Her “logic,” if you want to call it that, does begin to collapse when one realizes that the Lincoln bedroom still exists, unlike the billions wasted in Iraq, and compared to selling off government policy for pennies on the dollar, it was a relatively harmless way to reward contributors, but logic has no home in CheneyLand, and naturally no one at Fox batted an eye at her rank absurdity.  Of course, the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress spent eight years threatening candidates it didn’t like to stay out of the way or else, turned whole agencies into corporate cash machines, and placed venal nincompoops in charge of everything.  Who can forget, after all, that the hapless Michael Brown landed at FEMA because his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, left early to set up a clearinghouse for Republican freeloaders to help themselves onto the Iraq gravy train.  When money talks, Republicans listen.

What’s at work here are two complimentary processes: Republicans have enormous difficulty winning elections fairly, and yet they nonetheless believe they are the only ones fit to govern.  When in office, they immediately embark on an orgy of cementing their power through bribes and shady dealings, and when out, they dedicate their lives to de-legitimizing their Democratic victors.   Remember that the the US Attorney scandal (never investigated) stemmed from attempts to use false charges of “voter fraud” to disenfranchise Democratic voters, a tacit admission that in their hearts they knew they couldn’t win honestly.  Remember further that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was only the culmination of a lengthy and tortured Republican temper tantrum, which, though unsuccessful, did clear the way for George Bush’s “election,” and the elimination of the Special Prosecutor that has always bedeviled Republicans.

Those two “victories,” in the fullness of time, paid off wonderfully for her father’s administration, which eagerly set about  committing multiple impeachable offenses, and better yet, tainted impeachment itself as  just another tiresome partisan witch hunt that could only backfire on its proponents.  As Joe Conason pointed out at Salon the other day, the Republican wet dream at the moment is to retake the house for the sole purpose of impeaching Obama, so the Sestak allegations are just low-hanging fruit to whet the appetite of the right for another showdown.  You see, the same Republicans who tarred even their mildest opponents as traitors and worse for eight long and calamitous years have suddenly found the value of Checks and Balances, and the strident, carping daughter of the least popular politician in American history is being trotted out to wax rhapsodic about it.

In a more rational world, such dreadful and utterly discredited people as Liz Cheney would live out their despicable lives in obscure ignominy, but the world, especially on Fox, isn’t rational; just as Sarah Palin is pushed forward to babble incoherently about everything from oil spills to feminism, Liz Cheney is invited to hold forth on national security to electoral politics, and at least she lies and smears in grammatical sentences, which is kind of a bonus.

In the end, though, I don’t think Liz’s efforts are going to amount to much.  The one thing that the Clinton impeachment did show us was that his administration was not corrupt….  seriously, six years and $70 million dollars, and all they could come up with was a blow job?  Maybe they see things differently on Fox, but trotting out, as an example of corruption, the Lincoln bedroom in the world of Enron, Halliburton, et al is, frankly, beyond lame.

Then KPOJ came on the air, and I “met” Al Franken.  His show, with the honey-voiced charmer both sharp and smart from Minnesota Public Radio, Katharine Lanpher, made my mornings for as long as it lasted, and despite the coordinated and somewhat effective righty propaganda to the contrary, the show was quite successful in markets like Portland from day one.  Even as Bill O’Reilly was gloating at the unsteady rollout, KPOJ instantly became not just the #1 talk station here, but the number one radio station.  And in those days, Al Franken, along with Randi Rhodes, the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Janeane Garofalo, and MSNBC’s newest star Ed Schultz, were its heart.  Even the worst days flew by as never before.

But Al’s show, unsurprisingly, was the funniest, and that made it my favorite because laughing is about the only thing that can make hanging drywall with a hangover while your country turns fascist seem, in a weird and counterintuitive way, enjoyable.   Through the atrocious debacles of Iraq, Katrina and the Lewis Libby trials, Al played different characters at times with their predictable schticks, and yet he also had regular, serious guests that gave the show a homey personality while it persistently made the listener laugh even when crying was probably more appropriate, which was pretty often back then.  But that is certainly not to say that Franken’s show was just shallow entertainment; far from it. I would probably credit Al as one of the most significant forces behind the flipping of Scott McClellan, albeit belatedly, against Bush, because of the powerfully emotive evocations of the betrayal McClellan felt, palpable in his subsequent book, that drew almost directly from Franken’s frequent and passionate words at the time. (Once a talking points repeater, always a talking points repeater, but still….)

