Cheney Calls For Next Generation of Rack and Ruin

Dick Cheney insisting on the Republican Party not abandoning its, well, principles and calling for "the young talent" to take over is eerily reminiscent of a sick and gaunt Adolph Hitler drawing upon the Nazi Youth League even as the Russians were about to surround Berlin, imploring them not to give up. Of course, Cheney is neither sick nor gaunt, as eight years as Halliburton's president of contract procurement in the White House has made him very sleek and bloated.

Cheney, in a radio interview with North Dakota radio personality Scott Hennen during his "I'm Out of the Bunker" tour, warned the GOP not to abandon the ruinous neoconservative philosophies that had eventually landed the GOP on the reefs in less than eight years. In fact, this is what Dr. Strangelove said on that matter:

"You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'"

It's interesting that Cheney is still thinking in terms of party ideology and the alleged superiority of the Republican over the Democratic. Because the problems that are essentially killing this country far supercede party lines. While it can't be accurately said that the responsibility for these serious ills that afflict our nation can be laid neatly on the doorstep of GOP National HQ, it's also just as obvious that the radioactive fallout from Cheney's party spread faster and wider during the last years, especially during the first six years of Bush's administration when the GOP ran everything.

It's also laughable that Cheney thinking any Republican adopting a moderate stance is someone who's guilty of "act(ing) more like a Democrat" and is necessarily a bad thing. Well, let's review how efficacious it was for the Democrats when they started thinking like Republicans. Thinking like a Republican gave us

The USA PATRIOT ACT that all but Swiss-cheesed the Bill of Rights into quaint irrelevance

The Use of Force Resolution that authorized Bush to send combat troops into Iraq

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005

The Military Commissions Act, which allows the president to designate even American civilians as potential terrorists, thereby denying them due process under existing laws

Countless billions poured into Iraq and Afghanistan to no discernible effect, at least 11 billion of that going into the bottomless pockets of Cheney's "former" company, Halliburton, whose stock through some horrifyingly hyperactive financial mitosis has split more times than a fertilized human egg

Unending contract abuses that have cost the taxpayers untold tens of billions and absolutely no Congressional oversight whatsoever

The list goes on.

Scott Hennen, a right wing talk show host out of Fargo, ND seems to be Cheney's favorite outlet for defending waterboarding. Back in October 2006, Hennen was the guy who drew from Cheney the infamous "dunk in the water remark", the same interview in which Cheney said the administration availing itself of waterboarding was "a no-brainer."

To give you an idea of how deep are Cheney's roots in Bizarro World, he's even called upon the Obama administration to release two mysterious documents in which it can be proven that waterboarding yielded invaluable information that made our nation safer. You would think, if these documents existed and their veracity could be thoroughly vetted, that the Bush administration would've declassified such documents years ago as proof that torture does work.

But the very fact that KSM was waterboarded 183 times and Abu al Zubaida similarly tortured 83 times doesn't exactly bespeak "an enhanced interrogation technique" that's very efficacious.

All in all, I think that listening to Dick Cheney, while it wouldn't exactly be the smartest thing to do, would nonetheless be in the best interests of the nation. They ought to listen to Cheney, to Rush, to Ann Coulter, considering how well their philosophies in the long term served their party and the United States.

Finally, Kos's people have been feverishly at work on a new logo for the Republican Party and this is what they've come up with.

I'd say that about says it all. We should be sucking their fossils out of the ground in about 65,000,000 years.