Congress had authorized Bush to use military force; therefore he had the power to use the NSA against anyone anywhere in America. The president was “free from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment,” Yoo wrote. So the FBI would be free as well.

In Panama, I knew Noriega himself was the object of controversy. The "arms deal" was the final stage of Operation Carrier Pigeon where the planes were to wait in Saudi Arabia until all bank transactions were cleared and the load was ready for disbursement. Saudi Arabian King Fahd would then fund the Contras via Noriega for Reagan after all evidences had been properly covered up -- just as he had done in Afghanistan. After the shipment, there would be no further deals through Noriega involving Fahd, because Noriega could no longer be trusted. Besides, Fahd had increased diplomatic relations with Mexico for covert operations, and Iran-Contra was just beginning to heat up. Noriega did not seem to be upset by the news of losing Saudi Arabian business, although he was somber and took some time to respond. His translator was working over some complex computer equipment after I delivered the message. I left Noriega's yacht with John and a brief message for Dick Cheney at the Pentagon.

President Obama has diminished American power and retreated from the field of battle, fueling rising threats against our nation. He has pursued a foreign policy built on appeasing our adversaries, abandoning our allies, and apologizing for America.

Thin to me meant more than pretty. It meant disciplined, empowered, in control: all the attributes I secretly knew I lacked. But mostly, the illusion of a sound and healthy body was essential camouflage. I needed it to hide the evidence of an unsound mind.

Video shows the mob taunting Capitol Police officers standing between them and the east doors. Rioters were chanting “F*ck the Blue!” while others were striking at the glass in the doors with flagpoles and helmets and whatever else they had to try to break through.

The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.

In these volatile times, many Americans were realizing ‘elections’ were appointed and the subject was a focus of talk radio. What did this say about Salinas? That he not only was a proven traitor to his country, he was a traitor to his brother with whom I knew he was in the drug business12, and a traitor to the world. What did this say about Cheney? That if US political crimes against humanity and/or the environment were occurring, he was in the loop giving orders while hiding behind his corporate interests such as Halliburton.

Although Chris Miller had briefly been placed in charge of the National Counterterrorism Center, he had never managed anything close to the scale of DOD. He was quite possibly the least-qualified nominee to become secretary of defense since the position was created in 1947.

No nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.

By the seventh year of the Bush-Cheney presidency, Bush had attached signing statements to about 150 bills enacted since he took office, challenging the constitutionality of well over 1,100 separate sections in the legislation. By contrast, all previous presidents in American history combined had used signing statements to challenge the constitutionality of about 600 sections of bills, according to historical data compiled by Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who was one of the first to study signing statements.

When we had a presentation on recent polling results, I asked about Trump’s favorability numbers among independent voters. I didn’t get a direct answer. Any discussion of Trump that could be perceived as negative in any way was clearly to be avoided. Only praise could be offered.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect,” Madison told Bradford, writing with the authority of a man who knew firsthand the price of being bound to a received viewpoint—and the liberation of breaking free.

Tesla, at least, seemed perfectly satisfied with what he had achieved in Colorado. He had made lightning dance at his command; he had used the whole Earth as a piece of laboratory equipment; and he had received messages from the stars. Now he was in a hurry to get on with the future.

Since January 6, we had met privately several times in a town house near Capitol Hill, along with a small group of experts on authoritarianism and the rise of antidemocratic movements. We agreed that the threat posed by Donald Trump might well imperil the existence of American democracy.

The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide ‘These are the lies we tell today.’ No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they’ve chosen to live their lives. It’s a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama a saint. They know communism was a phony threat cooked up by right-wing cranks as a way to leverage power to the executive. They know Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, the response to Katrina was fucked up, torture never works, and mad Vietnam sniper Carl Hitchcock killed the saintly peace demonstrators. Cheney’s a devil, Biden’s a genius. Soft power good,

Congress has never since effectively asserted itself to stop a president with a bead on war. It was true of George Herbert Walker Bush. It was true of Bill Clinton. And by September 11, 2001, even if there had been real resistance to Vice President Cheney and President George W. Bush starting the next war (or two), there were no institutional barriers strong enough to have realistically stopped them. By 9/11, the war-making authority in the United States had become, for all intents and purposes, uncontested and unilateral: one man’s decision to make. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Donald Trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other American. And he was told this over and over again. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion.

