Monday, February 13, 2006

Accidents will happen



I've lived in this town for thirty years, and to no one I'm a stranger
And I put new bullets in my gun, chamber upon chamber - Nick Cave


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.

Reportedly this was the first occasion for the victim, Austin "millionaire attorney" Harry Whittington, 78, to go hunting with Cheney. Naturally enough he's a Republican, and not surprisingly he's a Bush appointee: a few years ago, then-Governor George Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Services Commission. If that means anything to you, it probably means Funeralgate. TFSC was the investigating body on the case of Service Corporation International, headed by Bush family friend Robert Waltrip, which had been "recycling graves" and throwing corpses in the woods. Eliza May was the director of the TFSC when the investigation began, and was fired, she claimed, on account of pressure from the Governor's office to help his friend at SCI. Her replacement? Harry Whittington. (As we've noted, SCI has gone on to better things, like being tasked to disappear the dead of Louisiana.)

Whittington was shot by the Vice President on the happy Republican hunting grounds of the 50,000 acre Armstrong Ranch of South Texas. The ranch had belonged to late Bush "Pioneer" Tobin Armstrong, who died last October, and is now the property of daughter Katherine. Perhaps the most interesting family biography belongs to Tobin's widow and Katherine's mother Anne, who advised Nixon, served as Ford's British Ambassador, and "approved covert actions on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Reagan." Perhaps also worth noting is that Anne was a Halliburton director when the company first hired Dick Cheney.

This happened on Saturday, but the incident wasn't news until late Sunday. What happened in the interim? I could imagine Cheney calling Wolf, the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction, to clean up his mess. But in the horror show we can't stop watching, Cheney himself is the cleaner. So how was the missing time spent?

Then, when the shooting was finally reported, it was told as a joke. Dick Cheney puts an elderly man in intensive care, and the newsreaders can't stop grinning. In the blogosphere too, it became a piece from the lighter side. What's that about, but a coping mechanism to keep the absurdity at safe distance. You let it get to close, it can either drive you mad or efface your presumption of the world. We need to be able to cope with the Deep Absurdity, but sometimes we need to stop laughing long enough to do something about it.

It's suggested that Whittington is wholly responsible for getting "peppered"(note: not shot in the face and chest), by his having separated himself from the hunting party and approached them from behind. Cheney, so goes the word picture goes, was tracking a bird, wheeled about, and - whoops.

An accident? Sure; could be. But just as possible is an intentional act, because in so much they do, the Bush Administration and Cheney at the head of its class conduct themselves with the berserking disregard of a thrill kill cult. They've shrugged "It was an accident" over too many bodies. Even those who don't know O'Brien's account of Cheney's love for hunting humans have been given great cause to wonder, what isn't he capable of? Remember, this is a man who attended the Auschwitz memorial ceremony dressed for a duck hunt, wearing a wool cap which read "Staff 2001." Was he enjoying a good, deep-body chuckle, knowing he wouldn't be held to account for it by anyone but people like us, and so could get away with it?

Guy de Maupassant's "Diary of a Madman" tells the posthumous, first person story of a respected judge whom no one would ever suspect of murder, and so he senselessly kills a little boy and a fisherman just because he could. ("Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, me, me, especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away with?") Appended to the diary de Maupassant adds this remark: "Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much to be feared as this monstrous lunatic."

I frequently read remarks such as What will it take for Bush to lose his base? Eat a baby on live TV? Maybe we'll yet find out.

126 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,sad as it might seem,I don't think he could lose any of his base by eat'en a baby on tv.Most of the mind dead MERICAN'S would think it was just another episode of fear factor any way.This fucken place has reached the tippen point,from my point of view no one has the balls to react any different than there told. What ever they are beam'en this orb with has taken hold.Oh,maybe this guy Wittington was gett'en cold feet,or maybe he knows where they put all the extra corpses from Katrina,later.

6:42 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let's just look at the actual event.

It was reported on the TV news (okay, sometimes I watch videos on my computer, even though we don't "do" television) that the incident is under investigation. And his victim is in... umm... stable condition was reported. No mention if he will lose an eye or worse.

It's also being reported that somehow it was the victim's fault, that he shouldn't have walked up behind the man with the gun. EXCUSE ME??? I thought that gun safety was entirely on the shoulders of the person with the weapon! I've been with Boy Scouts working on shooting sports merit badges, and every care is taken to assure that this kind of thing never happens!

I guess that Cheney ain't no Boy Scout.

9:18 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My first thought when I heard this story was, where was the Secret Service? Would they allow someone with a shotgun to come up behind the vice president?

9:39 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where have you gone Guy de Maupassant?

"Uhmm, would it be considered rude to ask what happened to Scalia's 'daughter'? Why is there no mention of how she returned to Washington? And would Scalia really have brought his daughter along on such an outing? Since it wasn't a big secret that Scalia and Cheney were there, doesn't it seem reasonable to conclude that the ban on photographs was intended to protect the young woman's identity? And did Scalia really hang around to hunt for a few more days, despite the fact that, according to Sheriff Naquin, the hunting "was terrible. There were very few ducks killed."?

Is it possible that Scalia and Cheney opted to leave separately so as not to highlight the fact that someone in their party had gone missing? Since no one saw Scalia leave, then it follows that no one can confirm whether his 'daughter' left with him. And even if she did, doesn't this story, at the very least, have the makings of a good sex scandal? I mean, when two older guys and a young woman go duck hunting for a couple of days and no one brings back any ducks, people are going to talk. And if the two guys come back without ducks or the girl, then I think we could have a serious problem."

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr50.html

If Cheney's head splits open and UFO comes out . . .

9:42 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where have you gone Guy de Maupassant?

"Uhmm, would it be considered rude to ask what happened to Scalia's 'daughter'? Why is there no mention of how she returned to Washington? And would Scalia really have brought his daughter along on such an outing? Since it wasn't a big secret that Scalia and Cheney were there, doesn't it seem reasonable to conclude that the ban on photographs was intended to protect the young woman's identity? And did Scalia really hang around to hunt for a few more days, despite the fact that, according to Sheriff Naquin, the hunting "was terrible. There were very few ducks killed."?

