Rachel Maddow on being misled into war:
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It’s a promo for her documentary about how we got snookered into the Iraq war, but it’s worth a look.
The Way To War
Category Archives: Cheney
Friday, February 15, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Grumpy Old Man
Speaking of chutzpah, former vice president Dick Cheney thinks Obama’s picks are “second-rate.”
Speaking before the Wyoming Republican Party, Cheney panned Obama’s recent picks, including new Secretary of State John Kerry, Pentagon nominee Chuck Hagel and CIA nominee John Brennan, according to a report from Associated Press.
“Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people,” Cheney said.
On Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, Cheney said Obama “wants to have a Republican that he can use to take the heat for what he plans to do to the Department of Defense.” Those plans, Cheney said, are to allow massive cuts to the defense budget which will hurt the United States’ military preparedness and place “limitations on future presidents.”
Cheney also blamed the administration’s policy toward the Middle East for increased turmoil in the region, citing Obama’s failure to reign in Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
Hearing Dick Cheney criticize anyone for increasing turmoil in the Middle East is like hearing an alligator complain about someone else’s table manners. There’s nothing like a little invasion of a sovereign nation based on lies and misinformation to get folks riled up. And when we’re talking about second-rate, who appointed Michael Brown to FEMA, Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, and Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Seriously?
He and John McCain should take a cottage by the sea together.
Via TPM.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Cage Match: Cheney v. Palin
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News that picking Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate in 2008 was a mistake.
Dick Cheney has some advice for Mitt Romney on choosing a running mate: Don’t pick another Sarah Palin.In his first interview since receiving a heart transplant in March, Cheney told ABC News, that John McCain’s decision to pick Palin as his running mate in 2008 was “a mistake” — one that it is important from Romney not to repeat.
It’s subject on which Cheney has some unique experience. He helped Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush lead their vice presidential searches and, of course, served as vice president for eight years. He’s also privately offered some advice to both Romney and Beth Myers, who is leading Romney’s search for a runningmate, on the process.
Cheney would not comment on what he told Romney and Myers, but he was harsh in his assessment of McCain’s decision to pick Palin.
“That one,” Cheney said, “I don’t think was well handled.”
“The test to get on that small list has to be, ‘Is this person capable of being president of the United States?’”
Cheney believes Sarah Palin failed that test.
In the larger scope, this pits the two wings of the GOP wingnutosphere against each other: the Bushies vs. the Tea Partiers, and those are the elements that Mitt Romney has to please in his choice of running mate: someone who’s not going to scare off the independents, but someone who’s got enough cred with the birthers and baggers to keep them from going rogue. Good luck with that.
It will be interesting to see what the reaction to Cheney’s remark is from John McCain and Wasilla. I’m willing to bet that somehow they’re going to blame it on Barack Obama: if the Democrats hadn’t chosen that Ni-CLANG!, the McCain campaign wouldn’t have had to go with a game changer. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Cage Match: Cheney v. Palin
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News that picking Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate in 2008 was a mistake.
Dick Cheney has some advice for Mitt Romney on choosing a running mate: Don’t pick another Sarah Palin.In his first interview since receiving a heart transplant in March, Cheney told ABC News, that John McCain’s decision to pick Palin as his running mate in 2008 was “a mistake” — one that it is important from Romney not to repeat.
It’s subject on which Cheney has some unique experience. He helped Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush lead their vice presidential searches and, of course, served as vice president for eight years. He’s also privately offered some advice to both Romney and Beth Myers, who is leading Romney’s search for a runningmate, on the process.
Cheney would not comment on what he told Romney and Myers, but he was harsh in his assessment of McCain’s decision to pick Palin.
“That one,” Cheney said, “I don’t think was well handled.”
“The test to get on that small list has to be, ‘Is this person capable of being president of the United States?’”
Cheney believes Sarah Palin failed that test.
