Cheney Hunting Party - Santorum, LaPierre, Goldman Sachs Banker

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/news/westmoreland/s_487670.html

<snip>

The excursion was sponsored by Dan Cook, an investment banker who runs the Dallas office of Goldman Sachs. He had invited Cheney on a hunting trip in 2003 at Rolling Rock.

Also in the hunting party were former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum; Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association; and Tom Hicks, CEO of Dallas-based Hicks Holdings, one of the groups that in December purchased Latrobe Steel Co. Hicks' group owns baseball's Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League.

The group included Sam Fox, former state finance chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign; Stephen Friedman, chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board; Fred Eckert, a lobbyist and former U.S. representative from New York; L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center and a Tribune-Review columnist(Dicky Mellon Scaife's Rag); and Dick Scarlett, CEO of United Bancorporation of Wyoming.

Secrecy was the watchword.

Dwayne Pickels, a spokesman for the airport authority, said he could not discuss the visit. Ligonier Township police Lt. Michael Matrunics said police and local officials were instructed by the Secret Service not to discuss the visit.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Shooting caged-raised birds. That's NOT 'hunting'. nt

[LiberalFighter]

2. Hey some good targets for target shooting

[napi21]

3. WOW, Santorum has more nerve than I thought! I sure would

never set foot in a field when Cheney had a loaded gun!

[liberal N proud]

4. Who in their right mind would go our shooting with Dead Eye Dick?

[Virginia Dare]

5. No mention of his girlfriend?...n/t

[havocmom]

6. What are they grooming Rick for?

I fear we have not seen the last of the loon.

[RamboLiberal]

7. He just joined a think tank directing a program

"America's Enemies". I posted on LBN just now.

[AndyA]

8. Rick Santorum. UGH.

That is one person who should just go the hell away.

If I never saw his name again it would be fine with me.

Heard he got a cushy job with a Nazi ("conservative") think tank in Washington. He's going to be dealing with "America's Enemies". It's true. I'm sure there must be thousands of people waiting with baited breath to hear what he has to say about our enemies. :sarcasm:

[Jack Rabbit]

9. I hope they have insurance

Of course, I'm sure they do. They can afford it.

[Bunny]

10. Isn't it funny how there's been no mention locally of the number of

birds he murdered? After the amount of criticism he got the last time his party murdered 417* birds, they learned their lesson about secrecy, didn't they?

* http://agonist.org/node/33643

<snip>
Canned hunts attract not only ethics-challenged pretend-hunters, but ethics-challenged celebrities as well. Among celebrities who have participated in canned hunts, and who mistakenly believe they are hunters and not cold-blooded killers, are Vice-President Dick Cheney, who has been on several hunts in which the kill was assured; and Troy Gentry of the country-rock duo, Montgomery Gentry.

In December 2003, Cheney and nine of his friends—including former Naval Academy and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), and some Texas high-roller Republican party donors—went to the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Pa., about an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh. The owners of the country club, being the good hosts they were, released 500 domesticated and penned-up ring-necked pheasants in the morning. Bird Dog and Retriever News reports that about 40 percent of all domesticated pheasants, if not shot by pretend-hunters, either starve or are killed by predators within the first week of their release; about 75 percent die within a month.

At Ligonier, starvation wasn’t a problem. A game keeper told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Cheney alone killed about 70 of the 417 killed that day. In the afternoon, having hardly raised a bead of sweat, the good ole boys slaughtered dozens, perhaps hundreds, of equally tame mallards that had been hand-raised and shoved in front of waiting shotguns for the massacre. No one kept score, but by the time Cheney flew out of the area, the mallards were plucked and vacuum-packed, according to the Post-Gazette, ready for flight aboard the taxpayer-funded Air Force 2. The pheasants the hunting party didn’t keep, according to the Dallas (Texas) Morning News, were donated to a local food bank. However, no one involved indicated which food bank, nor did they acknowledge that preparing pheasant is cumbersome, and that such a donation, if it did occur, was probably more of a public relations ploy or a tax-deduction to justify their killing orgy than community service. Nor does any “donation” alleviate the reality that people in these non-challenging fenced-in grounds kill because they like the excitement of killing a live animal, often mixed with the sheer joy of watching their prey die. After awhile, the animals are seen only as things to be blasted, essentially living clay pigeons; it is an attitude that true sportsmen abhor.

The owners of the country club didn’t say how much, if anything, the Cheney Pot-Shot Safari paid, but others who go to the exclusive country club/canned preserve pay for each bird or duck killed. It’s in the financial interest of the owners to make sure there’s easy prey.
<snip>

[Greeby]

11. Go on, Dick, do it. Give a repeat performance. You know you want to

:evilgrin:

[LeftishBrit]

12. Anyone else reminded of Tom Lehrer's "Hunting Song"?

I always will remember,
'Twas a year ago November,
I went out to hunt some deer
On a morning bright and clear.
I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

I was in no mood to trifle,
I took down my trusty rifle
And went out to stalk my prey.
What a haul I made that day!
I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

The law was very firm, it
Took away my permit,
The worst punishment I ever endured.
It turned out there was a reason,
Cows were out of season,
And one of the hunters wasn't insured.

People ask me how I do it,
And I say "There's nothin' to it,
You just stand there lookin' cute,
And when something moves, you shoot!"
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.