Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday was frank about his relationship with Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi (R), who faces a primary challenge from Cheney’s daughter Liz.
“Well, Mike also said he and I are fishing buddies, which is simply not true. Never happened,” Cheney said on ABC’s “This Week.”
In the 40+ years that both Enzi and Cheney have been in Wyoming politics, there’s probably some event where both of them fished in the same river at the same time, and I’ll bet the Enzi campaign is looking for that picture at this very moment, if they don’t have it already. That said, can a set of human beings be any more petty and dishonest than the Cheneys have been in Liz’s campaign? Liz has already tried to throw the clerk who sold her a fishing license under the bus, Mary and Liz have been in a Facebook fight about gay marriage, and Lynn told Alan Simpson to shut up in front of witnesses. With Dick’s contribution, every single one of them has said something stupid and damaging almost a year before the primary.
max
That said, can a set of human beings be any more petty and dishonest than the Cheneys have been in Liz’s campaign?
When has Dick Cheney ever not been petty and dishonest?
He’s basically a Bircherite quasi-fascist, and the sick part is that the press treated the guy like he was anything other than a ratbag.
max
[‘W. was bad and Cheney was worse.’]
Turgidson
So, after hearing Cheney’s take and doing the standard recalibration to correct for the fact that everything the man says is a brazen, easily-debunked lie, I come to the following conclusion: He and Enzi have fished together dozens, if not hundreds, of times, and that Dick felt that the fish would greet them as liberators. And at some point, Dick may have accidentally(?) gotten Enzi’s face stuck in his fishing hook. The media never got wind of that one, I guess.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Ruckus
I would expect nothing less.
Roger Moore
Yes, as I’m sure they’ll prove over the remainder of the campaign.
Keith P.
Enzi said specifically which even it was in an interview yesterday. It was some fly fishing event (can’t recall the name, but I’m looking for it). I’m sure Enzi has some kind of proof he and Cheney fished together there.
EDIT: My bad, interview was in July w/ NYT. The tournament was the One Fly Tournament.
The Red Pen
I read that as “fisting buddies” initially.
Maybe that’s true and it was just a misquote?
jheartney
Starting to think that Dubya was shrewd in allowing Darth to be his squire. Probably one of the few families that could make the Bush’s look good.
mdblanche
Unless Senator Enzi can show us the scar from the time he was stabbed with a fishhook, I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done before and believe Dick Cheney.
Hunter Gathers
I did not fish with him in a boat.
I did not fish with him with a goat.
I did not fish with that man.
I did not fish with him, Marianne.
Elizabelle
OT: If patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel (see Cheney, Richard B., and family), religion certainly is. (see Cobb, Craig — white supremacist attempting hostile takeover of poor little Leith, ND, population in the 2 digits).
Michael G
If someone had told me that Wyoming politics in the year 2013 would be one fishing related scandal after another, well… I guess that actually kinda makes sense.
Ruckus
@Keith P.:
Does it really matter?
Is there anyone not named cheney that doesn’t know that if their lips are moving they are lying? And I’m sure this applies even when their lips are not moving. Some may think it’s OK that they are lying but they still know.
The Red Pen
@Elizabelle:
I’ve been following the Church of Creativity (sporadically) since the late 80s. I don’t know if they’ve ever had a court test, but they attempted to dodge taxes and shield their assets by claiming to be a religious organization. Their main tenet is that white people are intrinsically superior.
Other than that, they are militant atheists. They claim that Christianity is a Jewish plot to make white people subservient to “mud races.” They refer to God as “the Jew spook.”
In a heated debate with an atheist on Daily Kos, I suggested that “magic sky fairy” was just as offensive as “Jew spook,” and my opponent claimed that neither was offensive because both were accurate descriptions of the Judeo-Christian deity. Sadly, the flame war was deleted, but I felt pretty vindicated getting this fuckturd to deem rhetoric from Church of the Creator as acceptable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Dishonest and incompetent. EventheLiberalMSNBC spent close to half an hour talking to Peter Baker about his book, and I don’t think the word Iraq came up once. Definitely no mention of Plame/Libby.
ETA: Speaking of MSNBC, Richard Posener is going to be on their young hipster show in a few minutes.
MomSense
There are a couple of enhanced techniques we could employ to find out what really happened.
MattF
Theological question here. Cheney sold his soul to the Devil, which I suppose he had the right to do— but how did he also have the right to sell the souls of everyone in his family? I don’t get that.
azlib
I am not sure what this guy’s problem is. All he has to say is I am supporting my daughter – end of story.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: I assume that was all part of the marriage contract when he asked Satan for Lynne’s hand in draft deferment.
opiejeanne
Is Mary as bad as the rest? I haven’t kept track, but Liz, Lynn, and Dick are terrible human beings.
