Guns don't shoot people, Dick Cheney does

First things first, there is no truth to the rumor that Rory Gilmore wrote this, but you should read it anyway. If you watch the OC, or at least have an idea of who the characters are, you’ll enjoy this. To be honest, I learned more about the OC than anything else in this fine piece of work.

Next up… Dick Cheney shooting a friend who happens to be 78 years-old and who happened to be in Cheney’s way on a hunting trip…

Look, we here at VFLOAB understand that it was an accident. We aren’t going to spin it any other way, even though we think Evil Dick is evil, we’re pretty sure he lets other people do his dirty work (actually we know he lets other people do his dirty work, usually the US Army). So this was an accident. We could live with that.

But of course it doesn’t end there. The way they’ve handled this entire situation is CLASSIC White House/Dick Cheney. First off, it wasn’t Cheney’s fault at first, it was Whittington’s fault since he got in the way or the media’s fault because of the way the handled the story. Maybe Mr. Whittington didn’t follow the standard hunting guidelines or codes (we’ve never been hunting so we have no clue). But the fact is he was shot in the face, neck, and heart, and I’m sure it could have been prevented.
It took 22 hours for the story to break and then almost 96 hours for Cheney to apologize for his actions. How was running this show should be fired right now. First off, the White House/Vice Presidents people didn’t even release the story; it was the owner of the ranch. Why the wait? I see one of three reasons why they waited:
1) Cheney had been drinking. The man does have three DUI convictions on his record, so this is not some crazy conspiracy theory. Cheney did admit to having one beer at lunch, so it isn’t a totally outrageous theory. It’s unlikely of course, since hunting with guns with a few beers in you has to be one of the dumbest ideas this side of invading Iraq. Anyway if Cheney was drinking the 22 hours gave them time to plan how to spin this.
3) They were very worried about Mr. Whittington’s health. And probably rightly so. Again if this was the case, and this is probably the most likely, then they were planning how to spin the story. Mr. Whittington isn’t out of the woods yet, but it appears that he’ll pull though the accident.
3) Cover up. Highly doubtful, but not out of the realm of possibilities with this administration which is now being compared to Richard Nixon without brains.

No matter what the reason, the entire incident and episode that followed was pure Bush Administration. They refused to take responsibility. It was someone else’s fault. They were secretive about the events and the episode in general. And it brought into question of who is in charge. Cheney called the shots, he delayed in informing the White House, and he attempted to control the story even after they were informed of what happened. It wasn’t until people where openly wondering on TV and in print who was and is in power/charge did you see Cheney apologizing for his actions (to FOX no less we might add). There is no way that Karl Rove would have allowed this story to continue on for four days like it did, Rove is too smart for that. And even now that Cheney has apologized; the story still won’t simply go away because it gained so much negative attention.

But that’s the story of this administration and what historians are going to have a field day with in about twenty five years… who held the power and the cards in this White House? While we’ve seen many administrations delegate power throughout the various cabinets and advisors around the President (Ike and Reagan come to mind) there was never any doubt that at the end of the day Ike and Ronnie were making the final decision. With this White House, that may not be the case. Does anyone honestly believe that Bush waned Cheney to stay quite throughout all of this? Of course not, if it was Bush who had accidentally shot a man, he would have apologized by Sunday.

Personally, we think Cheney should resign or be fired and we’ve felt this way for a while because of previous actions and conflicts of interest. He won’t unless he’s charged for manslaughter, and hopefully that will not happen. But it goes to show how ‘valuable’ Cheney is… not because he offers good politics or policy, but because he’s so powerful. I see nothing wrong in asking who Cheney answers too because it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s not George W. Bush.

To close out today, I’ll just give the keyboard to Ozzie:
"Alex was kissing Latino people's [butts]. He knew he wasn't going to play for the Dominicans; he's not a Dominican!

"I hate hypocrites: He's full of shit. The Dominican team doesn't need his [butt]. It's the same with [Nomar] Garciaparra playing for Mexico. Garciaparra only knows Cancun because he went to visit."

And we wonder where Hugo Chavez gets it…