So utterly bad it's hard to believe

(Via Truth Out)

Maybe you remember this bit of childhood doggerel, written by the American educator Hughes Mearns:

"Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away."

The Bush White House man who wasn't there isn't the president. It's Vice President Dick Cheney, who, if you believe in karma, may be returning in the next life as an especially pernicious mildew. Or, if the gods are feeling larky, decorative kale.

Cheney is the archetypal man who wasn't there (but is), not only because of his legendary secrecy but also his insistence that he can keep the lid closed on anything he wants because the office of the vice presidency is unique - not part of the executive or the legislative branches of government. It is both and/or one. Or the other. Neither fish but mostly foul, as it were.

Our Vice President is a man who believes himself above any laws, any morality, any limits. He is the embodiment of absolute power corrupting absolutely. He pushes laws banning gay marriage while holding his lesbian daughter's partner's baby. He had "other priorities" than serving in a war when he was young, and now sends other young men and women to die for nothing. He is a symbol of all that is wrong with our society. He is a man who has earned his name: DICK!