Land of Opportunity

"As Cheney told CNN, he has been 100 percent heart attack free since ascending to the vice presidency. He added, 'In fact, rather than giving me stress, being vice president has actually fueled my blackened soul, allowing me to gorge vampire-like on the bloody nectar of unlimited power.' I'm sorry that should have read 'I never felt better.'" — Jon Stewart, on Dick Cheney's insistence that he is the picture of health

Those lines from the Daily Show brought a lot of laughs then - they don't now because of the truth they tell.

The Land of Opportunity - that's the theme of the Repub convention tonight, and the theme of Vice President Dick Cheney as he speaks - the irony couldn't be greater.

The last four years have truly been a land of opportunity for Cheney.

* An opportunity to promote and profit from the corporate greed of Halliburton, the company he ran

* An opportunity to promote his own foreign policy of preemptive warfare

* An opportunity to influence and control a president like no other vice president has ever done

And a smiling Dick Cheney will rub your nose in his brand of "compassionate conservatism" tonight - the kind of conservatism that took us to the wrong war - the kind of compassionate conservatism that hides the dead returning from that war - the kind of compassionate conservatism that decimated our national guard and reserves - the kind of compassionate conservatism that failed to outfit our troops properly - the kind of corporate conservatism that mocks investors and rips them off - the kind of fiscal conservatism that lost control of the economy and your jobs - and the kind of fundamental conservatism (hidden well in this convention) that believes it has the inside road to God.

This is the Land of Opportunity for Dick Cheney:



But, a smiling and resolute Cheney will come before you tonight, hoping you won't hold any of this against him. In the heyday of communism, putting a softer face on those who committed evil was called "rehabilitation", and you will see (if you care to) a rehabilitation attempted tonight that would have been the envy of the evil empire itself.

On the other hand, the real attempt at rehabilitation is tomorrow night.