The following is not about Albany or New York. But it is about all of us. It is about what America is. It is about who we are as a people. It is too important not to pre-empt all other discussion and be spread far and wide.
MINDEN - A hunter faces felony charges for shooting a friend when he opened fire on a turkey in an isolated section of this Montgomery County town earlier this month, authorities said.
Dale R. Fisher of Fort Plain was arrested by the Montgomery County sheriff's department on Monday following an investigation into the May 3 shooting that left Thomas Fahy, 49, hospitalized.
At about 7 a.m. that day, Fisher shot at the turkey, killing the bird but also hit Fahy who was waiting in a nearby hedgerow, Sheriff Michael Amato said.
"That's part of the rules: know your target and know what's behind your target," Amato said.
The New York State Republican Party is trouble, at its "lowest ebb in 70 years", said one of them to the Sun yesterday.
As Vice President Cheney arrives in the city today to address the New York Republican State Committee at its annual dinner, he will find a party in worse shape than one of his hunting buddies. The state's Republican Party, once a national powerhouse that yielded presidential nominees such as Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, is struggling through a seemingly continuous stretch of setbacks, embarrassments, and defeats, leaving Republican elected officials an endangered species throughout the state and party stalwarts divided over how to spur a recovery.
You could say that. They've lost two members of their congressional delegation to retirement and a third to a brilliantly spectacular flameout. They just lost a state Senate seat they'd held since the 19th century. They can't recruit for crap, either at the federal level or closer to home (Um, Barbara Donno? Frank Powers?) They've got no bench and the old farts in the state Senate ain't getting any younger. (Senator Trunzo, I'm looking at you...)
Into this increasingly dismal situation strolls Mr. Sunshine himself, President Dick Cheney who "headlined" the state GOP's big wing ding dinner in Manhattan last night. These weary troops needed some morale boostin' and Darth Cheney was just the man to give it to them.
At a Midtown hotel ballroom on Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney declared that the United States was "succeeding brilliantly" in Iraq and assailed Democrats on taxes, gas prices, and national security.
As the keynote speaker at the annual dinner of the New York State Republican Party at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, Mr. Cheney predicted victory in November for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona. He also criticized Democrats in Congress for refusing to extend President Bush's tax cuts.
"Succeeding brilliantly?" Does he even believe this garbage anymore? Better yet, do the geezers in the ballroom believe this nonsense anymore?
Cheney wasn't the only one spewing false optimism in the hall last night either. Rep. Pete "Baghdad is just like Manhattan" King was there to predict that his party would pick up seats in the New York state Senate this fall, even though he told the Sun a rather different story yesterday:
"Right now we're in tough shape," a Republican congressman who represents Long Island, Peter King, said yesterday in an interview. "During the last decade we didn't build up a farm system and we didn't strengthen organizations and try to keep them alive. I think we just stagnated along the way."
All this happened while across town the Staten Island GOP, at least the ones who don't get invites to the big ol' Cheneyfest in Manhattan, finally found someone willing to run, a "dark horse" candidate (uh-huh), for the seat being vacated by the man with two families.
And if this wasn't weird enough, as if all these old men staring into the abyss while telling each other lies and and cheering on a certified war criminal as he told lies to them, as if this scene of greasy napkins, cufflinks and whistling past the graveyard of impending doom wasn't weird enough, or sufficiently perverse, the priest spoke and boasted of giving the "most partisan invocation ever" to great applause. Then he proceeded to enlist God's help in smiting Barack Obama. Or something.
Of course the chronology is all backward, but this is the order in which the relevant component's of the story of last night's surreal event came to me and, as they piled up, the scene just seemed creepier and creepier.
Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), a last-minute addition to the program -- rearranged around Cheney's changed schedule -- declared Republicans "are going to increase our lead" in the state Senate and warned that Barack Obama "cannot be trusted" with the highest elected position because "his vision is wrong" on negotiating with foes.
New York Republican State Committee Chairman Joseph N. Mondello today announced that State Committee will hold its annual State Dinner on Thursday, May 29th in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York City, highlighted by Special Guests Vice President Dick Cheney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and remarks by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Republican Leader James Tedisco.
We have seen one upstate Republican state senator hold a fundraiser in Manhattan and the NYS Senate Republicans held their own fundraiser in Manhattan also. This from the party that, on a state level, always labels the Democratic Party as the party that caters to the downstate and New York City interests.
Normally, I could care less where candidates or parties hold fundraisers. But when the New York Republicans make it a point to attack "downstate Democrats" at any given opportunity and then you (as Republicans) go to New York City for extravagant fundraisers and high-class dinners.
