Good thing for Borky that he didn’t mouth off to “Dick” Cheney – he would have ended up with buckshot instead of sprinkles on the old snowcone.

Does anybody notice that guys called Dick usually turn out to be ‘Dicks’. Tricky Dicky Nixon, Dick Armey, Dick Cheney, Dick Dawkins, Dick Armitage etc etc?

Never thought of that, but obvious on reflection!  Somebody should update Dickipedia!

Kind of a ridiculous premise.  But then again (via CNN):

A new group wants former Vice President Dick Cheney back in the White House.

The organization – “Draft Dick Cheney 2012″ – launched on Friday, and unveiled their new Web site. Their aim: To convince the former vice president to seek the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House….

“The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party’s standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP,” said Christopher Barron, one of the organizers of the Draft Cheney movement. “There is only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong – and that person is Dick Cheney.”

Few people take this seriously, of course.  As I noted back in September, this draft-Dick chatter is just a facade to justify the continuing media presence of his daughter, Liz (lest anyone ask, “Why, exactly, are you relevant?”) as she unsubtly positions herself for a future electoral career.

But as long as they’re going to play this game, it seems reasonable that we should call their bluff.  If Liz Cheney’s going to keep getting invited onto the cable talk shows and the public-speaking circuit based on the excuse that her dad might run for the White House, some noisy folks should start insisting on equal time for the questions Dick Cheney would have to answer if he weren’t too cowardly to show his own face in an open forum.

You know, the implausible amnesia, the sleeping on the job (literally and figuratively), the evidence hidden in safes intended for classified information, etc… anyone want to start compiling the list?

If he wants to haunt our nightmares, there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to haunt his.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Dean told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that Cheney attained “something of a record” by refusing to answer or claiming to not recall the answer to 72 questions posed by the FBI during a May, 2004, interview.

“If you’ll recall, former Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman did 150 ‘I don’t recalls’ during his three days before the Senate Watergate committee,” Dean said. “This is 72 in less than three hours, that’s right up there.“

Among the many things that Big Dick pretended not to remember or to have cared about, what stood out to me were these attempts to portray his chief of staff–the now-convicted felon Scooter Libby–as merely answering media questions in such a mundane way that Cheney was barely aware of them:

Routine press inquiries would have gone to Cathie Martin, while some of those involving more substantive matters, particularly in the area of intelligence and national security, would have likely been handled by Scooter Libby.  He [Cheney] provided press guidance to both of them at times … though he can’t recall any specific advice he gave them in the May/June 2003 time frame….

… Vice President Cheney advised he was aware, prior to the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity in Robert Novak’s newspaper editorial on 7/14/03, that Scooter Libby was speaking to reporters about Joseph Wilson and his trip to Niger.  He stated that Libby was not required to clear every public statement and press contact because the Vice President had confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries….

… The Vice President advised that it was possible while on the return flight [from Norfolk, VA to Washington, DC on July 12th], that he and Scooter Libby discussed media responses to inquiries regarding Joe Wilson’s charges about the use of flawed intelligence.  Though he cannot recall any specific conversation, he would not be surprised to learn that he had such a discussion with his Chief of Staff.

… Vice President Cheney reiterated that Libby’s 7/12/03 handwritten notes look and sound like something he might dictate to Libby, but he cannot specifically recall having dictated such instructions to him on that occasion….

… The Vice President advised that if Scooter Libby had any discussion with any reporters on 7/12/03 upon his return from Norfolk, VA, he must have viewed those discussions as unremarkable, inasmuch as the Vice President was never told the outcome of any conversations, discussions or interviews with the media by Libby.

Why do I find all of this no-big-deal spin noteworthy?  Because of how Cheney attempts to explain away a seemingly damning piece of evidence–a note written in early October 2003 demanding that the White House spokesliar Scott McClellan publicly (and, as events would reveal, inaccurately) exonerate Libby from involvement in the Plame leak:

The vice president stated that the portion of his handwritten notes which read in part, ‘… sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others’, was his reference to the efforts of Libby who was forced to respond to numerous media inquiries involving Joe Wilson because of the incompetence of the CIA.

