When he's not shooting old men in the face

Dick Cheney gets a little R&R and -- hold the phone!! What's that reflected in his shades???

Fortunately for Cheney's battered and beleaguered old ticker, "Don't worry dear, it's not what it looks like!":

No reports of anyone getting a fishhook in the face... so far.

(via)

Oh, that'll help.

Guess who's in the Middle East trying to jump-start the Peace Process:

"JERUSALEM (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney sought to coax Israel and the Palestinians to follow through on promises to forge a peace deal as he began an Easter weekend trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank." [...]

"Cheney's discussions "will involve the ways forward in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism and protect its citizenry," McBride said before the vice president left Saudi Arabia."

Maybe it's just me, but the US government sending Dick Cheney to the Middle East to advocate for peace is kind of like the bank sending Nick the Enforcer to your house to pick up your mortgage payment.

It all depends on your definition of "success"

Buckdog is outraged, and I don't blame him. Vice-Puppetmaster Cheney, the hideous and horrible, the evil and odious, he of the kevlar heart and the itchy, twitchy trigger-finger, has pronounced that the invasion of Iraq was a "success" (!)(??). For who? Not the US military, still stuck there almost 5 years after Georgie told them that their Mission was Accomplished. Not the hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed or displaced Iraqi civilians (yesterday's tally: 92 dead). Then who?...

Mission accomplished.

Breaking: Cheney's doctors detect a heart

... with an irregular beat:

"Doctors administered an electrical shock Monday to U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's heart and restored it to a normal rhythm."

They tazed him, bro! Or maybe they just hooked the old prick up to some jumper cables and a Snap-On™ charger and gave him a boost? You know, stood him up on a box in his hospital gown... Yeah, sorta like that.

Cheney says he was wrong

There's "shock" and there's "SHOCK!!!" -- the kind of shock that precipitates a myocardial infarction... heart attack, baby! When I read what Dick Cheney said on Larry King Live last night, my eyeballs sprung out of their sockets and under the weight of my sudden collapse, my keyboard exploded in a flurry of t's and f7's and esc's. For the first time in the more than 5 years that he's spent tearing the world to shreds with his reptilian claws, Cheney said: "I was wrong":

"US Vice-President Dick Cheney acknowledges he was wrong in 2005 when he insisted the insurgency in Iraq was in its 'last throes'.

The statement was Mr Cheney's most direct public admission of how badly the administration underestimated the strength of America's enemies in the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

But Mr Cheney, an architect of the 2003 US-led invasion, otherwise gave no ground in an interview on CNN's Larry King Live as he defended President George W Bush's Iraq policy.

He said the Bush administration would still send troops into Iraq if it could do it all over again, even knowing what it knows now, including that more than 3,000 US military personnel would be killed."

"Cheney acknowledges he was wrong" -- dig it. When an arrogant, lying sack of pigshit like Cheney admits he was wrong about something -- anything -- it's cause for celebration, if not defibrillation. But it's also a cause for... Suspicion.

You know these guys don't do anything without some self-serving motive. Ever. They don't cut their toenails until they've figured out what's in it for them (longer sock life?). Cheney knows better than anyone how universally loathed he is, and he couldn't give a flying fart. (Who cares if they hate me, as long as they fear me?!!) He's the kind of character who's not likely to garner much sympathy should his career path take a sudden hairpin turn and make a mad dash for the prisoners' dock at the Hague. Or impeachment hearings. So Cheney's covering all his bases.

Remember being interrogated -- err, seeing people on "Law & Order" being interrogated -- and the cops always play Bad Cop/Good Cop? The bad cop is the aggressive asshole and the good cop is the nice guy? And compared to the Bad Cop, the Good Cop seems like such a nice guy that you almost spill your guts to him? My suspicion is that with Cheney's Admission of Wrongness last night we're seeing the other side of a game of "Bad Cheney/Good Cheney". We've seen Bad Cheney, now he's bringing out Good Cheney. Just watch. He'll say he was wrong again, maybe about something else, and then again, and pretty soon you'll see pictures of Cheney with kittens (if he can resist eating them)... and before long, oh well, he's not such a bad guy after all, does he really deserve to be impeached? You watch!

While they were sleeping

So now even members of Congress who are also on the Homeland Security Committee are NOT allowed to see classified documents explaining how government would operate in the event of a major terrorist attack?

This is terrifying.

*shudder*

"President Cheney"... words horrifying enough to send 73% of America (and 98% of the rest of the world) screaming off into the night. Fortunately it's not for long:

"President George W Bush is set to undergo what aides described as a routine colonoscopy at the Camp David presidential retreat.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said that during the time that Bush is under anesthesia, he would delegate power to Vice President Dick Cheney."

This will be a lateral move, if not a step down, for Cheney, who recently declared himself as separate from the Executive Branch. (Next up: Dick Cheney, National Monument.) Oh well, somebody has to do the joe jobs.

Impeachy-keen

The latest poll numbers on Bush/Cheney impeachment support show that about half of Americans favour impeaching Georgie, for Cheney the number is significantly higher.

Bush
Favour - 45%
Oppose - 46%

Cheney
Favour - 54%
Oppose - 40%

Among Republicans, 17% are in favour of impeaching Cheney. That's Republicans, his own party! Cheney better watch his saggy, hemorrhoid-ridden, lizard-skinned old ass. Ha!

