Hasn't Dick Cheney made enough money off Criminal Policies

And, yes, policies can, indeed, be criminal.

Quite a few governments, around the world, in my life time have had their policies labeled as criminal by the United States as well as the U.N.

Just because we do it, does not make it legal, moral or even smart. Actually, given our former power, military as well as economic, Bush policies, which include the use of wars of aggression, based on deception and fear-mongering, and torture, just to name a couple of international crimes from the last administration, the crimes of the last administration are even more horrible than most.

Don't even get me started on the domestic crimes!

Contrary to popular belief, the president takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, not the people of America. Certainly any POTUS sees his or her mission as protecting the people when we are under attack, but that is not what a president is sworn to do. Our Constitution is far more important than any 1 or one hundred thousand Americans.

If certain Americans would not feel more protected with real time information about a threat to our nation, those Americans are obvious victims of the dumbing down of America.

How fearful have any of you really been?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine Bowman

As Molly Ivins used to like to say, dripping with irony, "Isn't that nice?" Dick Cheney has found a publisher for his memoirs. Now all he needs is some #2 pencils and a good title.

A recent contest at BuzzFlash should certainly help with the latter. Our readers were brimming with creative ideas for titling Cheney's memoir., and the winning entries are.....

As a progresssive political watchdog site on the Internet, BuzzFlash has kept an eager watch on former Vice President Dick Cheney's retirement activities. And, honestly? There's been much less hunting and fishing than we had hoped. Instead, the Veep has settled into his residence in Virginia, evidently in close proximity to a Fox News studio. He could have headed for the Wyoming hills or helped out daughter Liz by babysitting the grandkids, but Cheney instead has focused on trashing the Democratic president publicly and 'splainin' anew his take on American foreign policy.

But once again, he has a real project to sink his teeth into. His pal and former employee Mary Matalin has agreed to pay Cheney millions (that's the speculation) to spill his guts.

Or, will Editor Matalin, who also signed Glenn Beck and Mark Levin to the CBS-owned Simon & Schuster Threshold imprint, make sure that he doesn't? After all, she, too, was one of the insiders in the 2002 lead-up to the Iraq War -- one of the White House Iraq Study Group (WHIG) gang who brainstormed the marketing of the war, eventually settling on the WMDs and mushroom cloud story.

(We hear that Vice is getting $2,000,000. Pardon me, but has my memory failed me? Didn't Hillary Clinton get a better advance than that, like $10,000,000? Looks like Mary had to dig for the cash her old pal and boss.)

"I’m persuaded there are a lot of interesting stories that ought to be told," Cheney told the AP this week. On that point, we would heartily agree. "I want my grandkids, 20 or 30 years from now, to be able to read it and understand what I did, and why I did it." It remains a mystery just how the reported $2 million contract will enhance Grandpa's ability to just tell the family his side of things.

(Yeah, why not simply leave them a letter from Grandpa? Hasn't Cheney made enough money off the policies of the last administration?)

Writers at The New York Times seem to have explained Cheney's motivations a bit more realistically when they reported back in May that he was shopping the upcoming memoir to publishers. They observed that his memoir ...

... would add to what is already an unusually dense collection of post-Bush-presidency memoirs that will offer a collective rebuttal to the many harshly critical works released while the writers were in office and beyond.

(We plan to boycott all of them, unless there is truth in them. Publishers should lose money if they knowingly publish lies, especially recycled lies, while not under oath).)

Yep. There are stories to be told, all right, and they should be told in perfect harmony:

Already working hard to meet publishers’ deadlines is an informal writers’ workshop of historic proportions: President George W. Bush; Laura Bush, the former first lady; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Karl Rove, the former presidential political mastermind.

(God, what a Rogues Gallery that is!)

Members of the Bush group are in regular contact as they seek to jog their memories, compare notes and trade stylistic tips in their new lives as authors, according to friends and current and former aides.

The coming crush of books reflects what former Bush officials describe as a desire to produce their own drafts of history ...

Mr. Cheney is writing out his thoughts longhand in an office above his garage in Virginia and is in frequent contact with the other newly minted Bush administration authors, right on up to Mr. Bush.

A report by U.S. News & World Report about a visit by Mr. Cheney to Mr. Rumsfeld’s Washington office in March prompted speculation that they were trying to match up their stories, which a Rumsfeld spokesman, Keith Urbahn, denied.

Dick Cheney and his eager assistant, daughter Liz, sure have their work cut out for them. But they had better get cracking if they want to shape the eventual tale and beat others to the book tour circuit. Whatever would they do if a Colin Powell, for instance, were to jump in and write their history first? And suppose Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson were to lend Powell a helping hand ...?

(Where in hell is Lynn? Has anyone heard anything from the former, mouthy second-lady since Dick shot the old guy in the face? The reason we ask is that it was revealed at the time, briefly, that one of the women in attendance at Dick's fake hunting trip (The birds are caged and released so they can be shot by any fool.) was hated by Lynn Cheney. Mrs. Cheney strikes me as a lady not easy to forgive public slights or embarrassments.

