Tuesday
(0)The New Yorker(!) teed off very nicely on the rather stuffy account of a certain testy exchange between VP Dick Cheney and Senate Minority Lead Pat Leahy.
The background: The Veepster has been accused by none other than The Honorable Mr. Leahy of profiting (via Halliburton) on the blood of American soldiers spilled in Iraq. When Leahy approached Cheney at Senate function recently, full of smarmy bonhomie, Cheney told him to fuck off, or to go fuck himself (accounts vary, but everyone agrees the F-bomb was dropped).
The Washington Times reported this as follows:
Vice President Dick Cheney cursed at Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were having their annual group picture taken earlier this week. . . . According to [an] aide, Mr. Cheney . . . responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility.
The New Yorker, well, took it to the next level.
oh THAT is funny!!! I usually hate The New Yorker but that is priceless!!!
Posted by sark at July 20, 2004 11:46 PM
According to "2001: a Space Odyssey", filmed in 1967, by now we should be flying on Pan Am shuttle spaceships to an orbiting Holiday Inn before the last leg to the Moon.
However since Dr Floyd was the only passenger on the ship, perhaps the movie was more prophetic than it realised. The will to colonise a freezing desert just wasn't there. Homo sapiens is reflexively isolationist vis a vis other worlds, just as citizens of particular nations prefer their own backyards.
Only the Cold War made all this rocket stuff seem affordable, and once people grasped that the USSR had never been planning to take over the Earth, NASA felt a cold wind. We won't get bases on Mars until Mao's heirs can afford "defense" kit that will frighten the Pentagon.
Posted by PaleoMan at July 21, 2004 10:39 AM
I have just amazed my colleagues by busting out laughing in the workplace.
Posted by Dave F at July 21, 2004 11:41 AM
The will to colonise a freezing desert just wasn't there. Homo sapiens is reflexively isolationist vis a vis other worlds, just as citizens of particular nations prefer their own backyards.
Ah, that would explain the waves of Asiatic migrations (Huns, Mongols etc), European colonialism, modern migration from former colonies, the huge scale of modern mass market tourism...
Posted by Perry de Havilland at July 21, 2004 03:42 PM
Editors note: Comment deleted. We have already banned you once and changing your nick is not going to be enough. Ciao baby.
Posted by PaleoMan at July 21, 2004 07:20 PM
This one's funny too: "Donald Rumsfeld Orders Breakfast at Denny's"
http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/?030609sh_shouts
Posted by kid charlemagne at July 21, 2004 08:27 PM
PaleoMan is still the same obsessive fantastist he was before he changed his nick. Please note the syntax file and the TR I sent you and just ban the fascist jerk again. The patterns do not lie even when he tries.
Posted by u know who at July 21, 2004 11:12 PM
Leahy is a f***ing arsehole. He's one of those Democrats who isn't just partisan, but a fourth-rate individual as well (I'm not claiming that there aren't some of those in Republican ranks). I'm glad Cheney finally told him off - someone had to. Sometimes I do want to praise the lefties one can raise a pint with - they seem all too rare and rare, in this day where one's politics seem to obscure personality far too often.
Posted by Telemachus at July 22, 2004 04:39 AM
Leahy was a f***ing arsehole, one of those Democrats who wasn't just partisan... and I'm glad that Cheney shot him in the face with a Colt .45 and tore his skull into six distinct pieces, connected only by stray strands of fallen brain tissue.
Well yes, that behavior was totally unbecoming and inappropriate for a professional adult, especially on the Senate floor, but hey, you know, someone had to do it. Leahy was who he was, after all, and the fact that he deserved it supercedes the possibility that the Vice President of the United States shouldn't do things like that.
...right? Can I get some applause from the back row?
[chirp]
G to the IZZA!
Posted by Georgian at August 27, 2004 05:19 AM
