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MSNBC Shrugs About Liz Cheney’s Over-Exposure: “Liz Is A Great Guest”
MSNBC is shrugging off the growing criticism of the extensive airtime the network has granted Liz Cheney to mount a political defense of her father and a political offensive against the Obama administration, with a network spokesperson saying, “Liz is a great guest.”
As more critics are beginning to notice, Liz Cheney is not an ordinary GOP commentator. She is an active spokesperson on her father’s behalf at a time when questions about how to handle the Bush torture program are actively being debated by the White House and Congress. Her appearances are not comparable to those of conventional GOP guests.
Yet as Steve Benen, David Kurtz, and others have pointed out, Liz Cheney has been granted a near-constant platform on MSNBC to act as her father’s chief defender and go after Obama, often without meaningful challenge from either a co-guest or from anchors. They also note that it’s unclear what makes her newsworthy enough, in and of herself, to merit all that airtime.
Asked to respond to the above criticisms, MSNBC spokesperson Alana Russo emailed:
“We often have repeat guests on, from both sides of the aisle, when they are interesting and engaging. There are many people who appear frequently throughout the day on MSNBC, and Liz is a great guest.”
So for now, MSNBC has no interest in directly answering the criticism. The network may yet make a producer available for an interview on these questions.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s own Rachel Maddow ridiculed the overexposure Liz Cheney is getting (albeit without targeting MSNBC specifically), joking yesterday: “Liz Cheney is still on TV — making news by apparently making stuff up.”
Update: Keith Olbermann also whacked MSNBC’s over-exposure of Ms. Cheney, though he didn’t explicitly name MSNBC.
Update II: Liz Cheney has appeared on MSNBC and CNN ten times in less than a month.
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I wonder, did Rachel back up her claim? Perhaps if Maddow had Liz on as a guest it might help her ratings.
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Liz is on because she IS a great guest – there’s no denying it. As far as critical questioning, I saw Andrea Mitchell try . . . and fail.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/04/more-liz-cheney-whats-with-the-moral-relativism-obama/
I think there are a very important set of questions in here for reporters to pursue. As I mentioned in another discussion, the gears of the network booking processes determine, to a great extent, what we all see and hear. We really ought to know a lot more about how this works and perhaps even who are the key personnel involved at each of the networks. Thanks for this promising beginning, greg. I’m about to begin Boehlert’s “Lapdogs” to see how he might have covered this issue.
@sbj – Whatever.
Maddow extends invitations, on-air, to conservatives such as Dick Cheney himself, and his daughter. Often. Seeing as it takes two to tango, Ms. Cheney needs to agree to come on. And seeing as MSNBC overall is still third in news networks, I don’t think that Ms. Cheney’s omnipresence on the network is helping.
It’s obvious overreach by a network too scared to be known as the liberal news network. Fox News knows its identity and embraces it, but MSNBC always sees the need to put on loons like Scarborough, Buchanan and Ms. Cheney to discourage such charges.
A week ago I thought Liz was running for president. She’s running for something, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s her own show on MSNBC.
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This is not like having Chris Kofinis and Joe Watkins hanging around the studio for a few appearances in an afternoon. She’s in a weird sui generis category. She’s not an analyst, a classic operative, elected or formerly elected, although she did have a nepotism gig. There’s a bit of a kid gloves treatment that’s bothersome, although Andrea Mitchell did challenge LC about “mischaracterizing” something yesterday, can’t remember what.
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Something else that bothered me in that interview with Andrea Mitchell was to the effect that W was quiet and Obama is basically respectful towards W (but going after Dick) because they’re in this little Presidential club where there’s a code. And that Dick Cheney isn’t in that club and he can say–as can she by proxy–anything he wants.
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I hope Rachel keeps going after her, I hope Keith does as well–Tweety won’t, he’s too DC–and I hope they exile her to Fox where she belongs.
Greg
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Olbermann said something about it too. And its not just she is on air so much, its also because she is lying and none of the anchors MSNBC pairs her up with is willing to challenge her too strongly. Ask them why she won’t go on Maddow or be on with David Shuster. Or appear alongside Lawrence O’Donnell. The only guests MSNBC has on frequently are republican strategists or paid contributors. She fits neither category.
Liz Cheney is a great guest if your purpose is to generate publicity, attention, ratings and the advertising dollars that follow. If your purpose is to illuminate and inform…well that’s another matter altogether.
sg–exactly. she lies. she never concedes her point. that’s probably why sbj thinks she’s a good guest, she hangs tough. however, I don’t know why msnbc thinks she’s a good guest. she doesn’t add any real insight, she simply lies, her voice is grating, her clothes are blinding, and she lies like a dog, and they’re all afraid of her. kryptonite.
