| Nominee: | Dick Cheney |
| Born: | January 30, 1941; Lincoln, Nebraska |
| Education: | not
applicable |
| Occupation: | Politician and Corporate Big Shot. Currently Vice President of the United States |
| Vote NOW! |
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It's hard to say what's got Dick so angry. How much oil, money, power,
and war does one man need before it brings a bright smile to his face? |
From his disingenuous oil-economics populism to his multimillion dollar
solar-powered mansion in the Rocky Mountains, Cheney's cleverly cloaked
contradictions have often meant he was the man chosen to serve many
different masters along his twisting path to his current supreme power
as the man at the strings of the puppet.
Like many of his fellow nominees for this honor, Dick Cheney spend the
late 1960s sheltering from the Vietnam war and exploding liberalism in
the sweet sanctuary of graduate school. From there, he moved straight
into politics as a congressional fellow in 1968 beginning a career
marked with toe-holds in every sector of American power.
Cheney’s understanding of how to appear as an "aw shucks" down-home guy
was cultivated during stints in the Office of Economic Opportunity and
the Cost of Living Council in the early 1970s. From there, Cheney’s
education moved on to the imperial executive, becoming Gerald Ford’s
Chief of Staff after having been his deputy assistant the year before.
In November 1978 Cheney, a Republican, won election as Wyoming's
representative at large in the House of Representatives. During his
five years as a fixture on the the House Intelligence Budget
Subcommittee he keptng the purse strings to cover the plentiful
fly by night shenanigans of the Reagan years.
Less than a week after Bush nominated him, the Senate confirmed Cheney
as secretary of defense; he entered office on 21 March 1989.
Immediately delegating most of the daily duties in the Pentagon to
Colin Powell who he promoted, Cheney created a debt that Powell has not
forgotten.
Cheney cooked up actions in Panama to clean up after his and Bush Sr’s
1980s excess in the form of Manuel Noriega and was looking around for
someone else to do when the Soviet Union abruptly collapsed. Deeply
suspicious of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, Cheney advocated quickly expanding
Nato deep into the former Eastern Block. However, things looked
bleakly diplomatic worldwide until in 1990 Saddam Husssein gave the
United States the cue to begin another handy piece of 1980s clean-up.
Shortly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Cheney made the first of
several visits to Saudi Arabia and secured King Fahd's permission to
bring U.S. troops into his country. In fact it was he who carried the
doctored satellite photos showing a huge Iraqi invasion force poised to
invade Saudi Arabia accross their mutual border. Independant
commercial satellite photos later proved these troops had never
existed. Learning from their mistakes, after 9-11 the Pentagon bought
the rights to all commercial images of Afghanistan and Iraq - denying
the photos to anyone who might want to second guess their "Big Picture."
Responsible for the Pentagon during it’s only recent period of budget
cuts, Cheney fought a rear-guard action against Congress, using his
contacts and years of experience to blunt the post-Cold War peace
dividend.
Rendered stupid and unemployed by the post-Reagan economic hangover,
Cheney joined the American Enterprise Institute with the other Reagan
administration survivors before taking the leap finally into the
business world as Clinton revived the economy. Cheney became the head
of the Halliburton company in 1995, only 4 years after making them
billions capping oil well fires. Cheney spent the 1990’s redefining
himself as an industry executive - sucessfully enough that Halliburton
still has him on payroll for 1 million a year. Fully illustrating his
capacity for pragmatic irony, Cheney continued to trade with Iraq as
head of Halliburton until 1998.
In many ways the ultimate Washington insider, Cheney made numerous
jokes about being a Wyoming (or was it Texas?) businessman rather than
a politician during the 2000 presidential campaign where took his turn
playing daddy to his old boss’ kid. He also participated in the least
interesting two hours in television history when he played the smug fat
cat to Joe Lieberman’s sleepy, treaclely doormouse in the
not-so-electrifying vice presidential debates.
Cheney's transition back into the political life was fortuitously just
in time to avoid the collapse of his adopted freemarket business world
in the Enron scandal, but the funny business in Housten was not know to
most Americans until after Dick had let Ken Lay edit the U.S. energy
law with a hedge trimmer. Stonewalling Congress on the details of that
shredding has so far lead to several lawsuits and other dying spasms of
democratic accountability.
One thing that has not gone very well for Cheney has been his heart
condition that has made him the brunt of many cruel jokes that we will
not repeat here. Nevertheless, despite his frailty, he able to
personally shield Bush from assasination attemps quite effectively
simply by being next in line for power.
In his undisclosed location deep in a mineshaft under Ravensrock,
Pennsylvania (whoops. . . .sorry about that Dick) Cheney awaits your
vote, confident that you will see his long and twisting path to this
glorious nomination as proof of his worthiness. Don’t let him down.
The Golden Jackboot™ Award is a Goering-Goebells Production, a
subsidiary of Reichstag Enterprises (otherwise known as the DC Anti-War
network). |
THE NOMINEES
Learn more about the nominees by
following the links to their bios.
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VOTE NOW
Voting ends Tuesday, July 8, 2003.
The winner shall be announced Tuesday
at Bossa Bistro and Lounge,
2463 18th St NW, 7 to 10 PM!
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