Cheney's lost it completely

Either that or he's become so unspeakably evil that even Satan cowers, trembles and averts his devilish eyes when the Shooter lurches on by. The latest out of the Undisclosed Location is that Cheney's decided he's no longer part of the US Executive Branch -- he is an entity unto himself, his own separate branch of government:

"The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney told an agency within the National Archives that for purposes of securing classified information, the Vice President's office is not an 'entity within the executive branch' according to a letter released Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform."

So there's the Judicial Branch (SCROTUS), the Legislative Branch (Congress), the Executive Branch (White House), and the Dick Cheney Branch (Dick Cheney). Allowing him to do anything he wants in the utmost secrecy with absolutely no oversight or responsibility to answer to anyone. Kind of like Saddam, only greedier and less accountable.

Surely it can't be long before this crazy old bastard is dragged away in a straight jacket to an Undisclosed Rubber Room...

*Gasp*

Look at the "Who's blogging" links!

My little bloggie is linked in the Washington Post!? Am I the only one screaming for the impeachment of Dick "Shot-An-Old-Man-In-The-Face" Cheney? (Should I plan on getting a visit from Homeland Security?) I'm all verklempt.

Too much Cheney

A little Dick Cheney goes a long way. After posting about the pusillanimous old prick twice in 2 days (3 times if you include Blackwater, which I do), I'm overcome with an oppressive snarling anxiety. This old pre-election vid about "the rebranding of Dick Cheney" sometimes helps:

Profiles in Projection

Shorter Dick Cheney (at West Point graduation ceremonies yesterday):

"The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield..."

Replace "terrorists" with "war-mongering White House assholes" (or maybe just leave it as "terrorists", what's the difference?), "Baghdad" with "Washington DC" and "caliphate" with "one-party state", and you've pretty much got Cheney's own agenda in a blood-smeared, shit-encrusted nutshell. Ugh.

I hope the men and women graduating will remember Mr. Cheney's own distinguished military career, and recognize his words for the chickenhawk ravings that they are.

(h/t PSA at canadian cynic)

The Puppetmaster plans a coup

Elroon at Rants from the Rookery posted about this a couple of days ago, but it sufficiently alarmed the crap out of me that I wanted to screech about it here (lateness to the party notwithstanding).

The White House is being divided by infighting over the approach to Iran policy -- between those who favour diplomacy and those who want to turn the place into a big sheet of glass. The warmongers will not be denied:

"There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy. (...)

However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran's various power centers that the military option does exist.

But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument." (...)

"... Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands."

"End run strategy around the President"? "Tie the President's hands"? Cheney is determined to get what he wants, a conflict with Iran. His strategy also involves collusion with Israel, a scenario in which Israel would fire some cruise missiles at Iran, Iran would retaliate by attacking US forces in the gulf, and the diplomatic option would be off the table. This strategy is worrisome for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it willingly sets up the US military in the gulf as targets. Cheney wants Iran to attack the US military? But more disturbing still are the longer-term implications -- a conflict between the US and Iran might bring Russia and/or China into the picture.

Impeach this bastard, or at least put him in a Home for the Criminally Insane.

Deadeye in Baghdad

Enough of this civil war bullshit, it's time to get those petro-dollars flowing. And who better to intimidate the Iraqi government into getting its shit together and pumping out that oil like good little gas station attendants than the Shooter himself. Dick Cheney lurched and wheezed his way out of his undisclosed location to make an unannounced visit to Baghdad today, where his message was "We've got to pull together. We've got to get this work done. It's game time."

"Vice President Cheney flew into Baghdad unannounced on Wednesday intending to urge top Iraqi officials to reconcile a divided government and move forward on key legislative initiatives in an attempt to quell Iraq's unrelenting violence, U.S. officials said.

The urgency of the situation was emphasized by an explosion that rattled windows in the U.S. Embassy inside the heavily guarded Green Zone, where Cheney spent the day meeting with Iraqi and U.S. officials. After the early evening blast, reporters following Cheney were moved to a basement "attack shelter," but Cheney was not moved and "his business was not disrupted..."

His "business"? And what might that be? Oh yeah, sure, he doesn't want the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month recess. (Whose country is it, anyway? Oh, yeah...) And he wants the government to chill out the sectarian violence. But probably Cheney's visit to Iraq had one central, urgent purpose: the implementation of the new Iraqi Oil Law which privatizes Iraq's oil industry and allows foreign companies to buy into it.

The Oil Law document was leaked in February, but it's been almost 3 months and there's been no indication that the Iraqis are moving forward with it. Maybe they don't want to? I can see why they might have qualms about carving up their formerly nationalized oil industry and selling it off to foreign corporations. If it was hard for ordinary Iraqis to get in on their oil wealth under Saddam, wait until it's owned by foreign corporations. Iraqis need every cent (or Dinar or Euro) they can get from their oil. Their oil. While he was in Baghdad, Cheney might have been able to pick up a few fresh beating hearts to replenish his emergency supply, but he can't take their oil. He can only yell at them about it, then hunch his way back to the US, leaving a trail of blood and slime in his wake.