Member Discussions

Kerry also woke up this morning with a new staff and a new position.... oh wait, that's just propaganda though isn't it. How anyone can knowlingly back a man who can't stick to one position on anything and gets himself repeatedly caught on tape doing so is beyond me. It's obvious to those of us who will look deeper that Kerry will say and do anything to get elected. His own statements prove as much.

You don't need to like Bush, but you still have to admit that he's consistent in his beleifs and sticks by what he says. As a consequence, he doesn't have any problems with remembering which audience he's addressing and wondering in the back of his mind if he's made another flip-flop mistake.

Kris, you yourself once viciously attacked me for making personal attacks on you. So why are you supporting a man who's only real campaign issue is that he hates Bush and is willing to make a boatload of personal attacks on him? Isn't that the very definition of hyporcacy?

While the accuracy of polls is a debatable issue, their effect is well documented.

Many countries have laws against publishing polls in the last weeks before an election.
So even if they are lies, they are certainly powerful lies.

______

Bush started a war. And that on completely false grounds. He even knew them to be false.

Why is this man still in the presidential race?! How is he even -allowed- to do so??
Anyone who starts a war should be removed instantly to let someone else finish it.

Mass,
who thinks the whole world should have a vote in the US presidential election.

Mass,
who thinks the whole world should have a vote in the US presidential election.

Do many of your fellow Danes harbor the same dreams of US statehood?

Kerry also woke up this morning with a new staff and a new position.... oh wait, that's just propaganda though isn't it. How anyone can knowlingly back a man who can't stick to one position on anything and gets himself repeatedly caught on tape doing so is beyond me.

Still no quotes to back your argument, I see. Let me feign surprise. Ooh.

You don't need to like Bush, but you still have to admit that he's consistent in his beleifs and sticks by what he says.

As in 'supporting the seniors' by allowing a 17% Medicare part B premium rise? As in 'fighting for liberty' and restricting the civil rights of gays? As in being 'pro-life' and starting wars and supporting the death penalty? As in accusing someone of 'rising taxes on everyone' while proposing programs that total more than the opponent's programs in cost and at the same time lowering taxes so there's no way to pay for said programs? As in saying 'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction' only to change that to 'Iraq was a potential threat' six months later? As in 'simplifying' the tax code by making it a flat rate or even regressive?

It's politics, and yes, Bush is fairly consistent. The problems are that A) his policies are detrimental to the country and B) he refuses to change them even at the face of new evidence. The world wasn't flat after all.

So why are you supporting a man who's only real campaign issue is that he hates Bush and is willing to make a boatload of personal attacks on him?

I doubt Kerry hates Bush -a lot of other people do. In addition, Kerry has a few policies of his own, particularly economic and domestic ones, that differ from the Republicans considerably.

I personally haven't seen personal attacks from Kerry apart from the 'misleader' part. Most of the criticism has been that of the administration's policies. Again, if you have any quotes or links to articles saying otherwise, I'd be happy to read them. But, let me guess, you don't?

.

As in 'supporting the seniors' by allowing a 17% Medicare part B premium rise?

Not allowing it would be violating the law. They pay for 25% of those cost increases and Tyche pays the remaining 75%. That's the law. In fact I'd demand Bush be impeached if he tried pulling that sort of banana republic crap. If they don't like Plan B, the optional government insurance plan, they can go buy one in the private sector. TANSTAAFL

You don't need to like Bush, but you still have to admit that he's consistent in his beleifs and sticks by what he says. As a consequence, he doesn't have any problems with remembering which audience he's addressing and wondering in the back of his mind if he's made another flip-flop mistake.

Kris, you yourself once viciously attacked me for making personal attacks on you. So why are you supporting a man who's only real campaign issue is that he hates Bush and is willing to make a boatload of personal attacks on him? Isn't that the very definition of hyporcacy?


I would rather vote for a man who is bad at communicating his positions on things than a man who is consistently evil.

As for running a campaign of hate, do you have any idea how big a hypocrite you are?? The massive bulk of the Bush campaign is to get their base (people like you) to hate and despise John Kerry.

An independent study of political ads taken not too long ago showed that, while 25% of Kerry's ads have been negative and 75% of them have been positive, a whopping 75% of Bush's ads have been negative and only 25% of them have been positive! The Democratic convention was soft on its criticism of Bush, instead trying to focus on a positive outlook for this country. In contrast, the Republican convention literally mentioned John Kerry's name more than they did George Bush's! That's just plain sad, especially when Bush is the incumbant!

Hell, how can all these Republicans be so angry? They control the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, the lower courts, most of the airwaves, etc. The Kerry campaign is now getting back on message, and over the next few weeks will be turning this campaign back into a referendum on the incumbant. Since the Republicans have absolute power right now, they have nobody to blame but themselves for the mess we're in.


