(I bring you this blog post from Las Vegas, where I am vacationing. I’ve taken a short break from losing money in the casinos to catch up on the news.)

Liz Cheney has lied or at least been grossly incorrect about a lot of things. Like her father, it seems like she can’t go on TV without misinforming in some fashion. All of the incidents are equally egregious, but this one just cracks me up.

You may have heard that Obama made an unannounced trip to Dover to honor the service of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The President and Attorney General Eric Holder stood and saluted as flag-draped caskets were moved off the transport into the chapel in a precise and practiced military ceremony.

This simple gesture would ordinarily be seen as a good thing by anyone who honors the service of those in our armed forces. But the wingnut-o-sphere is shitting bricks. Not only that, but the conservo-luminaries are all over my TV talking about how terrible it was that Obama did this and, *gasp*, had pictures taken. (I guess if he had landed on an aircraft-carrier, and hopped out of the plane in a flight suit it would have been okay…)

Anyway, I digress. Liz “My Daddy Is Famous” Cheney had the fucking cojones to say this on Fox News Radio’s John Gibson Show recently:

I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras.

“Do what?” you might ask. Bush never, not once, even visited Dover to honor the soldiers he put in harm’s way. Much less “without cameras.” Liz Cheney, being the daughter of Bush’s Vice President, knows this, or she should know it. Which makes her either a liar or fucking ignorant. And given her track record of public statements, I’m going with liar.

That’s really only the first part of this post. The second part has to do with general criticism of this event from the dingbat contingent of the right wing. Boss Limbaugh himself called Obama “narcissistic” and criticized the event as a mere “photo-op.” Other wingnut bloggers and TV punditainers have followed suit. Or you could just read some of the comments on the above link to the Washington Post:

All the world is a stage to Obama … every action a measured bit of stage-craft. Cold. The man is very, very cold.

He does absolutely nothing unless there are cameras there to capture his “holiness”.

a staged sympathy event

Some are even getting all in a tizzy about the salute. Apparently they are unaware that a salute is the appropriate way for the Commander in Chief to acknowledge a servicemember.

It’s all just a bunch of wingnut poo-flinging.

And, ho! What’s this!

(photo via Hullabaloo; click for larger)

It’s wingnut godfather Ronald Reagan visiting flag-draped coffins of those who died in the US Embassy attack in Beirut. And he even brought Nancy with him!

This further confirms my “First or Worse” Theory of Unified Wingnuttery, which states that any action by Democrats/liberals which gets the wingnuts into a tizzy was done either first or to a greater degree by a Republican/conservative (more on this later.)

So, in summation, fuck you Liz Cheney, and fuck you wingnuts.

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Yeah, the trauma of 9/11 made some on the left go a little nuts. It also made a lot of folks on the right go nuts in different ways, and eight years later we’re still stuck in two wars as a result. But the whole Obama “birther” thing is a different kettle of fish insofar as the only “trauma” these people seem to have suffered is living to see the day a black man got elected President.

The US government defunds ACORN, but not Blackwater. I guess that’s what ACORN gets for helping brown people instead of killing them.

…except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks against Americans, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush’s inability to capture those responsible for 9/11, and waging an unnecessary war that inspired more terrorists, and the success terrorists had in exploiting Bush’s international unpopularity, the Bush/Cheney record on counter-terrorism was awesome.

Go. Read more.

I’m always amazed at the fundies’ ability to ignore pointless wars, torture, the needy, the hungry and abused of the world, but they’ll come out in full force against a plan that might actually help people.

Well played fundies, well played.

Why do self-described fiscal conservatives get in a tizzy over the cost of programs that help their constituents live, but not over the cost of bombing foreigners?

I’m pretty critical of Fox News, and I make no apologies for that. Fox News, as an entity, as a business, and as a news outlet is almost completely devoid of integrity of any kind. Their most popular anchors are all far-Right radicals (yes, radicals) and the vast majority of their daily reporting contains a gross conservative bias they’re not even trying to hide anymore.

