Geez, I almost forgot: where's Dick Cheney?
Our esteemed VP?
Here, Dick!
So visible, always willing to help out.
An inspiration. A leader.
He's where he's always been: in the center of his circular desk at SMERSH headquarters compulsively applying aloe to his dried and cracked smirk. His jet-black pussy is dead, an Old Glory lapel pin fastened to one of its brittle ears. And the cash (converted to euros years in advance) along with all the remaining soaps, sewing kits and White House towels have been stuffed into his custom-made, anthrax-proof Tumi and is already at the base of his escape pod, waiting to be loaded on board by his phalanx of Blackwater Elite Guardsmen.
Because while the spectacle of the upcoming election dazzles and distracts like the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Feast of San Gennaro, the guys who brought you eight years of soul (not to mention savings) destroying policy are taking it on the lam. Lord knows how many presidential signing statements are being blindly scribbled, how many waterboardings are being hurried along, squeegees at the ready. They've got a timetable to withdraw and they are sticking to it. Having set the explosive charges to go off sometime in '09 or '10, they have time to look back over their shoulders and muse at the doings of all those little ants scurrying to and fro, screeching about this and that, about justice and fairness and democracy and all the other intoxicating illusions to which Dick and his ilk are immune.
They are a tad bewildered by the growing unanimity among the ants but not totally, as they are astute historians. This shit happens from time to time. But maybe like a Roman centurian mystically transported to the present day, they are men out of time and cannot exist in this era, their DNA programmed to function only in another epoch, their psyches overwhelmed and overrun by the New (Jesus -- color me geek, why don'tcha). And even they, having never come in contact with genuine hope, having suckled what passed for inspiration from the bitter breasts of their ideological forebears, sense a change. And yet they can't help it: they would damn the tide for fear of being washed away. And so they are going bye-bye.
So by all means participate in the democratic process but keep your eye on the Bald. He's a tricky fellow and may have a couple more gags up his gadget enhanced sleeve.