Say What?!?

E

veryone has already heard the jokes about Vice President Dick Cheney. He's a Republican, so he hates lawyers and supports the NRA. Of course, this is not really a laughing matter. Shooting a friend by accident--and I am pretty sure that it was an accident--is no laughing matter. But worse than making jokes of it, some are taking the matter lightly.

In a recent poll by TIME Magazine, 1001 people were asked "Has the shooting accident made you more negative about the Vice President, more positive, or has it had no effect." I would have said "No effect" but astonishingly, 4% said that the accident has made them more positive about the Vice President. More positive? How does shooting a friend in the face effect a favorable image? Either these respondents are right-wing sociopaths (I wouldn't be surprised if Ann Coulter was one of the 40) or they are taking the matter far too lightly with a flippant response.

Of course, this could be a response to the media brouhaha over Cheney's timeliness in relating the event to the press. Personally, I think it has been blown out of proportion. Should he have reported it right away? Surely. Is it another link in a long chain of events that indicate his secretiveness? Probably. I don't get it. I agree with virtually nothing he represents, but I have never thought of him as stupid. Doesn't he realize that being secretive conveys a bad impression? Of course, he does. He has to. He's not stupid. But he doesn't care, and that is what scares me. He doesn't give a shit about what others think of him and this allows him to do whatever he wants. Haliburton gets a huge contract without competetive bidding and everyone bitches? So what, let them bitch? He says on one show that it's been "pretty well confirmed" that Atta met with Iraqi people before 9/11, but more recently on another show he says with a straight face that he had "never said that", all video evidence to the contrary. But so what? He could care less that people catch him talking out of both sides of his mouth. What are they gonna do? Pull the troops out of Iraq? As long as he can continue doing what he wants to do, he seems perfectly content.

One-thousand-sixty plus days left in this presidency. Am I the only one counting?