Dawnling

But how will we be SURE that the shovels
full of shame have gone down the correct throat,
actually been swallowed and kept down?

Kanadesaga

the trial and execution of sentence would be public, just the "interogation" could be private. As it should be. After "evidence" has been "collected" a full on public trial, complete with 8 x 10 color glossies with diagrams and arrows and a papragraph on the back of each one describing what it is.

__________________

Kanadesaga

Taking Options 'Off the Table'

Cheney's influence is manifested not just in crisis but also through his extraordinary involvement in the daily machinery of the White House.
The vice president chairs a budget review board, a panel the Bush administration created to set spending priorities and serve as arbiter when Cabinet members appeal decisions by White House budget officials. The White House has portrayed the board as a device to keep Bush from wasting time on petty disagreements, but previous administrations have seldom seen Cabinet-level disputes in that light. Cheney's leadership of the panel gives him direct and indirect power over the federal budget -- and over those who must live within it.

Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., who served as Bush's budget director from 2001 to 2003 and is now governor of Indiana, said that during his tenure the number of times a Cabinet official made a direct budget appeal to Bush "was zero," which aides from previous administrations found "stunning," he added.

Daniels said he chalked that track record up to "the respect people had for the vice president." Cabinet members, he said, recognized that if the board didn't agree with them, "then the president wasn't likely to, either."

It is well known that Cheney is usually the last to speak to the president before Bush makes a decision. Less so is his role, to a degree unmatched by his predecessors, in steering debate by weighing in at the lower-level meetings where proposals are born and die.

Cheney, Bolten said, is a vocal participant at a weekly luncheon meeting of Bush's economic team, which gathers without the president. As the most senior official in the room, Cheney receives great deference from Bush's advisers.

Wise officials vet their proposals in advance. White House budget director Rob Portman, for instance, sought Cheney's counsel as he was putting together the budget for the upcoming year, using him as a "sounding board" on issues as varied as defense spending and tax reform.

"He never, ever has said to me, 'Do this.' Never. Which is interesting, because that might be the perception of how he operates," Portman said. "But it is 'What do you think of this?' Well, he's the vice president of the United States -- and obviously I'm interested in his point of view."

Perhaps more important than Cheney's influence in pushing policies is his power to stop them before they reach the Oval Office.

When Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, broached the idea of limiting the popular mortgage tax deduction, he said he quickly dropped it after Cheney told him it would never fly with Congress. "He's a big timesaver for us in that he takes off the table a lot of things he knows aren't going to go anywhere," Lazear said.

Lazear, who is otherwise known as a fierce advocate for his views, said that he may argue a point with Cheney "for 10 minutes or so" but that in the end he is always convinced. "I can't think of a time when I have thought I was right and the vice president was wrong."

But Cheney is careful to choose which issues deserve his attention, preferring not to dissipate his influence. "Dick Cheney learned early on to say no to things that were peripheral to his primary interests or assignments," said his longtime friend David Gribbin.

Current and former White House officials say that the vice president has largely steered clear of hot-button issues such as stem cell research and Bush's "faith-based" initiative to funnel more federal money to religious groups. He is also savvy enough, they say, to retreat when the president expresses strong personal views.

Cheney sided with conservatives who wanted to urge the Supreme Court to reverse a landmark ruling that permitted affirmative action. But, former officials said, he did not press the case when the president, who as governor of Texas had run a state university system, made it clear that he intended to take a more limited and nuanced legal position.

Word of a Cheney loss seldom leaks, a trait that has further endeared him to Bush -- and that has served to exaggerate his influence. Former Cheney and Bush aides described several domestic policy defeats that never reached public notice.

Cheney shared conservative trepidations about the president's signature education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, which gave the federal government more control over K-12 education. He has griped privately to confidants, such as economist and CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow, about the administration's failure to control spending. And in robust internal White House discussions, he raised concerns about the cost of the administration's decision to expand Medicare to include a new multibillion-dollar drug entitlement, but bowed to the political reality that the president had to fulfill a campaign promise.

"At least in my area, he didn't have a 100 percent batting average," said Conda, the former domestic policy adviser.

In each case, however, Cheney was a loyal soldier, instrumental in helping to sell the president's policies on the Hill and to the Republican base.

"Dick once told me that our president is a 'big-government conservative,'" said former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), in a recollection disputed by Cheney's office. "Now, Dick keeps his opinions to himself whenever he disagrees with the administration, as he should. But I believe that Dick is a small-government conservative."
'A Spine Quotient'

When Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vt.) threatened to bolt the GOP during negotiations over the president's 2001 tax package, senior Bush advisers and Republican senators were deeply split over whether to buy him off. It was a momentous decision -- a Jeffords defection would toss the Senate to Democratic control for the first time since 1994.

But in a contentious internal debate, the vice president forcefully argued that the administration should not capitulate by giving Jeffords the billions of dollars in special-education funding he sought, recalled O'Keefe, at the time deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

O'Keefe said Cheney argued that the White House should not sacrifice conservative principle in the face of Jeffords's threat by scaling back tax cuts dear to the GOP base in order to create an expensive new mandate. Gramm, who confirmed that account, said there would have been no end to such demands if the president had caved.

