Wednesday November 14, 2007, 3:59 am


Dick Cheney's Sadistic Passion for Shooting Tame Animals
By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2007, Printed on November 14, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67663/
While most people are lamenting the violence in Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan and Iraq, apparently it's not enough bloodshed for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Last month in a caravan of 15 sport utility vehicles and an ambulance -- no jokes, please -- Cheney made his way to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club, about 70 miles north of New York City, near Poughkeepsie, for a day of controlled bloodletting.

Cheney landed at Stewart Air Force Base and took off the following day for the upscale gun club at a cost of $32,000 for local law enforcement officials who guarded his hotel, protected his motorcade and diverted school buses.

Unlike Cheney's 2003 trip to Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, Pa., in which he killed 70 pheasants and an undisclosed number of ducks (his hunting party killed 417 pheasants), staff at the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club remained tight-lipped about the take.

An employee who answered the phone would not disclose which species was being shot -- ads say pheasants, ducks and Hungarian partridges -- and kept repeating "I don't know anything about it" before hanging up. Like Cheney's last visit to Clove Valley in 2001, the 4,000-acre club, which costs $150,000 a year to join, was a fortress with Blackwater-style snipers "protecting" the vice president's right to shoot tame birds.

But a New York Daily News photographer did snap a picture of a small Confederate flag hanging inside a garage on the hunt club property, which prompted civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton to demand that Cheney "leave immediately, denounce the club and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people."

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said neither Cheney nor anyone on his staff saw such a flag at the hunt club. (Maybe the flag was on the women's side of Clove Valley; only men are allowed in the clubhouse.)

Of course the nation is still amused about Cheney's 2006 hunting mishap in which he shot 78-year-old attorney Harry Whittington in the face in Texas instead of a quail -- and everyone from Letterman to President Bush jokes about it.

But canned hunting isn't funny.


Birds raised for canned hunts at gun clubs and in state "recreational" areas are grown in packed pens -- think factory farmed chickens -- and fitted with goggles so they won't peck each other to death from the crowding.

When released for put and take hunters like Cheney, pen raised birds can barely walk or fly -- or see, thanks to the goggles. They don't know how to forage or hide in the wild and sometimes have to be kicked to "fly" enough to be shot.

Some hunters say shooting the pellet-ready tame animals, which offer no resistance, is like having sex with a blow-up doll.

But others say hunting itself is like sex with a blow up doll and that the 10 percent decline in hunters seen in the United States since the late '90s -- from 14 million to about 12.5 million -- coincides exactly with the debut of impotence drugs like Viagra.


Still for the veep to pursue his addiction to the "programmed massacre of scores of tame, pen-raised birds" despite all the "negative publicity it has generated for him" suggests a deep psychological disorder, writes Gerald Schiller in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Especially since criminologists have long recognized that premeditated, sadistic treatment of animals is a strong predictor of criminal and homicidal violence.

Sociopaths Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Speck were both big on animal cruelty. And they weren't running foreign policy.


© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/67663/

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 4:34 am
When was the last time a sitting VP shot another humanbeing, had to have been many years ago, maybe in the days of the wildwest? And that is about how outdated this kind of behaviour should be.........

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 5:27 am
Scary indeed that a man of such low moral fibre should be in such a powerful position. Pray for a hunting accident!!

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 8:39 am
I saw this and submitted it, then I found you had it up. I would like to say I was shocked, but nothing these people do shocks me. As we all know animal abuse leads to child abuse, and I guess the slaughter of so many innocents does not concern him, or satisfy him, so he has to kill more. America is in deep trouble, and I am truly afraid.

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 9:49 am
no i pray for the gods the hopi's promised to come, and that they deal with all these lousy government bastards ( excuse the language!!) all the scientists who hurt and abuse and violate animals, the nature as a whole, i pray for them, i want them so hard punished, that never, ever another pervert dares to treat another living, feeling creature like they do!!! that's what i am praying for, because that is what i want!!!!

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 9:50 am
oh, i forgot all those big and not so big pharma companies and their bosses, and supporters, that includes also doctors!!!

Wednesday November 14, 2007, 6:25 pm
He is a miserable, sick, coward who seems to have no regard for the lives of others.