Ruckus
@azlib:
That would be the normal thing to do. Darth has never done the normal thing in his life. Everything has the
smellstink of position and privilege. He doesn’t think he is better, he KNOWS it.Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
LOL, nicely played.
dmsilev
@azlib: Anyone who opposes Cheney in any way is The Enemy, and therefore must be destroyed.
I do think it’s hilarious watching Liz “too many federal jobs to easily count” Cheney trying to pass herself off as an outsider against the Washington Establishment.
dmsilev
@MattF: I always assumed it was a bulk-rate discount deal.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
are…human beings
Facts not in evidence.
are terrible…
Facts in evidence.
kindness
@opiejeanne: Eh. Mary got a job through Dad at some post during the bush43 years. She kept her head down and did not make a big issue of being Dick’s lesbian daughter. So, bad? It’s relative. I mean I might think she was awful because she didn’t come out and announce what sociopaths the bush43 regime was full of. But I don’t because I already knew that.
So I will give the vote on Mary Cheney a two what evers.
rikyrah
I find it hilarious that there are so many problems around wildlife escapades..
does no one care about the issues in Wyoming?
RSA
You anti-Heraclitean, you!
schrodinger's cat
Fishing buddies reminded me of Brokeback Mountain.
Violet
OT, but this is some good news:
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Heartened by that, but they’re sticking with the parts that make abortions harder to come by:
Hello there, transvaginal ultrasound. Haven’t we seen you before?
Just One More Canuck
@MattF: Well they weren’t using them
Cris (without an H)
Stupid, yes. Damaging, probably not. People who love the Cheneys consider this kind of crap to be a feature.
Keith P.
@Ruckus: Not really. The whole situation is pretty pathetic, really. Daddy’s little girl got her cushy job due to daddy, ditto for her next one (she even keeps daddy’s last name after marriage), gets a pundit job due to her last name, then decides to run for office in her daddy’s state using his connections. Even tweets about what daddy says in terms of “Best VP ever says..”. Just a blatant case of nepotism if there ever was one.
Ruckus
@Keith P.:
It was somewhat of a rhetorical question.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cris (without an H):
So, the Village press? Because Cheney isn’t even liked in the GOP. He’s as popular as hookworm, which come to think of it the Villagers probably think builds character among those noble Heartland Americans and is a sign of why the Inner City Poor are getting a free ride.
Elizabelle
@The Red Pen:
Did not know the twisted history of that “Church”.
More on Leith: it’s tragedy wrapped in some laughs:
The good people of Leith have gone after the arriving white supremacists by enacting building codes (insisting that they live in habitable homes with water and sewer; no tents or campers) and even pursuing the Lysistrata solution.
Mrs. Dutton seems to have been the only adult female on the premises.
Unfortunately, two Dutton kids, aged 4 and 5, remain with their father, Kynan — who has admitted to an alcohol problem (documented on video at a town meeting), and the supremacists. Social services is monitoring their condition.
Picture of the four supremacists with link. One of them affects a hipster skinhead look.
scav
I’m almost tempted to see the Cheneys as working hard to establish their white-trash populist political status. gonna wash that DC status right outta their hair, gunna wash that odor right outta their pits. Follow the political advantage / energy. They don’t clear brush to do it; they trash and shoot people. Smells a bit of reality TV PR.
Ripley
@Keith P.:
Two Hacks, One Fly.
Ruckus
@Keith P.:
I’ve re-read my post and it’s hard for me to see how anyone could take that as a positive view of The Darths.
Mary could be the outlying member of the family, the rest of them sure are shitty peas in a shitty pod.
Kay
Did Mike really say “buddy”? About Dick Cheney? I think that’s more doubtful than the fishing.
becca
Such a small, petty and fearful little man. Typical of republican men these days.
Scratch a GOP man, find a momma’s boy.
Trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
“People who love the Cheneys” sounds like the world’s shortest list. Wait, how many Cheneys are there? Okay, that’s our list.
O/T, how many billionaires does it take to lock up a stretch of California coastline? Just one, of course.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Surfers-lose-fight-to-access-Half-Moon-Bay-beach-4926919.phphttp:/
dmsilev
@Elizabelle:
He doesn’t subscribe to hatred of “mainstream” minorities, but instead hates new and obscure minorities that “you probably haven’t heard of”?
Ron Beasley
I would have never dreamed it was possible but Liz Cheney is even more vile than her father.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Calling darth a buddy may be a dig on Mike’s part. Just rubbing his nose in it so to speak. A little tongue in cheek fuck you as it were. And if there is one picture of them together?