Is it possible that Scalia and Cheney opted to leave separately so as not to highlight the fact that someone in their party had gone missing? Since no one saw Scalia leave, then it follows that no one can confirm whether his 'daughter' left with him. And even if she did, doesn't this story, at the very least, have the makings of a good sex scandal? I mean, when two older guys and a young woman go duck hunting for a couple of days and no one brings back any ducks, people are going to talk. And if the two guys come back without ducks or the girl, then I think we could have a serious problem."

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr50.html

If Cheney's head splits open and UFO comes out . . .

9:48 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of my best friends was fortunate to live next to an abandoned farm/cranberry bog (common up here in New England). The combination of free berries for the birds and the grassy field located near the bog was an excellent home for grouse, pheasant, quail, etc...what hunters call "upland game". In Massachusetts, unless you are using a muzzle-loader, you are only allowed to hunt with a shotgun due to the dense population. I have attended a hunter's safety course and was the owner of a shotgun at the age of 16 (a nice Browning 16 gauge). Safety HAS TO BE paramount as a hunter. There aren't many times when I picked up a firearm and wasn't conscious of the power it wielded. There are two rules that must be obeyed when handling a firearm - 1) All guns are always loaded 2)never point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot. I can't tell you how many birds I've let fly by because someone was in my field of fire. Ya don't take the shot, even if there's the slightest chance that someone is downrange and you always clear your field of fire before pulling back on the trigger. I suppose this could be just another tragic error that has become all-too-common for this administration. At the very least, we've found another vocation that Cheney isn't very good at! Btw, I don't hunt anymore and the shotgun needs repairing (broken fore-stalk). The abandoned farm has since become a housing development. So much for protecting wetlands.

10:07 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another great post.

As many, many blogs have pointed out, the simple fact that Dick Cheney shot another guy means he really is a "chickenhawk": he talks tough, but he has no idea on how to handle a shotgun (hint: the gun should always point down toward the fround when not in use and upward toward the sky when ready to shoot... never, ever point it srtraight ahead of you).

Also, I think I have read somewhere that all the people who had gone hunting with Cheney were given bright orange vests to wear. Even if Cheney had wheeled around real fast, he should have seen the vest and hold his fire.

Finally another interesting item is that the property were the hunting took place actually raises ducks, quails and pheasants in cages especially for these hunting parties. This means the birds are not wild and are actually unafraid of human beings... making the hunt easier for bad shots such as the VP.

All in all, this is really strange. I hope the guy who was shot will never ever give another dollar to the Republican Party.

10:16 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

From editorandpublisher.com:

More Questions Raised About Delay in Reporting Cheney Misfire

The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the Vice President of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious late Sunday. E&P has learned that the official confirmation of the shooting came about only after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property where the shooting occured and called Vice President Cheney's office for confirmation.

The confirmation was made but it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter, Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, had not received word from the ranch owner.

...

While E&P was first to raise questions about the delay Sunday afternoon, Frank James, reporter in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau, put his own spin on it later in the day, asking, "How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today?"

10:31 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

February 13, 2006
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VEEP WHO COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN DICK CHENEY'S HUNTING "ACCIDENT"?
A smart mid-western friend who has a lot of quail-hunting experience writes:

The entire Cheney hunting accident story stinks. The delay in announcing it is suspicious, obviously. I'll bet Cheney had a few beers in him, but I'm not sure that is illegal in Texas (drinking and hunting is illegal in most states, but I couldn't find out if that includes Texas).
But a few other points that may be worth noting:
1. The news reports say the accident happened "around 5:30 pm" on Saturday. In Texas, quail can be hunted until 30 minutes after sunset. Sunset on Saturday, in Corpus Christi, was at 6:18, which means they were legal until 6:48. The "around" is suspicious.
2. The news reports say that after Whittington (left) had gotten off his shot and went looking for his bird, Cheney and the other hunter went to another spot where they saw a covey of quail. Texas quail might be different from Iowa quail, but in Iowa when a shotgun goes off, every quail within earshot flutters away. The story doesn't make sense.
3. None of the stories have commented on the fact that they were "road hunting", or hunting from a car. That is just about the lowest kind of low-rent, dishonorable kind of hunting there is (the phrase "road hunting" is often used synonymously with "poaching"). When I was growing up in Iowa, I went pheasant or quail hunting on scores of occasions with my Dad and others. We never would have hunted from a vehicle and it was an insult to even suggest that someone might. It was considered dangerous and declasse, as it was too great an advantage for the hunter to be "fair". It most states, including Texas, it is also illegal:

"It is unlawful to hunt from or by means of motor-driven vehicles and land conveyances or aircraft of any kind except paraplegics and single or double amputees of legs may hunt from stationary motor-driven vehicles or land conveyances."
However, Texas exempts private property owners from the prohibition when they are on their own land and Cheney was with the property owner on his ranch. But it is still really tacky.
4. Hunting quail in Texas requires an "Upland game bird stamp", which costs $7. This is a relatively new requirement, but I'll bet Cheney didn't have one.
5. The spin is that Whittington "came up from behind the Vice President", implying that he snuck up on him or was somehow partially responsible because Cheney didn't know he was there. When hunting, it is bad form to walk in front of someone's gun. When given a choice, one would always approach another hunter from behind.
Cheney has gotten negative press in the past for participating in "canned hunts" and a couple of years ago he got really negative press for going on a canned pheasant hunt in Pennsylvania where he got between 70 and 95 birds (depending on which report is to be believed). The typical daily limit in places like Iowa and South Dakota, where we have many more pheasants than Pennsylvania, is 3 or 5 per day and a possession limit of 15 or 20.
To many of our milieu, hunting is hunting is hunting and the distinctions noted above aren't that big of a deal. To hunters, these are important distinctions. Hunting regulations are strictly enforced in most states and every sixpack Joe knows he better abide by them or he'll get in trouble. Most hunters aren't affluent suede vest guys, they are working class guys within a couple of generations of agriculatural roots. The gluttony of shooting 70 pheasant in a day is almost impossible for them to comprehend.
Focusing on the kill rather than the hunt is frowned upon. Killing more than you can eat is frowned upon. Canned hunts and that kind of over-indulgence is for the Rambo hunters, who are not thought highly of by the old-fashioned Izaak Walton league type of guys, like my Dad.
Someone should be asking if Cheney was drinking, if he was properly licensed with his Upland Game Bird Stamp, when (and if) the hunting accident was actually reported to the authorities and if anyone has investigated why the quail in Texas seem to have gone deaf.
Ms. Armstrong claims to have been in the car, but to have witnessed the shooting. If so, that would mean the hunters were fairly close, within eyeshot, which makes it even less likely that Whittington had gotten off a shot at a quail and then there were other quail still waiting around for Cheney to find them. It just does not make sense.

10:56 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe he thought he was firing at Dan Quayle ?

11:08 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cheney was "hunting humans" huh?

So there were no untraceable 15 year old crack heads available?

Or was a 78 year old man chosen because of Cheney's heart condition & the fact they couldn't find a souped all terrain wheelchair for the big guy?

If, as some say, he was trying to whack the guy, I guess his failure to do so was just the result of the neo-cons inability to complete anything successfully.

Personally, I think this explains Deadeye Dick's 5 draft deferments.
Instead of privilege keeping the guy out of serving, all branches of the armed forces recognized that Cheney was congenitally prone to engage in friendly fire.

Any way you slice it though, I think you're stretching things a bit thin with this post.

Sorry.

11:21 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice post, a welcome return to the 'terror-firma' so to speak. I believe that the beastman Crowley has returned in the unholy form of Cheney the Barbarous. This alleged "accident" has shades of William Sullivan's hit. William C. Sullivan, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations intelligence operations and co-architect of the original and current COINTELPRO.

"Sullivan was shot with a high-powered rifle near his New Hampshire home by a man who claimed to have mistaken him for a deer. The man was charged with a misdemeanor -- 'shooting a human being by accident'-- and released into the custody of his father, a state policeman. There was no further investigation of Sullivan's death."

11:51 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I disagree with [Richard's] assertion that this story is drum skin stretched beyond usefulness for several reasons but mostly because it has opened a venue to reveal so many thoughts and until now unknown items of interest, not to mention all by itself the thought of fact that this aging heart patient is slogging around the Texas tundra blasting other republican operatives (in the front) with shotgun load. Take that and the reillumination that this "accident" victim was a then Govenor Bush appointee to the controversial commitee overseeing a family friends burial business scandal and you begin to get the picture on the pentagram so to speak.

12:50 p.m.  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

"2. The news reports say that after Whittington (left) had gotten off his shot and went looking for his bird, Cheney and the other hunter went to another spot where they saw a covey of quail. Texas quail might be different from Iowa quail, but in Iowa when a shotgun goes off, every quail within earshot flutters away. The story doesn't make sense."

Such a simple insight, and yet it completely unravels Cheney's story. Bravo!

1:12 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush was not told that Cheney fired the shot.

3:00 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I bet Mr. Cheney will henceforth find considerably fewer people eager to go hunting with him. Perhaps future hunting forays for Mr. Cheney will likely consist of just him and the SS.

Cheneys previous 70-90 bird kill offers an unsurprising glimpse into his psyche. It reminds me of reading about Charles Darwin's obsessive enthusiasm for bird killing. In his college years he spent whole weeks and more hunting everyday. Beginning at day break he would spend the entire days with the sole objective to kill as many birds as possible - often scores in a single day. He kept meticulous tally and records of his kills, and became angry if anyone interferred with his shooting, though there is no report that he ever resorted to shooting anyone. All this he recorded in his own journals. Obviously something psycho was going on there.
I can look up the links if anyone is interested. Or you might try googling.

3:07 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's another interesting Cheney story. The woman spoken of in the articles below, Maureen Drummy, seems to have helped Dick get started in politics and 30 years later she was still working with him when she ends up murdered in D.C. Seems the murder has never been solved and that the victim, Ms. Drummy, had been raped and then left to die with a knife through her throat. That's the story I heard, but if you google her name you won't find any mention of her murder or an obituary.

From The New Yorker magazine May 7, 2001 by Nicholas Lemann called "The Quiet Man"

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?040906fr_archive06

Tom Stroock was a state senator at the time. Dick Tobin, the chairman of the Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee, also took a particular interest in Cheney. So did John Thompson, the chairman of the political-science department at the University of Wyoming. Cheney wrote a paper that won a national contest for student political scientists and that came to the attention of Maureen Drummy, chief aide to an up-and-coming Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Bill Steiger. In 1966, through that new connection, Cheney got a job as an aide to Wisconsin's Republican governor, Warren Knowles. Both Cheneys enrolled in graduate school, on scholarship, at the University of Wisconsin, Dick in political science, Lynne in English.

********************************************************************

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, July 25,2000, "Cheney Began Career in Badger State"

http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/jul00/cheney26072500.asp

One was Warren Knowles, then Wisconsin's governor. One was William Steiger, a Wisconsin congressman from Oshkosh. And one was Maureen Drummy from Waupun, a politically astute activist with the Young Republicans who helped Cheney win early, pivotal jobs with both men.

Drummy, a UW classmate of Steiger's, and, like him, an officer in the Young Republicans, became affiliated with a group in New York called the National Center for Education in Politics. She spotted an essay Cheney submitted to the center after his Wyoming internship and found him the job with Knowles.

So when Cheney won a Washington fellowship, from the American Political Science Association, he was drawn to work for Steiger by virtue of ties to Drummy and Knowles.

********************************************************************

3:55 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much to be feared as this monstrous lunatic."

Translating that into modern terms: 'that there are in the world many undiscovered sociopaths'. Which describes the Bush crowd pretty well I'd say.

BTW, the Cheney party bagged 417 pheasants out of the 500 that were released by the ranch for their hunt, not counting quail or other birds.

4:48 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

just a thought....maybe Dick shot Wittington while both were trying to kill the same victim....heard of cross-fire? If Dick wanted him dead i think he would be.

5:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've written about this before, but it seems in place here.
The company I worked for had a production company subsidiary called Survival Anglia. Some of you may have seen their wildlife programming.

Survival was the personal fiefdom of Lord Aubrey Buxton, the founder and chairman. He owned a residence in North Norfolk, on some of the finest wetlands in the world.

Two or three times a year the Duke of Edinburgh would visit, and the pair, and their companions, went out onto the water.

There, they proceeded to blast everything in sight. If it moved, they shot it.

Some of those birds were really endangered. In any case there is an absolute prohibition on any form of shooting. The wetlands are a protected wildlife habitat. It's like going into Africa, into a game park, and shooting every tiger about.