That said, this guy Shepard Smith has gotten my attention recently. He appears to be the lone voice of reason in the black hole of Fox News insanity. I’m sure he’s just as personally conservative as the rest of the crew over there, and I’m sure he and I would disagree on countless issues. But he seems to at least display the kind of sense and sensibility that one would hope for from all prominent journalists.

If you have a few minutes, visit this link and watch both of the embedded videos. In the first video (the YouTube embed) Smith goes up against Iraq War cheerleader Judy Miller (formerly of the New York Times) and some conservo-douchebag who does nothing but equivocate about what is and isn’t torture. Shepard Smith is rightfully dismissive of said douchebag, who keeps citing the meritless and oft-debunked “24 scenario” so popular with torture advocates.

The second video clip is from a discussion on FoxNews.com’s online show The Strategy Room. Smith pretty much goes off, slamming his hand on the desk and yelling, “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!”

(Torture doesn’t “help,” by the way.)

And Smith’s admonishment to anyone who thinks torture is no big deal: “If we are going to be Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on the Hill, we don’t get to torture. We don’t do it.”

Nothing gets the conservo-sphere’s attention like invoking Saint Ronnie. (Actually, the notion of a “Shining City on the Hill” was first proffered in a sermon by 17th century Puritan leader John Winthrop and later cited in speeches by Kennedy and Reagan. It is one of the few ideas on which I agree with Reagan. That is, if I understand it correctly to mean that the United States must lead by example and be a government and a society that others would want to emulate rather than fear. As such, yeah, torture is pretty much off the table.)

Sorry for the massive blockquote, I just couldn’t pare down what he’s saying any more than this. It’s all so good and, as they said in My Cousin Vinny, dead-on-balls accurate.

As far as I can tell these days, there are only three events Republicans remember throughout history, and those three events are the basis for every decision they make. The events are WWII (in which a damned furriner, Churchill, is the conservative hero), the Reagan administration, and the Republican take-over of Congress in Clinton’s first term. It doesn’t matter that they “misremember” those three cherished memories and don’t seem to have the ability to accurately assess those time periods. If you are wondering why the Bush administration and the past eight years is not one of those three memories, it is because they decided the day he left office that he is not a true conservative. Down the memory hole with you, George, and take those damned dogs with you!

Let’s just take one of these to prove the point. As WWII is one of the pivotal moments Republicans remember, every enemy is Hitler.

Saddam Hussein? Hitler.

Putin? Hitler.

Kim Jong Il? Hitler.

Barack Obama? Hitler.

Likewise, anyone who does not do precisely what the wingnut crowd wants is instantly an appeaser and akin to Chamberlain.

Barack Obama- appeaser and Chamberlain.

Iraq War Critics- Appeasers.

Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter- Appeasers.

And on and on. So what you have is a movement centered on a fictional history based on three events they don’t remember too well, and they are completely at the mercy of the echo chamber, which has them completely dumbed down by talk radio and the circle jerk of self-referential pundits that tells them exactly what they want to hear. If you remember correctly, the wurlitzer was telling us after the last electoral drubbing that this is a center-right nation, despite the fact the GOP got hammered.

Balloon Juice

We didn’t have a friendly media outlet promoting our every move. The media was hostile and interpolated us in a way that was unrecognizable…. We were alone.

When I protested the war I was made out to be the scum of the earth. Oh, what must it be like to show up for a protest, denounce your Country, bad mouth the President, threaten armed revolt, and have your very own media outlet there to brand you a patriot.

Balloon Juice

But after September 11, having been hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam might not strike again?

- Ari Fleischer on Hardball, March 11, 2009

Memo to Mr. Fleischer:

Amount of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11: ZERO. Apparently, everyone knows this except Fleischer.

And don’t get me started on that “we haven’t been attacked since 9/11″ garbage. We weren’t attacked for the 10 or so years before 9/11 either, and we didn’t have domestic spying, Guantanamo, or two wars to pay for.

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