Cheney's alive

Vice President, Dick Cheney has resurfaced. His picture was on the front page of today's Chicago Tribune touring Gulfport Mississippi. And it only took him two weeks and an order from President Bush to get there. Now the only question is will he be joining Bush on the porch of Trent Lott's new "fantastic" house sipping mint juleps? (See Derrick Z. Jackson's editorial.)

VP MIA

Has anyone seen Cheney?

As far as I remember this country has had a President and a Vice President. The big question is "where is our Vice President?"

Every day the newspaper and TV news is filled with news about Bush. Where he was, what he said, what he screwed up... but I can't remember when the last time was I heard anything about Dick Cheney. In the last week we experienced the worst natural disaster in the history of the country. The present spoke about it (although he took his time to do so) and has flown down to the disaster area, met with victims of the disaster, promised aid, etc. As far as I know The Vice President hasn't spoken a single word about the disaster. I haven't seen him on TV. I haven't read about him in the paper. In fact I did a search on the Chicago Tribune's web site for articles about Cheney and couldn't find anything significant. The only reference to Cheney I found were articles that Bush, Cheney, and Rice were going to meet with someone, or Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were going to meet with someone, or that the Army demoted a Halliburton contract critic and Cheney used to work for Halliburton. None of these articles say anything about what he did or what he said. Where is he? Does he care? Is he doing his job? Is he still alive?

Since I couldn't find anything significant about Cheney in the paper, I decided to visit whitehouse.gov to see if there was any information. After all, the White House should at least know where he is. To my surprise there was nothing about the Vice President on the home page. There ware articles about the President meeting with residents of Mississippi, visiting Louisiana, visiting the American Red Cross, his nomination of Judge Roberts for Supreme Court, nothing about Cheney. At the top and bottom of the page is a link to the Vice President page. On the Vice President page, unlike the President page, there was no section titled "Latest Headlines". There was only a section titled "Speeches and News Releases" that contained one speech for the entire month of August, and six speeches from July. (Incidentally, there didn't seem to be any speeches from the first half of July.)

That last time I remember hearing anything significant about our Vice President was on September 11th, 2001. We were told that when The World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists and The Pentagon was attacked that the Vice President was moved to a secret bunker for his protection. I think he's been living there ever since. Either that or he went back to working for Halliburton and hasn't had time to do his real job.

When Al Gore was VP we heard about the things he said and did. When Dan Quayle was VP we heard about the things he said and did. When George Bush was VP we heard about him. Doesn't it seem strange that we don't hear anything about Dick Cheney?


Here's some other questions to ponder:

• Doesn't it seem strange that since George W has taken office that the number of government documents that have been declassified has dramatically dropped and the number of documents that have been classified has dramatically increased? What is Bush really hiding?
• Doesn't it seem strange that a company associated with our Vice President, Halliburton, has benefited so greatly from the war in Iraq?
• Doesn't it seem strange that gas prices are at the highest anyone can remember, car manufactures are selling record numbers of gas-guzzling vehicles, oil companies are earning record profits, and our President has a connection to the oil industry?

Smoke out Chicago

As I was walking to the office this morning I saw an ad on the back of a bus for Smoke Free Chicago. This is an organization that's trying to convince the Chicago politicians to make Chicago a smoke free city. I think it's a great idea. I personally hate it when I walk into a restaurant and smell smoke or go to a bar or night club and have to leave after a few minutes because I can't stand the smoke. Some of these clubs are so smoky that after being in there only a few minutes my clothes reek of smoke.

Their web site also has a list of smoke free restaurants in Chicago. If you hate smoke like me I suggest you patronize some of these places and if you live in Chicago contact your alderman and the mayor and help make Chicago smoke free.