The next day, Phil, the kids, and I went to my parents’ house for a New Year’s Day lunch. As we were leaving, my father came outside to the driveway. He walked around to the passenger side of my car and gave me a hug. Then he looked at me and with steel in his voice said, “Defend the republic, daughter.” “I will, Dad,” I said. “Always.

I also wanted to go to the Senate side of the Capitol to check on something that was personal to me. The hallways outside the Senate chamber are lined with busts of America’s past vice presidents, each of whom also served as president of the Senate. My father’s bust stood outside Leader McConnell’s office. I wanted to see if it had been damaged or destroyed. As we neared the door to the Senate majority leader’s office, we noticed a group of reporters gathered there. I didn’t want to attract attention, so I stayed back while Kara walked ahead to check on my dad’s bust. “It’s fine,” she reported. “Not damaged at all.” I wondered if we would be able to say the same about our republic.

Which part of the statement do you have a problem with, Louie?” I asked. “Surely you don’t disagree with the part that says America is governed by the rule of law, or the part that says claims of widespread criminality must be backed up by evidence, or the part that says the president is obligated to respect the sanctity of our election process?

When it was Jim Jordan’s turn to speak, the Ohio congressman—perhaps Trump’s closest ally in the House—was dismissive of the discussion about the legal process for challenges and recounts. Jordan was not interested in understanding or discussing the rules. He didn’t seem to think the rules mattered. “The only thing that matters,” Jordan said, “is winning.

A longtime, well-respected Republican election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, explained what the scores of lawsuits had concluded—that Trump was wrong. Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including 10 appointed by President Trump himself, and at least 24 elected or appointed Republican state judges dismissed Trump’s claims. As Ginsberg pointed out, dozens of courts had analyzed the underlying factual allegations and ruled against Trump and his allies: In all the cases that were brought—I have looked at the more than 60 that include more than 180 counts… the simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case.… And in no instance did a court find that the charges of fraud were real.

Hey! look at us We're digging and digging Into stubborn, ancient earth; We're discovering Where we came from, and how we came. "but where are you going?" Hey! look at us We're learning and learning Into stubborn laws Of nature and space And non-nature and non-space; We're discovering All there is to know. "but where are you going?" Hey! look at us We're planning and planning Into stubborn years Of education and training And hopes and dreams; We're discovering How not to waste any time. "but where are you going?" Hey! look at us We're shiny and bright And clever and sophisticated And witty and well-read; We're discovering How to really fill up This old life. "but where are you going?" where? "Yes; where?

The threat continues. The outcome now is in the hands of the American people and our system of justice. The methods Donald Trump is using to undermine our democracy are not unique to him. I saw authoritarian leaders use many of these same tactics in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and across the Middle East when I was working for the US State Department. History

