The Poor Man
Seems now the guy Dick shot has had a heart attack. Poor bastard. If he dies will Dick have to step down? I figure he should step down anyway. Out of respect for the office, but you know he wont.
Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old lawyer shot by Cheney, suffered a mild heart attack after a shotgun pellet in his chest traveled to his heart, hospital officials said.
Whittington was moved back to the intensive care unit and will be watched for a week to make sure more of the metal pellets do not move to other vital organs. He was reported in stable condition.
Just hours earlier, the chief White House spokesman joked that the burnt orange school colors of the visiting University of Texas championship football team should not be mistaken for hunters’ safety gear.
”The orange that they’re wearing is not because they’re concerned that the vice president may be there,” said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. ”That’s why I’m wearing it.”
Scott knew about the heart attack at the time he made these jokes, he didn’t tell the press corps about the heart attack, yet still made jokes about it. You have to wonder if the pressure of all thous lies is making him go nuts.
Cheneys Got A Gun
So if it were not for the heroic hillbilly ramblings of a Texas ranch owner, it seems we would have never learned about Dicks little hunting accident.
I find it highly interesting that the first VP to shoot a guy since Hamiltion, decided to not tell anyone.
The White House said today that President Bush was informed Saturday evening that Vice President Dick Cheney had shot a fellow hunter in South Texas earlier in the day, although the news was not disclosed publicly until Sunday afternoon.
The shooting, which occurred at about 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, left a prominent Austin lawyer and Republican campaign supporter, Harry Whittington, wounded by shotgun pellets in the neck, shoulder and chest.
“Chief of Staff Andy Card called the president around 7:30 p.m. to inform him that there was a hunting accident,” a statement released today by the White House said. “He did not know the vice president was involved at that time. Subsequent to the call, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove spoke with Mrs. Armstrong. He then called the president shortly before 8 p.m. to update him and let him know the vice president had accidentally shot Mr. Whittington.”
In a contentious news briefing with White House reporters earlier about a subject that captivated the capital today, Scott McClellan, the president’s spokesman, said he himself did not learn until about 6 a.m. on Sunday that it was Mr. Cheney who had shot Mr. Whittington, 78, when the two were on a weekend quail hunting trip along with several others at the Armstrong Ranch.
If it really did take them this long to figure out something this simple , “Holy shit Dick shot that guy in the face, call the Karl Rove!” You can see how it is impossible for them to do things like defend us from natural disasters and find Bin Laden… Time to vote kids, time to vote as many times as they will let you. New senate + new house = IMPEACHMENT FOR THESE ASSHOLES!
Katharine Armstrong said she did not coordinate with the vice president’s office before calling the Corpus Christi paper. If Armstrong had not made the call, it is not clear when, if ever, the vice president’s office would have told the public about the incident. Asked what would have happened if the accident had happened another way — if, for example, Whittington had accidentally shot the vice president — the administration source told NRO that it would have been handled in a similar fashion. “The priorities would have remained the same — first medical care, then law enforcement alert,” the source said. Still, in the case of Saturday’s shooting, those matters were taken care of on Saturday, and the press was still not notified until after Katharine Armstrong made the decision to call her local paper.
Watch CNN’s version of this.
Download this video here. (wmv)
Watch The Daily Shows version of this.
Download this video here. (wmv)
PS. Dick didn’t even have his fucking hunting license when he shot that guy.
If you want to read the accident file here it is (pdf)
Dick With A Gun
I can’t make this stuff up, Dick Cheney SHOT A GUY. No really he really did shoot one of his old rich white guy lawyer buddies. Guess things are getting pretty bad in Washington and the NRA has been handing out free guns for them to fight it out (joke).
Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
The accident occurred Saturday at a ranch in south Texas where the vice president and several companions were hunting quail. It was not reported publicly by the vice president’s office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported locally by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.
Katharine Armstrong, the ranch’s owner, said Sunday that Cheney was using a 28-guage shotgun and that Whittington was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest.
Each of the hunters was wearing a bright orange vest at the time, Armstrong told reporters at the ranch about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She said Whittington was “alert and doing fine.”
What have we learned from all this.
Watch out for Dicks with guns.
Guns don’t kill people Dick Cheney does.
When Dick says to get down, he ain’t fucking around.
Are lawyers in season?
If so what is the legal limit on how many we can kill?
Insert your best joke into the comment section.
White House Lied About When It Knew About Levee Breaks
Yet another lie from the administration. Lets run the tally, lies 9,999,999,999,999,999,999 truth ~3 (maybe). The latest is about when the knew about the levee breaks. Read more here.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department’s headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
“FYI from FEMA,” said an e-mail message from the agency’s public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, “are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires.”
Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
Scooter Was Told By Dick To Leak
Well shit, looks like we are going to have to impeach the president for the NSA illegal spying program, and then we can impeach the vice president for treason. What a country we all live in. Its getting so you cant really keep up with all the shit that goes on. Every rock you overturn has another scandal for this administration. Step one, vote democrat for the mid term election, step two, hold their feet to the fire so they don’t end up just like the republicans. Read more here.
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. Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.
WOW, This Is Great.
This is wonderful piece of net art.
Rove Running Scared
So it looks like the administration is very concerned about the hearings about illegal warentless wiretaps. Seems they are so concerned they are trying to take advantage of senators desire to be re-elected to force them into voting a certain way. This just smacks of illegal. Bush broke the law, he needs to be punished for that. He cant use the stick and say “ill take away your election money if you don’t vote the way i want” thats like saying “I’m guilty but don’t you dare hold me accountable”. Sick really. Read more here.
The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.
The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Holds a Hearing on Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority
Just because I want to be able to come look this over at a later time, here are the transcripts of the illegal wiretap hearing. Warning its long, only click on the more if you really want to read it all.
Read the rest of U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Holds a Hearing on Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Gets Grilled
I am listening to Alberto Gonzales doing a very bad job of defending the presidents secret illegal wiretap program. He is getting it from the right and from the left. Its good to know that a couple of republicans and democrats can still get together on an issue when its important. Not only is he getting his ass handed to him, but he seems to have been caught in a lie as well.
When the Senate Judiciary Committee begins the most important oversight hearing in recent congressional history this week, Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold will go after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for what appears to be a deliberate deception of the committee and Congress.
This is not a political game. This is not posturing to score ideological or intellectual points.
By every measure, Feingold has the goods on Gonzales.
In advance of the Judiciary Committee hearings on President Bush’s authorization of the warrantless wiretapping of the telephones of Americans, Feingold sent a letter to Gonzales asking that the attorney general prepare to explain why, during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, he responded by saying “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes” - a statement that appears to have been a lie.
The American public might things is a good idea for the president to be able to listen in on calls from terrorists (and they would be right because it is something they should be doing), they have been tricked into thinking that this is what this issue is about. When in fact its about the president doing whatever the hell he feels like without any respect for the law at all. I am a bit concerned that they didn’t put him under oath, I mean why not? Listen up people, this is not about the president finding out who is a terrorist, its about the president breaking the law. He broke the law, he should have gone through the FISA court to do this, he didn’t. He should have asked congress to pass some laws to let him do this if he wanted to do it, he didnt. In fact he doesn’t even seem to intercepting calls from one terrorist inside this nation to another terrorist inside this nation. What the hell. These people are not even doing their jobs correctly. Let alone that the fact that we don’t know how the decide you are a terrorist, even if you are innocent they keep your info on file, and they have little or no oversight from congress. In short, BIG BROTHER.
Mostly Lies, Some Bald Faced.
So while Bush was giving the United States his yearly hand job state of the union address, to make us think he is busy doing anything other that fucking us over, he let slip that he wants to reduce our dependence on oil from the middle east by 75%. Wow, what a great idea, too bad it was all a lie.
WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that’s where the greatest oil supplies are.
The president’s State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that “America is addicted to oil” and his call to “break this addiction.”
Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”
He pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
“This was purely an example,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.
Asked why the president used the words “the Middle East” when he didn’t really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that “every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.” The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. “I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region,” he said.
Through the first 11 months of 2005, the United States imported nearly 2.2 million barrels per day of oil from the Middle East nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. That’s less than 20 percent of the total U.S. daily imports of 10.062 million barrels.
Imports account for about 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption.
Alan Hubbard, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, projects that America will import 6 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East in 2025 without major technological changes in energy consumption.
The Bush administration believes that new technologies could reduce the total daily U.S. oil demand by about 5.26 million barrels through alternatives such as plug-in hybrids with rechargeable batteries, hydrogen-powered cars and new ethanol products.
That means the new technologies could reduce America’s oil appetite by the equivalent of what we’re expected to import from the Middle East by 2025, Hubbard said.
But we’ll still be importing plenty of oil, according to the Energy Department’s latest projection.
“In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand … up from 58 percent in 2004,” according to the Energy Information Administration’s 2006 Annual Energy Outlook.
Some experts think Bush needs to do more to achieve his stated goal.
“We can achieve energy independence from the Middle East, but not with what the president is proposing,” said Craig Wolfe, the president of Americans for Energy Independence in Studio City, Calif. “We need to slow the growth in consumption. Our organization believes we need to do something about conservation” and higher auto fuel-efficiency standards.
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