SGW: Liz Cheney went up against Lawrence O’Donnell in her early days on MSNBC and O’Donnell used the same tactic he uses against Pitchfork Pat. He is impatient when **** is overflowing. But I haven’t seen him on Morning Blow or MSNBC recently. Cheney means numbers; and bookers fill time with “characters”. Pat, Liz and others who just have a passing acquaintance with TRUTH fit the bill. This pair has no shame.
Fact is Madow did refute Liz Cheney with her and her fathers own video, which was the point of her criticism. Cheney went on MSNBC repeatedly made claims that *video* refutes. It’s not the airtime it’s the outright lies which go unchallenged.
MSNBC: We love guests that are on constantly to undermine the current administration unchallenged. We are hoping our guests don’t trust the current governments decisions on national security so we have a close election in 2012. I mean, if it’s going to be a blowout, nobody will watch the news and our revenue will tank. We have to even out the playing field!
I think there may be an overarching question here that is not being asked. What credentials does Liz Cheney have to appear as a guest on any political show? Has she ever been an elected official? No. Is she a journalist who has devoted her life to covering politics? No. She had a two-year nepotistic appointment brokered by her daddy in the State Department to foster middle east relations (gosh, that went well for the Bush administration, she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice). She does not offer any expertise. She is soley there to represent the interests of her father. In my mind, that is not enough for her to be given an unchecked voice in this debate. It’s not enough to give her a national voice at all. She hasn’t earned it.
By great you mean someone who will say something so outrageous that it will be linked to from all over the place.
Carey is right. Lez Cheney has NO expertese in anything other than being an unwed lesbian mother. She should be talking about that and what it’s like to be a wealthy lesbian with a ******* boy child. Where are the evangelical idiots regarding her on this issue? And they call themselves Christians. hahahaha Lez needs to STFU we don’t care what she has to say about anything and certainly nothing about sending her criminal father to jail where he belongs.
@Kathleen: I like Liz because she is one of the few effective conservative spokespersons I have seen lately. She is calm and does not engage in the normal, tiresome theatrics we see from the likes of O’Donnell, Olbermann, Shuster (talk about telling lies!), Buchanan, and all the rest. Cheney has a very impressive resume and speaks with authority on a variety of topics.
She worked for the State Department for five years and the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. She practiced as an international law attorney and was a consultant at the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. She served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State for Assistance to the former Soviet Union, and as a USAID officer in U.S. embassies in Budapest and Warsaw. In 2002, Cheney was appointed to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. In February 2005 she was appointed the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State For Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives. Her position made her the second-ranking U.S. diplomat for the Middle East. She also headed the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG), established in March 2006, a unit within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Cheney
Liz Cheney is a lesbian?? Wow – some informed readership! Glad that you are an ex-Republican.
Who cares what Liz Cheney or her father think about anything? As far as I’m concerned, they can both disappear and never be heard from again.
Here’s one thought I’ve been considering, Greg. She’s got 5 kids. SP has 5 kids. But Liz is “resisting” running for something. While SP, nut case as she is, would run for any high office. I can’t help but wonder if Liz cheney is the GOP’s “uber-mom” alternative to SP. That’s in addition, of course, to her running around trying to put out fires that could harm the cheney family’s crime spree continuing.
Wow, with a background like that one would think that now that the Republicans are out of power the private sector would be banging down her door. But apparently not, as she has plenty of time to go on these shows. Shows you how toxic the Cheney brand is in the real world these days.
@sbj
“I like Liz because she is one of the few effective conservative spokespersons I have seen lately.”
A boxer is effective when his opponent never throws a punch in retaliation. A pitcher is effective when a batter has no intentions on swinging at a solitary pitch. Liz Cheney is only “effective” because the people at MSNBC fail to challenge her lies, they give her carblanch to tell mistruths with reckless abandon.
“She is calm and does not engage in the normal, tiresome theatrics we see from the likes of O’Donnell, Olbermann, Shuster (talk about telling lies!)”
Putting something in parenthesis won’t stop your dumb *** from getting called out. Please, by all means, provide us with some lies told by Olbermann or Shuster. We can cite Liz Cheney lies all day. This should be good.
So this ‘whining’ – Oh no, our favorite station keeps interviewing someone from the right… ‘oh woe is me’
I love it – when you don’t agree with a point of view it’s “lies”
Yes – that’s it – lies and conspiracies – and they’re everywhere..
ha ha ha.
have fun fruits
@Jake: There are entire websites devoted to exposing the lies of Olbermann but do you believe them? Shuster and Newsbusters reveals 6 pages of questionable items — you are gonna defend the man who was suspended by his own network for claiming the Clinton campaign was pimping out Chelsea? I’ll stay out of the mud and avoid an entirely pointless exercise, thank you. Liz is doing a great job for conservatives. Please point out her lies but there’s no point in my doing the same about Shuster and Olbermann. Many others have already done so, and continue to do so, but you wouldn’t believe them anyway, would you?
Liz is really scary. You can tell ALL of her talking points come from her dad…but, I think she went too FAR yesterday when she tried to tangle with Andrea Mitchell…she really looked uncomfortable, after trying to float the lie of the century!!!