So long as Kerry stays on message and reminds people that this election is a referendum on the job Bush has done, then a Democratic victory will be knocking at America's doorstep.

Bush started a war.

Actually he didn't. Saddam started it in 1990. He entered into a cease fire agreement which halted combat action and then played the world for fools in the UN for 13 years before Bush arrived at the conclusion that Saddam was in material breech of his agreements. Resolution after resolution after resolution was passed and Saddam ignored them even though they spelled out consequences for disobeying. Saddam voided his agreement by not complying with the terms, therefore the previous state of war was resumed. Bush did not start a war, but he sure as hell finished one.

Still no quotes to back your argument, I see. Let me feign surprise. Ooh.

Really now, if I need to do the dirty work for you to see what is plain as day in front of your face then you're already hopeless like Kris. I shoudln't have to go out of my way to point out such gems as "I actually did vote for the 87 billion, before I voted against it." Something Kerry was foolish enough to let soemone get on tape. Or the whole thing with the SUVs where he tells an environmentalist group that he's opposed to such things, a reporter asks him why he owns some, and he answers "my family owns those". Then turns around in Michigan a week or so later and proudly declares how many SUVs *HE* owns, not his family, him.


I would rather vote for a man who is bad at communicating his positions on things than a man who is consistently evil.


Now Kris, you know better than to make such an obvious smear attack. This statement goes to the heart of the problem. Instead of being content to disagree with Bush policy, you call the man evil. Democrats consistently refer to him as Hitler and to republicans as Nazis, and our troops as murderers.

Perhaps you're now trying to sweep the ads moveon.org has put out, with backing from Kerry, under the rug so nobody will see them? Did you forget about Michael Moore's hate filled movie of lies? Did you miss John Edwards' diatribe after the convention? Did you ever stop to consider that Zell Miller was angry for a good reason? Did you bother to consider what it means for Ted Kennedy to stand up and accuse the president of fabircating a war for political gain? Did you stop to listen to the accusations Howard Dean made about Bush conspiring with the bin Laden's to bring about the 9/11 attack?

Frankly Kris, cosnidering where you said Al Sharpton landed in your candidate link thing, I'm not at all surprised to see you perpetuating a message of hate. Not at all surprised to see you advocating views that are so far out of touch with the mainstream you can't even see what your own choice for president is doing. And you call yourself enlightened?

(Comment added by Samson on Tue Sep 7 22:23:13 2004)

BTW, I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. Clearly most if not all of you have already made up your minds and nothing I say, even if I were to drag out a mountain of evidence, will change your minds.

Those of you who demand I provide them with links fail to realize I don't collect them to drag out on some mud forum to present a case I've already been convinced is the right course. If you truly want to know the answers, go do your own research and stop asking others to do it for you.

Saddam declared war on one of our allies (not us) in 1990, and it was right for us to respond. If you ask me, Daddy Bush should've finished the job then and there. That's probably one of the few things that Dubya and I can agree on.

But Saddam, while he's surely not a nice guy to say the least, had nothing to do with 9/11 whatsoever. He had no weapons of mass destruction ever since Clinton bombed his defiant ass in 1996. Bush told Saddam to disarm, Saddam said he had already disarmed. The solution? LET THE WEAPONS INSPECTORS DO THEIR JOB!! I think Bush rushed into the war because he knew that the inspectors probably wouldn't find anything, and he didn't want to give them the chance to file such a report as prescribed in 1441. 1,000 brave U.S. soldiers are now dead, all for stockpiles of weapons that had long since been destroyed and dismantled.

Here's a simple way of looking at it: If Saddam really had all those weapons, then he probably would've actually used them when we invaded! Instead, he shot some decades-old soviet missiles with defective warheads at Kuwait-- only one of them actually hit its target (the rest fizzled harmlessly into the desert and ocean), and even then it didn't do much damage. And yet this was the man who was supposedly an imminent threat to U.S. security?! Come-on!


Here's what I tell people: If you didn't actually see Farenheit 9/11 for yourself, then you're not qualified to crituque it. Same goes for any movie, really. I saw the film, and it's really hard to call it nothing but lies when virtually everything in there he backed-up with hard, undisputed facts, video tape, etc. I do think he went a little too far with the whole Saudi connection thing, but only because it got really boring at that part and he tended to over-interpret the evidence. It is a known fact that there are many connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family, but there isn't enough evidence out there to prove the U.S. government knowingly helped those involved with the 9/11 plot escape the country.

