Lest you think that only the left engages in bizarre paranoid fantasies, let me share a snippet of right-ring fantasizing, a kind of nugget of wishful thinking sure to inspire a secret warmth in the heart of warhawks and terror warriors everywhere.
Vice President Dick Cheney is old, he's sick, he's unpopular, and he looks like Burgess Meredith playing The Penguin. He may be the most hated man in the US government, and with his age and ill health he's at the top of the Washington dead pools. Hell, for all we know the stealth VP might already be dead and no one bothered to tell us.
The Vice Presidency isn't a very useful job anyway. A dead man could probably do it. John Nance Garner once commented "The vice presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit," and most who've held that job seem to have agreed with him. At least one VP spent 80% of his term on vacation in the Bahamas and others like Dan Quayle sent their brains on vacation.
No one can doubt Cheney's patriotism, his hatred of terrorists, or his dedication to the neocon cause and the welfare of this administration. He's a dedicated man with a cause. So why not put him to some real use? Rather than letting him go out with a whimper on a heart machine in Walter Reed, we should let him be useful in a way that Vice Presidents rarely are, as a martyr for his cause. Get the most out of the office and the most out of the man by making him into the ultimate human weapon in the war on terror.
So here's the secret administration plan, possibly code-worded "Maximum Dick". Load VP Cheney on a plane with a minimal number of guards, and send him on a tour of terrorist hotspots around the world. Whisk him off to Afghanistan and Baghdad and Somalia. Parade him around in taunting public appearances, and hope the terrorists take the bait.
He'll be a likely magnet for suicide bombers, Jihadist snipers, and IED planters. If they don't manage to take him out on schedule, there's a fair chance that all the stress of traveling as a human target will wear out his heart and he'll drop dead. Then just 'find' his body at the next convenient terrorist strike and voila! You've got an instant martyr and the former liability becomes a rallying point for a discouraged nation.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - moonraven
This is just silly.
Where is it written that satire and silliness are the same?
I think of the brillant satire of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope and John Dryden. My "modest proposal" is that we read those guys again. And that we forego reading any more fooishness like this.
(Nalle will probably accuse this poster of having no sense of humor....Ha!)
And THIS poster can surely doubt Cheney's patriotism. How many deferments did he get so that he would not have to serve in the military defending his country?
2 - Noel Kelly
Satire should be clever - not opportunistic. Frankly, this attempt is pathetic.
3 - moonraven
Christ--another racist crackpot!
4 - zingzing
yeah, i thought by quoting all that, he was showing how evil and racist the whole thing is. i mean, it's one thing to expel radicals, but then it just goes insane.
5 - moonraven
Not the first time....
Zing, I didn't make it to the underground martinis in Seattle.
Too damn cold there.
Beautiful day in Mexico City though.
6 - Arch Conservative
John Howard is my new personal and neither he nor James Hicks are racists as the politically correct hacks, Moonraven and Zing claim.
It's nice to see a head of state who finally has the balls to stand up to the islamofacists and politically correct leftist hacks like Howard has done. Oh and all of the muslims in Austrailia, Moonraven and Zing can FUCK OFF!
God bless John Howard!
7 - moonraven
God and John Howard, happily, are not on speaking terms.
Neither are God and Arch Con.
He has never even met someone who professes the religion of Islam, but he hates them all anyway.
8 - moonraven
New personal WHAT--trainer?
9 - zingzing
so if you practice another religion, or don't want your church bugged, or speak another language, or don't subscribe to every christian value, or don't fly the flag or subscribe to what is a pretty socialist idea ("a fair go"), or like to see a culture move forward instead of stagnating... you should leave?
do most australians think this way? or should most australians leave australia? and what of the natives, by which i mean aboriginals?
most of this is fair game, really. the only part that's fucked up is the religious part... freedom of religion anyone? the language thing is a bit funky as well.
it sounds like the guy wants an australia made up of only english-speaking people, who completely fall in line with his idea of "australian" culture (i.e.-white). it's backwards and dangerous, not commendable.
archie, you obviously know very few muslims if you want to condemn them all like this.
10 - zingzing
"Zing, I didn't make it to the underground martinis in Seattle.
Too damn cold there."
yeah, it's been real shitty as of late, and it looks to continue. luckily spring, and summer, is just around the corner. it's the only thing worth living through winter for around here.
11 - moonraven
I think we need to remember that Australia was settled by the criminal riff raff of the British Empire.
Explains a lot.
12 - jaz
"I think we need to remember that Australia was settled by the criminal riff raff of the British Empire.
Explains a lot."
that's a pretty racist statement, also fallacious for blaming current individuals for the (alleged) crimes of their ancestors
possibly a feeble attempt at sarcasm?
13 - troll
(riff raff...my kind of hoi polloi)
14 - STM
Moonraven wrote: "I think we need to remember that Australia was settled by the criminal riff raff of the British Empire."
