So, the Veep went hunting his buddy’s face. What a rascal, our Dick.

The knee-jerk, bleeding from my 2004-four-more-years-of-this-bullshit, martyred stigmata liberal in me would love to whine about guns, gun safety, gun control, saving cuddly animals and why can’t we all just get along rainbows and unicorns. But fuck that shit.

Why the fuck are we as a nation paying out hard-earned income taxed dollars for this old geezer to spend the weekend shooting at things? Read the fine print in the article — security and medical personnel were on hand to help the poor schmoe with the VIP buckshot-riddled face. Why were security and medical personnel hanging about at the ready? Because Cheney is a frail old coot with a heart kept throbbing by batteries and the blood of welfare babies.

He ain’t Teddy Roosevelt. His candy ass is rough riding only as long as a defibrallator is rolling inches behind him in a tricked out Secret Service Escalade that maintains just enough distance for him to make pretend he’s a rugged outdoorsman. Seriously, it’s 2006. The gentleman hunter image is a throwback to at least a century back, when Mother England filled imperialist dens and museums with taxidermy exotica. You figure he was going to catch and release the quail or does he need them for food?

No wonder most of the world hates our U.S. guts.

While I’m at it and speaking of the world at large. Thank fucking god I was out of the country when the two-fer of wristslashing depression occurred, the appointment of Sammy, say good by to rights and all that sort of messiness, Alito and the State of the Union Address. I saved myself a fortune on psych bills and Prozac by missing them both entirely.

Happily, I can report, though, that the whole Danish cartoon thang wasn’t actually causing that half of the planet to burn out of control, as Western press might have you believe.

Just like here, the local Malaysia papers were full of local crimes, drownings, domestic murders, car accidents and completely misreading other governments and cultures. Only difference is, they don’t delusionally believe their press is anything but controlled.