The furor over the accident and the White House delay in making it public are "part of the secretive nature of this administration," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "I think it's time the American people heard from the vice president."

Medical info also included:

Hospital officials said they knew that Whittington had some birdshot near his heart and that there was a chance it could move closer since scar tissue had not had time to harden and hold the pellet in place.

After Whittington developed an irregular heartbeat, doctors performed a cardiac catheterization, in which a thin, flexible tube is inserted into the heart, to diagnose his condition, said Peter Banko, the administrator at the hospital.

The shot was either touching or embedded in the heart muscle near the top chambers, called the atria, officials said. Two things resulted:

_It caused inflammation that pushed on the heart in a way to temporarily block blood flow, what the doctors called a "silent heart attack." This is not a traditional heart attack where an artery is blocked. They said Whittington's arteries, in fact, were healthy.

_It irritated the atria, caused an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation, which is not immediately life-threatening. But it must be treated because it can spur blood clots to form. Most cases can be corrected with medication.

Can anyone translate the medical jargon?

"First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

She was referring to the overwhelming fascination with  Jessica Lynch, compared to the relatively small interest in the fate of Shoshana Johnson, an African-American woman who was in the same vehicle and experienced the same "capture," as well as the similarly muted reaction to the death of Lori Piestewa, a Native American woman with whom Jessica is said to have become close friends.

Thus while Mr. Whittington may not hope to aspire to the lofty heights of Natalee Holloway, being neither pretty, nor blonde, nor even a girl, and in all fairness, Natalee is more attractive, he naturally inspires greater sympathy than a few thousand African-Americans, most of whom never had two dimes to rub together.

one man's conspiracy is another man's business plan
Blog updated as needed

The Vice President of the United States SHOT someone. I mean, he actually pulled the trigger and shot someone! In the face and heart...

There's something so far beyond surreal about that, in context of all the other, larger outrages that this Administration has committed.

It's like, JEE-sus, he SHOT the guy!

And of course, the fact that it's a canned hunt just increases the utterly stunning, "OMG, what will they do next?" factor of it all...

Somehow the incident just encapsulates the sadism, carelessness and sheer mind-bloggling incompetence of this gang...

"History is ruthless, and will never flatter anybody." Zhou Enlai

Every public group, every school participated in fund-raising.  School children sold lemonade and cookies ... adults and businesses sent tens of thousands of dollars.

Everyone I ever talked to was utterly horrified by Katrina.  I heard talk about it in supermarkets and my doctor's office, etc., etc.

Since we have ZERO local television stations (because of the mountains), almost everyone has cable or satellite (better / more channels), and a LOT of people who have those are news junkies.  

And even our local little paper did a great job covering Katrina, and printing angry LTEs from people who live here who were very upset that people were stuck in the Superdome.

Of course, we get inundated on cable shows about Holloway, etc., but I really don't think that most people care that much, except for the Fox news junkies.

our local paper --and the Seattle papers, which we can buy here -- also do not cover the missing white women -- and DO concentrate on the big news.

Our local paper also has, in Section B, a very good rundown on all national news ... it's short, but most of the big stories are there, including mistreatment of prisoners, Guantanamo, etc.

And they publish Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, etc.... as well as Cal Thomas for the right group.  (They DROPPED Ann Coulter because she was so disgusting.)

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

AND:  Many locals here flew down to help both the human and animal victims.  We have both rescued people and rescued animals living up here now. Seattle is full of Katrina people.

And the governor of Washington has gone to great efforts.... three times she was told to set up for evacuees, and she got it all ready, and three times she was told to cancel by FEMA.  It was truly nuts.  We ALL wanted to help any way we could.  We here were very angry with FEMA.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

It is not to me that those who could have gone, and chose not to, must answer. Predictably, here is a blogrant from a couple of weeks after the event.

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans

Only in America would the citizenry watch thousands upon thousands of their countrymen die a slow agonizing death, some penned by armed gunmen in filthy enclaves with murderers and child rapists, and accept it as the will of their government.

Today I do not know if I am sadder about the massacre of New Orleans, the loss of the all the people, the
city that was those people, or the fact that the public, even the reviled themselves, watched it live
on TV and the streets of Washington are still free from hordes. As were the roads into the city. There
were not that many soldiers. Nothing that could have held back millions, had they taken exception to the
decision.

Not even the reviled target groups marched in millions, to Washington, to New Orleans, to overpower the relatively small number of gunmen sent by (God Speaks Through) Bush to prevent rogue citizens from saving their brothers and sisters.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, in impoverished pueblitos of Central America inaccessible to any vehicle, the people formed human chains to pass water and food, hand to hand down the gorges and up the mountains to the mothers and babies and grandfathers and uncles. They had little to pass, but all day and all night they stood in the mud and hefted buckets of rice, and beans and water, to the next pair of aching hands. Had any gunmen tried to stop them, God help those gunmen. And in those pueblitos, they did not have CNN, or Fox, or MSNBC to show them the dying children, the gasping elderly, the mothers falling from thirst.

Oh, America had its moments, when even the most patriotic of media figures shouted, "Let the people out!" and here and there there were some who felt an unfamiliar stirring of something as the media showed scenes of horror on one side of the screen, while officials on the other side explained that it was not so. Enough of a stirring, or perhaps simply enough time had elapsed, thought Washington, that most of this troublesome population, as Wolf Blitzer calls them, so poor, so black, would have perished and it would therefore be OK to magnanimously allow some lives to be spared.

And there have been tales of true generosity and heroism, even before permission was given. That old Miep Gies gene lives, and every heart in which it lives is precious.

In all fairness no one in Washington expected so many of them to still be not only alive, but ambulatory, by Thursday.

It was felt that the point had been made and on Friday the TV images began to show trucks coming in, soldiers. Naturally it took a while for them to get set up and get to work. The number of survivors continued to surprise. They had almost a week.

A week during which no million man marches were seen.

A week during which Americans who had long since learned not only to accept but to praise torturers and sexual predators as the divinely mandated manifestation of their will, of their destiny, now applied those skills to accepting the genocide of their own fellow taxpayers.

In any other country, it would have been necessary to bar the media from the scene. In any other country, there would have been to say the least "unrest."

But not in America. There is no nation on earth with a leader more beloved than George Bush, a government more revered.

Americans make the "good Germans" look positively rebellious.

From time to time it has been asked, "is there a limit?"

This week, the world got its answer. There is not.

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