In the larger scope, this pits the two wings of the GOP wingnutosphere against each other: the Bushies vs. the Tea Partiers, and those are the elements that Mitt Romney has to please in his choice of running mate: someone who’s not going to scare off the independents, but someone who’s got enough cred with the birthers and baggers to keep them from going rogue. Good luck with that.
It will be interesting to see what the reaction to Cheney’s remark is from John McCain and Wasilla. I’m willing to bet that somehow they’re going to blame it on Barack Obama: if the Democrats hadn’t chosen that Ni-CLANG!, the McCain campaign wouldn’t have had to go with a game changer. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Dick Cheney Gets Heart Transplant
Via MSNBC:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering Saturday at a Virginia hospital after receiving a heart transplant, his office said.Cheney was in the Intensive Care Unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, his office said in a statement.
Cheney, 71, who served as vice president in the George W. Bush administration, has had a long history of heart trouble and has been on the cardiac transplant list for more than 20 months.
“Although the former Vice President and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” aide Kara Ahern said in a written statement that was authenticated by several close associates of the former vice president.
I am sure that there are plenty of jokes that people will make about this operation and the patient, but that’s not my style.
All I wish for him is a speedy and uneventful recovery.
Dick Cheney Gets Heart Transplant
Via MSNBC:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering Saturday at a Virginia hospital after receiving a heart transplant, his office said.Cheney was in the Intensive Care Unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, his office said in a statement.
Cheney, 71, who served as vice president in the George W. Bush administration, has had a long history of heart trouble and has been on the cardiac transplant list for more than 20 months.
“Although the former Vice President and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” aide Kara Ahern said in a written statement that was authenticated by several close associates of the former vice president.
I am sure that there are plenty of jokes that people will make about this operation and the patient, but that’s not my style.
All I wish for him is a speedy and uneventful recovery.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Terrifying Canadians
Here’s another entry in the Not From The Onion files:
TORONTO — Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled an April appearance in Toronto citing concerns Canada is too dangerous.“He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
“They specifically referenced what happened in Vancouver,” Mr, Ruppert added.
In September, Mr. Cheney was speaking at a private club in Vancouver when protesters massed outside the front door harassing ticket holders and in one instance, choking a security guard.
The former vice-president was reportedly held inside the building for more than seven hours as Vancouver Police in riot gear dispersed the demonstrators.
Cheney, who along with former President George W. Bush remains unpopular in Canada, had been slated to talk about his time in office and the current U.S. political landscape.
“God forbid there was ever an emergency,” said Ruppert, noting Cheney’s history of heart problems.
Yeah, some hoser might sneak up on him and yell “Boo!”
Do I really have to defend our friends in the True North? I know it’s a stereotype that the Canadian people are the nicest people on the planet, but that’s because it’s basically true. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that while they are a strong and free people with a national pride second to none — and a lot to be proud of — they don’t go around like a big bully presuming to know best how to run everyone else’s business.
The only reason Mr. Cheney is afraid to go to Toronto is that he won’t be treated with the sycophantic slobbering that he’s used to from his toadies here in the U.S.
Terrifying Canadians
Here’s another entry in the Not From The Onion files:
TORONTO — Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled an April appearance in Toronto citing concerns Canada is too dangerous.“He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
“They specifically referenced what happened in Vancouver,” Mr, Ruppert added.
In September, Mr. Cheney was speaking at a private club in Vancouver when protesters massed outside the front door harassing ticket holders and in one instance, choking a security guard.
The former vice-president was reportedly held inside the building for more than seven hours as Vancouver Police in riot gear dispersed the demonstrators.
Cheney, who along with former President George W. Bush remains unpopular in Canada, had been slated to talk about his time in office and the current U.S. political landscape.
“God forbid there was ever an emergency,” said Ruppert, noting Cheney’s history of heart problems.
Yeah, some hoser might sneak up on him and yell “Boo!”
