<<<Maybe it's me but I'd swear that Arianna has become more attractive since
shunning the ugly politics of ignorance and the fattening tactic of parroting
the lazy Limbaugh legion...she's actually come into her own as both a
thoughtful pundit AND an attractive woman...seems FREETHINKING has physical
as well as intellectual benefits!! Keep it up babe!!!!!>>>>
Bill.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/03/08/cheney_health/index.html
Dick Cheney's suicide mission
It's time for the vice president to resign.
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By Arianna Huffington
March 8, 2001 | OK, everybody, listen up: The time has come for the nation to
stage an intervention. We need to come together and convince the vice
president that he needs to step down. And not just to save his life, but
potentially to save the lives of millions of Americans.
More important than presiding over the creation of the new budget or chairing
the administration's energy task force, this responsible act could be his
greatest contribution to the country. It would be compassionate; it would be
conservative.
Coronary heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in America today. Roughly
1.1 million Americans will have a heart attack this year -- with around
400,000 of them dying as a result. About 12.2 million people have a history
of heart attack, chest pains or both -- with many of them, like Cheney,
proudly, but irresponsibly and unwisely, soldiering on, denying the
significance of the warning signs.
And now, while the whole world watches, the message the vice president is
sending to his fellow sufferers is that power and position are more important
than life itself. In fact, in so many cases, such pursuits become just
another addiction.
And like any addiction, this one is rife with denial and self-delusion. The
vice president began experiencing chest pains on Saturday. You'd think after
suffering not one, not two, not three, but, yes, four heart attacks -- the
last of which was just three months ago -- this might have set off a few
alarms.
But not for Cheney, who not only kept to his arduous work schedule but his
arduous social schedule as well -- partying with Washington lawyer Roderick
Hills on Saturday night and Alan Greenspan on Sunday (and you know how the
Fed chairman likes to get down). In the midst of all this, he told Wolf
Blitzer on CNN: "I feel great."
He exhibited the same bonhomie when leaving the hospital Tuesday morning,
telling reporters he felt "good." Come on, Mr. Vice President, you've just
had a catheter tube inserted into your leg and run up to your heart to reopen
the same clogged artery that'd been propped open by a metal stent back in
November, and you feel "good"? What would it take before you admit to being
"a little under the weather" -- the onset of rigor mortis?
The problem is that, like all addicts, he's not just lying to us, he's lying
to himself. Cheney's doctors say there is a 40-percent likelihood that he'll
have another episode like the one he just suffered -- not great odds.
Nevertheless, Cheney has already resumed his supercharged work schedule.
"There is an increasing amount of scientific evidence," Dr. Dean Ornish told
me, "that stress plays a large role. All these bypasses and angioplasties
only temporize the problem. It's important to address the underlying causes
of the condition rather than literally and metaphorically bypassing them."
Underlying causes, like, you know, the vice presidency.
When asked if he thought his ailing No. 2 should cut back on his
responsibilities, our compassionate president said no: "He's plenty strong
and plenty capable of carrying the workload that he's been working in the
past." Of course, to the Bush family, Cheney is just a political version of
the help.
The question remains: Is the vice president on a suicide mission -- or just
unable to overcome his type-A addiction to the adrenaline highs of his lofty
position? After his last heart attack, he was asked if he was worried about
having another one. "I don't operate that way," he replied. No, you just put
the gun to your head and see if the next chamber is the one with the bullet.
Which is why you would have hoped that the people who love him the most --
his wife, his daughters, his close friends -- would have intervened by now.
But they haven't -- and clearly the enablers he works with are not likely to.
President Bush called this week's cardiac catheterization, which Cheney's
cardiologist termed "urgent" and "significant," a "precautionary measure." To
me "precautionary" suggests adding some extra fruit and vegetables to your
diet, not having a balloon inflated inside your heart.
Of course, this is not the first time the seriousness of the vice president's
condition has been obscured in a cloud of euphemistic understatement and
out-and-out lying. "Dick Cheney is healthy. He did not have a heart attack,"
Bush told reporters last November when Cheney was hospitalized after
suffering a heart attack.
And the obfuscation beat goes on. On Monday, Cheney spokeswoman Mary Matalin
assured us that the vice president had checked himself in to the hospital for
"a non-emergency precautionary procedure" after experiencing "two brief, mild
episodes of chest discomfort" over the weekend. By Tuesday that had doubled
to four episodes of chest pain.
Wasn't this the administration that was going to "restore honor and dignity
to the White House" and put an end to linguistic hairsplitting? I guess it's
just a question of subject matter: New Democrats lie about sex; aging
Republicans lie about their cholesterol count.
Illness is supposed to slow us down a step, take us back a pace and make us
reevaluate our priorities. In a culture that -- memorial service platitudes
notwithstanding -- always puts the urgent above the important, Cheney could
send a powerful message about what ultimately matters.
After all, vice presidents are supposed to attend other people's funerals.
