Apparently dick cheney just shot someone

(hi vicky!)

Talking about Cheney this made me laugh in a stupid tee-hee kind of way though...
Cheney should be probed...

HUNTING ACCIDENT [Jonah Goldberg ]

Dick Cheney accidentally shot someone during a hunting trip. The man's in good condition, thank goodness. Get ready for an avalanche of nasty jokes and comments.
Posted at 04:05 PM

Aw.

http://towleroad.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/cheneybulge.jpg

"Now see there, see there, that's what happens when you step in front of someone's gun. I mean do you really expect Dick Cheney, the VP, second-in-command of the world's most powerful military, do you expect him not to know how to handle a gun?"

This same thing is how my first programming teacher was blinded when he was a teenager. (He went on to be the world's first totally blind professional magician, of all things)

Many jokes seem inappropriate. O'Reilly's little connection there is funny, though: if gun-handling really is like military-commanding, then yes, this is a pretty adequate metaphor for the administration's job perforamce.

oh burr oh burr what have you done
you have shooted dead the great hamilton
you hid behind a patch of thistle
and shooted him dead with your big horse pistol

Burr: stick 'em! Ha ha ha stick'em! Burr: stick 'em! Ha ha ha stick'em!

"Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services.

He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: "Take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead."

There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

Back on the phone, the hunter says, "Ok, now what?"

(It's a lot less funny if you substitute "Iraq" for "my friend".)

(ok, not really)

That's what I thought this thread was about! Dean. never. learns. please to not let him go anywhere near a tape recorder or TV camera for at least four months before the midterm elections.

however, it is kind of a funny comment now that Cheney actually did shoot somebody.

"I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time," Sarah Brady said. "Now I know I was right to be nervous."

*or just maim a little, as in this case.

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/dick_cheney.jpgybnkxv.jpg

Grrr!

Got no human grace your eyes without a face.
Such a human waste your eyes without a face
And now it's getting worse.

Aaron offed his guy

Aaron attempted to overthrow the US govt AFTER his shot

Aaron's coup was unsuccessful

I told the folks at the local bar about this yesterday and everyone was slow to believe me.

(my source = gore vidal via my memory so that may be inkorrekt)

(ie vidal claims the duel was over the fact that hamilton had claimed publicly that burr wz havin sex w.his own daughter -- this is NOT the official historical version)

(also unlikely to be the reason here come to think of it!)

HOW DO I SHOT PENSIONER?

YOU LIE

http://www.nndb.com/people/902/000043773/calhoun55.jpg

(warning to anyone bored enuff to bother im-googlin: all other 19th-c veeps = boring to look at)
(except breckinridge during his CLONE TACHE phase maybe) (PAGIN G.VIDAL AGAIN!)

Armstrong said it took about 20 or 25 minutes for the ambulance to reach Whittington. "We don't have paved roads," she said. "It's going to take a little bit of time...the distances are pretty great out here."

*do you see?
**this is not the first time whh has been in the ilx spotlight

Let's see, there are no phones by the bedside of people in ICU, right?

yeah, right, cia directors shoot people. that makes a lot of sense, as they're the most public face of the company, sure.

c'mon, sub-david brooksian at best. stop watching "24."

"The nature of quail shooting ensures that this will happen. It goes with the turf."

wtf?

http://www.stanford.edu/~petelat1/quail.jpg

yeah, quail seems like a pretty bad bird to be hunting with shotguns.

You sure that's even a contest?

http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/images/aaron-burr.jpg

This story is a very big deal, despite all the mitigating factors -- the accident involved a friend, his medical team was right there to help, and all that. Something like this has never happened before, and it is a genuinely disturbing thing to think that the vice president of the United States actually shot somebody last weekend, even for fans of his. It's disturbing as well that there was a news blackout that lasted nearly a day about this serious incident. It seems beyond question that the vice president is going to have to go before the cameras, explain what happened, and show genuine remorse for his actions, however inadvertent. It's a difficult challenge for someone as reticent as Dick Cheney. But unless he does so, and makes a good showing of it, he will be damaged goods for the remainder of the Bush presidency.

Now and only now, eh?

(ok i know he's also saying: and that's the only constituency that matters -- but in a way this is TRUE as things stand -- it's not like this will damage dick further w.dems or the left -- there's no further there!)

