Late-life parenting. A 62-year-old woman has given birth to a son—her 12th child—with the assistance of IVF.
Any time there’s a story like this, there’s always someone, somewhere, who pipes up to suggest it’s irresponsible to become a parent so late in life—although such criticisms tend to fall into a convenient double standard, with particular ire generally reserved for late-life mothers, rather than late-life fathers. That said, when Tony Randall had his first child in his 70s, I recall some murmuring then, too, about how it was unfair to the kid.
If I were going to get fussed about something, I’d probably comment on having 12 kids, rather than the mother’s age, about which I’m indifferent.
What do you think?
Random Discussion Topic #2
Random Discussion Topic #1
Circumcision. Divorced parents are arguing about whether to have their son, who is now 8, circumcised. Mother says yes; dad says no. Of course it’s in court.
For many years, it’s been routine practice in America to have baby boys circumcised, but it’s falling out of favor a bit among those whose religions don’t require it. It’s never been as prevalent in Europe. Typically, it’s defended on health and hygiene grounds, although the American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends routine circumcision. There isn’t really a genuine medical or hygiene-related necessity for it, though both of the rationales are doggedly hanging around as conventional wisdom.
I find it an interesting topic, because I’ve heard parents—liberal people, who wouldn’t bat an eye if a son came home with a purple mohawk and a safety pin through his nose—justify the decision to circumcise by saying they don’t want their sons to “look different” in the locker room. It’s a curious thing to find people who encourage individualism in their children feel so passionately about making sure that their genitals conform.
Personally, I happen to be a fan of the uncut cock, and, had I son, I wouldn’t take him for the old snip. What do you think?
Russ Feingold on Real Time
Crooks and Liars has the video.
I have to admit, I’m liking Russ more and more. And here’s a rather unfamiliar concept as of late when it comes to politicians of either party—I actually enjoy listening to him speak. He’s interesting.
Conservative Religious Leaders Smack Crazy Pat
Thanks for getting us going with all your televangelizing and shit, dude, but now your headline-grabbing batshit insanity is making us all look bad, so shove off, will ya?
Fellow conservative religious leaders have expressed concern and even open criticism over Pat Robertson's habit of shooting from the hip on his daily religious news-and-talk television program, "The 700 Club."Let’s not forget his regular tirades against liberals, atheists, and homosexuals: “Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.”
The Christian Coalition founder and former GOP presidential candidate has said American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip.
Or against Gay Day at Walt Disney World: “I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”
Or against feminists: “(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
Or against the State Department: “Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up.”
And, you know, lots of other stuff. Anyway…
"He is in a very visible leadership position and comments such as recent ones related to Mr. Sharon and so many others are misinformed and presumptuous and border on arrogance," said David Dockery, president of Union University, a private college affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.Not to split hairs or anything, but what puts the evangelical movement in a bad light is not denouncing the likes of Pat Robertson, whose vitriolic screeds are not remotely Christian. His comments aren’t just “misinformed and presumptuous and border[ing] on arrogance”—they’re hateful, inflammatory bile. He doesn’t need a suggestion to consult theologians (heh—“other” theologians, as if Robertson’s a “theologian” and not just an unhinged lunatic who shields his spewing spleen behind the cloak of religion); he needs a one-way ticket to an asylum for the criminally shrill.
Dockery suggested Robertson might want to consult other theologians "before making these pronouncements so quickly."
"It puts the evangelical movement in a bad light when that happens because people make broad generalizations, rightly or wrongly, all the time," said Dockery, who also is chairman of the board for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
It used to be easy to rely on Robertson’s patented brand of hellfire and brimstone madness to fund their tidy little business built on the back of illiberalism. He was nothing if not a useful tool for whipping adherents into a hate-fueled frenzy until they give ‘til it hurts. Now it’s not so easy. He gave them what they wanted—prominence—and now they don’t want the responsibility it entails, the criticism it’s brought; don’t want to have to deal with the problematic dichotomy of motivating through hate while claiming to peddle the message of Christ’s love.
If the best the leaders of the conservative religious movement can do is suggest that he not speak at Tuesday’s closing banquet of the National Religious Broadcasters Conference, the problem isn’t Pat Robertson. The problem is that it’s decidedly inconvenient for snake oil salesmen to have the King Cobra constantly yakking about how splendiferous his oil is.
