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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Lies From Beginning to End

Open Thread: Lies From Beginning to End

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Okay, maybe I’m a little obsessive about this, but Dick “Absolutely” Cheney is cementing the assumption that, as Mary McCarthy once said about a different famehound, every word he says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’. Salon has a transcription of part of the CBS intereview where Cheney was shilling his new book:

Sanjay Gupta: This idea that you have this respected heart surgeon from Texas [Denton Cooley] who didn’t see you, didn’t examine you, and then writes something saying that you have normal cardiac function. That just wasn’t true, Mr. Vice President.

Dick Cheney: Go ask Denton Cooley about that.

Sanjay Gupta: But sir, you saw it.

Dick Cheney: Listen to me, I think the bottom line is: was I up to the task of being vice president? And there’s no question. I think based upon the fact that I did it for eight years that they were right.

Sanjay Gupta: How were they able to say that you were able to do the job?

Dick Cheney: The way I look at it, Sanjay, is that first of all, I didn’t seek the job. The president came to me and asked me to be his vice president. The party nominated me. The doctors that consulted on it reached a common conclusion and the people elected me. Now what basis do I override the decision making process? Do you want to have an offshoot where we come check with Sanjay Gupta and say, “Gee, is he up to the task?” That’s not the way it works.

Video clip at the link.

Remember, Dubya’s handlers chose Halliburton CEO Cheney to head a committee to pick a VP candidate who could offset Bush’s lack of interest experience, especially in foreign policy. Cheney, much to the surprise of anyone who hadn’t seen his CV, decided that the very best candidate would be Dick Cheney, and then steamrolled all quibbles about ‘appearance’ and ‘legality’ by calling the questioners anti-American Democratic plants. Once the rest of the RNC ratfvckers gamed the 2000 election sufficiently that Dubya’s daddy’s Supreme Court picks could hand Dubya the Presidency despite losing the popular vote, we were stuck with Dick Cheney, because Americans don’t vote for a VP separately from “our” presidential choice.

It’s like the RNC dug up this CREEPster as an example of what Dick Nixon might’ve been without the personal charm or social conscience.

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  5. 5.

    EconWatcher

    Why is it that only medical and (occasionally) sports journalists seem to know how to ask skeptical follow-up questions?

    Wolf Blitzer and John King would ruefully dropped their line of questioning after Cheney said, “Go ask Denton Cooley about that.” They would have bowed to the devastating logic of that response and moved on.

    At least from this excerpt, maybe the good Dr. Gupta should anchor one of those Sunday morning chat shows.

  6. 6.

    j

    It was plain to anyone who was paying attention that Cheney was going to appoint himself when he took a Halliburton corporate jet to Jackson Hole on the last day that he could register to vote and switched his “primary residence” status to Wyoming; in order to get around that “President and Veep can’t be from the same state” law.

    So that whole ticket was a con job right from the start.

  9. 9.

    JoyfulA

    And keep in mind that Cheney then very quickly became a resident of Wyoming, although he’d been living in Texas for a long time. (The president and VP candidates must come from different states.)

    Aha! beaten by j!

  11. 11.

    Trollhattan

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    If he booked TDS they could do a switcharoo and have John Oliver substitute-host. That I’d watch. And of course, he’ll never, ever, EVER book on Colbert. You could put that on pay-per-view in theaters..

  12. 12.

    aimai

    @EconWatcher: Wish Sanjay Gupta had had the nerve to say to Cheney “Didn’t you owe it to the country and your President to step aside and find a candidate who could serve without reservations? This has nothing to do with anyone else’s morality but your own. No higher moral code than “I see my chance to be VP and I’m taking it?”

  13. 13.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Dick Nixon might’ve been without the personal charm or social conscience.

    or basic competency of Dick Nixon.

    Supposedly Bush woke up at some point to the fact that Cheny is a worthless hack and shut him out. I wonder what Big Dick though about finding his alpha dog act was all BS.

  15. 15.

    Dcrefugee

    During the Shrub’s first term, I had occasion to attend an evening event for former Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Cheney, a former Member himself, was the featured speaker.

    One thing I remember distinctly was some advice he gave: “If someone ever asks you to lead a vice-president search committee, you do it!” That’s pretty much a direct quote, and all I need to know about whether he was sought out for the position.

    DCr

  16. 16.

    catclub

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: “basic competency of Dick Nixon. ”

    Cheney was fabulously competent at getting his disciples into powerful positions throughout the Bush administration. Also in enriching himself and Halliburton.

  17. 17.

    feebog

    Worthless, lying, evil sack of shit. Dubya will go down in history as the worst President ever, this scumbag will go down as the most despicable.