Phil Bill
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You have aright to your own opinions, you don’t have a right to your own facts.
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Too many videos around to show that she and her father are flat out lying. Here is one. Tell me how you can spin this into any way shape or form that she isn’t lying.
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http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001821/
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And I don’t want to hear any bullsh*t about somebody else lying or trying to change the subject. Explain how Liz Cheney and her daddy aren’t lying based on that video.
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Or slink back to your hole.
the only reason she’s on t.v. is to have dick cheney’s ridiculous arguments coming out of a female’s mouth. this is aimed at getting women to vote republican. and it’s a really shallow strategy, just like picking palin was.
Well I have watched MSNBC 10 hours a day for the past three years since it runs in my office, computer room, bathroom, kitchen and bedroom. Sheesh… that’s so Dick Cheney / Fox.
Anyway, I have had it with Liz on MSNBC, so much so that yesterday when she appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s show in the AM (June 4, 2009) I started to change the channel, but a phone call came in so I just ignored the two.
I remember when LC first started to show up on the air waves. I thought “huh?” Then she kept popping up more and more on MSNBC to the point it was noticeable. I thought MSNBC had a surprise up its sleeve, maybe to destroy Liz on the air.
I started to wonder “Why is she appearing as some sort of expert or provider of an opinion that matters, she isn’t and doesn’t.”
And I found it comical how MSNBC hosts started to puff up her title. I could swear I saw at one time she and MSNBC agreed to call her a “Republican Strategist” (which we all know is code for “I am unemployed and struggling.”) And one time I heard a host say to her that she had an important position “over at State.” Huh? She had a small cubicle at State and was a nobody, except daddy was the VP. We know how that all works.
Well, no need to repeat everything that’s been said. Most of the comments in here have been spot on.
If MSNBC thinks it’s a good move to provide Dick Cheney another platform to perform his Chatty Cathy routine (via Liz) that’s their choice.
But I find myself doing more and more of this in the past few months, especially when they put on Pat to spew his hate of all things Obama, I change the channel to CNN.
Sidenote: Is MSNBC in third place on the news? I believe that. Every day I find MSNBC making mistakes on production. Makes me wonder who is running things, interns?
For example, someone like Shuster or Matthews will say “Let’s see that video” and 15 seconds later the host will come back and say “Sorry about that, we will get to that video later” (And they never do).
If MSNBC can’t get production right, guess it’s silly to think they will get content and format right too.
Bonus Sidenote: Andrea Mitchell sucks on TV. They need to take her off the air. She is stilted, flubs her lines and her interviews are never compelling, must see TV moments.
With production and content problems no wonder MSNBC is tanking.
My first post on here. Is auto-BBC or HTML turned off?
No paragraphs showed up. Sorry for the ugly post.
I see how one poster handles it. With a dot to separate lines.
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Well I have watched MSNBC 10 hours a day for the past three years since it runs in my office, computer room, bathroom, kitchen and bedroom. Sheesh… that’s so Dick Cheney / Fox.
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Anyway, I have had it with Liz on MSNBC, so much so that yesterday when she appeared on Andrea Mitchell’s show in the AM (June 4, 2009) I started to change the channel, but a phone call came in so I just ignored the two.
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I remember when LC first started to show up on the air waves. I thought “huh?” Then she kept popping up more and more on MSNBC to the point it was noticeable. I thought MSNBC had a surprise up its sleeve, maybe to destroy Liz on the air.
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I started to wonder “Why is she appearing as some sort of expert or provider of an opinion that matters, she isn’t and doesn’t.”
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And I found it comical how MSNBC hosts started to puff up her title. I could swear I saw at one time she and MSNBC agreed to call her a “Republican Strategist” (which we all know is code for “I am unemployed and struggling.”) And one time I heard a host say to her that she had an important position “over at State.” Huh? She had a small cubicle at State and was a nobody, except daddy was the VP. We know how that all works.
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Well, no need to repeat everything that’s been said. Most of the comments in here have been spot on.
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If MSNBC thinks it’s a good move to provide Dick Cheney another platform to perform his Chatty Cathy routine (via Liz) that’s their choice.
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But I find myself doing more and more of this in the past few months, especially when they put on Pat to spew his hate of all things Obama, I change the channel to CNN.
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Sidenote: Is MSNBC in third place on the news? I believe that. Every day I find MSNBC making mistakes on production. Makes me wonder who is running things, interns?
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For example, someone like Shuster or Matthews will say “Let’s see that video” and 15 seconds later the host will come back and say “Sorry about that, we will get to that video later” (And they never do).
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If MSNBC can’t get production right, guess it’s silly to think they will get content and format right too.
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Bonus Sidenote: Andrea Mitchell sucks on TV. They need to take her off the air. She is stilted, flubs her lines and her interviews are never compelling, must see TV moments.
