Here, here!

Keep those cards and letters commin' Darth! His "I tortured and liked it" banner will bring him and his ilk to the Hague far quicker than any weak-kneed democartic Administration hell bent on protecting their own who colluded with these bastards. The world will judge these home-grown torture-terrorists even if Obama won't.

Now, if we can just get Cheney to take a vacation to, say, Spain...

all of this raises an interesting point about the GOP-leaning dynamic of MSM talking news. Because the GOP still dominates the Sunday morning talk shows and the daily shows, as well, there are no democratic screw-ups or in fighting. were I a GOPer, i would want the dems on tv all of the time talking with the expectation that there will be differences between this senator and that senator, this senator and the president, this cabinet official and the official WH spokesperson. Those otherwise trivial disputes would be amplified by the MSM and create a sense of disquiet and discord among dems that could become the new talking point.

Of course this requires the GOP to temporarily cede ground with the expectation that the dems will move forward to fill the breach, all the while transforming the subject of short-sighted MSM discourse.

Cheney is the embodiment of the bull in the china shop approach to politics. In your face and never giving an inch.

In Judo, you use your opponents aggression against him. In politics, the analog shall now be known as 'Obama Fu'.

eric

For those who want to look forward and not backward, Cheney is quite the foil. The guy wants a trial. And he deserves it, too.

That's the most sensible thing whats-her-name has ever written. I particularly like the quick "cheney's biggest flops" review of just how crazy the whole "invade iraq to get al quaeda" thing was. I'm actually kind of surprised that MoDo ties it all together so neatly, with the war and its misbegotten fruits including the financial crisis and the food borne illness scares. Because it is all of a piece--they gutted regulation and squandered our money on the war--but usually MoDo is more mealy mouthed about that stuff, leaving it to the DFH's to connect the dots.

aimai

Cheney going to Spain and getting his ass arrested would be about the worst possible thing he could do for Obama, if you think about it. It puts Obama in a terrible position.

Can't Fox give him his own show? I'm sure the Limbaugh People would make it a hit.

Conservatives are drawn to crazy belligerance like moths to flame. Having Cheney, Limbaugh and Hannity as the front men not only hurts the party in the near term - it makes it more difficult for rational voices to rise to prominance. Cheney will quietly turn up the crazy, while media loons like Limbaugh and Hannity will shout down any who disagree.

Cheney's media barnstorming is a pathetic cry to bin Laden for support.

MoDo also confirms the suspicion that GWB figured out that Cheney is, um, nuts-- she writes:

"Toward the end, 43 was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick," said a Bush family loyalist.

god damn dick cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint.

Dowd is still as dumb as ever. Cheney most definitely has a coherent foreign policy viewpoint, as it's the same one as his domestic policy viewpoint: More power to Cheney. And while the Iraq War weakened America, it strengthed Cheney; and that's all he was interested in.

And that's the thing, Dick Cheney is a parasite who only looks out for his own best interests. And if his interests conflict with his team's interests, then watch out team; Cheney's going to screw you over. He doesn't give a damn about the Republican Party. At this point, he's just trying to avoid doing time.

And overall, the biggest problem for Republicans is that the only guys courageous enough to take a strong stand are the same ones who got them into this mess to begin with. And all they're interested in is maintaining their power, even if it hurts the party. For guys like Cheney, Limbaugh, and Gingrich, it's better for the party to be filled with loyal diehards than moderate converts. After all, none of them have to win elections, so why should they care about gaining a majority?

Steve - Personnally, I don't think Cheney's reemergence is any laughing matter, and I certainly don't think he is a beneficial foil for political gain. He is an absolutely cancer on the body politic. Worse, the actions of the Villagers suggests that there is still a great deal of fear surrounding Cheney and Co. You read about the terrorist in Libya who was tortured by the US and provided some of the information linking Iraq and Al Queda committing suicide yesterday and it makes you wonder. Maybe there is a ghost in the political machine that is actually the seat of power, maybe the Star Chamber is not entirely fictional. Cheney and his crowd make me nervous. The question to ask is this: Is Cheney really out of power? Is he really as marginalized among the villagers as you would like to believe? I don't think so, and it is no laughing matter.

Capt Kirk @ 11:05 FTW!

You people keep making the same dangerous mistake over and over. "Oh, Cheney, he's so stupid. He's great for the Democrats. Keep it comin', Dick." Wake up. This guy is on major news 2-3 times a week, along with the right wing 24/7 radiobots, selling the country on the necessity and justification of torture like they sold, successfully, invading Iraq, WMD's, Swift-boating, etc. They're good at it; not funny. The only way to stop these madmen are facts, investigations, and if prosecuted, prison to show this country and the world that illegality, cruelty and propaganda are as dangerous and unwarranted now as when used by Hitler, Stalin and all the rest of dictators trough time that we justifiably vilify.

I think Cheney's done the math. 8 years between the first and second attacks on the WTC (1993 & 2001) and he's counting on another attack coming sometime in 2009. Of course, all the cons blamed Clinton for 9/11 even though it came 8 months into the Bush/Cheney administration. Has it not occurred to Cheney that the next attack will be blamed on him and Chimpy McFlightsuit, not Obama?