"The principle was 'Hell, we can't go around funding programs based on what some individual might do,'" said Gramm, who worked closely with Cheney during the negotiations.

By the end of the critical meeting, O'Keefe said, the divided group presented Cheney's view as the consensus recommendation to the president. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut passed, and Jeffords defected as promised.

Such stands by Cheney were not uncommon, said Bolten, the White House chief of staff. Cheney often stepped in if he sensed the administration was softening its commitment to Republican "first principles," Bolten said, and he was "a pretty vigorous voice for holding the line on spending and for holding the line on tax cuts." Longtime Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said the vice president brings a "spine quotient" to internal debates.

Cheney's power derives in part from meticulous preparation paired with a strong will to prevail. He knows what he wants, and as one rival put it, Cheney and his staff are "just ferocious negotiators."
The vice president regularly convenes a kitchen cabinet of diverse outside economic experts, often before the president is about to make a major decision. Members of the group describe a man who enjoys the nitty-gritty of economics, poring over charts of obscure data such as freight-car loadings and quizzing experts on the subtle ways the government can influence the economy.

"With the president it was much shorter. It's 'Marty, what do you think of where we stand today?'" said Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economics professor and the president and chief executive of the National Bureau of Economic Research. "It's also a less technical presentation."

R. Glenn Hubbard, Bush's former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of Cheney: "I'd have conversations with him that were at a level of detail that those with the president were not."

In the weeks following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as the White House was putting together an economic recovery package, Cheney gathered his kitchen cabinet, frequently interrupting the experts as he furiously jotted notes on a stack of cards embossed with the vice presidential seal. What kind of tax cuts are needed? Cheney wanted to know. How big?

A few days later, Cheney was "on fire" when he met with the president, Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, later told Conda. Cheney had decided that the best way to shake business leaders out of their post-attack paralysis was to let them immediately write off the cost of new plants and equipment. After hearing him out, Bush made Cheney's idea a centerpiece of his plan.

In previous administrations, such initiatives typically have been generated by the Treasury Department or the White House economic team. But Cheney has made the vice president's office a hub of tax policy, enabled by the fact that "this president appears to want to have Treasury take the orders from the White House," said John H. Makin, an economist and an informal Cheney adviser.
All this put Cheney in a position to outflank some of Bush's top advisers, and even his old friend Greenspan, to shape the administration's signature tax package: the 2003 cuts that Cheney sold at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.


(Emphasis mine) Continued

__________________

Dawnling

I can't take credit for
"Lonica Moooinski".

That was "Capitol Steps" or some such group.



PS. I've been to the Green Briar

Kanadesaga

Reporter: "Two thirds of the American people think Iraq was a mistake."


TheDick: "So."








what a fucking piece of shit cheney is, he should roast in hell for one billion, trillion years, sixteen forevers, twenty-seven eternities and 11,000 years after that!

__________________

Dawnling

What was that that Dick said to Lahey?

( fuck, how does one spell Lay Hee?)

I think that more people should quote the Dick to himself.

My response is to say,
"Sew?, yes, I can Sew! I can sew up the lips and asshole of the Dick and watch the rot and charge for it!"

Kanadesaga

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. LOL

__________________

Dawnling

Love on you and all your deeds all day and night every day and night

Kanadesaga

This cocksucker needs to die a slow painful death and then roast in hell for one billion trillion years.



Cheney on Iraq: 'It's Important to Win'
Vice President Discusses Grim Milestone of 4,000 U.S. Dead in Five-Year Iraq War


By MARTHA RADDATZ, ELY BROWN and JENNIFER PARKER
March 24, 2008

Share In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.

Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.

"I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. And just what effect do you think it has on the country?" asked ABC News' White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz, who traveled with the vice president on a nine-day overseas trip to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.

"It obviously brings home I think for a lot of people the cost that's involved in the global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan," Cheney said in the interview, conducted in Turkey. "It places a special burden obviously on the families, and we recognize, I think — it's a reminder of the extent to which we are blessed with families who've sacrificed as they have."

Cheney: 'The All-Volunteer Force'
"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."

Raddatz noted that some soldiers, Air Force members, and Marines have been on multiple deployments and have been sent back to Iraq because of the stop-loss policy — an involuntary extension of a service member's enlistment contract. The Army alone says 58,000 US soldiers have been redeployed to war because of the stop-loss policy.

"When you talk about an all-volunteer force, some of these soldiers, airmen, Marines have been on two, three, four, some of them more than that, deployments," Raddatz said. "Do you think when they volunteered they had any idea that there would be so many deployments or stop-loss? Some of those who want to get out can't because of stop-loss?"

"A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will see developments," Cheney said. "For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country."

Referring to his talks with US service members in Iraq, the vice president said the men and women he speaks to are committed to the war.

"The thing that comes through loud and clear is how much they are committed to the cause, to doing what needs to be done to defend the nation," Cheney said.


ABC News: ABC News

__________________