(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)
Wicked
[Note: There are spoilers about the play, Wicked, in this post—so if you plan on seeing it or reading the book or just don’t want to know, don’t read any further!]
For Christmas, a very generous friend of Mr. Shakes’ and mine got us tickets to see Wicked, which, if you’re not familiar with it, is a long-running (and hugely successful) musical about the life of the Wicked Witch of the West, of Oz fame. The tickets were for last night, so, on what had to be the coldest night so far this winter (it was 2 degrees; I thought my face would fall off!), we headed into Chicago for our first night age in ages.
We got in early and had a long walk to the Billy Goat (home of the cheeseborger), where we had our usual double cheeseborger and a Coke. We had planned to walk around the city for an hour or so between eating and the show, but it was so blasted frigid that instead we stayed at the Billy Goat and just chatted.
Anyway, the play was very good, and we ended up enjoying it much more than I had imagined either of us might. One thing I found interesting about it was that it's really the story of a friendship between two women (the Wicked Witch and Glinda), who are both complex and interesting characters. I was impressed to find out that such a hugely successful play had succeeded without either a male lead or the reduction of the female leads into ridiculous caricatures, which is really saying something considering they're both witches.
I didn’t know much about it going in, so I was surprised by the rather interesting political undertones running throughout, as well. The premise is that the Wicked Witch wasn't ever really wicked at all, but was basically a bleeding heart liberal who had been demonized by the Wizard of Oz and his minions (including Glinda the Good Witch) because they needed an enemy. And they needed an enemy because they never really had any power or desire to effect change; all they could really do was hold onto their control by making people feel safe. Hmm, thought I; this rings vaguely familiar. It wasn't nearly as overtly didactic as I'm making it sound in the retelling, but there were a good few times that Mr. Shakes and I cast knowing and amused glances at one another. If only the witch had been blue....
In any case, if you’re interested, you can read more about the author of the novel on which the play is based, Gregory Maguire, and a bit of his politics, here. And if you have the opportunity to see the play, do. It’s really good.
(Tickets for Wicked at Chicago’s Oriental Theater. Official site.)
Question of the Day
If you could live the life of any character in any book, whose life would you choose?
I had kind of a hard time coming up with an answer for this one. So many of the books I love are about fucked up people (Geek Love) or fucked up situations (Life of Pi). And many of the characters I love and root for, like Anna Karenina's Kitty or A Tale of Two Cities' Lucy Manette or A Prayer for Owen Meany's Owen and Johnny, don't particularly live lives that I'd want to lead. Even Beautiful Joe's Laura Morris, who was so kind and lovely, or The Secret Garden's Mary Lennox, who ends up happy and strong, lived in times that don't particularly appeal to my modern sensibilities.
And then I just thought of Charlie Bucket. Of course it has to be Charlie Bucket! What could be better than inheriting a chocolate factory? Nothing, that's what.
Trigger's Victim Out of Hospital...
“Is one of us supposed to be a DOG in this scenario?”
Like they need more angst:
A new gadget repels gangs of teenagers by emitting a high-pitched noise that can be heard only by under 20s.The dude who invented it used his four kids as guinea pigs, tinkering with the prototype until his kids were going nuts listening to the noise, which sounds to teens like “a demented insect or a very badly-played violin,” but he and his fiancée couldn’t hear it at all. Swell dad.
Police are backing the Sonic Teenager Deterrent, nicknamed the Mosquito because of its sound, reports the Daily Telegraph.
It annoys teenagers so intensely they have to clutch their ears. Eventually they can stand it no longer and have to move on.
But because the body's natural ability to detect some frequency wave bands diminishes almost entirely after 20, adults are completely immune.
In other news, four teens in Merthyr Tydfil have bludgeoned their father to death with a Sonic Teenager Deterrent.
When I was a teenager, people were always complaining about kids hanging around endlessly at fast food places and in empty parking lots so forth—but there was nothing else to do. The closest mall and movie theater were a half hour drive away. It seems like there’s always a problem, especially in small towns, with teens loitering about in awkward places, but no one ever wants to cough up the dough to provide a cool and interesting space for them to hang out.
