Midwest Monday News 02.13.06

Posted by Steven Bellah on 02.13.2006

What do you get when you take a millionare, a VP with a crack medical staff, and a rifle? Also, Hillary is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore--and that's why you shouldn't like her.

Happy Valentines Day tomorrow! Hopefully you have someone to spend the day with other than your hand. Now, on to the news.......


Cue the Looney Tunes theme.........now.

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday.

"He is stable and doing well. It was almost like he was spending time with me in my living room," said hospital administrator Peter Banko, who visited Whittington.

Banko said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warranted it, but he didn't elaborate. Whittington sent word through a hospital official that he would have no comment on the incident out of respect for Cheney.

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-gauge 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."

Armstrong told The Associated Press emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington before an ambulance — routinely on call because of the vice president's presence — took him to a hospital in Kingsville. From there, Whittington was flown by helicopter to Corpus Christi about 40 miles away.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president met with Whittington at the hospital on Sunday. Cheney "was pleased to see that he's doing fine and in good spirits," she said.

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to retrieve it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Whittington has been a private practice attorney in Austin since 1950 and has long been active in Texas Republican politics. He's been appointed to several state boards, including when then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission.

McBride said the vice president's office did not tell reporters about the accident Saturday because they were deferring to Armstrong to handle the announcement of what happened on her property.

Armstrong, owner of the Armstrong Ranch where the accident occurred, said Whittington was bleeding after he was shot and Cheney was very apologetic.

"It broke the skin," she said of the shotgun pellets. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that.

"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

Cheney is an avid hunter who makes annual trips to South Dakota to hunt pheasants. He also travels frequently to Arkansas to hunt ducks, among other places.

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year and is "a very safe sportsman." She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.

"This is something that happens from time to time. You know, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.

------I think this is hilarious, for a number of reasons. Now, if Kerry had done it, you could bet Rush, O'Reilly, and every other Right Winger would be raising hell about how Democrats aren't safe with guns. But since it's Cheney, we'll barely hear a peep. I'm sure they'll defend him, talking about how he did the safe thing or something.

What I find interesting is how Cheney has a permanent medical staff with him, since he might croak at any time. Remember, this man could be our President at one point.

Also, why is it that everyone Cheney and Bush hang out with has to be some millionare that owns like, 345 acres of land? Why can't it be someone like me? And people honestly believe these people are looking out for EVERY American? Please.



Hillary MAD!! HILLARY SMASH!!

The Republican national chairman created a furor this week when he suggested Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too "angry" to win the White House in 2008. And to hear Republicans tell it, Clinton is just one of many Democrats with an anger management problem.

Former Vice President Al Gore is angry. So is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The party is held hostage by the "angry left."

In recent months, GOP operatives and officeholders have cast the Democrats as the anger party, long on emotion and short on ideas. Analysts say the strategy has been effective, trivializing Democrats' differences with the GOP as temperamental rather than substantive.

"Angry people are not nice people. They are people to stay away from. They explode now and then," said George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. His book "Don't Think of an Elephant" has become something of a Bible for Democrats trying to improve their communication with voters.

Political history is dotted with failed presidential candidates perceived by the voters as too angry — think of Howard Dean's famous scream in 2004, or Bob Dole admonishing George H.W. Bush in 1988 to "stop lying about my record." Both parties' most revered figures in recent years, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, projected optimism and hope.

The latest example of the anger strategy came Sunday, when Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on ABC that Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger." He cited comments she made in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day in which she likened the Republican-led House to a "plantation" and called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history.

"I don't think the American people, if you look historically, elect angry candidates," Mehlman said.

Democrats defended Clinton.

"Democrats want a leader who shares their frustration — even anger — about Republican failures," Democratic strategist Dan Newman said. "Anger at terrorists is expected, outrage about corruption is a plus."

Some Democrats, in fact, complained that Clinton doesn't get angry enough. Some also denounced Mehlman as mean-spirited, and smelled more than a whiff of sexism in his remarks.