When Libya fought against the Italian occupation, all the Arabs supported the Libyan mujahideen. We Arabs never occupied any country. Well, we occupied Andalusia unjustly, and they drove us out, but since then, we Arabs have not occupied any country. It is our countries that are occupied. Palestine is occupied, Iraq is occupied, and as for the UAE islands... It is not in the best interest of the Arabs for hostility to develop between them and Iran, Turkey, or any of these nations. By no means is it in our interest to turn Iran against us. If there really is a problem, we should decide here to refer this issue to the international court of Justice. This is the proper venue for the resolution of such problems. We should decide to refer the issue of the disputed UAE islands to the International Court of Justice, and we should accept whatever it rules. One time you say this is occupied Arab land, and then you say... This is not clear, and it causes confusion. 80% of the people of the Gulf are Iranians. The ruling families are Arab, but the rest are Iranian. The entire people is Iranian. This is a mess. Iran cannot be avoided. Iran is a Muslim neighbour, and it is not in our interes to become enemies. What is the reason for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, and for killing of one million Iraqis? Let our American friends answer this question: Why Iraq? What is the reason? Is Bin Laden an Iraqi? No he is not. Were those who attacked New York Iraqis? No, they were not. were those who attacked the Pentagon Iraqis? No, they were not. Were there WMDs in Iraq? No, there were not. Even if iraq did have WMDs - Pakistan and India have nuclear bombs, and so do China, Russia, Britain, France and America. Should all these countries be destroyed? Fine, let's destroy all the countries that have WMDs. Along comes a foreign power, occupies an Arab country, and hangs its president, and we all sit on the sidelines, laughing. Why didn't they investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein? How can a POW be hanged - a president of an Arab country and a member of the Arab League no less! I'm not talking about the policies of Saddam Hussein, or the disagreements we had with him. We all had poitlical disagreements with him and we have such disagreements among ourselves here. We share nothing, beyond this hall. Why won't there be an investigation into the killing of Saddam Hussein? An entire Arab leadership was executed by hanging, yet we sit on the sidelines. Why? Any one of you might be next. Yes. America fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini. He was their friend. Cheney was a friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary at the time Iraq was destroyed, was a close friend of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, they sold him out and hanged him. You are friends of America - let's say that ''we'' are, not ''you'' - but one of these days, America may hang us. Brother 'Amr Musa has an idea which he is enthusiastic. He mentioned it in his report. He says that the Arabs have the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and that there should be an Arab nuclear program. The Arabs have this right. They even have the right to have the right to have a nuclear program for other... But Allah prevails... But who are those Arabs whom you say should have united nuclear program? We are the enemies of one another, I'm sad to say. We all hate one another, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one another, and we conspire against one another. Our intelligence agencies conspire against one another, instead of defending us against the enemy. We are the enemies of one another, and an Arab's enemy is another Arab's friend.

At the close of our June 16 hearing, Judge Luttig described the prevailing state of affairs this way: “Donald Trump and his allies… are a clear and present danger to American democracy.” And as Judge Carter had concluded: “President Trump’s pressure campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with Vice President Mike Pence. It targeted every tier of federal and state elected officials.

recalled what Jordan had said at our last Republican Conference meeting on January 5: He had made a strident speech about the constitutional text governing presidential elections, based entirely on the wrong provision of the Constitution. It had been embarrassing. I also remembered that Jim had been at the December 21 White House meeting where Donald Trump’s plans for January 6 were discussed.

We walked into the House chamber and took two seats in the front row on the Republican side. As we sat down, my dad looked over his shoulder at row after row after row of empty seats. We were the only Republicans there. Shaking his head, he said to me, “It’s one thing to hear about what’s happening in our party, but to see it, like this, in such stark terms…” His voice trailed off. It was a profoundly sad moment.

The first port of call was the Americans. In 1974, an initial agreement was reached by which the US agreed to sell two reactors, as well as enriched uranium, to Iran. The scope of the arrangement was expanded further in 1975, when a $15 billion trade deal was agreed between the two countries, which included provision for Iran to purchase eight reactors from the United States at a fixed price of $6.4 billion.55 The following year, President Ford approved a deal that allowed Iran to buy and operate a US-built system that included a reprocessing facility that could extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel, and therefore enable Teheran to operate a ‘nuclear fuel cycle’. President Ford’s Chief of Staff had no hesitation in approving this sale: in the 1970s, Dick Cheney did not find it difficult to ‘figure out’ what Iran’s motivations were.

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind...Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy. [...] I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode.

Sometimes after I talked through the facts of the 2020 election—including how the courts ruled and what the judges said—people I met with were willing to reconsider their embrace of Trump’s lies. Others remained defiant and angry. It can be tough to learn that you’ve been fooled, tricked by those you trusted. That you let yourself be deceived. The natural reaction is denial, and a refusal to listen to anything to the contrary.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world—and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own Nation.

