Sunday, February 12, 2006
Cheney Get Your Gun
Well, Darth Cheney is just one more man that doesn’t need to be carrying after shooting his hunting partner in the face and chest. In this Report:
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally wounded a companion with shotgun pellets on a weekend quail hunt in Texas, his office said on Sunday. Cheney’s companion, Harry Whittington, 78, was listed in stable condition after being brought in on Saturday night, said Yvonne Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Cheney’s office said Whittington, an Austin lawyer, had been sprayed by birdshot while hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas.
Someone please take Elmer Fudd’s firearms away. I can’t wait to see how Bushco spins this one and makes him look like a hero instead of an idiot. Also check out this link from Capitol Hill Blue.
When Jack Meets George on Film
Pictured: Jack Abramoff, George Bush, Republican Yuppie Man, Republican Yuppie Woman, Chief Raul Garza of the Kickapoo Tribe and Lucifer Rove
So there on May 9, 2001 is Abramoff, and George is shaking Raul’s hand and guess who arranged for Raul to be there? You guessed it, Jack Abramoff! What, you ask, are Abramoff and Chief Garza doing at the White House at a meeting of State Legislators gathered to support Bush’s tax cut plan? Good question.
Bonus question: What has Chief Raul Garza been indicted for? Answer Below:
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Howling Void
I’ve been a news junkie most of my life, pathologically so. I’ve always tried to stay abreast of current affairs, to know what’s going on in the world. CNN, when it started, felt like a gift. The internet ... well, what a great improvement over the Reader’s Guides at the library, trying to follow the thread of some subject from far away, digging out old magazines, only to find the one story you’re looking for torn out. Suddenly, I could read journals, newspapers and magazines from all over the world.
Now, though, I’m finding myself looking less and less. First, the media conglomerates aren’t even bothering to “publish” those missing pages anymore. Worse, though, no one seems to care when they do. Hey, isn’t there another dead white woman in New England?
America seems hell-bent on destroying itself, and I’m not sure I want to bear witness anymore.
Peter Daou’s latest strikes a little too close to home:
This half-decade tsunami of scandals has had the intended effect: overload the senses, short circuit the outrage, dizzy the opposition. How many times have Bush’s opponents simply thrown their hands up in disgust, overwhelmed by the enormity of the administration’s over-reach? How many times have bloggers railed against reporters for going about the business of burying scandals and muddying waters? How many times have Americans watched in amazement as a missing girl in Aruba receives weeks of blanket coverage while lies that led to war and law-breaking at the highest levels of government get a yawn from the media?
We feel more and more like a bunch of digital Chicken Littles here on the blogs. What to do when we live in a country that celebrates idiocy, a country where high school teachers can’t stage Grease with their students without bringing the wrath of the American Taliban screaming down onto their heads? It’s exhausting just looking at the links to those small imprecations, let alone staring into the festering abyss that is the Bush Administration. Even the Rude Pundit, who seems to use outrage as high-octane fuel to call for change, seems to be ... well, despairing:
And you know what? CNN would still balance the facts of the story with the demonic visage of Scott McClellan spinning it away, calling it ludicrous and ridiculous and “beyond the pale to suggest” yet never really denying all the fucking and gutting and grinding and rubbing, although if it had been done, it was for security reasons that are classified. Sure, there’d be many of us who’d say, “C’mon, it’s obvious it’s true,” and the mainstream media would poo-poo the idea, with guests and articles that echo the administration’s non-denial denial. But the facts’d be out there, and when it came out that, hey, all that shit you were saying about the complete animalistic barbarism of the Republicans? Damn if you weren’t right all along. But then, the real facts had always been around, like the lyrics to a song whose beat you’ve been bouncing along to for months: when you pay attention to the words, you think, “Oh, cool, I thought that’s what it was saying. What’s the next track?”
The confirmation of all the shit many on the left have been saying about Katrina, about DeLay, about Libby and leaks ought to be another of those massive tipping points. But no one’s suprised. It’s just become too hard to process it all, you know. It’s just traffic sounds, so many crickets, so much white noise.
I’m not even sure what the point of this last several paragraphs is. I feel like I’m babbling now, like I’m one of those characters in a Japanese horror movie, surrounded by phantoms that hardly anybody else can see. It’s not even comforting to read that others are in the same boat. It’s that horrible feeling you have when the brake peddle just goes to the floor, you’re headed downhill, and your only choice is to either close your eyes or watch the approaching traffic.
Perhaps something will break soon. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back, people will wake up, embrace their responsiblities as citizens. Perhaps, but so much of where we are feels structural. EVERYTHING in daily American life screams now shut up and buy something. Sometimes it just all feels so damned overwhelming, it’s seems the only way to maintain a semblance of sanity is to watch grown men ride sleds and try to tune out the horror, surrendering to the athletic fantasy that the human race can all compete happily without killing each other.
I wish I had something else to offer.