I know that I didn’t want to dwell on Dickie’s hospitalization, but I was trying to imagine him as a hospital patient. Imagine being Dick Cheney’s nurse, and having to lift him on and off the bedpan. The great Dick Cheney, now lying in bed in a backless hospital gown, unable to walk due to his surgery, and at the complete mercy of doctors and nurses.

Yes, I know, he’s also surrounded by Secret Service, who are there to make sure that no one over does the morphine, or puts a pillow over his face while he’s in a haze from pain killers. But I was just thinking about how vulnerable he is now, and not the hotshot strutting around and commanding and demanding.

Imagine having to look at Cheney naked? Imagine being his nurse and having to wipe his ass? You look down at him and think, this is the vice president (or co-president as he’s come to be known). The man responsible (co-responsible) for embroiling us in a devastating war in Iraq, for the murder of nearly 2,000 American soldiers and countless Iraqis, and indeed, the list of Cheney’s crimes against humanity just go on and on. Here is the man who couldn’t interrupt his vacation in Wyoming for a national disaster.

So if you’re a good nurse, you’ll have some compassion for this poor little man with aneurysms in both legs, a man who has suffered four heart attacks, and now has undergone surgery to keep his blood circulating. And if you’re not of the Florence Nightingale mold, you’ll hand the toilet paper to the Secret Service agent and tell him, “You wipe. If you’ll take a bullit for this fool, surely then, you can wipe his ass.”

I think it’s time for me to go to bed.

Vice president Dickie Cheney had surgery on his knees to repair an aneurysm.

Ask me if I care?

No, I don’t. Cheney didn’t think that people suffering and dying during hurricane Katrina were worthy of him cutting short his vacation. So why should anyone give a damn that he’s in the hospital, except if they want to send him wilted flowers, or some rotten moldy cheese basket. He’s just counting how much money Halliburton will make if they get a contract to rebuild the damaged areas of the Gulf. That’s Dickie’s level of compassion.

And isn’t it strange how he conveniently decided to have his surgery just as Rita made aim for yet another strip of coast? The surgery wasn’t an emergency, his doctors discovered it back in July.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste any more space on Dick Cheney. I think the surgery is over, was successful, and he’ll be back to his cheery self in no time at all. Now if he was resigning as vice president, or decided to voluntarily imprison himself inside of his house and never be heard from again, now that would be worthy news.

Hurricane Rita pummeled east Texas and the Louisiana coast Saturday, battering communities with floods and intense winds. But residents were relieved the once-dreaded storm proved far less fierce and deadly than Katrina.

Texas has good karma. They were spared what could have been a disastrous blow to their low lying coast, and a nightmarish environmental disaster had the refineries been heavily damaged. But Rita weakened significantly, and while there’s the usual flooding, power outages, trees blown over, mobile homes gone bye-bye–it is nothing compared to what was feared. And I know, a lot of people are probably grumbling and saying, “Why the hell did I bother evacuating?”

Better safe than sorry. And a little inconvenience is better off than ending up dead, or stuck on a rooftop for 18 hours as the water is rising around you.

There are a lot of news stories about Rita from all angles. The quote I have at the beginning of this post is from ABC.com