Liz Cheney Denounces Trump's "Utter Moral Failure"

 

From the YouTube description:

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., spoke on Dec. 19 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its final findings to the public.

She blasted former President Donald Trump’s actions in office on the day of the Jan. 6 attack. Cheney referenced testimony from Trump administration officials collected by the committee that said the former president watched the riot on television from inside the White House without calling on his supporters to stop.

“This was an utter moral failure and a clear dereliction of duty,” she said. “No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office.”

Cheney said Jan. 6 was the first time an American president “refused his constitutional duty” to transfer power peacefully.

“The committee recognizes that our work has only begun,” she said. “It's only the initial step in addressing President Trump's effort to remain in office illegally.”

The Jan. 6 committee will release its full report later this week as the panel wraps up its work.

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Robert Reich: Liz Cheney and the Future of the Republican Party

UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor
during President Clinton's first term, 1993-1997.

I must say, it is always gratifying to your Head Trucker when he sees that leading journalists and commentators have arrived at the same conclusions as he. An excerpt from Robert Reich's syndicated column this week: 

I expect that Cheney will run for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. If Trump is still alive and coherent, and most Republican voters are still deluded by him, she will lose. I hope she then runs as a third-party candidate for a new Republican Party that represents the best values of the old GOP — one that I recall from when Dwight Eisenhower was president. 

My father was a Republican. So was my grandfather. The first administration I joined in Washington was Gerald Ford’s. One of my dearest friends is Alan Simpson, former senator from Wyoming. 

But since Ronald Reagan became president, I’ve watched the Republican Party turn from a governing institution into a crazed cult. It is not just bent on returning America to what it was before the New Deal. It is now intent on turning America into an authoritarian nation. It represents a clear and present danger to the future of the United States and the world. 

I have disagreed with Liz Cheney on almost all the substantive issues she has voted on while in Congress. But on the transcendent issue of democracy — the foundation on which all other issues depend — I salute her leadership, her dedication, and her commitment. And I grieve for the Republican Party that has lost her and lost what’s left of its moral authority.

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Liz Cheney: "Let Us Stand Together"

Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney lost her primary battle yesterday to a Trumpist, but her concession speech will no doubt live in history.  After stating that she loves her country more than her party, she ended with a stirring call for Democrats, Republicans, and independents to join together to defend American democracy and the rule of law.  

“I have said since Jan. 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office — and I mean it,” Cheney said.  She is a true patriot - and I will tell you frankly that if she ran for President, I would not hesitate to vote for her, if the Democrats had nothing better to offer.  Somebody has got to stop the madness before it is too late.

I wondered in a recent post why no one is leading a charge against the dark forces now threatening to submerge the nation in a fascist dictatorship.  Perhaps that turning point is here.

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Dick Cheney Condemns Lying Coward: "He Knows It"

I never expected to post a video from Dick Cheney on the Blue Truck, but I agree with every word he says here: 

 

I commend Mr. Cheney for speaking the truth so plainly - even though his hands are not clean - and I very much admire his daughter Liz for putting the whole story of Trump's failed coup on record. 

But the Republicans are far gone. They are hellbent on turning the United States into a fascist dictatorship, one state at a time, and are nearly there already in Texas, Florida, and other places. But what can be done to stop them? 

Where are the voices of outrage and oh-hell-no from the Democratic side? Where are the good guys in the white hats riding into town to stop the crooks from terrorizing the citizenry and burning down the place?  

The thug party has a plan and a playbook they've been working on for years, step by step, to pack the Congress, the courts, the state houses with their henchmen, even down to the cellular level of county commissions and school boards.  What exactly are the Democrats doing to stop this collapse of democracy besides sipping their lattes and playing with themselves?  No, really, tell me -- I'd like to know.

Edging with Russia and China doesn't count.

Maybe I'm just out of the loop - I don't watch TV news and I'm not on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe there is a peaceful, patriotic movement arising to defeat all the lies with truth, and dictatorship with democracy . . . maybe millions are even now being enlisted in a righteous crusade to restore our country to what it was meant to be: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 

(If that's not too racist/misogynistic/transphobic/culturally insensitive/too many carbs/contains nuts/disturbing/triggering/ polluting/fattening/uncool/something only boomers do.)

But all I hear are crickets.

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Shame on You, Pete

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia

 

Some time ago, your Head Trucker concluded that the only person left in the Administration with good sense was Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation (who is young enough to be my son).  But now I see I was mistaken.

My truckbuddies will have already read about Buttigieg's defense of the protesters outside the restaurant where Justice Kavanagh was dining the other day, citing their First Amendment rights.

Now I have no high regard at all for Kavanagh and the other Trumpists who voted to overturn Roe - and by direct and indirect statements, threatened also to undo the whole concept of a constitutional right to privacy that has been settled law for half a century, and which underpins many other rights that have come to be accepted as normative - like the right to contraception, and to same-sex marriage, to name but two.

It was a nasty thing those five justices did, who voted to overturn Roe and have precipitated us all into a constitutional crisis whose full extent and effects have yet to be seen.

Nevertheless, no matter how much I despise a public official's acts, I cannot endorse hounding and harassing him in the ordinary course of private life - whether at home or in a restaurant or store.  This is a repugnant thing, and I will give you three good reasons why:

1.  It violates the Golden Rule - often summarized as "Do as you would be done by."  Although it was stated by Christ, it is not an exclusively Christian rule; in fact, it appears in the same or very similar form in the teachings of just about every religion around the world, and even among primitive tribes without a set of scriptures.  Even oh-so-modern atheists are sometimes heard mouthing it.

2.  But if course, if you don't give a flip for anything even remotely connected to religion, well then, surely you must consider an invasion of privacy to be at the very least a violation of the good manners you learned at your mother's knee.  What's that, you say?  Free speech trumps good manners?   Well, I can only reply that my mother also taught me that Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right.  Free speech is not the only right, and it does not justify doing anything you feel like doing, to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

And how do you justify disturbing the peace - a crime - of the other people in the neighborhood, the restaurant, the store?  Perhaps you will say that the end justifies the means - a favorite line of dictators.  But just exactly what good result will come of your disturbance?  What exactly will it accomplish?

3.  And if all that rings no bell with you, how about this:  if it's just fine and dandy to harass the hell out of people at their homes and in restaurants, why then, what's sauce for the goose is certainly sauce for the gander, is it not?  This nasty behavior invites retaliation in kind.  Suppose a crowd gathered outside the Buttigieg home, or around the place where Pete and his husband were dining, shouting ugly words and carrying signs - would you like to see that happen?  Say what?  Oh, you wouldn't?

Well, I guarantee you it will be happening if you and Pete and the rest of the good liberal folks don't wake up and stop this stupidity.  It's a great way to spark that civil war we have all heard rumors of.

I've warned about this kind of stupidity before.

Shame on you, Pete.  I thought you were a bigger, better, wiser man.  Now I don't see anyone under 80 on the Democratic side to admire.  You were my last hope.  

The Democratic Party that I knew is changing beyond recognition and dwindling rapidly into insipid uselessness - a cake left out in the rain.  It makes me ill to see what is happening to my party and to my country, the steady erosion of common decency, the fragmentation of society, the descent into madness.  I really hope I don't live to see the final act of this tragedy.

My hat is off to the valiant Liz Cheney, though - one of the few Republicans left with moral character and BALLS.

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