Domain: awolbush.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to awolbush.com.
Comments · 46
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Wireless, protects himself never US.
GOP/TP started a death-threat pissing war in 1980, liberals finally reply in the uncivil-pissing-war battles during the PBO decade 2008. Now, GOP/TP wealth-elitist and minions whine about US Liberals, Independents, and Patriots being mean to GOP/TP, because of truthiness white-trash dogma and commentaries. It is time to stand against the evils of GOP/TP wealth-elitist and minions hate, lies, and bigotry. http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html
I have not forgotten the past three decades of GOP/TP politician/members fear-mongering antics and hate speech. TREASON/CRIMES: Iraq, criminal deletion of Whitehouse email/message traffic, outing CIA agents
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Re:4chan gets it wrong again...
I don't know how old you are, but I currently have less freedom of speech and other rights than I did 30 years ago. And that's mostly on account of people born to William Lashua's generation and their misuse of the US military.
Ah, but you also forget that most of these people who have misused the military either "had other priorities" than serving their country and used their connections to get repeated deferments, claimed they had a boil on their asses that prevented them from serving, or got a cushy air force position and then went AWOL when even that was too hard.
Mr. Lashua's a hero and deserving of respect. Save your (justified, right, correct, and intelligent) scorn for the clowns screaming "Support Our Troops" while running the military into the ground.
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Re:second amendment rights
Hey, no problem. Let people have whatever weapons they want -- as long as they were honorably discharged by the military after having been trained in the use of said arms. And no one else.
This would, of course, cut most of the right wing nuts right out.
(Also, this might make those same right wingers straighten right the fuck out on their shameful treatment of our veterans.)
It would also cut out people with shitty hearing (but of sound mind) who were rejected for military service. It would also eliminate any other military reject who was rejected for any other myriad reasons not related to presence of mind.
Right-wing nuts pop up because of something like the dielectric effect. As soon as you put a polarizing issue out there, the right-wingers pull one way, the left-wingers pull the opposite. right-winger nuts are only right-winger nuts if you're left-leaning. The sad fact is that left-wingers are usually the ones advocating more outside control (from the personal perspective), and this is usually opposite what right-wingers believe in.
You're making a stupid argument. The 2nd amendment is there to make sure the soldiers aren't the only ones with the ability to force the issue. If the only people who get to use them are soldiers and former soldiers, then you've just circumvented the spirit of the 2nd amendment. It has nothing to do with poor treatment of vets.
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Re:second amendment rights
Hey, no problem. Let people have whatever weapons they want -- as long as they were honorably discharged by the military after having been trained in the use of said arms. And no one else.
This would, of course, cut most of the right wing nuts right out.
(Also, this might make those same right wingers straighten right the fuck out on their shameful treatment of our veterans.)
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Re:transparent democracy in action
here you go:
of course you may have to use the wayback machine on those URLs
http://www.awolbush.com/kerry-vs-bush.asp -
Re:Maybe...not.Interesting that the same libs who protested Vietnam are now praising Kerry for actually participating in it and demeaning Bush for not!
Hypocrisy abound!
The hypocrisy is in those who love war heroes, but instead vote in a coward who's ready to send someone else's kids to die for his own stupidity, while knowing full well that if he were in those kids' shoes (as he was during Vietnam) he would have done whatever it took to dodge the very same war he created. Shrub was a war dodger, although he was paradoxically a hawk on the war. Now that's hypocrisy my gullible friend.
His rationale for choosing to join the National guard in 1968 instead of gambling on Vietnam via the selective service lottery:
"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada, So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
GW Bush - 1990 interview with the Dallas Morning News -
Re:Liars
Sorry. The story is fully documented in spite of the recently discovered and possibly forged memos (even the "independent" investigation didn't say they were forged). Bush's disappearance occurred the same month mandatory drug testing first went into effect for service personel in the national guard. Any record of Bush having taken the mandatory physical during his missing year of service does not exist. Years later Bush would be arrested and convicted of drunk driving. George W. Bush is the first person in history to have a criminal record before becoming the United States presidents. Boy, how standards have slipped. First, Nixon. Then Bush. The Republican party sure can pick them. Would you like some dirty tricks with your chips?
