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Richard Haut
millennium club
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 1135
Location: Nice, France
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 Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:54 am Post subject: "Cheney’s response a concern to GOP" |
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Nobody has suggested that the shooting of Harry Whittington by Dick Cheney was anything other than a hunting accident/incident.
Whittington did not dress up in a long beard and a turban and leap out at Cheney yelling about the Great Satan. Cheney - however careless - did not deliberately go gunning for Whittington. We all know that.
Is Cheney such a profoundly small man that he cannot even express regret for what he has done ?
We can all draw our own conclusions - but personally I do not believe that Cheney, like the man in the White House or Blair in Britain, has the personal maturity and standards to accept responsibility for his own actions.
This is what the Washington Post has to say:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11355784/
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Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 496
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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| Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:45 am Post subject: Rich, are we being played? |
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Rich... it was an accident, as you stated. And Cheney has the maturity.
But the cynical side of me says... WE ARE BEING PLAYED!
The more Cheney keeps his mouth shut, the more mystery that swirls around such a true, true accident...
....Is America talking about the overseas cartoon, and the rioting going on? Are we talking about Americans or Afghanis or Iraqis dieing overseas?
Are we even remembering Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor journalist being threatened with death?
Or the Katrina debacle with 11000 trailers rotting in the mud somewhere, when Louisiana residents are being evicted?
Or the video debacle involving coalition troops?
Or the exoneration of Abu Ghurab military?
Or the nuke treatment admitted by Iran?
I say these top-crew guys are CLEVER, BRILLIANT, GENIUSES....!!!
Remember when Janet Jackson showed her nipple, two Supers ago?
I believe within the same 24 hour period, 150 Kurdish Iraqis were killed in one terrorist bombing in Northern Iraq.
Which of the two news items was headline news ...FOR MONTHS!?!
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Ed Ziomek |
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Richard Haut
millennium club
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 1135
Location: Nice, France
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| Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject: |
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I can't disagree with you, Ed - the same non-apology, headline grabbing stories have been used in Britain as a cover for whatever was really going on.
Anybody mention that the Danish newspaper that published the deliberately offensive cartoons supported Mussolini in 1922 and then in 1933, when Hitler came to power, ran an editorial saying that Denmark needed a dictator?
Both sides are manipulating the media - and the media lets them do it.
About the shooting incident: Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of her boss, “He was not careless or incautious [and did not] violate of any of the [rules]. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.”
As Molly Ivins says in the following remarkable article: "Of course he did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington."
Published on Tuesday, February 14, 2006 by TruthDig
Cheney Shoots A Texas Liberal
by Molly Ivins
Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas—what’s the fine for shooting a lawyer?—and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It’s not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we’ve got.
Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal—only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: “Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants.”
In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature—a “lock ’em all up and throw away the key” type—the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime neophyte to see Harry Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little basic education on the cost of prisons.
When Whittington was the chairman of Texas Public Finance Authority, he had a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds. As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no effect on crime.
Texas still keeps the nonviolent, the retarded, senior citizens, etc. locked up for ridiculous periods—all at taxpayer expense. If we could ever get to where we spend as much per pupil on education as we do per prisoner, this state would take off like a rocket. In 2003, we spend nearly $15,000 per prisoner, while average per-pupil spending was just over $8,000.
I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for partisan purposes—just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old Harry, a thoroughly decent man. However, I was offended by the never-our-fault White House spin team. Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of her boss, “He was not careless or incautious [and did not] violate of any of the [rules]. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.” Of course he did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington.
Which brings us to one of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration, which claims to be creating “the responsibility society.” It’s hard to think of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or not done than this bunch. They’re certainly good at preaching responsibility to others—and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their watch.
Of course the Cheney shooting was an accident.
But is it an accident if your home and your life are destroyed by the flood following a hurricane? Especially if the flood was caused by failed levees, a government responsibility?
Is it an accident if you are born with a clubfoot and your parents are too poor to pay for the operation to fix it? Is there any societal responsibility in such a case?
Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all you can find to replace it is a low-wage job at the big-box store with no health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can’t pay the bill, so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused by deliberate government policy?
Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and where does societal responsibility come in?
Cheney has a curious, shifting history on issues of blame and responsibility. He was vice chair of the congressional committee that spent 11 months investigating the Iran-Contra affair and author of its minority report. As John W. Dean highlights in a recent essay, the 500-page majority report concluded the entire affair “was characterized by pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy.” But Cheney’s report said the Reagan administration’s repeated breaking of the law was “mistakes ... were just that—mistakes in judgment and nothing more.”
Those of you who saw Cheney’s interview with Jim Lehrer last week may recall the passage on Darfur that ended with this:
Lehrer: “It’s still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless.”
Cheney: “Still happening, correct.”
Lehrer: “Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and—so you’re satisfied the U.S. is doing everything it can do?”
Cheney: “I am satisfied we’re doing everything we can do."
His head still tilts over more to the right when he lies.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including "Who Let the Dogs In?"
© 2006 TruthDig, LLC
_________________
Richard Haut has worked with the architectural profession for over 25 years and produces the weekly Richard Haut's Competitions, which has given architects details of many thousands of projects for which they can apply across Britain and Europe. |
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