I swear, you read the news and sometimes you just have to shake your head and laugh, or cry. This AP article, headlined “Cheney Says Hopes of World Rest on U.S.,” quotes him as saying that “the hopes of the civilized world ride with us. Our cause is right, it is just and this nation will prevail.”
Sure. And Cheney, speaking to the National Automobile Dealers Association convention, also was quoted as saying that modern automobiles are “marvels of design, performance and reliability. … You’re part of the reason America remains among the strongest economies in the world.”
I thought — is that the economy I’m watching? The economy I am watching has soaring deficits, massive unmet infrastructure-repair needs, unsustainable health-care costs, massive defaults by major corporations on retirement promises made over decades to their workers, two-income families because two incomes are needed to keep the family afloat, an ongoing meltdown of the real estate sector, GM and Ford and Chrysler all losing market share because they continue to build gas guzzling cars that don’t meet our needs, — shall I go on?
What is this guy smoking? But then, this is the same leadership that promised that our invasion of a soverigh country (Iraq) would naturally result in the people of that country throwing flowers at our troops. You’ve seen how that has been working out.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday California’s attorney general sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers for causing millions of dollars in damage through vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. The federal lawsuit is intended to hold the auto industry accountable for their contribution to climate change, since motor vehicles are the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state.
I guess California hasn’t heard Cheney’s opinion of the auto industry.
Cheney Says Hopes of World Rest on U.S.
By TOM RAUM
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; 9:24 PM
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney cast the global war on terror on Tuesday as a “war of nerves,” borrowing a phrase Harry Truman used to describe the Cold War. Cheney asserted that the hopes of the civilized world depend on a U.S. victory.
“We are not going to let down our guard,” Cheney told a convention of automobile dealers. He said President Bush “will not relent in the effort to track the enemies of the United States with every legitimate tool at his command.”
Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said that any legislation on interrogating terrorism suspects must preserve our intelligence programs and must protect classified information from terrorists. (Melina Mara — The Washington Post)
He defended the administration’s warrantless wiretapping and detainee programs, both subject to criticism from Democrats and some members of his own Republican party.
Cheney characterized as “just plain wrong” a federal judge’s ruling earlier this month rejecting the administration’s plea to throw out a lawsuit over the wiretapping program. “We hope it will be reversed on appeal,” the vice president said.
U.S. District Judge Garr King in Portland, Ore., said he was not persuaded by the administration’s argument that going ahead with the case would harm national security. It was the latest of several differing rulings on a program the administration says is essential to fight terrorism, but that civil-liberties groups decry as an overreaching of presidential authority.
Cheney said that, to President Truman, the term Cold War was “an expression he never much cared for and seldom used. He called it the war of nerves. When you think about it, that’s an apt description of the kind of challenge America is now facing.”
“The war on terror is a test of our strength, a test of our capabilities, and above all a test of our character,” Cheney said.
“We know that the hopes of the civilized world ride with us. Our cause is right, it is just and this nation will prevail,” Cheney added.
Speaking to the National Automobile Dealers Association, Cheney suggested that the U.S. economy was firing on all cylinders and seldom has been stronger. He credited Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and urged Congress to finish work on making them permanent.
Cheney told the dealers that modern automobiles are “marvels of design, performance and reliability. … You’re part of the reason America remains among the strongest economies in the world.”
Cheney recalled that his own first car was a 1949 Chevrolet with several hundred thousand miles on it “which I drove with not much skill but plenty of enthusiasm. It had a lot of power. As I could recall, I could pretty much pass anything on the road except filling stations.”