As a sufferer of osteoarthritis in my lower lumbar region, I am uniquely qualified to say, after hearing that Dick Cheney will be in a wheel chair for the inauguration:
Ha, Ha! [/Nelson]
Dick Cheney has supported every move made to eliminate worker's compensation protection since he was old enough to form an opinion. As one of congress's most right wing members, he did more to set back worker's rights than practically anyone before him. Even as he transformed into a neo-con more concerned about killing anyone over seas who didn't like the way he snarled, he still occasionally pointed his shot gun into the faces of workers, and let it rip.
As vice president, Cheney personally met with Arnold the Governor, who, in his rewrite of California worker's compensation laws (approved by the corporate democrats in charge of the legislature), personally screwed me into the position I am in now: a long wait without compensation, unable to work, waiting for a legal settlement that will award me a flat rate settlement based on the government determined worth of the affected body parts, rather than allowing a judge to include factors like potential future earnings in the equation.
As the effects of Dick's robber baronishness, the economy that was keeping me barely in propane is in shambles. I've lost most of my clients for the internet business that's been keeping my bills paid since I couldn't work as a stagehand anymore. My disability payments from California ran out a long time ago. Once social security denies your first disability claim (which they do for practically everyone), it's now a two year wait to your first appeal hearing (this is an enormous backlog created because the Dickies haven't been hiring enough administrative law judges). I am now destitute. Can't pay my rent, car payment, insurance... If it weren't for food stamps and my little cold-frame victory garden, we'd be starving. My credit is maxed and ruined. Bill collectors call all day. The pain gets worse all the time. My bad reaction to anti-depressents means they had to take me off them, which has put me into a fun little thing called SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome (because the drug companies don't want to call it withdrawal). And now my union's disability freeze is about to expire, so I'm going to lose my health care.
So, on this happy day, I get to see what might just be the only Karmic justice that Dick Cheney will ever have to suffer. He'll still get his government pension (on top of the Halliburton payments). Hell, he'll probably even have a decent little lawsuit against us, the federal government, for causing his back pain by terminating his free rental agreement. He actually hurt himself moving into his new home in McLean, Virginia, where he will write about all the wonderful things he did for the world, and how fucked we all are for not thanking him.
But today... Ah, today, when he comes rolling out in a chair similar to the ones he's responsible for putting thousands of our soldiers in (although I'm sure his will be much nicer), I'm going to watch closely for the grimaces and little twitches of pain. If he nods off, I'd think he was on some good meds, but he nods off so often these days, it's hard to tell. Maybe any kind of public meeting that doesn't include the latest body count just bores the shit out of him.
I've caught shit for my attitude about wishing pain on assholes before, but this time is a perfect example to make my point. When right wing extremists like Dick Cheney and George Bush started arresting medical marijuana patients and their legal drug providers, I got pretty angry. I've known people in the agonies of late stage cancer. I've seen what AIDS can do to a person. When the voters of many states said, yes, please, use marijuana if you and your doctor think it will help, I thought, wow. Finally, even some red states are starting to see the light that wasn't created by some pharmaceutical ad.
So, when the raids on medicinal marijuana clinics started, I said that I hoped that anyone who supported this policy would get cancer and be denied the medicine that would help. Just seems fair to me that if you want to get involved in dictating the pain regimens of thousands of people, then you are essentially torturing those people, and you deserve to see what that's like.
Now, I've tempered a little from that argument. I've come to the conclusion that there is no Karma, that torture is always wrong, even it does seem like Karma... even if it would be somehow perversely satisfying to see Cheney water-boarded.
But today, as I watch the big Dick wheeled around in a chair, wincing with every pain in his back, I'm going to think, heh, how would you like it if I took away your oxycontin, Dick? How would you like it if I arrested your Doctor, or took away his license, because I don't like the medical decision you and he made for your pain?
I'm going to enjoy watching Dick's pain today. See Dick wince. Watch Dick roll. Roll on, Dick. Roll on.