Dick Cheney is still vice-president. We have two now.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Dick Cheney’s appearance on Sunday morning shows was coordinated with stenography in the New York Times. Now it’s coordinated with stenography in Politico. The more things change…
Update. Comment #3 on this Politico piece (h/t demo woman):
It is not Cheyney who is rewriting OUR History, it is the Blacks and the Liberal Murdering Professors! The BLACKS lay claims to; Finding America, Winning the Revolutionary War, The Civil War, all of the Wars after that. They have Invented every good thing known to man. Have a MONTH just for them. Their own Beauty Contest, Racist Organizations set aside, for which my taxes go. Yet as we look around the Globe, at Africa, and every Black Ruled territory, they are stuck in the stone age. So, go ahead and rewrite it. We know the truth, and we know about the Muslims and Blacks!!
John Quixote
And of course Politico gives Dick the upper hand.
Harris and VandeHei must spend thier days in a puddle of thier own urine. The only thing that gives them comfort is page hits.
Genine
Wouldn’t they cancel each other out?
chopper
i do like that he said that any success in iraq should come with the phrase ‘thank you, george bush’. that’s a fitting quote – i’m sure most americans are totally thinking the same thing. totes.
seriously, i’m not sure why they keep trotting dick out in front of the cameras. i guess its the media’s obsession with republican has-beens. or dick is really trying to put a shine on the turd for the history books.
John Quixote
@chopper:
The latter. At least that’s what textbooks from Texas will say.
cleek
puck folitico
Kryptik
@John Quixote:
You notice that evenhandedness thing when liberals say something never applies when conservatives or Republicans say something.
If Biden had been the one to start this crap, you could be sure that the headline would ready something like ‘Biden calls Cheney ‘Dead Wrong’, Cheney Refutes’. Something to characterize Biden as not knowing what the hell he talks about AND show him as the aggressor.
Can’t we just petition them to rename themselves the GOPolitico? Please?
John Quixote
@Kryptik:
They’re too busy trying to copyright the entire English language at the moment.
licensed to kill time
I’d just like to call Cheney dead. Finally.
scav
Titles we’d love to read: “VP vs. VP: “Biden calls Cheney: ‘Dead'”
Late-Breaking: oh dog, the hive mind is real!
Kryptik
@John Quixote:
Ah right, forgot about that, my mistake. Tell me when they corner the copyright on ‘idiots’, since they’re already squatting on the intellectual property.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Why does Cheney always look like he has a mouthful of infected monkey cum?
Heresiarch
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
Because he always has a mouthful of infected monkey chum.
John Quixote
@Kryptik:
It’s a cage/table match between them and Fred Hiatt.
FlipYrWhig
@MoeLarryAndJesus: Blown seal.
Kryptik
@John Quixote:
$5 bucks on outside interference by the Teabaggers.
JGabriel
Whenever Dick Cheney sees his shadow, it means there will be six more … legions of hell flying into the sky on the backs of foul winged beasts and, well, just generally flying around a lot and darkening our days. And spitting. REALLY smelly boogers.
.
demo woman
From the comments at the Politico article..
Who the hell is Cheyney?
SiubhanDuinne
Most other countries stop using the title once a person is out of office. I mean, they might describe a former prime minister or ambassador as such, as an identifier, but we seem to be — if not unique — at least somewhat rare in our custom of regularly referring to and addressing ex-officials by the last or highest title they held. I used to like that we did that, but I’m changing my mind rapidly. I now think that once a person becomes a private citizen, the titles should be retired. Not to mention the fact that using them routinely contributes to the widespread “false equivalency” such as the Politico abomination above.
chopper
seriously, “the the dems were smart” they’d hang the phrase “thank you, george bush” around cheney’s neck like an albatross.
scav
@JGabriel:
but can he see himself in a mirror? Must go back to that Venn Diagram a few days ago….
JGabriel
chopper:
I think it’s part of the Democratic campaign for the 2010 elections. Seriously, it’s free negative advertising …
.
suzanne
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
Because he just gave Lynne her annual oral pleasuring.
scarshapedstar
Let’s not forget that the Washington Post now employs Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson as ankle-biter-in-chief while conveniently omitting any mention of his former employer.
So cool.
Annie
@demo woman:
LOL. And who the hell are the “blacks and the Liberal Murdering Professors…?”
Great to know that angry white men never committed any atrocities and were never part of politicies and practices that impacted another country’s development – underdevelopment.
JGabriel
SiubhanDuinne:
Or at least given new titles. For Republican ex-office holders, for instance, I like the title, “That Asshole”.
Try it. Under that rule, Cheney would become That Asshole Cheney, Frist, That Asshole Frist. And so on.
.
Heresiarch
@demo woman:
Shorter crazy asshole: “I’m angry that my habits of chewing tobacco, drinking cheap beer, eating deep-fried Twinkies and watching NASCAR have not lead me to fame, fortune and success, as is my god-given right.”
alex
I wouldn’t put too much stock in Politico comments. In every significant way, they resemble youtube comments for music videos: disproportionately racist and hateful, filled with txting slang and bad grammar, ignorant, and full of CAPS.
Svensker
@suzanne:
Oh. Yikes.
Dannie22
Thanks demo woman. That comment was hilarious
Kryptik
@scarshapedstar:
And they literally just hired on Bush’s other speechwriter this past week.
Matt
What’s funny is that commenter identifies his/her political party as “independent.” Whenever I hear the President is losing ground with “independents,” I laugh, because these are the types of “independents” he’s “losing.” If only he was more bipartisan!
TR
@Matt:
I think the commenter meant that as “independent of reality.”
FlipYrWhig
@demo woman: When did Teh Skeery Blax claim to have discovered America? Is this person getting black people confused with Vikings? Damn Musloscandinegroes and their murdering academipinko friends!
Jean
@John Quixote: Good one!
Kryptik
@Matt:
They’re the kind that I tend to term Billopendents. Republicans hiding behind the term Independent as if to give themselves more credibility, like a certain Mr. O’Reilly.
TR
Jesus Christ, those commenters at Politico are fucking insane.
CT Voter
You know what’s weird about this? (I mean besides the standard Politico habit of fluffing Republican talking points. . .)
Check out the time stamps. The first one is 7:59 AM. How is that possible? The blabberfests hadn’t even taken place at that time. . .
SiubhanDuinne
@JGabriel:
That Asshole Palin
That Asshole Gonzalez
That Asshole Santorum
Works for me!
(Can we also use it for DINOs like That Asshole Zell Miller and That Asshole Joe Lieberman?)
gaziantepayakkabi
They’re the kind that I tend to term Billopendents. Republicans hiding behind the term Independent as if to give themselves more credibility, like a certain Mr. O’Reilly.
thanks
dmsilev
@CT Voter: The blabberfests are often taped a day or two in advance. That way, people like Cheney don’t have to venture outside and risk exposure to the sun, but still get to snarl at the cameras.
-dms
CalD
Politico should just get the band back together and hire Judith Miller. She’d be a perfect fit for them. Who knows, maybe she could even start another war.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Kryptik:
You realize that Bill O’Reilly is occasionally seen as a socialist traitor these days by the Fox News set, right? That’s how crazy the situation has become.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
You realize that Bill O’Reilly is occasionally seen as a social ist traitor these days by the Fox News set, right? That’s how crazy the situation has become.
Uriel
I sometimes really wonder if anyone at politico _ever_ reads the comments sections for their articles.
I mean, the only thing extraordinary about the ramped up ignorance, incoherence and delusion in the comment posted above is how ubiquitous and almost de rigueur it is in the commentariat there.
If I was even a half-half-half-halfway serious political author, (which would make me only 1/16ths serious,) and I opened up a comments section to something I merely doodled absently in a drunken haze to find that *this* was the kind of audience I was appealing to-
Well, I’d probably decide it was time to learn a trade or something, ’cause that writing idea is clearly little more than an embarrasing, stillborn pipe-dream.
Yet they soldier on. It’s impressive, in a way.
JGabriel
Uriel:
Will the circuit be unbroken?
.
Ash Can
@Uriel: You know, not three minutes ago I was composing a comment with exactly the same idea, but I erased it because, as I re-read what I had typed, I thought, “Oh, who cares? The schmucks at Politico probably consider this kind of reaction to their articles a feature rather than a bug anyway.”
Uriel
@JGabriel:
Ha Ha. Very funny. :-P
Look- at least it was still spelled correctly the first time, even if it wasn’t the correct word. You have to give me some leeway here- I actually went over to the politico comments section in question and *read* the stuff they’re typing furiously into the ether.
That does thing to a man. Horrible things.
(Actually- I admit, it was pretty funny. )
CT Voter
@Uriel: I stopped reading Politico because of the comments, and the fact that the folks at Politico evidently just didn’t give a hoot about the racist crap people were spewing.
Ash
@CT Voter: You should have stopped reading Politico because….it’s Politico.
CT Voter
@Ash: I know. I KNOW. It took me awhile, but I’ve overcome my addiction to it.
gopher2b
God I hate white males. They totally suck.
licensed to kill time
@CT Voter:
I can’t bear to read comments on most any site anymore. I read Benen and TNC (who seems to have tamed his commenters into hyperpoliteness most of the time, which is nice but….)
