The Curse of Dick Cheney
 

T.D. Allman has written a very good article on Dick Cheney (in RollingStone). It covers his whole adult life, from college to Vice President. Well worth reading.

Here's my favorate part of the article:

In 1986, he was one of only twenty-one members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act. He fought efforts to clean up hazardous waste and backed tax breaks for energy corporations. He repeatedly voted against funding for the Veterans Administration. He opposed extending the Civil Rights Act. He opposed the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in South Africa. He even voted for cop-killer bullets.


Keep those uppity black folk in their place, who drinks water - let 'em drink champagne, and discard the men who served our country when you no longer need 'em. Who needs Marie Antoniette when we can have someone like that in high office? Makes be proud to be "ah 'Merican." :eyebrow:

You know what I can't wait for? I can't wait until all our presidential candidates and their cohorts were too young to have served in Vietnam. I'm freaking sick and tired of hearing about whether a politician was a draft-dodger or not.

Currently all those men are 48 (i.e., they were 17 in 1973,) so it should be happening pretty soon here.

That aside, I found the article really interesting.

Not to be too nit picky, but there is no such thing as cop killer bullets.

From Wikipedia

"Teflon coated bullets have an interesting political saga in the United States.

They were first introduced in the 1960s by three law enforcement officers who worked together to develop new ammunition for police use. The first Teflon coated bullets were known as "KTW bullets", after the initials of the three inventors, and were sold only to law enforcement organizations.

In 1982, the NBC TV network ran a special on the bullets and argued that the bullets were a threat to police. Gun-control organizations in the US labelled Teflon coated bullets as "cop killer bullets", and argued that they were capable of penetrating Kevlar bullet-resistant vests. This was, in a sense, true: many of the bullets that had Teflon coatings were capable of penetrating Kevlar vests...but they would be equally capable of penetrating the vests with out Teflon coating: the coating has no effect on the ability of a bullet to punch through body armor."

[quote=Troubleshooter]Not to be too nit picky, but there is no such thing as cop killer bullets.[quote]

Well, you should probably let The Rolling Stone know about that, not so much me. I simply left the sentence in as part of the cut and paste, and made no comment upon it. I have no opinion either way on "cop killer" bullets. I'd need to read up on the subject first.

The teflon coating was designed to prevent fouling and wear of the barrel. All the "cop killer" appellation was, was a way to get cheap publicity. Let me know if you want a few links, but a quick google will refute it rather handily.

And you can't really consider Rolling Stone a good source for light bias material.

I actually am pro-gun, believe it or not. I want weapons to protect myself from the government! As for the rest of the statements in that snip, even Rolling Stone wouldn't tell outright lies. The votes of members of Congress are a matter of public record, and given all the hoopla over CBS, Dan Rather, and forged documents, I would think that the writer would have been careful to keep his facts straight.

it doesn't have to be a lie in order to be misleading. example: John Kerry voted for the war but against the $87B needed to fight it. every item up for vote has multiple versions and most have BS tagged onto the back that cause people who support the original idea of the bill to vote against it. so it is technically true to say Kerry voted against funding US troops with an $87B bill, it is misleading.

Cheney in the early '80's was strongly influenced by a group in the pentagon called the reformers and the fighter mafia. this was a small group of people trying to reform the way R&D was done. they were pro-warrior but anti-gold plated weaponry. Cheney along with more than 100 congressman and senators joined these individuals in fighting the generals for reform. so yes, cheney did vote against many military projects at the time. at least variations of it.

i'm sure that he also voted for and against variations of different bills quite often. in order to find out what he was really trying to do, you would have to look at each of his (and any politician's) votes in detail.