As I’ve mentioned before, my parents’ basement became our hang-out—and the backdrop for the awesome films Mr. Furious and I used to shoot in our totally geeked-out way, such as the classics:
This was, as you might predict, a film about a guy whose narcolepsy doesn’t bode well for his job as a zookeeper, as he collapses and the animals eat him. Why he was working in a zoo full of stuffed animals living on a bed, we may never know.
’Nuff said.
This was a film about a grouchy old dyke who gets fed up with her lover’s “lesbian crap” and decides to go to Hollywood to become a star. She gets a starring role in the film Primo Plastic, only to be viciously killed later by a pair of gardening shears. Or a clapboard. I’m not sure which.
And as a bonus, here’s a shot of Teenage Shakes, reporting the news of Mrs. Crabapple’s untimely demise.
Foxy.
If every teen were issued a video camera and a basement full of fun junk, there’d never be a problem with loitering.
Then again, if my parents had owned a Sonic Teenager Deterrent, maybe Mr. Furious and I and the rest of the gang would have been hanging out at Burger King, too.
I'm Shocked...Shocked!
You might want to glide over to that fainting couch and have MaryAnn bring over the smelling salts... this might be too much for you, dear heart.
Republicans Fail to Make the Grade with Blacks
WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Although the head of the Republican National Committee and President George W. Bush have pledged to make a more concentrated effort to win over Black voters, 98 percent of Republicans in the House and Senate earned an F on the latest NAACP Civil Rights Report Card, compared to only 2 percent of Democrats receiving failing grades.(Bolds mine)
"[Republican Party Chairman Ken] Mehlman has been out beating the bushes and saying that the Republican Party was appealing for the Black vote, but this is the most powerful evidence and continuing evidence that the Republicans have not realigned their public policy approaches to attract the Black vote," says University of Maryland Political Scientist Ronald Walters.
According to the NAACP'S mid-term report for the 109th Congress, all but one of the 231 Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives got an F. The exception was Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who earned a D. No House Republicans got Bs or Cs.
Fail Black America, Republicans, and they will flunk you.
In an attempt to attract Black voters, Republicans have been saying many of the right things.Talk is cheap, and no one knows this more than the most marginalized groups in our society. So feel free to continue peddling your snake oil, but don't assume that African American voters are stupid enough to fall for your pitch. Deliberate disenfranchisement, the gutting of social services, nose thumbing during disasters and thinly disguised racism won't win you any loyal voters.
"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," Mehlman said at the annual NAACP Convention last July. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
Many say Republicans are still wrong. Walters, the political science professor, points to statements made by President Bush in his State of the Union address.
"He said, 'A hopeful society depends upon a court that delivers equal justice under the law.' And with respect to the Katrina disaster, he said, 'We must work for the day when all Americans are protected by justice, equal in hope and rich in opportunity,'" Walters recounts. "The Republican Party has taken almost every opportunity to go against these kinds of principles."
And Republicans must deliver more than rhetoric if they are to successfully reach Blacks, Walters says.*Fanning frantically* Oh, someone call the doctor! Miss Mehlman has swooned once again, I do declare!
"What is the basis of any party's appeal to any voter? It is the extent to which they believe in that party's vote," he explains. "And there is a very simple answer to the question that we get all the time, 'When will Blacks vote Republican?' It is when they have a reason to."
(Tip 'o the Energy Dome to Oliver. It's a cross-post, it's an outrage...)
Ugh
Seriously. Barf.
I'm willing to try just about anything once. For god's sake, I lived in Scotland. I've eaten things that are usually only found on the menu during the second segment of Fear Factor. But that's just beyond the pale. Bluurrrgh.
Think of the (Unborn) Children!
One of the things I most love about being a woman is how often, when some jackhole is trying to prevent you from doing something specifically because you’re a girl, you get patted on the head and reassured it’s just for your own good. It’s nice to be an adult and still treated like an infant.
Even better is when they use the old “it’s so you can still have babies someday” chestnut. This time, it’s the explanation for why women can’t compete in Olympic ski-jumping.
Siblings Alissa and Anders Johnson are two of the best ski-jumpers in the world. Alissa is ranked ninth among the top female jumpers, which is 141 spots higher than her brother in the men’s ranking. However, it’s her little 16-year old bro that is training for the Olympics, and not her.I also love it when the term “ladies” is invoked in these kinds of arguments. Because, you know, if you were a lady, you wouldn’t want to go careening off into some absurd, high-flying destiny and would be content to stay at home and have your babies like a good girl.