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Re:Bullshit
- obviously doesn't like me
- has murdered thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands
- has had desires for WMD his entire life
- flaunts UN inspections
- is Islamic
- waves a gun in the air berating western countries
- pretends he has what he doesn't for show purposes
- you name it, he did it
For a second there, I thought you were talking about Bush except for the Islamic one.
- obviously doesn't like me - I'm wondering if anyone does?
- has murdered thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands
- has had desires for WMD his entire life
- flaunts UN inspections
- is Islamic - ok, you got me, but he is still a religious nut
- waves a gun in the air berating western countries (less the gun)
- pretends he has what he doesn't for show purposes
- you name it, he did it -
Republicans have left realityI posted two comments with links rebutting this asshole's nonsense. The world acknowledges there was no wmd, and Bush himself admits he didn't volunteer to go to Vietnam.
So to recap: Telling lies that serve republican interests: +1. Telling the truth, backing it up with links to sources, -1 troll.
Yeah, you republicans are fucking realistic.
>>In fact, if Vietnam is any example, a draft would unfairly pull in working class people because they're less likely to be able to get exceptions because of college or a cushy tour in National Guard.
He was talking about Vietnam, not Iraq. Don't get your panties in a bunch. He didn't disparage the honor of the National Guard. You're just trolling. Get lost.National Guardsmen: How do you feel about being asked/ordered to risk your life in Iraq, now that we know there was no WMD?We know our soldiers will serve whenever, wherever, without question, and we thank them and honor them for that. It is the place of the CIVILIAN to ensure that the soldier's service is applied responsibly and ONLY when NEEDED. It is reprehensible, and TREASON, to send a soldier into war when war is not justified. Iraq is an unjust war. Bush lied, continues to lie, continues to make vague implications. The only reason Our Boys are dying in Iraq is because Bush "has faith it is the right thing to do." An ex soldier passed this on to me: Wish in one hand and shit in the other. Which one will fill up first? No matter how much W WISHES Iraq was necessary, it's shit, bar none.
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Bullshit.>>Except that it looks like Bush actually volunteered for duty in Viet Nam when he was in the guard.
Where are your sources? Bush was AWOL, and even *that* was too much for him so he went campaigning. Bush also admitted, on February 8, that he DID NOT VOLUNTEER TO GO TO VIETNAM.
Thanks for spitting in the face of everyone who actually DID serve in Vietnam.
Like hmmm... John Kerry? :P Guess you'll have to find another thread to troll in.Jackass^2.
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Re:Hindsight and the pathetic Slashdotter
"The winds have changed in our world and we need a dynamic leader who is capable of adjusting the sails."
I totally agree. You can't fight a war, and remain rigid, because the constructs of war are constantly changing. You have to be flexible and be able to recalculate your plans at every step.
Bush isn't.
As a testament to that, here is an excerpt from the 2004 Presidential Debates, where Bush said:
"I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war. And he has.
As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts."
This, in effect, proves that Bush thinks that by remaining firm, not changing his plans, we will "win" this war. That is outright ridiculous.
I also find it funny that the top 9 people who are leading us through this war, NEVER EVEN SERVED IN THE MILITARY. Just look at that list. Pathetic. These people don't even understand what war is, other than a board game they can play from 12,000 miles away.
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Re:I agree, but offer corrections
A nice summary of Bush's Gaurd Duty problems: http://www.awolbush.com/
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Cameras Stop Crime!! In Public office buildings.
If we really want to stop crime, we need to put cameras where we all know the serious crime takes place.That is the office buildings of public officials. We also need to tap their (OUR taxpayer dollar paid for) phones. Over night the dirty dealing and back rubbing would stop. No more BJ's in the oval office. We could even link the cameras in air traffic controllers to watch as they ignore planes that switch off there transponders and deviate from course for 20-30 minutes before they crash into the WTC. Hey, but what's with letting three or four planes all go AWOL. Not like George doesn't support going AWOL. (and he cares enough about our troops, not to attend even one funeral.)
To bad they have this thing about letting the American public know the truth about WMD's. That would have been neat to see that briefing for replay. The ability to trace this info to the source (or lack thereof) and actually hold them accountable for the 1,000 US soldiers that have died. These really are the people that need the cameras put on them because the fate of all our live are held in their hands. How long will it be before the world decides that Americans are the real threat to life and need to be controlled. If the American people won't hold elected official accountable, then somebody will have to.
