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Liz Cheney went on Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer and a few other Republican strategists to discuss Rick Perry and Herman Cain's recent troubles, but as usual, she played the part of Lady Vader, a role her mother is quite good at as Wolf Blitzer can attest to. I almost forgot his interview with Mommy Vadar on CNN back in 2006 which surprised him so much because they are such buds that it made him tape a separate segment so he could tell America that he too, is a patriot.

Sunday, Liz made her mom proud by playing the same conservative victim card and insinuated that the media is wasting our time showing us clips of Rick Perry giving a bizarre speech where some people have said he appeared drunk. And then she went there. What do I mean? She proudly stated that George Bush left this country in great financial shape after he left the White House:

BOB SCHIEFFER: What do you think, Liz?

LIZ CHENEY: You know, I think-- again, I find this all pretty frustrating. This country faces huge, huge challenges. And you know, frankly, watching a morning show like this one where first we're talking about Herman Cain allegations and then we're shown a YouTube mash-up of--

BOB SCHIEFFER: We were covering the campaign, Liz.

LIZ CHENEY (Overlapping): Well, but the issues are what matter, Bob. And with all due respect, you know, the American people are out there afraid. They're afraid that the economy is going off a cliff. They're afraid that this President wants higher taxes and more spending and bigger government. And in the midst of all of that, I think that-- that's what we ought to be talking about. You know, last night in Texas, you had Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have a very substantive exchange about the issues and a very cordial exchange but one that focused on how important it is to deal with the entitlement crisis, how important it is to create an environment where the private sector's actually going to be willing to invest again. How important it is to look at what's happening in Iraq, you know. Barack Obama likes to talk about what he inherited. He inherited a victory in Iraq. He inherited a AAA bond rating. And right now, you've got a situation where, frankly, he is going down the wrong path on all of these issues. And I just got to imagine that people who are watching this morning and, you know, voters all across this country want to know who is going to help put this country back on the right track. Not, you know, who was able to put together a mash-up of, you know, clips out of a speech that Rick Perry gave on YouTube.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, I take your point. But I would also make the point that we in the media, it is not our job to make the campaign. That is up to the candidates. The candidates determine what the campaign is going to be out.

LIZ CHENEY: But you guys choose what you're going to cover, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And we show up and cover what's there

Did you see what she did there? She was asked specifically to come on to FTN to discuss the exact issues that she's trying to brush under the carpet and bash the media for doing their job on. See, if the media was running with an obviously horribly edited video that smears the candidate or a person and doesn't bother to verify it's validity then Lady Vadar would have a point, but that's not what happened in this examples. I mean they've done it before for sure. Not only that, but she tries to insinuate that Obama walked into a picnic in Iraq (she forgot to mention Afghanistan) while George Bush won the Iraq war as if it took a couple of weeks, no casualties and something we spent a buck three eighty on. The two wars the Bush administration bought us makes Newt's Tiffany's obsession all but a ripple in the pacific ocean.

Then to top it off, after her father's administration destroyed the world's financial markets which have caused this great recession, she says Bush left Obama with a AAA credit rating to boot! As if that wipes away his massive economic failures.

Now if President Obama gave a speech and it appeared that he was falling down drunk in it, Liz Cheney would be spending millions of dollars with her group Keep America Safe making ads replaying the tape in every state she found air time available. And do I really need to comment on the legitimacy of the Cain's sexual harassment stories?

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, is leading the defense of Senate Bill 5, Ohio Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining law passed last year. Ohioans were so upset with the law they launched a million-signature effort to repeal the law that will go to voters in the state on November 8. A "no" vote would repeal the law.

Cheney’s mailers have included phrases like, ““YES on Issue 2 will get POLITICIANS to Do The Right Thing on Spending” And “OBAMA wants us to do things HIS WAY? Yes on Issue 2 is our chance to do things OUR WAY” — convenient talking points that leave out the overall message that many Ohioans are getting a raw deal with Senate Bill 5 and Issue 2 is the public’s chance to wrong a right. The tactless tactic of invoking President Obama, who has literally nothing to do with this matter, displays the desperation of the Right’s effort. In the opinion of some, the bigger wrong that needs corrected is the election of Kasich.

Cheney's ads are notable for their failure to be completely accurate:

Cheney’s group began last month to flood Ohio with deceptive mailings that claim “voting yes on Issue 2 will give our communities the ability to get spending under control without raising taxes.”

A mailing that just went out statewide declared: “We just can’t afford to pay 100 percent of government employee benefits too.”

“In this tough economy,” the mailing continues, “it’s just not fair to ask taxpayers to pay even more for salaries and benefits for government employees.” Voting yes on Issue 2, it says, “means that government employees will make modest contributions to their benefits” by paying “at least 15 percent toward their health insurance coverage” and “just 10 percent toward their own retirement.”

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Man, ABC News seriously loves them some torture.

Because for them, the Bin Laden capture and killing is a triumph of intelligence derived from waterboarding, therefore the question of whether we should continue to torture should very much still be on the table. And who better to confirm that than the poster girl for waterboarding, Liz "Demon Spawn" Cheney.

