http://www.mix941.fm/markmercedes/audio/021506_cheneysgotagun.mp3

 

Frodo failed...Bush has got the ring.

When a person begins to lose their vision, they rely more and more on movement just as many animals do. Most animals rely more on movement than colour or detail.

(Not that I sympathize with the old coot. If he is losing his vision, he should not be driving or hunting.)

To thine own self be true. W.S.

They lie automatically, even on those extremely rare occasions when they have no reason to.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.

However they also will walk rapidly across the road. They'er sharp birds ... they know if they have time to walk across before the car comes close.

(OH, and the single-file row of their babies behind them is the cutest damn thing in the world.)

Of course, underreported in all of this is that a lot of those in those "canned hunts" are captive quail kept in tiny cages who never get to walk or run around much at all.  Probably -- if the hunter is a decent shot -- a fast death from being shot is a mercy killing to relieve the agony of being stuck in a cage endlesslyl.

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

Why did Cheney's staff call the Situation Room and withhold the key information that Cheney was the shooter?

I'd say that at that point they were still trying to come up with a version whereby somebody else in the party took the blame. Perhaps they couldn't 'cause old Harry was in no shape to remember the "story".

Though I've never been on the Armstrong Ranch, I did go with a hunting party on the King Ranch once. (That was the only time I ever shot a gun. "Oh, my God! What if I hit something?" I thought.) There were many cases of beer for about a dozen people, and we stayed in a lovely, sprawling adobe house. I only went so I could be on the King Ranch and say I'd been there. So I'm saying it. But I expect my trip wasn't atypical.

Just my .02.

There are LIVES in the balance. Click here. Watch. Listen.

As for the rest of it, 30yds=90feet, 28 gage shotgun??? I really wonder about that.  Someone with knowledge of shotguns and effective ranges should be able to clear up that question.

We need to push for Progressive change, now more than ever.

"I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there. Didn't know he was there," Cheney said. "I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast."

Maybe if you weren't so goddamn trigger-happy, Dick, it would've happened slower.
This is neither conscious remorse or contrition -- it's a man saying he simply couldn't control himself.

"You shot the VP and then went and had a catered dinner?"

that said:

Quail move very fast and fly low, up, down and all around.  They are not that easy to hit.  It's not that surprising to me that an old man wearing glasses (hurts peripheral vision) could track 60-75 degrees on a bird flushing perhaps 5-10 yds out (sometimes you walk right up on them before they flush - scared the shit out of me every time) and fail to notice he'd just tracked onto someone obscured by brush 30 yds out.  (All this is speculation just like everyone else).  Cheney's still at fault as he pulled the trigger, but walking back into a group close enough to get hit that badly without making your presence known is pretty stupid.

Also consider the rest of the physical situation.  It's late in the day, (5:30-6:00) so shadows are long and light density poor.  These old geezers should have been back at the ranch by then enjoying their "companionship".  The whole scenario sounds unsafe to me.  I wonder if they have flame orange walkers or just shoot from a rocker in the back of the pickup when they get a little more aged???

As for birdshot not penetrating the skull vs digging through clothes/flesh, I'd guess #8 shot could easily penetrate clothing and an inch of flesh to lodge near the heart.  The skull is hard as a rock.  Hard to penetrate.  I've never hunted with the new no-lead shot, but the old stuff flattened out pretty fast.  You could blast a piece of plywood and make it fly all over without penetrating all the way through.

Warm clothing is relative.  Today's high was 78.  They may have only been wearing shirts and the orange vest.  Those vests can be paper thin nylon.

Why did Cheney fail to come clean for many, many hours?  Force of habit for lying MFs????

On the other hand, having fired a shotgun or two (though I'm certainly no expert), I'm of the opinion that there is no way Whittington was thirty yards away, it had to have been more like thirty feet for it to do that kind of damage.

I'm sure there are ballistics experts out there who will weigh in on this in the days to come.

"If Adolph Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway" -- Joe Strummer

Based on the reactions of my newfound "drinking buddies", I'd suggest that focusing on all these details surrounding the actual incident is not as effective as pointing out something I mentioned in a comment yesterday:

My big question thru all of this is more basic:how the fuck does the VP of the US even get off going  on a leisurely drive-by hunting spree on a Saturday afternoon while at the same time Katrina victims are being evicted from motels and 40,000 people are being left homeless? When do these fuckers ever work?

How many US citizens work through the weekends just to keep food on the table, and where do these scumbags get off thinking they can even consider something like "free time" with all the myriad crises this country faces?

The rethugs have no answer to that. They went ballistic. Seriously. Ultimately, me bringing up that point finally caused one of them to reveal his true self by saying, "Oh let them eat cake!"

Course we all know that's what they're thinking, but they certainly can't admit it--not if we're to take "compassionate" conservatives at their word.

If my "test audience" is any index, there is hardly any rebuttal to counter  this aspect of the incident--certainly not for anyone who takes the notion of "hard work" seriously.


juslilolme at Historical Footnotes

My speculation is that the only way this happens is for one drunk to shoot another drunk.  Using a small shotgun like Cheney's .28 very likely shooting a 7 1/2 load would not do so much damage to a well clothed human being at 30 yards.  

I know Cheney's lying for two reasons: first, he is a liar; second he's a drunk liar.  Oh wait a minute, it's the President who's a drunk.  It's so hard to keep the dissipations of the family values crowd straight.

All Progressives need to become ardent supporters of the Second, as well as the , First Amendment

see http://www.rfgc.org/reload/pattern_density_calc.htm

Given this and other info I've seen it fits that the wound pattern and severity could happen at 30 yds. Quail fly low and I haven't seen anything that said the quail was 30 yds out, just Whittington. So, the simplest explanation is that Cheney fired on a bird just as he said so.

But he screwed up big time. Rule #1 of hunting birds is to make sure you see sky behind the target. Clearly he did not.

Second screw up is waiting 14 hours to talk to the sheriff. No matter what actually happened that has created a stink he will never get off him.

SS worked that deal, that is known. But what was the reason? To protect him because he had a belly full of beer? To protect themselves because they let him hunt with a bunch of drunks? Maybe no one was drunk but they wanted to make sure everyone's story was right.

Of course one part of the explanation surely includes the fact that Cheney hates the press and feels no need to talk to them about anything. But he knows that as soon as he talked to the press things would get out. And he knew that he needed to talk to the sheriff before he talked to the press. If he felt no urgency to do the latter, he felt no urgency to do the former.

I was taught there are only two angles at which one should discharge a firearm--pointing down at the ground at a50-65 angle out from the body, or pointing up at a 25-30 degree angle from the body.

When the quail are on the fly, your rifle should be in the "down" position for safety.  You then bring the rifle to its "up" position and (hopefully) catch the birds in your sight as they fly more or less in a line along the horizon.  This is very difficult to do even if one is a good shot, which is why so many hunters use shotguns--the dispersal of the pellets greatly increases your odds of killing a bird.

Cheney either is a piss-poor hunter and should stop doing it altogether, or else his reflexes and judgment were impaired by alcohol consumption.  I'm guessing it's the latter.

I diaried this:  "When Dick Shot Harry", at http://www2.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2006/2/16/132735/429

Visit me at The Blogging Curmudgeon

I just don't see the political or legal gain to be made by covering up the fact that a guy was more hurt than he really was. I mean the VP SHOT someone. That by itself is pretty bad. Unless he shot bin Laden its not good.

And the guy is in a public hospital with regular nurses and doctors. Leaks are going to happen. And if they lives (or is said to be doing fine) he is going to have to talk to reporters sooner rather than later. It would seem the VP would know instantly that he couldn't downplay it too much for too long if whittington was really badly hurt.

That said, anyone getting shot is a serious thing, especially if you are 78 years old.

as for all the stuff about getting through a winter coat and such, maybe I missed it, but has anyone actually seen the coat. How thick was it? was it zipped at the time? How damaged is it now? Until you can see the actual damage and wounds, there is no way you can do anything except speculate.

My speculation? They knew immediately this accident was a disaster and the only part of it they could make better was to not let him talk to the cops with alcohol in his system (either a lot or a little).

So they circled the wagons and dummied up. It removed the certainty of creating a documented fact that the VP shot a man while under the influence, but replaced it with speculation that he did any number of awful things. Tough call, but as usual, not taking immediate responsibility always gets these guys screwed.

I just don't see the political or legal gain to be made by covering up the fact that a guy was more hurt than he really was. I mean the VP SHOT someone. That by itself is pretty bad. Unless he shot bin Laden its not good.

And the guy is in a public hospital with regular nurses and doctors. Leaks are going to happen. And if he lives (or is said to be doing fine) he is going to have to talk to reporters sooner rather than later. It would seem the VP would know instantly that he couldn't downplay it too much for too long if whittington was really badly hurt.

That said, anyone getting shot is a serious thing, especially if you are 78 years old.

as for all the stuff about getting through a winter coat and such, maybe I missed it, but has anyone actually seen the coat. How thick was it? was it zipped at the time? How damaged is it now? Until you can see the actual damage and wounds, there is no way you can do anything except speculate.

My speculation? They knew immediately this accident was a disaster and the only part of it they could make better was to not let him talk to the cops with alcohol in his system (either a lot or a little).

So they circled the wagons and dummied up. It removed the certainty of creating a documented fact that the VP shot a man while under the influence, but replaced it with speculation that he did any number of awful things. Tough call, but as usual, not taking immediate responsibility always gets these guys screwed.

You just never know...

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