MattF
@dmsilev: Yeah, and your favorite minority sucks.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
If you consider Cheney and Rumsfeld to be a “set of human beings” (I don’t) then the run-up to the Iraq war would be a good example.
TG Chicago
It’s funny to me that if Cheney had just said “Well, Mike also said he and I are fishing buddies, which is simply not true,” it would be tough for Enzi to rebut unless he had proof he had gone fishing with Cheney many times.
But then Dick added “Never happened,” which implies that they never went fishing together. So by adding those two words, Cheney made it easy for Enzi to rebut as long as they fished together even once. Silly Cheney!
? Martin
@Trollhattan: Worth noting that the land was owned before California was a state, so the legal status of the land likely predates the public right to beach access. IIRC that’s been upheld in a number of other private beach cases.
Ruckus
@Ron Beasley:
The vileness scale is logarithmic. But I did think darth had reached max so pushing lizzy past that is saying a lot. Not saying you are wrong.
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan:
I would LOVE to have a party boat that ferries surfers, tourists, beach lovers, Occupy activists, Rastafarians, and the occasional vagrant to that beach.
It would feature a huge banner: “Tax the Rich! Vinod Khosla SUCKS!” and play “Three Blind Mice” in a continuous loop as it passes the great man’s estate.
Drum circle optional.
KCIvey
It’s the same “Never met him” trick Cheney pulled with John Edwards in 2004.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@The Red Pen:
Neither is okay, but one is much worse than the other. You’re both sort of fucked.
Liquid
Hey, Cheney was in Die Hard 3 so he can’t be ALL bad…
Hawes
This is the first time Wyoming politics has been at all interesting. Did I say interesting, I meant entertaining.
Elizabelle
@? Martin:
I wonder if the land grant provision’s should attach, for all time, to owners not in the original family’s lineage?
And this sounds like a complete black eye for billionaire Vinod Khosla.
Wonder what happened to those 45 leased cabins?
I hate the privatization of what should be public beauty.
Yatsuno
@Elizabelle: He won’t care. All that matters is those poors, browns, and blahs won’t be sullying up his private beach. And even if the beach isn’t technically his, it is, because he haz all teh roads naow!
Felonius Monk
When Native Americans in Wyoming (in particular, the Shoshone and Arapaho) want to call someone an Asshole, they say “He’s a Cheney.”
sharl
Compliments of a commenter at TBogg’s former (FDL) site (comment #43 in this post), meet Liz Cheney: The Early Years:
Somewhat relatedly, fans of Harry Shearer may appreciate an episode of Dick Cheney: Confidential! (8.57) from his Le Show, um, show. I could do without the distracting video myself, but when heard on the traditional magical voice box, his dark and pointed comedy usually works for me. (Warning: he uses a sawed-off shotgun in his shtick, so successors to the Darth-Dubya Administration also get hit by the grapeshot.)
Violet
@Yatsuno:
With a name like Vinod Khosla, isn’t he probably one of those browns? I realize it’s not the same kind of brown as those south of the border, but I wonder how well he’s received by his lily white neighbors?
RaflW
I hope Liz stays in the race as long as possible.
She’s the perfect emblem of f*ked up rich white power-hungry shitheels the world over, or at least USA Republican style. More cowbell, Liz!
Trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
GMTA? My first thought was an endless procession of party boats. Maybe set up an excursion concession at Santa Cruz–you’d have at least one drum circle per boat.
Trollhattan
@Violet:
Dollars to
donutschapati he grew up upper caste and could teach a graduate seminar on keeping the riffraff under control.Elizabelle
Here’s another article on the Martins Beach/Khosla case.
And can’t the original plaintiffs appeal to a higher court?
Judge apparently swayed by a pre-Civil War decision, when the plaintiff was a member of the family granted the land.
It would seem that intervening years and changes in ownership and public use should be given weight also?
Trollhattan
@sharl:
At least Sarah Heath could give hockey scores on camera. Peas in a pod, only Lizzard doesn’t have a Tawd (or a pack o’ li’l Duffels).
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan:
Born in India, dad an officer in the military, studied at the best tech schools in India and then Stanford. Co-founded SUN Microsystems.
Tone in DC
In a parallel universe (a la Star Trek DS9), I might pity Mary Cheney. Almost.
Also, too… I really hope Enzi has a picture from that fishing tournament.
Frankensteinbeck
@Violet:
I always got the impression the rich care more if you can act like Their Kind than what color your skin is. Not being rich, I can’t be certain.
