Cheney Biographer: VP Would Certainly See Bailout As Opportunity To Reinforce Unitary Executive
Cheney Biographer: VP Would Certainly See Bailout As Opportunity To Reinforce Unitary Executive
In recent weeks, Vice President Cheney has virtually disappeared from the public spotlight since last month’s economic collapse. He has given seven public speeches since Sept. 1, none of which were devoted to the economy. Cheney’s absence is puzzling considering his major role in crafting economic policy during the first term.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress asked the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, author of the new book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, about Cheney’s disappearance. Gellman suggested Cheney has become a less influential figure in the White House and Congress, handicapped by abysmal approval ratings:
GELLMAN: Several explanations for Cheney’s disappearance. Number one: if you have approval ratings lower than those of the least popular president in modern history, you’re not going to be tapped to go out and make the public case. He had one sort of foray into Congress to try to talk House Republicans out of their opposition, so he’s lost his sway with them. … But in the second term, Josh Bolten and Paulson have formed kind of an alliance to take back economic policies from the Office of Vice President which was where it resided in the first term.
Listen here:
Gellman cautioned, however, that Cheney “is probably is involved behind the scenes in shaping the policy because there hasn’t been many massive policies that he hasn’t helped shape.”
The administration’s initial plan doled out extreme powers immune of oversight to executive branch — the Section 8 provision of the original Paulson plan. Gellman said Cheney may have used the bailout as an “opportunity” to expand executive power:
GELLMAN: He would approve the idea that this an executive responsibility. He would argue both that in order to solve this problem the markets have to be convinced that decisions will be made swiftly according to a unified idea of how to solve the problem and that they would be final and that markets would not be worried about Congress undoing what the Treasury Secretary has just done. Uncertainty isn’t good, he would say, for economic planning. He would certainly also see this as an opportunity to demonstrate and reinforce that the executive needs to be supreme on big consequential national policy.
On whether Cheney supports bailouts, Gellman said he may have granted an exception for this one: “He doesn’t like them in general. He thinks people who take risks in a capitalist society ought to bear the consequences of those just as they ought to reap the gains.”
Check out Gellman’s site here.
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October 11th, 2008 at 6:06 pmDavid Addington, Cheney’s crazed right-hand man, had a hand in writing Paulson’s bail-out plan.
Just look at Section 8.
It has Addington and Cheney written all over it.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:09 pmDr. Doom disappears after all of his evil planning has come to fruition. America is now the poor maiden tied to the train track, struggling to escape as disaster approaches.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:12 pmBe afraid! Be very afraid!
October 11th, 2008 at 6:20 pmARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
October 11th, 2008 at 6:37 pmARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
ARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
ARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
ARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
ARREST THIS MUDDFUGGA NOW!!!!!!!
“He doesn’t like them in general. He thinks people who take risks in a capitalist society ought to bear the consequences of those just as they ought to reap the gains.”
The problem with this statement is the fact that the people who created the “crisis” will not bear the consequences of their actions.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:44 pmO/T: why is TP ignoring Rep. John Lewis’s brilliant analysis of the hate-monger by McCain and Palin.
Here are his own words from the http://www.salon.com web site:
“As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” Lewis said in a statement, continuing:
Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.
During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.
As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better.”
Salon also has some great comments on this statement.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:59 pmGellman said he may have granted an exception for this one: “He doesn’t like them in general. He thinks people who take risks in a capitalist society ought to bear the consequences of those just as they ought to reap the gains.”
And the no-bid, cost plus contracts he procured for Halliburton?
He doesn’t like them in general – but when he can steer risk-free contracts to his buddies at Halliburton, it’s another matter entirely.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pmBeat me to it, barfly.
Loot the treasury. Check. Move personal accounts off shore and convert dollars to more credible currency. Check. Give more secretive looting authority to fellow robber-baron. Check. Move headquarters of gravy-train to Dubai. Check.
Now all he has to do is clean out his bunker.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pmOh, and The Surge is failing in it’s stated goal to reduce violence. The Iraqi Chaldean Christians are seeing an increase of violence directed at them:
1,000 Christian families flee north Iraqi city:
Published: Saturday October 11, 2008
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) Nearly 1,000 Christian families have fled their homes in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul following the worst wave of violence against them in five years, provincial governor Duraid Kashmula said on Saturday.