But as I've written before, there's a logic drop off to their allegations. By all accounts, the use of waterboarding stopped in 2003. The Bush Administration closed down the Bin Laden unit in 2005 and did nothing for the intervening five years. If there was actionable intelligence obtained by waterboarding, why then did they close down the unit hunting for Bin Laden?

What Leon Panetta told the media was that they did receive actionable intelligence from individuals who had been waterboarded in the past but the name of the courier that enabled them to directly track Bin Laden was not known until 2007, after waterboarding allegedly ended. But the media en masse, with their giant hard on for Jack Bauer theatrics, turns that around into Panetta admitting that they got intelligence from waterboarding. Now it is possible that having already experienced waterboarding, the detainees they interrogated were more forthcoming with information, but that begs the question why they weren't more forthcoming earlier.

If Christiane Amanpour wanted to have an intellectually honest discussion of whether torture--and please, give up the "enhanced interrogation techniques" euphemism, it's TORTURE, pure and simple--works, perhaps she should have employed some logic as I have rather than serve up that nice little softball to Liz Cheney, whose only purpose on these shows is to defend her dad's evil and criminal tactics.

AMANPOUR: Liz, does this reignite this debate as to whether these enhanced interrogation techniques work and should be brought back?

CHENEY: I think it does. I think the fact that you clearly have the current CIA director saying that part of the intelligence came from enhanced interrogation, it's important to remember, you know, Chip Burlingame, who was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon, he himself was subjected to these techniques when he went through SERE training.

These are not torture. These are techniques that we know work. That debate is over. It worked. It got the intelligence. It wasn't torture. It was legal.

It seems to me the key question now is, we've got this trove of intelligence, what looks to have been perhaps the biggest trove we've ever been able to get a hold of. If that leads us to other Al Qaida operatives, it's not clear to me that we have any way to effectively interrogate them. We don't have enhanced interrogation anymore. We read people their Miranda rights. We are not detaining people at Guantanamo anymore. We're not detaining people in the secret prison sites. It's not clear to me what the administration will be able to do to get this information.

Shame on ABC News and Christiane Amanpour for not only framing the debate to assume that torture worked, but to then give Liz Cheney a platform to undermine the Obama administration's success where the Bush administration with all their war criminal tactics failed.

On a day (and week) when the news has been less than fun, we want to take some time out to wish our own wonderful VlogFather, John Amato, a very happy birthday!!!

It's a running joke among the staff that John's main squeeze is Liz Cheney. Amato remarks: "Liz and I are going for some sushi and then I'll be taking a tour of the new Haliburton factory...That really gets her going..."

Happy Birthday, John!

You're all invited to leave well-wishing in comments below....

Don't tell anyone! That WAS our own John Amato crashing Chelsea's wedding with his long-time squeeze Liz Cheney!

Open thread below...

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{H/t Heather]

Here's a fact: Right-wing authoritarians will never accept Barack Obama as their president, even if he does everything they demand of him to the jot and tittle. Just watch Liz Cheney on Fox News Sunday today, after Bloody Bill Kristol went so far as to praise Obama for his "clear commitment" to winning the war in Afghanistan:

Chris Wallace: Liz, does Bill Kristol have it right with the appointment of Petraeus and the comments that he made that we showed about no rush for the exits in July of 2011 and late this week -- are you as convinced as Bill is that the president is "all in" in Afghanistan?

Cheney: Ah, I think that Bill is right, that the president did the right thing and that the president deserves credit. I think that he unfortunately had to relieve McChrystal -- I think that McChrystal was a tremendous general and he did tremendous things in Iraq; when the entire story of Iraq is told I think he'll get the credit he deserves there with the special forces. He had to be replaced, however, and Petraeus is the right person for the job. And I do think the president's speech announcing the change was a good speech.

Now, I don't think we know for sure that he's all in. Because Petraeus can't do it alone. And if you don't have the changes in your civilian leadership that you talked about in your interview segment this morning, it will be very difficult to get this done.

It's obvious to everyone on the planet -- except the rabid right -- that Obama is "all in" on military-industrial complex's strategy for "winning" in Afghanistan -- but it's predicated on eventually "winning" (whatever that means) and then getting out. This is what Cheney really is after: like her father, she favors an endless war in Afghanistan, one that can just roll on forever, providing an endless excuse for our military involvement in the Middle East. They're looking out for American hegemony, and too bad about that body count.

Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority -- and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle.

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John Amato and I frequently Monday morning quarterback the news shows and the pundits invited on to represent the "left" side of the conversation. Most of the time, I'll admit, we're puzzled by how that particular person is considered on the left (Joke Line, I'm looking at you). John has done some media training and I'm just dipping my toes into the media appearances (you can hear my segment discussing the Sunday shows on The Nicole Sandler Show live every Monday at www.radioornot.com or check out the podcasts) because we both feel so passionately that we need strong, unapologetic liberal voices out there to pierce through the right wing noise.

So I'm thrilled that we're seeing high visibility liberals like Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas on This Week on a semi-regular basis. For years, it wouldn't have happened.

