Dick Cheney May Have Been Drinking.....Google Cache Snapshot

A little birdie? I think we,ve had enough confusion between birds and people lately.

Maybe Cheney will blame it on bad intelligence?

This is like dangling a steak in front of a pitbull. How long until Bush is blamed for this?

He should have just been up front on this right away with local authorities and the left wing would have nothing to work with.

I've been wondering what choke he was using. I posted this a pattern intensity guide on another thread:



Now one wouldn't normally use a full choke hunting quail, but I wouldn't use a 28 gauge either.

News about Cheney's hunting accident: Cover-up or overblown?

(CNN) -- What did you see when you saw the story about Vice-President Cheney's hunting accident?

If you were a comedy writer, you saw definitive proof of the existence of God.

If you hold the Bush Administration in minimum high regard, you saw enough metaphors to power a Ph.D. thesis: a reckless, inept use of force directed at the wrong target, compounded by a cover-up.

If you support the administration, you saw the press in full hysteria, "going nuts" (as a FOX News personality put it), by pounding White House spokesman Scott McClellan on the 20-plus hour delay in making the news public.

If you were me, and you heard the news that a piece of birdshot lodged in the victim's heart, you heard -- OK, I heard -- an echo of a plotline I used in a novel a decade ago: the just-elected president dies after breaking his leg, when a tiny piece of bone marrow works its way into his bloodstream, causing a fatal embolism.(Cheney shooting victim suffers 'minor heart attack')

What's so striking, I think, is how a story like this becomes an instant Rorschach test, with political predispositions substituting for inkblots. We know the meaning of this incident because we know how we feel about the vice president, or the administration, or the war in Iraq, or the press -- and therefore, we know how to judge the event.

Look, I have never hunted in my life (assuming you don't count hunting for a parking place in Manhattan). I have no more knowledge of the rules that govern a quail hunt than I do about the topography of Neptune. But the same massive level of ignorance doesn't seem to be stopping a whole lot of people from explaining why the vice president was innocent, careless, criminally negligent, or homicidal. Similarly, it seems all but impossible to separate your judgment of the White House's response -- perfectly appropriate, sloppy, or an inexcusable attempt at cover-up -- from your broader view of the president.

There are plenty of grounds on which to make out a case against the vice president's performance in office; there are plenty of examples where his easy assurances -- about weapons of mass destruction, about the way the U.S. would be greeted in Iraq -- have turned out to be dramatically wrong-headed. But I'd prefer to see those arguments stand or fall on their merits. As for the comedy writers, they're exempt from any analysis, rigorous or otherwise. Some temptations are, literally, irresistible.

The Media is a two faced whore.

Whatever bandwagon is hip, There on it.

Bunch of drunks out shooting at each other, I love it! Good thing they weren't hunting with AK47's

MSNBC's Missing Paragraph Reappears; Reporter Misled By VP's Office
Last night, MSNBC scrubbed a paragraph about alcohol from an online article about Cheney's hunting accident:

Now, they've restored the paragraph, slightly reworked:

In a recorded, on-the-record phone call with NBC News, Armstrong said that beer may have been available at lunch that day. "If someone wants to help themselves to a beer," she said, "they may, but I did not see anyone do that," Armstrong says. She says she was not sure if there were beers in the coolers but wasn't ready to rule it out: "There may be a beer or two in there, but remember not everyone in the party was shooting," she told NBC News.

The story also now suggests that the White House misled MSNBC about whether Cheney had consumed alcohol. A new paragraph from the revised article:

NBC News called the vice president's office for comment four times Tuesday and Wednesday and asked whether the vice president or anyone in the hunting party had consumed any alcohol on Saturday prior to the accident. In an e-mail statement Wednesday to NBC News, the vice president's press secretary referred NBC News to the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department report on the incident.

The sheriff's report says "there was no alcohol…involved in the incident." Cheney told Brit Hume that he drank beer prior to the accident.

Question: Did the White House pressure MSNBC to remove the paragraph last night?
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/15/nbc-paragraph-reappears/

VIDEO: Cheney Admits To Drinking Beer Prior To Hunting Accident

The bloggs and Cycloptichorn were right.

Anybody know how many medications Cheney takes every day that warn against mixing with alcohol? A bunch I bet.

Interesting question blueflame

I am shocked that I kind of agree with McG on this being a little overblown because while the media has been focused on this admittedly newsworthy story, Cheney has been going around strong arming the GOP who formerly were against the spy program and are now backing out like the cowardly dogs they are.

Well, I see all the loony stuff is neatly brought together in one thread, that helps ...

I must admit I LOLd when I read the metaphor in McG's article tho:

This is the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. Can't you tell I'm laughing? Stupid beard always gets in the way!

I'm quite sure he is laughing at us right now, don't you think? The most powerful nation in the world, by far, and we can't catch one simple man who hides in caves.

Cycloptichorn

Quake Radio's Will (Durst) and Willie (Brown) program managed to get a long exclusive intervew with he owner of the ranch. She ws hilarious, she related how a number of people had been shot on her ranch, that it wasn't a big deal. It really was quite amazing.

source

Told you so.






<I love it when that happens>

Sheriff, deputy explain responses to Cheney shooting
By NANCY MARTINEZ
February 14, 2006

The Kenedy County Sheriff's Department feels at home with the Secret Service and the powerful people who go hunting on the Armstrong Ranch, but is out of its comfort zone with the media circus that the Dick Cheney shooting incident has attracted, the sheriff said Wednesday.

No one in the federal government has told Sheriff Ramon Salinas III and his deputies how to do their job, Salinas said. He was the one who decided not to go to the ranch to investigate until Sunday, the day after Vice President Cheney shot and wounded Austin, Texas, lawyer Harry Whittington on a quail hunt. Salinas based the decision on witness accounts and advice from people on the ranch he knows and trusts, including a former sheriff.

"Everybody's been saying there's a cover-up from the time they heard about this," he said. "That is not true."

Salinas said he was barbecuing with his family at 5:30 p.m. Saturday when he received a call from sheriff's Capt. Charles Kirk.

"He told me he heard of a possible hunting accident on Armstrong Ranch."

Minutes later, Salinas got a call from a U.S. Secret Service agent.

"He said the reason he was calling was to officially notify the sheriff's department that the vice president was involved in that shooting accident."

Soon after, Salinas said, Kirk called him from the Armstrong Ranch gate. He told him he was there with a U.S. Border Patrol agent who didn't know what was going on.

"I told him don't worry about it. I'll make a call," Salinas said.

Salinas called Ramiro Medellin Jr., a former sheriff who lives on Armstrong Ranch and works as a ranch hand. Medellin called Salinas back and confirmed the incident was an accident.

It was at this point that Salinas decided to wait until the next morning to send an officer to investigate the incident.

"We've known these people (witnesses) for years. They are honest and wouldn't call us, telling us a lie," Salinas said. "I talked to an eyewitness who said it was a definite accident. We knew Mr. Whittington was being cared for."

He told a Secret Service agent who called him that he would send Chief Deputy Gilberto San Miguel Jr. to the ranch at 8 a.m. Sunday.
source

Cheney was probably feeling the pressure and guilt from ducking military service, and had an episode of subconscious combat flashback.

Ramon Salinas, a regular Colombo there.