Dick Cheney

Appearing as a panel member on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show on Sunday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius predicted that President Obama would be more aggressive in taking on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a second term, as he cited the  belief by Obama's people that the President "has had success" in Middle East policy so far. (Video below)

Ignatius seemed to go along with the idea that President Obama has a "strong foreign policy record" as he ended up asking rhetorically:

This is what happens when left wingers ignore another left winger with a microphone -- pathology.

Mike Malloy, a man so beyond the pale that he was fired by comparatively sane moonbats at the now-defunct Air America Radio, has again shown he's probably beyond redemption. (audio clip after page break)

NewsBusters readers should be quite familiar with Ron Christie, the Republican strategist who loves to tangle with the liberal commentators on MSNBC.

Following his terrific encounter with Chris Matthews last week, NewsBusters spoke by phone with Christie about his experiences on the nation's most left-leaning cable news outlet as well as what it's like to be a black conservative in the year 2011 (video follows with transcript):

Actor Alec Baldwin for the second time in as many months went nuts on Twitter.

His targets Monday were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mark Levin, readers of the website Free Republic, and what he referred to as "right wing trash":

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman this weekend said he'd give President Obama high marks for fulfilling Bush's foreign policy.

This surprising observation on PBS's McLaughlin Group came somewhat coincident with Chris Matthews saying George W. Bush was actually better at conveying his message than the current White House resident (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Like many Americans, actor Alec Baldwin took to his Twitter account Wednesday evening to express his feelings about the execution of Georgia cop killer Troy Davis.

Rather strangely, the objects of his derision included former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and conservative author Michelle Malkin:

CNN's John King on Tuesday asked former Vice President Dick Cheney if one of the motivating factors behind writing his recent book was out of a fear that his "days could be numbered."

As only Cheney can, he dryly replied, "I was very much aware that my days are numbered. So are yours" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Salon columnist Joe Conason appeared on Monday's Hardball to excoriate former Vice President Dick Cheney: "...You would almost think that Cheney was actually an agent of the nation's enemies..." Host Chris Matthews did not disagree or contest this charge.

Conason and Matthews were discussing the war in Iraq and Cheney's continual defense of it. Playing off the Salon.com's columnist's comments, Matthews compared the ex-VP: "That's what they said, by the way, of Joe McCarthy. You couldn't be a better friend to the communist, in effect, than Joe McCarthy."

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace displayed to former Vice President Dick Cheney how NBC’s Today show on Tuesday had ended Matt Lauer’s interview with him by pulling back to highlight an Amnesty International protest sign (“TORTURE IS A CRIME: INVESTIGATE CHENEY”) in the crowd on the street.

Wallace wondered: “What do you make of that? I mean, I somehow doubt that if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were speaking, they would have taken the shot and then suddenly a person with a sign would have been putting their picture up. I mean, simply, do you think there is a liberal bias in the mainstream media?”

Given the way most media members treated former Vice President Dick Cheney during his book tour last week, CNN's Howard Kurtz asked an absolutely perfect question on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."

"Would liberal pundits be satisfied with anything other than Cheney confessing to war crimes?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Trial lawyer and liberal radio host Mike Papantonio really knows how to draw attention to himself. The Radio Equalizer blog reports he was subbing on Ed Schultz's radio show on Monday and not only claimed like Rep. Andre Carson that conservatives favored "lynching black people for real," but suggested Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibal/serial killer from "The Silence of the Lambs," was more respectable than Dick Cheney:

You know, it was easier to at least respect a character, a fictional character, like Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs" because Hannibal Lecter at least readily admitted that he was a dangerous mutation and he was somebody capable of lying and manipulating and even killing to get what he wanted.

Tina Brown seems to be very conflicted about her opinion of Dick Cheney.

After telling the "Morning Joe" panel the former Vice President is a "wrecking ball" who "seems to be totally in denial still about Iraq," the Daily Beast-Newsweek editor said moments later, "He's been validated by Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Monday's NBC Today featured another preview of the upcoming Dateline interview with Dick Cheney about his new memoir, with correspondent Jamie Gangel declaring the former Vice President to be "A conservative hero to his fans, Darth Vader to his critics." [Audio available here]

On Thursday, Gangel also appeared on the NBC morning show to promote the interview, with co-host Ann Curry proclaiming Cheney to be "one of the most controversial figures of our time."

