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When I saw this on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I actually became physically ill. Bile, headache, etc. I have difficulty finding words to describe my speechless, drop-jawed...horror? Anger? Dismay? Frustration? Horangedistration? Gobsmacked would be a good word, except that I don't think it's negative enough.

All right, here's a story of pure fiction that might illustrate my indescribable feelings at the moment I watched this. Imagine you're at the display of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence looking at the two foundation documents of our nation with other American tourists, foreign tourists, and wounded American veterans visiting from the VA hospital. VP Cheney strides in, has Secret Service smash open both cases, then takes out both documents, tears them to hand-sized pieces, wipes his poop-covered arse with the pieces, shoves these poo-papers in the mouths of the wounded vets, knocks the vets out of their wheelchairs and off of their crutches to the floor, then has Secret Service kick the vets in the face. Not that Cheney'd actually, physically do that. I can't imagine anyone would actually be that horrible. But if he did and I were standing there, watching it, unable to stop any of it from happening, that feeling I'd have during the whole thing might kind of equal how I felt when I watched this. Except in the hypothetical and completely fictional case, I might actually vomit instead of just feeling like I might, sob with despair, go home, write a suicide note, then jump off a bridge.

Protest? Try to stop it? Why? No one listens. No one cares. Especially not the executive branch. They're like the phone company in the old SNL sketches in the 1970s: "We don't care; we don't have to: We're the executive branch."

No one cares. Except for a frustrated, angry, and deeply saddened Jon Stewart. But all he can do is make a funny TV show while New Rome burns.

Woe is we.