*by which i mean: anyone who KNOWS how to use a gun is going to know -- whatever supportive public noises they make -- that cheney really really doesn't)

E-mails are flying fast and furious, most of them criticizing me for living in a "concrete jungle" and not understanding that, hey, hunting accidents are very common, every hunter has been peppered with buckshot, the accident was probably Whittington's fault, and that this is all a media frenzy and the last thing the Vice President need do is apologize or say anything. To which I have to reply: Wow. You people are tough. Tougher than the White House is going to be, I assure you, because Dick Cheney will have to say something about this, and the tone he will have to strike is one of rueful sorrow for having caused -- even inadvertently -- a serious injury to a friend. It is the appropriate and proper thing to do, by the way. You are free to consider this unjust and unfair. I assure you that any argument that begins, "So the Vice President shot somebody, big deal," isn't going to prevail.

Further:

OH, AND BY THE WAY...accusing me of being either a liberal or in a liberal bubble or being manipulated by the liberal media for saying that it's a big deal when the vice president shoots somebody isn't a rational response to what I've said about the Vice President's hunting accident. And saying that, hey, people get shot all the time when they're out hunting and it's no big deal really isn't an argument you want to be making if you are a supporter of gun rights.

Please note the hilarity of that second response re: accusations of 'liberalism' given Goldberg last night on another (or is it?) issue.

i know the hunting ethic doesn't only flourish on the pro-bush right

Sure doesn't. Ask my dad and John Kerry.

I suspect it's because it's starting to get closer to the bone with him. Goldberg is right about how the dynamic works both ways, but seems unaware that it's his side that got that ball rolling in the first place, so I shed no tears.

godammit, this is bullshit more overt than usual. basic hunter's safety rules

From a law enforcement perspective, a hunting incident occurs when a hunter directly or indirectly causes personal injury or death while using a firearm or bow. More broadly defined, a hunting incident is any unplanned, uncontrolled action that occurs while using a sporting arm. It can include near misses.

Being responsible in order to prevent hunting incidents is your first priority.

-The most common hunting incidents result from hunter judgment mistakes.

-Eighty percent of all firearm incidents occur within 10 yards of the muzzle.

and this is shit they drive into your head again & again when you first get your license, or when you first get your license.

http://hunter-ed.com/images/graphics/safety_zone_of_fire_v2.jpg

wtf is this? an attempt at a smile or just a smirk?

http://images.chron.com/photos/2005/01/26/1106956/166xGeneric.jpg

Head of Texas Funeral Services Commission, appointed by then-gov GWB.

"Don’t let red-state identity politics derail you, JPod. I’m not from the East. I’ve hunted my whole life. All of my friends have also hunted all of their lives. There is NO excuse, period, for ANY hunting accident. I think, as you mentioned, that hunters need to be mindful of their public image. This doesn’t help, and any attempt to explain it away as common, routine or inevitable will only hurt our image with the public."

"There have to be some of us “country folk” who agree with you. I do.
Growing up in rural Nebraska, I was into the Junior NRA and Boy Scouts big-time – emphasis on gun safety was paramount. (However, I lost interest in hunting itself – my eyesight isn’t very good (glasses have to be perfectly clean) and I like my sleep.)
As much as I admire the VP, what happened was STUPID and reckless, whatever the details happen to be."

"A relative accidentally shot his own son in a similar hunting accident - but in the face - resulting in permanent loss of sight in one eye and more than 50% loss in the other eye. So, sorry - like any accident - it CAN be a big deal!!"

Goldberg's starting to come around a bit too.

For those of you who aren't in Austin, you probably haven't heard that the building housing KOOP Radio (where I do Commercial Suicide with Alex Keller) caught fire not once, but twice in the last month or so. The first fire was caused by someone on the 2nd floor (KOOP is on the third) falling asleep with a lit cigarette. The second, much larger fire's causes are unknown but it is surrounded by very suspicious circumstances. The fire started two doors down from KOOP and VERY quickly spread to 304 E. 5th where KOOP is. The building was practically condemned before the first fire and was scheduled for demolition before the second fire.

The building is owned by local attorney Harry Whittington. If that name sounds familiar to you, it's because he's the guy Dick Cheney just shot on a hunting trip. Who knew that KOOP's slumlord was none other than a hunting pal of the Prince of Darkness? Not I.

