corrente

This MoDo is a couple of days old but it seemed appropriate to hold it for today. Anybody yet seen a promotion for "Patriot Day Mattress Sale & Used Car Extravaganza"? I haven't either but...maybe next year.

In 1992, the senior Mr. Bush wooed the voters with "Message: I care.'' So this week, Mr. Cheney wooed the voters with, Message: You die.

The terrible beauty of its simplicity grows on you. It is a sign of the dark, macho, paranoid vice president's restraint that he didn't really take it to its emotionally satisfying conclusion: Message: Vote for us or we'll kill you.

Without Zell Miller around to out-crazy him...Mr. Cheney is back as Terrifier in Chief.

It's like that fairy tale where vipers and toads jump out of the mouth of the accursed mean little girl when she tries to speak. Every time Mr. Cheney opens his mouth, vermin leap out.

Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn't protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and President Bush didn't protect us from the real 9/11.

Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a 9/11 tape of an uncertain Democratic president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down.

Just like Presidents Day sales feature George Washington sitting on a mattress with an axe and a bowl of cherries, future Patriot Day sales ads will feature George Bush sitting on top of Air Force One reading "The Pet Goat" while Cheney frantically tries to aim a Star Wars laser cannon at it. It will become traditional as a day of deep discounts on dark glasses, ball caps, unattractive swimwear and other traditional vacation items which remain unsold at the end of the season.