Tom Toles for August 16, 2009

He got tired of being a puppet for eight years.

He got tired of being blamed for things done by Rove and Cheney.

He got tired of hearing that he’d go down in history as the worst president ever.

Anthony, not much more to add.

NOW look what you have, a lying mouth piece for George Soros, Bill Ayersl, the corrupt Chicago machine, et. al.

Be proud, be very proud!

Also, beware, they just haven’t come for you.

YET!

You are the swamp critter that will be eaten last. For the time being they still need you. Watch your back.

Yep, replace cheney with Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers, or in a few years the living idiot we have for the vp or with rob emanuel or however you spell his name.

Compare that with Biden’s memoire:

“Today they took pictures of me eating a hamburger with the President.”

Seriously, that’s the most important thing I’ve heard him work on yet. Does Biden do anything?

Run out of material, Toles?

This is a pretty tired old line.

DrC, to hell with grammer, look at the memory deficit and distortion. Must be Cheney’s editing staff.

What’s a word for someone who sees faults in others, but can’t see those same faults in themselves? (And I’m not talkin’ ‘bout spellin’).

You’ll have to forgive me on that one Dr.C. My reflex is to use French spelling on French words. I assure you liberal French people will do it too.

Cheney will rampage on how his boss chose to disobey him, and like Gepeto, he was only trying to cut strings that controlled his dummy. (Ventriloquist=dummy-string controls mouth, strings to body parts=marionette, on the hand=puppet) Cheney=failed martinet.

Cheney must have flipped out the first time GWB refused to go along, wow I bet the paint peeled

You folks do realize that the VP’s constitutional responsibility is to have a pulse, right?

So, iamthelorax, you shouldn’t be surprised to see Biden doing mostly ceremonial tasks. Why are you concerned about what he’s been up to? He stated going in that his goal was to scale back the office of the Vice President.

HQ: “…maybe W did get stupid at the end…”

At the end???

HQ, did you never listen to Bush speak at the beginning?

Love how Bush referred to the financial melt down last October as a “Wall Street adjustment”…

Where is ANandy blaming this on Obama?

Really? The VP is supposed to do nothing? LMAO! I assumed he was supposed to be doing something important. Cheney was always up to something, makes sense to me that the Vice-President was chosen because he’d be great at xyz task….are you serious? I’m speechless…..he’s as useful as the Queen? Smile and way, smile and wave, wait to see if the President dies? I thought we were the only ones with high-paying useless positions.

I think that Dick Cheney was much more than a glorified tie-breaker for Senate votes, HQ.

I have not seen any signs that Biden does not intend to do his job. That he does not (so far) show any desire to be anything more is means he is simply doing what his job is. You make it seem like Cheney did a good thing when he tried to overreach his constitutional prerogatives.

Actually, harleyquinn, I’m not wrong. The job of president of the Senate only comes into play on those rare occasions when there is a tie. All the other responsibilities of the president of the Senate have long been given to the president pro tempore (who is an actual senator). (As it happens, the president pro tempore has also handed his duties off to junior senators for a long time now.)

You seemed concerned that VP Biden was somehow not doing his job because you didn’t hear about him doing much. He _is_ doing his job, harleyquinn. He’s breathing. As soon as a tie comes up in the Senate, he’ll do that, too.

Don’t presume to give me a civics lesson. As I recall, it was the VP candidate for the Republican party who couldn’t correctly answer a child’s question about what the vice president does. Perhaps I might even go so far as to guess that you voted for her?

Dick Cheney much? This much should be clear: the Vice President is an executive office. And we should be clear about what the office of President of the Senate actually is. The President of the Senate is the parliamentarian for floor debate. This person does not lead the Senate so much as facilitate the deliberations. Oh, and preside over the General Assembly for the tabulation of the Electoral College vote (again, a parliamentarian duty).

And there is no constitutional requirement that the Vice President be aware of anything regarding the President’s agenda. I thought you conservatives were supposed to be strict constructionists when it came to the Constitution.

tpenna, if the real “righties” fawning over Cheney ever actually READ the Constitution, they would protest it. Actually when a survey actually did read the Constitution to them, most “righties” DID reject major portions of it!!

To be fair, not all those on the right of center are nuts, just those who don’t realize Cheney repeatedly violated the document, and yanked his boss’s strings.

I’m not a Rep, not a socialist, but the damage done to the Rep party by Bush and Cheney will take years to overcome. His fault too – they had a chance to do it right a totally dropped the ball – he’s a dope.

striper - he’d have to sink a lot more to get below Dubya Bush, who I think currently outranks Warren Harding – who at least knew he wasn’t cut out for the job.

You democrats better think twice about your “slash and burn” politics. I don’t recall too many people being upset with Bush for six out of those eight years. You Dems are doing the Union a disservice and will deserve the loss of respect you are currently inculcating in the electorate.

Bravo, motivemagus. You hit the nail on the head.

