From CNN:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently underwent heart surgery and is recovering in a Virginia hospital, said a statement issued by Cheney on Wednesday.
During the operation last week at the Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute, doctors implanted a small pump that “improves heart function and will enable me to resume an active life,” Cheney’s statement said.
“The operation went very well and I am now recuperating,” the statement said.
Dr. Tim Gardner, former president of the American Heart Association, told CNN that such implants indicate severe heart failure.
“These devices are put in patients whose heart failure is so bad that they need a mechanical pump to keep their circulation going,” said Gardner, who is the medical director of the Center for Heart and Vascular Health at Christiana Care in Wilmington, Delaware.
OK, I’ll bite. On hearing this news, I’m sure many were reminded of the Onion article from a few years ago, New Heart Device Allows Cheney to Experience Love.
The Onion always seems ahead of its time.
The advances in micro surgery in the past few years are nothing short of miraculous.
Surely karma had nothing to do with it.
How many heart procedures has this guy had over the years? We all know if he dies, conservatives will start to blame liberals for grave dancing. We should take a pool which right wing blowhard makes the accusation first. I go with Drudge.
I think he is now up to five heart attacks and I don’t know how many procedures. He’s obviously had top-notch health care.
Okay, I so don’t wanna feel bad for Darth Vader, but if this is true, then damn, no one really wishes death on their enemies right?
Grim
BTW, Rachel Maddow is talking a bit about this at the beginning of her show.
Speak for yourself. I’m delighted the murderous traitor is dying slowly and painfully. May he linger in a half-dead limbo for decades, and when he finally enters his last days may the Teri Schisvo zealots succeed in hooking his brainless carcass to life support in perpetuity, while Tom DeLay insists he can smile and communicate.
I know ya don’t know me, but I almost always speak for myself.
But, being from the land of voodoo like I am (born & raised in NOLA), you just try not to mention death and anyone, unless you really wanted the outcome. Growing up, it was engrained in us to “not be putting shit out in there” (in the universe) that you not want to come back to you. i.e. don’t calling in for work, cause your grandmother/father/brother/sister etc died, was in a car accident is sick, etc, cause it might come back to ya.
I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s still something I just can’t get rid of even after all my “book learnin” as my grandma used to say.
Besides, to my mind, death would be the easy way out for Darth Cheney.
I feel the same way. I don’t believe in reincarnation but karma is real. If you put out negative vibes, trouble comes looking for you. I believe you could prove it scientifically.
Prove it scientifically? Doesn’t Cheney’s continued refusal to shuffle off this mortal coil conclusively disprove the notion of karma?
Maybe karma is like health care and the rich can just buy however much they need while the rest of us are actually accountable for our actions. Well, it makes sense to me…
I don’t think karma involves anything metaphysical; it’s more like a regular chemical reaction. You flip off a driver, he shoots you in the head. That sort of thing. You go around with a frown on your face, or a scowl, and people treat you badly. You go around with a positive attitude and people give you free shit and job offers.
It’s not some kind of hippie-dippie theory for me, but just basic cause and effect.
Ah, well nevermind then. I’ve been pushing that theory for years myself. I usually call it “practical karma” though, because “karma” is generally associated with, as you say, hippie-dippie metaphysical stuff.
Right. ‘Hippie-dippie’ metaphysical stuff that’s only 5000 years old or so.
😉
What it boils down to is that the more bad stuff you do over a longer period of time, the greater the likelihood that something will come back to bite you in the ass as a result of those things you have done. It’s simple probability. There is no shortage of people who like to apply some mystical, other-wordly, theistic slant to it. But it’s really just simple math. If you could quantify and graph it, I have no doubt you would end up with the classic bell curve. Not nearly as fun for many, of course, as thinking there is some omnipotent Oz in the ether pulling the levers on our life events. But, of course, all this science stuff has a political agenda so in this country we have to discount it as pure quackery and cling to the Almighty Oz postulation.
Karma for sale.
Get your Karma here.
Karma, no down, easy payments.
Karma, lease plan.
I’m not from NOLA, but I’m right there with you on the “not be putting shit out there”…although we called it “karma can be a real bitch”.
Indeed, and so do i. hence my Terri Schiavo comment.
I personally do not feel bad for Mr. Cheney, and I do not wish him any succor. You know who I save my sympathy for? the millions of innocent Iraqis who are dead and maimed because of him. The thousands of US soldiers who died because of him. The people on the Gulf Coast who’ve seen their lives destroyed because of his secret energy meetings that helped deregulate everything. the people who’ve been tortured by him.
Cheney is one of history’s monsters. Fuck him. He deserves everything he gets.
I know I shouldn’t be but I totally get your brutally honest point.
Maddow is replaying now. She had an informed interview with a heart doctor. One interesting comment is that the pump means he literally will no longer have a pulse.
OK let the Darth Vader comments fly
Also sounds like he will use the device until “the end”. Transplant is the other option but they didn’t make too much of that.
First you have to find a brain dead lizard with a still beating heart.
Just curious but does Cheney get socialized government health care and what death panel approved this heroic expensive end of life care?
Given that we don’t really know whether he even has the capacity for a heart or not, hopefully he’ll try to get a transplant but his insurance company will reject the procedure as experimental.
More seriously, it’s fairly routine (and happened in my case) that insurance providers will drag out the approval process for transplants in hope that the patient dies first. Bet this doesn’t happen for Cheney. I try not to wish ill on anyone, but it’s hard not to think of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi (and other) children who didn’t have access to his level of medical care, and needed it because of his actions.
Whatever, really. Even evil people suffer.
Kissinger, Cheney, Bush.