Of course Edinburgh and Buxton's crimes were never reported.

The point, of course, is that the rules don't apply.

5:22 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree Anonymous 5:05. If Cheney wanted him dead, he'd be dead, but there is more to this accident then what we are being told. The story was delayed to make sure everyone had their stories straight, I think. There are many more ways to kill someone in a subtle way that he could have used if he wanted to get rid of him. The big public spectacles - or even incidents like this that even make the news - are reserved for the big game, like JFK.

The whole thing about Cheney's huge "member" was probably first started and circulated by someone within the Cheney camp itself. He dodged the draft and has a wek heart, so let's give him a big prick. It's more of the same macho bullshit we've seen from these guys since Day One.

5:30 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That should be "weak heart." It appears I'm writing in weak English today. Ay, chispas!

5:32 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hang on. Dick shot Whittington? What's next? Has the Cow strangled the Moon? Did the Dish rape the Spoon? Will Oliver Twist? This administration is "creating it's own reality", sure, but one peopled from nursery rhymes?

5:36 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Way to go! First Jorn at robot wisdom links to your site and now Boing Boing has a link... you must be doing something right.

6:13 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where I came from if you pulled such a stunt you'd never have anyone who'd go out in the woods with you again, ever. This is the kind of hunting accident that drunks and morons cause. Draw your own conclusion. . .

6:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

remember that old saying, if you cant lick em , join em, well we could add a little twist to it, if you cant lick em fairly pretend to be with em and lickem squarely

7:00 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Of course, in today's world, if Cheney wanted a pass on the whole thing, he should just say it was about sex and be done with it.

Everyone knows the only thing better than shootin' a man is fuckin' him good before you pull the trigger, and Cheney, by all accounts, seems to have his hand in everything else these days, why not Whittington as well?

7:42 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perhaps Cheney was just sending a message, it isn't always necessary to kill somebody to get a message across (I assume, not being a killer or a message sender myself). Maybe Whittington was growing a conscience all of the sudden upon realizing the horrific nature of what he had become involved in (the N.O. body coverup/funeralgate). I haven't checked the headlines yet today, but it seems quite likely that a 78 year old man in intensive care could still die, and that would be a much easier story to sell.

7:52 p.m.  
Blogger SwaG! said...

It's all a very intriguing mystery. But there's one argument against Cheney trying to kill him on purpose: Wouldn't it be easier and safer for the administration if he were able to get someone else to do it?

I say Cheney was drunk. Or high.

8:31 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

exactly what i was going to say steve. this also draws attention away from this:

Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0209nj1.htm

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

and this:

Republican Push-Back on Bush Wiretap Stance

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11300384/site/newsweek/

This coming week is not going to be any better. The Senate intelligence committee is likely to vote to open an investigation into the NSA's wiretapping program, according to senior congressional aides who declined to be identified discussing sensitive matters. The chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, will probably follow the White House line and try to keep a lid on the hearings. But three Republicans—Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Mike DeWine of Ohio—are expected to join with the Democrats on the committee to vote to demand more information about the secret eavesdropping program from the White House and intelligence agencies.

8:32 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

dugoboy...of course you're right! Distraction is always the name of the game with these vampires...yechh...

9:25 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous 9:25 is steve vegas, gremlins nabbed my identity...

9:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Welcome to make-shit-up-ville, huh?

& I thought your post stretched things...

.....little did I know the comments section would grab hold & pull.

Cheney is a reincarnated Crowley?

O-fucking-k!

Their humping Scalia's daughter?

Wow-ze-wow-ze-woo-woo!

Bush's head better split open & disgorge a ufo one day, cause I don't think anything less will satisfy you folks.

I do agree that their story stinks to high heaven, but there are explanations that are bit more mundane, though no less immoral.

Cheney could have been drunk.

Cheney's a pudgy old desk jockey & not an outdoorsman & all the news articles calling him an avid hunter won't turn him into Rambo. His hunting skills could be limited to little more than spray & pray. For a guy who cultivates an air of faux machismo, this could have been a tad embarrassing.

Maybe they delayed to ensure that the wounded old codger wouldn't become a dead old codger.
Having the veep arrested for involuntary manslaughter would have a been a huge embarrassment to an administration awash in embarrassing revelations.

I guess I'm just not getting the Great Old Ones/Satanic Masters/Alien Overlords line of thought to explain America's bloodthirsty nature.

We've always been bloodthirsty sons of bitches. Christ, what the US did in Guatamala & El Salvador & Nicaragua using proxy armies would have been enough "blood sacrifice" to make any demonic entity writhe in ecstacy. The Jesuits left alive still refer to the 80s as the decade the US declared war on the Catholic Church.

In fact when Rush Limbaugh called Abu Ghraib "frat boy hijinks," he wasn't far off. If he'd have qualified that by first saying 'Hell, compared to what our bought & paid for Central American proxy armies did Abu Ghraib looks like frat boy hijinks,' he'd have been dead on for the 1st time in his long winded career.

And since Carter is the Einstein who created al-Queda in the first place, I don't see the Democrats as being all that much different.

10:45 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

carter created al-queda? now THAT'S a conspiracy theory.

10:52 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To anonymous:

Maybe created & al-queda were the wrong words....

....let's see, Carter-era national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted in a widely publicized interview with France's Le Nouvel Observateur that he and CIA director Bill Casey had cooked up the idea of trying to provoke a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by providing covert aid via the Pakistani intelligence services to the mujahideen.

In the end, it amounts to the same thing.

Reagan just picked up Carter's ball & ran with it.

11:24 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i have an even better way to put this:

they love to do things that kill as many birds as possible with as few rocks as possible.

11:26 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

exactly richard.

: \

11:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

^ 5

11:30 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Holy Crap Jeff. You have to read the bottom of this as it relates to the Discussion Board thread concerning a guy living in a cave. Holy Crap again:)...all I can do is laugh at this point

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/
space/02/09/asteroid.tractor/index.html

12:28 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This wonderful headline was on my Yahoo news page:


"Cheney Apparently Breaks Key Hunting Rule"

Truthfully, I didn't read the article, but what do suppose the "key hunting rule" is?

Hmmmmmmm........

Oh wait, I know, that would be the rule that says 'Don't shoot the guy standing behind you, ya fucking moron.'