In related news, KOOP will be back on the air broadcasting from a temporary location this weekend. Great news.

oops, i should add that this is required when you first get your licence, too!

In 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, named Mr. Whittington to head the Texas Funeral Service Commission, which licenses and regulates funeral directors and embalmers in the state. When he was named, a former executive director of the commission, Eliza May, was suing the state, saying that she had been fired because she investigated a funeral home chain that was owned by a friend of Mr. Bush.

The suit was settled in 2001, but the details were not disclosed. Mr. Whittington still serves in the position.

This is all assuming nobody presses any lines that he was flagrantly unsafe and clearly at fault here, which I seriously doubt anyone will.

(morb you surely know this?)

Mark, you mean "The Most Dangerous Game?" (short story?)

what happened (worst OR best case) PLUS whatever he does to deal screws w.the simplicity of the symbol-cluster -- it's a subliminal wedge issue

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200307/quammen

(haha and "greatest game" there = my unconscious projection/desire)

i think this plays BETTER w.nice forgiving liberals like you and me -- who anyway have plenty other good reasons not to let DC off the hook -- than it does w.certain elements of core constituency

and that plays badly for him!

i also read that it is considered highly unsporting to shoot quail -- which are not exactly giant fierce beats of prey -- unless they are WELL off the ground

(in which case the only possible injuries wd be fallin shot, which unless you get it in yr eye is not something you'd go to hospital for)

(ie DC wz aimin horzontally, and thus Real Sportsmen everywhere will be tut-tuttin at his lame skeez soup-to-nuts) (soup = aiming at tiny little pen-readed birds ON THE GROUND; nuts = letting someone ELSE announce that it wz basically whittington's fault)

but seein as i have never once in my life touched a gun let alone seen one fired, i may to be merely selectively quotin what i wd LIKE to hear be so

I dunno, though -- like I was saying upthread, there was a guy in my town who'd shot his son like this, and I don't think the overall feeling was that he was a terrible person or a hopeless foul-up. It wasn't though of like, say, drunk driving. It seemed to get glossed over as a horrible accident, with a lot of benefit-of-doubt going on, for obvious reasons -- he lost a kid, no need to rub it in. Though the gravity of it made a difference that Cheney doesn't have: the results were tragic enough that it'd have felt mean-spirited to fault the guy, in a way it's not when an unlikeable public figure accidentally injures a buddy.

http://www.sachsreport.com/smart%20drug%20super%20master%20mind%20brain%20drug%20alternative%20mind%20thought%20neuron%20FDA%20approved%20dietary%20supplement%20loophole.jpg

Surely that happened during the pre-hunting soggy biscuit ritual?

* Cheney Accidentally Shoots Limousine Driver (October 9, 2005)
* Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Elevator Passenger (June 21, 2005)
* Cheney Accidentally Shoots News Reporter (March 19, 2005)
* Cheney Accidentally Shoots Opera Singer (May 2, 2004)
* Cheney Accidentally Shoots Four Housecats (January 12, 2004)

*BLAM*

Dr. David Blanchard, the emergency room chief at Christus Spohn, said Whittington was hit by "many, many" pellets. But he said most of the wounds were "superficial at best," and many of the pellets would be left inside Whittington's body.

"at best"

BIG SHOT
Cheney wounds hunting buddy in accident
(Post)

DUCK! IT'S DICK
Oops, Cheney shoots pal during hunt
(Daily News)

http://iwontheinternet.com/dick/

You'd shoot quail with the smallest birdshot (12) - the pellets are like .05" dia. (BB's are like 0.18".) It would suck to get shot in the face with birdshot, and could easily blind a person. Also, the closer he was to the muzzle, the tighter the pattern would have been, but if he was a few feet away the shot would have spread out.

*I just like putting that in OMG WTF caps.

daily show just used this

Well, that would pepper a person pretty thoroughly. Poor guy. Hopefully Cheney wasn't using lead shot, though he could have been. Non-toxic shot isn't required for upland bird hunting in Texas, just waterfowl.

I always will remember,
'Twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a mornin' bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

I was in no mood to trifle,
I took down my trusty rifle
And went out to stalk my prey.
What a haul I made that day.
I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,
And one of the hunters wasn't insured.

