If it were Clinton, the jokes about “quail hunting” would lower double entendres to a whole new level.
I posted this at 7:20am, 2/14/06. Two hours and twenty minutes later, Cnn Posts This
and,
What is it that they say? “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” ? SUUUUUUURE it is, when you’re the Vice President !!
President Bush: “We will obey the Rule of Law.”
Condoleeza Rice: “We will obey the Rule of Law.”
Vice President Cheney: " Check’s in the mail."
:rolleyes:
The quote that tells us so very much about the Vice President’s value system?
Ya don’t shoot a car. Ya don’t shoot a dawg. Some old man who gets in the way of a good clean shot? Awwww…hell…I dunno…
And, lastly, a foreshadowing of the possibility that Mr. Whittington may be in for some serious legal problems courtesy of the T.S.A.,
.
One can imagine the headline: " Cheney shooting victim refuses to remove from person and place all metal objects inside of tray at Dulles security checkpoint, shot while being subdued. "
Which makes the bimbo that fired the gun even more of an idiot.
Given the hatred of Cheney, Republicans, guns, gun owners, and hunters held by most members, moderators, and administrators on the Straightdope, idiotic posts like yours don’t suprise me anymore. It is the rule instead of the exception with the vast majority of all posts on the Straightdope. Cheney didn’t have a duty to go to the press about a private accident on private property. Lots of people slide on lack of a $7 stamp on a hunting license when it is a fairly new requirement. There were no fines associated with the accidental shooting.
As much as I dislike him and his politics, it seems rather straight forward. An accident, he didn’t have a stamp and made good on it.
No, but given his position he or his agent should report it to the press.
You’re wrong, in fact. I don’t hate the Vice President at all. I am horrified by what he did. His imbecilic behavior has now caused this man to suffer a minor heart attack- with pellets lodged IN HIS HEART.
And yet, gosh, you need to lash out at all of the Anti this, Anti that folks. You cannot find it in you to actually say, " Man this guy truly and unequivicably fucked up and may yet cost this gentleman his life."
So… when this man dies of a heart attack next week, or infection due to the pellets that penetrated his heart… what is Cheney charged with?
You say Cheney had no duty to report, none at all. So, he is in no way responsible for… the man’s facial disfigurement? The heart attack from the pellet? How much of what Cheney did, acting alone, do you need to somehow pin on Dopers who don’t like Cheney or guns? At what point do you admit that a person you respect and admire screwed the pooch, ought to act like a real man, stand up and say yes, I shot this man and have directly caused his heart problems. I take full legal and moral responsibility for having fired the weapon, and the damage it has done.
Asking a person to take full moral and legal responsibility for the results of firing a gun that’s in their hands isn’t Anti anything. It’s called being an American.
My apologies for not providing the cite from which I took certain information in my post. Here it is..
So if he’d hit shot a guy in a public library… I’m sorry, the location of the accident doesn’t make a difference. I don’t think anything sinister or wrong happened here, but the fact remains that they deliberately dragged their feet in releasing this news, and then leaked it to a local paper as quietly as they could. Regardless of private property, he’s not a private citizen. He’s the Vice President.
It is looking, smelling and sounding more and more like a very clear cover-up was operated by Cheney.
:wally
None of this week’s screw-up would be such an issue if it wasn’t so symbolic of his poor performance in office. “I didn’t tell anyone I had shot somebody for a day” reminds everybody of “I didn’t tell anybody we were illegally detaining and torturing prisoners for months”. “I shot my friend by mistake” reminds everbody of “We invaded Iraq for reasons that turned out to be mistaken”. And “Whittington was also to blame for getting shot” reminds everybody of … well, pretty much everything Cheney has ever said. This incident simply reinforced Cheney’s reputation for secrecy, recklessness, and an inability to take responsibility for his mistakes - it didn’t create it.
I just want to agree that driving to a private property where fat quail are stocked, driving up to the quail, and shooting them, is the lamest excuse for hunting I’ve ever heard of.
Dick Cheney doesn’t go hunting… he goes killing.
CNN announced this morning on air that Mr. Whittington’s family has instructed the hospital where he is being treated to no longer make the status of his recovery or anything related to his care public.
Gee. Can you say cover-up? No chance at all the Mr. Cheney’s attorney’s called the family and pressured them to call the hospital, huh? Out of sight, out of mind. We won’t know if that steel pellet ( which according to the images shown on CNN is larger than I’d thought it would be ) in his heart does indeed kill him.
What will they do? Force a totally secret hidden funeral, with no public announcement? Make sure nobody knows he died from the pellets? Insist he died of completely unrelated issues that have nothing to do with being blasted in the face, neck and chest at close range? Jeeez. The guy works for the Texas G.O.P. on and off in various ways since the 1960’s and this is the thanks he gets. Becoming a Non-Entity.
My guess is that we will never hear about this man again. Anywhere. Reporters who dig deep around the hospital in Corpus Christ will mysteriously find themselves out of a job, etc. That’s what paranoid dangerous powerful men do when the truth is too close to the surface.
It’s pathetic. Or would be, if he weren’t the second most powerful person in the nation. Since he is, it moves from pathetic to chilling at the speed of, well…the speed of a pellet !
Gun owner and hunter here.
I really believe that this would be swept under the proverbial rug if it wern’t for folks holding their “feet to the fire”.
He screwed up in a gigantic way.
It is a unsafe hunting practice to swing and shoot behind you.
Get that?
It is an unsafe hunting practice to swing and shoot behind you.
One more time.
It is an unsafe hunting practice to swing and shoot behind you.
It really is the truth in politics that the cover-up is usually worse than the offense. The fact that Cheney is breaking his silence about this incident is getting its own news coverage. They leaked the story the way they did to try to minimize coverage, and instead he has to go on camera and talk about it. That’s old political wisdom, and this is a mistake they’ve made before: they made the Valerie Plame story into a bigger deal by keeping secrets as well.
I’m a gun owner and lifetime member of the NRA. I’ve gone hunting(it didn’t do much for me but I have nothing againest it). I think Cheney’s a Dick and I agree with others that this is a perfect example of what happens when you violate hunting safety rules.
And I do think people like Unrestgistered Bull would be making a huge stink of Gore had done this. This adminstration gets a pass on anything they do because “The democrats are/would be worse”.
The rumor going around now is that Cheney had been drinking when the accident happened, so he waited several hours before talking to the police in order to have time to sober up. Obviously, it’s no longer possible to prove Cheney was under the influence at the time of the incident. But the rumor’s out there now and it’ll also never be possible to prove he wasn’t. I’m sure the rumors will die out in time though - just like Chappaquidick has.
I dunno, if I had a family member in the hospital fighting for his/her life, I wouldn’t want the press hounding the docs for updates every 30 seconds. Of course, the odds of any member of my family being shot by the Veep are nil, so. . .
And since he’s not the number two guy in the “party of personal responsibility”, he didn’t have to deal with it.
Oh wait…he is?
Well…crap.
Sailboat
No way of knowing the drug interaction between the medications Cheney takes for his heart situation ( which I wholeheartedly believe are none of our business , in the particulars ) and the bottle of beer he drank. Was it one small pony bottle of lite beer? A 24 ounce bottle of darker heavier beer? What was the alcohol content?
What’s wrong with this sequence?
- " There was no alcohol or drugs involved, period".
- " We had beer at lunch 4 hours before holding live loaded weapons in our hands. "
A conflict, what?
Apparently it does not matter a whit that Mr. Cheney has now lost all credibility that he might have had before, because he has lied in a serious, face-to-face live and death situation that he solely is responsible for. Apparently as long as he keeps on scowling and threatening, everybody will be so frightened out of their wits by his power base that they will do anything to not draw his (f)ire. :rolleyes:
Can you impeach a Vice President for lying about shooting a man. Apparently we Americans are not owed the truth in a timely fashion. We are only owed a certain carefully crafted set of possible near-facts, when and if Mr. Cheney is good and goddamned ready to share them with us. And if we don’t like it, why we’re UnAmerican and The Enemy.
I could have sworn McCarthy was out of power. Hmph.
It is a humiliating time to be an American.