Sheesh!

Someone, I don't remember who, once described journalists as " people who can't write writing for people who can't read."

I'd say that was a dead on bullseye.

I'd also have to say that it appears that the press didn't actually drop the ball on the Iraq War story, they just weren't astute enough to know where the goddamn ball was at.

1:09 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Is it possible that Scalia and Cheney opted to leave separately so as not to highlight the fact that someone in their party had gone missing? Since no one saw Scalia leave, then it follows that no one can confirm whether his 'daughter' left with him. "

The moral to this story? Don't go hunting with Cheney... no matter how much crack they feed you.

2:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was a 28 gauge bird gun, loaded with #7.5 shotshells. You might conceivably kill someone with that if you shot him at pointblank range, although it would probably be more effective to just use it as a club. You can't have it both ways. If Cheney and Co., are evil masterminds (which I doubt), then they're not going to try to murder people with weapons that are manifestly unsuited to the task.

And "peppered" is the traditional term for getting hit with bird shot.

-Sepka the Space Weasel

3:48 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My money is on:

- Cheney had been drinking
- There was sex involved(orgy)
- Other unnamed person(s) were present involved who need to remain anonymous ...

11:43 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shooting people in New Hampshire
while hunting is "just part of the sport":

FORMER POLICE OFFICER CLEARED IN HUNTING DEATH
Man Says He Thought Victim Was Wild Boar

POSTED: 10:45 am EST December 14, 2004

NEWPORT, N.H. -- A jury acquitted a former police officer of negligent homicide and felonious use of a firearm in a hunting death.

Steven Laro, 49, had said he thought he was shooting at a wild boar when he killed Robert Proulx, 58, last January.

His trial was in Sullivan County Superior Court. A judge had tossed out one charge against Laro before the jury deliberated. That was reckless conduct with a deadly weapon.

http://www.thechamplainchannel.com/wnne/3995652/detail.html

12:52 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

In cases like Whittington’s, it’s better to leave them there than to try to extract them, said David Blanchard, Christus Spohn chief of emergency care. He put the number of remaining pellets at “more than I can count on the fingers of my hand, but less than 100.”


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11312757/

Not saying "less than twenty," or "less than fifty," so between 6 and 99. Wanna bet the number of pieces of birdshot left in him is on the higher end of that estimate?

This branch of the Christus Spohn healthcare group is the one with the most experience with gunshot trauma care, according to a poster elsewhere.

Reasons to leave birdshot pellets in patient:

1/ Oh, there are so many of these, let's leave him a few as a souvenir of this memorable occasion...

2/I hear the ladies like the "ribbed" effect on their G spots...

3/When you are that old and that rich, what's a pock mark or two with a special lead filling inside?...

4/It's lodged a bit too close to his brain/optic nerve, we don't dare dislodge it...

Any other good guesses?

1:16 p.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

I agree that it's unlikely that this was a planned "accident" to get rid of Whittington. The Bush cultists are not that stupid -- if they wanted to get rid of him, there are much easier ways, and lots of eager, cash-hungry hit men with checkered pasts that could do the trick.

I'm inclined to believe Cheney was drunk or just a fucking incompetent idiot.

However, just to play Lucifer's advocate, I'd like to call attention to this article by Molly Ivins, a woman who is very attuned to Texas politics:

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

Whittington has been portrayed here and elsewhere as a typical Rethuglican, but, according to Ivins, he's more nuanced in his thinking than the average cabal member. From her article:

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.


More from another article:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3654596.html

In 1979, Gov. Bill Clements named Whittington, who received his law degree from the University of Texas, to the Texas Department of Corrections Board. He helped negotiate reforms that led to the state's settlement of the lawsuit filed by inmate David Ruiz because of conditions in state prisons.

Whittington later accused prison officials of lying during a trial of the case. Among the lies, Whittington said, were prison officials' denial that inmates were being used as guards.

"In terms of human suffering and the waste of tax dollars, this has been one of the worst crimes in Texas history, and no one is being prosecuted," he told a prison reform group in 1985, the year he left the board.

While on the board and afterward, Whittington was critical of the state's treatment of mentally retarded inmates. One of his daughters is mentally retarded.


And more:

To Harry Whittington, an Austin lawyer and former state prison board member aiding in Bell's latest round of appeals, the case exemplifies what he sees as two disturbing hallmarks of death penalty justice in Texas.

First is the blind persistence of prosecutors in pursuing death sentences even when the law has turned against them, Whittington said.

Second, he said, is the failure of prosecutors and courts to understand mental retardation and devise legal and compassionate methods for dealing with criminals afflicted by it.

"This (case) confirms, in my opinion, the callousness we've had . . . toward this condition," said Whittington, who has long fought for legal protections for defendants and inmates with retardation.


And we all know how George W. loves to execute people, and his sociopathic glee he gets from it (recall his mocking of Karla Faye Tucker -- "Please don't kill me!").

I do think it was a colossal fuckup, and a hasty attempt to whitewash Cheney's negligence. But there's a little, gnawing part of my brain that proposes something more sinister. After all, I'd be dishonest to discount that the Cabal was capable -- and willing -- of doing something as brazen and evil as intentionally shooting a soft-Republican with a probable head full of Dubya's dark, closeted secrets. After all, that is their modus operandi in everything else they do -- flaunt the evil.

What really disturbs me is the blatant coverup of Whittington's injuries. And the fact that Scott McClellan and Jeb Bush are cracking jokes about the VP shooting and wounding another human being.

http://espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/2006/0214/2330379.html

The White House has decided that the best way to deal with Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting accident is to joke about it.

President Bush's spokesman quipped Tuesday that the burnt orange school colors of the University of Texas championship football team that was visiting the White House shouldn't be confused for hunter's safety wear.

"The orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president may be there," joked White House press secretary Scott McClellan, following the lead of late-night television comedians. "That's why I'm wearing it."

The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, took a similar jab after slapping an orange sticker on his chest from the Florida Farm Bureau that read, "No Farmers, No Food."

"I'm a little concerned that Dick Cheney is going to walk in," the governor cracked during an appearance in Tampa Monday.


Just in: Whittington suffered a heart attack after the birdshot became lodge in his heart.

Okay, Jeb, Scottie -- what jokes are you gonna tell if he dies?