People ask me how I do it,
And I say, "There's nothin' to it,
You just stand there lookin' cute,
And when something moves, you shoot!"
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.

(yeah, I've read too many conspiracy crap)
(xpost!)

the best explanation i've heard for why they kept it quiet for 22 hours is that if there were a chance the dude was going to die, someone else would have taken the blame.

unfortunately, this just makes TOO much sense.

Maybe he was hunting with buckshot, which would be stupid for quail, but I wouldn't put it past him. If the guy dies, is it manslaughter?

I hate the sense that TranceFormation of America makes. I've referenced the book several times here, notably with respect to Dick Cheney's endowment, Bill Bennett's sado-masochism and the ubiquity of Oz programming, and each time I've apologized for doing so. Cathy O'Brien's account of her decades of torture and mind control is a fittingly dissociative jumble of contaminated memory, fantasy and truth, and if the rationality of these times were any less attenuated I'd be inclined to not bother trying to separate the parts:

Dick Cheney, then [assistant] White House Chief of Staff to President Ford...was the reason my family had travelled to Wyoming where I endured yet another form of brutality - his version of "A Most Dangerous Game," or human hunting.... Dick Cheney had an apparent addiction to the "thrill of the sport." He appeared obsessed with playing A Most Dangerous Game as a means of traumatizing mind control victims, as well as to satisfy his own perverse sexual kinks.

It's just out of this world, right? But then Cheney goes and shoots a man, in this world - not the otherworld of O'Brien's narrative - so another suggestive point of unfortunate contact is made, and the weirdness bears down a little more.

eurgh, I don't want to know.

A number of readers have written to say that hunting accidents are quite common, but a look at recent statistics shows that, in the state of Texas at least, they are not that frequent an occurrence. A report by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says there were 29 hunting accidents, four of them fatal, in Texas in 2004. Ten of the 29 were self-inflicted, so there were just 19 reported incidents in all of Texas in which a hunter accidentally shot someone else. According to the Department, there were 1,091,178 hunting licenses sold in Texas in 2004.

Hospital officials said they were not concerned about the six to 200 other pieces of birdshot that might still be lodged in Whittington's body. Cheney was using 7 1/2 shot from a 28-gauge shotgun. Shotgun pellets are typically made of steel or lead; the pellets in 7 1/2 shot are just under a tenth of an inch in diameter.

now, is it good to still have up to a coupla hundred pieces of metal still lodged in your head and torso?

Texas officials said the shooting was an accident and no charges were brought against the vice president.

A Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report issued Monday said Whittington was retrieving a downed bird and stepped out of the hunting line he was sharing with Cheney. "Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards," the report said.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060213_accident_hunting_cheney/

If the Constitution hadn't been amended, the vice-president position would've probably remained vacant until the next term.

And of course, rumors are a 'flyin' that Dickie-Boy was tanked, hence his confusion between a bird and a lawyer, and hence the day-long delay betwixt shooting the esquire and reorting it.

Some creature called Bay Buchanan was on the news this morning saying the public wasn't interested in this story at all and that it had all been blown out of proportion by the national press.

I'm no PR expert, but I'd think going aggressive on this story is very poor strategy.

And of course also because it is simultaneously funny and horrifying.

http://www.dickcheneygunclub.com

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0214-23.htm

To be sure, a trigger-happy vice president makes for good feature stories – not to mention good comedy. But where were the demands for answers, where was the cries for accountability, where were the shows of righteous indignation last week, when it was revealed by the National Journal that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, had told a federal grand jury he was "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" to disclose classified information to journalists as part of a plot to defend the Bush administration's manipulation of prewar intelligence to make the "case" for going to war with Iraq.

In the scheme of things, the many unanswered questions about whether the vice president of the United States engaged in a conspiracy to deceive Congress and the American people about reasons for entering a war that has now killed more than 2,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians would seem to be a bigger deal than the same vice president's involvement in a hunting accident.

True, it would be foolish to assume that Scott McClellan would be any more forthcoming about the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence -- and evidence of Cheney's involvement in efforts to attack those who exposed that manipulation – than he has been about the manipulation of information regarding the vice president's gunplay.

But if the press corps is going to rise from its slumber when it comes to Dick Cheney's secrecy and chicanery, would it make sense to get excited about the Constitutional crisis – as opposed to the veep's itchy trigger finger?