However, he was right that (at least at the time the movie was made), there was only 1 single police officer patrolling the ENTIRE Oregon coastline because of budget cuts directly related to the Bush top-1% tax cut. He was right that the Bush administration did not take the Al Qaeda threat seriously, despite persistant warnings from the outgoing Clinton Administration officials. He was right that Bush sat in that classroom reading "My Goat" for 11 minutes after he was told that America is under attack. Seeing the look on his face, it was quite obvious that he had no idea what to do; i.e. he choked. That's the sum of his leadership, or lack thereof.


As for the Hitler thing, the Republican party has spun that into a nice little quilt of lies. MoveOn.org NEVER released any ads or statements comparing Bush to Hitler, period. What happened is that MoveOn was having an open-to-the-public contest to see who could make the best anti-Bush ad. It would then be voted on by the public by viewing them on the website, and the winning ad would be released on TV (it ended up being the one with the children working in the sweatshop factory). The Hitler ad was a single submission by some guy completely unaffiliated with anyone. As soon as the ad was brought to MoveOn's attention, they promptly disqualified it and removed it from the voting rotation. But not before the Republicans saw the ad and, illegally I might ad, ripped the video onto their own servers and posted it on the GOP website. While it was only on the MoveOn site for a couple of days, that disgusting ad was playing on the GOP website for weeks after it had been taken down from the MoveOn site.

The Republicans hate 527 grassroot organizations like MoveOn.org because they aren't beholden to the corporate interests, and they are not for sale to the highest bidder (which is typically the Republican Party). MoveOn is made up of its members (and I'm proud to be one of them), and relies soley on small contributions from average working Americans like myself. Organizations like that give the PEOPLE a voice they never had before, and that is a threat to the Republicans, who would otherwise have a virtual monopoly on ad spending. They'll do anything they can to discredit them and make them illegal. Free speech means nothing to them if it hurts them politically.

Nice to see a rich man like Samson take time out from his CEO job to spew his party line re the election. He must be rich, after all that's the only voting bloc the Bushies give a s**t about!

The American voter needs to ask himself the same question the Republican icon Reagan asked years ago:

ARE YOU BETTER OFF NOW THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO!!!

HELL NOOOOOOO!!!!

Check out "60 Minutes" this Wed nite 9/8/04 at 8:00pm edt on CBS as they interview the former Lt. Governor of Texas who got Bush his cushy no-show Air National Guard gig in a unit so full of the sons of the Texas rich & powerful it was called the "Champagne Unit". All of the sudden the worm turns as the media now turn their spotlight on what Bush was doing while Kerry shed blood in Vietnam.

SEND BUSH BACK TO TEXAS!! VOTE!!!

It's facinating that CBS would run a single sourced claim from a man who has raised $500K for John Kerry this year. A man who claims a dead man called him and asked for a recommendation for young Bushie into the Texas NG. Even stranger when he claims he was Lt. Governor of Texas at the time[1]. Even stranger is that Bush entered the guard in 1968 and this guy wasn't Lt. Governor until 1969. Even stranger was that this guy is well-known to be politically corrupt[2]. Even stranger they act like it's brand new news despite it being written about extensively and dismissed in 1999.

But most strange of all is that CBS 60 minutes has yet to run a documentary on the Swift Boat Vets and their #1 bestselling 'Unfit for Command' book which double and triple sources every claim and is backed by signed and sworn affidavits of 60 Vietnam Veterans.

I guess that's why they call it SeeBS.

John Kerry is running on a Vietnam war record that he made up. 11 of his mates think he's swell and 254 of his mates think he's a liar.
If Kerry was a tenth as honest a man as George McGovern was he'd be relevant. It's a shame you picked such a loser. You'd have been better off with anyone but Kerry. We get it. We're not stupid. Character matters. Bush landslide.

[1] 'I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was lieutenant governor of Texas, and I'm not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,' Barnes said in the 45-second video, which was recorded May 27 before a group of John Kerry supporters in Austin.

[2] Feb. 13 1997, Abilene Reporter-News - 'In January, Barnes was accused in a federal prosecutors' report in New Jersey of engaging in a kickback scheme similar to one that led to the conviction of a lottery company official in New Jersey. In Texas, prosecutors alleged, more than $500,000 was paid to Smith through a Barnes bank account.'

Sept 2001 Texas Monthly - 'Back in the days of the Sharpstown stock manipulation scandal, Frank Sharp told federal investigators that 'Ben is smarter than those other politicians—he only takes cash.''

11 of his mates think he's swell and 254 of his mates think he's a liar.

253 of whom weren't on the same boat as Kerry.

I would dearly love for the claims you've made about me and my standing to be true. I am not rich. I am not a CEO. When asked if I'm better off than I was 4 years ago, I can honestly say yes.