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With production and content problems no wonder MSNBC is tanking.
Well let’s talk about the primary lie Liz dragged out on TV yesterday: that Bush & Cheney never claimed they tried to make links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. There are HOURS of video footage refuting that as a blatant lie. When confronted with her lies, she just changes the subject, or claims that she never said what she said 10 minutes ago. Apple didn’t fall too far from the tree with that one.
@sbj
“There are entire websites devoted to exposing the lies of Olbermann but do you believe them? Shuster and Newsbusters reveals 6 pages of questionable items”
..and those cites are so credible that you fail to cite one solitary “lie” from them? That’s great..
“you are gonna defend the man who was suspended by his own network for claiming the Clinton campaign was pimping out Chelsea”
That was an off hand remark, not a lie – only a fan of the parasitic Liz Cheney wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“Liz is doing a great job for conservatives.”
Liz is lying coward just like her own man. She doesn’t have the courage to say that Obama is siding with terrorists herself, she cowardly prefaces the statement with “..some people say..”. her old man, well, 5 deferments.
Please point out her lies but there’s no point in my doing the same about Shuster and Olbermann.”
You won’t do so with Olbermann and Shuster because you can’t, let me point that cowardice out up front. That said, Liz Cheney’s lies:
The library tower plot being thwarted because of waterboardin.(Problem with that, said twarted plot happened a year before Sheik Muhammad was captured.)
Another Lie: Obama has weakened america by stopping waterboarding.(Problem with that, the Bush administration stopped waterboardibg in 05′. So did Bush weaken america then?)
Those are two off the top of my head.
@sgwhite: The heavily edited dkos tape of comedian jon stewart proves that Dick Cheney lied when he said that he never claimed “it had pretty much been proven.” I don’t see Liz’s lie.
Dick then claims, in what I believe was another undated snip, that the Atta Iraqi intelligence meeting has not been proven to have not taken place (again, a difficult proposition). To my knowledge that is true to this day – the alleged meeting can not be proven to have not taken place (but there is plenty of opinion and some evidence that it did not). I think that Cheney still feels that the meeting took place. He is probably wrong.
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1) Liz says that her father did not claim a tie between 9/11 and Saddam. That’s true – he did not.
2) Liz says that her father claimed there was a tie between al qaeda and Iraq. That is true – that is what he has claimed. (The 9/11 report makes the same claim – no operational ties, to be sure, but ‘ties’ all the same.)
3) Liz says that Dick made the al qaeda Iraq claim based on a CIA report of a meeting between Atta and Iraqi intelligence. That is true – he did make his claim based on that report.
4) The 9/11 commission did not BELIEVE that such a meeting took place. They did not PROVE that such a meeting had not taken place (a difficult proposition) – they simply “believed” that one had not.
5) Liz claims that once the CIA report had been widely discredited that her father had stoped making a claim that there was a 9/11 to Iraq connection. I believe this is what you are referring to as her lie?
7) The tape then shows an undated CNBC report with Cheney talking about the Atta Iraqi intelligence meeting. I cannot tell if this snip was made before or after the CIA report was “widely discredited.”
9) Did Dick lie? Yes, but, judging this tape, only when he said he did NOT say “it had pretty much been proven.”
10) Did Liz lie? Where?
sbj–thanks for all of Liz Cheney’s credentials. I am aware that she is smart, educated and has spent the majority of her career on the government payroll. That said, she is on tv chiefly as her father’s defender, with not a lot of insight into anything beyond furthering the Cheney worldview.
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My question is why? Effective, schmective. Somebody at MSNBC has her back and wants to help further her career. This does not feel organic: gee, she’s good, more please. It feels forced, it’s not subtle, and the deference with which she is treated is disheartening. The biggest thing she has going for her is that, guilty here, we end up talking about her a lot.
@Jake–5 deferments for Dick, with deferment #1 because Lynn was pregnant with Liz.
@sbj
Since #1 on your piss poor list is wrong, it makes the rest of your sorry apologizing irrelevant.
1: Lie – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiNtpIpD6k
By catering to the right, all MSNBC is doing is losing members of its core audience. FOX viewers will never tune in – they have a place. Everytime I see Liz Cheny or her ilk on MSNBC or CNN to spew her views without someone to call her out on her lies, etc., I simply turn it off. What the so called mainstream media fails to continue to realize is that this is why they are losing people like me, who used to be “news junkies”. For those of us with cable, there’s always the BBC.
sbj: /Rachel would love to have Liz on her show so she can straighten her out. The problem is non of the Rethugs would want to appear on her show including Liz because they don’t want to hear the truth. Rachel has mentioned in her show several times that she has a hard time getting Rethug guests to appear on her show.
“1) Liz says that her father did not claim a tie between 9/11 and Saddam. That’s true – he did not.
2) Liz says that her father claimed there was a tie between al qaeda and Iraq. That is true – that is what he has claimed.”
