Dickie's quickies

Tiki-Tim's has some new Halloween postings: albums featuring The Munsters and, separately, Boris Karloff.

U.S. News is reporting that some members of the White House staff are considering what would happen if Dick Cheney is prosecuted and resigns. They do admit it's idle speculation at the moment, but some have floated Kindasleazy Rice as a possibility. There is some opposition to such a notion:

The rumor spread so fast that some Republicans by late morning were already drawing up reasons why Rice couldn't get the job or run for president in 2008.

"Isn't she pro-choice?" asked a key Senate Republican aide. Many White House insiders, however, said the Post story and reports that the investigation was coming to a close had officials instead more focused on who would be dragged into the affair and if top aides would be indicted and forced to resign.

The key Senate Republican aide did not go on to say, "My God, and she's a woman, too. Plus, she's black, which puts her one step behind Libby Dole. And who would take her seriously with that back to front comb over? Did you know she got a melatonin transplant from Michael Jackson? Just a rumor, but I've heard whispers."

The Financial Times is reporting that Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Chief of Staff, confidant, and friend to Colin Powell for 16 years, is the latest former staffer to break his silence on his views on what has gone wrong in this White House. Long quote from the article:

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

...

Among his other charges:

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

■ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

So, Kindasleazy Rice would side with her husband the president to build her intimacy with her husband the president? Maybe she is in for the VP job?