Four years ago I was unemployed. Laid off as a direct result of defense cuts initiated by the Clinton administration. I worked in a non-essential civilian sector of the Navy. As a result of the recession which followed closely thereafter, I remained out of work. I lived off of what little savings I had managed to scrape together. When that ran out, I went to school, at great cost to myself because the remnants of Clinton's economic policy resulted in my being denied a grant because "I made too much money" according to the people in charge of that. They cited Clinton's budget which we were still under the affect of.

I graduated and entered the job hunt. I spent six months on the hunt sending resumes and applications to plenty of places. Then Bush announced he was initiating the first set of tax cuts. Shortly therafter, I was hired on. Out of curiosity, I asked my employer what their reasons for hiring me were. The first one mentioned was the tax cuts. Not my qualifications, not my certifications, not my personality. Tax cuts. Cuts which allowed them to expand their IT budget for the first time in 9 years.

Now, sitting here 2 years later, I make a decent living at about $30K per year. I purchased the first brand new car in my life at this job. I was here when the second tax cut went into effect. I got an increase in pay as a result, not only from the extra money the cut created, but from the extra money the budget now had to give raises to people. I have enough stashed away now to begin considering moving into a place of my own instead of having to share rent in a house with 4 other people and their menagerie of cats.

I survey the parking lot here at work and note that maybe 5% of the cars in the lot are older than 3 years. I have co-workers who share similar experiences to myself. Some are moving into new homes for their families due to the drop in interest rates which has made this an affordable thing for them to do. Others who couldn't consider it once before are looking at getting married and starting a family. Still others are planning vacations they've not been able to take in 10 years.

So when I hear democrats trying to convince me that the economy is collapsing and that we're in danger of bankrupting ourselves, I can't help but take another look around, talk to co-workers, friends, and family, and be reassured that no such thing is taking place.

I do not enjoy getting involved in the political debates over issues. For me it's all about observed reality as opposed to spin doctoring and media hype over stuff that happened 35-40 years ago before I was even born. But when 254 of John Kerry's fellow veterans come forth and accuse him of lying and have solid proof to back it up with and all Kerry can come back with is some ridiculous smear about how Bush joined the Guard and went AWOL, I get mad. Especially when evidence has been presented that Bush was not AWOL and he got his honorable discharge. Can you honestly say that an employer would have something good to say about a nobody working for them who was absent without any sort of explanation? What makes you think the Guard would be any different even though it was George HW Bush's son.

Kerry returned from the war and accused our troops of committing atrocities. He testified before the Senate that he himself had engaged in these atrocities. Cutting off heads and limbs, blowing up bodies, burning down villages, randomly firing on civilians, just to name a few of the things I heard said in his own voice. He admits to having done all of these things. Had this been a republican who said them, he would have been arrested and tried as a war criminal. How is it Kerry got away with that and Nixon was nearly impeached for a burglary? The two simply don't compare.

Kerry then spends 19 years in the Senate ( how the hell? MA elected an admitted WAR CRIMINAL?!?!? ) and does nothing of any real noteworhiness except vote consistently against pretty much every military and intelligence funding bill which ever came before him. And those were the ones he actually bothered to show up and vote for. If I decided to not even bother showing up for work for 3 DAYS I'd be fired on the spot with no questions asked. Yet the people of MA tolerate this for 19 years? Something is wrong here.

Skip ahead to today where you have Kerry and the democrats calling Bush and the republicans vicious and terrible things. Accusing them of all manner of conspiracies and lies and other things without any evidence to back them up at all. All while trying to conceal evertything about Kerry's past from those who might want to dig it up. 254 of his own comrades stand against him to tell us otherwise They present mountains of evidence to back it up. He calls the liars, but offers nothing to prove that. Howard Dean accuses Bush of conspiring to plan 9/11 and then aiding the Bin Laden's to escape the country afterward. Yet he has no proof and can't pin anything down when asked. Micael Moore creates a "documentary" full of twisted video footage and misrepresentations of the facts, and focuses much of his attention on the 11 minutes in which Bush kept his composure and dealt with the situation without showing fear, weakness, and panic. All while in front of media cameras if you'll recall. While somewhere in some dark backroom, Kerry and several of his friends sat in stunned disbelief at what they were seeing and were "unable to think" for 41 minutes. By this time of course Bush had taken action and grounded flights across the country.

Kerry accuses Bush of starting a war in Iraq illegally all while forgetting to mention 13 years worth of UN resolutions and non-compliance by Saddam with those resoluitions. We're supposed to just take Saddam at his word that he disarmed when he can show no proof that this ever happened? He had plenty of chances to do just that and never did. Kerry also forgets to mention that the war never officially ended after being declared in 1990, or that he voted with everyone else in favor of resuming hostilities in 2003. Of course, he's changed that position now about 4 times at least. But Bush is the liar. Yeah, that makes sense. Kerry cast his vote based on the same intelligence information provided to Bush and Cheney and the rest of the country. Numerous Europen agencies concurred. The Russians even concurred. Clinton left office concurring. Clinton even signed the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998. But Bush started an illegal war. Right.