So why can’t she join her brother, who has repeatedly said that Alissa is the better athlete? Gian-Franco Kasper, head of the International Ski Federation, had a pretty explanatory answer:
"Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. Don't forget, [the landing] it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters to the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."
And it only gets worse. The reasons given to Alissa were a bit more in detail:
"So far, we've been told every excuse in the book. That it's too 'dangerous' for girls. That there aren't enough of us. That we're not good enough. That it would damage our ovaries and uterus and we won't be able to have children, even though that's not true. It's so outdated, it's kind of funny in a way. And then it's not."
Oh, so that’s why it’s “medically inappropriate”! It’s more appropriate for a lady to become a mommy than to become the best female ski-jumper in the world.
In any case, if preventing possible reproductive injury or sterility is a legitimate concern for Olympians, we might want to ban men from the Summer Olympics altogether. Heat is one of the main causes of low sperm counts.
As is frequent intercourse, ironically enough. If a guy does it a lot (or even masturbates a lot), his sperm count can drop so low as to render him effectively infertile. So, we’d better make sure all our male Olympians are celibate, just in case. Of course, then that might make them jumpy and distracted—so probably we should just not allow any heterosexuals into the Olympics. Let the gay guys compete for the medals, while the breeders stay home and make babies, as any gentlemen should be inclined to do, just like the ladies.
But then again, a lot of gay guys want to be dads these days, too. Eh, just screw it and cancel the whole Olympics. The future of humanity clearly depends on it.
Cartoon Madness Continues Unabated
Cleric: $1 Million to Kill Cartoonist
In the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, prayer leader Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi announced the bounty for killing a cartoonist to about 1,000 people outside the Mohabat Khan mosque.Yeesh. Just yeesh.
Qureshi said the mosque and his religious school would give $25,000 and a car, while a local jewelers' association would give another $1 million. No representative of the association was available to confirm it had made the offer.
"This is a unanimous decision by all imams (prayer leaders) of Islam that whoever insults the prophet deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize," Qureshi said.
Qureshi did not name any cartoonist in his announcement. He did not appear aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures.
Meanwhile, in response to Iran’s call for anti-Semitic Holocaust cartoons, an Israeli graphic artist and comic publisher, Amitai Sandy, has announced an anti-Semitic cartoon contest of his own, in which only Jews can participate. Yesterday, I heard Sandy interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air—just fantastic. (You can listen to it here.) He talks about how the ability to lampoon oneself is tied to self-confidence, and it's quite compelling. I also loved his reason for why he wouldn't have published the Danish cartoons—not because they shouldn't have been published, free speech and all that; they just weren't funny.
He also gives some examples of the cartoons which have been submitted already, my favorite (as it were) of which is: Two guys at a used car lot. The Jewish buyer asks the salesman how many Jews can fit in the car they're looking at. The salesman tells him, "Oh—lots. You can fit two in the front and three in the back and six million in the ashtray." Beat that, Iran.
I love this contest. There's just such a brilliant bravado about it; it's the best response imaginable.
(And, weirdly, has a bit of a tie-in with Toast's QotD yesterday. Sometimes, the politics of entertainment is ugly...but turned on its head, the same joke can suddenly take on a whole different political meaning. Irony can often make for the best political statements.)
Specter of Corruption
Say it with me, Shakers: There is simply not a scrap of integrity to be found among the GOP. Not the tiniest, miniscule, infinitesimal wee remnant of honor among this collection of thieves.
Senator Arlen Specter defended himself and a member of his staff on Thursday after the disclosure that clients of a lobbyist married to the staff member had received money through the senator's actions.Yeesh. If it’s not attributable to a blatant conflict of interest, it sure is quite a coinkydink.
Vicki Siegel Herson, who until recently was Mr. Specter's legislative assistant on the Appropriations Committee, is married to Michael Herson, a top executive of the lobbying firm American Defense International.
Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and his staff confirmed that six of Mr. Herson's clients received a total of about $50 million over the last four years through items Mr. Specter inserted into military appropriations bills in a process known as "earmarking."
…Mr. Specter said he would conduct a further inquiry into the possibility that Ms. Siegel might have knowingly played a role in allocating federal money to one of her husband's clients.
