4 November—Dick Cheney died yesterday at 84. While he was a lousy marksman and may not have been everybody’s favorite politician, he redeemed himself in 2008 when, as vice president, he advocated—albeit in vain—for Ukraine’s membership in NATO and again in 2022 when he told it like it is about Donald Trump:

“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it. He knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know.”

* * * * * * *

Will Rogers was born on this day in 1879 and died on 15 August 1935 when his Lockheed Orion-Explorer airplane, piloted by Wiley Post, crashed shortly after takeoff in Alaska. Commonly called a humorist, he was actually a perceptive, insightful observer and commentator on politics, business, human nature, life, and reality in general. For instance:

It’s a tough life, this thing of being President and trying to please everybody. Well not exactly everybody but enough to re-elect.

You know an awful lot of folks are predicting the president’s downfall, not only predicting but praying.

There is very little dignity, very little sportsmanship, or very little anything in politics, only “get the job and hold it.”

Business rises above politics in this country.

​I love a dog, he does nothing for political reasons.

I don’t belong to any organized political faith. I am a Democrat.

Now which is the narrowest, religious intolerance or political intolerance?

If we could just send the same bunch of men to Washington for the good of the nation, and not for political reasons, we could have the most perfect government in the world.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super-nation.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

Ain’t it funny how many hundreds of thousands of soldiers we can recruit with nerve. But we just can’t find one politician in a million with backbone.

I tell ’em that this Country is bigger than Wall Street, and if they don’t believe it, I show ’em the map.

Let this country get hungry and they are going to eat, no matter what happens to budgets, income taxes or Wall Street values. Washington mustn’t forget who rules when it comes to a showdown.

Big business sure got big, but it got big by selling its stock and not by selling its products.

Everybody nowadays is suggesting ways of getting prosperous on somebody else’s money.

Both parties have their good and bad times, only they have them at different times. They are good when they are out, and each bad when they are in.

You know it takes nerve to be a Democrat. But it takes money to be a Republican.

There ain’t any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.

A Democrat is naturally windier than a Republican. He is out of office more and he has more time to think up things to say.

The whole trouble with the Republicans is their fear of an increase in income tax, especially on higher incomes.

Cheer up. Let’s all be friends again. One of the evils of democracy is you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not.

It is human nature for a man to look out for himself.

​Nothing makes a man broad-minded like adversity.

It takes a long time to find out how wrong you are sometimes.

No man is great if he thinks he is.

You got to sorta give and take in this old world. We can get mighty rich, but if we haven’t got any friends, we will find we are poorer than anybody.