So when the Republicans play the downstate card in this year's elections, let's remind them that they are being hypocrites. After all, their own party will be holding their annual dinner in New York City.
Is it downstate Democrats or downstate Republicans? I'm confused...
Most Americans are eager to turn the page on the Bush years. Yet even as we elect a new president we're still coming to terms with an era that has both tarnished America's reputation and diminished its influence.
Fred Kaplan chronicles the folly of the Bush years in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (John Wiley & Sons).
Kaplan writes that,
"Nearly all of America's blunders in war and peace these past few years stem from a single grand misconception: that the world changed after 9/11, when in fact it didn't.
Certainly, things about the world changed, not least Americans' sudden awareness that they were vulnerable. But the way the world works - the nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations - remained essentially the same."
Vice President Dick Cheney will undergo a heart procedure Monday afternoon after doctors discovered an irregular heartbeat, his office announced.
Cheney was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, when he visited his doctor Monday morning complaining of a lingering cough after a cold. It was then that the arrhythmia was diagnosed, Henry said.
Doctors described the procedure - intended to shock the heart back into normal rhythm - as routine, and said they expect the vice president to return to his residence Monday night.
I know what you are thinking. Cheney has a heart? And yes, this does indeed mean that George W. Bush will indeed be acting as the President for the next few hours. God help us all...
Vice President Dick Cheney is coming to Dutchess County again to go hunting, according to two sources familiar with his plans. Cheney will arrive Sunday night and head to a hunting club in Dutchess Monday morning.
Cheney is expected to arrive Sunday night at Stewart airport and travel to a hotel in Poughkeepsie, sources said.
On Monday morning, he is expected to leave Poughkeepsie and head to the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in LaGrangeville.
And if I were caged game bird in Dutchess County, I'd be getting my affairs in order...
Here's a rather amazing piece of video. It shows Dick Cheney making a hell of a lot of sense about a war in Iraq. In the video he cogently and thoughtfully describes pretty much every adverse consequence of invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, all of which we have so tragically seen come to pass in the last four and a half years. Unfortunately, the video was shot in 1994.
Vice President Dick Cheney will undergo minor surgery Saturday morning to replace the battery that powers a device implanted in his chest six years ago to monitor his heart and deliver a shock if it ever goes out of rhythm.
So, does this mean that George Bush gets to be President for a day?
Vice President Dick Cheney’s popularity has hit an all-time low, with recent polling by The New York Times and CBS News suggesting that he has replaced Dan Quayle as the most unpopular vice president in recent history.
...
The polling shows that he is even having trouble among his conservative base. Just 31 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of conservatives say they have a favorable opinion of Mr. Cheney. And 47 percent of conservatives questioned say they approve of the job he is doing, while 40 percent disapprove.
Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday.
The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney.
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But Democratic leaders appear unlikely to pursue such a course.
Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.
I wish I could tell you that this was some sort of late April Fool's joke, some sort of attempt at dark humor. I can't. The barking mad wingnuts at the New York Sun have come up with one of the most insane pieces of obscenely unfunny asshattery of all time. The editorial board at the Sun think they know who should lead the nation after 8 long years of King George II. They know just the man to raise up the nation after all these years of war, corruption, lawlessness and deceit.
Who might that be, you ask? One Dick Freakin' Cheney. No, really.
For all the talk about potential candidates who haven't entered the 2008 presidential race - from Mayor Bloomberg to Vice President Gore to Senator Thompson and Speaker Gingrich - the one that who would bring the most to the race is Vice President Cheney. In previous recent campaigns, when there was an outgoing president who had won a second term, there has been a vice president around on the campaign trail to defend the record of the administration. George H.W. Bush promised to be kinder and gentler than Reagan, but he was still essentially defending the Reagan record. Vice President Gore didn't campaign much with President Clinton in 2000, but he was running in part on the record of the Clinton-Gore administration.
This year, the leading Republican candidates include Senator McCain, who was Mr. Bush's rival in a bitter 2000 primary contest and who voted against some of Mr. Bush's tax cuts, and Mayor Giuliani, who is going around proclaiming, in what seems a rebuke of George W. Bush, "it's time now that we have a president that knows how to get things done." Were Mr. Cheney in the race, it's hard to imagine that the president's approval ratings would not be five or 10 points higher. The reason is that the administration would have a defender on the campaign trail as part of the public debate.
"Five or 10 points higher"? Well, 10 points might get him to the 40s...
