President Cheney?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Bush to cede power to VP during colonoscopy

WASHINGTON - President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers over to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House said.

Press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure done at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat.

He last underwent colorectal cancer surveillance on June 29, 2002.

"As reported at the time and in subsequent physical exams, absent any symptoms, the president's doctor recommended repeat surveillance in approximately five years," Snow said. "The president has had no symptoms."

Polyps found
Two polyps were discovered during examinations in 1998 and 1999 while Bush was governor of Texas. That made Bush a prime candidate for regular examinations. For the general population, a colonoscopy to screen for colon cancer is recommended every 10 years. But for people at higher risk, or if a colonoscopy detects precancerous polyps, follow-up colonoscopies often are scheduled in three- to five-year intervals.

"Although no polyps were noted in the exam in 2002, age and history would suggest that there's a reasonable chance that polyps will be noted this time," Snow said. "If so, they'll be removed and evaluated microscopically."

He said results would be available after 48 to 72 hours, if not sooner.

The procedure will be supervised by Dr. Richard Tubb, the president's doctor, and conducted by a multidisciplinary team from the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. Because the president will be under the effects of anesthesia, he has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, making Cheney acting president until Bush indicates he is prepared to reassume his authority.

Cheney held power in 2002
In 2002, Bush transferred presidential powers to Cheney for more than two hours.

It was only the second time in history that the Constitution's presidential disability clause was invoked. President Reagan was the first to invoke the Constitution's 25th Amendment since its adoption in 1967 as a means of dealing with presidential disability and succession.

The earlier colonoscopy for Bush also was done at the well-equipped medical facility at Camp David near Thurmont, Md. Bush felt well enough afterward to play with his dogs and take a 4 1/2-mile walk with the first lady and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his wife. He then went to the gym for a light workout.

The 2002 procedure began at 7:09 a.m and ended at 7:29 a.m. Bush woke up two minutes later but did not resume his presidential office until 9:24 a.m., after Tubb conducted an overall examination. Tubb said he recommended the additional time to make sure the sedative had no aftereffects.


May God help us all if something happens to Bush.. I think Bush has hurt this country however Dick would take it (USA) to hell with him..

[Oh, Gee!!]

Invasion of Iran by noon Saturday. Book it!!

[IceColdBrewski]

Cheney has always been in charge. Bush is just his puppet.

[/boutons]

[Condemned 2 HelLA]

Bush getting a colonoscopy?
The joke pretty much writes itself, dont you think?

[Oh, Gee!!]

You better not say it, or you might hurt someone's feelings

[Yonivore]

Bush getting a colonoscopy?
The joke pretty much writes itself, dont you think?
Not for people with colo-rectal cancer.

[DarkReign]

Cheney has always been in charge. Bush is just his puppet.

[/boutons]

And anybody who has heard the president try and pronounce the word "nuclear".

[Yonivore]

And anybody who has heard the president try and pronounce the word "nuclear".
Har, har, har. Do you know how long presidents have been mispronouncing nuclear? I think I've heard it joked about through, at least, the past 6 presidencies.

In fact, there used to be a conspiracy (Nbadan probably knows) that the mispronuciation was part of some secret code thingie doogie.

Clinton has mispronounced, As did the first Bush, Reagan, Carter, and probably Nixon.

[Oh, Gee!!]

And anybody who has heard the president try and pronounce the word "nuclear".


nucular

[DarkReign]

Har, har, har. Do you know how long presidents have been mispronouncing nuclear? I think I've heard it joked about through, at least, the past 6 presidencies.

In fact, there used to be a conspiracy (Nbadan probably knows) that the mispronuciation was part of some secret code thingie doogie.

Clinton has mispronounced, As did the first Bush, Reagan, Carter, and probably Nixon.

To even put Bush in the same sentence with those other Presidents does a disservice to them. They were intelligent and Presidential. Bush is neither.

Our first puppet President (that I have any knowledge of, they say Reagan was a real wreck at the end of his second term) and youre lauding him.