And all this time I've been under the impression that it was W. that had "the crazy".

Who knew?

Republicans would love nothing better than to isolate Dick Cheney into his own universe.. far away from them and their failures.

But, the truth is that Cheney is a symptom, not a cause, of all that is wrong with the Republican Party. The Party is narrow, ideological, closed minded, anti-intellectual, unethical, and mean-spirited.

Dick Cheney represents his party well.

Cheney is a one man Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Giddyup motherf*cker!

Speaking of stupidity, surprised no one has mentioned Cavuto's idiotic question about the Gitmo released prisoners being eligible for welfare. Yeah, can just see them applying for food stamps "What was your previous occupation?", "Er, I was Terrorist" and in their best Milton Waddams impersonations, "And, if you don't give me stamps, I'll burn the the joint down"

Hey, McGruber,
You're an idiot. The "liberal" press hasn't put any blame on Obama yet? He's been in office less than four months, cleaning up crap left by Cheney and Company. The world's not flat, Bozo, stay out of the conversation unless you can contribute something with thought behind it.

It looks like the "liberal media" has renewed its contract with the Pentagon Information Multipliers. Cheney is anointed spokesman.

Addicted to his teleprompter and unable to speak a coherent sentence without it?
Posted by: McGruber

No teleprompters used during all of the debates (the three with McCain, plus all the debates with the other Democratic nominees), and as far as I can recall, Obama was gaffe-free. As opposed to McGruber, whose idiocy knows no bounds.

Renman, you expect too much from the trolls.

I think Jesse Ventura summed up Cheney perfectly the other night on the Larry King show:

1) If torture works, how come we still haven't caught Bin Laden? We've caught most of his colleagues, and not one of them will tell us where the hell he is? Even after being tortured?

2) Cheney is a chickenhawk. 5 deferments from the Vietnam War. Trained military people don't have gun 'accidents'. Cheney is a fear-stricken loser.

Torture is morally wrong, against the law in the U.S. and within the international community, and was summarily condemned during the Nuremberg Trials.

As for the "war on terrorism?" Cheney and company employed torture against our enemies in this war, but I wonder if any of the Bush WH crowd actually connected the dots - when torture is involved, the torturer is employing terrorism as a de facto policy.

So, in the end, the Cheneys among us believe we needed to fight terrorism with terrorism, possibly corrupting our heritage immeasureably for years to come - talk about a Kurtz moment! -Kevo

The question to ask is this: Is Cheney really out of power? Is he really as marginalized among the villagers as you would like to believe? I don't think so, and it is no laughing matter.

Scott F - You're seeing Cheney all wrong. He's not an evil mastermind with super-secret connections. He's an incompetent boob who happens to be an awesome bullshit artist. And one of the biggest weaknesses of bullshit artists is that they never learn how to be actually good at anything, because they're so good at bullshitting everyone.

If Cheney truly had power, he wouldn't be on the TV trying to save his skin. He'd be pulling the strings behind the scenes, which is how he prefers to do things. But he no longer has the president's ear to whisper into, so he's stuck going to the only forum he can work in: The media. None of this is good for him, as he himself must realize that he's now the public face for torture. But he has no choice, as he's just a bullshitter and the only influence he can have is bullshitting people. And so that's what he's doing.

Remember, even as a powerplayer in the Whitehouse he wasn't one to go out front and bully everyone. That's not his style. He's the guy who sits quiet and makes everyone nervous, asking only a few cryptic questions to put you on the spot; which makes you even more nervous. And then he works behind your back by going directly to Bush, who himself is a bullshit artist and easily swayed by the superior bullshitter. That's his style and it obviously worked very well for him.

So for him to be going public and defending his actions like this is the strongest indication that he has no real power. I'm sure he realizes that the more he talks, the less fear he can instill in people. It's obvious that he feels he has no other choice, or he wouldn't be doing it. And so the best thing we can do is laugh at Cheney and call him on his bullshit. He can smell your fear, but is completely helpless against mockery.

[...] an Al-Qaeda attack on the homeland is probably well into the works. -- McGrubber, @ 10:56

Doubtless through all those unsecured ports, which your Brilliant President and his Brave VP left wide open and which Obama may not yet have had the time to close, given how much shit those two left at his doorstep. 12 Labours of Hercules is like nothing, compared to the task of unscrewing the 8yrs of misrule by those two SOBs

I still haven't figured out if McGrubber is a parody or not. I was leaning towards parody, because no one who could use a computer could possibly be that stupid, but our resident parodists tend to be brief, whereas McGrubber has the verbosity of your common variety troll.

I think Cheney's done the math. 8 years between the first and second attacks on the WTC (1993 & 2001) and he's counting on another attack coming sometime in 2009. Of course, all the cons blamed Clinton for 9/11 even though it came 8 months into the Bush/Cheney administration. Has it not occurred to Cheney that the next attack will be blamed on him and Chimpy McFlightsuit, not Obama?