This is big. This has the potential to show the faces behind the masks in a way that even the most deluded FOX watcher can grok.

Keep watching.

1:47 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think this was a pratice run for Cheney's hunting trip with Scooter Libby.

1:48 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All just a big distraction from the numerous other problems surrounding this administration.

Funny how the WH press-pool grows some balls when someone gets wounded in a hunting accident but can't ask the tough questions about [insert favorite scandal here]

2:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

12 & 20 gauge are the norms, 20 being a smaller shell- but it can still sure ruin your day. A "28 guage"? ...um-kaay...
I guess with that your shoulder won't get too sore after blasting off a 100-odd rounds.
btw, no, Cheney didn't have the $7.00 stamp. It is now reported he has sent in a check...
And yeah, the "he didn't announce himself" line seems a little desperate- hell, even Elmer Fudd knows to be vewy vewy quiet when yer' sneakin' around with a shotgun...


*sigh*

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight...

2:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why are they trying to trivialize the victim's condition?? He is 78 years old. When the body of a 78 year old is compromised with several hundred pieces of metal, what are we to think of his odds for survival??

2:09 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sepka the Space Weasel, how do you get "peppered" with bird shot, and end up in critical condition?

2:11 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just heard on the news that whittington suffered a "mild" heart attack this morning and is back in ICU

2:23 p.m.  
Blogger ELFIS said...

It just gets weirder and weirder... like you Jeff, the first thing I thought about after hearing of the shooting was the TRANCE testimony.

Now I just learned something else strange:

"Whittington owned one of the buildings damaged by the fire that destroyed Taste night club and KOOP 91.7 FM on Feb. 4."

http://keyetv.com/topstories/local_story_043175514.html

KOOP radio in Austin is the radio station that I and several other parapolitically minded activists used as our soapbox for railing against the Bush Junta on a weekly basis.

This recent fire was the SECOND blaze to knock KOOP off the air and threaten its very existance.

Stranger and stranger.

http://www.elfis.net/phorum/read.php?f=45&i=515&t=515

3:03 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i just wanted to point out that references are made to "the most dangerous game" in both The Simpsons (2005's Halloween episode) and in the film, The Wedding Crashers. in both cases it's in reference to hunting humans.

perhaps the writers of those shows have been reading Cathy O'Brien? or maybe it's just a coincidence ...

does anyone know if "the most dangerous game" was common knowledge (eg: in fiction) before O'Brien began writing about it?

3:24 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Most Dangerous Game" was a short story by Richard Connell. It was turned into a movie with Joel McCrea and Fay Wray in 1932.

http://eserver.org/fiction/the_most_dangerous_game.html

Not much else to add, except to agree with others that if the shooting was anything other than a drunken accident, it was something really weird. It wasn't a hit for any practical reason.

3:42 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow. what happens if whittington dies?

lets see...cheney authorizes libby to expose a cia agent, who is the wife of an opponent of the white house. cheney kills a major republican attorney...bush allows illegal wiretappping...

interesting times...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/140206criminalsyndicate.htm

3:45 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

do you believe it yet?

3:49 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/010206detentioncamps.htm

no joke.

3:51 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another thing that strikes me as odd. The news reports say " Whittington shot a bird and went to get it." Surely multimillionaires hunting on a private ranch would be using bird dogs.

5:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another "wonderful" movie with the
same theme is "Surviving The Game"

"Mason accepts the job and flies with them to a hut in the wilderness where they prepare everything for the four rich businessmen who want to hunt something special. Mason does not yet know that he is the victim of their sports..."

http://imdb.com/title/tt0111323

Rich guys just love to hunt and shoot other people, or create wars where they can move the big guns around on a map.

5:29 p.m.  
Blogger Effwit said...

Remember, this is a man who attended the Auschwitz memorial ceremony dressed for a duck hunt, wearing a wool cap which read "Staff 2001."

Mr. Cheney was dressed that way because that morning he had been visiting the secret CIA prison in Poland for "terrorists".

He didn't have enough time to change into appropriate attire for the ceremony.

With the Texas shooting, we may be looking at an impeachable offense. It is always the cover-up, not the crime that gets them.

President Clinton got impeached for the cover up when he blasted Ms. Lewinsky in the chest.

5:38 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

A current film with a similar theme is Hostel. ("Elite Hunting.")

6:08 p.m.  
Blogger TonyForesta said...

Rip roaring commentary Jeff.

Of course we will all never truly know what happened last Saturday on the Armstrong ranch, or why, and though many of us believe Obriens Transformation of America is not just the ramblings of a lunatic, we are left as usuall with little more than Cheney's good word to examine.

But the balistic metaphor lingers. For theright, Lord Cheney - the rugged sportsmen and rapturist patriot got a little wild out there - ha ha ha, - and it just shows how civil and tough us fascists - I mean - republicans truly are where the led is flying.

For theleft we witness another glaring example of Cheney's criminal recklessness and exceedingly poor judgement, - not to mention vampiric lust for blood and vengeance.

Interesting how this creepy story inevitably advances the Cheney specter on both sides of the fense.

All we truly know is that all is not well in the land of oz. The wizard is a fraud, and murderers and madmen are piloting the good ship America.

8:10 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In answer to Anonymous 3:24 pm, I read and knew of the short story The Most Dangerous Game from my high school English class in the 1970's, and my dad mentioned to me once knowing of it in something of the same way. It is an old, classic story which is well known to the general population. The story was also read on a public radio program called "Selected Shorts" (http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/shorts_static.php?id=31).

By contrast, O'Brien's TranceFormation is a very obscure work known to very few.

9:29 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Over at talkingpointsmemo.com

(February 14, 2006 -- 03:39 PM EST // link)
Here perhaps we're in need of some expert insight from hunters and doctors. But the latest round of news raises this question in my mind. Would the weapon and ammunition Dick Cheney shot have the force to imbed pellets near Whittington's heart at 30 yards? A hunter wears a decent amount of clothing over the chest, remember. So these pellets would have to have pierced his clothing, his skin and then lodged inside the body cavity, somewhere near or around his heart. The shot came from the right and the heart is on the left so that might add to the amount of tissue needing to be traversed -- but without more specifics that's hard to know for sure. That takes a decent amount of force at 30 yards. Any thoughts from our TPM hunters and clinicians?