What ever became of the security tapes around the Oklahoma City Federal building. These tapes hold the smoking gun of Timothy McVeigh in the last moments before the bomb blew. But they were never released due to national security.
Our government has been running amuck. We need to pull out the magnifying glass and put the cameras on them that can't be turned off. These cameras should be streamed on the net and recorded for later viewing. We also need to remove our public officials right to privacy anywhere they go so they can't make deals 'out of the office'. Just like a teenager that gets into drugs, they will loose any right to privacy, they have, because we know they can't be trusted. There has been to much trust in this country of our elected officials for way to long.
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Re:Ummm...
I'm a disabled vet and I can't figure out the same thing.
I mean, I think it's fairly clear that Bush used huge political influence to avoid Vietnam. The former Texas Lt. Gov. from the 70s has recently publicly stated that he pulled strings to get Bush and other sons of the elite into the Nat'l Guard.
Bush obviously didn't want to go to Vietnam (I can't blame him), since he checked the box saying he didn't want to go overseas.
It's also clear that Bush was a deserter. After his father sent him away from Texas for being a drunk he went missing from the Nat'l Guard for a year. You mean to tell me that some of the supposedly hundreds of people that served with him are not stepping forward to claim the thousands of dollars in rewards for saying they served with Bush?! That's insane.
Then there's the military records. I remember how fat my 201 file was and how the military loved to keep paperwork. There's no way those records are "lost" -- I think it's far more likely that Bush cronies cleaned house on his records.
I also think it's fairly likely that Kerry worked an angle to get 3 purple hearts and to get out of Vietnam. Hell, I would not have wanted to go to Vietnam. But then again, when an explosion went off and Kerry got a butt-ful of rice, dirt, and some shrapnel, do we honestly think he was knew about that explosion or was calculating how it would impact on him? When he was grazed with a bullet, do we really think he was volunteering to be shot "just a little" so he could get the hell out of Vietnam and go back home?
Hell no. He got lucky. He got lucky repeatedly, saw an angle to get out, and got the hell out. I can't say as I blame him -- he did his time and played by the rules.
But that's a helluva lot more than you can say about Bush's "service"[sic]. The fact that this deserter organizes campaigns to criticize Kerry or McCain says a lot about his lack of character. -
Re:NutsI find it funny that people whine about Bush's service, but defend Clinton, the draft-dodger who never served in anything.
In the autumn of 1969, Clinton entered the draft but received a high number in the lottery (311) and was never called to serve. Geroge W. Bush got a cushy assignment flying National Guard jets in Texas. Or was it Alabama? Whatever, it seems he wasn't sure either. For fun and extra credit, compare Bush and Kerry.
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Re:NutsI find it funny that people whine about Bush's service, but defend Clinton, the draft-dodger who never served in anything.
In the autumn of 1969, Clinton entered the draft but received a high number in the lottery (311) and was never called to serve. Geroge W. Bush got a cushy assignment flying National Guard jets in Texas. Or was it Alabama? Whatever, it seems he wasn't sure either. For fun and extra credit, compare Bush and Kerry.
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Re:NutsI find it funny that people whine about Bush's service, but defend Clinton, the draft-dodger who never served in anything.
In the autumn of 1969, Clinton entered the draft but received a high number in the lottery (311) and was never called to serve. Geroge W. Bush got a cushy assignment flying National Guard jets in Texas. Or was it Alabama? Whatever, it seems he wasn't sure either. For fun and extra credit, compare Bush and Kerry.
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Re:I'm proud of CMU
That's what George W. Bush should have done, rather than going AWOL like a coward. -
Re:LOL
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Re:Don't blame the military.
Could you post a link to the facts that prove this? It was debunked weeks ago... unless you are a mouthpiece of Kerry, who voted for the war and then refused to fund it putting himself under condemnation of his own previous statements.
Here is a link to a site which hosts the relevant military documents. (You'll need to scroll down a bit to get to them.) You make not agree with the specfic opinions offered on that website, but the facts and the authenticity of those documents are hard to dispute.
I'd like to know how you think this was "debunked weeks ago."
Bush is far from perfect, but can we at least criticize things he really did?
He really did not fly with his unit, although he has publicly claimed that he did. I consider this a serious charge.
I do largly agree with your post above, but the cheap shot at Bush is totally out of place.
I think it was related, and I included it mostly because I believe that most Americans don't know about this.