"That would be a blatant conflict of interest," Mr. Specter said. "I don't think that happened, but I am going to go back and take a look at the specifics of it."
By the end of the day, a spokesman for Mr. Specter said he had decided "voluntarily" to refer the case to the Senate Ethics Committee as well.
But wait for it—the Karl Rove-Approved Stamp of Denial and Obfuscation:
Mr. Specter said that "I think I knew" that Ms. Siegel's husband was a lobbyist, but that he had met him only a few times and might not recognize him "in a crowded room."Don’t know him…wasn’t me…9/11!
…"The allocations in issue went to Pennsylvania companies for items which were important to national defense," Mr. Specter said in a statement.
Is anyone else beginning to seriously entertain the notion that the entire GOP has been secretly replaced with Stepford-style Congressbots?
Does Richard Cohen have a learning disability?
I’m not being cheeky. I’m genuinely wondering. Because he seems to have struggled so mightily with basic math that it suggests a possible undiagnosed learning disability, which isn’t a funny thing. It also sounds like the girl in his linked column to whom he’s directing the bad advice that math doesn’t matter—a girl who failed “algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it” and subsequently dropping out of school—may well have an undiagnosed learning disability, too. And that makes his column not just ridiculous or ill-advised, but tragic.
PZ Meyers (who gets the hat tip; passed on by Shaker Angelos) addresses quite well many of the problems with the column—most importantly that advising a student that math doesn’t matter is advocating ignorance. And that may well be the case. But when I clicked through and read Cohen’s column, I didn’t feel nearly as angry about what he saying as I did sad that he was saying it. It seemed less like an endorsement of ignorance than a justification for it.
Anyone who’s worked as a math tutor before undoubtedly has stories of working with someone who was smart enough to “get it,” but couldn’t. Someone who would become so intimidated by the work, that they could barely stand to look at the paper, barely allow themselves to try lest it just result in another failure. Someone who would throw their hands up in the air in frustration and say, “Why do we even need math, anyway? I’m never going to use this in real life.”
It struck me that that column had been written by someone just like that, about someone else just like, too.
Like the more widely-known dyslexia, which is associated with reading, dyscalculia manifests first in a struggle to work with numbers and understand associated concepts, and, left untreated, can lead to math aversion of phobic proportions. And also like dyslexia, it’s treatable. But it’s got to be diagnosed.
Cohen may have spent a lifetime running away from feeling like “a dummy,” because no one ever noticed that he has dyscalculia. It may have left him defensive—and therefore blind to the likelihood of his subject sharing the same unfortunate fate. Perhaps he only lacks compassion and perspective on this subject because he never got any himself. Rarely is someone who excels elsewhere just “a dummy” when it comes to math.
The point shouldn’t be that math doesn’t matter; it’s that diagnosing math-related learning disabilities does.
Spying Inquiry Update
Well, the administration’s full court press attempting to swing Republican members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees against an official inquiry into the domestic spying program seems to have worked quite well. The Senate Committee voted along party lines, so, with a GOP majority, the proposed Senate inquiry has been squashed. And although the House Committee has voted to open a Congressional inquiry, there’s already argument about its scope:
Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican and committee member who called last week for the investigation, said the review "will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward."So, it’s not clear yet how effective this inquiry is actually going to be. The Bush administration is already laying out its rationale for not cooperating, which is, predictably, that a comprehensive inquiry risks disclosing national security information that could help Al Qaida.
But an aide to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws needed to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself…
Ms. Wilson said the review would include closed-door briefings by intelligence officials about the operational details of the program, a review of its legality and discussion about whether changes are needed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which bans eavesdropping in intelligence investigations without a court order.
While the administration agreed under pressure last week to provide limited operational details to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Ms. Wilson said she wanted more information and remained uncertain whether the N.S.A. had the needed safeguards in place to protect against civil rights abuses against Americans.
But Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said: "This is not an inquiry into the program. It's a comprehensive review of the FISA statute. " He said Mr. Hoekstra "wants to set up a process to move forward and look at the entire statute and ways to modernize it."
But aides in two other Congressional offices, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said their understanding of the agreement was that the inquiry would focus in large part on operational details of the surveillance program.
Of course it does.