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1) looking back, i’m sure the parents of all the u.s. soldiers killed in iraq would be absolutely thrilled with that distinction.
2) james inhofe told me to tell to you to stop calling him at home. he’s just not that into you.
I think I’m officially done with MSNBC. I can’t stand CNN, but at least I can hear Cafferty once in awhile, and ignore Campbell Brown, Candy Crowley, Ed Helms, etc.
I’ve been done with Olbermann for awhile. I got sick of his ranting against Fox News and O’Reilly for their asinine ramblings, but his never even remotely calling out some of idiots who come on MSNBC.
Also, how can it possibly be okay, to call out Repub, Rush, Fox, etc for their racists ramblings(which they are), and not in one breathe mention Pat Buchanan. In fact, I remember a segment Keith O had with Lawrence O’Donnell where Keith O never once mentioned Pat Buckkkanan, Lawrence called out Pat directly…Keith did not!
Ha-ha-ha…whatever happened to diversity? You haters can’t stand a woman who can stand up to morons like Oby, Madcow, Tingley Matthews, etc.
sbj
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President Bush had to walk back Cheney’s comments after he tried to give the impression that Iraq was involved in 9-11, something your little Liz said he never did.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0918-03.htm
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But keep up the spin, I hear the RNC is looking for help. lol
@Jake: Your clip has Dick Cheney saying that there was a report that Atta, the lead 9/11 attacker, met with Iraqi officials before the attack. That is NOT a claim that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack.
@sbj
..you are being intellectually dishonest. Shocker.
maybe we can just get all political offspring on-air to defend their respective parents, all the while pretending they are impartial and objective about who/what’s being discussed.
Sitcoms or late night talk shows have the same guest appear often because they are “great guests”, but wouldn’t a respectable news channel value diverse opinions rather than guest appeal???
Between Liz Cheney getting massive air time and Pat Buchanan continuing to have a job there, I’m pretty much done with MSNBC myself, Olbermann (and Maddow’s outstanding coverage of the Tiller murder) notwithstanding.
What kind of dog whistle goes out where people who never post here all of a sudden show up to defend the likes of Liz?
@sgwhite: Your link proves my point – which I guess you don’t understand. Sure some, including Bush, might think that Cheney tried to give an impression that Iraq was involved, but he never EXPLICITLY linked the 9/11 attack to Iraq. I’m sure that Dick doesn’t feel he tried to give an impression of something other, and I’m sure that Liz doesn’t feel he tried to give another impression. The fact, though, is that (so far as I know) Dick never explicitly linked Iraq to the 9/11 attacks. That is Liz’s defense – that after the CIA report was discredited her father was careful to not explicitly link Iraq to the 9/11 atacks.
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“Democrats have accused the administration of creating the “false impression” at the heart of a widespread belief held by Americans that Saddam had a personal role in the attacks.”
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That’s ‘impression’ in quotes. Get it? How can you prove that this was Dick Cheney’s intent?
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“Cheney, interviewed on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” left open the possibility of a Saddam link to the attacks.”
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He ‘left open’ – he did not explicitly say there was a link. Get it?
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The real tragedy is that most people, including about 90%, I’d wager, of the commentors here, don’t believe there was an al qaeda/Iraq link.
If I may paraphrase Shaquille O’Neal: sbj, tell me how my *** tastes.
Old man butt – yeech!
Four words for Cheney apologists: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
“The real tragedy is that most people, including about 90%, I’d wager, of the commentors here, don’t believe there was an al qaeda/Iraq link.”
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i’d pay to see you tell the parents of u.s. soldiers killed in iraq that that’s the “real tragedy”.
“I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries [sic]. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.”
Markos Moulitsas (dKOS) regarding the horrific murders of four American civilian contractors in Fallujah–all of them war veterans with distinguished records, three of them fathers.
No. She is a good shill. It’s different.
Whoa…who let the trolls out??
and they were in Fallujah because Liz’s dad. but of course, that’s not the “real tragedy.”
What else is up with Liz? Google her husband. Look at all his ties with the military industrial complex. And Liz’s mother’s ties as well. Note all the jobs her hubby had under bush. And consider that Liz may be protecting not just daddy but hubby. The whole family is implicated here in both wrong-doing and cover-ups.
I don’t mind Liz Cheney on MSNBC as long as they provide someone to counter against her lies and manipulations of the truth. But when MSNBC is providing a platform for the Cheneys to rewrite history with no counter arguments than that is disturbing as it would be on any channel. MSNBC needs to be careful they don’t become as irresponsible as FoxNews by allowing guests to spout off anything without being questioned on inaccuracies, and in Liz’s case, proven lies.
I just turn the channel when she comes on because otherwise I want to throw a shoe at the TV screen as soon as she starts with her self-righteous fantasy-weaving.
Um, sbj, not to pile on or anything, but how do you square the veracity of #1 with the veracity of #5?