Folks like Hannity have been shown repreatedly to make up "facts" on the spot. (I can give you evidence on this too.) -
Re:The accuser later backtracked...
www.awolbush.com
Go there, read the evidence, and come back when you've finished. I don't have time to lay out all of the facts for you. As to what kind of pressure might have been put on Turpinseed since his initial statement, I don't know, but he was just one tiny piece of the vast stockpile of evidence against Bush. -
Re:Not a bad forgery.....
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Re:Apple's new Superbowl Ad.
I'm still trying to figure out what world you people live in... I'm no "leftie".
I'm a gun owner. Infact I belong to various orginazations related to guns and their use. This alone is enough to get me labled as a right-wing freak by most of the country.
I'm all for having as little government as possible.
Etc.
I don't know where you get that our philosophy is "disposable and corrupt.", when the leader you praise so much is invariably more corrupt than you could hope to imagine.
Really, you come in here, without a shred of evidence to support your claims (especially when all indications point the opposite way), tantamountally say that anyone who dosen't support bush dosen't know what the fuck they're talking about, and go just about as far to say we're treasonists. You know what? This guy deserves no faith. Faith is for the gods, of which I can assure he is not. -
Reuters coverage
Reuters coverage of this story is here
Sig
-- Compare war time president's military record (www.awolbush.com) with Wesley Clark's (Wesley Clark's Army Career) -
Like everyone else
Like everyone else here is saying, why would you pay top $$ for a most recent processor when you could rather upgrage your fast P4 2.4 GHz box with other items that really affect the performance like extra fast SCSI or Serial ATA hard drive, more and faster RAM, faster graphics card etc.... Unless you do something that is very CPU cycle intensive (like graphics editing/encoding etc)....
Sig
-- Compare war time president's military record (www.awolbush.com) with Wesley Clark's (Wesley Clark's Army Career) -
Re:Unbelievable...
I was kinda hoping they would grab Bush when he flew to Iraq. They could have made him serve out the time that he was AWOL and send some of our troops home for 6 months.
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Re: and your ...
missed some drills
Some drills? What a bunch of utter lies. Try almost an entire year of being AWOL. It's all out there in the mainstream media - A compilation of reports on the issue can be found here - AWOL Bush
Granted this was not a CRIME back when he decided to shirk his duty, but nowadays it is.
That reservist retard you quoted is either ignorant of the facts, or a liar. -
Re:Carter was an officer
GWB had some military service in the Texas Air National Guard.
A bit less than "some," evidently. -
Re:Carter was an officerGWB had some military service in the Texas Air National Guard.
"Some" being the key word there. GW Bush deserted the Texas Air National Guard for approximately a full year between 1972-1973. This was originally reported in the May 23rd issue of the Boston Globe."1-year gap in Bush's Guard duty. No record of airman at drills from 1972-73"
More information on that here and here. -
Re:The real shortcomings of Florida systemYou're right, of course. Bush wasn't AWOL. He actually deserted (because he was gone for so long). He had nothing to hide regarding his military record. So he chose to not release it (unlike Gore and McCain). Still, the records exist.
I didn't bring criminal convictions up but since you asked, Bush's DUI conviction in 1976 courtesy of the Smoking Gun. I don't personally think it is that big a deal but you seem sensitive on the subject.
It's ceratinly true that all major political candidates favor corporate welfare of one kind or another. (Though I do want to point out that the Clinton administration's stance on trade was far more market oriented than the pandering of the Bush administration. Look at steel tariffs.) Bush was unusual in that he personally profited from corporate welfare.
"Self-righteous" is definitely an eye-of-the-beholder thing.
The Clinton recession? That's good. Clinton certainly benefitted from a strong economy while he was at the helm. And a downturn of some sort was inevitable. But he did the most important thing: he didn't derail the economy. The Bush tax cuts, which Bush claims is a "jobs stimulus", have created nothing but defecits as far as the eye can see while the economy sheds tens of thousands of jobs each month.
There was fraud in the election. The Bush team pressured Florida election boards to count invalid absentee ballots. But even with it, under every plausible recount scenario (with the hugely ironic exception of the one favored by the Gore team), Gore received more votes in Florida than Bush.
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Re:Unfair to public servantsI would agree, there are a lot of good people out there working as public servants. However...
