Richard Bruce Cheney, 46th (Vice) President

Dick Cheney is a mysterious figure. He could just as easily be a villain who was lifted from the pages of a comic book. (Side note: how is it that both Bush and Cheney were arrested for DWI, and MADD isn't protesting in front of the White House every day?)

The Washington Post did an excellent, 4 part series on "the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president."

A few snippets from the first part...

On his role as VP:

In his Park Avenue corner suite at Cerberus Global Investments, Dan Quayle recalled the moment he learned how much his old job had changed. Cheney had just taken the oath of office, and Quayle paid a visit to offer advice from one vice president to another.

"I said, 'Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you'll be going to the funerals,' " Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. "I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, 'We've all done it.' "

Cheney "got that little smile," Quayle said, and replied, "I have a different understanding with the president."

"He had the understanding with President Bush that he would be -- I'm just going to use the word 'surrogate chief of staff,' " said Quayle, whose membership on the Defense Policy Board gave him regular occasion to see Cheney privately over the following four years.

Expanding the law:

In expanding presidential power, Cheney's foremost agent was David S. Addington, his formidable general counsel and legal adviser of many years. On the morning of Sept. 11, Addington was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and began to make his way toward his Virginia home on foot. As he neared the Arlington Memorial Bridge, someone in the White House reached him with a message: Turn around. The vice president needs you.

Down in the bunker, according to a colleague with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the president need for his response?

Before the day ended, Cheney's lawyer joined forces with Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel, linked by secure video from the Situation Room. Flanigan patched in John C. Yoo at the Justice Department's fourth-floor command center. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales joined later.

Circumventing the process:

Three days after the Ashcroft meeting, Cheney brought the order for military commissions to Bush. No one told Bellinger, Rice or Powell, who continued to think that Prosper's working group was at the helm.

After leaving Bush's private dining room, the vice president took no chances on a last-minute objection. He sent the order on a swift path to execution that left no sign of his role. After Addington and Flanigan, the text passed to Berenson, the associate White House counsel. Cheney's link to the document broke there: Berenson was not told of its provenance.

Berenson rushed the order to deputy staff secretary Stuart W. Bowen Jr., bearing instructions to prepare it for signature immediately -- without advance distribution to the president's top advisers. Bowen objected, he told colleagues later, saying he had handled thousands of presidential documents without ever bypassing strict procedures of coordination and review. He relented, one White House official said, only after "rapid, urgent persuasion" that Bush was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay. [Read the order]

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Scott McClellan's book, and I have the same sinking feeling about Bush that I had about Reagan: he is not evil, but he surrounded himself with evil people.

The WaPo series is a fascinating read. I highly recommend you read it all the way through.

Target sells Presidential (in)Action Figures

Thank you Wonkette for pointing this out! Target is now selling presidential action figures, and Wonkette has challenged readers to write their own sarcastic reviews.



Under my pal Jimmy Carter is this review:



Man, I wish I could take credit for the Reagan one. I guess I'll write my own. Once again, Will joins me to provide commentary:

theAlphaJohn: wtf: [link]
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: do you think the JFK doll
theAlphaJohn: doll's fingers smell like the Marylin Monroe doll?
Will: haha
Will: i was going finish your sentence and say "do you think the jfk doll has an exploding head?"
theAlphaJohn: lol
Will: if they were ass cheap, i would get a couple for some stop motion video fun
theAlphaJohn: You know they're going to star in a future episode of robot chicken
theAlphaJohn: Does the Thomas Jefferson doll come with a slave he can impregnate?
Will: hahaha
Will: i like how some of the dolls have guest ratings
theAlphaJohn: read the jimmy carter ones
theAlphaJohn: i tried to add a comment but it hasn't been approved
Will: hahahahahaha
Will: "Does the reagan doll allow for the murder of hundreds of marine dolls in doll Lebanon and retaliate by pulling our troops out so fast that it makes your head spin?"
Will: wow
theAlphaJohn: The one I added for Carter was something like, "I love this doll cause they renamed National Airport after him. No idiot would rename national airport after the moron who promised the ATC Union he'd help with their grievences in writing before illegally firing the air traffic controllers, now would they?"
Will: nice
Will: they should have an andrew jackson doll
Will: that comes smelling like whiskey and good times
theAlphaJohn: lol
theAlphaJohn: a Ulysseus S Grant doll that's always drunk and corrupt
theAlphaJohn: or a Herbert Hoover doll that makes barbie and ken live in cardboard "Hoover Doll Houses" and reassures them with claims of "a doll chicken in every doll pot"
Will: i'm saying
Will: they really didn't explore their options with the dolls
theAlphaJohn: so much untapped potential
Will: for real
theAlphaJohn: which president didn't have a first lady?
theAlphaJohn: they could make his doll mom to live with him
Will: James Buchanan
Will: haha
Will: snap
theAlphaJohn: you know he never got presidental whores with mom next door in the lincoln bedroom
theAlphaJohn: he certainly didn't have no vernon jordan to run down to dairy queen and get him some fine-ass hookers