It was clear, though, that no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party. Throughout the 18 months of our work, certain Republican House members and senators who knew better elected to play to that audience anyway. Senator Tom Cotton, for example, went on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show at one point and disparaged the hearings as a partisan exercise—and therefore inconsistent with “Anglo-American jurisprudence.

Despite the brutal violence, destruction, and death at the Capitol, despite the fact that Donald Trump’s lies—the same lies Republicans were telling to justify the objections—had mobilized the mob and caused the attack, McCarthy was going to let the travesty go on. Kevin McCarthy lacked the courage and the honor to abide by his oath to the Constitution. This wasn’t leadership. It was cowardice, and it was craven. I wanted no part of it. I got up and walked out of the House chamber.

IN THE UNITED STATES, OUR courts adjudicate claims of election fraud. Elections can’t be overturned based merely on accusations, or because someone says they believe there has been fraud. Sufficient evidence is required, and the fraud must have occurred on a scale that could change the result. That’s the rule of law. If he had a basis, Donald Trump had the right to bring election challenges in court. What neither he nor any other candidate has the right to do is ignore the rulings of those courts.

The resolution reflected a political party that had lost its principles and, frankly, seemed to be led by morons. This was my reply: The leaders of the Republican Party have made themselves willing hostages to a man who admits he tried to overturn a presidential election and suggests he would pardon Jan. 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy. I’m a Constitutional conservative, and I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump. History will be their judge. RNC

The conservative policies and principles that had once defined what it meant to be a Republican were being replaced by complete allegiance to one man—who wasn’t actually a conservative. One of the clearest manifestations of this was the lack of any platform for the Republican Party in 2020. In place of the extensive policy document that each party normally adopts every four years, the Republican Party adopted a resolution that simply affirmed, “The Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” I talked to Condoleezza Rice in the spring of 2021. I had served as deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East when Condi was secretary of state, and I’d known her since she served on the National Security Council staff during George H. W. Bush’s administration. She was an expert on the Soviet Union and a student of history. We discussed the cult of personality that had captured our party. This was something America had never experienced before. I asked Condi if she could think of any historic examples of countries successfully throwing off cults of personality. “Not without great violence and upheaval,” she said.

Whatever our ex-president claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. But the president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his vice president.… We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.

New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It's Oscar time again, which means two things: (1) I've got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We're too liberal; we're out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products--movies---that people all over the world still want to buy. Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska. What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sony Bono? Fred Thompson? And let'snot forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That's right, Dick Cheney. I'm not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they're almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derrick with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be "Two Die in Car Bombing." The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liebral stars that the right is always demonizing--Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy--they're just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren't begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do...nothing. We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: The people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys. So please don't hat eon us. And please don't ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we're just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.

In Detroit, Dr. Forest Dodrill, a surgeon at Wayne State University, collaborated with engineers at General Motors Research to develop a mechanical pump capable of supporting the circulation of an adult. The resulting stainless-steel and glass device, the Dodrill-GMR mechanical heart pump, had multiple cylinders from which blood circulated and, perhaps not surprisingly, bore an uncanny resemblance to a Cadillac V-12 automobile engine. The device was intended to temporarily replace either the right or left ventricle and was first used in 1952 to support a patient for fifty minutes while Dr. Dodrill repaired a mitral valve.

-Hola -dijo- soy Jesucristo. Pero puedes llamarme Jesús, o Señor, si lo prefieres. -¿Señor? -pregunté, tratando torpemente de ser graciosa. Es decir, aquello tenia que ser una broma. Jesucristo en un hospital psiquiátrico... Menudo tópico. -Señor Dios, por supuesto -respondió, frunciendo el ceño con desconcierto- ¿Acaso eres judía? En ese caso, no hay problema, puedes decirme Cristo. -No, soy católica, he sido bautizada y educada según la religión. -Entonces, tendrías que haberte arrodillado al entrar -me amonestó, y se apresuró a hacer en el aire la señal de la cruz- Por esta vez, te perdono. Pero que no vuelva a ocurrir -dijo. Después me miró con esos ojos de donde parecían surgir dos rayos láser y se me heló el corazón. Me pregunté si era posible que Jesús aun estuviera vivo y que hubiera terminado en ese lugar. La linea que separa el carisma de la locura suele ser muy fina.

Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.

Lord, I intend to be aware today of the presence of your divine being in every other living being that I encounter. I intend to center my spirit in alignment with the spirit of Love before I commence my day. I intend to ground my being in your source, Universal Intentional Love Energy, recognizing my role as a cell in the body of the universe. I intend to be loving and compassionate with every person I encounter today, observing their activities in the context of their growth, and not judging their decisions as good or bad. I intend not to attempt to blame or shame other people, but rather to encourage and support. I intend to be creative today, emulating the divine creative essence in my life. I intend to be joyful today, aware of what good things I have, picking up the scent of wonder, and breathing in the good things with thanks and appreciation. I intend to reject any opinion of other people offered which negatively affects my ability to achieve the above goals. I am blessed and will be grateful for the presence of love in my life. I will grow today, learning more and applying love to the best of my ability.

It was discussed and decided that fear would be perpetuated globally in order that focus would stay on the negative rather than allow for soul expression to positively emerge. As people became more fearful and compliant, capacity for free thought and soul expression would diminish. There is a distinct inability to exert soul expression under mind control, and evolution of the human spirit would diminish along with freedom of thought when bombarded with constant negative terrors. Whether Bush and Cheney deliberately planned to raise a collective fear over collective conscious love is doubtful. They did not think, speak, or act in those terms. Instead, they knew that information control gave them power over people, and they were hell-bent to perpetuate it at all costs. Cheney, Bush, and other global elite ushering in the New World Order totally believed in the plan mapped out by artificial intelligence. They were allowing technology to dictate global control. “Life is like a video game,” Bush once told me at the rural multi-million dollar Lampe, Missouri CIA mind control training camp complex designed for Black Ops Special Forces where torture and virtual reality technologies were used. “Since I have access to the technological source of the plans, I dictate the rules of the game.” The rules of the game demanded instantaneous response with no time to consciously think and critically analyze. Constant conscious disruption of thought through television’s burst of light flashes, harmonics, and subconscious subliminals diminished continuity of conscious thought anyway, creating a deficit of attention that could easily be refocused into video game format. DARPA’s artificial intelligence was reliant on secrecy, and a terrifying cover for reality was chosen to divert people from the simple truth. Since people perceive aliens as being physical like them, it was decided that the technological reality could be disguised according to preconceptions. Through generations of genetic encoding dating back to the beginning of man, serpents incite an innate autogenic response system in humans to “freeze” in terror. George Bush was excited at the prospects of diverting people from truth by fear through perpetuating lizard-like serpent alien misconceptions. “People fear what they don’t know anyway. By compounding that fear with autogenic fear response, they won’t want to look into Pandora’s Box.” Through deliberate generation of fear; suppression of facts under the 1947 National Security Act; Bush’s stint as CIA director during Ford’s Administration; the Warren Commission’s whitewash of the Kennedy Assassination; secrecy artificially ensured by mind control particularly concerning DARPA, HAARP, Roswell, Montauk, etc; and with people’s fluidity of conscious thought rapidly diminishing; the secret government embraced the proverbial ‘absolute power that corrupts absolutely.’ According to New World Order plans being discussed at the Grove, plans for reducing the earth’s population was a high priority. Mass genocide of so-called “undesirables” through the proliferation of AIDS4 was high on Bush’s agenda. “We’ll annihilate the niggers at their source, beginning in South and East Africa and Haiti5.” Having heard Bush say those words is by far one of the most torturous things I ever endured. Equally as torturous to my being were the discussions on genetic engineering, human cloning, and depletion of earth’s natural resources for profit. Cheney remarked that no one would be able to think to stop technology’s plan. “I’ll destroy the planet first,” Bush had vowed.