When asked, I have yet to find a single democrat who can tell me what it is John Kerry stands for, what his plan in Iraq is, and what his goals for the US are. Aside from wanting to turn control of our troops over to the UN. That alone scares the hell out of me. An organization as corrupt as the UN, which just got exposed in a corruption scandal in the oil for food program, in control of the only defense this nation has. Sorry, but no thanks. Besides, I don't beleive there would be any Constitutional basis for allowing that to happen. The only other thing anyone can tell me is Kerry wants to raise my taxes. And for what? He hasn't given me anything to justify doing it with! All any of the democrats who support Kerry can tell me with any certainty: "He's not George Bush". As if that alone is a good reason? Basing your vote on such a shallow thing is dangerous. Especially when most people really don't know anything about this man. Just ask a Massachusetts resident sometime. I have.

Now before someone accuses me of being a kool-aider for the Bush campaign, there's plenty I don't agree with that he's done. The prescription drug plan was wreckless and irresponsible and we have no way to pay for it, regardless of who is in power. Costs for this are estimated to double in the next 10 years. What's that going to do to the economy and the deficit then? Is Kerry going to cancel this program and releive the burden? I don't know. He hasn't told me what his plans are.

Bush wants to grant worker amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in this country. Amnesty. What kind of moronic policy is that? Bush should be seeking deporation of every last one of these people. They're law breakers. Pure and simple. Criminals. You don't reward criminal behaviour with amnesty and a job. You send your troops to the border, enforce the law, and stop this problem once and for all. So what's Kerry going to do about it? I don't know, but if he's consistent with policy proposed by others, he'd simply give them all amnesty and relax control of the border with Mexico and make it as easy to cross as the one with Canada! So neither side on this issue has a brain in their heads, both for different reasons.

On the issue of taxes, neither side is proposing anything I agree with. I've been an advocate of a national sales tax for years. A flat rate at around 6-8%. Eliminate the IRS as we known it. Democrats argue this would penalize the poor. I fail to see how. The poor pay sales taxes in most states as it is now. If it was such a problem why haven't they complained yet? It's a red herring because the democrats want to keep their hands in my wallet and steal from my income to pay for their bloated social programs. Sadly the republicans have shown no interest in changing their stand on this issue either. All they propose is making the existing tax cuts permanent.

Anyway, I think I've ranted enough for one morning. I'm sure I'll see a one-liner soon enough telling me I'm crazy. I don't care. I only advise you to actually think before you speak, think before you act, and think before you vote. But above all, just think.

253 of whom weren't on the same boat as Kerry.

You can regurgitate the talking point not knowing it has little relevance. You did forget the 'served under' qualifier. Without that we have 2 of these people who were on boats with Kerry. And that doesn't include the half dozen men who served shipside with Kerry either. PTFs had 6 man crews and operated in task forces of 3-5 boats. These TFs all bunked together and conducted missions together, not unlike tank brigades or fighter wings. You didn't have to be serving on the same boat to observe another boat commander bug out.

Sigh...I hate political discussions. I mainly just wanted to echo Samson.

Not all people voting for Bush are rich. I know we are not. We are however, so much better off than during the Clinton years. When the media hype tosses out 'the tax cut for the rich' my husband and I joke about how 'rich' we have suddenly become. Not only was it needed and appreciated but like Samson said, it created more jobs.

My husband also works in the IT sector. Because of cuts and programs initiated under Bush the bank he works for was able to not only hire more people but also to update its systems. They posted record earnings the last two quarters and have put much of that money back into the communities they serve in the form of jobs, lower rate home and business loans and contributions to local charities.

I don't always vote republican. It depends on the candidate and the issues at the time. I often vote independent (in local and state elections) and am usually annoyed at a party system that often shuts these candidates out. At the local level they can compete, but once you get past that it becomes increasingly different.

The democrats scare me because underneath all the hype and party rhetoric is the impression they don't think I (and the rest of the country) am capable of taking care of myself. I am neither intelligent enough or motivated enough to run my own life. And if by some chance I have managed to get somewhere they want to take some of mine and give it to others.

I am not a kid and I don't -need- the government to parent me. Most of the people struggling in the country don't need it either. They need to work. They need support systems among family, friends and neighbors that help them do so. They need control and choices. The dems are big on giving away money to insure a voting block, instead of giving away schooling and job training to boost the economy. The less someone knows the less able they are to control their life. The dems scare me because they seem to like it that way.

And like Samson I agree the other side is not perfect. I voted for the Republican candidate in the Governor's race. I got burned. The incumbent was soooooo crooked it was unreal and he was proudly blantent about it. The new guy is not crooked, but he has turned out to have a temper and is prone to petty fits when he doesn't get his way. Sigh.

Maybe we just need better choices?

Kitkat - okay, okay...so I once voted for a guy because he complimented my landscaping -

KitKat reasons that capitalism works because people are nice, and will share the wealth: creating more jobs and raising wages.

Marx reasoned that communism works because people are nice, and will all work for the same wages, sharing the wealth.

People are not nice.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I come to The MUD Connector to read about things pertaining to MUDs. In particular, this board is for "administrative ethics", as pertaining to MUDs. While there's certainly been a lot of talk about the ethics of current political administrations and would-be political administrations, none of it is on-topic to this board or TMC anymore.

Could we all agree to disagree and let this thread end, please? Yes, I could just not read this thread but I'm concerned if this thread doesn't stop, there won't be any room left in TMC's database for the wars that are actually on-topic. ;-)

Er...skipping for a moment the fact that this and practically any other topic is more interesting than the original (grin)...you did hit it on the head. Why are you reading the thread if it doesn't interest you? And if storage is a prob, all Iccy has to do is give us a heads up and we can all shift to more on-topic..er..topics. ;)

Scan-babes...not even I am all that nice...grin...but capitalism doesn't work because people are nice...it works because in order to make money other people must have money to buy your goods or services. So the better off your employees and people in the community are, the more money they have to spend.

As for on topic...hmmm

Bad admins! No biscuit!

I'm glad you guys brought up the military service issue, because there's some very juicy breaking news on that.

Just yesterday, the Associated Press won a lawsuit against the Bush campaign to have Bush's complete military records released. And what did they show?

Well, the Boston Globe has been pouring over those records, and it's quite clear that the claims Bush has made about his military service have been false.


Given Samson's long, ranting post, I figured I'd do the same, but base mine on actual facts. So, if you'll forgive the blatant plagorism, here is the Boston Globe article in its entirety, taken from http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/08/bush_fell_short_on_duty_at_guard/.


Bush fell short on duty at Guard
Records show pledges unmet
September 8, 2004

This article was reported by the Globe Spotlight Team -- reporters Stephen Kurkjian, Francie Latour, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Michael Rezendes, and editor Walter V. Robinson. It was written by Robinson.


In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.


But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.

On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months. . . " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ''I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview.

And early in his Guard service, on May 27, 1968, Bush signed a ''statement of understanding" pledging to achieve ''satisfactory participation" that included attendance at 24 days of annual weekend duty -- usually involving two weekend days each month -- and 15 days of annual active duty. ''I understand that I may be ordered to active duty for a period not to exceed 24 months for unsatisfactory participation," the statement reads.

Yet Bush, a fighter-interceptor pilot, performed no service for one six-month period in 1972 and for another period of almost three months in 1973, the records show.

The reexamination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been ''satisfactory" -- just four months after Bush's commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months.

Bartlett, in a statement to the Globe last night, sidestepped questions about Bush's record. In the statement, Bartlett asserted again that Bush would not have been honorably discharged if he had not ''met all his requirements." In a follow-up e-mail, Bartlett declared: ''And if he hadn't met his requirements you point to, they would have called him up for active duty for up to two years."

That assertion by the White House spokesman infuriates retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records and old National Guard regulations, and reached different conclusions.

''He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen," Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ''He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard."

Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty."

But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. ''There were hundreds of guys like him who did the same thing," he said.

Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush ''gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. ''If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.

After his own review, Korb said Bush could have been ordered to active duty for missing more than 10 percent of his required drills in any given year. Bush, according to the records, fell shy of that obligation in two successive fiscal years.

Korb said Bush also made a commitment to complete his six-year obligation when he moved to Cambridge, a transfer the Guard often allowed to accommodate Guardsmen who had to move elsewhere. ''He had a responsibility to find a unit in Boston and attend drills," said Korb, who is now affiliated with a liberal Washington think tank. ''I see no evidence or indication in the documents that he was given permission to forgo training before the end of his obligation. If he signed that document, he should have fulfilled his obligation."

The documents Bush signed only add to evidence that the future president -- then the son of Houston's congressman -- received favorable treatment when he joined the Guard after graduating from Yale in 1968. Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a deposition in 2000 that he placed a call to get young Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

Bush was given an automatic commission as a second lieutenant, and dispatched to flight school in Georgia for 13 months. In June 1970, after five additional months of specialized training in F-102 fighter-interceptor, Bush began what should have been a four-year assignment with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.

In May 1972, Bush was given permission to move to Alabama temporarily to work on a US Senate campaign, with the provision that he do equivalent training with a unit in Montgomery. But Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year.

And even that service is in doubt. Since the Globe first reported Bush's spotty attendance record in May 2000, no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months.

Although the records of Bush's service in 1973 are contradictory, some of them suggest that he did a flurry of drills in 1973 in Houston -- a weekend in April and then 38 days of training crammed into May, June, and July. But Lechliter, the retired colonel, concluded after reviewing National Guard regulations that Bush should not have received credit -- or pay -- for many of those days either. The regulations, Lechliter and others said, required that any scheduled drills that Bush missed be made up either within 15 days before or 30 days after the date of the drill.

Lechliter said the records push him to conclude that Bush had little interest in fulfilling his obligation, and his superiors preferred to look the other way. Others agree. ''It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable," said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard.



© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.



So, there you have it. Sure beats dental records.

Scan-babes...not even I am all that nice...grin...but capitalism doesn't work because people are nice...it works because in order to make money other people must have money to buy your goods or services. So the better off your employees and people in the community are, the more money they have to spend.

*Intense happiness towards Kitkat* I don't think it could've been put better into a common sense definition.

Not all people voting for Bush are rich. I know we are not. We are however, so much better off than during the Clinton years. When the media hype tosses out 'the tax cut for the rich' my husband and I joke about how 'rich' we have suddenly become. Not only was it needed and appreciated but like Samson said, it created more jobs.

Great for you, but not everyone is better off. The money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere tends to be government programs serving the less fortunate. Or, it goes into the national debt for future generations to deal with. Those tax cuts better have a heck of a stimulus and pay for themselves.

Those tax cuts better have a heck of a stimulus and pay for themselves.

Unfortunely, you are probably right. It is not like any politician has any guts to actually stand up and even suggest the idea of killing most of the social welfare programs in the United States. That would easily fix a lot of the deficit.

Given Samson's long, ranting post, I figured I'd do the same, but base mine on actual facts.

You are in no position to make a claim against anything I told you in my post, and the Boston Globe article was entirely irrelevent to what I had to say. It's clear to me you don't bother to read what's been said. You probably learned that from Kerry since it's been bantered about on the local talk radio shows that Kerry had no clue what Bush's speech at the convention was even about before he responded to it.

If all you have is a bunch of crap spewed forth by a liberal newspaper, this thread has reached the end of it's value in any capacity. As I said before, the military is not in the habit of giving honorable discharges to AWOL soliders. I don't care what sort of evidence the Globe had to fabricate to try and prove otherwise.

Of course, one notes, you completely avoided the issue of my being better off because of the tax cuts. Or Kitkat being better off because of them. Or the gross generalization by your supporters here that nobody could possibly be better off now than they were four years ago. I know it's a difficult thing to accept when everyone around you is telling you this, but maybe if you'd stop and listen instead of zoning out you might just learn something.

Anyway, it seems folks would like to see this thread quietly fade away. I've said what needed to be said, and you regurgitated what you needed to regurgitate. Lets leave these nice people to their forum eh?

(Comment added by Samson on Wed Sep 8 22:59:02 2004)

BTW, I feel compelled to once more remind you of who it was who sat before the Senate and confessed to war crimes and was never prosecuted for it. Yes, that's right, John Kerry. Committed perjury before the Senate. Had than been you or me... well... you do the math. It's on the record, publically, and without dispute.

As Tyche points out, Bush's record has a few oddities in it, but it was afterall the 1970's and I'm sure we all know how wonderful government record keeping was in those days. In any case, the Globe is a far cry from absolute proof that Bush did anything wrong and his honorable discharge speaks volumes in his favor.

So, there you have it. Sure beats dental records.

You keep forgetting that Bush isn't campaigning as a Vietnam War hero. You see Bush didn't request to be awarded 3 purple hearts, Bush didn't write up false after action reports to get bronze and silver medals, Bush didn't attend meetings of the VVAW, debate and vote on whether to assasinate five US Senators, Bush didn't go to Paris and have unauthorized talks with Madam Binh while Americans were fighting in NV while still a commissioned officer, and Bush doesn't have his portrait as a hero in the war crimes museum in Saigon.

No he did something much much worse, he had a spotty record showing up for guard duty in the last two years of his service. He might even have even been out chasing tail and drinking beer.

What's the 'F' stand for in John F. Kerry? F is for Fraud.

Common sense would be that if you pay employees as less as possible you don't have to wait till they spend the money.

Common sense would be that in a competition driven system there is always a loser.

Common sense would allow one to see that if 10% of the population owns 90% of the wealth something is wrong, and that tax cuts to this population group will not make them spend money they are already not spending.

If all you have is a bunch of crap spewed forth by a liberal newspaper, this thread has reached the end of it's value in any capacity. As I said before, the military is not in the habit of giving honorable discharges to AWOL soliders. I don't care what sort of evidence the Globe had to fabricate to try and prove otherwise.