A certain number of people out there ARE fawking off and trying to screw me. I could care less about "downloading music." The issues that I think a lot of us are worried about are things like:
* The Patriot Act and it's Big Brother.
* Our public servants being sent off to WAR by a bunch of leaders that don't really have any idea about the people they're sending off to war. Remember, it's typically not your rich/white/sons going into the military.I could go on, but I think I would be going overboard. The issue really comes down to that some of us have had run-ins with the type of people that give our public servants a bad name. Others of us just really understand that power corrupts, and we'd at least like to pretend that there are some checks and balances in place.
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Re:He didn't go AWOLThis is just an urban legend
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Re:Gerald FordUnfortunatley aboard the USS Bill Clinton, seamen always seem to go AWOL.
No, that would be the USS George W. Bush who was AWOL in 1972-1973, as is documented on this website:
AWOLBUSH.COM
Bill Clinton may have played legal games with the draft board, but unlike George W Bush he was never AWOL.
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Re:In other news
Bush Jr. got his daddy to get him out of trouble when he deserted the National Guard, yet the media didn't touch the subject. They were all over Clinton, yet you didn't hear a peep out of the media about this.
Obviously, someone was keeping the media silent about the issue. But it's impossible to get the journalists to shut up about voter fraud??
By the way, you can't watch people vote; it's illegal. You can only exit poll them. You would know that, if you had actually voted.
And you would be pissed if your vote had been stolen from you! -
Re:Military targets?
I honestly believe you've hit the nail on the head. I've been saying this for a while now, but it's hard to get people to listen to anything these days. When people are invading your homeland, you'll do anything necessary to fight them off, even if they are superior in numbers, even if you have no hope of success; Even if your fighting means nearly instant death, you still fight.
To date, the united states has been the only country to use 'weapons of mass destruction' against a civilian populace; We were not even defending our homeland but instead fighting off a weary but fierce enemy. Now, I do honestly believe our actions in dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be justified by our position at the time, and the fact that JAPAN STRUCK FIRST, so what I'm about to say takes that into account.
Being the only country to use nuclear weapons in time of war, the only country to decimate a civilian populace to achieve its' war aim, what leg do we have to stand on saying that Iraqis attempting to defend their homeland with chemical or biological weapons (or other weapons of ''mass destruction'') are war criminals?
I have grown so tired of the spin on news networks that I just can't watch it anymore. Hussein's a bad guy, and nobody doubts that... But all else aside, why does America fail to respect our enemy? In warfare, it's often the worst mistake you can make.
As a matter of fact, since last Wednesday I can honestly say that, while I'm a patriot, while I love my country, I'm ashamed to be an American.
No longer can I say that America never starts wars, but always finishes them; No longer can I say that for all its faults, the system works. When I now face ridicule and accusations of being 'unamerican' for posts such as this, when the government can yank my pilots license with no due process based on evidence they do not have to disclose, when our electoral process is invalidated by a court, when our country extends copyright to obscene dimensions, allows the enforcement of ridiculous patents, when a president who I like and respect gets strung up for having a fling in the whitehouse, when people poke and prod every fact and detail about him to find something, anything to hang him with- and that is the best they can come up with, when our deserter of a president sends our soldiers off to war, with full support and a blind eye, and, in short, when my country almost entirely stops 'doing the right thing' in most places that matter, I find myself disenchanted.
So much more I could say.
-Kysh, American -
Re:Politics
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Re:COUNT ME OUT! Gore's a fucking jerk.
Gore was IN the military.
Bush DESERTED the military, during Vietnam. He refuseed to take a drug test and disappeard from duty! -
Re:alert level: OrangeYou're right. That there should be an Orange Alert is the laughable part.... Duck and cover, you sheep! Your draft-dodging, cokehead Enron president is leading you to war against evil! Ignore that sucking sound in your pockets!
hee hee. why be anonymous when you can be cheeky? -
Re:And yours are? I think not...
Why don't I have a right to pass on what's mine to somebody else?
While you are alive, you have the right to give or sell what's yours to others.When you are dead, you have no rights in the living world. None. Some third party can strongarm victims in your name, but that has nothing to do with any "rights" imbued in your mouldering corpse. This issue is slightly muddied by inheritance law, until you remember all inheritance law is primarily concerned with the rights and properties of the living, because the state has a vested interest in allocation of taxable assets.