Do I really have to defend our friends in the True North? I know it’s a stereotype that the Canadian people are the nicest people on the planet, but that’s because it’s basically true. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that while they are a strong and free people with a national pride second to none — and a lot to be proud of — they don’t go around like a big bully presuming to know best how to run everyone else’s business.
The only reason Mr. Cheney is afraid to go to Toronto is that he won’t be treated with the sycophantic slobbering that he’s used to from his toadies here in the U.S.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Today’s Chuckle
Via Think Progress:
Citing Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009 in which he criticized the Bush administration for “overreacting to the events of 9/11″ and called for a ban on torture when “we [the Bush Administration] were never torturing anyone in the first place,” Cheney said he felt that Obama owes the Bush administration an apology. Insisting that enhanced interrogation techniques helped identify the location of Osama bin Laden, his daughter Liz Cheney added that “he slandered the nation” in Cairo and “he owes an apology to the American people”
I’m not sure which is funnier; that Dick Cheney insists the Bush administration never tortured anyone, or that Liz Cheney is actually complaining about hurt feelings.
What a riot.
Monday, September 12, 2011
But He Was Never Wrong
Bob Woodward notes that former Vice President Dick Cheney was the only one in the Bush administration that wanted to attack Syria in 2007 because they had built a nuclear reactor and he thought they were started a nuclear weapons program. Turns out the intelligence didn’t back up that theory, but he still wanted to bomb it anyway.
Two participants in the key National Security Council meeting in June 2007 said that after Cheney, the “lone voice,” made his arguments, Bush rolled his eyes.
Dr. Strangelove, call your office.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Dick Cheney Defends Torture
Check out this video of former Vice President Dick Cheney being interviewed on the Today Show by Matt Lauer. In it he defends the use of waterboarding — which is defined as torture by every reputable government and signer of the Geneva conventions that isn’t ruled by a dictator — and he says that he doesn’t think our preemptive invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war has damaged our reputation.
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It’s not what he says that I find so disturbing; after all, he’s been saying it for years and, of course, he’s never made a mistake in his life. No, it’s the deranged Uncle Fester-like smirk as he says it that is just creepy.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Sorry Is for Suckers
Harry Whittington, the man who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2006 talked to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post about the experience and his life since.
Nearly five years on, Harry Whittington still speaks with a slight flutter in his voice — a “warble,” he calls it, inadvertently choosing a bird metaphor. His easy East Texas drawl changed forever one day in February 2006 when a tiny lead pellet pierced his larynx. It’s still there.[...]
Four years ago, Whittington was on a quail hunt, walking in the tall grass of a South Texas ranch, when a fellow hunter wheeled on a winging bird and fired. The shot peppered Whittington in the face, neck and torso. The shooter was Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States.
Eyewitnesses, including Cheney, said the shooting was accidental. Whittington doesn’t dispute that, but his memory of the event is limited only to his most immediate sensations. “All I remember was the smell of burning powder,” he says. “And then I passed out.”
Paramedics rushed the bleeding and unconscious Whittington to a hospital in tiny Kingsville, Tex. Doctors deemed his injuries serious enough to transfer him via helicopter to larger hospital in Corpus Christi, about 40 miles away.
No one in the vice president’s entourage said a word about it publicly until the next morning, when Katharine Armstrong, the daughter of the ranch’s owner, spoke with a reporter from a local newspaper. Armstrong blamed Whittington for blundering into Cheney’s line of fire, a comment that White House spokesman Scott McClellan repeated later that day. Investigators didn’t speak to Cheney until the next morning, and Cheney didn’t address the issue in public until four days later. In a TV interview on Fox News back in Washington, he took responsibility for the shooting (“Ultimately, I am the guy who pulled the trigger… “) but offered no apologies.
And he never has. Because when you’re a Dick, you don’t have to.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Short Takes
Pakistanis are frustrated at the slow response by the government after devastating and deadly floods.
BP is preparing to plug the leaking well in the Gulf for good.
Dick Cheney is still in the hospital recovering from his heart surgery last month.
Another Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), faces ethics charges. But what about Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)?
Your BlackBerry won’t work in the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia now.
On My No-Fly List: Spirit Airlines now charges $45 for carry-on luggage.
Tropical Update: This could become Tropical Storm Colin, but if the models are right, South Florida won’t have to worry about being Colinized.
The Tigers continue the slump, losing again in the ninth to the Red Sox.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Dick Cheney’s Future
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has had a procedure to install a device to keep his heart going.
The kind of heart pump that Cheney received can be implanted next to the heart to help its main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, pump blood through the body. Such devices are used mainly for short periods, to buy potential transplant candidates time as they await a donor organ.But they are being studied for use as a permanent therapy for people with severe heart failure who aren’t transplant candidates.
About 5 million Americans have congestive heart failure, where the heart weakens over time — often as a result of heart attacks — and cannot pump enough blood. Heart transplants are one solution, but few patients find a donor and many are too old or sick for a transplant.
Cheney said a few weeks ago it became clear he was “entering a new phase of the disease when I began to experience increasing congestive heart failure.”
It’s safe to say, then, that Mr. Cheney is not looking at a full recovery.
Say what you will about the man — and I’ve said plenty, including the sincerest wish that he had found some other line of work in his life, like selling shoes — but it’s low-class and wrong to wish ill health and death on anyone. If we can’t separate the person from the politics and not have some compassion for the pain and the grief a family goes through when they’re faced with a gloomy prognosis, then we’re no better than the intolerant and vicious lunatic out there who calls for the death of their enemies. There are some supporters of Mr. Cheney who would not return the favor if it was Bill Clinton or Al Gore who faced this prospect, but that doesn’t make it right, and it gives those of us who were his opponents the moment to show something they never had: class and dignity.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Short Takes
The G-summit is still going on in Canada.
Protests at the G-summit are winding down; over 300 people were arrested.
Dick Cheney did not have a heart attack, but he’s still in the hospital.
Protesters demonstrate against off-shore oil drilling.
Florida gets a bunch of new laws on July 1.
Tropical update: Tropical Storm Alex is heading across the Yucatan towards central Mexico.
At the World Cup, the US lost 2-1 to Ghana and is out of the running.
The Tigers lost to the Braves in the ninth with runners stranded.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Short Takes
The G8 summit turns to nukes.
The financial reform bill makes it through the conference.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is spending the weekend in a Washington hospital after complaining of “discomfort.”
Tropical update: That little disturbance is now Tropical Storm Alex, and it looks like it’s headed for the Mexico-Texas border area.
The Tigers lost to the Braves.
Jon Stewart recaps the week.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Recap – Week of 6/21/10 | ||||
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Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Transparency, Huh?
Mark Thiessen, the Washington Post‘s newest columnist, defends Liz Cheney’s witch-hunt of the Justice Department.
Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would — and rightly so.Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information.
[...]
Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the “shameful” personal attacks on “these fine lawyers,” while numerous commentators leveled charges of “McCarthyism.”
This is McCarthyism in and of itself. In his opening sentence, Mr. Thiessen jumps to the conclusion that the attorneys defending the suspects are sympathetic to their clients’ beliefs by comparing them to “mob lawyers” in charge of prosecuting mob cases. He carries on, citing an investigation by Fox News as his source of information that these attorneys are somehow unpatriotic, and compares the situation to the attacks when “fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack” during the Bush administration. In other words, the men who basically said that the president has the power to do whatever he wants to get information out of suspects, up to and including torture and killing, were vilified for their positions. Aside from the fact that the two situations are in no way comparable, the attorneys defending the al-Qaeda suspects were doing what lawyers do and what the Constitution requires, whereas John Yoo and Jay Bybee were clearly skating out onto thin ice, both legally and morally. And to lump David Addington, the man who helped out Valerie Plame, in with them is, to be generous, a stretch of right-wing logic that doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Since Mr. Thiessen’s previous employment was as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, it’s pretty clear that his acquaintance with the canon of ethics for lawyers and the interpretation of the rule of law is, to say the least, problematic.