Daley to GOP: Suck it.
Thanks but no thanks.Oh, sure—they say it’s because they want to focus on their bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, but it’s really because Daley has nothing but an unending reserve of contempt for the GOP. If the Bushes are the ultimate Republican clan, the Daleys are the ultimate Democrat clan (not to be mistaken for the Kennedys, who are the ultimate liberal clan)—and Daley ain’t gonna have no nasty GOP bullshit going on in the Windy City on his watch.
That's Chicago's answer to an invitation to submit a bid to host the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The Republican National Committee said yesterday that Chicago and 30 other cities were selected to submit bids explaining why they'd be a good choice to host the 2008 convention.
But a spokeswoman for Mayor Richard Daley says City Hall isn't interested.
There’s only enough room for so much corruption in Chicago—and it’s the kind that makes a city work, not the kind that lets a city drown.
Wevvy Wev Wev McWevverwev
Bush Approves Cheney’s Handling of Mishap. (Something tells me if I shot someone in the face it wouldn’t be described in the local rag as a “mishap.”)
President Bush said Thursday he was satisfied with Vice President Dick Cheney's explanation about his shooting accident in Texas.It’s so cute when everyone pretends he’s the boss.
"I thought the vice president handled the issue just fine," the president said in his first public comments on Saturday's accident. "I thought his explanation yesterday was a powerful explanation."A powerful explanation? A powerful explanation is when Felicity Huffman is asked why she took the role of a transsexual in Transamerica and movingly describes her intention to honor the courage of those who risk being ostracized or discriminated against, or bravely live life on society’s margins, all in pursuit of realizing their true selves. Dick Cheney’s guttural intonations about how he shot a dude in the face in the middle of a canned hunt that’s essentially skeet shooting with the added benefit of actually murdering living things is not powerful. It’s pathetic.
Bush said it was "a deeply traumatic moment for him and obviously it was a tragic moment for Harry Whittington." He said that the shooting "profoundly affected the vice president."Profoundly affected him in that he was woefully inconvenienced and actually had to admit doing something wrong.
Bush recounted Cheney's explanation of the accident. "He heard a bird flush and he turned and pulled the trigger and saw his friend get wounded," the president said.Wouldn’t a normal person say, “He heard a bird flush and he turned and pulled the trigger and immediately realized he had made a terrible mistake by accidentally shooting his friend?” It’s ridiculous the lengths to which these nitwits go simply to avoid admitting error. “Saw his friend get wounded.” Sheesh.
Oh, and by the way…Whittington’s not a friend, according to the veep. He’s only an acquaintance.
Dick Cheney: Declassitron 3000
Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?Yeah, maybe if the Vice President is the Dark Lord of the Administration. In most cases, the veep is, you know, Dan Quayle or whatever.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: There is an executive order to that effect.
Q There is.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q Have you done it?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order –
Q You ever done it unilaterally?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.
Nowadays, the president is.
Who’s crazier?
David Hasselhoff for posing for these bizarrely disturbing pictures, or Pepsi…for hiring David Hasselhoff?
Dare for More? Pepsi, didn’t you know that hiring David Hasselhoff is in itself a counter-message to your own campaign? Please tell me these ads will only run in Germany.
Maybe they were impressed with his Hooked on a Feeling video.
(Hat tip Hollywood Rag.)
Wev
Trigger takes full responsibility for shooting his friend in the face. Delightful.
And he describes it as “one of the worst days of my life.” Precious.
And he’ll “never ever be able to get out of [his] mind” the image of the poor old codger falling to the ground. Charming.
And he says it’s “not Harry’s fault,” that “You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend." Enchanting.
It’s almost like Trigger is a real human boy!
Apparently, “Cheney was soft-spoken and somber during the interview with Fox's Brit Hume.” As opposed to what? His usual effervescent, gregarious self? He’s always a glum old fuck.
Trigger also claims that as soon as his friend, who he’d just shot, fell, he “ran over to him.” Yeah, right. Like those legs have seen any motion that could remotely be described as “running” since Trigger charged out of a draft office in the 60s.
I’m decidedly unimpressed. Call me when you’re willing to show some of that Artificial Emotion and Somber Personal Responsibility on behalf of the soldiers who have been shot in the face by enemy fire after your trumped-up bullshit that sent them to war.