On Monday, fellow co-host Matt Lauer kept up that theme as he announced: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks out about his controversial new memoir....looks back on his controversial time in the White House. In an exclusive interview he pulls no punches, makes no apologies. No one's spared, from Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice."

Newsweek journalist Dan Stone appeared on MSNBC's News Live, Monday, to offer a bizarre complaint about Dick Cheney's new memoir. He lamented, "This book is very focused on rehashing. It's very based on the past, from what I can tell."

Responding to a question about whether the book could cause problems for Obama, the White House correspondent added, "Not many people are taking it to look forward." Of course, it would be hard to write a memoir on one's life and not look backward.

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The liberal media are predictably gushing over Colin Powell's supposed rebuke of Dick Cheney on Sunday's "Face the Nation."

Bucking the trend was Joe Scarborough Monday who on the MSNBC program bearing his name said Powell going on "Face the Nation" to defend himself proved Cheney right about heads exploding over his new book (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Just when you thought Rachel Maddow could not get more cloyingly annoying, she outdoes herself again.

There she was on her MSNBC show last night, talking about about how she must interview Dick Cheney about his memoirs, seeing how he'll be appearing on "Dateline NBC," "Today" and "Morning Joe" (video after page break) --

According to Hardball guest host Ron Reagan, former Vice President Dick Cheney is a "war criminal" for endorsing waterboarding. On Thursday, the son of the former President attacked, "But the fact of the matter is...[Cheney's] a war criminal. Torture is a crime and this is a guy who can't travel to Europe anymore for fear of being- ending up in the Hague."

Reagan was commenting on a new interview Cheney has given to NBC in which he reiterates support for waterboarding. The liberal anchor discussed the subject with Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. Reagan reiterated, "...Any neutral reading of, say, the U.N. Convention Against Torture makes it pretty clear that if you support waterboarding and you enact that sort of a policy, you're guilty of a war crime."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Thursday's NBC Today previewed an upcoming Dateline interview with Dick Cheney about his new memoir and labeled the former Vice President "controversial" three times in less than a minute. Co-host Ann Curry proclaimed him to be "one of the most controversial figures of our time." [Audio available here]

Turning to correspondent Jamie Gangel, who conducted the interview, Curry noted: "I understand that you asked the former Vice President, in a wide-ranging conversation, about one of the biggest controversies of his time in office and that's the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques?"

Gangel described how Cheney's book was "filled with revelations and he does not back down on those controversial programs he championed that made him such a lightning rod for criticism after 9/11."

Referencing Dick Cheney's revelation in his new memoir that he urged President Bush to bomb a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, CNN's Kyra Phillips posed this obnoxious question to her panel: "Was Cheney even more of a hawk than we gave him credit for?"

The upcoming release of Cheney's memoir, "In My Time," should re-ignite the media's decade-long war on the former Vice President, as he himself has predicted that the book will have "heads exploding" in Washington. In the book he detailed a meeting in 2007 where he was the only one the room supporting the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor. President Bush declined to take that approach, and Israel bombed the site months later.

[Video below the break.]

Dick Cheney has begun a media tour to promote his memoir, "In My Time," with excerpts of his NBC "Dateline" interview showing up on Wednesday’s "Nightly News" and Thursday’s "Today." If history is a guide, Cheney will face a liberal media that has been stunningly hostile and derisive in their coverage of the former Vice President.

Prior to his selection as George W. Bush’s running mate in the summer of 2000, the liberal networks generally treated Cheney — who served as White House chief of staff, Congressman and Secretary of Defense — as a respected Republican leader. But the media turned on Cheney as soon as he joined the Republican ticket, portraying him as an extremist who was “anti-equal rights” and “against education” — even distorting his vote on a non-binding resolution as a vote “against releasing Nelson Mandela from prison,” as if the U.S. House had such power.

[video and audio excerpts follow the page break]

Tina Brown got in hot water this week for an unflattering Newsweek cover photo of Tea Party Republican Michele Bachmann but those who've followed the current Daily Beast and Newsweek editor's career, ever since she brought her version of tabloid journalism over from England to Vanity Fair in 1984, can tell you this is just par for the course.