[boutons_]

Apparently, dickhead has swayed dubya back towards taking military action against Iran in the remaining 18 months, after the dubya had earlier swayed towards Condi and diplomacy.

Plenty of time for them to continue the unbroken string of major fuckups, and leave even a bigger mess for the next Exec.

======================

Strategy on Iran Stirs New Debate at White House
By Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger
The New York Times Saturday 16 June 2007

Washington - A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran's nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney's office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems.

Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran's leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country's facilities is still an option.

Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.

Even so, friends and associates of Ms. Rice who have talked with her recently say she has increasingly moved toward the European position that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for Mr. Bush, even though it has so far failed to deter Iran from enriching uranium, and that a military strike would be disastrous.

The accounts were provided by officials at the State Department, White House and the Pentagon who are on both sides of the debate, as well as people who have spoken with members of Mr. Cheney's staff and with Ms. Rice. The officials said they were willing to explain the thinking behind their positions, but would do so only on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Bush has publicly vowed that he would never "tolerate" a nuclear Iran, and the question at the core of the debate within the administration is when and whether it makes sense to shift course.

( dubya vows a lot of shit, "dead or alive", but doesn't follow up. Talk is cheap for fakers )

The issue was raised at a closed-door White House meeting recently when the departing deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch, told senior officials that President Bush needed an assessment of how the stalemate over Iran's nuclear program was likely to play out over the next 18 months, said officials briefed on the meeting.

In response, R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state who is the chief American strategist on Iran, told the group that negotiations with Tehran could still be going on when Mr. Bush leaves office in January 2009. The hawks in the room reported later that they were deeply unhappy - but not surprised - by Mr. Burns's assessment, which they interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment that the Bush administration had no "red line" beyond which Iran would not be permitted to step.

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly. "Regime change or the use of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if they want it," said John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

( Pakistan already has nukes and looks to becoming unravelled, Mushareff looks shaky, and the FATAs are a real, imeediate threat, but these want to bomb Iran? insane Dr. Strangeloves, jerking themselves off in the same self-congratulating echo chamber that led into the Iraq disaster. )

Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney's top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice's diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.

The vice president's office has declined to talk about Mr. Wurmser's statements, and says Mr. Cheney is fully on board with the president's strategy. In a June 1 article for Commentary magazine, the neoconservative editor Norman Podhoretz laid out what a headline described as "The Case for Bombing Iran."

"In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force - any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938," Mr. Podhoretz wrote.

Mr. Burns and officials from the Treasury Department have been trying to use the mounting conservative calls for a military strike to press Europe and Russia to expand economic sanctions against Iran. Just last week, Israel's transportation minister and former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, visited Washington and told Ms. Rice that sanctions must be strong enough to get the Iranians to stop enriching uranium by the end of 2007.

While Mr. Mofaz did not threaten a military strike, Israeli officials said he told Ms. Rice that by the end of the year, Israel "would have to reassess where we are."

The State Department and Treasury officials are pushing for a stronger set of United Nations Security Council sanctions against members of Iran's government, including an extensive travel ban and further moves to restrict the ability of Iran's financial institutions to do business outside of Iran. Beyond that, American officials have been trying to get European and Asian banks to take additional steps, outside of the Security Council, against Iran.

"We're saying to them, 'Look, you need to help us make the diplomacy succeed, and you guys need to stop business as usual with Iran,'" an administration official said. "We're not just sitting here ignoring reality."

But the fallout from the Iraq war has severely limited the Bush administration's ability to maneuver on the Iran nuclear issue and has left many in the administration, and certainly America's allies and critics in Europe, firmly against military strikes on Iran. On Thursday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the international nuclear watchdog agency, warned anew that military action against Iran would "be an act of madness."

( With Iraq, dubya and dickhead shot themselves in foot in many ways )

The debate over "red lines" is a familiar one inside the Bush White House that last arose in 2002 over North Korea. When the North Koreans threw out international inspectors on the last day of that year and soon declared that they planned to reprocess 8,000 rods of spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium, President Bush had to decide whether to declare that if North Korea moved toward weapons, it could face a military strike on its facilities.