"It's the stereotype of the crone — angry, nasty, but powerful," Lakoff said.

RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt dismissed the charge of sexism, saying the anger strategy was fully justified when Democrats launch personal attacks. She cited Dean's description of Republicans as "brain dead" last year, and Reid's calling President Bush a "loser."

"Whether she's a man or a woman is completely irrelevant. If some Democrats want to fall back on the gender card, that's their prerogative," Schmitt said.

Other examples of the anger strategy abound. Last summer, with chief White House political adviser Karl Rove under investigation in the CIA leak case, Sen. John Cornyn R-Texas, denounced Democrats' criticism of Rove as "more of the same kind of anger and lashing out that has become the substitute for bipartisan action and progress."

Last month, after Gore criticized the president for approving warrantless eavesdropping on terror suspects, Schmitt retorted: "While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger."

Bush himself touched on the anger theme in his recent State of the Union Address, saying: "Our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger."

For her part, Clinton — calmly — dismissed Mehlman's remarks as a diversion from serious issues and the Republicans' "many failures and shortcomings."

But even she has employed the anger strategy. Six years ago, as a Senate candidate in New York, Clinton questioned the temperament of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was expected to be her Republican opponent.

Giuliani "gets angry very often," Clinton said. "I don't see the point in getting angry all the time and expending all the energy when we could be figuring out a better way to take care of people."

------I find this approach interesting, as I would expect the Democrats to be angry, regardless of my party affiliation. I mean, what are they supposed to be? Indifferent?

I WANT them to be mad. They should be. It's been a shitty 5 years. And the one thing everyone (including myself) has said about them has been that they are too whimpy and weak. Well, now they are standing up to the big bad Republican machine, and yet, that's the WRONG thing to do--to be mad.

Republicans have always been the angry ones to me. I mean, have you ever tried to debate/argue with one of them? Watch any weekly "Meet the Press" type show. Listen to Rush, Laura Ingraham, or O'Reilly. They all sound pretty pissed off to me.

But this is what they do, and do so well. They take the weaknesses of their own party, and of their own candidates, and put them on the opposition. Remember Bush's spotty military record in 2004? Well, of course you don't, because all anyone could talk about was John Kerry's fake Purple Hearts and how HIS war record was tainted. Now Hillary and the Dems are the angry ones....surprised?

Well, I'm glad they are mad, and I'm glad they are projecting that image upon them. They should be mad, and they should realize that a lot of the country is mad as well. The problem will be that this will cause them to change their image, and suddenly we'll be hearing about how NICE the Democrats are, because we can't be defined by our opponents, can we? Why can't they just develop a "We don't give a shit" attitude and say, "Yeah, we ARE mad! So What?"

But again, it's amazing to me how the Republicans take everything that THEIR party does, and make it seem like the Democrats do it SO MUCH WORSE. It's amazing in the fact that the American people will eat this up with a spoon. Sad, very sad.



Feedback

One quick e-mail before we go:

Hey, I know you hate talking about her, but I HAVE to know what you think about Cindy Sheehan being arrested/escorted out of the State of the Union.

------Well, whoever invited her needs to be banned from inviting forever. She had no place in that chamber to begin with. Sure, she's been a voice for the anti-war movement, but she didn't do anything meaningful other than getting Bush to shit himself a little.

Then, of course she had to take the "Crazy Kooky Liberal" route and wear some Anti-Bush t-shirt in there. And she was surprised to be escorted out? I bet the whole thing was set up so that she WOULD get arrested. It's pretty weak and pretty sad that the only way you can get attention is to break the law.

And all of you that will e-mail me saying, "She didn't do anything wrong!" Well, you're probably right. But she knew what would happen the second she walked in there, and once again, she disgraced the Presidency and our government. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't agree with the man, but I respect the office that he holds--and when you disgrace it like Cindy Sheehan has done so many times, well, I can't have any respect for a person like that.