View Full Version : The Cheney debacle - he's privileged
KafirChobee
06-27-2007, 23:19
Well, now that the latest scam by Cheney to withhold information from judicial oversight committees is passing, I was curious how others might feel about this affair.
As we know VP Cheney believed that he was a branch of government unto himself, not a part of the Executive Branch or the Legislative and certainly not the Judicial (Gonzales just didn't want to get involved - "no my yab"). But, he now conceeds he was caught - that is, since he is never wrong - he was mistaken.
Thing is, he hasn't allowed oversight of his documents since 2003 - actually never. He disallowed the Senate from reviewing his conducting the policies that set our energy policys in 2001 - with only oil company execs in attendance to determine what those might be - are. Of course this was all well and good under the GOPist congress, but now that the 3 branches have been reestablished (to some affect) there is a return to accountability. Wonder how many documents will be destroyed, or email correspondence lost?
Items concerning Cheney's new branch of goverment:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19391241/site/newsweek/
Gah! The internet hates me - do it for yourselves on these two =
http://www.tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=2302
http://www.abcnews.com/GMA/story?id=331643&page=1
Items about Cheney resolving to hand over the goods:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/27/27/cheney-gives-in-to-the-co_n_53961.html
For other comments on Cheney:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topics/Dick+Cheney
You gotta love Cheney, a for real super villian. Lex Luther, Bizarro, the Penguin, and Dr. Doom rolled into one. :pirate2:
Well, now that the latest scam by Cheney to withhold information from judicial oversight committees is passing, I was curious how others might feel about this affair.
As we know VP Cheney believed that he was a branch of government unto himself, not a part of the Executive Branch or the Legislative and certainly not the Judicial (Gonzales just didn't want to get involved - "no my yab"). But, he now conceeds he was caught - that is, since he is never wrong - he was mistaken.
From what I've seen, Cheney's argument is idiotic and it's just another example of a self-inflicted wound by this administration. It's an Executive Order, or basically just a fiat by the President that created this new rule. So to exempt Cheney, the President would only have to state as much. The reason for his ridiculous argument is beyond me.
KafirChobee
06-28-2007, 05:44
Xiahou, you bring up an interesting point. What is the Constitutional rights of a President to create a Executive Order, and what body of the seperates have oversight?
Or is it a carte blanche for the Prez? Which sounds odd, but then the founders did leave enormous gaps they could never have imagine +200 years later - after all they all grew MaryJane and were in contests dto out do the other. Imagine their horror that we outlawed MJ, especially since there is now profit in it.
Would hardly sound capitalistic would it - unless by making it illegal they could actuallly make more money. Y'all know?
Grasping the concept of equality - at any level is always a comprehensive good.
This entire episode is insane. It's a presidential order, what is there to disclude him from he's teh vice president.
It would seem as though Cheney's trying to seperate himself from the president. Definately a rare thing to see a VP attack the presidents command like this.
KukriKhan
06-28-2007, 14:32
I think our Veep is tired, and only just barely trying anymore, to justify his actions/influence.
I think that he and the Rumsfeld-Ashcroft-Wolfowitz-et al cabal deliberately set out after 9-11 to do whatever it takes to prevent another 9-11, even if 'whatever it takes' was illegal, immoral or insane - knowing that, down the road, some or all of them would 'take a hit' for the team. They were willing to do that in pusuit of what they thought of as a higher good. In their minds, a patriotic sacrifice.
So we got torture, Gitmo, Iraq, renditions, Abu Gharib, wiretapping, the whole iceberg of extra-legal (or barely legal) stuff. Much of which we're still in the dark about.
And, one-by-one, each of those cabalists has fallen, though not very hard. Dick C. is just about the last guy standing, still in power, of the group. And I think he thinks that he's fought a good fight, defended america, and now just wants to take a nap, hence the silly defenses his office offers lately.
All that, of course, is just idle speculation on my part. Here's my last "I think": I think he'd be just as happy as can be if elections were held tomorrow, and he could quit this VP gig and go back to his hobby: running the world thru Haliburton. But he has to tough it out another year and a half, and the prospect just makes him tired.
Seamus Fermanagh
06-28-2007, 15:31
I think our Veep is tired, and only just barely trying anymore, to justify his actions/influence.
I think that he and the Rumsfeld-Ashcroft-Wolfowitz-et al cabal deliberately set out after 9-11 to do whatever it takes to prevent another 9-11, even if 'whatever it takes' was illegal, immoral or insane - knowing that, down the road, some or all of them would 'take a hit' for the team. They were willing to do that in pusuit of what they thought of as a higher good. In their minds, a patriotic sacrifice.
So we got torture, Gitmo, Iraq, renditions, Abu Gharib, wiretapping, the whole iceberg of extra-legal (or barely legal) stuff. Much of which we're still in the dark about.