Supply Side Shock

I knew in the back of mind that this was coming, but I had no idea it would be so soon:

President Reagan negotiated a "voluntary" import quota on Japanese cars sold in the United States during the 1980s. Some of his advisors had recommended that he impose a higher import tax (tariff) instead. Assuming the tariff was in the form of a constant tax T per Japanese car sold in the United States and that T was chosen to produce the same quantity reduction as the quota, how will the prices paid for Japanese cars by U.S. consumers compare under the two policies?

I hate Reagan. I hate his Building, I hate his library, I hate his airport, and now I hate this textbook. Hate hate hate.

W is a fist-fucking asshat

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I hope he chokes on another pretzel.

In yet another attempt to bankrupt our nation and prove he's a more fiscally irresponsible douche-bag than that rotten corpse Ronald Reagan, our fake president is trying to raise the debt ceiling.

Again!!

The Senate, on a 52-48 vote, sent to President Bush a bill raising the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion and preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes. When the government reaches the new ceiling, expected sometime next year, the debt will represent $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

[...]

The debt limit increase is an unhappy necessity - the alternative would be a disastrous first-ever default on U.S. obligations - that greatly overshadowed a mostly symbolic, weeklong debate on the GOP's budget resolution.

[...]

"When it comes to deficits, this president owns all the records," said Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "The three largest deficits in our nation's history have all occurred under this administration's watch."

[...]

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Bush's tax cuts account for just 30 percent of the debt limit increases required during his presidency. Revenue losses from a recession and new spending to combat terrorism and for the war in Iraq are also responsible, he said.

!!!

$234 BILLION dollars is still a nice chunk of change you dummy. How hood-rich can one retard from Texas possibly be? "I've already maxed out my credit cards, but I still have $100 in savings bonds, instead of paying down my debt why don't I just go out to a nice dinner?"

Please, please trip running one day and crack your skull open in a puddle of Cancer, you shiftless cunt.

Feliz Chrisma-hana-kwanz-ica

I can't tell you how much I am enjoying The War on Christmas, so much so in fact that I decided to rank my three favorite wars in order or win-ability:

(1) The War on Christmas (winnable)
(2) The War on Drugs (un-winnable)
(3) The War on Terror (less-winnable than The War on Drugs)

More coverage of The War on Christmas [1] | [2] | [3] | [4] | [5]

Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, it's not Jesax (the proto-Jesus) I'm lobbying against, it is in fact Hallmark. Anyone who has paid attention knows:

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1. Jesus was not born on or anywhere near December 25th according to the New Testament narrative.

2. The apostles and the early church never celebrated December 25 nor any other day as the birthday of Jesus.

3. Though the events surrounding the birth of Jesus were prominent in the New Testament, they were never associated in Bible times with any annual celebration of his birth.

4. Rather, the only celebration kept in honor of Jesus was the celebration of his death. Further, that observance did not coincide with the pagan observance of Easter, (the name comes from Ishtar, or Astarte, the ancient goddess of spring", as is done today, but it was on the day of the Jewish Passover as is well documented in the Bible.

5. The pagan festivals known an Saturnalia and Brumalia, associated with December 25th, were being celebrated during the time of Jesus's life and for centuries before. It would have been considered outright pagan for Jesus or his disciples to celebrate December 25th.

6. Saturnalia was celebrated very much like Christmas is celebrated today, with the decoration of homes and trees and garlands, round orbs, crosses, mistletoe, yule logs, wreaths, etc. It was all done, however, in honor of Mithras, the sun god.

7. Ancient Rome derived its pagan religious activities from even earlier forms of paganism in Egypt and in Babylon, condemned widely in the Bible as the worship of Baal.

8. These pagan practices were incorporated into the church in the 4th century, by the Roman emperor Constantine to further his political agenda. The church that emerged from that period was a travesty and the church of today is nothing like that of the first century.

