Foot, meet ass.

It's rare to see your neo-con delusions come up so forcefully and embarrassingly against actual reality. Remember this guy?

And that is what I love about the United States. It means protection for those living in tyranny, freedom & equality for all, human rights and brotherhood to me and billions of people on this planet.

So I'm guessing that guy is keeping a really low profile today, given the following swift boot to the nethers (all emphasis added):

Vice President Dick Cheney looked ahead Tuesday to a three-nation, six-day trip designed to nurture democracy and advance U.S. interests in lands where political change doesn't always come easily...

There were other complicating factors, none more so than in Kazakhstan.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the ex-Soviet republic for 16 years, has come under criticism recently for becoming increasingly authoritarian.

So what's the appeal of Kazakhstan? Whoops, sorry ... that was an amazingly stupid question:

... Kazakhstan has a strategic location, sharing borders with both China and Russia. It also holds vast energy resources at a time of increasing global demand for oil and gas supplies.

So ... any more tin-pot dictators on the agenda? Why, sure:

In that vein, Nazarbayev is the third foreign leader to receive personal attention from the Bush administration in recent weeks despite persistent concerns about a willingness to tolerate freedom.

Bush met recently with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, at the White House.

And Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice greeted Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema as "a good friend." He seized power in a 1979 coup and his government has been regularly accused by the State Department of human rights violations, including torture and deaths of prisoners.

Sorry ... you were saying?