Calling himself a ‘Unique Creature,’ Dick Cheney decides he belongs to the Loch Ness Monster branch of gubmint.

And all along I thought it was the Creature From the Black Lagoon branch,

Mr. Death has been too busy in his latest hauntness
taking two innovators with his skeletal gauntness.
He came for the smiling creator who gave us the West Coast Offense
and the happy happy late show creator of the West Coast Flauntness.

Goodnight Bill. Sleep well Tom.

Meredith, N.H. - Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Monday accused Democrats of favoring a controlling “nanny government” as he continued his bashing of the rival party.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Rudy the Unready hasn’t yet learned the lesson of Dick: embrace the maternal substitute, so that if we let the voters grow up they shall not depart from the righteous ways of the Decider. He should learn this theme song, from a movie about the Ultimate Nanny, to the tune of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.

We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution.
Try and hold us to the Law,
And we’ll get absolution.
Call us in, we’ll go “Haw, haw”,
For this is our solution:
Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution.

We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
There was a time when we did quake
If Congress said a word,
For fear our funding they would take
If we shot them the bird,
But we have learned a magic term
That stands up like a wall.
We never more will have to squirm
Since we have learned to squall:

Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution.
Try and hold us to the Law,
And we’ll get absolution.
Call us in, we’ll go “Haw, haw”,
For this is our solution:
Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution.

We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
We diddle fiddle twiddle your rights away.
So if the Senate wants to know
The memos we email,
Just let their Chairmen puff and blow:
We do not need to quail.
Branch one and four of this our state
Are both beyond rebuke.
Subpeonas will not be our fate:
Reality’s a fluke.

Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution.
Unitary Executive trumps the Constitution!

It’d be nice to attribute it to cluelessness.

But I suspect the deepest motives: money & power.

We’ll see if it’s laughable when we attack Iran next month.

Somehow methinks somebody might be able to do something to prevent this sort of thing:

[Emphasis of all kinds and / or off color commentary courtesy of the Funny Farm Editorial Staff]

U.S. Set to Offer Huge Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON, July 27 — The Putsch administration is preparing to demand ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when the mystical, oft mentioned, but never defined some United States officials contend that the Saudis are arming terrorist factions in the Middle East playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous (cough). Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

But the mystical, oft mentioned, but never defined administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this upcoming marketing season fall.

In talks about the package, the administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition of receiving the arms package, the the mystical, oft mentioned, but never defined officials said.

The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Persian Gulf countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing power of Iran in the region (BOO!) and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab paymasters allies. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon agreed to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged from closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill.

[snip]

The package and the possible steps to allay Israel’s concerns were described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration to test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final negotiations on the package with Saudi officials. The Saudis had requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom.

[snip]

The $20 billion price tag on the package is more than double what officials originally estimated when details became public this spring. Even the higher figure is a rough (cough) estimate that could geometrically spiral out of control, especially with Cheneyburton dipping into the till fluctuate depending on the final package, which would be carried out over a number of years, the mystical, oft mentioned, but never defined officials said.

Worried about the impression that the United States was starting an arms race in the region, State and Defense Department officials stressed that the arms deal was being proposed largely in response to improvements in Iran’s military capabilities (BOO!) and to counter the threat posed by its nuclear program (BOO!), which the lying, criminally incompetent, lame duck Chimperial administration contends (cough) is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

[snip]

Much more at the link. Go check out the potentially gory details for yourself.

Do we really need to re-employ the failed cold war strategery of arming the winning side by arming both sides again? Please tell me there’s something that the Democratic congress can do to put this on the back burner until saner heads prevail at the WhiteWash House…

Many thanks to Kathy at Shakespeare’s Sister and the Gun Toting Liberal for bringing this morsel of information to my attention!

[Editors’ Note: this entry has been cross-posted at the Funny Farm]

The right wing has spent considerable effort trying to turn the word “liberal” into an epithet equivalent to, say, scum-sucking Commie homo or greasy butt-munch. Not surprisingly, those on the left have increasingly sought to call themselves something else, such as Hillary Clinton did during the YouTube debate when she referred to herself as a “progressive.” And also not surprisingly the wingnuts have started a campaign to demonize that term too, starting with this post by the preposterous Yuval Levin over at America’s Shittiest Website™:

Progressivism, after all, has a very mixed history in American politics, which takes in not only efforts to reform labor laws, bust trusts, and create national parks but also some serious doses of racism, social Darwinism, eugenics, and a very strange mix of authoritarianism and out of control populism

Of course, there is no broad agreement about the meaning of Progressivism, nor is their any manifesto that defines the tenets of Progressivism. At best it is an umbrella term that covers a number of disparate reform movements in the early twentieth century.

So Levin can attribute almost any belief he’d like to Progressivism, although racism certainly seems a stretch. But Levin apparently fails to see the irony of his hurling a charge of racism from a website run under the auspices of a publication that itself was once a virulent proponent of segregationism, which it espoused in blatantly racist terms. Consider this defense of segregationism from the pages of the National Review:

The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

You can read more about racism, er, Progressivism at the National Review here.