Thereisnospoon has a highly recommended diary about the GOP metaphor.
It is important that we see this and expose the cruelty and sadism of this party...
About a year ago, a very talented man named Mark Morford from SF Gate wrote a sweet little human interest story about Cheney's hunting trips.
So then about a month ago the vice president of these beautiful and deeply confused United States, he of the struggling defibrillator and the shockingly nefarious wife and the gnarled calluses from working Dubya's puppet strings, he of the thin-lipped sneer that makes babies cry and women wince and foreign policies crumble like feta cheese in the freezer, well, Dick goes himself a-huntin.
Not just any ol' regular, camouflage-wearing, man-versus-nature hunt out in the wild, mind. Dick is far too fragile and unskilled and spoiled and scared of the open woods and icky furry monsters for that. Assumedly.
Nossir, our man Dick, he has himself flown over, in Air Force 2, on the taxpayer's tab, accompanied by his most favoritest shotgun, to the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, in rural Pennsylvania, to have himself a nice, cushy "canned" pheasant hunt.
This is what it was: Dick and about nine other overfed white guys sitting in a comfy luxury blind with their manly shotguns, waiting for the Westmoreland guy stationed behind them on a hill to release clusters of stunned, fat, tame game birds from a net. Then they shoot them.
Lots and lots of them. And then they slap each other on the back. And they grunt and say nice shot as the birds drop like flies as dogs race back and forth hauling dead or dying birds into huge piles. Whee what fun.
More than 400 birds were killed in one lackadaisical afternoon. Dick himself blasted the living crap out of 70 birds, all by himself. That's right, 70. Plus an unknown number of mallard ducks. Then they had them all plucked and vacuum packed and sent back home to show off to the staff. Dick was driven back to the airport in a Humvee.
Are we not all impressed? Are we not all sitting here saying, wow, that Dick Cheney guy, he of the massive alleged Halliburton corruption scandals, he is one studly dude, slaughtering a small mountain of docile, stupefied birds that had no chance of escape. What a guy.
And what a display of prowess and skill, using his day off to kill almost as many pheasant and duck in an afternoon as all those notions of progress that have been slaughtered by his inbred cronyist pro-industry energy policy since the beginning of this sentence. Gosh.
Even real hunters cringe at canned hunts. It is not a sport. It is not man versus nature. There is no nobility, no honor, no sportsmanship, no instinct, no luck, no tramping through fields and crouching in blinds and waiting for hours as you coddle the barrel of your shotgun and dream of J.Lo and tell jokes about homos and Hillary Clinton, just so you can shoot a few wild birds.
In other words, Cheney's canned hunt had none of the ostensibly sporting characteristics of true hunting. Cheney's was essentially a slaughter, a bloody target practice for aging overpampered white males who never have sex and have desperately zero outlet for all their pent-up misanthropic energies. In short.
Wow. Brutal!
And Morford does not let up.
Finish him!
You know what? It's not a big deal. It's just a bunch of dead birds, right? Over 400 of them spread among 10 guys who simply could not shoot fast enough to kill them all. Again, it happens all the time.
Except here, here in the land of obvious and tragicomic analogy, where you simply cannot help but transfer Dick's little aggro mind-set -- this numbly violent attitude of "just line 'em up and shoot 'em and pretend you're actually a manly hunter when all you are is rather heartless and inhumane and small" -- over to the government itself.
Which is to say, this is the worldview we are up against. This is yet another perfect example of the American agenda as set forth by the CheneyRumsfeldRove Triumvirate o' Pain, very much the way this administration attacks the world. No competition. No sportsmanship. No fairness. Zero respect. No reverence. And no actual talent required. Just kill at will.
Because it is, in the final analysis, all about how you approach and engage the world, nature, yourself. It is all about with what degree of sacredness and veneration you walk the planet, treading lightly or stomping heavily, in awe of the interconnectedness or working to crush the beautiful and the weak for profit and hollow thrill. It is, after all, your choice.
Do you, as Dick Cheney obviously does, see the world as your personal blood-sport playground, where you can take anything you want, kill whatever you like, respect nothing nature has to offer, suffer no ramifications, and do it all on someone else's tab? Well then. You have made your choice. The GOP wants you.
Goodness.
I've consumed many substances in my lifetime, and only two would make me mistake a 78 year old man for a bird.
And I don't think Cheney was shrooming.
No, Cheney was drunk. That's why they hid the story for a day.
This sad little worm of a man, who gets off on taking life...he had too much to drink.
He was tipsy and bloodthirsty.
This fucking parasite that sends young men off to fight suicide bombers but doesn't
have the honor or strength to fight fowl without a nice handicap.
Withered old sadistic fuck.
It's funny that he is one of the architects of this fucking mess we live in today. This neocon America based on moral values? A culture of life? Are you fucking kidding me?
No part of Dick Cheney resembles life. He even looks like the Grim Reaper.
Good thing our next two elections will be much like your "hunting trips."
Your party and it's bullshit, pro-war, anti-sanity values are tamed, well-fed game birds, and this November we will let them out of the cage and shoot down all of them, without mercy.
You are a fucking joke Mr. Cheney, and a sick joke at that.
Your time is over, turn off the pacemaker, unplug the defibrillator, and let Satan receive you.