But after watching this clip, the substance of which Heather discussed on Sunday, I want to speak to a fatal flaw in appearances like Arianna's and Markos's.

As I expected, both of them did their homework and were armed with facts to support their side. That's what we do: we present facts and hope that the other side will observe the rules of debate. But look who they were debating. Do you honestly think that Liz Cheney is going to argue fairly? Of course not. She lies right in the faces of Markos and Arianna (and more importantly, the viewer who may not have those facts in hand) when she says it's absolutely not true that Halliburton was fined millions of dollars for defrauding the federal government. Note how Arianna laughingly says she can't wait for Politifact (a supposedly non-partisan fact-check organization through the St Petersburg Times) for their verdict on her factual accuracy. As of this writing, more than 36 hours from the broadcast, and Politifact has remained suspiciously silent on Liz Cheney, but only too happy to go after Markos for a slip of the tongue that he immediately acknowledged afterward.

So clearly, having the grasp of the facts and/or counting on the anchor/fact check organization to expect truthfulness from their guests doesn't work. Nor does expecting Liz Cheney and George Will to be fair, and not dismissive, as they trot out the strawman that liberals even blame the demise of the Gore marriage on Bush, something Liz Cheney thinks she read on Daily Kos. All snide insinuations to dismiss, belittle and render non-credible everything else they say.

Well, liberals, let me tell you right now: It's time to put away those Marquess of Queensbury rules. Stop smiling as they lie to your face. But don't get caught in some distraction (the last vestige of a Republican scoundrel: focus on some picayune aspect and steer the conversation away from anything of substance for which they have no defense). Keep hold of your head, your calm and your facts and cut them off at the knees, rhetorically speaking.

There's no reason, for example, why Liz "Spawn of Satan" Cheney should have any credibility to appear on these shows. She is a veteran of an administration widely considered the worst in modern history and of the department that pushed a foreign policy that has failed us, at the cost of thousands of American deaths, tens of thousands of devastating injuries and one trillion dollars of American taxpayer money. Her latest gig is at the head of a think tank formed with another neo-conservative (Bill "I'm always wrong" Kristol) to push a failed foreign policy that has been soundly rejected by the American people and to throw as much crap at our current president to see what sticks. That's it: she is on TV to push for more destruction. Why the hell aren't we impeaching her credibility by pointing out this FACTUAL information?

C'mon, Markos and Arianna, she's done nothing to earn your (or the audience's) respect. She feels no compunction about belittling you on air. Stop being polite. Be honest. And make that torture-apologist, war-mongering shrew and her partisan-motivated propaganda talking points radioactive on these shows.

h/t the ever fabulous BlueGal for the graphic

Why oh why oh why? Can anyone give one good reason why Liz Cheney's pundit career should even exist in the realm of reality? How on earth can anyone who says that waterboarding isn't torture and that Obama can't simply say something to make it so (especially coming from the one administration--and family--that made that practice an art form) and whose latest gig is simply to keep pushing the Bush Doctrine, a policy that the country overwhelmingly voted against. I'm sorry, but the woman's credibility is less than zero. Shame on ABC for booking her yet again to pollute their round table. Will fellow participants Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington have the huevos to call her out on her lies? Stay tuned...

Elsewhere around the dial, Coast Guard Commander Thad Allen is making some serious rounds to discuss the Gulf oil spill. He'll be on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday.” Also worth noting is the head-to-head of Arkansas runoff candidates Blanche "DINO" Lincoln and Bill Halter on CNN's "State of the Union". And if you're a real glutton for spin, the Israeli ambassador to the US will be on "Fox News Sunday", no doubt to try to justify the shootings of the humanitarian flotilla. Luckily, we're spared our normal Sunday David Gregory hackery. "Meet the Press" is pre-empted for the French Open.

ABC's "This Week" - Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the Gulf oil disaster; Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Allen; Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Howard Fineman, Michele Norris, Andrea Mitchell, Bill Plante. Topics: A Look Back At The Moments in TV and Politics Which Changed American History; The Good, The Bad and The Unforgettable

CNN's "State of the Union" - Allen; Gov. Charlie Crist, I-Fla., Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, D-Ark.; Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Israel; the man who came in second in the recent Afghan elections tells Fareed what he really thinks about the man who beat him - Hamid Karzai...and offers his advice on what the US should be doing to fix his embattled nation.

"Fox News Sunday" - Allen; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

A modest proposal: Please, somebody needs to throw a boom around Liz Cheney.

Open Thread below...

First Draft: When Birtherism isn't quite crazy enough...

The Rude Pundit: Al Qaeda, Liz Cheney, and American Failure

The Washington Independent: The 'rule of law' is unacceptable to the GOP

Eschaton: Walking away...

The Political Carnival: Salacious news CNN and Fox somehow missed...

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: OKIYAR...An honest headline you'll never see...WSJ fail...Why your media sucks...The Cable News bubble...Another reason to reform health care...Is this a joke?...Comatose CNN...Where was the NYT on Bush's war?...Say what?...I am so proud...New Media Watchdogs...Newsweek's propaganda...Altering history... Death panels--Again?...Cable News Fail