But a failure by the vice president to answer questions about the accident might allow such speculation to grow until it does significant damage to the administration. And if that happens, it will be the result of the vice president's failure to be forthcoming about the issue from the very start.

Cheney Shoots a Texas Liberal

Posted on Feb. 13, 2006

By Molly Ivins

Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas -- what's the fine for shooting a
lawyer? -- and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as
they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered
with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one
we've got.

Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal -- only by Texas
Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook.
Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues
of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of
Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has
often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime:
"Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."

In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of
new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature -- a "lock 'em all up and throw away the key"
type -- the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime
neophyte to see Harry Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little
basic education on the cost of prisons.

When Whittington was the chairman of Texas Public Finance Authority, he had
a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds.
As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is
segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong
in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no
effect on crime.

Texas still keeps the nonviolent, the retarded, senior citizens, etc. locked
up for ridiculous periods -- all at taxpayer expense. If we could ever get to
where we spend as much per pupil on education as we do per prisoner, this
state would take off like a rocket. In 2003, we spend nearly $15,000 per
prisoner, while average per-pupil spending was just over $8,000.

I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for
partisan purposes -- just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old
Harry, a thoroughly decent man. However, I was offended by the
never-our-fault White House spin team. Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of
her boss, "He was not careless or incautious [and did not] violate of any of
the [rules]. He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do." Of course he
did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington.

Which brings us to one of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration,
which claims to be creating "the responsibility society." It's hard to think
of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or
not done than this bunch. They're certainly good at preaching responsibility
to others -- and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their
watch.

Of course the Cheney shooting was an accident.

But is it an accident if your home and your life are destroyed by the flood
following a hurricane? Especially if the flood was caused by failed levees,
a government responsibility?

Is it an accident if you are born with a clubfoot and your parents are too
poor to pay for the operation to fix it? Is there any societal
responsibility in such a case?

Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all
you can find to replace it is a low-wage job at the big-box store with no
health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can't pay the bill,
so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for
good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused
by deliberate government policy?

Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and
where does societal responsibility come in?

Cheney has a curious, shifting history on issues of blame and
responsibility. He was vice chair of the congressional committee that spent
11 months investigating the Iran-Contra affair and author of its minority
report. As John W. Dean highlights in a recent essay, the 500-page majority
report concluded the entire affair "was characterized by pervasive
dishonesty and inordinate secrecy." But Cheney's report said the Reagan
administration's repeated breaking of the law was "mistakes ... were just
that -- mistakes in judgment and nothing more."

Those of you who saw Cheney's interview with Jim Lehrer last week may recall
the passage on Darfur that ended with this:

Lehrer: "It's still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless."
Cheney: "Still happening, correct."
Lehrer: "Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and -- so you're satisfied
the U.S. is doing everything it can do?"
Cheney: "I am satisfied we're doing everything we can do."

His head still tilts over more to the right when he lies.

O' course. It's more a matter of general documentation.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will break his silence on Wednesday over the shooting of a Texas lawyer in a hunting accident, with a television interview announced by the White House.

Doctors kept a close eye on Cheney's victim, who was in stable condition a day after experiencing a minor heart attack caused by the shooting.

Cheney sprayed Harry Whittington, 78, with birdshot while hunting quail in Texas on Saturday, but has stayed silent on it except for brief statements from his office.

Cheney would appear in an interview with Fox News at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT), White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"It's an opportunity for the vice president to talk about the questions relating to this issue and also to talk about his concern for his friend Mr. Whittington," said McClellan, who was traveling with President George W. Bush in Columbus, Ohio.

Many are now discussing more paranoid theories as to what happened in a shooting accident in Texas. The most persuasive of these is that Cheney had had a few when shooting and kept the press and cops at bay while he sobered up. I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but in general, I favor the Occam's Razor explanation. You don't need alcohol to explain his behavior. Dick Cheney's behavior in this incident is exactly the same as his behavior elsewhere. He thinks he's answerable to no one. He doesn't just disagree with his critics; he has complete contempt for them. The reason he didn't contact the police or perform routine notification of the press is that he's Dick Cheney. Why should he deign to tell anyone? It's his private life; and he has a war to run, detainees to order tortured, phones to tap, laws to break. And he may well believe he is doing all this for the good - because we face a dangerous enemy and only he, in his mind, has the capacity to stop it. This afternoon, he will give Brit Hume an audience. The Prince-Regent will not deign to be interviewed by a journalist not actually a daily spinner for the administration, let alone subject himself to a press conference, where he might be forced to answer real questions. And this set-up, in which an arrogant, unreachable, all-powerful vice-president determines critical policy decisions (most of which have proved nothing less than calamitous), is a troubling one in a democracy. What Cheney represents is the democratic danger of the vice-presidency becoming much more powerful than it was ever designed to be. And in Cheney, it has found a man eager to press the limits.

xpost
Bay Buchanan is Pat's sister.

