Matt Yglesias finds an interesting tidbit in Peter Baker’s recent Times piece on John Brennan:
A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama’s policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.
It’s strange that people are still afraid of Cheney’s circle. But I guess they are.
Midnight Marauder
Pimpin’War Crimin’ Ain’t Easy, I guess.Scott
That’s the Village for you.
What would Cheney’s Circle do to you if they become displeased? “Why, they’d stop inviting me to cocktail parties!”
Zifnab
You say that, and yet you’ve never spent a day cowering in your Pentagon cubicle cowering and protecting your face.
Roger Moore
They’re worried about their future job prospects. Getting into a feud with Cheney is going to get them labeled as not team players, which will hurt their chances of getting positions in the next Republican administration. It’s also going to hurt their job prospects in the lucrative Military/Security/Industrial Complex, since Cheney still has a lot of friends there.
The Grand Panjandrum
Wow. Cowardly careerists in DC? I am shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
dmsilev
Cheney’s circle. Is that the Eighth (Fraud)? Or the Ninth (Treason)?
-dms
General Winfield Stuck
Because it’s not a circle, it’s a Pentagram.
Undisclosed Location
Dick will be the first VP to be buried in an undisclosed location – unless he’s cremated I can’t believe he can stomach the thought of being pissed on for the next decade or so after his much unlamented demise. (except for the faithful 30% among the base that is)
scav
@Undisclosed Location: We can narrow it down a little. If they do it properly, it’ll be at a crossroads.
me
@Zifnab: Cheney and Ballmer seprated at birth? *throws chair*
jeffreyw
@General Winfield Stuck: The Algonquin pentagram table.
Violet
Sheesh. Dick Cheney really is Darth Vader. Everyone is terrified of him and his “circle.”
Notorious P.A.T.
I’m so glad that high-level Bush officials are comfortable with Obama’s policies. It’s not like I donated money I couldn’t afford to Obama’s campaign because I wanted change or anything.
PAnAmerican
To quote the Boss:
…end up like a dog that’s been beat too much..
Legalize
Cheney shoots his friends in the face. Of course folks who used to merely work for the mother-fucker are scared of him.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@General Winfield Stuck:
FTW
danimal
@Roger Moore: Yep, it’s all about the money (not just in future admins, but also current wingnut welfare jobs) and being perceived as team players.
Obama’s opposition is a mile wide and an inch thick. When the economy changes and the foreign policy mess is cleaned up, the GOP have little to run on except bs and bluster. Of course, that describes the median GOP campaign pretty well already.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
A prediction: the next GOP
Sith LordPresident will be Liz Cheney. The GOP has to break thru the demographic barrier somehow, and it will be with a female candidate not named Palin.aimai
Cheney was a very long lived public servant–and he was a the godfather, one presumes, to a lot of people still somewhere in the civil service and, of course, in the congressional circles of hell. I wonder what effect his theoretical eventual death–presuming that the undead can officially die–will have on his ability to continue to shape the debate? The other thing about that Brennan article, it seems to me, is that Brennan, at least, seems pretty clearly ready to turn his back on the Bush/Cheney years and even on his old self from those years in favor of the new, Obama approved Brennan. I have to wonder whether Cheney’s continued attacks on Obama and all his new CIA buddies is going to have a reverse effect and make the CIA more sympathetic to Obama and to the necessity of ” anti bush” rhetoric. Cheney’s attacks have become more strident and, if the Brennan article and Brennan himself are to be believed, more unhinged from the reality that the CIA is actually seeing. The article contains the supposed Obama order, early in his term “The CIA gets what the CIA wants.” If that’s true, and widely known within the CIA, the attacks Cheney is making publicly are going to ring very hollow. Blowback isn’t just something that happens in afghanistan. What’s the blowback from these attacks by cheney on obama and his team going to be–in psych experiments it usually hardens the team against the attacking “outsiders.”
aimai
ruemara
@General Winfield Stuck:
You win the internets today. Even if you’re mocking my pentagram.
Origuy
@General Winfield Stuck: The early bird gets the Intertubes; I had the same idea but you beat me to it.
@Undisclosed Location: They’ll have to put a rubber sheet over the coffin.
Brachiator
@General Winfield Stuck:
Hah! Well played.
scav
This thread could be a contender.
Also, @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: and
@General Winfield Stuck:
The symbolism is strong in this thread or sutra. For the Pentagram can be Inscribed in both a
Pentagon and a Circle and yea!, the Pentagram is the innermost of these. So sayeth the Geometrer.
Sasha
I’m assuming it’s a case of “I go down, I drag you screaming with me.”
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not a chance. Dick Cheney may be feared within the GOP, but he’s not liked. Fear is more of a negative power- it keeps people from doing things you don’t like- than a positive one- getting people to do things you do like. If Liz Cheney winds up with a major career in the GOP, it’s likely to be one like her dad’s: a power broker rather than a top of the ticket candidate.
ppcli
“they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric”
Huh? What anti-Bush rhetoric? Perhaps I haven’t been paying enough attention, but Obama has seemed extremely gentle in this regard, only occasionally referring indirectly, without naming names, to past mistakes.
He didn’t, for example, enter the presidency announcing that he would “restore honor and decency” – suggesting that his predecessor had lacked both. He didn’t initiate action with remarks like “When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”
Punchy
Slightly OT, but this PM has a good point:
To justify this massive action based on one individual sets a deleterious precedent. And he didn’t even radicalize himself in Nigeria. This “do anything, as long as it’s something!” behavior must be embarrassing as hell for the TSA higher-ups.
Mike in NC
Because you can’t be too careful around a nearsighted guy with a shotgun, even if you’re standing in back of him.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Not really. I wouldn’t want to piss off someone with a vindictive streak as wide Wyoming, and hundreds of millions to finance it.
Well, okay, I would.
But I’m clearly self-destructive. These guys aren’t.
.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
That depends on how strong the fear is. Consider this video documenting what happens to people who cross the Cheneys and don’t have powerful patrons to protect them.
Mari
One should assume that Cheney used his control over the NSA to acquire enough personally embarassing information about enough people to blackmail most of the village.
El Cid
If you draw out a Cheney circle on the floor of on a leap day and pour infant blood on it and repeat “FourthBranch” 13 times in a row, Cheney will manifest and tell you to go f*** yourself.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Gosh, people who helped craft Bush’s anti-terrorism policies are a bunch of wusses?
Knock me over with a feather.
Fxd. Also.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Well, Obama’s counterterrorism policies are not all that different from the previous administration’s policies.
And, just how many counterterrorism theories are there? I’m not aware of any rocket science or radical new approaches to the problem set since 911. It seems to me that the only differences are matters of degree, and maybe a few differences like how, when or if to use torture, or how, and where, to send detainees.
I’m no expert on counterterrorism, but it would be hard for me to believe that any counterterrorism plan would succeed or fail on the basis of how much torture was used on detainees, or on the basis of where detainees were being held.
I also don’t believe that success or failure will depend on how many rockets we can shoot into mud huts in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan, from robot planes. It seems to me that terrorism is all about adaptation, and that this kind of war games activity isn’t worth much in the long run. The same people who were just telling us recently how many “bad guys” they were getting are now on tv telling us that we are less safe. Huh?
These assholes really need to learn how to properly run their protection racket.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Punchy: Why aren’t Germany and the UK on that list? Most of the 9/11 bombers spent time there and by all reports that is where they planned it. Richard Reid and the PantyBomber both spent time in the UK. The London subway bombings were carried out by people who were either citizens of, or legal residents of the UK.
JGabriel
Punchy:
It’s not just one individual! It’s all the Nigerian e-mailers, too!
(Sadly, I suspect this really is the TSA’s actual reasoning.)
.
slag
I don’t see why people are always comparing Dick Cheney to Darth Vader. He’s typically struck me as more of a Jabba the Hutt type of character.
Elie
@General Winfield Stuck:
LOL! YES…exactly
Joey Maloney
@Undisclosed Location:
How does that joke go? “I’d piss on his grave, but after serving in the military I swore I’d never stand in a line that long again.”
JGabriel
Notorious P.A.T.:
To be fair, it kind of depends on when they served. Didn’t Bush’s counter-terrorism approach change and improve rather drastically during the last year or two he was in office?
If the guys Baker is talking to are among the ones who recommended and implemented those changes, then their approval of Obama’s approach is marginally less worrisome.
.
New Yorker
I dunno. I imagine there were those who were still afraid of Pinochet even after he stepped down in 1990. I’ve also read stories of how Romanians couldn’t truly believe that Ceausescu was dead and were still terrified of him.
Elie
I think also that in the absence of any true and credible leadership of the Republican Party, the uncertainty about who really is powerful makes them all less anxious to wade in. If there was a true leader, (other than Cheney or Rush), people within their party might be willing to take him on more. Sooner or later though, that battle will be joined.
Michael
They’re afraid of what happens after Cheney’s minions do their “Jericho” bit.
blahblahblah
@Scott:
Perhaps they’re frightened of winding up dead by “suicide” like Dr. David Kelly.
Notorious P.A.T.
Well, we can spend billions of dollars to blow up Afghanistani children or we can spend that money to put air marshalls on airline flights. We can send our best and brightest to the other side of the world in hopes of pinning down terrorist cells that are designed to avoid being pinned down in the first place or we can have them inspect cargo entering our country. We can lock up Muslims forever just in case and make a billion people more likely to hate us or we can release people we have no evidence against. We can prop up heroin-dealing warlords because they happen to be powerful in areas we are active or we can not. etc etc etc
Notorious P.A.T.
They tailed off a little but they didn’t improve drastically. See above.
Violet
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Exactly. And terrorists aren’t stupid. All they’ll do next is find a disaffected British passport-holder (or French or other approved country) and get them to wear the exploding underwear. Or I guess this time it’ll be the exploding replacement hip joint, or something else equally challenging to find during screening.
Our TSA – or whichever org made this decision – is just so frustrating.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Notorious P.A.T.:
The Military Industrial Complex is a hell of a drug.
JD Rhoades
This thread is making me laugh hard.
KG
One other possible reason for the fear: there is still a belief within conservative circles that Cheney will run/be drafted in 2012. And those who actually believe this, believe that he can win.
It’s monumentally stupid, but it’s there. It really is.
Elie
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Excellent point.
Also, many assume that either obviously dark skinned persons are the most likely potential terrorists. They completely forget that there are blonde and blue eyed Muslims in Croatia or the surrounding area who could theoretically be “recruited” and would, with the proper fake passport, look like a totally ok white European…
Rhoda
It’s really simple: Support Obama in any way and no wing-nut welfare for you.
I haven’t heard boo from Rice lately, for example.
inkadu
@Undisclosed Location: They can bury Cheney anywhere they want as long as they put a large heavy stone directly over his casket.
Notorious P.A.T.
For sure. It’s easy to laugh when the guy at the airport asks you if you packed your own luggage, but there are plenty of cases where a person almost brought a bomb onto a plane because a friend of a friend wanted them to deliver a package to Aunt Edna.
Oh, but strip-searching Muslims would stop terrorism. They would be powerless!
Man, I’ll say. And no one sucks that glass dick harder than America.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@inkadu:
Night at the Museum IV – Cheney Returns
Notorious P.A.T.
@inkadu:
Hehe )
Notorious P.A.T.
I’m doing some Googling about terrorism.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,476599,00.html
Racial profiling will save us!
Violet
@inkadu:
I’d prefer they also bury him in a silver casket in a field of garlic. Just to be sure.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Violet:
Gilroy, California it is then.
Might harsh the vibe at Casa de Fruta a bit, but I guess some sacrifices have to be made in the name of the national interest.
serge
“…worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did…” I don’t think their fears are misplaced, I find Mary Matalin to be one creepy-ass person. I’m fearful just thinking about her. If I had to wake up next to her, I’m not sure I wouldn’t drop dead on the spot.
Maybe that’s James Carville’s problem, he’s just the re-animated corpse he so resembles.
Bubblegum Tate
O/T: Hey, you know how Avatar is a bunch of uber-radical left-wing commie nazi soshulist fascism that hates Murrica and Teh Troopz and turns its audience into mini-Mao Tse-Stalins and is therefore going to be a horrendous flop hahahaha stoopid libs? Well, now that it’s passed the $1 billion mark, a funny thing has happened: It’s totally a conservative movie now! Hahaha, stoopid libs!