The Pentagon had drawn up an extensive plan for taking out those facilities, though with little enthusiasm, because it feared it could not control North Korea's response, and the administration chose not to delivery any ultimatum. North Korea tested a nuclear weapon last October, and American intelligence officials estimate it now has the fuel for eight or more weapons.

Iran is far behind the North Koreans; it is believed to be three to eight years away from its first weapon, American intelligence officials have told Congress. Conservatives argue that if the administration fails to establish a line over which Iran must not step, the enrichment of uranium will go ahead, eventually giving the Iranians fuel that, with additional enrichment out of the sight of inspectors, it could use for weapons.

To date, however, the administration has been hesitant about saying that it will not permit Iran to produce more than a given amount of fuel, out of concern that Iran's hard-liners would simply see that figure as a goal.

In the year since the United States made its last offer to Iran, the Iranians have gone from having a few dozen centrifuges in operation to building a facility that at last count, a month ago, had more than 1,300. "The pace of negotiations have lagged behind the pace of the Iranian nuclear program," said Robert Joseph, the former under secretary of state for international security, who left his post partly over his opposition to the administration's recent deal with North Korea.

===================

Attacking Iran would cement the current very unpopular Iranian leadership into place for many years.

Iran has a huge young population that is fed up with the revolutionary authoritarain, religious assholes running the country. Apparently, the Iranian people are one of the most pro-US/pro-Western populations of any Muslim country. Attacking Iran would change that pro-US stance.

[Yonivore]

To even put Bush in the same sentence with those other Presidents does a disservice to them. They were intelligent and Presidential. Bush is neither.
Yeah, okay.


Our first puppet President (that I have any knowledge of, they say Reagan was a real wreck at the end of his second term) and youre lauding him.
Who's "they?"

[PixelPusher]

Invasion of Iran by noon Saturday. Book it!!
With plenty of time leftover to write up a Presidential pardon too...

[Wild Cobra]

With plenty of time leftover to write up a Presidential pardon too...
That's it. It's all a conspiracy so pardons can be issued and not be president Bush's fault.

Really now... Give me a break from these unfounded conspiracies.

[Wild Cobra]

Bush getting a colonoscopy?
The joke pretty much writes itself, dont you think?
Well, how much do you know of Murphy's Law?

He has several more laws, and if he doesn't get you, Kharma will. I don't know the exact wording, but people who joke about harmful things upon others will recieve the joke...

[Wild Cobra]

To even put Bush in the same sentence with those other Presidents does a disservice to them. They were intelligent and Presidential. Bush is neither.
President Bush is more intelligent than people give him credit for. So what, he's a very bad orator. Lacks charisma.\

That's right though, the libs like the phonies and glitz, don't they?

Our first puppet President (that I have any knowledge of, they say Reagan was a real wreck at the end of his second term) and youre lauding him.
He is no puppet. He just believe in ways that even most us conservatives don't line up with completely. He is an honorable man, and I really don't see how he can be accused of being a puppet.

[Wild Cobra]

Har, har, har. Do you know how long presidents have been mispronouncing nuclear? I think I've heard it joked about through, at least, the past 6 presidencies.

You know, I pulled out a few of my several dictionaries, and found these different pronunciations:

1906 Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged:
nū’clēăr

1948 The New Century Dictionary:
nŭ’klē-är

1974 New Collegiate Dictionary:
‘n(y)ü-klē-ər or ‘n(y)ü-kyə-lər

1989 The New Lexicon; Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language:
nứ:kli:ər, njứ:kli:ər

1996 Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary:
nōō’klē ər

[xrayzebra]

What is really scary, something happens to
Cheney, Pelosi becomes President!

And on pronunciation: How about JFK
and Cuber.

[boutons_]

"That's right though, the libs like the phonies and glitz, don't they?"