-- Josh Marshall

11:20 p.m.  
Blogger Maggie Picard said...

"Surely multimillionaires hunting on a private ranch would be using bird dogs."

But that would require staying on good terms with the dog!

12:08 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sky Watcher said...
Sepka the Space Weasel, how do you get "peppered" with bird shot, and end up in critical condition?


By being 78 years old when it happens?

-Sepka the Space Weasel

1:11 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As this article from 2003 shows:

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/2693558/detail.html


Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

"This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets."

**********************************************

Mr. Cheney is quite fond of hunting penned birds. If I'm not mistaken, before they release them, they swing them around a few times so they're dizzy & don't flush as easily.

If this is true for his little Texas outing, then I
see why Vice President Tippy Testosterone chose the 5 deferment route through Vietnam.

Ain't no fun
when the rabbit got the gun.

It also ain't no fun when you have to actually work for your kill.

I guess they really couldn't find the "avid hunter" a souped up all terrain wheelchair to lug his pudgy desk jockey behind through the brush.

Hell, if the boy wanted to fake it so bad, why not just instruct the Secret Service to kill a few free rangers & then just take the credit.

What is it with these Republicans?
They give us a fake cowboy for president & a fake hunter for vice-president.

Avid hunter? More like avid skeet shooter.

What a hoot!

1:19 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

By the way, I always found the Wizard of Oz allusions , like the Nazi allusions, a bit trite when explaining the actions of Bush*tters, but now I'm beginning to wonder.

In the Great Oz's defence, he may have been a bumbler, but he was a well meaning bumbler who made things right in the end.

I don't foresee any such happy endings come out of the mess we're in.

In Hitler's defense, he may have been a bastard, but he was a competent bastard.

Every time I hear someone mention America's lust for empire, I can't help picturing Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, & even old Adolph, just contorted in laughter in their graves.

It's like comparing my QB-ing skills with BartStarr or Joe Montana.

1:38 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/westmoreland/s_103955.html

"It's a shame. But you know this guy was firing his gun off wildly just over the hill from where Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting at the same time," the witness said.

HAHAHAHA

3:55 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/westmoreland/s_416534.html

"Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Ligonier Township police are investigating the theft of numerous decorative wall and floor coverings last week from the prestigious Rolling Rock Club in Laughlintown, Westmoreland County."

Curious.

3:56 a.m.  
Blogger AJ said...

Sorry a bit off topic.
Does anyone remember what string contained the problem that Jeff had with Peter Levenda? That whole situation confuses me. I was under the impression Peter said something contradictory and was dismissed by RI as a fraud.
Anyone know?

10:16 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Does anyone have information of the Ultimate Prison hunts in Texas and Whittington's opposition to them?

11:05 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cheney is a man who probably lives in constant paranoia and fears death by his own workers. The guy who was shot in the chest, probably walked up to Cheney from either behind or suddenly appeared at Cheney's side (only an idiot would believe he walked into the line of fire head on with the sun at his back) and "hair trigger" Cheney was startled and shot the guy. Cheney has strict laws that if you donot abide by them you will be fired by him. The rules are simple and that all his guards and recievers must follow.

1 Donot make eye contact
2 speak only when spoken to
3 never get too close
4 ALWAYS approach or walk BESIDE Cheney with hands in full view

11:29 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

aj: Weird Tales

1:18 p.m.  
Blogger AJ said...

Thanx 1:18

1:21 p.m.  
Blogger A Fake Doctor said...

We read "The Most Dangerous Game" in high school English in the '90's. Old hat.

I am not so surprised about powerful men suffering hubris, resulting in outrageous consequences such as this shooting incident. It's like the cartoon(s) that caused the Muslim world to riot. The world is absurd.

1:37 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Brew(ing) scandal in Cheney case: "A beer or two"? Why did MSNBC try to hide that?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/02/brewing-scandal-in-cheney-case-beer-or.html



When first posted, NBC news quoted Katharine Armstrong as saying:

"There may be a beer or two in there," she said, "but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.".

About an hour later, the quote was deleted from the story.

The original text was captured by Google and you can see it

2:25 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The original text was captured by Google and you can see it here:

http://www.thoughtcrimes.org/s9/index.php?/archives/519-Beer-comment-scrubbed-from-NBC-story.html

2:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Missing Beer Or Two:

http://blogs.philly.com/blinq/2006/02/was_there_beer_.html

Cheney, "A Beer or Two," and a Gun:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060215/cm_thenation/160212;_ylt=A86.I1cDX_ND4h4BGQj9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--

2:33 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

god i suck at links:

The original text was captured by Google and you can see it here

The Missing Beer Or Two

Cheney, "A Beer or Two," and a Gun

explosive revelation if true.

2:39 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Beer quote pulled from MSNBC Cheney hunting party article

Beer quote pulled from MSNBC Cheney hunting party article

2:44 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/cheneys-chappaquiddick-i_b_15711.html

4:38 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"one of the worst days of my life" (yeah it's a bitch getting caught).

Something's wrong. There's lying going on about the few details that are being discussed (the wounds do not correspond to a shotgun hit from 30 yards for one), and a news blackout on many obvious details/questions that immediately come to mind.

The organized behavior of an unseemly long delay from the time of the incident goes against all logic, and probably conventional legal advice; unless the gravity of the problem was big enough.

None of this would not be occurring if it was an innocent accident like was claimed from the start.

Even Ted Kennedy in Chappaquidik got his story as straight as he could sooner and still paid a big price.

Some theories:

What was the LONG delay for? Time to get over a hangover then preside over emergency meetings and decide on options the staff came up with while the pig slept it off? Get all the details clear among all witnesses especially if a death was involved? and therefore this meant you had to wait for word from the hospital on that? Maybe.

This could not have been deliberate, as there are better more efficient ways to accomplish the same thing.

Unless speculations based on some testimonies from some are true that Cheney likes to play the so-called "ultimate hunting game" or whatever you call it, but that doesn't make sense either, as he would do that among a crowd that arranges such things, and they would not arrange that then report his name to the press as they did, unless...

Unless such people were on this occasion ordered to make the incident public, you know, by power brokers behind he scenes, who use such leverage to blackmail those in high positions???

Just theories...

5:28 p.m.  
Blogger Pissedoffcabbie said...

In a perfect world, Cheney would be playing "the most dangerous game" with Ted Nugent in pursuit.