1) Liz says that her father did not claim a tie between 9/11 and Saddam. That’s true – he did not.
5) Liz claims that once the CIA report had been widely discredited that her father had stoped making a claim that there was a 9/11 to Iraq connection. I believe this is what you are referring to as her lie?
If he stopped making the claim of a 9-11/Iraq connection after the report had been discredited, would that mean he would have had to start. Would that make # 1 virtually impossible then? In order to stop doing something, you would have had to be doing it in the first place.
Anywhooo… I think Liz Cheney gets a free pass more or less not because she is factually correct (she’s not, the wide-spread presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to the invasion has been disporven, but there she is touting it to Andrea Mitchell), but because the Washington Press Corps is still scared pantless of her old man. And, if you think Dick Cheney is a nutjob normally, imagine what he would be like if you insulted his daughter by calling her a consummate bullshit artist.
@Jen: Now you’re just being silly. I was paraphrasing the tape that someone else had linked to. But to address your “point” – I could have written #1 better. Liz was clearly saying that IF her father ever had said there was an Iraq 9/11 link then he had stopped making such a claim after the report was discredited. C’mon now! I do not believe that even before the CIA report was discredited that Cheney ever explicitly stated that there was a 9/11 Iraq link. And please, pile on – I don’t believe a thing has stuck yet!
“I don’t believe a thing has stuck yet!”
well now, that is truly the real tragedy in all of this.
Even that one bounced right off!
there’s a book entitled “the optimistic apologist: carrying water for dick” in your future.
Your first attempt (at humor?) was better.
Yeah, and Matthews’ former producer told me Ann Coulter was a great guest. When’s the last time she was on any MSNBC program? Meanwhile, I strongly advise against engaging sbj any further. “Feeding the trolls” has become a conventional sanction for good reason – they’re always willing to stoop to greater depths than we are.
Seriously though, what makes any “commentator” qualified or unqualified? Aren’t all talking heads the same? Liz at least eschews the normal scream and spittle approach that most take.
You have to forgive Ms. Maddow and Mr. Olbermann. He is angry that Obama visited Buchenwald and never mentioned that Mr. Olbermann’s father was a camp guard there during the war. Also, Maddow has been having a hard time with her dismal ratings; so much so that her Adam’s apple keeps bobbing up and down when she mentions Dick Cheney. Although why the word “dick” should worry her, or her girlfriend, is beyond me.
Maybe it”s a “framing” problem? The “reality-based” community my ***. You people created the “Guantanamo war crimes” meme/frame and sold it to kids too dumb to look into it. Now that the Dear Leader has set a deadline to close it, the debate has only just now been joined. Guess what, most Americans don’t see us as the force of evil in the world that Nancy Pelosi, Obama, and Code Pink do.
The interview with Andrea Mitchell yesterday was a joke. The best Andrea Mitchell could do was say “I’ll have to do my home work” and have you back” Hay do your home work before the interview and stop people like the Cheneys before they get thousands of people killed for no reason. Shame on MSNBC for putting the **** on the air…. Liz Cheney would not last 5 minutes on Rachael Maddow’s show before being exposed to be the lying piece of dirt she is.
It is amazing how many stupid people are commenting on this article. Most of you wouldn’t know what the truth is if it reached out and smacked you in the face. You think Maddow and Olbermann are serious journalists? You must be joking. What lies has Liz Cheney told? If Obama could ever find an ounce of courage and integrity he would release the documents her father is asking for proving EITs worked but as that would be an inconvenient truth for Obama we will probably never see it so as such I assume the former VP is telling the truth because there would be nothing Obama would like more than to prove him wrong but he will hide behind any and all legal avenues to prevent these memos from seeing the light of day.
All I can say is go back to your worshipping of Obama – the architect of 9.4% unemployment and rising by the day. How many trillions of dollars is this costing us to see free market capitalism being flushed down the toilet without creating any jobs? Obama’s own economists said employment would crest at 8.8% if the so-called economic stimulus package wasn’t passed. We are far higher than that now WITH the wasteful spending. How is that working out for you morons? We used to be a great nation. Now we are indebted to the Chinese who ironically are now lecturing us about the concept of responsible capitalism…
Taking my cue from the idiotic left, I hereby apologize to the world for the 52% of registered voters who were so stupid as to elect a street agitator with no executive experience to the most important job in the world. We will be lucky to survive the next three and a half years as he bashes Israel (the only true democracy in the region), ignores every broken promise made by the Palestinians all while allowing Iran to put the finishing touches on their nuclear weapons program. At some point you would swear all of these actions are being done on purpose because nobody in their right mind would think this would be sensible policy.
Hey,Patrick – wake up,man. No one said Maddow and Olbermann were “serious journalists” – they have shows, they have video of Old Man Cheney talking doo-doo,and all you need is to run these videos and ask a few pointed questions,and the Cheneys know it – THAT’S why they they won’t go on either show. Gutless Wonder – I didn’t know it was a gene!