Repugs liked Hollywood-glitzy Reagan's ability to deliver his lines.

dubya's problem isn't just bad oration and total lack of charisma and charm.

The childish simplicity of his speech, the lack of ideas, betrays a way below average ability of ideation, of relating ideas to each other. iow, he's just fucking stupid, just the way the Repug string-pulling Edgars like their Charlie McCarthy presidents.

[exstatic]

Darth Dick is watching you, RIGHT NOW!!!

[DarkReign]

Who's "they?"

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1126442.htm

Like I said, it has been "claimed". I never said I believed it. Doctor's that did analysis never confirmed it, etc, etc.

It was just a rumor.

[Wild Cobra]

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1126442.htm

Like I said, it has been "claimed". I never said I believed it. Doctor's that did analysis never confirmed it, etc, etc.

It was just a rumor.
Liberal propaganda that turned out to be something later, but I'll bet coincidence.

I don't think he had any mental ailments while he was president. I think someone would have come forward now that he is dead, and 26 years have past since he left office. President Reagan was my commander in Chief for 7-3/4 years. I joined in September 1981. For his last three years, I was in the communications field directly supporting JCS, Airborne Command Post, and a few other acronyms. I think I would have heard some rumor from the top if any of those allegations of his mental health were true. I'm sure he was stressed dealing with the soviets, and that I'm sure took a toll on him. I have never heard anyone be able to show evidence his Alzheimer’s affected him while in office.

[PixelPusher]

That's it. It's all a conspiracy so pardons can be issued and not be president Bush's fault.

Really now... Give me a break from these unfounded conspiracies.


:lol I got the idea for this "conspiracy" from a readers poll on instapundit.com

EDIT: update - the National Review Online is joining in the "conspiracy" fun too. (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjBjYjhiYjBjNTc1YTljZjc1ZDg5YjFjZjliMDExZmQ=)


A Busy Saturday [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Readers are really into Cheney being president for awhile. Suggestions for Acting President Cheney include

Bomb Iran.
Commute the sentences of those border agents.
Fire Mike Chertoff.
Tell Harry Reid to ... well, you know...
Pardon Scooter.

UPDATE: An e-mail:

Three hours wouldn't be long enough to actually bomb Iran, given the necessary flight time. But ICBM's can be there in about a half-hour.
In addition, I think President Cheney should have a target practice session out by Rose Garden...

[boutons_]

"I don't think he had any mental ailments while he was president. "

one doesn't, can't get Alzheimer's overnight. It grows slowly over decades. Reagan definitely had the beginnings of Alzheimer's while he was president. Alzheimer's victims an be pretty strange and messed up for years before they have clinincal diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

[Oh, Gee!!]

5 Polyps Removed From Bush's Colon
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070721/bush-colonoscopy/

[Nbadan]

Speaking of ass-polyps, Cheney's wild-ways started at a young age...


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dick Cheney once considered the vice presidency a "cruddy job" but got over his misgivings and went on to be arguably the most powerful No. 2 in U.S. politics, and one of the most heavily criticized.

The 66-year-old Cheney's stoic, no-nonsense demeanor and influence in many White House decisions are in stark contrast to his youthful days when he was caught twice for drunk driving in Wyoming and dropped out of Yale University for bad grades.

Cheney's life has been chronicled in a fairly sympathetic biography by Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard conservative magazine. He spent nearly 30 hours in one-on-one interviews with the normally reticent Cheney for the book.

In his research Hayes found that Cheney in 1996 called the vice presidency a "cruddy job," which his political mentor, President Gerald Ford, had hated. But by 2000 Cheney was persuaded to accept when George W. Bush offered the position.

Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1837490820070723)

How bad do your grades have to be where even skull and bones won't bail you?

[fyatuk]

The childish simplicity of his speech, the lack of ideas, betrays a way below average ability of ideation, of relating ideas to each other. iow, he's just fucking stupid, just the way the Repug string-pulling Edgars like their Charlie McCarthy presidents.

