I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I wish Dick Cheney would just shut up. It’s not because I have some airy-fairy liberal stance that as a former vice president, protocol dictates that he shouldn’t speak in ways that undermine a sitting president’s actions; this Slate piece does a nice roundup of other former executive branch members who couldn’t keep their mouths shut either, and frankly, one of the worst in this regard was former democratic president Jimmy Carter. No, for me it’s a few other things. One is that I just get sick of seeing that hideous little face of his. Another is that I get sick of hearing about him when he makes some childish and angry remark on Sunday TV, and that’s all my liberal friends talk about for a week. But perhaps most importantly, it’s because I’m sick of a self-serving, sociopathic, sadistic prick trying to take on the mantle of dignified statesman, and getting airtime to do it. It would be a lot easier to tolerate statements like “I was a big supporter of waterboarding” if I knew he had at least tried it once. A different self-serving prick who gets on my nerves tried it, and although I’ll continue to disagree with lots of other things he says, I won’t take issue with his stance on that topic. So please Dick, do us a favor. You’ve already carved out your legacy with a Dickipedia entry and a place on Time’s Worst Vice Presidents list. Please, just shut up and get back to your other hobbies like running corporations that support rape and shooting your friends in the face.

I shouldn’t be as astounded as I am that the GOP has once again taken ownership of a public sentiment that has absolutely no real foundation in a partisan stance. Tell me. Who in America (besides a bunch of bailed out bank executives) is NOT angry that tax dollars are being funneled into a mind-boggling array of government subsidizing of business and bailouts of epic business failures? And more importantly, how the hell did the GOP spin this out so cleverly and so quickly into their issue, when it is, plain and simple, their fault? This is the party that from Reagan to Cheney has said that deficits don’t matter. And now, suddenly, deficits are a horrible monster created by Barack Obama. The GOP is even benefitting from the humor and confusion that a typical witty liberal will enjoy when watching a pun-laden rant against tea parties, as in the MSNBC clip featured at left. Who’s behind this masterpiece of Astroturfing? Mostly the conservative lobby groups Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity. Nice job, Dems.

It’s too bad George Bush didn’t like reading the newspaper as president. If he had, he might have realized what a horrible person he’d been much sooner, and wouldn’t be apologizing for it now. Not that he didn’t have plenty of help from his Constitution-shredding “co-president” , and the revolting gasbag he affectionately refers to as Turd Blossom. So he’s selling the infamous Rancho De Relaciones Públicas and moving back to his native suburban environment, which apparently makes a few people happy. But where does the end of the eight-year-empire leave us as people and a country? Will we do anything to address the crimes the Bush administration has committed? There are plenty of reasons to impeach Bush and Cheney; are we just going to move along like a big dysfunctional family as if nothing ever happened? Part of me wants to do that, but part of me feels like not addressing what has happened will encourage other megalomaniacs to repeat the pattern. What do you think?

Dick Cheney Shows Us
How Much He Cares

It’s likely to get you sued. In the ongoing legislative cat and mouse game that AT&T and the White House are playing to keep their ability to stick their eyes, ears, and noses into every aspect of your personal life, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is once again stepping up to bat for you. After AT&T bought enough dinners & prostitutes for politicians over the past several months, they eventually managed to get the bastards to grant them immunity for their part in illegally tapping our phones in the guise of protecting us. (Personally, my experiences with AT&T’s service and billing suggest I’ll be just fine without whatever protection they might be providing, thank you very much.) It’s a major show of dedication to protecting your constitutional rights on the part of the EFF; you might think about giving them some of your money , rather than giving it to those two senators running for president, one of whom voted for the bill after saying he would filibuster against it, the other of whom didn’t vote at all.

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
CHENEY: No.
Q: Why not?
CHENEY: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off — part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.