And, one-by-one, each of those cabalists has fallen, though not very hard. Dick C. is just about the last guy standing, still in power, of the group. And I think he thinks that he's fought a good fight, defended america, and now just wants to take a nap, hence the silly defenses his office offers lately.
All that, of course, is just idle speculation on my part. Here's my last "I think": I think he'd be just as happy as can be if elections were held tomorrow, and he could quit this VP gig and go back to his hobby: running the world thru Haliburton. But he has to tough it out another year and a half, and the prospect just makes him tired.
Speculation on your part, of course, but this is the first "attack" on Cheney I have read that -- to me at least -- coheres with events and likely motivations. I never did buy into the "evil puppeteer" stuff, but I can see that crowd taking a "never again" vow and then cutting corners to try to reach that goal. Good thoughts, knife-lord.
If anyone has the time, here is a series written for the Washington Post this week about the Cheney Vice Presidency. Interesting stuff.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/
There are rumors that the GOP will push for Cheney to be replaced before the election season heats up. He needs surgery for his pacemaker soon, and there is speculation that this can be used as an excuse to gracefully replace him.
I read the Environmental Policy article, and I gotta say, it's hard to picture a person acting like more of a caricature of the evil, scheming Republican.
It's kinda hard to see what will bring Cheney into line, however. He doesn't want to be elected again, he fears no public or private reprisal, and he's completely convinced of his own correctness. Utterly unphased by all of the times he has been proved wrong. ("Last throes," "We will be greeted as liberators," etc.)
The man is a liability to his party, and oh yeah, his nation. It's a shame we can't really do anything about him.
Gregoshi
06-28-2007, 16:22
Kinda makes you long for the days when the VP didn't do anything except sleep in the Senate, doesn't it?
Let's bring back the presidential runner up = vice president tradition. No more of this "presidential ticket" crap. :beam:
Let's bring back the presidential runner up = vice president tradition. No more of this "presidential ticket" crap. :beam:
I agree, would make the presidential races much more interesting.
A good epitaph from the Cato Institute (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/06/27/cheneys-secret-failure/):
In a way, Cheney’s story is the story of the Bush administration: Where they pushed bad policies, policies that dramatically expand the power of the federal government and infringe on our liberties, they have had much success. When Cheney and occasionally Bush backed good policies, policies that would constrain government, they failed miserably. Indeed, if Vice President Cheney is indeed a “small-government conservative” who used his unprecedented power to “hold the line” for “conservative orthodoxy on budget and tax matters,” he has been a failure of Carteresque proportions.
Hosakawa Tito
06-28-2007, 23:37
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/hoppy84/cheney.gif
Leave it to Tom Toles to sort this one out.
I read in an article a couple of days ago that the VP gets his office & staff funding through the executive budget office, but since Cheney claims he doesn't fall under executive office control they were going to withhold his funding. Money talks and bull **** walks, eh Dick?
Heh heh heh, a splendid cartoon :)
Papewaio
06-29-2007, 02:46
The man is a liability to his party, and oh yeah, his nation. It's a shame we can't really do anything about him.
Do what we do with our frontbenchers that stuff up, the government makes an embassy position available and the ex-frontbencher magically is the right person to fill the job. Now depending on how much they keep their mouth shut determines how good the job is... one of our ex-ministers spent a fortune on lessons on Mandarin so they sent her to Italy... couldn't keep her lyrics to herself...
I think that he and the Rumsfeld-Ashcroft-Wolfowitz-et al cabal deliberately set out after 9-11 to do whatever it takes to prevent another 9-11
I disagree. I think they took it as a prime opportunity to do the kind of business they had been doing for years. Getting massive contracts for US companies in foriegn countries - companies they were directors of.
KafirChobee
06-30-2007, 20:24
Certainly 9-11 enters into many of the actions taken by the Bushys and justified by Cheney. However, most of these have been for the reasons Idaho touched on - to expand the MICC (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex) and to make profits for their croney corporations. Face it, Usama made Haliburton (Cheney was CEO, you know before he named himself the VP) that much richer.
What 9-11 did allow was give a full speed ahead back to the Nixon days of full Executive privilege (had Nixon not gotten carried away with his dirty tricks shannanagans - Watergate - he may have succeeded then), whereby Presidential Power is unlimited and no one allowed to oversee it. That is the Cheney doctrine, one need only review his summarys on executive power and privilege to grasp what the agenda is.
No oversight of the Executive branch, or of businesses (especially the oil/chemical industry)in general, and limiting the ways those that oppose them can challange their decisions. What a wonderful world it would be, if only there were no checks and balances so Cheney and gang could continue to have their way - without those pesky balances getting in their way.
:pirate2:
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