The New and Not-Improved-at-All Dick Cheney Action Figure:
Hey, gang, lookie here: It's the new battery-operated Dick Cheney action figure. He's thinner, quieter, and ten times more sinister. He's all ours, America. Plus, he's got an electric heart so he's part cyborg: he'll never die.

You'll love your new Dick Cheney action figure when he gets all cuddly telling us about his special new features: "What's happened over time is the technology's gotten better and better and we've gotten more and more experience with people living with this technology. So I'll have to make a decision at some point whether or not I want to go for a transplant." In other words, your Dick Cheney plays a game where he chooses which healthy young adult he wants killed in order for him to continue running. Maybe it'll be you. It's like winning the lottery, except with forced organ removal instead of millions of dollars as your prize.

You'll thrill to your Dick Cheney action figure taking a heaving, slow victory lap and praising President Obama on embracing the some of the worst aspects of the Bush administration's policies on detention, surveillance, and secretiveness while, in the next wheezed breath, setting Obama up for blame should al-Qaeda hit us again: "I hope President Obama is to that point now where he has that same basic attitude. But we might never find out until there's actually another attack."

You'll delight when your new Mecha-Cheney, which used to have a quail-hunting play set with face-shooting action, comments on angry and violent rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shooting: "I think we need to be a little careful about assuming that somehow the rest of society or the political class bears the responsibility for what happened here when it was the act of a deranged, crazed individual that committed a crime." It's as fun as pulling birdshot out of your forehead.

Of course, your Dick Cheney action figure comes with de facto immunity from prosecution for the many crimes he committed and approved of during his time as Vice President, even though it's easier than ever to find a man who needs to change his batteries every twelve hours or so.

But as long as you do so, America, you will never, ever escape Dick Cheney, old and husky or older and gaunt. Gosh, this model is so much better than the one that drank oil and blew up poor countries. And, remember, every Dick Cheney action figure comes with skull-fucking night-time mode so that, while news people sleep, Cheney can stick his plastic penis into their ears and screw their brains so that they think he has anything meaningful to say beyond "Sorry I fucked it all up so badly," which, if he ever did, would immediately trigger the thermonuclear self-destruct mode embedded inside so he can continue to leave casualties behind.