Mr. Thiessen is also ignoring the fact that a slew of former Bush administration lawyers and the Hero of the Clinton Impeachment, Kenneth Starr, think it is McCarthyism.
“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.The statement cited John Adams’s defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that “zealous representation of unpopular clients” is an important American tradition.
The attacks on the lawyers “undermine the Justice system more broadly,” they wrote, by “delegitimizing” any system in which accused terrorists have lawyers, whether civilian courts of military tribunals.
The one thing that’s clear in Ms. Cheney’s crusade and Mr. Thiessen’s enabling of it is that neither of them give a flying rat’s ass about “transparency” or the “right to know.” It’s a malicious attempt to tear down the Department of Justice for political gain. It’s nothing new for the Cheneys, and Mr. Thiessen is just another one of their Wormtongues.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Rotten Apple
Liz Cheney’s group Keep America Safe, which has led the resurgent Republican attacks on President Obama’s national security policies, is releasing a video this morning that questions the loyalties of Justice Department lawyers who advocated for detained terror suspects during the Bush Administration.The group has been hammering Attorney General Eric Holder for months on the issue, which has drawn increasing attention from Senate Republicans. Senator Charles Grassley last month pushed Holder to identify any lawyers who had represented detainees, and the Department said last month that nine Justice Department appointees filled that category — but he refused to name those whose work hadn’t been previously reported. Conservatives view the partial disclosure as another Holder misstep, and in a new video, the group is going on offense.
“Holder will only name two. Why the secrecy behind the other seven? Whose values do they share?” asks the video, suggesting that the lawyers support terrorism. “Americans have a right to know the identity of the Al Qaeda Seven.”
I was too young to witness the career of the late junior Senator from Wisconsin, but the scare tactics and paranoia he generated echoed after him. And I’m not surprised that Ms. Cheney, who is picking up the banner of her father in terms of both dour demeanor and grumbling pronouncements, is reaching back to the techniques of Tailgunner Joe. It’s easy to do; all you have to do is wave a bunch of papers in the air and make claims that play on the fear and loathing of the foolish and the weak. Instant ad campaign; just add venom and stir.
This, more than anything else, proves that Ms. Cheney and her gang are little more than bullies and cowards. They have no other way of making their case so they resort to this kind of crap. Setting aside the fact that the Supreme Court — the one with a majority of Republican appointees — certified that defendants held at Gitmo are entitled to legal representation, to imply that there is somehow a connection between a lawyer who takes a case and the cause the client stands for calls our entire legal system into question. Fortunately, there are some lawyers — including a senior prosecutor of Gitmo detainees during the Bush administration — who are denouncing this chickenshit attack.
I know the Cheneys have always had a problem with the concept of the rule of law and the United States Constitution, but to turn that disdain into a fund-raising ad for their new McCarthyism sets a new low for cynicism that is impressive even for them. It’s just more proof that the apple doesn’t fall far from the crooked old tree.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Short Takes
The jobs bill gets five Republicans to vote to end the filibuster, including the new guy.
Former Vice President Cheney is “resting comfortably” after having chest pains.
The death toll is 27 in the accidental bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
There are now at least 21 senators who support putting in the public option during reconciliation.
Najibullah Zazi, accused of plotting to blow up the New York subway, pleads guilty.
A number of people are missing after mudslides in the Azores.
Toyota may face criminal charges.
The City of Miami got a new manager for free.
Red-light cameras are ruled unconstitutional in Aventura.
Charlie Crist’s Senate campaign is losing staff.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Predicktion
Former Vice President Dick Cheney told the CPAC crowd that Barack Obama would be a “one-term president.”
This is the same guy who said we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq.
Predicting the future does not seem to be Mr. Cheney’s strong suit.
