Déjà vu all over again -- Shrub is behind his Vice President 1,000%

Darth Cheney is toast. Shrub's team (meaning Karl Rove) will ease Cheney out this year so they can appoint an heir-apparent as Vice President to run in 2008 so Shrub's vision (meaning Karl Rove's vision) for spreading messy Rumsfeldian democracy in the Middle East can continue. This is not good news for Bill Frist.

The Mandarin realized Cheney's days were numbered today as he read various headlines proclaiming Shrub's full support for his embattled Veep. Not to mention all the bright orange "Don't shoot!" ties sprouting around the White House

[Begin flashback to 1972, when the Mandarin was hardly taller than an eggroll standing on its end.]

Remember Thomas Eagleton? Senator Eagleton (D-Mo) was George McGovern's (first) Vice Presidential running mate. The free press, doing their job, uncovered information that Senator Eagleton had been treated briefly for depression years earlier and had undergone electro-shock therapy. McGovern announced that he was behind Eagleton "one thousand percent," and had no intention of dropping him from the ticket. Three days later, guess what. McGovern dropped him anyway and replaced him with some other guy, the Mandarin forgets who. Sargent Shriver or something like that.

Anyway, the Mandarin fully expects Big Dick to be back home in Wyoming hunting snipes, or whatever they hunt in Wyoming, by the time the first snow dusts the Wind River Range this fall.


P.S. The picture is Senator Eagleton. And for all you younger readers out there (you know who you are), the late great Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is the definitive study of the McGovern campaign self-destructing and a lot more about that bizarre year in American politics. Which of course the Mandarin is too young to remember. That's the Mandarin's story and he's sticking to it... one thousand percent.