The Christians had taken shelter over the past 24 hours in schools and churches in the northern and eastern fringes of Nineveh province after attacks that have killed at least 11 Christians since September 28, Kashumula said.
At least three homes of Christians were blown up by unidentified attackers in the Sukkar district of Mosul, regarded by US and Iraqi security forces of one of the last urban bastions of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“The (violence) is the fiercest campaign against the Christians since 2003,” Kashmula said. “Among those killed over the past 11 days were a doctor, an engineer and a handicapped person.”
The latest flight came as Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako this week called on the US military as well as the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to protect Christians and other minorities in the face of a rash of deadly attacks.
In a recent interview with AFP, Sako called on the Americans to do more to protect Christians and other minorities.
“We are the target of a campaign of liquidation, a campaign of violence. The objective is political,” Sako said.
He said that since the US-led invasion of 2003, more than 200 Christians had been killed and a string of churches attacked, and added that the violence had intensified in recent weeks, particularly in the north.
It was now time for Prime Minister Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-led government to deliver on repeated promises to do more to protect Iraq’s minorities, Sako said.
“We have heard many words from Prime Minister Maliki, but unfortunately this has not translated into reality,” he said. “We continue to be targeted. We want solutions, not promises.”
There were around 800,000 Christians in Iraq at the time of the US-led invasion, a number that has now shrunk by a third as the faithful have fled the country, the archbishop said.
He said Christians are dependent on the government and its US backers for protection. Unlike the Shiite majority, the Sunni Arab former elite or the Kurds, they have no powerful tribes or militias to defend them.
“The Christians of Iraq are not militias or tribes to defend themselves, we have a bitter feeling of injustice, because innocent people are killed and we do not know why,” he said.
Christians used to pay protection money to insurgents groups, but the increase in violence in the past few months has forced some villages to start organising their own fighting forces to protect themselves.
In March, the body of the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paul Faraj Rahho, was found in a shallow grave in the city two weeks after he was kidnapped.
Rahho, 65, was abducted during a shootout in which three of his companions were killed as he returned home from celebrating mass on February 29.
In Baghdad, gunmen shot dead a Syrian Orthodox priest, Youssef Adel, near his home in the city centre in April in an attack condemned by Pope Benedict XVI.
Former archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey has warned that the ethnic cleansing of Christians from Iraq had intensified since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Iraq’s Christian community includes various denominations, including Syrian Orthodox and Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic congregations.
Obama might want to point that out, in the next debate.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:40 pmMore violence begat more violence? Who ever heard of such a thing? Must be that liberal media—always looking for dark clouds in a silver lining.
October 11th, 2008 at 7:42 pmi just found this, if you haven’t been there, do so and pass it on…
i’m still smiling!
via C&L (hey, it’s “VP” related):
Margaret and Helen: Best friends for sixty years and counting, say: Even if you watch your p’s and q’s you can still spell bullsh*t. (h/t swimgirl)
http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/bush-shit/
be sure to read the palin thread… it’ll do ya good!
October 11th, 2008 at 7:53 pmkaty Says
I’ve been to that site it’s a hoot.
OT was it you looking for the bush speech where he want’s to
October 11th, 2008 at 8:04 pmincrease loans to the “low income” groups?
here it is:
http://www.hud.gov/news/speeches/presremarks.cfm
lurker – i left a message for you back there…
October 11th, 2008 at 8:13 pmthanks, but i had already checked that speech.
there’s that word again – how did it pass the first time?
katy Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. …at 8:24pm…
Oval12345678 aka James K. Sayre Says:
O/T: why is TP ignoring Rep. John Lewis’s brilliant an alysis of the hate-monger by McCain and Palin.
excellent… thank you.
in case you missed it, check out rachel maddow’s take on it, from her show the other night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ id/ 21134540/ vp/ 27125261#27125261
(i hope that works)
the first 4 minutes are most profound…
and wait till you hear the statement from the spokesgal…
oh, wth, here: “Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising” …
wow.
.
and, fook you, dick cheeeney.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:27 pmhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27125261#27125261
October 11th, 2008 at 10:29 pmCheney came out against any bailout last fall, as reported by Fortune.
