Oh, those crazy liberals with their conspiracy theories! Now they've wondering whether the fire in Cheney's office was deliberately set in order to burn incriminating records. They obviously don't understand either digital technology or the nature of evil. For one thing, Cheney's staff has been shredding paper documents for months. They don't need to destroy them in such a conspicuous way. For another, most records of importance are stored on computer disks nowadays, not paper. If you've erased 5 million emails, God (or Somebody Else) knows how many hard drives you've wiped.

There's a much more innocent explanation for the Cheney fire, and all I'm going to say is ... See, kids! That's why I won't let you conduct Satanic rituals in the basement. Oh, sure. Recite a harmless prayer to Asmodai, draw a harmless Pentangle on the floor in chalk ... then somebody trips over a candle, and next thing you know Smokey the Bear is wrestling Old Scratch to keep the rec room paneling from going up in flames.

So, in all probability, they were just doing their usual heat-the-sacrificial-blood-with-candle-wax routine at the weekly staff meeting when the candelabra tipped over. These things happen. No need to get all conspiratorial about it.

Now we learn that the mantle of obsessive secrecy has been handed from Cheney to Giuliani, and that Rudy - who described his mayoralty as "an open book" - took 2000 boxes of records with him when he left office. That is to say, all of them. Could that "open book" actually be ... the Necromicon? I think I've seen this movie.

Rudy has now officially inherited Cheney's legacy of good old-fashioned evil. He's got Dick's secrecy obsession ... the dubious clients and national-security profiteering ... and he's using the same cabal of discredited neocons. Who knows how long he's been joining the Vice President in secret rituals to propitiate the Horned One? After all, it worked once before.

There might even have been a formal ceremony to pass down Satan's earthly Viceregency, in which the VP handed over his hooded cloak, the Evil Eye amulet, and his crooked staff (and no, we don't mean Scooter Libby). It would have been a good career move for Rudy, and the sacrifices the Dark Lord requires aren't great: just a few minutes of your time each day for worship, your immortal soul ... oh, and if you're a guy, you get male pattern baldness. That's a small price to pay to rule the world.

Until recently this Lucifer gambit had been paying off for the Mayor, but now he's slipping in the polls. Does it have something to do with that ceremony in Cheney's office? Did something go terribly wrong, accidentally binding Satan to a candidate other than the one they had planned?

Only the Antichrist himself knows for sure.

A Night Light

The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog

Future-While-U-Wait

RJ Eskow at the Huffington Post

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About author Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer, is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the



No Middle Class Health Tax

A Night Light



Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer, is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project. Richard blogs at: