Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 344 Editor's Choice: 70
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Don't Forget Cheney's Defibrillator...
[Read the article: Fourteen hours]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dick Cheney is a sick man. He's had multiple heart attacks, aneurysms in arteries in both his legs, emergency hospitalizations due to pulmonary edema ("fluid on the lung"); he was lately seen using a cane and is known to wear two different-sized shoes which some people insist is due to "an old football injury", but experienced doctors and nurses say it could be due to lower body edema brought on by congestive heart failure. Sometimes the edema is "lopsided" --- affecting one extremity more than the other --- especially if poor circulation has resulted in phlebitis or a thrombus in one leg. This necessitates a larger shoe size for one foot.
Cheney has a defibrillator in order to override cardiac arrhythmias. As long as we're speculating here, suppose he had an arrhythmia this weekend while hunting. I would guess that his defibrillator would be timed to a certain interval of a few seconds.. it wouldn't kick in immediately otherwise the people with implantable defibrillators would be getting shocked all the time while snoring or gasping or while watching a scary movie. So Cheney would have time to get symptomatic before his defibrillator kicked in, maybe by getting dizzy, by starting to pass out. Suppose Harry Whittington saw Cheney get woozy - he'd probably go towards Cheney to help him, getting close enough so that he could be seriously "peppered" at close range if the vice president were to get jolted by his defibrillator while holding a shotgun.
I would then imagine (purely speculating, remember) that both men would need to be treated and transported to a hospital. Cheney travels with medical personnel, but they are trained to treat the vice president for a cardiac episode, not to treat the vice president AND a 78 year old trauma victim (literally) in the field. Pandemonium would ensue. This could account for confusion at sorting out the facts. The Secret Service and medical personnel see Cheney falter (and possibly fall) in the field, they see Whittington go towards Cheney, they see Whittington fall. Holy cow. What happened? Have both men been shot? How did it happen? What kind of hunting accident is this? Is it in fact an accident? These are the questions they would ask themselves while running to the men, treating them on the scene and transporting them. What the hell happened? Keep in mind these guys need to make sure the men receive top shelf medical care when they get to the hospital while putting the hospital, local law enforcement and local media on lockdown.
This would explain the lack of information flow. Cheney would need to be observed for several hours, getting serial EKGs and having blood tests drawn for enzymes to check for serious cardiac involvement. This would explain why Cheney didn't speak to the sheriff for hours - he was a patient being observed by his private physicians.
I think Cheney's medical condition had more to do with this incident and its strange unfolding more than alcohol or a leathery blonde purported "mistress" in the hunting party. But it's all speculation, of course.
To me, what is most bizarre about the entire incident is that ailing old codgers insist on being driven to a grassy field to shoot small birds. And people let them do it.
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"Acknowledged Expert" Katherine Armstrong
[Read the article: Fourteen hours]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I find it hilarious that Cheney claims Armstrong was the right person to notify the press because, among other things, "she was the immediate past head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department ... an acknowledged expert in all of this".
She was appointed head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department by family friend and Texas Governor, George W Bush. Just like Michael Brown was appointed by George W Bush to head up FEMA.
Another Bush expert.
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Sorry, Not Racist
[Read the article: Terminal folly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I doubt there would be an uproar if Kuwait, an Arab country, were to take over port management. They are seen as an ally and have not sent bombers to the US to attack our cities, unlike another certain country.
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Add Me to The List Who Thought Stewart
[Read the article: Oscar castrates himself]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]was absolutely fine. Not great, but it's the Oscars, for Christ sake. We don't have Sasheen Littlefeather and streakers anymore. This is big bizness, baby. Stewart looked a little uncomfortable, but he's East Coast, as opposed to Hollywood. Stewart's humor is more cosmopolitan, less the manic "la, la, la, la --- hey lady!" schtick you get from Hollywood types.
I honestly don't know what people expected of him. As far as I'm concerned, they should have turned the whole thing into an extended Daily Show episode it would have been a lot more fun.
Next year - Colbert at the Oscars, pretending to be one of those "Hollywood is out of the mainstream" types.