Lines of the Day

From Jim Geraghty's speculation on Peggy Noonan's speculation on whether or not President Bush is pondering dumping Dick Cheney, and who his replacement would be:

Knowing the President’s preference to go with those who he knows well and trusts, a couple of names pop to mind; Harriet Miers (AIEEEEE!!!) , but perhaps more intriguingly, Alberto Gonzalez, a.k.a. AGAG.

Good thing I wasn't taking a sip of my tap water when I got to the "AIEEEEE!!!"; I already dumped a full cup on my office floor this morning.

Say, wasn't Agag king of the Amalekites? I don't think that Senate Donks would be as likely to spare him as King Saul was, especially since they don't even want him to be involved in the Justice Department's Abramoff investigation.

UPDATE: Say, could Noonan have been implicitly touting Darth Queeg?

How about Mike "Brownie" Brown? He appears to have a lot of spare time on his hands....

UPDATE: Here is a highly plausible explanation for last weekend's remake of The Shootist that nobody else has mentioned:

The reason that it took so long to release details of the hunting accident - Dick Cheney and Harry Whittington - is that Whittington is actually dead, and it took them about eight hours to go find a double for Mr. Whittington, because he's actually brain dead. He's so injured that he's being held captive. He's somewhere - the same place they have JFK; the same place Elvis is - and there's a body double and a facial double in the hospital that we're being told is Harry Whittington, but it's not. They had to go out, and they had to find a phony Harry Whittington.

If you look closely at the difference between the photos taken before and after the shooting, you can plainly see the difference between the brain-dead Harry Whittington and the imposter that Cheney and the Secret Service had to go find and put there in the hospital room, and this guy is not going to get out of the hospital any time soon. Despite the news that he's doing well, it's going to be awhile before he gets out because they've got to do some plastic surgery and make sure he is as close to looking like Harry Whittington, gotta do what they can to make him look like a lawyer and so forth. (interruption) Well, there are after photos. They haven't shown them to us. You're saying, "What before and after photos?" No, there are after photos! We just haven't seen them.

So the bottom line here, Cheney got the guy. He got the guy. Whittington is brain dead. All those pellets went to the brain; all the diagrams of the pellets in the heart area and so forth, all this talk about he had a heart attack, that's just an excuse to keep the body, the double, in the hospital longer so they can do the plastic surgery to make him look more and more like Mr. Whittington. They're spending time with Mrs. Whittington, getting her up to speed on this - the family, the kids - and they're reading them the riot act, if they don't go along with this they'll be shot too, and they will never be heard from again. That's the truth libs. That's what you need to be looking at.

You're missing the point when you focus on, "Was Cheney drunk, or was he sending a message to Scooter Libby?" That's all chump change. Penny ante. The fact is Whittington died, and they're keeping him exactly where they're keeping JFK because he's brain dead and where they're keeping Elvis. Now, I have a story here. Now, this is (interruption). What? What? (interruption) Oh. Snerdley is saying, "Rush, you better close the loop on this, because when the producers at CNN play this for Bill Schneider..." No, he'll do a poll on it. See, one of the possibilities that Whittington is dead and that they're working on a double and making him look as much like Whittington. They'll go out and do a poll on it! No, I stand by it. I'm trying to help the libs.

The libs are just, as usual, aiming at the wrong place, and they're not firing on all barrels, or cylinders. I mean, if you're going to concoct a theory, you've gotta get it right. You've got to be bold. You have to be fearless! You have to be reckless out there when you want to get to the truth when it involves Cheney. We all know that. Saying he's drunk? I mean, you're giving Cheney a pass. Cheney kills people! Everybody knows it, especially you libs. Whittington is dead. I wouldn't be surprised if the family's been flown down to Brazil now, never to be heard from again.

I realize the above hypothesis is tame on the scale of left-wing fever swamp sites, but it is a theory that fits all their preconceptions. Not the actual facts, of course, but libs long ago gave up any pretense of interest in such mundane prosaica.

There is at least one other possibility, however. It could be that Harry Whittington wanted to do some big game hunting - you know, yeti, sasquach, the Loch Ness Monster, maybe a season's pass to Jurassic Park - and asked the Vice President to shoot him to provide an alibi for the expedition. After all, he'd need a captured flying saucer to take him down there incognito, and we all know how James Carville likes to sit on his front porch and watch the departures from Area 51 like the proverbial hawk. Heck, for all we know, Whittington could be the Predator in disguise (maybe his personal cloaking device went on the fritz), in which case Cheney couldn't possibly have damaged him with a little pellet gun. That would explain the Bush Administration's "predatory" foreign policy as well, come to think of it.

Yep, exo-hunting and space aliens. And Sith Master Dick controls them all. You can just see him last night, after his interview with Brit Hume, pulling the dark cloak over his head and gutterally intoning, "All is proceeding as I have forseen."

Well, cantcha?