I should have guessed.

An old man on a car quail hunt - you've got to expect that he'll be wandering around in places he shouldn't be.

HOW DO I etc.

"It doesn't exactly constitute a Profile in Courage for him [Cheney] to run over to the F-Word Network and have a sit-down with Brit Hume... that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde." -- Jack Cafferty just now on CNN

Haw. Cafferty is turning into one of my favorite news heads.

Otoh, I can easily imagine wanting to get drunk and shoot birds/things/people if I worked in this administration.

Every time I see this thread on the New Answers page, I think, 'Again!? Damn, he must be well pissed off this week!'

The real story is already emerging, if you're willing to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries since they occurrred. Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined to investigate.

Before the right-wing commenters howl - there's documentation for all of these statements. Let's take them one by one: In addition to Cheney and Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive comments that only referred to a "third hunter," we now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland.

Then there was this Armstrong quote on MSNBC and picked up by Firedoglake (later dutifully scrubbed, but preserved on Google cache): "There may be a beer or two in there," (Armstrong) said, 'but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.'"

Interestingly, Armstrong's playing with words here. She later said that she (Armstrong) hadn't had anything to drink, so at least one of the other three must have been drinking - and the other three were shooting. So while her statement was literally correct ("not everyone ... was shooting"), it gives the false impression that nobody drank and shot.

Then there was this item (courtesy kos):

Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press.

In other words, she didn't see the accident. All of her statements, replete with colorful sidebars about getting "peppered pretty good," gave the false impression she was an eyewitness. She wasn't.

And what about Dr. David Blanchard, who made such light of Whittington's injuries? Before the heart attack occurred, Blanchard gave no indication that pellets had entered Whittington's torso or major organs (we now know that at least one other pellet entered his liver). I found an interesting quote. After asserting that spiritual beliefs help people recover more quickly (which studies have suggested may be true), Blanchard said this of people with out of body and near death experiences:

"These people do quite well in their disease processes," he said. "The Lord wasn't quite ready for them yet . . . It makes believers out of them."

It's likely that Blanchard is also the same "Dr. David Blanchard" who is listed as Vice Chairperson of World Hope International, a Christian evangelical aid group.

Blanchard's certainly entitled to his own beliefs, and World Hope International (if he's the same Blanchard) has done some good work, albeit with a proselytizing bent. But most evangelicals in this country are ardent supporters of the Bush/Cheney Administration. This may explain the otherwize puzzling word choices Dr. Blanchard made to play down Whittington's injuries, especially before the heart attack made that more difficult to do.

So was Cheney drinking, and was there anything inappropriate about this hunting party? We don't know, and nobody's investigating. There's reason to be suspicious. We do have the suggestion that drinking was taking place, we have inconsistencies and a pattern of deception in Armstrong's statements, we have a shooting injury that's far more serious than originally claimed ... and a Sheriff's Department and national press that have already proclaimed the VP innocent of all wrongdoing.

I was right to call this Cheney's Chappaquiddick. The parallels get stronger every day. Of course, Chappaquiddick happened almost forty years ago, and Ted Kennedy's turned his personal life around. Cheney's actions happened this weekend. There's reason to be suspicious of the Vice President's behavior, starting with the cover-up itself.

They're trying to spin it as just a badly handled case of press relations, but it's could be a whole lot more than that.

February 15, 2006

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney accidentally shot documentary filmmaker Michael Moore yesterday as Moore was walking out of a Manhattan Denny's.

A spokesperson for the vice president said that it was a "complete accident" and that Cheney felt "horrible." The White House released a statement saying that the shooting was "just bad timing. Vice President Cheney, who is well-versed in firearms safety, was merely sitting in a shrub, wearing camouflage, outside of a Denny's frequented by Mr. Moore." The statement went on to say that Cheney had been in the shrub for "several days." Moore is said to have suffered only minor injuries and was released from the hospital.

IN ANOTHER BIZARRE accident, Cheney mistakenly shot every Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A White House spokesman said that the vice president feels "bad, but not that bad." An aide to Cheney said that the vice president "happened to be in the committee chambers, under a chair, when he stood up to put on a pair of chaps, accidentally shooting the committee members, stopping to reload three times." Remarkably, the committee members were largely unhurt and are expected to make complete recoveries.

THE WHITE HOUSE was put on the defensive again today when Air Force Two was forced to make an emergency landing 25 miles west of New York City after a loss of cabin pressure because of the accidental shooting of former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Both men have recently come under criticism for their handling of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Cheney was said to be "laughing, but also deeply concerned" when he was awoken from a nap after accidentally shooting the men at close range. Typically, shotguns are not allowed on either Air Force One or Two, but Cheney is, the statement said, "a seasoned hunter and also planned to accidentally shoot both men." Both Brown and Chertoff are expected to make complete recoveries, although it remains unclear as to why Brown was duct-taped to the wing of the plane.

A White House spokesman later added that the vice president had been on his way to New York City to accidentally shoot New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

SEN. HILLARY Rodham Clinton miraculously escaped injury today after Cheney accidentally ran up to her motorcade and accidentally shot at her car. The White House said the vice president "tripped."

"These things happen," a White House spokesman said. "Guns, while completely safe, are also dangerous."

wait a minute, there's a denny's in manhattan?

it doesn't seem that credible that a five-time heart attack "victim" with a pacemaker (right?) would be drinking.

President Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, pushed Vice President Dick Cheney to speak publicly about shooting a fellow hunter, sources tell CBS News.

Rove worried the vice president's silence on the issue was becoming a political problem, CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

Cheney is in a "state of meltdown" over shooting his friend and the political fallout it has caused, a source close to the Cheney has told CBS News. On Wednesday, he accepted full blame for the incident and defended the decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060216073209990011&cid=2249

this kind of meltdown?

Well, by his own admission he had a beer. If he shouldn't even be doing that because of his health, that's a problem.

meanwhile

Slightly more entertaining.

http://cliffschecter.blogspot.com/2007/07/man-walked-up-to-dick-cheney-calmly.html

http://m1.freeshare.us/161fs577980.jpg

It's real hard to read someone's blog when they have a picture like that put up.

Hold on, someone said to Dick Cheney he doesn't agree with his Iraq policy, and Dick Cheney shot him?

A guy told Dick Cheney to go fuck himself, so Dick Cheney told him he didn't agree with his Iraq policy. Then Dick Cheney shot the guy and put a picture of him on his blog.

Then the guy claimed executive privilege as the 8th branch of government.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_cB48QdxI

Never gets old.

@radleybalko
Here's wishing you and yours a warm and happy 10th anniversary Dick-Cheney-Shot-A-Guy-In-The-Face Day.

Billy Joe Shaver approves.

https://i.imgur.com/RwfFQU4.jpg
(christian bale)

euargh

Last (x) Movies you are going to Avoid

amazing how ilx preserves threads like this, formally consistent with everything else and revive-able at the drop of the hat. everything that ever happened is equally distant from the present. can't be many other places where the "dick cheney just shut someone" thread is so straightforwardly unearthed.

otm, every other forum you’ll get blasted for necroing a thread and it’s dumb

i love that ilx is a living archive

one of the reasons ilx became so popular is it has the best user interface ever. whoever designed is website is a goddamn genius. revives at the drop of a hat. no damn avatars or signatures. and best of all, you don’t have to click through fifty thousand pages when you look at a big thread.

Phil Greenspun IIRC

he also started the old photo.net forum, which started out looking like ILX and became a complete disaster when features beyond text were added

starting to think christian bale's acting career is just an excuse for an extreme eating disorder

and TYLER PERRY as COLIN POWELL

shoulda done it as Madea

one of the reasons ilx became so popula

Lol

wow I never put it together that Cheney shot a guy in the face the same day the first Uhh Yeah Dude episode dropped

2006 4 Life

this movie looks fucking terrible and seems destined to backhandedly glorify Cheney