The lies of Little Deferrement (is she #1 or #2?) have already been detailed here, so I won’t waste space here with them. I wonder : has either of them been on C-SPAN, where the VIEWERS can help grind them into hamburger? Believe me, they will be ready to do so,armed with the lies and half-truths of the both of them.
EITs don’t work.You get more info if you treat prisoners with respect and get them to trust you. President Obama certainly isn’t holding back any reports that will make Cheney look good – because there aren’t any.He’s too busy trying to clean up the mess that started under bumbling Bush. Are you saying that these problems started right after Obama was sworn in? I love how you Republicans/Obama haters twist arguments and deflect blame : the Guantanamo prisoners were being tortured, but let’s look at Pelosi – for NOT STOPPING IT. Bush was flying America into the ground, but it’s all Obama’s fault for NOT PULLING US OUT OF THE SPIN FAST ENOUGH. Dick Cheney infamously shot his friend – and the friend apologized FOR GETTING IN THE WAY OF HIS BUCKSHOT. The Cheneys bring squids to mind – when they (or the Repubs) get in trouble, they blort out a mass of ink, squirt away, and leave the truth in a gooey cloud. They they re-emerge in another place to start again.
Israel has been acting like their WW2 oppressors for quite a while now – and been getting away with it because they scream “self-defense”. They are allowed to “neither confirm or deny” that they have nukes…when are they going to sign the NPT-like IRAN has? They get a slap on the wrist from the world when they commit atrocities – like the invasion of Lebanon. The US routinely blocks any UN rulings against Israel. Israel is NOT the only “true”(whatever that means)in the region : the Bush administration touted the Palestinians’ “free and fair” elections,remember? When they voted for Hamas, everyone wanted a ‘do-over’. Hopefully, these days are coming to an end.
And are you trying to say that we only became indebted to China when Obama took office? Really? you can’t have it both ways ; you can’t trash Obama and his administration-but cite his economists when they say something you like.
The WORLD gets the dry heaves thinking of the USA under the rule of McCain/Palin. We did good!
WHY THE CHENEYS WON’T LEAVE THE SCENE: A QUESTION OF JOURNALISTIC DEONTOLOGY!
The recent appearances of the Cheneys over the media as a credible political opponent on par to the Obama administration’s policies and stances raises an issue of journalistic deontology! This is definitely of artificial making. On the one hand, we’ve got a legitimately elected President of the United States who has undergone the rigorous electoral process having to make his case to the American people and coming out successful in eliciting the policies he intends to carry out during his mandate within the confines of the American political institutional structure and process. On the other hand, we’ve got political personae (the Cheneys) who are effectively being presented by the media as a legitimate opponent on par to the Obama administration whereas they do not bear any electoral mandate whatsoever for the political views they profer and with no consequent responsiblity, stake and risk that will arise from any such mandate while the President is tied to them.
The latest case in point, is Liz Cheney’s appearance on the Scarborough Show with her critical and undermining views of the President presented in effect as critical views to the Obama speech delivered in Egypt under the disguise of expressing her opinions. For comments/expressions of opinion on the President’s policies, her views as well as those of her father have been given such a broad artificial reception by the media that runs very contrary to the expression of opinion as we’ve come to know it. These views are rather given almost the same weight and placed on par as the political stances of a legitimately elected president with a legitimate mandate for the policies he is undertaking while the Cheney’s hold no such legitimate mandate and with no accompanying political accountability whatsoever. The issue here is that such attitude by the media is contrary to what we’ve come to expect from normal implicit democratic rules. If the Cheneys had any pretense for policies they wished to be implemented after the Bush Administration, the solution would have simply been for Dick or Liz to run for president. Since they didn’t, it is artificial for the media to strive to present them as a counterweight on par to the Obama administration’s policies well beyong what will be expected for the opinion of a simple citizen that the Cheneys are now notwithstanding their previous political roles. And by the way, by extension is it acceptable that any citizen, no matter what self-righteous pretense they might have, to be artificially given a similar counterweight role on par with the President on any policy issues of the Obama administration while not holding any legitimate political mandate for which they will be politically accountable for their stances? It can be understandable, that the Cheneys can be of direct concern when it comes to matters of direct relation to political issues having to do with Cheney’s role in the Bush administration. But to raise their views on the policies and stances the administration should take on par with the President undermines appropriate journalistic deontology because as we should all know by now “elections do matter”.
What strikes the mind here is that the Cheneys have perfectly understood this “naïvété” of the media and are using this “media confusion about fairness” to artificially strive to extirpate Mr. Dick Cheney from accusations of introducing torture policies during the Bush Administration among other political accusations. Their strategy is very simple. Legally, Cheney can’t make it (they know that secretly). In all courts of law, so-called EITs are definitely torture practices. Besides, the facts as we know them are overwhelmingly against him and the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney’s contradictions are extensive. The real strategy of the Cheney’s here is totally otherly: turn it “political”. First, saying torture works and was for the good of the country should elicit the fervour of many Americans. Afterall, all what is needed is that a substantial number of Americans polled buy to this argument, and then the issue’s legal underpinning may be undermined. Secondly, posing artificially as the right wing counterweight to the Obama’s administration policies elicits the impression and fervour in some quarters particularly to the right that he is making the President moderate and thus he is political useful. A look at this second political trick shows how the media has effectively been manipulated: knowing fairly well that in his administrative role the President will have to take practical and pragmatic postures with respect to the release of photos of abused detainees as well as on other policies, all what Dick simply have to do is to posit that he is against releasing the pictures and pretend to take critical policy issues postures on the right, making him seemingly a moderating influence on the President. Thirdly, the Cheneys simply have to claim that Obama is following the Bush Administration’s policies he criticized pointing to his strategies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. In this case too, the media is manipulated as they ignore the fact that the Obama administration does not have the luxury of starting from scratch as Bush had on all these issues but rather adopts a “course correction strategy” of the situations to bring them as close as possible to what he advocates. The fact is that, the underlying strategy of Dick and her daughter is to make this three steps political trick extirpate Dick from the accusations levied against the former administration. The sad thing is that the media is “naïvely” falling for these political tricks!
Mark – I like your squid analogy.
Mark:
It is almost impossible to follow your logic. Are you really that concerned about the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons? They have probably has them since the early 1970s so despite all the violence that has been directed at them for decades they have shown the kind of restraint of a responsible democracy. I am afraid I don’t share the moral equivalency in regards to Iran because I can just about guarantee that if they are allowed to possess nuclear weapons they will use them and it will be Israel and perhaps even us that will be on the receiving end. And you have the unmitigated gall to compare Israel’s behavior to the Nazis – you should be ashamed of yourself for even making such a statement. The Palestinians live in abject poverty and squalor for a number of reasons – not the least of which is the fact that the surrounding Muslim countries force them to live in refugee camps that are unfit for human habitation. They do not recognize them as full citizens of their nations and care not a wit about them other than to use them as a convenient club for them to hit Israel over the head with. Don’t even compare Israel’s human rights record with ANY Muslim nation. They don’t hang homosexuals and treat women like objects. And why did Israel invade Lebanon? Because that is where the terrorists that launch daily attacks on Israel live to plot and plan future attacks. Are you saying they just have to take the daily missile and mortar attacks and not fight back. What the hell is wrong with you? Israel gives up Gaza and what happens? The Palestinian terrorists use it as a launching pad for rockets. If anybody needs to wake up it is you. The Palestinians have time and again been let down by their lack of leadership. Many Palestinians actually prefer living under Israeli rule because as one put it “that in order to get in trouble with the Israelis you have to do something wrong” whereas corrupt people like Arafat (when he was alive) and his successors terrorize and extort money from their own people to satisfy their own greed and lust for power. As long as groups like Hamas try to exploit Palestinian suffering in the worst possible way there will never be peace. They steadfastly refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and as long as that is the state of play nothing will ever change nor should it probably. And you can throw Iran into the mix there because all they have done is throw gasoline on that fire – they play nothing but a destructive role in the region which is why they should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons because they will only use them to finish the job they have already started.
And to you really believe a Halal meal, a Koran and a prayer rug is all we need to provide and the terrorist detainee will then tell us everything we want to know? It is so dumbfounding to hear somebody so intellectually dishonest that he refuses to believe anything from anybody he does not agree with about this issue. Using EITs was done as a last resort on a mere THREE detainees. Nothing else had worked up to that point and there was an urgent need to find out what Al Qaeda was planning because at that time we had very little knowledge about their organization. We did not have the luxury of waiting until we got hit again. If we did, I am sure you would have been one of the first to criticize the effort. It is amazing what over seven years of safety and security will do for the average liberal – they tend to believe there is no longer any threat and it is precisely because what had been done at that time that has kept us safe for all the years. You can deny the success of the EIT program all you want. The fact that Obama refuses to release those memos to me proves the case that they worked. Nothing you have said in your post proves that EITs were not effective. Just saying they weren’t is not proof.
I am more than willing to call out the previous administration for running up far too much debt. I have always been uncomfortable with the whole compassionate conservative philosophy because far too much of that unnecessary spending was done to placate Democrats who more often than not thought many of his programs like education and Medicare reform were actually UNDERFUNDED! But still, Bush made mistakes but it is far less concerning than Obama’s quadrupling down on stupid deficit spending which is doing NOTHING to grow our economy and create jobs.
Good God! Liberal dunderheads surely are idiots.
Quoting Keith Olbermann calling somebody a liar??
Good God!
Good luck to you all in the land of Unicorns, dreams, Obama and penny-whistles.
What a bunch of effete tools.