If it weren’t for the snark and wit on Balloon Juice to filter the poison out of current events and media bloviating I might be edging a bit closer to that windowledge, ya know? This place is like a Zone of Sanity for me. And the Commentariat is first rate.
My bookmark feeds, they’re shrinking!
jeffreyw
You all should be cooking and not reading that stuff.
valdivia
OT–have you guys seen the loathsome piece by Stolberg in the NYT style section about how Obama spends too much time with his daughters? Read it and weep people, it has the worst of The Village Knows Best snobism with the ‘it would be irresponsible not to speculate’ idiocy about how this is bad for his presidency and the country.
CT Voter
@valdivia: Loathsome is exactly the correct word. I can’t tell which parts I hated the most. The one where she employs the “some say” method of sliming, or where she talks about how the Washington media elite were offended because Obama preferred spending time with his family to going to the Gridiron Dinner.
Isn’t this part just a thing of beauty:
And she’s one of their top reporters!!!!
At least we weren’t lectured on how hard it is for rich people in D.C. to get good childcare, I guess.
Dan Robinson
That is because Biden isn’t a real VP. You are not a real VP until you shoot someone in the face, and then get them to apologize for getting shot in the face. That is what it takes to be a real VP.
valdivia
@CT Voter:
So glad someone else read it and felt like I did. Don’t you love the “some could accuse him” bs? And wasn’t this called good family values when Bush was in office?
Our media is truly dead.
licensed to kill time
@valdivia:
And if Obama was rarely seeing his kids because he’s working all the time like those “other politicians who have sacrificed their families for their jobs” it would be “ZOMG! Why won’t he set an example for Fathers in America” and “Won’t Someone Think of the Children!?”
{{{Thud}}} Head. Desk. Ouch.
Jim Once
Real VP’s order the President around, and tell Senators to fuck off.
jrg
Comments like that insane, rambling screed are the reason I won’t read Politico. That site is a train wreck.
…and it’s astonishing that the right-wing howler monkeys are trying to bring politics into a shooting that had nothing at all to do with politics. How stupid do they think we are?
valdivia
@licensed to kill time:
I think our current media operates under the rules that anything Obama does is 1. bad for the country 2. bad for himself politically 3. even, or specially, if it is actually a good thing.
PS also, as if Obama had not sacrificed greatly time with his family to be senator for 4 years and run for president for 2. I guess he automatically got to the Wh right? Maybe because it is Obama he should move out of the WH so he sacrifices time with his family? even if all other presidents did not have to?
CT Voter
@valdivia: And did you like how she gets a freaking Republican strategist to comment on Obama, but nothing from any Democrat?
The whole piece made my jaw drop. As soon as I saw the headline I thought “How many paragraphs will it take for Stolberg to turn what SHOULD be a positive into a political liability?”
She, of course, didn’t disappoint.
They can’t slime him for lacking family values. He obviously love his family. So, instead, that becomes the problem. A strength becomes a weakness. He’s too attached to his family. He’s willing to let the COUNTRY SLIDE INTO A DITCH WHILE HE GOES TO MALIA’S BASKETBALL GAMES!
You watch. This is just the beginning.
licensed to kill time
@valdivia:
The media really failed in the Emperor Has No Clothes Dept. on the last go-round so now they seem to be calling Naked! on Obama all the time to make up for it, regardless of what he is wearing/not wearing.
CT Voter
@licensed to kill time: Yes, Balloon Juice commenters are the funniest around.
Well, SadlyNo commenters are pretty hilarious, too.
But I agree: most comment boards are getting ugly these days.
Beej
Slightly OT, but I’ve been seething since watching MTP this morning. What is the purpose of the press if they can’t be relied upon to give us the facts? Congressman Republican Mouthpiece gives us the party line about how the underwear bomber clammed up after he was read his Miranda rights. Does David Gregory, respected journalist, break in to tell us that, according to the FBI, this is not factual? No, of course not. It is left to Rachel Maddow and Harold Ford, of all people, to establish the facts. Bobo just sits there smiling vapidly, and Gregory is so busy checking out his next question that he doesn’t even listen to the discussion. Isn’t the media actually supposed to dig out facts and report them? I always thought that was their purpose. They’re sure as hell falling down on the job.
ruemara
Aw hell, looks like I’m gonna have to break into today’s home decorating and week’s cooking fest and go school any bitch writer that has the jaw dropping slimeball thought patters to go after Obama as a father.
demo woman
@Beej: Rachel was excellent and I hope that she is rewarded by the network. Unfortunately, she will probably not be asked back due to the fact that she made the moderator look like an idiot.
DougJ
@licensed to kill time:
This is the the only comments section I read. I agree that TNC has also good commenters. Steve Benen’s and Kevin Drum’s comments are ok too, I guess, but a little dull.
demo woman
Msnbc.com has an article about Sarah Palin attending the Daytona car race. Sarah was very impressed and had this to say
I can understand touting some July 4th events as being patriotic but why is watching a bunch of cars go around a track patriotic.
eemom
this piece by Steve Benen, “Elections Used To Have Consequences,” is impressive. Painful, but impressive.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_02/022403.php#more
It’s good that there are one or two other sane people (besides our esteemed hosts) still writing blogs out there.
gil mann
Good timing! “I am aware of all internet traditions” was getting a little threadworn.
4tehlulz
@demo woman: Because only a European would think of putting right turns in a car race.
daryljfontaine
@jeffreyw: Looks good. I have a pork tenderloin roast in the slow cooker, filled to the brim with veggies — mushrooms, onions, baby carrots and potatoes. Smells like heaven in here right now.
D
freelancer
@DougJ:
I think I’m banned from Benen’s site, as my first comment there was a piece of jackass spoofery that I think he took seriously.
licensed to kill time
@DougJ:
I used to read all of them (yeah, I know who that sounds like) but over the last year and a half (what does that coincide with, boys and girls?) I have been winnowing out the crazy and the stupid and yes, the dull. Life’s too short.
Gracias a Dios para Balloon Juice! FSM, too. And thank you for your posts and especially your titles, DougJ. Most excellent.
demo woman
@freelancer: OMG, you’re banned from the Washington Monthly and Doug is banned by the NYTimes. Is this a new trend?
jeffreyw
@daryljfontaine: Yum! Take a pic!
valdivia
@CT Voter:
I totally see it. In the next press conference someone will ask a question about paying too much attention to his family and too little to the country and wouldn’t it be better if he moved his family back to Chicago so he can concentrate on presidenting?
@licensed to kill time:
Yes now everything he does leads to speculation of how it could be bad, pretty much yelling naked as you say even if he is fully clothed. Fuckers.
freelancer
@demo woman:
Yes but the WM is worth reading. It’s not like every other story is cringe-inducing.
OT – Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you.
Chyron HR
@demo woman:
The track is like a prayer wheel, grinding out non-heathen karma for the US-of-A.
scav
@freelancer: And Misery Bear wishes you the best of the day too.
wesindc
Anyone know of any IT position’s that don’t suck your soul out through your eyeballs? Let me know, my Karma is in a serious negative lately.
Ash Can
@valdivia: Not having looked up her personal stats, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Stolberg doesn’t have any kids. Parenthood is something that non-parents can’t really understand, and she certainly sounds clueless about it.
gnomedad
@demo woman:
Anything involving wanton petroleum consumption is patriotic. Drill, baby, drill!
Waynski
Color me exhausted.
valdivia
@Ash Can:
that could be (I have no kids–yet–but I think I can grasp how having them is not about putting them in a corner when you’re busy right?) And even if she does not have them, that piece is just the biggest slime job I have ever seen. This is a top reporter from the NYT? Really?
CT Voter
@valdivia: Lynne Sweet, coming right up!
She has to find a way to top what she managed at the last press conference (throwing fire on the Henry Gates conflagration. . .)>
licensed to kill time
__
Gads, last night I was surfing around on the teevee for something to watch and saw a movie named “Drill Baby Drill” and it was some soft porn thing with a Palin impersonator – the Palin parts (yeah, haha) were funny ! She was a kind of framing device for the other bits, including McCain in bondage gear (she called him MacDaddy).
I seem to recall hearing about this film (by Penthouse?) during the campaign but had never seen it. And, no, I generally do not watch this sort of thing whether you believe me or not.
And we just had a 4.5 earthquake 20min ago so I guess Gawd is punishing me for my curiosity, hah.
darryl
Please let me know your ethnicity and sex so I can return the compliment.
Ash Can
@valdivia: To be sure. Believe me, that was by far the most charitable thing I could possibly have said about her and her article.
valdivia
@CT Voter:
so true. But I could also see Chip or Tapper running with this.
@Ash Can:
:) we are on the same page then!
Mike G
Don’t you remember after Carter left office and you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Walter Mondale all over the librul media pontificating on everything the Reagan administration was doing wrong?
Me neither.
Kyle
Anyone know of any IT position’s that don’t suck your soul out through your eyeballs? Let me know, my Karma is in a serious negative lately.
