Charlie Rangel's Hateful Hope

Read this excerpt and then ponder the questions of mine that follow:

House Democrat Charles Rangel suggested Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney may not be healthy enough to continue in office.

"He [Cheney] is a sick man, you know," Rangel told the Manhattan news network NY1. "He's got heart disease."

In quotes picked up by the New York Post, Rangel insisted, "Sometimes I don't even think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on. [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld is the guy in Washington . . . running the country."

The Harlem Democrat claimed that Cheney's heart disease "is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never really know what he's thinking."

-Is this not an overt insult against the Vice President?

-Is this not an even bigger overt insult against the President, since it's people like Rangel that have insisted that Dick Cheney has been "the guy in Washington...running the country"?

-Is this also perhaps both a gambit to try and drive Cheney from office as well as a bit of wishful thinking that his "heart disease" might just do that job for Rangel "permanently"?

One more question after this last blurb:

Rangel offered no specific evidence to counter a pronouncement from Cheney's doctors last month, who gave the VP a clean bill of health.

Might it not be the Prince of Harlem who is the "very sick man"? Only about a foot northward of the cardiac region?