Dick Cheney’s Marvelous Torture Tour will continue this week as the most evil man in America is set to address the American Enterprise Institute. Liberal ire is up and GOP morale is down as the former vice president appears all over cable news and talk radio to explain the merits of his prized torture program. The Daily Beast weren’t the only ones wondering aloud this week if Cheney is running for president, but that’s kind of a silly suggestion. The stakes here are much higher than Cheney’s future political plans. His PR blitz this week is more about saving his own ass than driving a new policy agenda.

If you can get through the the first five rambling paragraphs of his HuffPo piece, Bob Cesca comes right out of left field and sort of nails it:

I believe it’s the desperation of a crook who’s under significant strain and duress. And as information related to his authorization of torture trickles out, the reason for his desperation becomes increasingly evident.

This isn’t just about torture or a tangential debate about ticking nukes or “keeping us safe.”

It’s apparent that torture was authorized for the purpose of fabricating a case for invading Iraq.

Hello!

It’s not exactly as if the hounds of accountability are nipping at the Cheney’s heels or anything, but I think Cesca’s is right idea. The fact that torture doesn’t work and that the American public is morally opposed to its use in most cases wasn’t unknown back in 2001, so why do it? Well, one the one hand there was the goal of obsessively expanding the authority of the executive branch at ever opportunity. And, on the other hand, there was the small issue of having a case for war to manufacture.

It’s now been more than six years since years since the Bush administration invaded Iraq and, as we know, the political tide has turned significantly. While there aren’t yet any major investigations into Bush or Cheney’s dealings as of yet, the first rule of public relations – especially in damage control situations – is to always be in front of the story.

This week’s media tour is Cheney’s pre-emptive strike. That means that out there somewhere is a very large shoe, dangling precariously, waiting to drop.

Run Dick Run [The Daily Beast]
The Real Motive Behind the Cheney Family Torture Tour [Huffington Post]

• If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Oh, wait. Yeah, okay, go ahead and fix it please. [New York Times]
• Some foreigner says Bush told “half-truths” about torture. Dude. Get back to us when there’s some news. [Think Progress]
• Katie Couric is readying the hardest-hitting piece of fluff about journalism made with Flip cam. Should be fascinating. Quick, what’s the opposite of cutting edge? Blunting bevel? This is real blunted bevel reporting.[CRJ]
• Facts have always been a left-wing conspiracy. It’s no surprise that measuring fact also has a liberal bent. [The Plank]
• Barry’s starting to hang out with the wrong crowd. [Sully]
• For some reason, the Democrats don’t think Roland Burris is Senate material. [Political Wire]
• Andy Borowitz makes a funny joke that become sad when you realize that it’s true. [Huffington Post]
• Oh, Arlen. It’s so inspiring when you feign a conviction of principles. [Political Wire]

David Souter will hopefully hang around long enough for Al Franken to get seated in the US Senate. Sixty seems like a pretty solid number to put a new justice onto the Supreme Court.

It’s only been 100 and something days, but already this must feel to that certain 23% of the country what it felt like for us when Bush was nominating two justices simultaneously while New Orleans was sinking into the sea.

Suck on apocalypse, bitches.

You don’t get more cynical than this. We like a politician who calls it like he sees it, and Arlen Specter couldn’t see himself getting re-elected to the Senate as a Republican. Our favorite part of the deal he struck with the Democratic Leadership is that they’ll recognize his seniority reaching way back across his 29-years as a Republican and he’ll get to chair whatever committee tickles his fancy. But so long as there are 60 votes for Obama and the Republicans are thoroughly humiliated, we don’t give a shit how, right? All the same, lest we forget his roots, we’ll hit some of his Bush-era highnotes in a photo treasure trove after the jump.

This last one is our favorite, obviously. That Lieberman is there is like the little, red moschino asshole on a sky-high choculate sunday of assholes. It also reminds us that the Democrats really will put up with anyone’s petter bullshit to keep the agenda moving.

Oh, Arlen! Welcome aboard. You’ll fit in just fine.

Anyway, his first column, called, “Cheney for President,” explores what a effect a Cheney run for the White House would have had on the GOP.

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.

Oh? And how might that be, pray tell?

We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation.

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.

I’m just going to assume that since he’s Kristol’s replacement and wanted his first New York Times piece to be a full-throated defense of the most indefensible member of the Bush administer that he too is a subscriber the “particular strain of right-wingery” described above. So when Douthat says “a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of its political viability,” I think it’s safe to assume he would have liked to have seen this happen.

I don’t know if he’s just waking up from a coma or whatever, but the last eight years, including the two massive electoral poundings in ‘06 and ‘08 don’t serve as your “viability test,” I don’t know what will. The country (and the GOP too, frankly) doesn’t need more of Dick Cheney’s leadership, it needs less. Far less. In fact, it’s pretty clear at this point that the United States and the Republican party both would have done just fine had the motherfucker never found his way to Washington in the first place. “Real conservatism” with Dick Cheney as its “diamond-hard distillation” had its moment I’m afraid, and that moment has finally passed like the giant, painful bladder stone that it was.

Well, you wished your way onto the pages of the New York Times, why stop now, right? Welcome aboard. You’re photograph is still captioned “Sue Etheridge.”

