It's D.C. Dick

Richard Cheney
Born: January 30, 1941

In honor of the birthday of the VP, is this skit by Jon Stewart.

And then, for the icing on the cake, is this little tidbit from Dan Froomkin, The Unraveling of Dick Cheney, in which he says of Cheney:

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so.

Maybe that works within the White House. But for the rest of us, it's becoming a better bet to assume that everything -- or almost everything -- Cheney says is flat wrong.

And for the candles, there's this:

Carl Hiaasen writes in his Miami Herald column: "There are several possible explanations for the vice president's bizarre performance:

"* He's crazy as a loon.

"* He's a compulsive liar.

"* He's gotten his prescriptions mixed up with Rush Limbaugh's.

"Whatever the clinical reason might be, Cheney continues to float blissfully through a smug and surreal fog."

Finally, in Editor & Publisher, Dick Cheney: The New 'Baghdad Bob'?, Greg Mitchell asks the question, "Is the former Iraqi propaganda minister inhabiting the soul of our vice president?" Mitchell notes:

Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney, in his latest statements, starting once again to sound like another balding, rose-colored-glasses wearing war spokesman, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob”?

* * * *
In a later Newsweek interview he said that the president's State of the Union address had "shored up" his public standing -- even though every major poll shows that it actually sank.

Is it time to start calling Cheney "Beltway Bob"? Or "D.C. Dick"? Or perhaps "Bunker Bob"?

Baghdad Bob, of course, was Saddam Hussein's minister of information, later immortalized on t-shirts, Web sites, and even a DVD for his optimistic, if fanciful, statements about Iraq's triumph over the American infidels, right up to the point his boss left the building. Baghdad Bob somehow survived and later worked as an Arab TV commentator, sans trademark beret (although he now seems to have inhabited our vice president's body).

As you wish him birthday wishes, read Mitchell's column for a few Baghdad Bob classics that could be confused with D.C. Dick.

Tags: Daily Show, Humor, Jon Stewart, Cheney, Video