  18. 18.

    Steve M.

    He’s flogging this book like crazy and it’s still not in the Amazon Top 100. Fuck you, Dick — oh, and fuck you too, Liz, because I know the whole point of this is to get you elected to the Senate on reflected sympathy.

  23. 23.

    jayjaybear

    There were an awful lot of Nixonian second-stringers (the ones who were backbench enough to avoid indictment or conviction) that got pulled into the Shrubya administration. That was completely and totally Cheney’s move to retry the imperial presidency concept in a clean, new, non-mucked-up Oval Office.

  25. 25.

    waspuppet

    Between the way Cheney ran the country from the VP’s office, the way that ticket got into office, and the way he got on the ticket in the first place, Dick Cheney engineered the closest thing we’re likely to get in the U.S. to a coup d’etat.

  29. 29.

    Chris

    @jayjaybear:

    Hasn’t the party been pretty much run by Nixon alums since, well, Nixon? It was my impression that he’d reshuffled the power broker community in a way that’s stuck with us ever since.

  30. 30.

    Redshirt

    Also, now that the Dark Lord is part machine, I wonder if he keeps backups of his heart in various man-sized safes around the world.

  33. 33.

    Jay C

    OK, since the subject has come up; can anyone ( not named Cheney) confirm whether or not heart pacemakers CAN be wirelessly “hacked” to off their wearers ( a la “Homeland”)?

    I know Darth Cheney claimed to have to have had his pacemaker replaced with some sort of “secure” device to protect his vile ass, but it sounds very very fictional…

  34. 34.

    shelly

    Dick Cheney is the one person who makes me hope that there truely is an afterlife and a Weighing Of The Souls like in the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead.’

    This bastard needs some accounting.

  36. 36.

    pacem appellant

    OT Question: After I’m read The GOS and BJ and Atrios’s three posts of the day, where should I go next? My blog roll got thin at some point and I never filled it back out again. As a gesture of good will, for those who may not know, there is much joy at cakewrecks.com.

  37. 37.

    Redshirt

    @Chris: Hey Chris, sorta/kinda OT – did you recommend I read “Darth Plagueis”? If so, thanks! I love it in ways that confirm my absolute nerd-dom. It’s awesome!

  38. 38.

    aimai

    @Dcrefugee: In Angler it is argued that he demanded reams of private, personal, data from the people he was supposedly considering for the VP slot and then used that data to control them after he rejected their names and substituted his own.

  41. 41.

    Frankensteinbeck

    See, I think Cheney hardly ever lies. I’ve watched him in an interview, and he comes off as the true, classic, primal, textbook narcissist. He is not aware that he is ever wrong, has ever been wrong, or ever could be wrong. It irritates him hugely that Americans don’t understand that the Bush administration’s positions were all correct, and if anything failed at all it was because of outsiders. Whatever he wants to believe must be true to him. If this changes every thirty seconds, that’s fine. He either knows that he’s always believed this, or is patting himself on the back for having adapted to changing circumstances.

  42. 42.

    Chyron HR

    Yes, but it’s retroactively Obama’s fault because he didn’t have Bush, Cheney, and their entire families arrested and/or executed immediately upon taking office. Was there ever a greater betrayal of the principles for which America stands?

  48. 48.

    Michael Bersin

    Dick Cheney has some ‘splainin’ to do.

    “Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” – International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – in force September 8, 1992

    “…There were two forms of water torture. In the first, the victim was tied or held down on his back and a cloth placed over his nose and mouth. Water was then poured on the cloth…” – International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 12,936.

    “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.” – Principle III, Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950.

    “There is no exception under the statute permitting torture to be used for a “good reason.” Thus, a defendant’s motive (to protect national security, for example) is not relevant to the question whether he has acted with the requisite specific intent under the statute….Thus, for example, the fact that a victim might have avoided being tortured by cooperating with the perpetrator would not make permissible actions otherwise constituting torture under the statute. Presumably that has frequently been the case with torture, but that fact does not make the practice of torture any less abhorrent or unlawful.” – “Levin Memo”, December 30, 2004

  50. 50.

    Teddy's Person

    This is one of my favorite quotes about Dick Cheney from Andrew O’Hehir’s review of the documentary, The World According to Dick Cheney:

    Cheney’s not some Camelot-style “best and the brightest” girly-man, and he will go to his grave – presuming he turns out to be mortal after all – as the neocon Frank Sinatra who did it his way, completely unrepentant and only sorry that the rest of us are such unbelievable pussies.

  51. 51.

    Fred

    @Chyron HR: All that would be unnecessary. A stint on the ducking stool would be enough. Keep ’em under for a half hour and then all will be forgiven and they are free to go.

  52. 52.

    Chris

    @IowaOldLady:

    Oh, my. Now if we could make Cheney the person internally combusting from the logical fallacy rather than the person causing it to happen, that’s an episode I wouldn’t want to miss.

  54. 54.

    Jay C

    @Bill Arnold:

    Thanks for the link: I thought the “wireless pacemaker attack” scenario was just spy-fiction-thriller stuff: guess I’m wrong. And unhappily insecure about medical technology….

  55. 55.

    maya

    Logic puzzle:
    Dick Cheney, Don Toni Scalia and Ted Nugent went out hunting together.
    Only one returned.
    Based upon the evidence we have here, which one would that be?

  57. 57.

    aimai

    @Frankensteinbeck: I think he’s indifferent to concepts like “lie” or “truth.” He’s a consummate political manipulator and he moves in a world where there are people who you have to deal with and people who you don’t. The audience for his speeches and his tv interviews are all nobodies, to him. He doesn’t owe them anything, much less the truth of any event or opinion. He says what he thinks is advantageous to him and what he thinks they will accept (what will get over, frighten, overawe, or impress them) without caring about its truth value.

    This, to me, is the truly vampiric part of Cheney’s personality. He doesn’t worry about his reflection in the mirror–what a normal person holds as their personal reputation for honor and probity, for example–because other people (the mirror of society) don’t matter to him.

  59. 59.

    Mike G

    This idea that you have this respected heart surgeon from Texas [Denton Cooley] who didn’t see you, didn’t examine you, and then writes something saying that you have normal cardiac function.

    Denton Cooley should lose his medical license for lying like this. But being Texas he’ll probably get a Freedom Medal of Murkan Freedom from Goodhair Perry.

  60. 60.

    j

    @pacem appellant: “Think Progress” for truth telling supported with a shitload of links

    Josh Marshall’s “Talking Point Memo” (Polk Award winner, BTW) for investigation and analysis,

    FireDogLake for total bullshit put out by a GOP concern troll acting as an “ultra liberal” Obama hater. (Really, stay away from FDL. That site is the equivalent of the Tea Baggers with a bunch of Alex Jones on the side.)

    And “Crooks & Liars” with their awesome blogroll, which has “Raw Story”, Rising Hegemon”, “Mock, Paper, Scissors”, Dependable Renegade”, “Down With Tyranny” and others.

    For an insiders view of what happens on “The Hill” John Aravosis’ “AmericaBlog” is usually pretty good.

    And others. Find your own after test driving these. Let us know what you like.

  61. 61.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    OK, since the subject has come up; can anyone ( not named Cheney) confirm whether or not heart pacemakers CAN be wirelessly “hacked” to off their wearers ( a la “Homeland”)?

    @Jay C: Medical devices can be hacked wirelessly (shown at one of the BlackHat conferences, can’t remember which one). I don’t think the scenario Darth laid out was possible though. People with insulin pumps are most vulnerable. That is not fiction and is kinda worrisome, as the devices were designed to be accessible to anyone (imagine an EMT team trying to figure out your password. Hint. It’s not “AGGGHHHHHH”). No security whatsoever.

  62. 62.

    MattR

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: One of my friends installs pacemakers/defribilators for a living. He said that in order to activate the wireless antenna in the device you have to place a special wand over the device. His understanding is that the wand has a range of only a couple feet (he usually has it touching the body because the range is so limited) , though perhaps it could be amplified. Once that is done, you can then either issue commands via the wand or use a separate machine that connects wirelessly. (During the installation surgery they usually test it wirelessly so they don’t have to keep the wand sterile) But that second machine (which is currently about 25-30 lbs and the size of a briefcase) in an 8-10 foot range because the antenna on the device is so weak.

    Based on the rumors/speculation he has heard, the consensus seems to be that Cheney had the antenna removed from his device before it was installed. But if that is the case, he is still vulnerable to the close range wand altering his settings. It would just require being in close proximity for a longer time to use the wand to do everything making it more likely for a person to be noticed while doing it (instead of getting in close range for a few seconds to use the wand to activate the wireless and then being able to do the rest from a bit farther distance – perhaps the next room)

  64. 64.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Teddy’s Person:

    Yes, this from a cowardly asswipe who used five deferments to get out of going to his generation’s war, a war he actively and vocally supported, by the way, for other people to go and fight, not “other priorities” Dick “Major League Asshole” Cheney.

  67. 67.

    Paul in KY

    @Trollhattan: I have it on good info that in Hell, no demon is allowed to say ‘Dick Cheney’ 3 times into their bathroom mirrors.

    Little known fact: Demons do have bathrooms.

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