New Heart Device Allows Cheney To Experience Love

[Satire]
WASHINGTON, DC—Recovering from minor heart surgery Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney stunned both the medical and political establishments when he mysteriously began to experience love for the first time in his life, sources reported Tuesday.

A replaced defibrillator is having unexpected effects on the vice president, as this photo taken Monday reveals.

It is believed to have been the first recorded incident of Cheney exhibiting compassion for his fellow man.

Calling the vice president's sudden ability to love "mystifying" but a possible medical breakthrough that could aid other Americans who suffer from acute mulishness and generalized misanthropy, Dr. Jonathan Samuel Reiner, Cheney's cardiologist, said in a press conference at George Washington University Hospital that the vice president exhibited a series of unexpected side effects almost immediately after regaining consciousness following his surgery.

"The vice president broke free from the straps that secured him to the bed and lurched at me as he customarily does following a heart procedure," said Reiner. "But instead of trying to strangle me, he wrapped his arms around me in a hug."

According to Reiner, Cheney left the hospital under his own power, but returned minutes later complaining of unfamiliar chest palpitations and sensations of warmth for others regardless of political affiliation or income. A test of the replacement defibrillator showed that the device was functioning properly, and an examination of Cheney revealed no physical abnormalities.

"The vice president's eyes had an unfamiliar gleam in them, and he didn't sound like his usual self at all, so we checked for signs of a stroke, but found none," Reiner said. "His voice was atypically soft, and his hands felt warm to the touch."


Cheney with "new BFF" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) at the Capitol Tuesday.

Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president, told reporters that her husband was "doing fine" upon release from the hospital, but acknowledged that he had exhibited some peculiar traits.

"When he came home, he did not characteristically stomp into the house and grumble about how the 'stupid American people should just be shot,'" Mrs. Cheney said. "Instead, he bent down to scratch the dog behind his ears instead of kicking him, and kissed me off-camera for the first time in 10 years."

Mrs. Cheney added she has not ruled out the possibility that her husband's blood- thinning medication may have been switched, unintentionally or not, with a CIA mind-control drug.

Over the past two days, various White House and Capitol Hill sources have also reported bizarre behavior by the vice president. Cheney was back at work Monday, and, according to incredulous eyewitnesses, greeted each of his staff members by name. Later that afternoon, he canceled his regular weekly meeting with Halliburton executives, then kicked off his shoes, rolled up his pants, and strolled around barefoot on the White House lawn.

Attending a Monday evening GOP fundraiser at the Washington Convention Center, Cheney was accompanied by David Gillian, 6, a young boy he had previously crippled, and by a small fawn who had followed him to the event. Mounting the podium as the featured speaker, he told supporters he had cast aside his planned speech on the counterinsurgency in Iraq's Anbar Province in order to "tell the real truth."

"If the events of Sept. 11 have taught us anything, it is this: We need to learn to love one another," Cheney said. "We are all entwined in an unbreakable braid of human brotherhood. Each of us has something good and special to offer. If we work together, we can make the world into a most wonderful place where we can turn our attention to the truly important things, like snuggling."

During a C-SPAN-televised appearance at the Senate Tuesday, Cheney, in his role as Senate president, announced he had brought doughnuts for everyone, and encouraged the legislators to be more sensitive to one another's feelings.

"I've wasted so much of my life on a mindless quest for power and outright destruction," an increasingly emotional Cheney said. "What about all the sunsets I've missed?"

"What are these things you call 'tears'?" added Cheney, as Senate ushers politely escorted him from the chamber.

Despite his miraculous turnaround, doctors are calling Cheney's condition unstable and, if left untreated, possibly fatal. On Friday, Cheney will return to George Washington University Hospital to have the defibrillator removed, as it is feared that prolonged exposure to love could overwhelm his already shrunken and ulcerated black heart.

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Seniors Balk at Ban on Free Doughnuts

[You can't make this stuff up!]

By JIM FITZGERALD

MAHOPAC, N.Y - It was just another morning at the senior center: Women were sewing, men were playing pool - and seven demonstrators, average age 76, were picketing outside, demanding doughnuts.

They wore sandwich boards proclaiming, "Give Us Our Just Desserts" and "They're Carbs, Not Contraband."

At issue is a decision to refuse free doughnuts, pies and breads that were being donated to senior centers around Putnam County, north of New York City. Officials were concerned that the county was setting a bad nutritional precedent by providing mounds of doughnuts and other sweets to seniors.

The picketers said they were objecting not to a lack of sweets but that they weren't consulted about the ban.

"Lack of respect is what it's all about," said Joe Hajkowski, 75, a former labor union official who organized the demonstration. He said officials had implied that seniors were gorging themselves on jelly doughnuts and were too senile to make the choice for themselves.

C. Michael Sibilia said, "I'm 86, not 8."

Inside, some seniors said they missed the doughnuts but others said they were glad to see them go.

"It was disgusting the way people went after them," said 80-year-old Rita Jorgensen. "I think the senior center did them a favor by taking it away."

Stan Tuttle, coordinator of nutritional services for the county's Office for the Aging, said the program had gotten out of control. As many as 16 cases of breads, cakes and pastries were delivered, by various means, to the William Koehler Memorial Senior Center each day. Some were moldy and some had been stored overnight in the trunks of volunteers' cars, he said.

Caregivers there and elsewhere say the doughnut debate illustrates the difficulty of balancing nutrition and choice when providing meals to the elderly.

"Senior citizens can walk down to the store and buy doughnuts. Nobody's stopping them," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington.

But he notes that older people have high rates of heart disease and high blood pressure and says senior citizen centers, nursing homes and assisted-living centers should not be worsening the health problems of seniors.

At the North East Bronx Senior Citizen Center, lunch is served five times a week (suggested contribution $1.50).

"We don't tell them what to do, we don't force them to eat what's good for them. But we certainly don't give them anything that's bad for them," said center director Silvia Ponce.

The church-basement senior center, one of 325 under the New York City Department for the Aging, has a mostly Italian-American clientele, a Naples-born cook and a menu that includes eggplant parmigiana, linguini with clams and manicotti.

"We try to give them what they like," said the cook, Stella Bruno.

The lunches have to supply one-third of the federal minimum daily requirements in such categories as calories, protein, vitamin C and vitamin A, said Chris Miller, spokesman for the department.

The Bronx center offers coffee, tea, bagels and rolls in the morning, but nothing in the doughnut family.

"The sweetest thing here is the raisin in the raisin bagel," said Nicholas Volpicella, 87.

Maureen Janowski, director of nutrition resources for Morrison Senior Dining in Atlanta, which provides meals at more than 370 senior living communities, says residents' food preferences depend somewhat on their age. Those born between 1901 and 1925 generally prefer meat and potatoes, and those born between 1925 and 1942 are "a little more trendy, a little more adventurous, a lot more nutrition-savvy," she said.

"They have choices, and we show them how to make good choices," she said.

At the Bronx center, Bruno said she tries to help the seniors avoid the bad buffet choices when they take a trip to Atlantic City. As a group was departing, she handed them bag lunches - with a roast beef sandwich, cranberry juice and carrot sticks.

"Protein, vitamin C, vitamin A," she said.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online