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Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week.

In case you have forgotten, Cheney was one of the people who, to date, has been 100% wrong about Iraq. In every conceivable way. Our soldiers are dying because he was wrong. We are spending billions of dollars a day while stuck in an increasingly hostile foreign country with an Army stretched too thin because he was wrong, and now he wants to add another country to the list.

Here’s what I’m trying to say, folks:

We need to get rid of this guy once and for all. He is a threat to this nation. He has harmed our country by running it into debt (while enriching his corporate buddies), destroying its reputation in the world, and sending soldiers into harm’s way for no reason. He has placed himself above the law, essentially saying that he answers to nobody for his actions. He’s done everything he can to eliminate the checks and balances of the government, ignore the Congress, and turn the Judiciary into simply a rubber-stamp machine for his policies. He has made it clear that Dick Cheney serves only one person: Dick Cheney. He is a cancer and needs to be removed. If you thought Nixon and Clinton showed contempt for the law and the public, I can’t imagine you’re happy with Cheney’s behavior.

There is a strong case for impeachment for both Bush and Cheney, but frankly Bush without Cheney (or Rove, who should be kept as the sole occupant of a reopened Alcatraz, a la Rudolf Hess in Spandau Prison.) would be a toothless lame duck for a few months, unable to cause much problem. Bush is dangerous, sure, but only because he’s stupid and easily led. Without his mentors the Congress would just have to spend time reminding him that he doesn’t need to go to war with Latveria because it’s not a real place.

In this interview Bill Moyers talks with Bruce Fein and John Nichols about the case for impeachment. These aren’t moonbats, either; Fein wrote the articles of impeachment for Clinton. These are people who are interested in preserving the Constitution instead of just “winning one for the team” or doing what the polls say.

If we lived in a real country, we would have a real opposition party working on such an impeachment. We would have people in the street demanding it. But we don’t have a real country, we have a lazy country. That’s okay, though. We won’t have it for much longer.

On Saturday Becky and I moved forward boldly on our bike-riding initiative. We went out to Easthampton to ride the Manhan Rail Trail.

The Rails-to-Trails program takes abandoned railway lines and repurposes them to biking and walking trails. It’s a great idea, and it’s sad that the residents of Springfield are too stupid to realize how good having one or two would be for the city.

This particular trail is four miles long. It’s well-paved and there are a lot of shady parts. The scenery is great, with a nice view of the Oxbow and Mt. Tom. It does cross some streets, but the drivers were all pretty courteous and respectful of the crossing. We saw a lot of folks out on the trail: families, older couples, joggers, a dad with a stroller, and a fellow walking along listening to his mp3 player and playing air guitar. We started in the middle, went to one end, then went to the other end, then back to the middle, for a total of eight miles. That’s three more than our usual afternoon five!

More importantly, eight miles didn’t really bother us much at all. We weren’t tired, we weren’t hurting, and we didn’t nap afterwards. That’s a pretty big deal for us. Granted, the trail is relatively level, but even so, it definitely shows some progress on our part.

We’re now looking to hit some of the other nearby rail trails.

BONUS! My spell checker doesn’t think too much of Easthampton, I guess:

Emerald City, the new album from John Vanderslice, is out on July 24. His previous album, Pixel Revolt is an incredibly rich and evocative work, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing the new one beyond these two samples.

Here’s a song off the new album for starters:

And here’s a video for the first single off the album, “Time to Go”:

And finally, it’s been ten years since Radiohead wowed a global audience of geeks in their dorm rooms with OK Computer, and to celebrate the music blog Stereogum commissioned covers of all the tracks from a bunch of indie artists. Mister Vanderslice drew “Karma Police”:

Why not preorder a copy of Emerald City today?

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A reader writes:

I remember you mentioned that most of your gaming buddies were smokers. Does the odor of cigarettes get on your games? I know this sounds like a goofy question, but I remember [my wife] and I complaining about getting student papers that reeked of cigarette smoke, or lending books to people that get returned smelling like smoke. I don’t really consider myself to be uptight about this sort of thing, but I do remember that it could be distracting and occasionally overpowering.

It is true that I game with smokers. It’s also true that despite being a former smoker, I’m not crazy about the smell of smoke. Several years ago I was playing Magic with some friends and one went outside to smoke. When he came back in for some reason the smell got to me and I was told I literally turned green from illness.

It’s not unusual when seeing games up for sale or trade to see the owner describing them as being from a “smoke-free” house. People have complained about getting things in trades or from thrift stores that smell of smoke. Number one way to deal with that seems to be a dryer sheet thrown in the box. (I’m glad I haven’t had to do that since I’d be hard pressed to identify what bugs me more: the smell of smoke or the smell of dryer sheets.)

I don’t game anywhere where people smoke inside the house, though. So this really cuts down on the smoke-smelling on the games and on me, though sometimes when I come home from a long day of gaming I can smell smoke on me. More often I come home smelling of curry powder. My only problem with smoking and gaming is that it annoys me when a game (especially a tense one) is constantly interrupted for smoke breaks.

Also, what are the etiquette rules regarding a gaming group and wear/tear on the games? I mean, obviously you expect there will be some wear on your games, but are some people very particular about eating/drinking around their treasured games? What exactly is the most expensive or valuable board game you have played? Have you ever ruined or had to replace a game or game piece due to taco Dorito trauma?

This is another story. There are people who believe that no food or drink should ever come close to a boardgame. In fact, some have said that they don’t allow this in the same room. I and the people I play with are not in this camp. We regularly eat and drink around the games. We try to be careful and courteous, of course. Having chips around the games isn’t an invitation to smear grease all over cards, and it’s probably best if your drink isn’t right next to the board, but we’re not fanatics about it. But if someone new came to the table and asked that we don’t eat or drink around his games, we’d certainly respect that.

And sometimes there are accidents. There’s the Red Wine of Catan Incident, for example. Recently someone doused Southern France with beer in a spirited Power Grid game. And once during a Princes of Florence game I accidentally dipped a jester in salsa and ate it. But by and large these incidents are isolated, and in pretty much every case the game cleaned up well or well enough (our Settlers of Catan game wasn’t in great shape to begin with).

Personally I feel that games are to be played. The social interaction is part of the experience. My friends are more important to me than my games, and I’m not going to tell the former that they can only handle the latter with white gloves and tongs. I would expect some amount of respect, sure, inasmuch as you’d expect an amount of respect with anything of someone else’s with which you’re interacting. For example, when we’re playing Traders of Genoa I don’t hide my money in that place because it’s Al’s copy.

Thanks for asking!