She's right of course ... it has shaped our national character - but what she doesn't understand is that we're proud of it.
It's a badge of honour here to be able to trace your ancestry back to the convict era. What she also doesn't understand is that because 40 per cent of Australians have some Irish background (a lot of the convicts were Irish political prisoners), we also don't like authority. We also don't like anyone who looks like they might be behaving like a bully.
It's probably fair to say at this point that MORE than 50 per cent of Australians don't agree with the war in Iraq, don't want their citizens (or any citizens) locked up without proper trial in Guantanamo Bay, don't like John Howard's obsequious acceptance of everything his mate George Bush suggests we do, and according to the polls, Howard's Liberal Party (what a misnomer that is: he stands marginally to the right of Genghis Khan) is on a slippery slope in the countdown to the next federal election.
I'll use moonraven's own familiar argument against her. Judging by your caustic comments (but, really, what did I expect?), I'd say you've never been here and don't know much about the place. I could be wrong, but that's my guess.
In short, in view of Australians' unwillingness to blindly accept what politicians (and particularly politicians from another country) tell us, our convict background probably gives us a bit more street smart than some other countries currently dealing with their alliances to the US.
Interestingly, when Cheney's convoy held up traffic in Sydney on Saturday and forced drivers out of their cars on the freeway routes leading onto the Harbour Bridge, the sentiment was very much: "Who the bloody hell does he think he is."
Using our convict background to support your argument actually undermines it, and given our genuine celebration of it, shows you really know nothing about the place.
And I bet you'd be hard-pressed finding it on a map.
15 - Dan
Whatever Austrailians ancestory, they have managed to create a desirable society. Something that Muslim 3rd worlders seem incapable of.
16 - zingzing
dan, go read something. like a map, maybe. then think about your statement.
stm--the guy who said all that junk up there ("go away muslims," etc) is your prime minister? ha-ha. you live with a bunch of idiots. how many times has he been elected? my god, it's good to feel like there are other countries in the world as gullible as mine. ahhhhh...
also, an open hint to australia: if your name is not nick cave, please don't make music. you suck at it.
17 - jaz
zing..tsk tsk...can you say AC/DC? plenty more great rockers down under
interesting that our *brothers* down under have some similar wackiness with parts of their leadership
but i digress...
18 - Dan
zingzing, Maybe you could explain what benefit I could derive from reading a map.
I'm guessing you don't think my statement to be well thought out. Yet your cryptic response doesn't illuminate.
19 - zingzing
one of the most desirable spots on the planet is dubai, uae; istanbul is one of the hippest cities in europe... they can create desirable societies. in fact, they did before us westerners stuck israel right in the middle of their land and fucked the whole place up with our meddling. unstable economies make for such cheap oil, don't they now?
20 - Clavos
can you say AC/DC? plenty more great rockers down under
Some damn good actors, too.
21 - zingzing
ac/dc? come on now... bleh.
birthday party! now that's a fuckin rock band!
but, it's nick cave. so's grinderman, so don't gimme that.
midnight oil sucks. go-betweens are okay. just bought architecture in helsinki... which i think is australian. so we shall see...
22 - Arch Conservative
"one of the most desirable spots on the planet is dubai, uae; istanbul is one of the hippest cities in europe..."
Maybe those statements are considered true in the circles you run in, but then again it's ok for muslims to emigrate to traditionally non-muslim nations and refuse to assimiliate or respect the native culture at all while expecting the natives to condone sharia law rather in your circles huh Zing. And any native citizen that objects to this behavior is immediaately labelled a racist.
I sometimes wonder why people like moonraven and zing are so incapable of realizing the stupidty that comes out of thier mouths.
23 - Dan
So then the muslim immigrants to Austrailia are from Dubai, and Istanbul? I didn't know that.
I also didn't know that Israel being in the middle of "their land" fucked the whole place up. Don't they celebrate diversity?
Austrailians have "their land" also. Are the new immigrants "fucking it up" as well.
24 - STM
Zing wrote: "stm--the guy who said all that junk up there ("go away muslims," etc) is your prime minister?"
No, I think the racist guy is lying. But first up, Howard is not representative these days of what most Australians think. We have had a gutful of him, and he did the usual politician thing of making promises, seeming quite moderate, and then breaking them and doing and saying things that most people don't believe in. Sound familiar? However, on muslim immigration, what he's suggesting is that if some people come to this country and don't like its way of life, then why have they bothered coming? The ones he is taking a swipe at are those who think jihadist thought is OK.
Most muslim-Australians, BTW, don't think like that anyway, so it's largely a moot point. As the racist points out above, treasurer Peter Costello, "seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state, and its laws were made by parliament".
He said: "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you."
Really, his is a quite moderate and honest view, and he does have a point.
25 - STM
Zing: you don't seem to know many Aussie bands :)