Uhh, Dick, what happened to your “confidence in Libby’s abilities and experience in handling such inquiries”?  How did conversations with reporters that were “unremarkable” when they occurred in July suddenly become the equivalent of putting one’s “neck in the meat grinder” three months later?

Kind of makes you think that the real “meat grinder” must have been something else, doesn’t it?

I’ll have more on that soon (schedule & circumstances permitting)…

Nancy Pelosi, please step aside and let somebody more competent assume the Speaker of the House position – preferably somebody who wasn’t a Quisling Democrat during the reign of King George the Witless.

*Update 6/3/09* Turns out there is more to the story – maybe even some credence to Nancy’s claims that she was misled.  Turns out Dick Cheney led all these Congressional intelligence briefings, even those on torture techniques.  Forget the Truth Commission, it’s time for Congress to subpoena his ass and start grilling him…pronto!

- we were right to use torture
- torture kept us safe, and gave us intelligence that saved lives, and
- Obama’s decision to forego torture (and all the other extralegal escapades of the Bush years) puts us at risk.

The fact that Cheney is taken seriously as a commentator on this topic, after he, his party, and their firmly-held beliefs plunged us into two losing wars and The Great Recession, demonstrates the impotence of the “liberal” media. The fact that he, and the Republican party, have succeeded (partly through the bumbling ineptness of Pelosi) to turn this conversation to what Democrats knew and when they knew it, illustrates the inability of the Democratic Party to stir the pot on these issues like the deeply experienced Republican machine can.

WIth all the petty tit-for-tat, however, it becomes easy to overlook the explosive strategy behind Cheney’s position. The fact that Republicans are influencing the debate in Washington, as evidenced by Obama’s acquiescence in military affairs this week…that’s the short game. The long game is far more insidious – Cheney and his party are betting that there will be another spectacular terrorist incident, and they’re setting the seeds for the only rescue position Republicans are capable of at this moment – the big-daddy, keep you safe party that’s not afraid to ‘break a few eggs’.

Think about the narrative that a terror catastrophe enables. There’s Cheney, reminding the world on “Meet the Press” that he told us so. There’s the elder wise man (believe it or not) George W., reminding regular folks how tough but effective the Bush adminstration was, with all the softening benefits of nostalgia that moves the Palin yokels so effectively. And there is the chorus of neo-conservatives, reviving their debunked mythologies alleging that American power can control the world.

So, Democrats can console themselves all day with the comforting notion that Cheney is the worst possible spokesman for the sinking Republicans, like we see them doing on every talking-heads show, but he may have the last laugh.  If the worst comes to pass, and the forces arrayed against American power are again successful in perpetrating an atrocity, how long will it be before the Republicans, and, unbelievably, even Dick himself, seem like a comfort to a polarized and terrified America?

Betting that another terror extravaganza will hit us, and will benefit their party if it does,  may be cynicism to the nth degree, but remember…this is Dick Cheney we’re talking about.

Yesterday, I was idly thinking of posting advice to Obama to consider opening up a Torture Truth Commission to put a little pressure on Cheney and maybe get him to shut up that way, but I figured Obama really isn’t interested in spending any political capital on going after Shrubya-era crimes, no matter how egregious, so I didn’t bother.

Imagine my delighted surprise with Obama’s pronouncement that he won’t give immunity to the architects of torture.

Maybe that’ll shut Dick up.

“A public that yearns for, and has now been promised, “pollution-free” energy will be given instead something that produces plutonium, strontium, cesium and dozens of other highly toxic radioactive waste products. One can only imagine the chuckles inside the White House about the “gotcha” built into the hydrogen initiative. You environmentalists want clean hydrogen instead of oil? We’ll give you plutonium. “

“The energy bill would also reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act, the most extraordinary piece of corporate socialist legislation in U.S. history. Price- Anderson immunizes the nuclear industry from as much as 99 percent of the liability it might face in case of a serious release of radioactivity in a major accident. This subsidy has always been difficult for nuclear advocates to explain. On the one hand, they tell the public that the technology is safe and people living near reactors have nothing to worry about — in fact, we should be building more of them. On the other hand, they tell Congress correctly that the technology is so dangerous that no insurer will accept the risks, and that unless Congress limits the public’s right to compensation for damages, the free market will bring nuclear power to a halt.”