6:06 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cheney attended the Auschwitz memorial ceremony in a parka. There is a holocaust angle to every story.

What message was he trying to get across ?

6:42 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some irregularities :

Cheney said Mr.Whittington was lying on his back, not talking.

Our intrepid reporter, Armstrong, stated "he fell towards me, on his face", and " was conscious and talking".

Early in the interview, Cheney said the victim had both eyes open.

Later, he stated only one eye was open.

Probably Friday night, after the "rabid" media goes to sleep for the weekend, Mr.. Whittington's true state of health will be revealed.

8:01 p.m.  
Blogger AJ said...

This is getting to be a circus. There have been so many dead "inconsistencies" of people opposed to this US admin, vying for coverage(journalists), or becoming fall guys, that boggles the mind.
What the hell is everyone worried about an old rich Bush supporter who might have gotten a little cocky about the Emanate Domain thing?
Yea, there's a good chance Cheney shot him to make a point. Big deal.

Is this behavior new to us?

9:26 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only speculation here of sinister malfeasance on Cheney's part in this incident that I totally write off is the notion that Whittington was deliberately being hunted. I think that is just absurd. However, anything short of that, including some kind of psychological glitch with Cheney, I would not say is completely impossible. But I think that by far the most likely explanation is that this was a case of really bad luck, very possibly courted under the influence of alcohol.
As for the delays and inconsistencies in the explanations, that's simple. Cheney is the VP of the United States. This incident, even under the best possible spin, still makes him look like a bozo. Isn't Cheney supposed to be overseeing national security? But he is so careless he shoots one of his own hunting partners. Duh-ooh. He looks bad, the Bush administration looks dumber, and the USA looks silly with a man like this overseeing national security. And there is no real way to spin out of this entirely. So, naturally, there were delays and contradictions while they were scrambling and bickering about how to spin it. And it looks like Whittington’s outcome was entirely uncertain for at least several hours or more.
Whittington was shot, but Cheney is now irreparably the lame duck. Quack.

9:42 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Interesting find on DU:

How did #7.5 birdshot travel a distance of 30 yards, penetrate layers of clothes and the chest wall to lodge in the pericardium? This is the part of the story that bugs me the most.

I've found this site with some interesting information on penetration tests. If correct, Cheney was a hell of a lot closer than 30 yards.


Birdshot Penetration Tests

Birdshot as a Defense Load

I have had a lot of questions, summed up as follows: How effective is birdshot (#4, #6, #8, etc.) as a defense load?

We have done tests with various birdshot loads. Birdshot penetrated through two pieces of drywall (representing one wall) and was stopped in the paper on the front of the second wall. The problem with birdshot is that it does not penetrate enough to be effective as a defense round. Birdshot is designed to bring down little birds.

A policeman told of seeing a guy shot at close range with a load of 12 gauge birdshot, and was not even knocked down. He was still walking around when the EMTs got there. It was an ugly, shallow wound, but did not STOP the guy. And that is what we want... to STOP the bad guy from whatever he is doing. To do this, you must have a load that will reach the vitals of the bad guy. Birdshot will not do this.

In fact, tests have shown that even #4 Buckshot lacks the necessary penetration to reach the vital organs. Only 0 Buck, 00 Buck, and 000 Buck penetrate enough to reach the vital organs.

9:52 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/dick-cheneys-delay_b_15715.html

Dershowitz says it very well:

Why would a media-savvy and clever man like Dick Cheney delay notifying the press and the police about an accident when a) he knew it would eventually be covered by the press and b) he knew he would be criticized for delaying release of the story?

A simple cost/benefit analysis suggests that he (or those advising him) must have believed that there was more to be gained than lost by a 14 hour delay that would eventually be made public. It is likely, therefore, that something happened during that 14 hour period which was worth the negative costs of the delay.

What is the most likely thing to happen during a 14 hour delay that is worth the negative publicity? One possibility is that it takes approximately that period of time for alcohol to dissipate in the body and no longer be subject to accurate testing. It is fairly common for people involved in alcohol-related accidents to delay reporting them until the alcohol has left the body. There is no hard evidence that this is what happened here, but we are entitled to a better explanation. We should be told whether Vice President Cheney's victim had alcohol in his system when he was taken to the hospital. Was there any alcohol at or near the hunting area? Were any in the hunting party carrying flasks (which is apparently common among hunters)? What was Cheney doing just before he went hunting? Did anyone in the hunting party have a drink? We do know that Cheney had two drunk driving convictions when he was in his early 20s, but he has apparently been clean since then.
-----

10:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

See Dick shoot.

http://www.cafepress.com/heycoolshirt.47764650

2:23 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is worth noting the fact that Google had the original article (with Armstrong saying Cheney's hunting party had beer prior to accident) indexed so quickly after it was posted, and then de-indexed just as quickly after it was removed.

The question to ask of Google is: do they receive notifications from news agencies about article placement so that they can be indexed and then removed from their search database at the drop of a hat?

This is almost like the paid advertisements Google places. Is this a premium service that Google offers news agencies?

Google has a lot to answer for these days. First censoring content in China, and now possibly censoring content in the USA.

Are they really delivering objective, unfiltered news as they claim?

11:42 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous above:

"Are they really delivering objective, unfiltered news as they claim?"

Google is a corporation, which means it exists for the sake of money. So, like all corporations, it will go where the profits are. "Money is power". and "power always corrupts."

6:09 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tronicus, Google is more than just a corporation, it is a corporation whose founders are part of the occult elite who were set up for success by the same elite, just as most all of that elite were setup in business in their day. Same with Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Disney, big oil, pharmaceuticals, etc., etc., etc.

They were given an irresistible product to provide us for free that we mostly love but which will give them control of the internet search market, and at some point we will live to regret this.

The Chinese people already know this.

10:22 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cheney shooting: A multi-layered, staged managed distraction

5:17 p.m.  
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Most people feel that just because they are excellent drivers they can get away with not having any insurance. Of course this is against the law but people still do it just because they feel that they will never get into an accident. You can be the world's perfect driver but there's still a chance for you to get into an accident and the reason for this is because there are many people that simply cannot drive on the roads. An accident can happen at any given time without you even knowing it and by not having insurance you are putting yourself in a bigger hole than you would be if you had some insurance.
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