Only in America is debt spending equated with economic prosperity. Americans, you see, aren't spending money they've actually saved. By and large, they're spending money they don't have (last year's national savings rate was a negative number). Using credit cards and other forms of debt to buy clothing, gasoline and Wal-Mart doodads is hardly a sign of economic prosperity; it's more an indication that the population still thinks the cheap money party will last forever.
Besides, most of the money people are spending is coming right out of their price-inflated homes in the form of home equity loans. Consumers think their homes are giant ATMs they can live in, and they mistakenly believe that housing prices will continue to rise forever. So with each passing year, as the housing bubble gets larger, consumers are extracting the virtual gains from their homes and using that money to buy stuff they don't need and can't really afford.
When the housing market corrects, and prices return to rational levels (which is inevitable, by the way), all this consumer spending of fictional home equity is going to look pretty darned ignorant in retrospect. And whoever happens to be the President at that time is going to get the blame.
That's why all Presidents try to keep the money easy and the lending cheap. That way, they can pass on their economic bubbles to the next politician unlucky enough to step into the White House.
White House Press Secretary (i.e. "professional liar") Scott McClellan explains -- with a straight face -- that it was Mr. Whittington's fault for stepping away from the other hunters to retrieve a downed bird. Never mind the fact that every hunter safety course in the world says identify your target before pulling the trigger -- a lesson that actually shouldn't need to be taught if people had any common sense.
The Bush Administration is rife with such "pass the blame" explanations for world events. The bad pre-war intelligence on Iraq wasn't Bush's fault, we're told, it's those damn lying spies and "intelligence failures." The Hurricane Katrina disaster has nothing to do with poor government preparedness and planning, it was all the fault of a "freak" storm that created a disaster nobody could have possibly predicted (although many did, years before).
And when the U.S. bombs Iran in the near future (that's Iran, not Iraq, in case you're confusing the long list of countries that have been bombed by the United States), unleashing radioactive fallout upon hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, there's no doubt the White House will blame it all on Iran. "If they didn't have nuclear facilities to begin with," we will be told, "there wouldn't have been any radioactive fallout."
With this White House, everything is somebody else's fault.
Leadership is not the practice of passing blame onto others for events gone wrong. Heck, any juvenile can do that. But it takes a person of real courage and integrity to stand up and take responsibility for his own mistakes. Why can't Cheney just admit, "I did something really stupid and accidentally shot the guy!"? The answer is because this White House is all spin and no substance. The washing machine is running, but there's no laundry in there!
Of course, the White House is quick to take responsibility for fictitious achievements, like the so-called "economic prosperity" (actually, just rampant mindless debt spending) explained above. Or the carefully timed but absurd claim that Bush's domestic spying program intercepted and halted another terrorist attack on Los Angeles (a claim that members of the intelligence community have publicly called completely bogus).
I'm just wondering whether average citizens can use the same twisted White House logic to explain their own shooting mishaps. "The convenience store clerk just walked right in front of my shotgun when I was actually trying to shoot the cigarette cartons!" Or, the ever popular, "That crazy guy just jumped right in the way of my carefully planned drive by shooting."
This logic all comes down to one stunningly ludicrous statement: They got in the way of my bullets! It's so absurd that only the White House (or a pharmaceutical television ad producer, perhaps) could dream it up. Was Mr. Whittington supposed to pull a Matrix bullet-time maneuver and whip his arms past ten pieces of buckshot moving at the speed of sound? Was it his fault because of all the thousands of different places he could have chosen to stand at that very moment, he chose to stand directly in the path of steel pellets unleashed by Dick Cheney's firearm? That was his choice, was it not?
You see, with enough spin, almost anything, no matter how ridiculous, can start to sound feasible. Well gee, maybe Mr. Whittington really was the perpetrator and Dick Cheney is the victim here for being put in this compromising position by the careless actions of Mr. Whittington.
The fact is, Mr. Whittington is lucky to be alive. Cheney plainly shot him, and he simply would not have been hit if his body hadn't lined up with the sights on the barrel of the shotgun Cheney was aiming. Don't let the White House spin this story and absolve Cheney of responsibility yet again. He screwed up, he accidentally shot his friend, and if the man had any integrity left whatsoever, he would publicly apologize and move on.
Other hilarious comments from around the web:
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced today that his department would immediately implement a 'Cheney Alert' system to warn Americans if an attack by Vice President Dick Cheney is imminent.
"What we have learned, the hard way, is that Dick Cheney can attack without warning," Mr. Chertoff said. "It is our hope that with this Cheney Alert system we will be able to give the American people some warning before he strikes again."
"Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time-there-were-quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be the 78 year old man. Even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists-he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face." - the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Far from anything resembling honorable, live-off-the-land hunting that actually requires stalking healthy, wild prey that have a reasonable chance of escape, this shoot-em-up canned bird hunting is the kind of activity only pursued by truly cowardly, heartless humans like Dick Cheney. No honest sportsman in the world would dare call this hunting. It can only be described as a cruel, Satanic act, where entertainment is derived from the pain and suffering of other living creatures who were raised for no other purpose than to be shot.
That the leaders of our country would purposely injure and kill innocent creatures as a form of entertainment is not merely disturbing; it also explains why this administration so easily condones the torture of human beings. After all, when you have absolutely no compassion towards living creatures, killing birds and torturing Iraqis all seems to blur together. And "blur," in Cheney's case, is the correct word.
Read more about canned hunting at: The Humane Society.