Author: Dick

Scooter Libby
and Hamid Karzai.
Old buds

You can actually learn something from reading Wonkette. No. I mean really, you can. Wonkette writes about Scooter Libby’s new Web site touting the Libby Legal Defense Trust. (Word detectives: Which words do not fit in Libby Legal Defense Trust?) The indicted, former chief of staff to Veepster Dick Cheney shamelessly asks people if:

“Yes, I want to help Scooter Libby fight these charges and restore his good name.”

And right below it he gives the reader another choice:

“No, I want to help Scooter Libby end up inside a pathetically tiny prison cell with a redwood tree of a man named Psycho.”

Not really.

Libby, if you will remember, faces charges in connection with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Libby said he is as innocent as a newborn’s butt. That is just paraphrasing of course. So we should remember that Scooter Libby is innocent until proven GUILTY!!! That means that we should not prejudge him as GUILTY!!! before he has had his day in court and is found GUILTY!!! Or innocent. I don’t worry about tainting the jury pool because the only people who read this blog are my friends, people worried about Vivi the missing Whippet dog and the National Security Agency (and they’ll read just about anything).

So give Scooter’s Web site a visit. And if you are tempted to donate money to his legal trust, then e-mail me for instructions on where to send me your money. That is correct — where to send ME the money. And no, I will not give Scooter the money. What I’m saying is if you are tempted to donate your money to Scooter, give it to me instead. Why? Because I’m lovable and promise to make all your wildest dreams come true. Or else … I won’t.

America’s psychic hotline must be ringing off the walls. A covey of psychics have joined in the search for Vivi the Whippet, the award-winning show dog that escaped prior to catching a flight on Feb. 15 at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

We here at EFD vow to stay with this story until Vivi is found or until we are hit by a gigantic, earth-annihilating meteor, whichever comes first.

Being Presidents’ Day and all, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on those people who could have been president but were not. I’m talking about those heart-beat-away-funeral-attending-ain’t-worth-a-bucket-of-warm …. vice presidents of the United States of America.

I am sure that the country is better off that some of the vice presidents never became president. I know I used to pray for President George H.W. Bush’s health because of his Veep, Dan Quayle. And I’m not even a religious man.

A lot has been said in the last week about Dick Cheney and the similarities of his veepancy with Aaron Burr. Of course, Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded by Burr as a result of a duel. As far as we now know, Cheney’s shooting and wounding lawyer Harry Whittington was supposedly an accident. After all Cheney only had one beer for lunch that day.

But one has to wonder what the course of history had been if Franklin Pierce had died in office and his successor to the presidency was William Rufus de Vane King. Well, for starters the nation would have been in a hell of a fix because King died after serving only 45 days in office. King curiously took his oath of office in Cuba where he had gone for his health. Apparently the trip didn’t do him a whole hell of a lot of good.

Certain historians have speculated that King was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with it). He allegedly had a relationship with James Buchanan and King was sometimes called “Miss Nancy” by his critics. Oh well, you know what they say: Sticks and stones may break your bones but death will kill ya.

Happy Would-be Presidents’ Day Rufus.

If you looked at world headlines lately and didn’t know about the furor caused by cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, you would swear something is about as not right as it can get.

Nigerian Muslims riot over cartoon protest, 16 dead
4 Wounded in Pakistan Cartoon Protest
Pakistan cracks down on cartoon riots
Police fire on cartoon protest in Pakistan, at least four injured …

People are killed and wounded in a CARTOON protest. Pakistan cracks down on CARTOON riots. At first glance one might think that all of this tumult is taking place in a cartoon rather than over a cartoon. Or perhaps that is the way my mind works when I glance at something that seems to be at odds with the world as I know it.

I will say this: I don’t understand what’s going on with all the rioting. I know what this is all about, but I don’t understand it. My suspicious Western mind believes these are not all spontaneous outbreaks. I don’t think that a large group of Muslims are running into each other on the street corner and saying to one another: “Hey, let’s go burn down the Danish embassy because of the cartoon depicting Mohammed.”

Beyond my suspicions, I just don’t understand people getting so bent out of shape over a cartoon. But then, I’m not a Muslim. I probably won’t ever understand it. I will know what the core arguments are, but fathom it I will not.

When I worked as a reporter I wrote about all kinds of inhumanities that people deliver upon other people. I have written about serial killers, baby killers, crack-n-smack-addled bank robbers with AIDS. But never did I receive the amount of feedback that came after I wrote a story about when authorities took a plethora of domestic animals from a man’s home. The guy had started an animal rescue shelter but could no longer take care of these animals and his entire home and an empty house on his premises were full of cats, dogs, chickens and all the wonderful matter they leave behind. The story hit a nerve and led to a local philanthropist starting a new animal rescue shelter.

What that says is people care deeply about animals. Sometimes you wouldn’t think so with the way some people treat them. But animals arouse a lot of passion among our populace. Just one more example of that is the story I have satirized a bit over the last couple of days concerning Vivi the missing whippet.

Checking my blog stats for yesterday I saw that I had 89 visitors, which is quite a few for this site. Looking at the origins of these visitors, including what searches they made on Google or elsewhere that landed them on EFD, I saw that 32 of those 89 visitors had been searching for news about Vivi. There was one visitor from Vestsjalland, Taastrup, Denmark, another from the LA County Sheriff’s Office, and those from just about wherever else.

I point this out because I think that it is an interesting phenomenon and shows that any newspaper editor or TV news supervisor who thinks animal stories are without value should perhaps be in another business.

P.S. The search for Vivi enters Day 3. A nation holds its breath.