I see, so any news organization that reports something that contradicts Republican talking points is all of a sudden liberal?

Back then, the Vietnam was was coming to an end, so the military wasn't enforcing attendance rules very much. Also, the people who gave Bush the honorable discharge (from the Texas Air National Guard.... no such honorable discharge on record for Alabama) are the same people who pulled strings for him to stay stateside in the first place. The links between these people and the Bush family are numerous.

The fact that he went to the dentist then was honorably discharged doesn't prove that he served, particularly when ALL the evidence, documentation, and first-person accounts suggest otherwise. Also, there's the fact that NOBODY remembers ever serving with him (the son of a wealthy Texas politician; I think they'd remember) during the periods in which it is documented that Bush didn't show up for duty. The documents and testimony speak for themselves; the Globe is simply reporting them.


Of course, one notes, you completely avoided the issue of my being better off because of the tax cuts.

I didn't avoid it, because that's a seperate, parallel conversation on this thread that I didn't see any need to get into. Specifically because that guy referred to you as extremely rich or whatever, which I know not to be true. Not all Bush supporters are rich; some are religious fanatics who think the Ten Commandments should be amended to the Constitution, some are homophobes who think that being gay should be a capital offense, some are related to the Saudi royal family, and some are just plain ignorant and/or stupid.


BTW, I feel compelled to once more remind you of who it was who sat before the Senate and confessed to war crimes and was never prosecuted for it. Yes, that's right, John Kerry. Committed perjury before the Senate.

It's statements like that which prove the statement I just made above about ignorant/stupid Bush supporters. :P

Here's something that wasn't mentioned in the Smearboat Republicans for Bush ad: KERRY WASN'T TESTIFYING THAT HE ACTUALLY WITNESSED ANY OF THESE CRIMES PERSONALLY!!

What they did was some creative video editing, taking out the part where Kerry says that this is what honorably discharged soldiars had testified in the January 1971 "Winter Soldier" hearings. Kerry made it very clear that he was repeating what he was told by other soldiers, and that he never witnessed these things for himself. Did Fox News ever bother to mention that?

In the misleading ad, they play an edited quote of Kerry's testimony: "....they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads...."

Now, here is the ENTIRE quote of what was actually said: "They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks…"

Note the first part of "They told the stories at times they had personally...." That states clearly that he was repeating what other soldiers told him. That is why those ads are misleading, because they edited that quote to make it sound like he was saying he witnessed those things himself.

Kerry also went in that testimony on to say that the blame fell with the U.S. government and how it was conducting the war, NOT with the individual soldier following orders.

As for the comment about him committing perjury, I'm not sure where you pulled that from. Even though he was only testifying as to what he was told by other soldiers, there are hundreds of well-documented cases of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam-- many of which documented by the very soldiers who committed them.

I think that settles that. And finally....


As Tyche points out, Bush's record has a few oddities in it, but it was afterall the 1970's and I'm sure we all know how wonderful government record keeping was in those days. In any case, the Globe is a far cry from absolute proof that Bush did anything wrong and his honorable discharge speaks volumes in his favor.

I think I already touched on this, but I'll touch it again in case you weren't paying attention the first time.

You point to "a few oddities" in Bush's record. I'm talking about reports filed saying that Bush didn't show up for duty. I'm talking about former commanding officers saying they never saw him report for duty during those time periods. I'm talking about units Bush claimed to have served with having absolutely no record of his service, and the members of those units having absolutely no memory of ever serving with him. I'm talking about the fact that not a single person has come forward to say that they remember serving with him during the time periods in question. I'm talking about the fact that it is CLEARLY DOCUMENTED that Bush did not report for duty when he was supposed to, after he had signed documents promising that he would. This is more than just "a few oddities."

As for the honorable discharge thing, that means absolutely nothing. One of two things happened: the officer who filed the honorable discharge was a friend of the family doing him a favor, or Bush was one of the literally hundreds of AWOL soldiers at the end of the Vietnam War that the military negligently overlooked and rubber-stamped honorable discharges to.

In other words, the only thing the honorable discharge proves is that the military didn't punish Bush for his lack of attendance like it should have. That's not something to brag about.

As for the dental records, all that proves is that he went to the dentist while he was in Alabama. Just because he was in Alabama getting his teeth cleaned doesn't mean he showed up for drills the next morning.


Face it. John Kerry volunteered to goto Vietnam to risk his life for his country. He was against the war, but he served anyway. George W. Bush dodged the draft and pulled-in some family favors in order to get a cushy spot in the Texas Air National Guard stateside, and even then he didn't show up. Bush supported the war, yet he was too big a coward to actually fight in it.