What a fucking asshole

King of Spain Kills Drunk Pet Bear at Russian Hunt

Authorities are probing a violation of hunting regulations in the Central Russian region of Vologda where Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, allegedly shot a harmless pet bear this August.

Hunting was a part of the entertainment program for Juan Carlos, who paid a visit to the region in summer, Interfax reports.

However local media, citing a hunting watchdog, claim that the bear the monarch killed at the hunt was by no means a wild beast, but a tame, timid creature made drunk.

Organizers of the royal hunt allegedly took the good-natured bear called Mitrofan to the hunting base in a cage.

The animal was given honey mixed with vodka and forced to go out into the field. The heavy clumsy bear was easy prey for Juan Carlos, who killed it with one shot.

Michael J. Fox

The TV Watch
Making Stem Cell Issue Personal, and Political

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
October 25, 2006

The plea is as disturbing — and arresting — as a hostage video from Iraq. In a navy blazer and preppy Oxford shirt, the actor Michael J. Fox calmly asks viewers to support stem cell research by voting for several Democratic candidates in Maryland, Missouri and Wisconsin, while his body sways back and forth uncontrollably like a sailor being tossed around in a full-force gale.

In short, Mr. Fox’s display of the toll Parkinson’s disease has taken on him turned into one of the most powerful and talked about political advertisements in years.

Republican strategists who saw how quickly the commercial was downloaded, e-mailed and reshown on news broadcasts certainly thought so. Rush Limbaugh rushed in to discredit Mr. Fox, though he mostly hurt himself. Mr. Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, told his listeners that the actor either “didn’t take his medication or was acting.” Mr. Limbaugh later apologized for accusing Mr. Fox of exaggerating his symptoms, but said that “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician.”

Republicans cobbled together a response ad that did not mention Mr. Fox but attacked the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. It included testimonials by the actress Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and James Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ.” At least in the advance version shown on YouTube last night, Mr. Caviezel’s introduction seemed either garbled or to be in Aramaic.

The issue of embryonic stem cell research is divisive, but Mr. Fox is not. And that is one reason his advertisement had such resonance. He is a popular actor who played a young conservative Republican on the sitcom “Family Ties.” His illness was diagnosed in 1991, but he kept it secret until 1998. In 2000, he told his fans that because of his illness, he had to quit the hit sitcom “Spin City.” He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance stem cell research, lobbied Congress and made commercials to rally support for his cause.

But he has rarely looked quite as infirm. Mr. Fox was recently a guest star on several episodes of the ABC drama “Boston Legal,” and, presumably thanks to medication, his symptoms there were less noticeable.

If Mr. Fox did forgo medication for the advertisement as Mr. Limbaugh suggested, it could hardly be considered fraudulent: if anything, masking the extent of the disease’s ravages is the deception, not revealing them. (A spokesman for Mr. Fox said his tremors were caused by his medication.) It was certainly the most dramatic way Mr. Fox has to personalize the issue; he used his infirmity much the way the late Christopher Reeve did when he lobbied for stem cell research to seek a cure for spinal injuries.

Debate over stem cell research is especially intense in Missouri, where voters are considering a measure that would amend the state’s Constitution to protect all federally allowed forms of the research, including embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Fox’s words in support of the Democratic Senate candidate, Claire McCaskill, were not nearly as forceful as his condemnation of her Republican opponent.

“Unfortunately, Senator Jim Talent opposes expanding stem cell research,” Mr. Fox says in the 30-second spot. “Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.”

The Talent campaign protested Mr. Fox’s wording as misleading. “Senator Talent supports medical research including stem cell research that doesn’t involve cloning or destroying a human embryo,” said the candidate’s spokesman, Rich Chrismer.

But one reason candidates rely so heavily on 30-second spots is that they appeal to visceral emotion, not reason. In the recent past, it has been the Republican advertisements that have tended to be more bold and more memorable: the Willie Horton advertisements that George Bush used against Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 or the specter of stalking wolves that his son, George W. Bush, used to make Senator John Kerry seem weak on terrorism. Democrats usually have to go back to 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy” attack on Barry Goldwater to find comparably vivid ads. Until now, that is.

These are times in which most actors seem prepared to do anything, and pay any price, to disguise flaws that could harm their careers. So when a famous one exposes the full, frightening extent of his infirmity in the name of saving lives, it tends to get noticed.

Dick confirms sim drowning

Dick ....

Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding

Wed, Oct. 25, 2006
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Compare, contrast.

Water-boarding means holding a person's head under water or pouring water on cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth to simulate drowning until the subject agrees to talk or confess.

Sounds so much better when it's:

"Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" asked Hennen.

"It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president `for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in," Cheney replied. "We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that."

What the Dems Would Do

And, if they take back Congress, from a Newsweek article , there's this:

John Dingell likes to reminisce about the days when Democrats ruled Capitol Hill.

Back in the 1980s and early '90s, the irascible Michigan congressman was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the most influential in the Capitol. Dingell oversaw huge swaths of the U.S. economy, as well as the environment and food and drug laws.

At times the chairman seemed more prosecutor than politician. He used his gavel to call dozens of hearings.

He'd subpoena high government officials—at the time, that often meant Republicans who worked for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush—and grill them for hours under the hot television lights.

Dingell always insisted that witnesses testify under oath, meaning anything less than honest answers could be met with perjury charges. It was Dingell's oversight subcommittee that uncovered the Pentagon's $600 toilet seats and exposed corruption in government agencies.
"We emptied the top leadership of the EPA," Dingell recalls with obvious satisfaction. "We put a large number of FDA people in jail."

And, so, if they win?

He says "there's no list" of things he wants to investigate.

But in the next breath, he quickly ticks off a list of things he wants to investigate: The Bush administration's handling of port security and the threat of nuclear smuggling; computer privacy; climate change; concentration of media ownership; the new Medicare Part D program, which he calls a "massive scandal," and the secret meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. "This is a hardheaded administration," Dingell says. "So we'll probably have lots of hearings."