Posted by: 3reddogs on May 13, 2009 at 11:12 AM

I never quite understood why politians can put a timeline of when to put the blame. Some argue that Clinton is the cause of 9/11 (no reason cited other than he was lax on counter-terrorism - which isn't true, according to Dick Clark who I consider an expert in these matters). Some say it happened on Bush's watch so it was his fault. Bush might have been asleep at the helm and certainly not tested a tested or capable commander-in-chief at the time, but the anti-American sentiment was brewing for a long time before Bush Jr - so I can't really blame him.

The fact of the matter is that terrorism is a direct result of the Cold War and the vaccuum the Super powers left in their wake after we found "Glasnost." There are a lot of disenfranchised people in the world that saw their homes, families, and way of life destroyed by super power aggression and were (and still are)easily recruited by power hungry leaders and turned to extremism for purpose of existence and promise of greatness.

Didn't the CIA train Bin Ladden in the late 70s? (wasn't Bush Senior CIA director at the time?) Didnt' we arm Afganistan's fighter to counter Russian aggression in the early 90s? Terrorism is a direct result of taking advantage of less advanced civilizations, sending in our MNCs in the 50s, 60s and 70s to globalize foreign resources and use our military and puppet leaders as shield to fight our Cold War with Russia and their states behind the Iron Curtain. The middle east and Southeast Asia were our battle grounds - their countries destroyed and resources pillaged. We fostered and left brutal dictators in power in order to control populaces and fight our enemies, and created dictators that opposed us - the shah was exiled -replaced by theocracy, Saddam rose to power and terrorist organizations came into existence after the Egyptian-Israeli wars. We created these people by making terrible decisions post WW2. All our major problems we've been dealing with after 2000 in the middle east was a direct result of American intervention in one way or another.

So can we blame Clinton? Can we blame Bush? Not really, things were set in motion when they were barely in highschool.

The real question is what do we do now. How do we handle these sitations? I feel that we are still making many mistakes and that these problems will not go away anytime soon - it may take generations and a lot of concessions on our part to make things right. We were the sole super power left standing in the 90s - and an easy target for everyone's ire. We didn't even know the bullseye was painted on our back because we were too occupied with our own prosperity. It's time to look at history and start changing the course.

It's not about blaming Bushies or Clintonistas, it's about Americans being aware of the world around. Once we have that, we might actually have a shot at making terrorism obsolete.

Silly of me, or anyone for that matter, to think that Obama would have any say in it's use whatsoever. -McGrubber

You know he fired the person responsible for the fly over, right?

I'm guessing you did know, but the fact that Obama addressed it doesn't fit into your worldview so you conveniently ignore it.

Cheney is "giving the whole party a black eye."

"Giving"? As in this is a recent phenomenon?

Should have read "gave". As in during the past 9 years. It's one or the other. The GOP can't have it both ways.

Renman, we were doing a good job of ignoring him. Eventually he'll go away.

Could we please return to a discussion of whether Dowd's useage of numskull, instead of numbskull, is correct?

Isn't it amazing to realize that the person with the steady hand on the tiller of state, during the last few years, keeping the madman from sending the ship of state
over the waterfall of true disaster, was GEORGE BUSH.

I also gave them credit for not manufacturing WMD's
to show the press in Iraq after no actual ones were found. They actually figured out that trying to do that would be uncovered as a fake.

My standards for approval are pretty low.

"Has it not occurred to Cheney that the next attack will be blamed on him and Chimpy McFlightsuit, not Obama?"

Umm, it almost certainly will not. Bush was not blamed for failing to do anything whatsoever to protect the homeland prior to 9/11 simply because IOKIYAR.

Cheney and the Republican Party are busy laying the groundwork to blame Obama for the next terrorists attack. They will say that closing Gitmo, restricting warrantless wiretapping and failure to torture all known Muslims is why we were attacked under the Obama Administration.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a new candidate for the title of Stupidest Troll Ever.

"Sure, Bush and Cheney took us to war on a false pretext, tanked the economy, and pissed off every government in Europe except Poland. Obama uses a teleprompter! Don't you people understand how much worse using a teleprompter is than torturing prisoners? Ronald Reagan wouldn't have used a teleprompter!"

e still doesn't fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America.

Oh, I think he fathoms this perfectly. How else to ensure a full spigot of funding for Cheney and his military-industrial complex pals? He's fostering endless conflict via antagonism and imperialist adventure. That's what he does, and he knows exactly what he's doing.

Seriously, your[sic] quoting a professional wrestler as some sort of national security expert?

Nope, I suspect he's quoting an ex-Navy SEAL, and ex-State Governor. Were you suggesting that a elite special forces operative does not understand national security?

MoDo wrote half a good column today,the first half, her brief against Cheney. The second half was little more than apologia for the Bush family which to my reading was intended to rehabilitate W. and save what little political future that Jeb may have. This transition paragraph from first to second half makes it clear.

Bush 41 cares about decorum and protocol, said an official in Bush I. I'm sure he doesn't appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party.

W. admired Cheney's brass (he used another word) but grew increasingly skeptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself, and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of W. doing a funny Cheney imitation and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

Steve, I'm not ready to rehabilitate either W or MoDo.