Quote of the Day

"I think he's a traitor,” --

Former vice-president Dick Cheney, on NSA leaker Edward Snowden

It's not that I don't want to hear from Dick Cheney on whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

It's not even that I don't want to hear from Dick Cheney about anyone who he might happen to consider a traitor.

It's also not that I don't want to hear from Dick Cheney about who he thinks might be a great and noble American patriot.

I just don't want to hear about anything from Dick Cheney. 

Dick Cheney did so much harm and helped divide the nation, that any words emanating from his body are meaningless to me.  The man left office with a shocking 13% approval rating.  It's not unthinkable that most of those disapproved of him, but being staunch Republicans didn't want to say anything bad about any Republican to a pollster.  So, perhaps in reality just six percent of Americans truly approve of him.  And nothing that's occurred since he left office has changed that and shown him to be right about anything.  As a friend of mine once said in another context, I have hard time believing that Dick Cheney and I come from the same lifeforce.

Time tends to pass quickly for many people, and the distance of just a few years often blocks out the past.  So, for those who have forgotten or blocked it out, The Atlantic has a wonderful article here about "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney."

In case you think is a pointed, but softly-critical general-publication article critical of the former Republican vice-president, the Conclusion of the piece begins this way: 

"Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decisionmaking, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush."

And ends --

"Thus his unpopularity circa 2008, when he left office.

"Good riddance."