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Un-Cheney My Heart

As the great Ray Charles would sing:  “Unchain My Heart, baby let me be, Unchain My Heart 'cause you don't care about me.  You've got me sewed up like a pillow case but you let my love go to waste so Unchain My Heart, oh please, please set me free.”

Well, in an attempt to get a little closer into the heart and mind- -mostly the heart- -of Dick Cheney, this week I sacrificed myself on the cardiologist’s cold slab table and underwent an angioplasty, with all the trimmin’s, complete with cardiac stent.  Of course, Cheney, with four heart attacks and a pacemaker, has me beat, but then, he’s older than I am, and he has a better insurance plan- -not the one with the screaming duck.  I just wanted to see what a new lease on life might feel like after the clearing of an artery that was more than 99% blocked.  Now that it’s over with, I highly recommend it should you get to that point in life where all the road food catches up with you.

Of course Vice President Pork Butt probably eats a little better on the road than old-school roadhouse musicians like yours truly.  Them thar honky-tonks don’t exactly serve up the same vi’tt’als as Republican fundraisers.  They’re eating chicken and peas with mashed potatoes and gravy while we’re staring at week-old bar sandwiches and pickled hard-boiled eggs in formaldehyde.

“Care for some Slim Jim with that?”

“No thanks.  I just ate some shoelaces.”
And what has Vice President Rump Roast been talking about in his standard stump speech?  Why John Kerry, of course.  Now there’s a fair match-up.  A draft-dodger of the first magnitude belittling Kerry for having volunteered to serve his country, not once, but twice.  Yup- -he re-upped.  Cheney had five deferments.  Hmmm…Four heart attacks,

five deferments- -is there a pattern here?  Cheney, like Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrinch, and many other fat blowhards who are now hawks on The War, never served.  Okay- -one of Cheney’s deferments was a family deferment so he could begin raising the daughter who would turn out to be gay and an occasional political embarrassment.  See, Dads love their little girls no matter what they are, but he is forced to publicly deny her to support Bushie.  What a pickle.  Oh wait- -pickles.  They were back at that bar with the hard-boiled eggs.

But speaking of bars.  I may have discovered Big Dick’s “Undisclosed Location”.  It’s right here in California, in a little coastal town down near San Diego called Encinitas.  This news item is from a recent Los Angeles Times, in the section where they have local news (“Dairy Generates Power From Cow Waste”) and lost pets (“Family, State Disagree on Status of Pet Owl”):

“Ear Biting By Agent Not Battery, Jury Decides- -Vista, CA.  A Superior Court jury ruled that an off-duty U S Secret Service agent did not commit battery when he bit off part of another man’s ear outside an Encinitas bar in 2002…Special Agent Kelly Ward was part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s protection detail when he got into a fight outside the Daley Double Cocktail Lounge.” - -Los Angeles Times

Now I’m wondering- -Dick Cheney got into a bar fight?  You could read the story that way.  No wonder he always looks so mean and surly.  Is that when his lip was permanently turned down into that snarl?  So there’s Agent Ward and Vice President Ham Hocks pummeling a couple of drunks in a bar in Encinitas?  This story needs more investigation.  What was the V P doing at the Daley Double Cocktail Lounge anyway?  I know!!  Having a week-old bar sandwich and some petrified hard-boiled eggs.  What a pickle.

You see, after the survival of heart attacks or heart surgery, you feel like you have just cheated death, and you can get away with just about anything.  I’m convinced that’s why Cheney is the way he is.  Remember his Meet The Press interviews with Tim Russert last year totally convinced there were WMDs in Iraq.  Of course to him, WMD meant Wonderful Meals Delivered.  Cheney is living bionic proof that you can lie and cheat your way to the top.  And those at the top rewrite history, or try to.

Remember Poppy Bush lying to us and saying “Read my lips- -no new taxes”? 

Well all you have to conjure up in your mind is that photo-op of Junior standing in front of the “Mission Accomplished” sign last year.  It seems as though lying runs in the family.

Okay- -I’ve got to go repeat my new mantra: “Melted cheese is not a beverage.”

Meet you at the Daley Double for some beer nuts and a pitcher of generic draft.

I wonder if they have Unchain My Heart on the jukebox.

And who would have thought that Cheney hides out in bars?  I figured the perfect place for him where no one would look is a health club or cardiac fitness gym.  Go figure.

My name is Danny McBride and I approved this column.