JGabriel
OT, but this is kind of interesting (summary mine): Teabaggers to identify companies that fund anti-crazy movement — so Centrists, Liberals, and Independents can support them.
.
licensed to kill time
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Ok, so it’s Gilroy, at the crossroads, with a stake thru the heart (if it’s possible to locate).
This is starting to sound like a game of Clue.
JGabriel
Hmph, I’ve been modereratered, and I don’t know why. I didn’t use the dreaded CiaIis word, or any of its derivatives like SoCiaIis, so I have no clue.
(ETA: I get it now. The SoCiaIist word is in the URL. Can’t really fix that on my own without breaking the link, so I definitely need a moderator to clear it.)
.
tamied
@Violet: I was thinking stake thru the heart. If he has one.
Seanly
Kinda like how some people in Middle Earth were still afraid of Sauron even though he hadn’t been seen in quite some time. I submit that Cheney is Sauron or at least one of his Ringwraiths.
New Yorker
How someone could write things like this….
Politicians, not businessmen, are more likely to be ego driven sociopaths bent on domination.
….with a straight face is beyond me. Yes, Lloyd Blankfein is a humble public servant who has his ego in check. On the other hand, random Congressman/woman X is a comic book villian.
Cameron’s film hypothesizes that egomaniacs with unchecked power are a bad thing. I agree Jimbo! Does that mean you will join me in voting against Obama in 2012?
I’m shocked, shocked! that “unchecked power” is a bad thing now that healthcare is the major issue. Back when it was arbitrary torture and disappearances, it wasn’t so bad….
This actually reinforces the leftist notion of non-white societies. Conservatives carry no such notions. White people, or America as a whole, always have to help the poor, brown savages who are incapable of democracy or self-sufficient economies according to the left. If you want to hear racism “straight up” just listen to your average, leftist, white politician condescend to the black and Hispanic communities.
I think this is the dictionary definition of the psychological term “projection”.
Cameron’s idealized society is one based on individual achievement. When individuals take great risks, they are often rewarded over people who have seniority…..Sounds good to me. In fact, it sounds a lot like the conservative view of what America stands for.
I hope to god that you’ve never cited anything written by Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, or John Podhoretz, and didn’t vote for George W. Bush.
Chad N Freude
Don’t forget how dangerous pregnant Irish women are.
Interrobang
Legalize — Dick Cheney not only shoots his friends in the face, he makes his friends apologise in public like cringing servile dogs for inconsiderately getting their faces in front of his oncoming birdshot. No wonder people are afraid of him; I mean, that’s some kind of powerful anti-charisma there.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Seanly:
Cheney strikes me as more the Barrow Wight kind of guy. Undisclosed location, etc. Plus, didn’t the Nazgul actually serve in the military (or at least they knew how to hold a sword correctly)? Mr Draft Deferment, not so much.
Michael
The only travelers who can board unmolested will be proper White ‘Murkans with a down home Southron white trash drawl.
And that will be regardless of how many Southron white trash trailer dwellers assisted Eric Rudolph after he bombed them ‘Lympics in Atlanta.
Seriously, if the traitorous terrorist fucks of the American South got even 20% of the scrutiny that they keep demanding of all the evil brown people, they’d whine like the little panty-wetting, squealing bitches they are into the next century.
I HATE THE SOUTH, AND I LIVE HERE. I despise the symbolism, I despise what passes for “culture”, I despise the chickenshit “values”, I despise the hypocrisy, I despise the xenophobia, the paranoia, the excusemaking.
Where the fuck were all those fine Southern Christians*spit* back when black members of their community were being stomped on and excluded? I’ll tell you – they were BENEFITTING from the exclusion.
ksmiami
As to Cheney, a Seinfeld reference:
“He is a bad man, a very bad man.”
Michael
PS – I vote we waterboard Randall Terry to find out who else hid Eric Rudolph. Oddly enough, the Dubya admin sold out real quick on the Rudolph prosecution and didn’t get any names of anybody who was bankrolling his ass. I’d also like to dig a bit deeper on the Paul Hill thing.
Certainly, right wing politicians can’t complain about enhanced interrogation methods to Keep Us Safe. Plus, the can sell video of the interrogation of Randall Terry – that could close the deficit all by itself.
Then, we can close down the Mosques along with churches affiliated with the more radical strains of the Right to Life movement……
kay
@New Yorker:
That argument never made any sense. It just goes ’round and ’round.
I’ve heard it so many times and I’m always amazed they don’t see the problem with it.
Liberal politicians condescend to minorities, thereby tricking them into voting for liberal politicians. That’s the problem.
Conservatives have to point this problem out to minorities, patiently explain to the minorities that liberal politicians are tricking them, because they’re apparently too stupid to cast a vote without constant conservative guidance, but that’s not condescending.
Violet
@licensed to kill time: @tamied:
I’m all for a stake in the heart. Even if he doesn’t have a heart, putting a stake through the place where his heart should be is just good common sense. One can’t be too careful.
Keith
People don’t piss themselves around Cheney because they’re afraid of him; it’s because he hangs out with his own age group, and they’re about a half-dozen Friedmans past bladder control.
maus
I wonder if it’s less afraid of the “get savaged on Fox news” than “afraid of getting the boot from bohemian grove and not getting to be naked and pee on things while being paddled in front of the giant owl” thing.
JGabriel
Elie:
Croatia is mostly Catholic; I think you mean Bosnia.
That said, there are blonde (and red-headed), blue-eyed Muslims all over the world, particularly any area with a Muslim population and an Indo-European background or substrate. That includes: Bosnia, Albania, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, China (Uighurs), and Russia (especially its North Caucasian linguistic minorities, although there’s a small Muslim minority among the Ossetians as well)
.
kay
@Keith:
I’m a little afraid of him. I think he’s creepy as hell, on a hair-trigger, scared all the time, and would do just about anything.
Seriously. “Oh, Dick Cheney would never do that!” What would he never do?
Beauzeaux
That was my first thought. “Total Information Awareness” and all that.
Mari
@kay:
Show empathy.
Vote for a democrat.
Michael
When the revolution comes, I want to run at least one of the camps for the re-education of conservatives. We can chain Doughy Pantload, Bill Kristol, Glenn Beck, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh to a stake outside the compound wire and throw them a raw roast and 1 quart canteen every 3 days as the camp assembles to watch.
It’ll be like Thunderdome, only with more people.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Beauzeaux:
Another bold prediction: come back in 50-100 years after the dust has cleared and relevant documents have been unearthed, and we’ll find out that at least half of the behind-a-subscription-firewall (i.e. leaves traces) pr0n industry of the last decade was a CIA/NSA honey trap. And a lot of folks in DC got trapped.
woody
Roger:
Right on the button, bro…
Allan
Cheney’s vicious circle?
I thought that was Jeff Gannon’s pet name for Turdblossom’s rosebud.
Notorious P.A.T.
I stopped reading at this point. Seriously, folks, what the fuck?
Notorious P.A.T.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The Nazgul were great kings of men once.
@Chad N Freude:
Excellent find. I spent half an hour trying to find that.
RSA
So basically, these guys think that Obama’s doing the right thing, but they’re unwilling to support him for political reasons. And if Obama takes enough political damage to change those policies, these guys will… do what exactly? Sadly shake their heads? Hypocrites and cowards.
Mustang Bobby
“Cheney’s Circle” sounds like a bunch of football jocks who go around stuffing middle-school nerds into their locker.
Palate Cleanser
Blecchh! Need something to wash the Cheney Taint off my display. How about some G(NO)P standup comedy?
OT – It’s late in the afternoon – time for a good laugh.
And for once – I think the diarrhea puddle is onto something here.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/04/bachmann-redefined-tea-gop/
GregB
You will notice that John Walker Lindh gets shoved down the memory hole.
If we profile terrorists based on who they are and not what they think and how they behave, well, then how about folks who look like him?
-G
Svensker
@Bubblegum Tate:
Aaarrrgggghhhh.
Michael
I’m telling you – not the right accent.