Lack of ideas? Bush has put forth many fairly original ideas. You're seriously short-changing him on that one. I'm not saying they were all good ideas, but he's proposed a lot of interesting things over the past 6 years.

Relating ideas to each other is a whole 'nother issue. I won't even argue that one.

[boutons_]

"Bush has put forth many fairly original ideas"

HIS ideas? He's a puppet/stooge of the neo-cunts and Repug string pullers.

Just listen to him talk extemporaneously, or in the debates, and anybody can see at very, very most generous, he got average intelligence (C student fuck-off at Yale), and way below average in communications skills.

[fyatuk]

"Bush has put forth many fairly original ideas"

HIS ideas? He's a puppet/stooge of the neo-cunts and Repug string pullers.

Just listen to him talk extemporaneously, or in the debates, and anybody can see at very, very most generous, he got average intelligence (C student fuck-off at Yale), and way below average in communications skills.

That's why several of the things he's put forth like his guest worker program have ticked off the Neo-Con base? A lot of his early domestic agenda was more in line with Democrat ideals than Republican/Neo-con. Bush became a puppet when he agreed to invade Iraq. At that point he became so reliant on his base he lost his ability to do what he wanted.

Also, I can pretty much guarantee that a President hasn't put forth their original idea in probably at least a century. They have advisors to come up with the the plans and they just push the ones they like.

I wasn't trying to say he was extremely intelligent. He seems to be of average intelligence and below average social skills (just about the same as Kerry in both). There's not really any way to argue better than that for Bush.

[xrayzebra]

May God help us all if something happens to Bush.. I think Bush has hurt this country however Dick would take it (USA) to hell with him..

Lifted this from Rush Limbaugh, but I wanted to share.



President Bush had five polyps removed from his colon over the weekend. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Carl Levin and Dick Durbin are all doing fine.

:toast

[Nbadan]

Polyps are benign...


ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports: Five small polyps, or growths removed from President Bush's colon were benign, or non-cancerous, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters Monday.

"The president is in good health, there's no reason for alarm," said Snow, who himself beat colon cancer but was diagnosed in March with a re occurrence of cancer that has attached to his liver.

Snow said the President will have a follow-up colonoscopy in three years, rather than waiting the usual five years, because polyps were discovered.

Linky (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/president-bushs.html)

I wonder if the Prez had a simultaneous endoscopy, that's important too...

[boutons_]

"his guest worker program have ticked off the Neo-Con base"

nothing original about his proposition. He did what his business backers wanted, not what his ideological backers wanted.

[Nbadan]

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/steve_bell/2007/07/23/stevebell512ready.jpg

[Nbadan]

Just in case you have any lingering doubts who is really running things...


Then he goes on to review a memo that Gonzales himself signed, actually extending the structure Ashcroft set in place. And while Ashcroft's memo made several attempts to tamp down this structure, in key ways he opened it up, explicitly for the Fourth Branch. Whitehouse describes how the memo describes that the lines of communication open to the White House will "apply in parallel fashion in communications with the OVP." And then he points specifically to a paragraph at the end of the memo reiterating the communications open to OVP. Gonzales, typically, claims to have no idea how those items got into a memo he signed personally.

Whitehouse: What on earth business does the OVP wrt ongoing investigations at DOJ.

AGAG: Good question.

Whitehouse: Why is it here then. I'd like to know how that addition was made. Once again, final paragraph, set off by asterisks, that undermines everything set out in previous paragraphs. President, VP, then you add their Chiefs of Staff, Counsel to the President, or Vice President. Somebody took the trouble to write in Counsel to VP and give them access to ongoing investigations.

AGAG: I don't know if that has happened.

.........................

Lovely. Cheney--whose own Chief of Staff was indicted and convicted for impeding an ongoing investigation--now has usurped access to ongoing investigations, for himself, his Chief of Staff, and his Counsel, courtesy of AGAG. David Addington, the architect of the Unitary Executive, now gets to know what DOJ is doing with ongoing investigations. AGAG is doing marvelous work in DOJ.

Linky (http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/)