From Franken’s show, I fell in love with regular guest Joe Conason, whose deep, mellifluous voice could melt glaciers, and is one of the wittiest and sharpest thinkers you’ve ever heard, and thanks in part to his exposure on Al’s show, has since gained a much wider audience, quite deservedly.  (To my considerable chagrin, when I went to meet Joe at a local appearance he turned out to be kind of scrawny and disappointing, but such is the power of radio….)  I also found out that if you’re a Hollywood liberal like Al, you can get, say, Linda Rondstadt, to sing your intro ditties, beautifully, and at fairly short notice.  Let Rush Limbaugh, with all his millions, try to pull that off.  Once.  Talent, musically in particular, utterly escapes the right, which is part of what makes them what they are.

But the most audacious part of Al’s show was that, from the beginning, he was planning on kicking Norm Coleman out of the Senate, personally, and  although he remained appropriately cagey about it, this was alway a major goal of his in moving into progressive talk. His moving home to Minneapolis sealed the deal for me.  I remember one day when he was reading some absurd, false, or hateful thing Coleman had said, as he often did, and said, “Someone’s gotta take him on.”  My heart leapt, because I could tell he meant it.  And today his (and my) wish came true.  Congratulations, Senator Franken, you of the 60th vote.  I bet Bill O’Reilly has shit in his blood.  More than usual.

If you look at any political remark from Neocons-Repugs they will first say “No way!” then ask any fools listening to believe it is just dandy for them to have it both-ways using twisted logic and facts. These forked tongue, con artists operate under the following rules:

1. Never talk about the consequences of the current problem or offer any real solutions only complain and whine about the problems created by liberal-Dem solutions.

2. If it conflicts with your current goal, totally ignore anything previously said even if only minutes ago.

3. Never let facts or consequences affect what you want to convey.

4. Don’t concern yourself with what is best for the country or the world only about what is best for your reelection or ideological group.

5. The end always justifies the means so integrity or truth is irrelevant as long as you can rationalize your motivation.

6. Determine the most damaging framing for the liberal-Dems and then create any facts to reinforce that message and repeat it as many times and from as many sources as possible.

7. Take every opportunity to play the victim especially when it is far fetched to make that claim.

8. Make sure every message includes one or more of these themes: big, bad, socialized government; tax cuts never hikes; increases debt; dire security threat; and No.

9. Above all, use fear to the utmost, prey on insecurities and threaten disaster if liberal-Dems are allowed to do anything they propose.

Neocons-Repugs operate in reversed problem solving mode. Decide what will not work, think of all the ideas that will prove failure, select the best that will emotionally involve your audience and then make up whatever facts or evidence is needed to back up your claims. Here are some examples:

Men’s zippers that won’t stay zipped: When President Clinton unzipped his with an intern, the Repugs saw the most decadent, terrible man who should be impeached, yet when Neocon-Repug critters do it and do it often they are just normal men who have made a mistake. Joe Conoson in his Friday Salon piece put it this way, “Whenever the latest Republican politician is caught with his zipper undone, a predictable moment of introspection on the right inevitably ensues. Pundits, bloggers and perplexed citizens ruminate over the lessons they have learned, again and again, about human frailty, false piety and the temptations of flesh and power. They express concern for the damaged family and lament the fall of yet another promising young hypocrite. They resolve to restore the purity of their movement and always remember to remind us that this is all Bill Clinton’s fault. What they never do is face up to an increasingly embarrassing fact about themselves and their leaders.” The last two fallen unzippers, Ensign and Sanford, may be excommunicated from the Club because they didn’t make their wives stand by them during the press conference and actually seemed contrite about their betrayal. The hypocritical fact that both were loud objectors to Clinton’s, one-time, brief dalliance might save them as happened with Newt Gingrich.