Today we circle on back to Texas, where governor Rick Perry has requested the federal government send him stockpiles of medicine to battle the swine flu epidemic threatening to spill over the border from Mexico. It was, of course, just a week or so ago that Perry was rallying his army of Austin teabaggers in favor of secession, you know, to escape the tyranny of federal oppression or whatever. Turns out that the only thing that threatens the Texan’s re-election more than cooperating with the islamo-facist socialist federal government in Washington on the budget is a teeny weeny bit of swine flu.

Austin — Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas.

So, for now at least, the Union stays in tact.

Well, Cynics, it’s been a long, hard winter for us. What with the election of President Unicorn and and the long-overdue righting of innumerable policy wrongs, not even the collapse of the global economy brought us out of cynic-blogging hybernation. But where unprecedented financial meltdown has failed, the trusty American rightwing did not.

This tax day, thousands upon thousands of wingnuts stepped up to the plate to get us back behind our keyboards here at Cynic Headquarters, dear readers, and we are eternally grateful. Yes, in protest of increased federal spending, our country’s leading fanatics and their flocks self-applied term “teabagger” (without even a hint of irony, mind you) and took to the streets. Watching this genetic horrorshow on parade inspired us in that only 43rd President George Walker Bush could.

And so tea bag mania swept the nation, or at least certain batshit parts of it, and nowhere and more than my home state of Texas. Ah, Texas. The Lone Star state. So independently minded and always on the cutting edge of of bad practices and horrible policy ideas. Texas Governor Rick Perry always had his finger (or whole hand and probably mouth) on the pulse (or, some say, throbbing, hard cock) of his lunatic base, he’s also been turning it up to 11 with an election impending. He loves to brag about the $550 million in federal bailout money for   unemployment he rejected and so Perry didn’t miss an opportunity to meet some Texas Teabaggers way, way, way on the outskirts of Crazytown:

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax “tea party” Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states’ rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!”

And then:

Later, answering news reporters’ questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

I particularly like the we-have-a-great-union-and-there’s-no-need-to-dissolve-it-bit. Not only does it show level-headedness, the 19th century lingo means he knows his audience. But as backward-looking as these ‘tards may be, not a single one in this home-schooled, selective-memory-having, closet-blowjob-giving, evolution-denying bunch have a sense of history. Here are some handy Wikipedia to help understand the experience of states that have secceeded in the past: 1, 2, 3, 4.

This is all, of course, totally, 100% batshit crazy. What Obama is trying to do is un-bankrupt the nation so that we have a future and call all meet our own basic needs. That doesn’t constitute, tyranny, slavery, genocide, facism, or any other totally inappropriate analogy our inbred, homophobic friends may paste onto a sign. That’s right, lunatics. As hard as it is for you to believe, paying taxes will never be as bad as the holocaust, much like how Texas will never be a foreign country, no matter how much we wish it to be true.

Today’s episode of the McLaughlin group was the second half of their 2008 Year-End Awards. For the “sorry to see you go” award John McLaughlin nominated capitalism as the biggest farewell of the past year:

“Capitalism… will be the ultimate casualty of the global economic crisis of 2008. Governments everywhere are implementing socialist measures. The golden age of capitalism is kaput. Managed capitalism is what rules.”

I think he’s jumping the gun a bit there. We may have nationalized banks and a promise of universal health care, but our public education system is still a joke and it remains to be seen if Obama’s going to come through with those health plans he promised.

This is why I hope the the national learning curve is about eight years shorter going forward.

Bush v. Gore Still Influencing Court Decisions [New York Times]
Bush v. Gore Continues to Haunt [Political Aminal]
Sen. Coleman’s Bush v. Gore Style Complaint in Minnesota Supreme Court [Election Law Blog]

If, for the past eight years, the United States had been governed by a monkey who made decisions by throwing darts at a board labeled YES on one side and NO on the other, the odds indicate that our country would today be 50% better off. And now it’s official.

According to a Pew Research poll a majority of the American public to the tune of 56% think the best word to describe President George W. Bush is “incompetent”. The descriptor that came in a distant second is “idiot,” but it pretty much only captured the Democratic base or 27% of Americans. We analyze these stunning results after the jump.

Some of you may see this empirical data as yet another vindication of what you’ve long taken for granted: that George W. Bush is the worst president, like, ever in the history of the universe. The 27% of you out there who watched regularly That’s My Bush on Comedy Central throughout the opening days of the administration, and who, on September 12, 2001 thought, “My, what horrible disaster will unfold now,” who sighed as Hans Blix pleaded with the United States to let the weapons inspectors do their jobs in the spring of 2003 and who perused Montreal real estate on Craigslist as the votes for Bush poured in at the end of 2004, you are pleased to see that the public at large has caught up with you. Yes, we expected bad things from the outset, you and I. But in the waning days of the Bush Era, we have to admit that Bush exceeded our expectations at pretty much every step of the way.

Historians looking back at this moment in history–the moment that defined global geopolitics for most of the 21st century–will see that in January 2001 it was a fake newspaper that got it most right. On the 17th of that month, the leading story in the Onion read, “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over’“. I’m sure they shocked themselves at how right they turned out to be.

Bush and Public Opinion [Pew Research Center]