9. Christmas celebration was exclusively a Catholic practice until as late an the early 1800s. Legends concerning Santa Claus and others have been layered upon the earlier observance since 1830 to produce the quasi-secular holiday that has become popular in our time among the protestants and the secular.

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So while any good C&E Christian can tell themself that you're celebrating the birth of their savior by putting presents under the tree, they're really just helping retailers make their Q4 targets and celebrating the expansion of Capitalism.

Bill O'Reilly is all worked up about the War on Christmas, but he has no right until he gets his facts straight. Maybe Chanukkah is more his speed, or Stickmas

And Jesax, while he doesn't get a cut of those profits, still thanks you Christmas spending. I'm almost certain that Reagan had something to do with this mess.

Good riddance to Ronald Reagan

A speech I wrote for my communications class:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this year that over 15 million wage and salary workers here in the United States are union members. This accounts for almost 13% of the labor force, and since the BLS began tracking union membership in 1983, this decline has been steady from a high of 20%.

It is fair for me to assume that anyone in this room tonight who does not already have a degree is working toward one, and with that degree you will join the other 123 million Americans who are not part of organized labor. Whether or not your job requires you to manage or interact with union employees, it is important to acknowledge the role of organized labor in our nation's past and future.

For this reason, everyone of us who went to school here in the United States was required to take social studies -- to ensure that the mistakes of our past are not the mistakes of our future. Throughout the course, we learned about Uriah Stephens and the Knights of Labor; how they built an effective labor force of nearly 750,000, and how their constitution called for an end to child labor and equal pay for the sexes -- an idea that was as progressive in 1869 as it is today. The Knights also called for the establishment of the Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as government ownership of the railroads.

We also learned about Samuel Gompers who founded the American Federation of Labor in 1886. An important win for the AFL came in 1916 when the Clayton Antitrust Act was passed, which stated explicitly that "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or an article of commerce". The AFL eventually merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO.

One of the most important incidents in the history of labor relations involved the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association, or PATCO, and took place in 1981. When negotiations began in February of that year, PATCO President Robert Poli brought a list of 97 grievances to the table, among them: 7 were money related, 2 were related to work hours, 5 had to do with equipment, and 60 referred to working conditions.

Indeed, the greatest concerns for PATCO members involved job stress and workplace control. Two federal studies were done on the FAA to investigate low morale among the controllers -- one in 1970 and another in 1972. Both stated the FAA's relationship between management and labor were in disarray, and that many job stressors were related to the autocratic management at the FAA. The 1970 study urged a sharp reduction both in work hours and required overtime, in addition to a revision in pay criteria.

The FAA not only ignored most of the recommendations in these reports, but also ended an immunity provision in 1979 that encouraged pilots, administrators, and controllers to openly discuss mistakes without fear of retribution, just as surgeons do.

PATCO President Robert Poli received this letter from then Governor Ronald Reagan on October 20, 1980, shortly before being elected President:

Dear Mr. Poli, I have been briefed by the members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation's air traffic control system. They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation's air travelers in unwarranted danger. In an area so clearly related to public safety, the Carter Administration has failed to act responsibly. You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety. I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and air traffic controllers.

When 13,000 of PATCO's members walked off the job on August 3, 1981, the Great Communicator ordered them back to work within 48 hours or face termination. As federal employees, they were in violation of the "no-strike" clause of their employment contract, though that clause had not stopped postal workers or employees at the Government Printing Office and Library of Congress from having twenty-two other unauthorized strikes in recent years. Nevertheless, an angry Reagan fired the 11,359 controllers who had not returned to work on August 5th and banned them from returning to work for the FAA. This ban was lifted by President Clinton in 1993, but some controllers still want their jobs back. Ron Taylor, a former Vietnam veteran and air traffic controller fired in 1981, was interviewed just two weeks ago in USA Today. Of the ban he says, "Reagan banned us for life, even murders get parole. We thought we, as labor, had a friend in the Whitehouse". As a final slap in labor's face, Washington National Airport was renamed in 2002 to pay homage to the man who fired the air traffic controllers.

Which begs the question: how important is organized labor? It was vital to our nation's growth, so much so that Congress declared the first Monday in September "a working man's holiday" in 1894. While union membership has been in decline, they are likely to see a resurgence in the coming years as issues like off shoring of jobs and violations of World Trade Organization Rules continue. While I am not a union member now, I am certainly proud to have been one.

And now, for equal time on this topic: Ani Difranco