StringOnAStick
@dmsilev: Liz has two major hills to try to climb in her DC high heels; one is trying to sell herself as a DC outsider after all her years there working the nepotism game, and the other is selling herself to Wyoming residents as a real downhome local girl. The latter is tough to do when she splashes her kids all over her ads, and these kids are the perfect exemplars of DC rich brat private schools. Hell, even her well-connected hubby/lobbyist has stayed on in DC and isn’t “living” in WY like Liz & kids (they moved there right before Liz announced so no, they weren’t residents before mama decided she deserved a Senatorship). I’m not sure how familiar WY residents are with the term ‘carpetbagger’, but I bet they are learning.
Enzi is a winger, just a low key one, and he’s popular in WY. Even the WY GOP is pissed at Liz barging in there and deciding she gets to decide who they get to nominate. Li’l Miss Deferment #5 is gonna lose to Enzi, and it will be fun to watch.
Botsplainer
@Elizabelle:
If you want to know what a judicial opinion looks like when it is bought, take a good look at that one.
MattF
@StringOnAStick: Would it be wrong to spread a rumor that the reason she wants to be a Senator is that she’s got a wild crush on Sen. Cruz?
fuckwit
Keep fucking that chicken.
Trollhattan
Speaking of our political Uberklasse, lunch with Nooners and the USCOC, on a Very Special Episode of Wonkette.
http://wonkette.com/532782/peggy-noonan-says-swear-word-tells-obama-how-to-be-reagan-skips-dessert#more-532782
The whole thing–read you.
Frankensteinbeck
@Trollhattan:
No, the GOP would be left without any voters. Are the 1% so desperate not to admit that there aren’t enough of them to elect a dog catcher? CoC, the reason you’ve had a good run since Reagan is because he convinced the cultural conservatives that you were on their side. If the evangelicals and racists desert you, you don’t have a party!
Jebediah, RBG
@MattF:
Only “wrong” in the sense that I am pretty sure it isn’t a rumor, since I just read somewhere that Liz Cheney has a big ol’ Cruz crush.
mdblanche
@Trollhattan: I wonder how many of those Democrats had Romney signs on their lawn.
Trollhattan
@mdblanche:
:-) To be fair, they’re beautiful lawns.
shortstop
I liked Dick’s huffing that “The media will not choose Wyoming’s next senator. The people of Wyoming will choose their next senator.” Yes, Dick, and you, your imperious wife and your noxious offspring are really, really not that popular among those people. Enzi (who is also a jerk) is, however. I would really love to see Liz come in at a percentage similar to the Alan Keyes 27.
sm*t cl*de
That had gotten Peggy thinking about scandals and how real Presidents handled them with “true accountability.” It reminded her, in fact, of the Iran-Contra affair.
So “true accountability” translates as “I can’t remember anything and I pardon everyone.”
Turgidson
@Jebediah, RBG:
I have also read this recently. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Turgidson
@mdblanche:
Damn, beat me to it.
Also, pretty sure the “Democrats, even!” are just Lanny Davis and one of the voices in Lanny Davis’s head.
StringOnAStick
@Jebediah, RBG: Holy crap, I thought that was a joke. Maybe Liz really does see winning a senate seat as the easiest/safest way for a cloakroom canoodle with Calgary’s current fave export…
Kathy in St. Louis
The man is a turd. T-U-R-D. turd.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer:
I fear you are right.
But it might be hard for a “bought” (or shall we say, ideologically co-opted) judge going up against the public good.
Unless said judge is a justice on a federal, state or Supreme bench.
SiubhanDuinne
@RSA:
Harsh.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trollhattan:
Popcorn in a good cause.
SiubhanDuinne
@TG Chicago:
I don’t even see what would be so damaging (on its own) about Cheney saying something like “Yeah, Mike Enzi and I fished together (once, twice, occasionally, frequently, a lot) but we have some profound disagreements on some key policy issues.” What’s wrong with that approach?
Seriously, if you are someone’s political opponent on a specific issue or in a particular primary or even general campaign, why do you have to pretend that you oppose every.single.fucking.position your rival has ever taken on anything, any time, any where?
I don’t get it.
SiubhanDuinne
@StringOnAStick:
It’s so weird to find myself rooting for the winger. But there it is.
debbie
Surprisingly, Cheney got a heart that made him even meaner.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
When your choice is winger or complete, total, absolute fucking shithead asshole what choice do you really have?
Yes I know it is a small difference but in this case at least it is a real one.
Ruckus
@debbie:
If you were a transplant heart and had to live in that body wouldn’t you be pissed all the time?
debbie
@Ruckus:
I’d go on strike.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I would try to defect.
TheWatcher
@MattF: It’s like multi-level marketing,,
tybee
@Trollhattan:
one would think that if the public has had access to that beach for some number of years via that road that a de facto easement exists.
Bart
Ya know, this would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that Cheney ruled the US for a good half dozen years.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: That would be cool!