I’m wondering if there’s money to be made in training white, blue-eyed AQ recruits how to say “yeehaw – I’s a comin’ to see mah maw for barbeeecue, and we loooooooove the Sweet Baby Jesus” in perfect Trailerese.
Svensker
@Allan:
Ow, my brain, what have you done to my brain…..
Sheesh. Yoiks. Ew.
Svensker
@GregB:
I thought they wanted to profile Muslims, not Middle Eastern men. So that everyone will have to identify his or her religion before getting into the U.S. Perhaps we could suggest Muslims wear an armband to help us know who they are. That technique worked pretty well 70 years ago.
geg6
Okay, it’s OT and all, but I found this hysterical.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/teabag-populist-by-digby-she-is-their.html
From digby, an interview of Sarah Palin by Bill O’Reilly has a section where he brings up her “populism” and he tells her how she is being portrayed in that “populism” by us lefttards:
She has no fucking clue who it is he’s talking about. None at all.
And, yes, I’m sure this is going to be total blockquote fail.
Chuck Butcher
You might have to wonder about terrorism experts being aware of how terrorism works and being afraid of Dick…
geg6
@Chuck Butcher:
Ha! Seriously. Wonder if they ever question that about themselves?
Chuck Butcher
@geg6:
No
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
Prolly thinks he means Madonna.
geg6
@Chuck Butcher:
Oh, I know you are right. I just wonder how these people get through life with exactly 0 self-awareness.
licensed to kill time
@Chuck Butcher:
Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Dick?
The Big Bad Dick, The Big Bad Dick
Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Dick?
The terrorists have won.
geg6
@General Winfield Stuck:
It’s always fun to read transcripts of Serendipity’s interviews. Again, from digby, here’s Sarah’s explanation of why she’s smart, incisive, and intellectual enough to be president:
DZ
@geg6:
WTF? Don’t cry for me Alaska?
Chyron HR
@geg6:
That is SO unfair. Evita got her big-city makeover BEFORE running for Vice President.
Chuck Butcher
Actually, “no” is inaccurate, they and their pol buddies are perfectly aware of the politics of fear – they ran on it enough; and still are…
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
One thing about our Sarah. She always has another wabbit to pull out of her hat. Or a shithouse rat.
geg6
Okay, another OT moment. But it has to do with animals and I know how all the BJers feel about animals. Especially of the canine type. And this is the feel good story of the day (h/t Sully):
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Retriever+saves+year+from+cougar+attack+Boston/2401815/story.html
It caught my eye because that could be a bloodier, more bedraggled version of my John’s Otis. Looks just like him. I’d die if this happened to Otis. I’d never be as cool and calm as the kid in this story.
srv
Cheney is so 9/12.
Time for someone to post a screed on why Ticketmaster merging with Live Nation is a victory for the free market. Perhaps John could channel his inner-teabagger.
http://www.ticketdisaster.org/
Notorious P.A.T.
Man oh man, I hate when someone puts facts on their resume!
WereBear
@geg6: Dang, I teared up. Thank goodness for a happy ending.
Svensker
@geg6:
Because if Sarah knows anything, it’s about how to run a business, make a payroll, pay the taxes…. She just epitomizes the hard working private sector. Oh, wait. What? Apparently not? Ah.
Notorious P.A.T.
@geg6:
Wow, what a story!
geg6
@WereBear:
I know! Me, too! I kept looking at the photo and thinking about Otis and I had to keep blinking so my co-workers wouldn’t think I was crying at my desk if someone popped their head in the door to my office.
dmsilev
@geg6: Dare I ask what Palin thinks a ‘fact resume’ is?
-dms
brantl
Then these are the incompetents that are willing to defend GWBush’s policies as good, which they clearly weren’t. Those assholes wouldn’t know security or intelligence if it walked over and bit them on the ass.
Randy P
@geg6:
Excellent link, thanks. This kind of thing will give more fuel to Dean Koontz, who seems to be getting squishier and squishier and to have decided that golden retrievers are the One True Dog.
http://www.deankoontz.com/books/the-darkest-evening-of-the-year
On a sort of related note, I’ve noticed that some of the Philly K-9 cops working the Amtrak station are working with black Labradors. This is not a breed I would have considered mean enough to work as a police dog. I said that to one of the handlers and he just laughed.