Thursday November 15, 2007, 1:57 am


So that's what rich men do to amuse themselves. 35 million Americans went hungry last year and Cheney and his friends join private clubs that charge $150,000 a year to let them shoot tame and helpless birds for kicks.

Do you think the reason that Pelosi took impeachment off the table was because Cheney promised to let Pelosi visit the female side of that segregated club and shoot tame birds too? Is your Congressional Representative opposed to impeachment because they're also a member of that disgusting private club? Why not ask them -- with all the money they've been making off the Iraq war, they can easily afford such privileges. Why else would they oppose impeaching Cheney, unless they also enjoy shooting tame and helpless birds and killing innocent civilians in countries that never did anything to us?

Thanks for giving us a glimpse into how our rulers live, Jennifer. A pity we don't live in a democracy where we could elect and impeach Presidents ourselves instead of having to beg their friends in Congress to do it. Maybe the reason that the founders gave us a republic (a representative democracy) instead of a real democracy, was because they thought we might find out some day what kind of people our leaders really are when they think nobody's watching? The Indian-killers and slaveholders who founded this country didn't have to settle for shooting helpless birds -- they used to shoot helpless humans. Nowadays they send our kids to do it for them in foreign countries.

IMPEACH! IMPEACH! IMPEACH! And then let's get a REAL Constitution that is written by REAL people, not by sadistic rich people, and make this country a REAL democracy, not a pretend democracy.

Thursday November 15, 2007, 3:29 am
Hi Jennifer -
Ratty has sent you a message:


This week Dennis Kucinich led an heroic effort to put the impeachment of Dick Cheney ON the table by requesting a floor vote on H.Res. 333. As expected, BushDemocrat Steny Hoyer moved to table the bill. And then all hell broke loose as 165 Republicans voted with Kucinich and 85 brave Democrats to force a debate on impeachment over the objections of Nancy Pelosi. To block that debate, Hoyer moved to send H.Res. 333 back to the Judiciary Committee, and this motion passed. Watch David Swanson explain the events to Paul Jay of The Real News .

Kucinich is urging Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to start hearings immediately because Cheney is desperately manipulating the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to justify a U.S. attack, just as he did with the pre-war NIE on Iraq. But Judiciary Democrats are deeply divided on impeachment, with Robert Wexler (FL-19) calling for immediate impeachment hearings, while fellow Palm Beacher Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20), who is close to Speaker Pelosi, told Ed Schultz she adamantly opposes hearings.

So what do we do next to move impeachment forward?

1.** Email all of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee:
http://www.democrats.com/topelosiandjudiciary
and call them:
http://www.democrats.com/house-judiciary-democrats

2. If you live in the district of a House Judiciary Committee member, call their office and tell them you 9;re a constituent and you want immediate hearings on H.Res. 333. Then join your Congressional District Impeachment Committee http://democrats.com/cdic-find
and organize a HonkToImpeach rally http://www.democrats.com/honktoimpeach
in front of your Representative's district office. Then keep up the pressure on your Representative every way you can, including letters to the editor, op-eds, calls to local talk shows, protests at local media offices, and pointed questions at every community forum attended by your Representative.

3.** If your Congress Member is not on Judiciary, ask them to cosponsor H Res 333:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73

4. Ask pollsters to poll the public on impeachment, especially of Cheney: http://www.democrats.com/impeachment-poll-petition
and promote impeachment through media activism:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/748

5. Watch for updates and notice of a national conference call with Rep. Dennis Kucinich at http://impeachcheney.org

Tha nks my friends!! Ron G.

*********************************************************************
























Cindy Sheehan Asks You Write Pelosi to IMPEACH CHENEY





"........But,
we are told Nancy Pelosi ... that if she received 10,000 hand written letters she would proceed with it. What are we waiting for?

####---Send them to Cindy to get an official count---####

Do it NOW!

Please click here:
Cindy Sheehan Asks You Write Pelosi to IMPEACH CHENEY

I am writing mine and taking it up to the mailbox as soon as this is posted, please do the same.

Thanks,
Rats

Thursday November 15, 2007, 1:25 pm
Thanks for posting this...I'll send it to CNN and to Keith Olbermann...He will just LOVE it!

Friday November 16, 2007, 2:52 am
Great Tsandi- it helps to spread the word as much as humanly possible! Thanks for commenting.