Health care reform: Neocons-Repugs loudly proclaim they want the best health care that capitalism can provide yet don’t care how few people are covered or how many get screwed by the insurance companies. They don’t want Dems to let government control costs yet tell everyone that all the Dems want to do is spend money. They don’t want government rationing care, yet it is OK for insurance companies to dump any expensive clients and only insure healthier and wealthier clients like them. They don’t want to greatly increase government debt through a public option even though that option will offer serious competition that will significantly lower costs for everyone. They want health providers to be able to offer all the tests they want and thus let profit decide medical decisions even though government care has clearly proven that it allows doctors to make decisions that is best for the patient and does not allow money to be a significant factor and that is exactly what the congress critters have and use.

Terrorists and national security: They warn with trembling voice that the terrorists who number in the thousands are ready to invade our shores so we have to fight and kill them in other countries while ignoring all the resulting millions of innocents that are killed, injured, suffer greatly and become homeless or countryless. The Neocons-Repugs thump their chests believing American democracy and culture is so great that America must insist that all in the world should aspire to our greatness even though they encourage our CIA and policies that will force those ignorant nations to be a model democracy like America no matter the cost in money and lives. It is irrelevant that these nations have tyrannical and misogynistic leaders identical to evil empires as long as they promise to love America. It is also totally unnecessary to actually visit and study these countries’ culture and history because that could interfere with running the world.

Israel: The fact that Obama wants to stop the natural growth of settlements when the settlers live in such a dangerous environment shows he is an Arab appeaser yet when only a few settlers a year are injured or killed by unguided missiles its OK to slaughter almost 1,400 Gazans most of whom have absolutely no choice about where they live and due to Israeli oppression lose what little they have if they are fortunate enough to survive the killings and atrocities. Israel can demand any concessions from the Palestinians and when they don’t graciously accept, it is their fault that peace can’t be found. Greenwald in his Update III put it best Friday, “Goldfarb admits he thinks torture is tolerable when we do it to Them but not when They do it to us because — as he puts it — “Of Course We Are Superior and They Are Inferior ” (that, of course, is the very definition of “moral relativism,” which Goldfarb and his allies like to pretend they oppose even as they exemplify its core premise). And — other than a view that Muslims generally are inferior — what possible ground is there for claiming moral superiority over the numerous detainees at Guanatnamo and elsewhere who, even by the Bush administration’s reasoning, were guilty of nothing? Independently, it’s bizarre to hear someone proclaim themselves morally superior when, just a few months ago, they were celebrating the benefits of the wholesale slaughter of an entire extended family — including small children — in Gaza.” Then in most heinous, hypocritical logic that supassed any used for the Iraq invasion, the Neocons-Repugs blamed the Gazans for the atrocities that the Israelis had no choice to carry out because they were under such dire threat to their safety. So dire that the Gazans still have no right to try and recover because it was these enemies of Israel who caused the horror not Israeli policies and oppression and theft of the Palestinian homeland.

Iranian election: Neocons-Repugs say Iran almost has a nuclear weapon that can hit Israel so the crazy Iranian government has to be forced out through revolution. The Neocons-Repugs could care less about all the injuries and deaths that would occur to those Arabs (Persians) just as the Reagan Administration didn’t care about the more than one million Iranians that died in the Iran-Iraq war when we supported Saddam who later became the pariah who justified our war with Iraq. Since the Neocons-Repugs then refused any dialogue or contact with the Iranian government, its OK to be in the dark and believe the country and people froze in place since the Shah was ousted. Israel keeps in touch and absolutely knows that the threat is so dire that the U.S. or Israel must attack their nuclear facilities. The Neocons-Repugs warned Obama about his ridiculous idea of talking to the Iranians and because he isn’t strongly encouraging a revolution there will be no choice but to attack and soon.

Climate change: The Neocons-Repugs shout it’s colder than last winter somewhere, somehow so all those thousands of world scientists are blowing smoke about global warming even though the Neocons-Repugs have no scientific proof other than their gut feeling and having spent a long time on our planet. Any climate change bill that angers any lobbyists is wrong. The coal, oil and nuclear energy companies are critical to our economy and should not be hindered from doing their fine work. All the Dem legislation will do is add to our deficit and it can’t affect global warming since it doesn’t exist.

Commenters are more than welcome to add to these examples.