Dick Cheney’s failure to serve in Vietnam

At The Nation, John Nichols reviews each of warmonger Dick Cheney's four 2-S draft deferments that allowed him to not serve in Vietnam in the 1960's. He explained himself decades later, but doesn't even mention this aspect of his life in his new book, In My Times. Here is an excerpt from Nichol's article:

Twenty-three years later, when Cheney appeared before the Senate to plead the case for his confirmation as George Herbert Walker Bush’s defense secretary, he was questioned about his failure to serve. Cheney responded that he “would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called.” In a more truthful moment that same year, Cheney admitted to a reporter, “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” Cheney’s lie to the Senate has never caused much concern, but that “other priorities” line has dogged him. After he selected himself to serve on the 2000 Republican ticket, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown, a Vietnam veteran disabled by a gunshot wound to his right arm, said, “As a former Marine who was wounded and nearly lost his life, I personally resent that comment. I resent that he had ‘other priorities,’ when 58,000 people died and over 300,000 returned wounded and disabled. In my mind there is no doubt that because he had ‘other priorities’ someone died or was injured in his place.”

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The facts and the delusions of Americans

Here's what China says about the United States:

"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," Xinhua said. It said the rating cut would be followed by more "devastating credit rating cuts" and global financial turbulence if the U.S. fails to learn to "live within its means." "China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets," it said. Xinhua said the U.S. must slash its "gigantic military expenditure and bloated social welfare costs" and accept international supervision over U.S. dollar issues.
Here's what United States Officials say:
Officials at the Treasury Department fought the downgrade until virtually the last minute. Administration sources familiar with discussions said the S&P analysis was fundamentally flawed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Here is a stunning fact, but by no means newly revealed information: The federal government is borrowing about 40 percent of what it spends. If some other country were ruining its economy like this, we would scold them, much like China is now scolding us.

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Insider Trading Writ Large

Imagine, if you will, a country in which banking regulations were stripped down so far that worthless paper again becomes a hot commodity. Now consider that this had (as it inevitably must) blown up and caused a crash in the lending market and equities market and thus the economy in general. Further note that a necessary result would be a rapid rise in the price of precious metals, notably gold. After a couple of years, that gold bubble would be ripe. People who had assets remaining when the junk bonds or sub-prime mortgages or whatever collapsed could have conservatively moved their money into gold, further depressing the equities market and inflating the price of gold. But, wait. Because of government investing, the market was recovering too fast! So fast that the wealthy were unable to swap their inflated gold for depressed stocks at the optimum time. What to do? Congress to the rescue! The wholly owned carriers of the banners of freedom and independence could be employed to create a palpably unnecessary crisis with a distinct deadline. Yes! This would quickly depress the markets and allow those holding too much bubble-gold to buy depressed stocks. Meanwhile, those elected to carry the load of screwing the middle class could also jump on the wagon and buy up stocks just before the deadline hits. Then the price of stocks returns to normal levels, and the gold bubble can be allowed to pop. I, for one, would like to see the trading histories of all those involved in the current crisis, and their friends and kin.

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Republicans saving us from high-efficiency light bulbs

Think Progress reports on the latest episode of dysfunctionality of the modern Republican Party:

By a voice vote on Friday, the House passed a “light bulb ban” amendment to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act (HR 2354). The amendment, offered by climate denier Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), prohibits spending to enforce the incandescent lighting efficiency standards in the 2007 energy law signed by President George W. Bush. These standards have already spurred the lighting industry to create innovative new incandescent bulbs that are dramatically more efficient than the century-old design the Tea Party is bent on defending. This amendment will hurt jobs, hurt manufacturing, and hurt the environment — helping instead coal-powered electricity producers who depend on wasteful use of energy. The standards were originally proposed by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who turned his back on better light bulbs in order to curry Tea Party favor and get the chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. This is but the latest example of House Republican leaders promoting a right-wing, dirty energy agenda that harms families and businesses rather than investing in innovation, new products, and jobs — even if they came up with the idea in the first place.

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Is this painting obscene?

I'm in London on vacation, enjoying many of the museums, including London's National Gallery.   Today I spotted the following painting, which is part of the National Gallery's collection: This is a painting by Palma Vecchio (painted around 1520).  The art gallery is open to all ages, including small children, and there were plenty of young children in the vicinity of this painting today.  The description next to this painting announces that the woman displays a "sensuous beauty" characteristic of Roman courtesans. Frankly, I find the woman in Vecchio's painting to be quite fetching, and I find the painting itself to be most excellent. To my eye, it is not in the least obscene.  But seeing it today made me think of Janet Jackson's "nipple" incident at the Superbowl XXXVIII.  What an incident that was, ending up with a fine of more than 1/2 million dollars for the TV network, and America ending all up bent out of shape because somehow . . . somehow . . . the sight of Ms. Jackson's nipple harmed children.   I strongly disagree with the attitude that the naked human body should be seen as perverse.  I have never seen any evidence that any child has ever been harmed by seeing a nipple; I've never seen any scientific evidence suggesting that it is harmful to view a nipple, despite millions of protests to the contrary (As to why so many Americans are so terrified about the public viewing of female nipples, I have a theory). Seeing this painting reminded me of  Dan Dennett's comment that people in American don't believe in God, but they believe in belief.    Likewise, we don't really believe that children are harmed by mere nakedness, but we believe in the belief that children are harmed by mere nakedness. If we  Americans really believed that mere images of nakedness and sexuality harmed children, we'd pass a law to remove quite a bit of art from our own museums, and we'd also take down quite a  bit of our suggestive advertisements currently on billboards and storefronts. It's incidents like Jackson's that make me think that we Americans are not even capable of having meaningful conversations anymore, unless the topic is sports, TV, movies, or consumer electronics. On important issues we'd rather yell at each other in tribal ways.

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