Sixty-seven year old Dick Cheney endorses, John McCain, a man five years his senior.

UPDATE: Obama congratulates McCain:

I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney’s support.

The Los Angeles Times has a nice piece out today showing that EPA Chief Johnson overruled virtually his entire staff in rejecting California’s bid to regulate Greenhouse emissions.

The ruling, the Times points out, came just days after Dick Cheney met with executives from the auto industry:

“California met every criteria on the merits” one top staffer told the Times. “The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers.”

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So in addition to telling America last week that Global Warming is good for you, Presidential spokesperson Dana Perino insisted that the White-House’s edits to the Senate testimony of CDC Chief Julie Gerberding had not “watered down” the facts.

As we can see from the unedited version, that’s true. The document wasn’t watered down, it was water-boarded… until it rendered the version of facts the White House wants you to hear.

Let’s take a look at a few of the inconvenient truths that the censors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue found too objectionable to include:

Global warming will cause Katrina-like storms:

Catastrophic weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes are expected to become more frequent, severe, and costly.

Global warming will bring malaria and dengue to the states:

Climate change is likely to alter the current geographic distribution of some vector-borne and zoonotic diseases… such as plague, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, malaria, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and dengue fever; some may become more frequent, widespread, and outbreaks could last longer

Global warming might kill grandpa:

The United States is expected to see an increase in the severity, duration, and frequency of extreme heat waves. This, coupled with an aging population, increases the likelihood of higher mortality as the elderly are more vulnerable to dying from exposure to excessive heat. Midwestern and northeastern cities are at greatest risk.

Global warming makes more smog, lung disease:

Higher surface temperatures, especially in urban areas, encourage the formation of ground-level ozone. Ozone can irritate the respiratory system, reduce lung function, aggravate asthma, and inflame and damage cells that line the lungs. In addition, it may cause permanent lung damage and aggravate chronic lung diseases.

Global warming means water-shortages in the West:

The west coast of the United States is expected to experience significant strains on water supplies as regional precipitation declines and mountain snowpacks are depleted.

And — particularly inconvenient given the current so-Cal conflagrations — global warming means more wild fires!

Forest fires are expected to increase in frequency, severity, distribution, and duration.

It’s hard to be shocked anymore by the administration’s bald contempt for science and human health. But this what happens when you outsource global warming policy to Dick Cheney.

I’ve been reading Cheney’s Iran speech, and it’s clearer than ever that we’re in danger of getting snookered again.

First General Petraeus laid out damning, but damnably unsourced, intel about Iranian involvement in Iraq in his presentation to congress; now Dick Cheney is citing it as gospel in building his case for war:

This same regime that approved of hostage-taking in 1979, that attacked Saudi and Kuwaiti shipping in the 1980s, that incited suicide bombings and jihadism in the 1990s and beyond, is now the world’s most active state sponsor of terror. As to its next-door neighbor, Iraq, the Iranian government claims to be a friend that supports regional stability.

In fact, it is a force for the opposite. As General Petraeus has noted, Iran’s Quds Force is trying to set up a “Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and to fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.” At the same time, Iran is “responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and, in some cases, the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers.”

If the New Jesus said it, it must be true.

Lynne Cheney reveals her husband and Barack share an ancestor — making them eighth cousins, or something similarly grotesque. You know, I think I liked Obama better when he was related to Saddam and raised in a madrassa.

YouTube – Dick Cheney ‘94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

… and tell me what you think.

In a new poll by the American Research Group, a majority of Americans — including 51% of independents and 17% of Republicans (!) — said yes.

Is it time to impeach Dick Cheney?

Judging from those numbers I’m a bit baffled Democrats haven’t made a serious (i.e. : non-Kucinich-led) stab at it already.