Dick Cheney is no Darth Vader.
Shorter Dick Cheney --> Regret? No, no, agh! Quelle horreur!
or
Shortest Dick Cheney --> Regret? Wha-? HellNO!
What is it with the concept/emotion of regret and people thinking it's a bad idea? I should perhaps clarify -- it may be an emotion for some people but not for most. Regret appears to be an emotion people regret or shirk away from. Take for example -- Richard Cheney, (mostly known as Lynn's Dick, amongst my friends...) to whom regret is more a concept and one to which he gives a wide berth.
Feeling a normal emotion, like regret, may be too complicated for Dick Cheney, outgoing VP, who played a central role in promulgating controversial policies such as domestic wiretapping, using tactics of torture on detainees, and who came out of the Cheney Bunker proclaiming, in recent interviews, that this outgoing administration would have gone to war with Iraq, even if there had been no erroneous intelligence attaching Saddam Hussein to possession of weapons of mass destruction. Now that's a tough man, no?
Umn, no.
Not even when he waxes nostalgic about the fact that the current president is always accompanied with a --
"football" which carries nuclear codes which could "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress; he doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in. It's unfortunate, but I think we're perfectly appropriate to take the steps we have."
Mr. VP really wishes someone would follow him with that nuclear football.
But the really good news, this night before the eve of Christmas is that Darth Vader and Dick Cheney are not related! I know Darth Vader (so do you - go to your nearest Blockbuster) and Dick Cheney is no Darth Vader. I reject, renounce and denounce the use of the later as his nickname. Darth Vader, at the end, found his humanity, felt love and regret and turned away from the dark side.
Oh so fucking recommended, my sweet eye girl.
Oh so fucking rec'd.
In this fragile little bubble called Earth, we need someone like this Dick telling us what he dreams could've been?? Should've been??
I think not.
December 24, 2008 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, LisB!! ;)
So true, what you say about our beautiful blue planet being a fragile bubble.
That quote about launching devastating attacks was chilling when I read it this morning. He sounds like he experiencing something almost sexual when he talks like that, which is, like, totally ewwwwww!
On another note, LisB, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Festivus to you!
December 24, 2008 1:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Happy Everything to you too.
December 24, 2008 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
This reminds me of Redd Foxx. He is constantly grabbing his chest and being sent to the hospital.
He has had fifty five heart surgeries and still lives.
Nothing can kill this guy.
I noted in another blog that Cheney also reminds me of John C. Calhoun. The single worst person ever to reach the Senate or the VP's office. He would stand up in the Senate of the United States and BRAG about being a slave owner.
Cheney stands up (unless he sits down attached to some machine) and says;
TORTURE IS A GOOD THING
LYING ABOUT GETTING INTO A WAR IS A GOOD THING
WE HAVE NOT HAD TERRORIST ATTACKS BECAUSE OF WHAT I HAVE DONE
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS CANNOT BE RESTORED UNTIL THE WAR ON TERRORISM (which has been going on for 5,000 years) IS OVER.
You cannot talk to this guy. You cannot argue with this guy.
It is like arguing to a wall with a mechanical heart.
December 24, 2008 1:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
And Elizabeth rolls around in her grave every time Cheney's pacemaker has a hiccup.
Poor Elizabeth.
December 24, 2008 1:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a drawing framed and hanging in my living room, done by a friend of mine who as a young boy fought with the Italian resistance during WWII. It depicts a muscular man in loincloth, lifting a barbell that resembles a human femur held at his knees, and a large pear balanced on his left shoulder. The title of the drawing is 'Strong Man with Pear'. When discussing the drawing with me my friend, Marco, began by describing the kind of strong men like Mussolini. A rigid strength, and unbending will, who would lead men to their graves without losing sleep over it. In short, a false strength. Then he added as an aside that phonetically, 'pear' translates as 'fart' in his native tongue. Cheney is such a strong man. I fart in his general direction. Rec'd.
December 24, 2008 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Heh, good comparison. And, yeah, thanks. ;)
*running away while holding a large bandana to my nose*
December 24, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Loved it. Great way to take a mistaken metaphor out of play. Darth Vader had an arc that took him from being a Jedi through the darkest of the dark side and out the other end. I doubt Cheney ever had a light side to go back to.
December 24, 2008 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, he does not have a light side, at least none he's allowed us to see. And now has only WY to take him. Too bad and really too sad for WY, which actually happens to be a beautiful state, especially, like, around the Wind River Range, not to mention Yellowstone.
December 24, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some of my people come from Wyoming and I spent many years right next door in Colorado. Like Kansas, Wyoming was one of the first places in the Union to embrace progressive ideals. Just goes to show that the nicest of places can spawn the nastiest of people.
December 24, 2008 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe you are right, jason. But I would not be surprised to in fact see Cheney, too, sometime dropped out of the "other end," right into the toilet of history where the emperor Cheney's royal flush awaits.
December 24, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hah. ;)
Good one.
December 24, 2008 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
From the toilet he came and so to the toilet he goes? Makes sense to me!
December 24, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
We don't want to insult Darth Vader by comparing him to Dick Cheney :)
December 24, 2008 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, Darth Vader had aspirations.
December 24, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Totally spot-on! Love it.
December 24, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
;)
December 24, 2008 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cheney, with his actions and his "mentoring" influence over Dummy W, has done massive damage to our country and world over the last 8 years. Thanks, Yva, for shining a light on his twisted grotesquery. This is what happens when an embittered paranoid personality directs the federal government. It drags us all into the darkness. I feel like we need a national exorcism!
December 24, 2008 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Me too. In all sorts of ways. I'm hoping we will move away from the sentimentality of politically correct thinking into the political where we can do the right thing for our communities instead of getting mired in self regarding sentimentalism of outrage.
December 24, 2008 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Cheney said. That whole riff, the noise of a monster. No regrets, no pain, just aching to do it do it do it.
Thanatos in a hard shell.
December 24, 2008 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome, quinnesque.
Thanatos. ;)
Except the damn Romans gave him -- Thanatos -- an almost Cupidesque form.
The greeks and
Waterhouse of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood depicted it one way. Jeeez, does that mean that we have been in the thrall of Hypnos and Thanatos.
December 24, 2008 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
They'd have gone to war with Iraq even if there had been "no faulty intelligence" -- of course we know that, since they made up the "faulty" intelligence in the Office of Special Plans and at the various warmonger think tanks to which Cheney's friends belong.
December 24, 2008 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink