Imperial Hubris
How would King Louie XVI reacted if, on a hunting outing, he had accidentally shot one of his court toadies? He probably would have berated the wounded man for getting between the King and his game then gone back to his palace and forgotten the incident.
It's good to be the King. Being King means never having to say you're sorry. Being King means you don't even have to get a hunting license from the King, since you ARE the King.
But above all else, being King means whatever he does, it's none of anyone else's damn business.
That's really all you need to know to understand why Dick Cheney didn't inform anyone that he had shot a hunting companion last weekend. That incident, like nearly everything else this VP says, does or meets with, was personal, and none of our damn business.
Hell, he didn't even tell the guy in Washington who is literally an undependable heartbeat away from the Presidency, George W. Bush. Had it been Cheney who took the lead his pacemaker/defibrillator could have gone off, scaring the shit out of the VP and killing him dead – leaving George home alone and in charge.
The mainstream media wants to know more. Why did the Secret Service deny local police access to Cheney for 12 hours after the shooting. Whenever there's a serious accident resulting in death or injury the first thing police want to know is if anyone involved had been drinking. That's a bit difficult to determine 12 hours later. Did the VP have a little flask of brandy with him? Was he tooting and shooting? Inquiring minds want to know.
I have a different question. Who puts a loaded semi-automatic shotgun in the hands of a man with an implanted defibrillator? What if that little gadget goes off and tasers the guy setting his trigger finger into a serial twitch? He could mow down a small crowd of companions before he either croaks or his battery goes dead. Cheney's little hunting trip could have turned into My Lai on the open range.
The Swiss Ambassador was there and witnessed the shooting. But he's not talking, claiming "nuetrality." He did, however, offer to hold the victim's wallet -- which has now gone missing.
My pal Tony Seton at Quality News Network asked me yesterday if I thought this story “had legs.” I responded that nothing this administration has done wrong before has made a bit of difference, legs or not. The WMD fiasco, mishandling the war itself, New Orleans, secret meetings with big energy companies followed by record energy prices... nothing stops them. Their response when caught doing something wrong can boiled down to this... “So, bite Me.
They just don't care. When John F. Kennedy narrowly beat Nixon his brother, Bobby worried out loud that “we don't have a mandate.” To which JFK responded, “We don't need a mandate. We have the White House.”
The Bushies have boiled that attitude down to imperial dimensions. It's good to be the King. Just don't go hunting with him.
Other Absurdities
Another Fine Mess
Remember Valerie Plame? When the Bushies outted the CIA agent wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, their defense was, “no harm, no foul” They said she was no longer undercover and just a CIA clerk now.
Wrong.... Guess what she was doing at the time Cheney blew her cover? She was tracking nuclear materials being smuggled to where – oh, go ahead – guess:
Iran.
Yes boys and girls, even as this bunch of hypocrites bash the Washington Post for disclosing the NSA domestic spying program (a year after they learned about it,) they themselves blew the cover of the CIA agent trying keep a non-nuclear Iran, non-nuclear.
Remember that the next time these windbags invoke national security as the reason they can't tell us what they are up to in our name.
Here's more on the Plame story.
More KY for the Oil Guy
Big Oil has already built pipelines directly into each of our bank accounts, reporting -- surprise, suprise -- record profits. But the Bushies figure they need more, so they are proposing to give them a little Valentine gift:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years...New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government. (Full scam here)
I wonder how that switch-grass-to-gas idea of Bush's is coming along?
Liars are as Liars Lie
As the administration began to feel the heat over it's illegal NSA domestic spying program the President made a Hail Mary pass in LA last week hoping to blunt further criticism. He insinuated that the NSA program had prevented a 9/11-style attack on the tallest building in LA. It was lie. (I mean, another lie.)
Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002.
"The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world," says a longtime field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. "He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington." (Full tale here)
I told Tony last night that these guys are wearing me out. Seriously, nothing they do, no matter how wrong, no matter how deadly or how transparently cynical, gets them in trouble. Had Bill Clinton pulled any one of the stunts these guys have gotten away with the GOP-controlled Congress would have successfully impeached him long ago. (I will refrain from mentioning that the only thing Bill shot by accident was a blue dress... oops..)
But we no longer have a loyal opposition to protect us. Democrats are quite hopeless. As I wrote last month, I am done with them. Hope does not spring eternal after all. Democrats have succeeded in exhausting the last of my hope reserves. Democrats just posture and fiddle as Republicans rape the Constitution and pillage our treasury.
Who will save America? Who will save us? I don't know about you, but I don't have a clue. Al Gore? Which Al Gore? Hillary Clinton? Hillary is just Tom DeLay with hot flashes.
I am not optimistic. My combination social/political/environmental/fiscal barometer has been dropping like a rock. Heavy weather's ahead. I am battening down the hatches on the good ship Pizzo.
A Must See/Hear
http://nobravery.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
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