In fact that wasn't the first time the former editor of The New Yorker displayed her disgust for women of the right. After a run of victories by female candidates in the 2010 GOP primaries, Brown on the June 10 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, called the wins: "a blow to feminism." However when it comes to liberal women like Michelle Obama, Brown sings a decidedly different tune. Videos after the jump.

He said it, he meant it, and there's no denying it.

On Monday, in a statement carried at the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times (Page A8 of Tuesday's print edition), and elsewhere, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told U.S. troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad: "The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked. And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that."

That sound you hear is a Democratic Party meme shattering into teeny tiny pieces. The attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again, both by Panetta himself and the establishment press contingent following him, have been pathetic and ineffectual, which is what happens when one is up against succinctly stated truths.

Having friends in Washington is one of the quickest and dirtiest paths to success, but when President Barack Obama is the one helping you out by discriminately favoring your company's products over others, very few in the media seem to care.

Flashback to the early 2000s during former President George Bush's first term. The mainstream media pounced on former Vice President Dick Cheney's association with Halliburton, an oil company for which Cheney once served as CEO. The Bush administration supposedly favored Halliburton by rewarding the company with a number of multi-million dollar oil contracts in the Middle East, purportedly only using a bidding process to make the game look fairer.

Today it's a different fuel and a different president, but Obama has an almost identical story: favoring the clean-technology companies of his financial supporters through rewards of federal money. This time around, though, the media is giving his shady dealings a free pass.

Ed Schultz's apology was full, unequivocal and a breath a fresh air.

We wish Ed would have shown the same remorse when saying we should ‘rip out’ Dick Cheney’s heart, when he called Liz Cheney "shooter's little girl,” or when he said Republicans enjoyed watching people with cancer die.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday continued to obsess over Dick Cheney, deriding the former Vice President as a "torture advocate" who should waterboard Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby.

The Hardball anchor attacked Cheney for complaining that Barack Obama has ended Bush-era war on terror polices. Matthews offered this aside: "...But Cheney being Cheney- doesn't that sound like a good torture advocate name, by the way- he couldn't help but stick it to the President on this very issue."
   
He then played a clip of Cheney and, rather than address the ex-VP's statements, mocked, "Why don't we have Cheney try that waterboarding thingamajig of his on Karl Rove and Scooter to really find out who said what in that CIA leak case? I think they're fair game, to use a phrase. "

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On Tuesday's Hardball, while praising President Obama's handling of the killing of Osama bin Laden, MSNBC's Chris Matthews excoriated Dick Cheney as a "sadist."

Former Newsweek editor Howard Fineman contrasted the Bush/Cheney administration's dropping of bombs in Iraq with Obama's actions. Matthews responded by mocking, "There's a difference between being cold blooded- I think presidents have to be cold blooded- and being a sadist."

As if his point wasn't clear, the liberal anchor interrupted Fineman to add, " I was referring to Cheney, of course."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Are you old enough to remember the polio-era line: "funny as an iron lung"?  After all, what kind of person would find funny the notion of someone fighting to breathe?

Answer: Mika Brzezinski.

Today's Morning Joe played a Letterman clip of a faux-promo for an imaginary TV show called "The Dick Cheney Story."  As the title song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show plays merrily in the background, we're treated to images of Cheney wielding a gun, in a wheelchair and undergoing open-heart surgery.  The clip closes with video of Cheney fighting to get a breath of air.

Cut to Mika, doubled-over, laughing hysterically, literally to the point of tears.

View video after the jump.

For an MSMer attacking a Republican, there's nothing quite like a wild-animal metaphor.  

Witness Newsweek/Daily Beast's Tina Brown, claiming on Morning Joe today that the Obama administration is loath to speak of "regime change" in Libya.  Why?  Because that phrase "has been tainted by the big, greasy paws of Dick Cheney."

View video after the jump.

As noted by John Nolte, the network that brought you the not-so-friendly "Reagan" special last month has just announced a new miniseries on Dick Cheney, which will reportedly focus on the former vice president's "single-minded pursuit of enhanced power for the Presidency (that) was unprecedented in the nation's history." Oh boy.

Via Hot Air headlines, here's what Deadline Hollywood has reported on the upcoming series: