Coffee Cups

So the veep shoots some guy and waits almost a full day to report it.

Isn't that what his crowd are always getting on Teddy Kennedy about?

Just sayin'.

Also? Al's been bird huntin' a time or three. You maintain a safe field of fire in front of you, which is an arc of well under 180 degrees, so that you don't shoot your fellow hunters, who, if following routine safety procedures, will be walking in a row alongside you. (And you keep your muzzle up at least 30 to 45 degrees, not only because that's where the birds are but also because you don't want to shoot your own hunting dog.)

If, in trying to shoot, you pivot outside that safe field of fire, you don't shoot. Period. Not even if Bambi's 12-point daddy suddenly materializes a foot away. (Of course, shooting a buck with birdshot would just piss him off.)

The veep was criminally negligent, and if it had been Bill Clinton, he'd be in jail.

Firstborn, currently suffering from flu and (possibly) strep throat: "I'm burning up and I'm really cold and my shoulder hurts and I feel like there's blood coming from my teeth."

I neither need nor intended for this blog to be political, but fuck me dead, have you looked at this country lately?

• Torture: What the fuck? It doesn't work. It's against both U.S. and international law. It turns people against us who otherwise might be for us. It makes a mockery of the values we profess. It puts our military in even more danger than it would be in otherwise. It corrupts those who practice it, sometimes permanently. So does someone want to explain to me, in little bitty words, why this is such a good idea?
  
• Iraq: Can you say "hell on a sled"? A majority of Americans don't want us there. A majority of Iraqis don't want us there. We're manifestly NOT putting down the uprising. It's one big looting spree for Halliburton and their ilk. It's bankrupting the country -- their and ours. And, oh, yeah, it's KILLING TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. Last night at the Grammys after singing, Bruce Springsteen said, simply, "Bring 'em home." Today. Now.
  
• Corruption: Let's see: The vice president apparently ordered his top aide to leak the identity of an undercover CIA operative to disrupt her anti-proliferation efforts ... because those efforts were finding that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though the claim that there were was the big reason we invaded. The administration's chief procurement officer pleads guilty to felonies. A member of the House Armed Services Committee cops to bribery charges. The Senate Majority Leader dabbles in insider trading. The House Majority Leader is under indictment (but still gets a cushy seat on the Appropriations Committee, where he can steer tax money toward his district or those of supporters, where he can raise a ton o' money for his tapped-out legal-defense fund and where -- oh, by the way -- he can dangle the power of the purse over the same Justice Department that happens to be investigating him). And, geez, there's so much more but this bullet item is too big already ...
  
• High crimes and misdemeanors: The president conspired with the British Prime Minister to fabricate an excuse to invade Iraq. He illegally and unconstitutionally took money appropriated for rebuilding Afghanistan and spent it to invade Iraq. He illegally and unconstitutionally ordered a seedy warrantless domestic wiretapping program so offensive that even three Republicans with the power to do something about it -- House Intelligence chair Heather Wilson, House Judiciary chair James Sensenbrenner and House Majority Leader John Boehnert -- have called for investigations. And yet this man remains unimpeached. The fuck?
  
• Economy: Deficits are still shot to shit, we just "cut" the deficit by cutting spending $40 billion and giving the rich a $50 billion tax cut (for the math-impaired, that means we made the deficit $10 billion worse), we're not even creating enough new jobs to keep up with work force growth, let alone bring unemployment down, wages are stagnant for all but the very wealthy and the housing bubble is popping as we speak.
  
• Homeland security: While we waste money in Iraq, we are no safer against dirty bombs or suitcase nukes in our ports today than we were five years ago, and Hurricane Katrina suggests that if something like a bird-flu epidemic does happen, we are so screwed ... which might be all this administration needs to declare martial law.
  
• Citizenship: People, did we learn nothing from the Milhous minions? No one is above the law. Not Nixon, not George Dubya Suckass, not anyone. And I'm sorry, but the terrorist attacks of 9/11, horrible as they were, do NOT excuse lowering our standard of behavior to "just slightly higher than, if not indistinguishable from, those of the terrorists," and to suggest otherwise betrays a fundamental (pun not entirely unintended) contempt for American values.
  

OK, I just had to get all that off my chest. Thanks.