Duck Season

A comedian once noted that he was more than a little nervous about having then-president Ronald Reagan as the man with his finger on the big red button. Reagan was well into his seventies when he was in office, and the comedian's point was this: "My uncle is seventy-three, and we pretty much just don't let him use the TV remote. How comfortable would I feel with Uncle Bob having control of half of all the nuclear weapons in the world?"
As I make my way through my fifth decade, I feel a little of the age-ism that exists in the world, but maybe this item may resonate for you: Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday. "Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," said property owner Katharine Armstrong. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
If you're keeping track, Dick (his real name) has been the subject of much medical concern over the course of his two terms as vice-pinhead. Dick is a vital sixty-five years young, and has a long history of cardiovascular disease and periodic need for urgent health care. I'm not guessing that Lewis "Scooter" Libby will be accepting any invitations from Dick to "do a little quail hunting."