Cheney’s Temper Tantrums

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is right. Vice President Dick Cheney is having fits of temper. Cheney just can’t get his mind around the fact that he’s not in control anymore. Time was, he could tell House Speaker Denny Hastert to tell a lie or jump off the capitol dome, come to that, and Hastert would do it. Now, Cheney can’t even blast the Democrats for not having a plan for Iraq or a foreign policy plan. The Dems do have a plan for Iraq and they do have a foreign policy plan. And Cheney is so pissed he can’t see straight. He said, "I think it is, in fact bad behavior on her (Pelosi's) part. I wish she hadn't done it (gone to Syria)...Fortunately I think the various parties involved recognize she doesn't speak for the United States in those circumstances, she doesn't represent the administration." It’s true, Nancy Pelosi does not represent the administration. And Cheney can’t understand how that happened. How can it be that the Speaker of the House of Representatives does not represent the Bush administration? Cheney is livid. Nor can Cheney understand how it happened that the Democrats speak for the citizens of the United States in all circumstances all around the world. It’s more than Dick Cheney can handle. He said, "The president is the one who conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House." In other words, Cheney believes it’s up to the president to bungle United States foreign policy, which he has done, in spades, for over six years. John McCain made an interesting statement last night on CBS’s “60 Minutes”. He was reminded by interviewer Scott Pelley that the majority of the people in the United States are in opposition to McCain’s views on how the situation in Iraq should be handled. McCain said, “I disagree with what the majority of the American people want.” McCain and the Bush administration disagree with the will of the citizens of the United States. And this minority of men sees no problem with imposing their minority views on the entire world. That is Cheney’s foreign policy doctrine and he cannot understand why it’s not working anymore. Not only is it fun to watch Dick Cheney acting like a sandbox toddler, it’s also fun to watch the talking heads on TV. Priss-faced passive-aggressive National Review Washington Editor Kate O’Beirne got in her licks against Pelosi yesterday on Tim Russert’s "Meet the Press". Acting as though she was concerned for Pelosi’s career in particular and the Democrats in general (when we all know O'Beirne would like for all Dems to pack up and go home so the Repub dictators could run the country), said “What I wonder, though, is what she was thinking with respect to the effect on her own Democratic caucus back home? Republicans wonder whether or not she’s tone deaf. There was a real blowback in commentary, a lot of criticism for her doing this, a lot of editorials thinking she’s with—out of line. And I think that raises questions on the part of her colleagues. I’m thinking of the more moderate members of the Democratic Party. They don’t want to be labeled with being a 'Nancy Pelosi Democrat' back home, and to the extent she makes herself such a lightning rod and so controversial, it just really raises the heat on them. So I really questioned her judgment with respect to the delicate task she has with her conference.” Couldn’t you just gag? God knows, O’Beirne and her conservative neocon cohorts are finding the new Congress very hard to swallow. During the same Meet the Press segment, Judy Woodruff, who is back on PBS, and was a Sunday guest on NBC was a caution trying not to roll her eyes and keeping her tongue out of her cheek as O’Beirne went on and on and on with her snide gibes and jabs at Pelosi. As Paul Krugman pointed out this morning in his New York Times Op/Ed piece, “The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.”