Apparently there’s some confusion about what “the Right” in America is over the pond. Not to mention who are “top Republicans”:

In his audacious attack on a sitting president last week, Mr Cheney declared that America was less safe from terrorism after Mr Obama’s decision to abandon violent interrogation methods and close Guantanamo.

But once the cheering had died down on talk radio and cable television, discordant voices emerged from the Right to challenge Mr Cheney’s defence of the Bush-era legacy.

“Yeah, I disagree with Dick Cheney,” said Tom Ridge, who was appointed by the Bush-Cheney administration to set up and run the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on America.

The other “top Republican” “from the Right” quoted is John McCain, who formed part of the political tag team with George Bush who seemed to do their best to squeeze the last drops of “the Right” out of the party. We just had the stark contrast of speeches on national security between a perpetual campaigner and vague spinner, and a statesman speaks his mind as always, and these squishes are whining about it. Pathetic.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oh, and Tom Ridge is an idiot:

Mr Ridge spoke out after back-to-back “dueling” speeches on national security by Mr Obama and Mr Cheney on Thursday. He took issue with much of what Mr Obama had to say, but particularly disliked Mr Cheney’s response.

“It’s just the whole notion of a Republican vice president giving a speech after the incumbent Democratic president,” Mr Ridge told CNN. “It’s gotta go beyond the politics of either party.”

The Cheney speech was planned weeks in advance. What was he supposed to do, cancel at the last minute so that he wouldn’t make The One look bad when he scheduled his to come first?

This is long overdue, I think. I’d sure like to see it go somewhere.

…the bastards:

“In talking to different organizations that did focus groups and polling throughout the process and also organizations that did exit polling afterwards, it was really clear that voters were giving us a very specific message– This is too complicated. We don’t want to vote on it. We are fatigued with the number of elections we’ve had especially special elections and we want you to go back to Sacramento and resolve this.”

The problem, of course, with this self-serving theory, is that it doesn’t explain the single “Yes” vote to deprive these looters of their pay raises if they can’t balance the budget. I’m going to go with Occam here — the California voters are fed up with spending and taxes. I know that I was when I lived there, and that was five years ago. It’s only gotten worse since.

Related bonus: another good reason that newspapers are dying.

I continue to be amazed that people think that this president is honest, when there is such a huge ongoing gap between words and deeds. Who was foolish enough to believe that he would actually cut the federal budget? Of course, as was the case with many of his campaign promises, I assume that his supporters just assumed and hoped that he was lying.

I think, sadly, that Mickey is right:

I had a revealing argument with a politically sophisticated friend–call him “Max”– when the “game changer” charge first surfaced. Max’s argument: Suppose it were a scandal sufficiently big to sink Obama. Any red-blooded Times reporter would be proud to publish it and tack Obama’s scalp to the wall. To have taken down a presidential nominee–that would be a professional achievement, maybe a Pulitzer. They’d be high-fiving in the newsroom.

I think my friend is right about the culture of the newsroom–about 45 years ago. As for today, I think he’s living in a dreamworld. Even if the Times had published such a story, Times reporters would certainly not have high-fived the colleague who’d cost Obama the election. Not after two terms of Bush. And I have no faith the paper would even have published it (before allowing the reporter to slink out of the building). In part, that’s because I have no faith that I’d publish it. The old adversarial ethic–I play my role and let the system take care of the moral consequences–rightly went mostly out the window with the ascension of the Sixties cohort.

Yes, the cohort that thinks it won the Vietnam war (not the one to keep South Vietnam to go communist, but rather the one at home against the Amerikkkan fascist pigs who thought that not going communist was a good idea). And now they work to make sure that America never again wins a war, and that people who favor free minds and free markets never win elections.

…and creeping, creepy ecofascism:

Isn’t it interesting how Dad looks like the sort of delayed-adolescent types most likely to be already concerned about these things, and spending his day working on developing websites for sustainability, hosted on servers powered by methane captured from pig excreta? For that matter, who would like this ad? Wives who regard their husbands as overgrown boys in need of the Moral Guidance of those who will inherit the earth, perhaps…

…One more thing: if the kid didn’t learn these steps to righteousness at home, where did he get them?

The state knows best.