But it’s still hard to imagine our own late beloved Lab as any kind of attack dog.
licensed to kill time
Palin is just a word jumble. I mean:
WTF does that even mean? Is it a kind of Mobius strip of values in a never ending spiral? She makes me dizzy.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Svensker:
Now why did she have to go and shit all over George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard MBA, no success in private business, bailed out by daddy repeatedly) like that? That’s our job, dammit.
Sly
I wonder why Lady Starbursts never took her grifter of a state off of the massive subsidies the rest of the nation provides it, as a testament to the “private sector, free enterprise” principles of which she is so reflective. The only state in the union that receives as much in Federal spending as its entire state budget. A dollar and eighty five cents for every dollar it sends to the IRS. One of two states in the union without a statewide sales and income tax.
Here’s a free enterprise principle for her: Can we have it back, please?
Dee Loralei
Why is Erik son of Erik going to be on Colbert tonight? Oh well, the TCU- Boise State game should be good .
Bubblegum Tate
@Sly:
Not to mention the seizing of corporate profits and equal redistribution of those profits among the state’s citizenry, which is totally NOT soshulizm!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@licensed to kill time:
It is the logical endpoint of Lee Atwater’s famous quote ‘You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nig…’, i.e. a system of “values” defined so abstractly that it doesn’t refer back to anything outside of itself. What happens after this value system is untethered from the rest of the world? This may be one possible result.
Origuy
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Not much garlic is actually grown in Gilroy these days, because of a combination of development and nematode infestation. Most of it is grown around Fresno and Bakersfield, and trucked to Gilroy for processing. I can still get a whiff of garlic at my house in San Jose at times, though.
Probably don’t want to bury Cheney around Bakersfield, though. There are a lot of oil fields around there. It would probably reanimate his corpse.
Ash Can
@Dee Loralei:
Wait, what? He is? Really? Oh, man, that’s gonna be comedy gold.
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
Wow. These doggies are entwined in our existence like nobodies business. They just are. And we are the better off for it, as I hope the doggies are as well. Lucky 11 year old, and dog as well from surviving a cougar mauling.
LanceThruster
Go Cheney yourself, Dick.
Dee Loralei
@Ash Can:
Yea, I DVRd it. Someone more cynical than I should come up with a drinking game.
dmsilev
@Ash Can: Yes, really.
Wonder if he thinks that Colbert is sincere?
-dms
licensed to kill time
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Excellent explanation. I think it might also be like that definition of pornography, i.e. “I know it when I see it”…
Real ‘Murkans like Palin just know what “values” are American and how they reflect each other and whatnot.
Demo Woman
@Ash Can: Tomorrow he’s going to be on Morning Joe and Hannity. WTF… A local politician from Macon, Ga makes the big time.
Allan
Values are very shiny things, and so they reflect a lot.
They’re kind of like little mirrors, except when conservatives look at them they don’t see their own reflections, only the imperfections of others.
Ian
@General Winfield Stuck:
Nice.
Kobie
A fact resume? Seriously, what the fuck?
Anne Laurie
@Punchy:
Tell that to the late Saddam Hussein’s fellow countrymen. Hey, look, Nigeria’s got oilfields!
Violet
@Kobie:
It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s a series of talking point words. Here’s what her followers hear:
Common sense
Values
American values
Not elitism
Spinelessness = elite Ivy league education
Fact
Hard work
Private sector
Free enterprise principles
Positive change
All the rest is just filler.
Her minions don’t care about all those connection words. They hear all the important words and just know she’s “speaking the truth” and “speaks for them.”
Elie
@JGabriel:
Thanks Gabriel for the correction and you are so right — misspoke when my intent was to identify Bosnia — a relative next door neighbor to Croatia. Your point was also completely accurate and correct — lots of blondes, red heads and light eyed Muslims in the world and any “profiling” would be very hazardous and likely to fail.
Kobie
@Violet: Oh, I know. Just the notion that a “fact resume” (which makes no sense, btw) is somehow a bad thing seems rather whacked out even by wingnut standards.
