Scott McClellan's Ugly Monday
Media feathers flew after the South Texas
quail-hunting accident that involved Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday,
but such incidents are rare, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department records show.
In 2004, Texas' 1 million-plus hunters were involved in 29 hunting-related
accidents, four of which were fatal. The overall accident rate, 2.7
per 100,000 licenses sold, is the lowest since TPWD began keeping accident records
in 1966, when the rate was 12.6. From 1999 to 2003, the accident rate was 4.02
per 100,000 licenses. Hunting-related
accidents rare state date shows
(via TalkLeft)
When did the president know the vice president had accidentally shot someone?
Not a great way to start a Monday morning.
“This is reminiscent to the levy story,” said one reporter.
Oh, Scott, this is getting bad. It's getting very confusing for
reporters trying to understand who knew what when. Listening to Scott, he says
he didn't find out until late Saturday night, but that he knew more on Sunday.
It's the drip, drip, drip of information that should have been known and disseminated
immediately, but wasn't.
Scott McClellan is spinning as fast as he can, including advising
reporters to contact the vice president's office, repeatedly. He doesn't want
to touch this story it seems.
But again, it's simply ridiculous to continuing pushing this “protocol”
nonsense, which Scott did right at the top. Hunters don't give other people
in the group a heads up. Even if you don't hunt, just think about it. If you're
with a group of hunters, don't you think if you can't see someone you still know they're out there? Protocol has nothing to do with pulling the trigger at a fellow hunter. You just don't do it, period. Do accidents happen? Yes, but rarely. But when they do it isn't because some protocol wasn't followed. The continual inference that the guy in ICU is to blame is insulting, spineless and just plain wrong.
The vice president agreed with Ms. Armstrong that she would leak
give the facts to the local media. That's a big problem today with the press
corps. They aren't buying why a private citizen should be the one disseminating
this type of information. Scott didn't have an answer.
But Scott is taking a pummeling for the 24 hour lapse. If given the chance, he would also prefer to defer the entire press conference to the vice president's office.
The press then went “Law & Order” on poor Scotty.
Is this a criminal offense? Would it have been worse if the man had died?
New subject … new subject called Scott… but the questions
continued … new subject … Ah, nuclear weapons, finally, something safe to
talk about.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars now has the video. Atrios has the transcript, as does Raw Story.
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