Unlike a Cheney memoir, that alternative, indeed, would soar to the top and become a bestseller for us at The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

I won't hold my breath.

^{Washington Post Photo: "In a bunker under the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney speaks to administration officials, including from far left, Joshua B. Bolten, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin (standing), Condoleezza Rice and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby (behind Rice)"}

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Bushies Count On Americans' Stupidity or ADHD

No quit: the campaign to boost Bush By: Mike Allen March 11, 2009 04:28 AM EST

The defense never rests. When President Barack Obama released his own policy this week on former President George W. Bush’s practice of attaching controversial signing statements to legislation, a reporter quickly got a tip from a Bush loyalist: the cell phone number for a White House lawyer in the past administration. “The spin is bogus,” said William Burck, a former deputy White House counsel, in pushing back against early news accounts framing Obama’s action as a slap at his predecessor. In fact, Burck insisted, the new policy is no different from Bush’s. Even though Bush is keeping quiet in Texas before heading out on a lucrative speaking tour, an informal network of former aides is keeping his views in the political bloodstream, defending his legacy in TV appearances and back-grounding reporters about his record. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer calls the Bush pundits “a loose confederation of people united in our belief in what President Bush did, and we’re freer now to talk about some things than we used to be — good and bad.” The Bush defense forces include Fleischer; former press secretary Dana Perino; Bush political czar Karl Rove, who has contracts with Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek; economics guru Tony Fratto; the prolific Peter Wehner, former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives; and the graceful speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes an opinion column for The Washington Post. See also Obama gets omnibus and earmark fight Obama plan hits blue states hardest GOP goes retro for 2010 races The former aides are armed with many of the same arguments that they tried out on reporters when they strolled the hallways of the West Wing. When CNN’s Larry King recently asked what Fleischer considered to be a hostile question about tax cuts, the president’s first press secretary pulled out an ancient talking point and reminded viewers that the nation “had a record-breaking 55 straight months of job creation and economic job growth” on Bush’s watch. “We’re invited to comment on the events of the day and along the way, we remind people that there was, indeed, good news under President Bush,” Fleischer said. Participants say the effort is not coordinated or organized but, rather, a natural result of the hunger by bookers and reporters to get the views of aides who approached the status of celebrity through their service in a two-term presidency. The Bush alumni said they make their points subtly — both because the former president does not want to feed an Obama vs. Bush story line and because they know they will never win that battle. “Communications-wise, this tidal wave is going to have to wash on over everybody,” said Perino, Bush’s last press secretary. “We do what we can, and we believe that history will get it right in the end.” A few days before Obama announced he was abolishing Bush-era limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, Bush supporters who frequently appear on TV received an e-mail from an adviser saying: “I wanted to send you the following two documents on President Bush’s record on stem cell research: 1. a Bush White House fact sheet on President Bush’s record of advancing stem cell research in ethical, responsible ways and 2. a November 2007 Washington Post column by Charles Krauthammer, ‘Stem Cell Vindication.’” Recipients said the information was helpful and that they were struck by the fact that it wasn’t talking points — just a savvy reminder of points the press was likely to overlook. So the Bush message persists in the punditry ether. On National Review Online, Yuval Levin, who worked on health issues as an associate director of Bush’s Domestic Policy Council, defended his boss’s approach to the stem cell decision: “Unfortunately, the political debate has yet to recover the kind of balanced understanding of the moral quandary that President Bush offered the country eight years ago.” Jim Connaughton, the former chairman of Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, popped up on Fox the other day talking about the president’s record on energy and the environment. And Fratto, once a top spokesman for Bush’s Treasury Department and White House, talks to reporters about economic issues just about every day. “A lot of us still hear from you guys, looking for reaction, especially when we’re attacked, like on the budget,” Fratto said. “There’s no coordinated effort to push back on these things, but if there’s a charge, we’ll set the record straight.” Bush-era officials walk a fine line, and they know it. The outgoing administration, in the view of even the most partisan members of the Obama team, was hugely helpful and professional during the transition — a tone that clearly started in the Oval Office. Former presidents, by tradition, try to leave the stage to their successors, and Bush — who has been largely incognito except for a visit to a Dallas hardware store, has been no different. Former White House aides from both parties also feel a bond with the new kids in town — particularly given the economic apocalypse that they face. Fratto says he often reminds reporters to give his successors at Treasury a break, since they have so much on their plate, “some of it of their own making, a lot of it that they had to pick up as they came in.” “That doesn’t always make the stories,” he said. Perino said her fellow alumni have no interest in “fanning the flames of Obama vs. Bush.” But sometimes the frustration does show. “For many years, we were accused of being too close to the Russians, right?” Perino said. “Too close to Putin — too friendly with them. And then on this recent trip, our new secretary of state wants to press the reset button and improve the relationship with Russia. And I think: Why isn’t there any critical thinking going on?”

© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC

Let The Sun Shine In......