Bush lied to the American people to get us into two wars that destroyed our economy and strained our military – and Afghanistan was justifiable only if you were going after Osama bin Laden, which Bush abandoned (remember how “dead or alive” suddenly became “he’s irrelevant?”) to go into Iraq. He alienated all of our normal allies save the UK and Australia, and actually cost Tony Blair his popularity ultimately there as well. He introduced the Patriot Act, which is an amazing invasion into American lives, wiretapped Americans illegally and then insisted Congress make it legal retroactively; he protected the Saudis in this country after 9/11 – the ONLY planes to take off on 9/12 had Saudi citizens, including members of the bin Laden family. And you think Obama bowed down before middle Eastern princes? (I’m ignoring the fact that Bush’s father put American soldiers on the line for a domineering kingdom.) He also forced religion into public life, undermined science systematically in favor of oil companies and religious groups, and created the biggest (and arguably the least efficient) bureaucracy in history with Homeland Security, introducing invasive and ineffective security measures in airports while ignoring more effective methods (like X-ray machines that actually detect plastique!). NFP, LOTS of us complained about Bush – you just demonized us as “unpatriotic.” But we believe in the Constitution, too, which Bush has done his best to undermine. Deal with it.

Puppy: “I don’t recall too many people being upset with Bush for six out of those eight years.”

Now that’s a truly amazing comment.

Hard to tell if it’s a lie, a typo, an indication that you slept through six years, or the same type of self-delusion you use for your religious beliefs, or just a contribution to the frantic rewriting of history like Cheney is doing.

Bush showed his true being as “governor of texas” when he ignored the Pope and every religious leader in the world, and giggled as he ordered Karla Fay Tucker, born again, and doing great good, executed. He went downhill from there. He didn’t use acorn to steal an election, he used his brother and the much less than supreme court. He LOST THE POPULAR VOTE- TAKE A HINT!

don’t look now but stripper is back with his favorite words

“For instance abortion, gay rights, higher taxes, gun control, bestiality, child molesters, NEA, ACLU, NGLTF, liberal judges appointed, PETA, NAMBLA, green peace, tree huggers, fur huggers, stem cell research, abortion over seas by tax dollars, etc.”

motivemagus You are right, but Obama is making a good faith effort to eclipse Bush – sure, it’ll be tough, but if he works real hard at it, and he’s got a pretty good start, he might just get there (and that’s saying something!).

hey thanks bull! i missed y’all. through a seismic trio of blunders on verizon’s part (ooooooo don’t get me started) i’ve been with screwed up lan line and no internet for about a month, spending my cell minutes trying to rectify. so now i’m calm until the bill comes. then we go ‘round some more.

striper - to save time, I’ll go through paragraph by paragraph:

The Democrats gave in, true, but Bush had plans to enter Iraq long before 9/11. When the CIA insisted on giving facts to the White House, Cheney went around them and got his own sources to justify going into Iraq – like convicted fraudster Chalabi. They knew there was no excuse. I don’t know what you’ve seen, but Europeans loved Clinton. Still do. I spend a lot of time there. The excuse put forward for the Patriot Act does NOT justify destroying Constitutional rights to do it. You know what Ben Franklin said about that. And your latter part is simply unwarranted (and demonstrably false) assertion. Yes, so? No, that’s not correct. I want effective security at airports. Taking off our shoes is useless (they can’t detect plastique at better than chance levels), and the whole “liquid explosive” thing that forced everyone to carry around 3 ounces of anything was pure fiction. There’s no such explosive you could fabricate! So why do this? Just to keep us scared and submissive? And why did we allow FedEx trucks to sail through and load planes with no screening at all? No, you’re mixing things again. The reason to move to electric cars is (1) because there are more sources of electricity than oil, (2) we may well have passed peak oil, meaning we’re running out and it’s only going to get more expensive, and (3) reduced climate impact through non-fossil-fueled sources of power. It’s not primarily because of the cost, though that is a contributing factor.

Motive, I’m sure the majority of “progressives” here were unhappy with Bush; But, I like to think I live in the real world…

“Europe may love Clinton but almost every other country hates him as well as all other Americans.”

So the countries that like Americans like Clinton and the countries that hate Americans hate Clinton? That isn’t at all surprising, but I as well have to take issue with the “almost every other country” part of your comment.

On the other hand, those countries which like America but were joyfully counting the minutes until Bush left office are as numerous as the stars in the sky… The only notable exception that comes to mind is our “good friend” and “partner in freedom” Saudi Arabia. You know them, the place where most of the 9/11 guys came from…

You’ll be a true Obamican if, in 2012, you vote against him in your state’s primary but, come the general election, hold your nose and vote for him anyway because he’s still better than anything the Republicans have to offer…

There is an earmark for removing that odor oldie: http://www.gocomics.com/stateoftheunion/2009/08/19/

tjanus, you’ve had so much practice with that senseless remark, I’m surprised you still can’t spell the words in it properly.