Working for a public university doesn’t suck too badly. At least that’s what I’ve found here in CA – a more collaborative, less dictatorial management culture. Many of the campus employees are unionized (though my department is not), which tends to reduce the arrogance and aggression of management.
Previously I worked for Ross Perot (not by choice, I was outsourced), which put me off ever working in the corporate world again and turned my politics to the left (and made me damn glad he never became President). Being royally screwed and manipulated by a corporation turned me off fast to ‘free market’ pro-corporate economics as practiced by most of the mainstream media.
trollhattan
If anybody would like to share his or her opinion of herr Reichschancellor Cheney with him in person, save your shekels for March 27. It’s sure to be extra grassrootsy.
http://www.claremont.org/events/
Some Claremont Institute drone authored an op/ed printed for some reason ($) in today’s local paper, extolling the local activist perspective of the teabag movement, which “the media have tended to overlook.” How hard is it to overlook the nearly invisible?
I don’t know how many conservative belief tanks there are, but every time the local paper prints one of these crazy Sunday op/ed pieces I discover a new one. Claremont employs such luminaries as gamblin’ Bill Bennett, Hindrocket and Helprin.
wesindc
@Kyle
thanks, I think I need to start rescuing kittehs or something to wash and save my soul. Nothing worse than getting up each morning and wondering what my overlords are pushing today. Sad existence.
I’ll look into it.
mai naem
I find this crap so freaking depressing. I just feel like the Dems always, but, always come out as the losers. It pissed me off to no end that I see people on disability who have their kids/grandkids on WIC, people who go or have gone to school on the GI bill, are on medicaid , all of which are Dem. initiatives etc. all sit there and whine about how awful the Democrat party is and how healthcare reform is sozyluztik. Face it, the American public is too stoopid to understand anything that’s even slightly complicated.
demo woman
@valdivia: I just read the article in the style section. During the Bush years, it had been reported that he went to bed early. He took long bike rides and he cleared so much brush that I’m surprised there is still brush left in the state of Texas.
We now have a President who works in the wee hours of the night and they criticize him because he takes time to go to parent/ teacher conferences. Exactly how many recitals or conferences are we talking about? Most likely not many. The article is the a shameful piece of rubbish.
valdivia
@demo woman:
I know. I am still seeing red hours after reading it. If I had not killed my subscription long ago this article would have lead me to do that. Just pure unadulterated rubbish.
eastriver
Really, Dougie? Picking dingleberries from the Poolitico comments? And the point is ________?
This is fruit that’s fallen off the tree.
DCLaw1
This shocking news compelled me to scrawl a new piece of satire, Republican Superfriends: Dick’s Seduction.
True story.
http://insideoutthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/02/republican-superfriends-dicks-seduction.html
gogol's wife
@valdivia:
I just came in on this discussion. The Times is ridiculous with regard to Obama, and I’ve written the Public Editor about it maybe 3000 times (no reply ever). Stolberg is one of the worst, but Helene Cooper is a contender. She (Cooper) had an item about how Obama was postponing his Thanksgiving trip for one day in order to work on health care reform. It was only one paragraph long, but it had to end with something like, “but of course, unlike the rest of us peons who have to wait in line at the airport, he has Air Force One waiting on the tarmac to take him on his vacation.” Yeah, just like every other president in recent history, so your point is?
russell
Allowing Cheney to pontificate is like inviting commentary from the ghost of Franco.
Go fuck yourself, Dick.
Dee Loralei
@DCLaw1: LOL, that was amusing, thanks for your link. I bet it really truly happens just like that.
Unfortunately, by comparing Allen et al to teeny-bopper girls, you do a disservice to the little girls.
Trollhatten @93, isn’t the Claremont thingy the ones who gave Rummy an award last year?
valdivia
@gogol’s wife:
I am so glad I did not see that piece. I actually rarely read the paper anymore but was having breakfast at friends this am and they had that page open. I almost choked on my coffee. I am going back to not reading it. Period.
DCLaw1
@Dee Loralei:
Deepest apologies to little girls. And boys who wear super-hero pajamas.
SiubhanDuinne
Well then goddammi, Sherryl Gay, why the *fuck* are you raising yours.
I’m sorry to have seen this. What a piece of asswipery.
And O/T (I posted next thread up) RIP Dick Francis, whose racing mysteries gave great pleasure over the years.
Morbo
Isn’t that just protocol though for presidents and vice presidents? Not saying it isn’t stupid protocol, but is that not the case?
Nick
@mai naem:
Which is all we are saying. But, wait, that would be condescending of us to say it, says this guy.
For anyone who is interested, the BBC has us pegged.
My favorite piece;