His rivals, Hank Paulson and Condi Rice, were front and center today with G-7 leaders.
The V.P. last surfaced Oct. 4th as a fill in for Bush. He likely read the speech prepared for George, just adjusted for a Cheney firearms joke.
He’s laying low, working on the next war or his next career. Funny, The Carlyle Group has an opening with Lou Gertsner’s recent resignation.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:15 pmA link to the Fortune piece is below:
Cheney: No bailouts, no tax hikes…more oil
October 11th, 2008 at 11:17 pmA scoundrel to the bitter end.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:38 pm“You Are Looking for The Money, I Believe?”
. . . And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not–whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.
“Did you call me?” he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the new comer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.
And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added, “You are looking for the money, I believe?” it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
Markheim made no answer.
“I should warn you,” resumed the other, “that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences.”
“You know me?” cried the murderer.
The visitor smiled. “You have long been a favourite of mine,” he said; “and I have long observed and often sought to help you.”
“What are you?” cried Markheim; “the devil?”
“What I may be,” returned the other, “cannot affect the service I propose to render you.”
“It can,” cried Markheim; “it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!”
“I know you,” replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. “I know you to the soul.”
“Know me!” cried Markheim. “Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. . . . I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself.”
“To me?” inquired the visitant.
“To you before all,” returned the murderer. “I supposed you were intelligent. I thought–since you exist–you would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it–my acts! . . . But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity– the unwilling sinner?”
“All this is very feelingly expressed,” was the reply, “but it regards me not. . . . Shall I help you–I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the money?”
“For what price?” asked Markheim.
“I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,” returned the other.
Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. “No,” said he, “I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil.”
“I have no objection to a death-bed repentance,” observed the visitant.
“Because you disbelieve their efficacy!” Markheim cried.
“I do not say so,” returned the other; “but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service: to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me; accept my help. . . .
“And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?” asked Markheim. “Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin and sin and sin and at last sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? And is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?”
“Murder is to me no special category,” replied the other. “All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other’s lives. . . .
“I will lay my heart open to you,” answered Markheim. “This crime on which you find me is my last. . . . I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination.”
“You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?” remarked the visitor; “and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?”
“Ah,” said Markheim, “but this time I have a sure thing.”
“This time, again, you will lose,” replied the visitor quietly.
“Ah, but I keep back the half!” cried Markheim.
“That also you will lose,” said the other.
. . .
Markheim stood for a long while silent, and, indeed, it was the visitor who first broke the silence. “That being so,” he said, “shall I show you the money?”
“And grace?” cried Markheim.
“Have you not tried it?” returned the other. “Two or three years ago did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?”
“It is true,” said Markheim; “and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.”
At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.
“The maid!” he cried. “She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance; no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening–the whole night, if needful–to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!” he cried; “up, friend. Your life hangs trembling in the scales; up, and act!”
Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. “If I be condemned to evil acts,” he said, “there is still one door of freedom open: I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.”
The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance medley–a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.
He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.
“You had better go for the police,” said he; “I have killed your master.”
(Robert Louis Stevenson, Markheim (1885) http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/2058/
October 12th, 2008 at 2:49 amThat hat that Darth’s wearing probably cost more than many of us make in a week…$600-$700, estimated
And he STILL looks like a “piece of shit” in hat.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:17 amTwo years ago, Cheney gave the warning signal only the press didn’t pay attention. This is when both Dick and Lynne Cheney sold their stock and bought bonds, lots of bonds. That’s when I moved my money out of the stock market and into safer investments. For me, it wasn’t about maximizing profit. It was about keeping my money.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:01 amfollow the money..
October 13th, 2008 at 2:17 amfind all, his ..cohorts for the last 20 years..
all of his …contacts, who are linked to ..halliburton, like for instance,..shell, veco oil company, dressar industrys, are linked to halliburton, ..etc.there is a lot of paper work to follow, but if you have someone look, like the authorities, you could find tons of links to this man. also links to that right hand fellow…david addington, and karl rove.. also..just
follow the money..
I obviously do not know how to use the formatting buttons to insert links in comments here, which resulted in the comments in my prior posting being linked instead of the URL’s.
Despite that, most of the comments in my previous comment link to the article which was supposed to be cited, even though the URL is not visible as I intended.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:25 am