John Montgomery  Presents This Week's Creep Logo by Lynn Kauczka

Dick Cheney The Big Dick's Big Time Electric Bills

After six months worth of the Bush Junior Era, the verdict is clear: George W Bush is a disengaged, disappointing, disingenuous disgrace who shouldn't be within a thousand miles of the Oval Office. All the same, he's a hard guy to hate. He's a back-slapping, nickname-calling, baseball-loving, cowboy-boots-wearing good old boy who (if he wasn't the president) I wouldn't mind having over to my house for a backyard barbecue. Especially if he brought his daughters along. Now that would be a party!

On the other hand, I don't have any trouble crossing Vice President Dick Cheney off my invitation list. He's everything his boss is not. Like intelligent, competent and articulate. I'll give him that. But he's also an arrogant, belligerent and cantankerous bought-and-paid-for whore for the energy industry who's sold our country down the river into a manufactured energy crisis, big time. The closest thing to a smile he's ever had on his face is that lopsided sneer which says, "Up yours, fuzz nuts, I'm running things around here, not you!"

Indeed. Dick's in charge. And like Frank Sinatra, he wants things done his way, not yours. So Dick was mightily pissed off this week when he looked at his $186,000 electricity bill for the Vice Presidential mansion he lives in. He sneered his sneer and grabbed his chest, exclaiming, "Great balls of burning oil wells! The cost of energy is going up! I'm not paying this bill! That's not coming out of the Vice Presidential budget! Let the Navy pay for it!" There's no one in the world more responsible for the obscenely rising cost of energy than The Big Dick Himself. His drill-slash-and-burn energy policy and the $37 million he received from his oil industry pimps last year will assure higher energy costs for years to come. But when it's his budget that's shot to hell, he looks for a governmental hand out.

Back here on planet earth, where the rest of us live and pay our bills, these higher prices aren't in our budgets, either. But we lack Dick's options, not to mention his contemptuous "let them burn candles" attitude. Although electricity use at the mansion is down from when Al Gore lived there, the bill is up by 36 percent. And our outraged Dick doesn't think he should have to pay. "The rationale for the requested transfer of responsibility is based on the fluctuating and unpredictable nature of utility costs," his office said in its request to pass the buck (and the bill) to the Navy. I wonder how much extra energy Dick's pacemaker consumed trying to come up with that explanation. No wonder this guy needs to go to the hospital once a month to get more electronic junk installed in his chest.

Of course, Dick's defense amounts to the standard "Blame Clinton and Gore" spiel given for anything that goes wrong anywhere these days. His top aide, Mary Matalin, whose nasal, whining, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard voice surely drove husband James Carville to lose all his hair, says only, “This has nothing to do with Cheney. This is an administrative thing.” Speaking of bald guys, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in what I hope was a lame attempt at humor, says "I don't think it's a question of Dick Cheney left his hair dryer in the socket.''

Copy those last two quotes down and include them in the envelope when you send your next electricity bill to the Navy. Tell 'em The Big Dick sent you.