Wait … did I just imply wingnuts had standards? Scratch that. Kthx.
Ash Can
@Dee Loralei:
Please, no. My liver is still recovering from the holidays.
@Demo Woman:
A double sawbuck says they’ll all be saying how great it is that Stephen Colbert agrees with them.
And can I be the first to say “Hannity/Erickson 2012?” Hey, a girl can dream, right?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Kobie:
Pulp Faction.
Somebody call Tarantino, I smell a sequel.
Kobie
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Starring Alan Keyes as Jules Winnfield.
Older
DZ (104):
Do you remember “Don’t Speak for Me, Sarah Palin”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh9BmNuqeiQ
maus
@Notorious P.A.T.: Avatar is panderingly, patronizingly stupid and cringeworthy, though.
New Yorker
BTW, something occurred to me while reading the Palin transcript: the woman is acutely aware that despite the millions she made on a huckster campaign for a largely fictional book that she didn’t write, she still doesn’t know things like where Argentina is, or who Eva Peron was. Thus, there are people out there (like me) who might have a fraction of the money, fame, or influence she does, but can find Argentina on a map and can identify Evita’s husband, and thus would never in a million years trade places with her.
THAT’S the essence of what drives this hateful, petty, resentful woman.
Fractured Wingnut Fairy Tales
Don’t forget Dick’s memoir comes out in the spring next year.
“I’m persuaded there are a lot of interesting stories that ought to be told,” Cheney said. “I want my grandkids, 20 or 30 years from now, to be able to read it and understand what I did, and why I did it.”
And THAT children is why Grandpa stood trial in the Hague.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/alan-grayson-who-wrote-the-introduction-to-cheneys-book—-mephistopheles.php?ref=fpb
asiangrrlMN
I welcome the racial/religious profiling because then maybe I wouldn’t get ‘randomly’ searched so often. I have no idea into which demographic I fall. Though, to be fair, most of my ‘random’ searching happened pre-9/11.
As for Dick, if I had a job that depended on being in his good graces, I would be afraid to say anything against him as well.
Brachiator
@maus:
And a hell of an enjoyable movie. Go figure.
Palin’s acolytes don’t know who Eva Peron was either. Perhaps this works like a secret handshake for them.
Anne Laurie
@Randy P:
You don’t want “mean” dogs working with the police, especially somewhere like an Amtrak station full of busy innocents going about their lives. You want focused, well-trained dogs, preferably big enough to knock over a bad guy but not so wired up they take off after every running commuter, horseplaying teenager, or small child holding an ice-cream cone tempting inches from the dog’s nose. Just like you don’t want to grab some steroid-pumped knothead who only got his high school diploma because the teachers didn’t want him hanging around bullying the other kids, give him a uniform and a big shiny gun, and set him loose to ‘keep the civilians in line’.
gwangung
Um, somebody should pass this along to a few hundred police departments across the country….
Elie
The generalized comfort in much of our nation with Cheney’s abusive and aggressive style speaks to a population that “normalized” that sort of behavior at home, right in the core of their families and emotional realities. This is unfortunately, I believe, a normal emotional reference for way too many folks in this country. If it were not, he would not have the acceptance or support. This sick typology resonates for a reason.
Question: What to do about it?
I dont think that meeting it with the same resentment, anger and hate will do much except amplify and validate it. Of course, the seductiveness of doing so, and the reality that even on our side, so many have the same sad experience in their own families, makes this exceptionally difficult.
keestadoll
@Fractured Wingnut Fairy Tales: link malfunction…
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/alan-grayson-who-wrote-the-introduction-to-cheneys-book—-mephistopheles.php
mclaren
Dick Cheney is the guy who ran a global assassination squad out of his office with no oversight from congress or the military and no accountability.
And you’re wondering why people are still afraid of him?
The TIm Channel
They ought to be afraid. Cheney orchestrated 9-11, the trashing of the Constitution and everyday torture. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.
Enjoy.
licensed to kill time
Gah, losing my reply arrow again.
Lex
I don’t know what’s more pathetic, this or Cheney arguing that his Plame testimony shouldn’t be released because otherwise it would be mocked by Jon Stewart.