Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney starting to sound like another balding, rose-colored-glasses wearing war spokesman, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as "Baghdad Bob"?

Yesterday, after a week of serious criticism, for claiming that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes," Cheney refused to back down, even after Gen. John Abizaid, our top military commander for the Middle East, proclaimed that the insurgency, in fact, was as strong as ever, and "a lot of work" remained to be done to defeat it. Earlier this week, GOP Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska had said he was sick of sunny assertions about the war from the White House, and declared that the United States indeed might be losing, not on the edge of victory.

Yet Cheney said on Thursday, "If you look at what the dictionary says about 'throes,' it can still be a violent period." He compared this time to the end of World War II when tough battles "occurred just a few months before the end. I see this as a similar situation." Give this man a beret!

Is it time to start calling him "D.C. Dick"? Or "Baghdad Dick"? Or perhaps "Bunker Bob"?

These steps are great for the environment and great for our economy, too. Many people have falsely assumed that you have to choose between protecting the environment and protecting the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In California, we will do both.

That is why I am travelling around the state and my administration is holding a series of conservation summits for businesses around California, spreading the word that pollution reduction is good.

Pollution reduction has long been a money saver for businesses. It lowers operating costs, raises profits and creates new and expanded markets for environmental technology.

Although John Edwards isn't officially running for office, he is already courting a key constituency for a possible presidential bid in '08: left-leaning bloggers. Not only did the former VP candidate spend the week guest-blogging on TPMCafe, a new offshoot of the popular Talking Points Memo, but amid his postings on such issues as poverty and globalization, another blog disclosed that he had been the host of an off-the-record dinner with several bloggers at his house in Washington. "Gaining the loyalty of bloggers," noted TAPPED, "is not that hard to do if you just talk to them."

Steven Spielberg is hitting out at Hollywood for not rallying around John Kerry in the last election. The War of the Worlds director apparently feels the film industry wasn't vociferous enough in its support for the Bay State's junior senator. Apparently, Steven wasn't paying attention when Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, the Baldwins, etc. prostrated themselves before the pride of Louisburg Square. Because in an interview on an Australian chat show, Spielberg fumed, ``The Democratic Hollywood base, power base and money base really didn't come out this year and I was surprised about that.''

Howard Dean is "over the top,'' Vice President Dick Cheney says, calling the Democrats' chairman "not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party.'' "I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell,'' Cheney said in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes.''

Last Wednesday, Senator John Kerry told the editorial board of the newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the "Standard-Times," that he was amazed at the lack of American media coverage of the so-called "Downing Street Memo" — notes of a July, 2002 British cabinet meeting that suggested the U.S. was making all the evidence fit a pre-planned invasion of Iraq.

The words of the Democrats' 2004 standard-bearer?: "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue. I think (the memo) is a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth..."