When you engage in speech, or publishing, you release an image from your mind (something that's yours) to others (whoever's listening or reading). You have gifted them with knowledge, and although that knowledge may be worthless, it is now available to the recipient to do with as that person wills.
You need to grasp the fundamental difference between property, which exists in a single instance (like a physical CD-ROM) and communication, which can be replicated without diminishment of the source (like a picture that can be copied, or a speech that can be transcripted). Consider Thomas Jefferson's remarks on the subject; if I light your candle with mine, you are illuminated, but my own light is not extinguished.
My reference to "the divine right of kings" is apropos, as you have demonstrated, because most people (like yourself) have been brainwashed into thinking they have a right to force others behavior, all because of an imaginary right to own and inherit that which is essentially and naturally free - human thought and communication.
Your comments about the current regime in the US may be correct, but they have nothing to do with anyone's rights- they have to do with the ability of powerful families to hoard power and escape punishment. Case in point: Bush is apparently a military deserter, which is normally a punishable crime that would invalidate ones' ability to hold public office. There are no "rights" being exercised here, it's plain old corruption at work.
Just because someone can get away with something doesn't mean they have a right to do so. If your dead ancestor wrote down an idea, or painted a picture, you don't have a right to forcibly prevent me from writing down the same idea.
I hope the forgoing has made the distinction clear. If you give someone your clothes, you don't have them any more. If you compose a poem, it is not erased from your memory if others hear it, nor does it evaporate when they repeat it, or elaborate on it, or make a movie based on it. ...does it extend to everything I own, including the clothes on my back? I ask because you don't seem to make any distinction. -
Re:Moral of the StoryNo, the House is and was Republican. The Senate was Democratic for a short time, but run by Tom Daschle who'll do anything Bush asks for fear of being accused of being unpatriotic. Very ironic considering the person who cannot be criticised is a deserter..
Republican tax cuts have generally gone through with little more than tweaking. Dumbya's had essentially a free reign. He's failed. Get over it.
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Re:Bush sucks.
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Re:Bush sucks.Really? This is the first I've heard of this. Seriously. Can you point me to some info on this?
AWOLBush has the basic facts. Shrub's military record shows that he did not show up for duty between May 1972 and October 1973.
There is no statute of limitations for desertion in time of war. If this was Clinton, Ken Starr would have investigated. However because it is a republican he gets off.
See also Bush's Top 10 Lies, Exaggerations And 'Obsfucations' About His Military Service
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Re:not just the price, but the market
Sorry, that should have been AWOL Bush dot com.
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George Bush's (AWOL) National Guard Service: CitesTry these:
- Boston Globe
- Washington Post
- Dubya refused to release his military records, but pieces of them have been obtained through FOI requests.
- AWOL Bush has some interesting things to say on this topic.
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Re:rofl(Posted as AC because this is off topic)
AWOL Bush explains, quite succinctly, why Dumbya isn't fit to be CiC. Oh, and Gore did at least go to Vietnam during the war, Dumbya had the strings pulled so he could guard Texas incase of Mexican invasion. And as the link shows, he couldn't even do that.
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Re:Appointees of the PresidentYou talk about it like it's some kind of personal corruption on his part - that, Billstr78, is about as mistaken a view as the opinion that the Bush administration is not stepping over the bounds of ethics and clean government proceedure to confer blessings on big business interests.
the short version: look up Whiggism. Esp, the decay into Toryism.
the longer version:
They most certainly have been pimping their level best for Enron (Enron, dynegy, Williams, Duke power et al.) and Arthur Andersen and Xerox. They have broken the rules for Mining Co.s, big Coal, GMFORDDAIMLERCHRYLSLER, and let's not forget delivering Afghanistan for UNOCAL and Enron, but there is no monetary quid pro quo as you and others allege at the heart of this. Not even the "legalized bribery" of campaign contributions. George W. Bush does not consider himself in the back pockets of these interests - not in his worst nightmares.Can you guess why? It's important that you understand the distinction between a pol on the take, who knows he's selling out his constituents and the very different motivational basis of the current regime.
Every single dime George W. Bush has ever made has been a bribe. A favor from one rich and powerful person to the son of another - or more properly speaking, his father. Look up the history of Arbusto Oil and Harken energy and his association with the Texas Rangers if you don't believe this. You have to ask yourself this: how would our President know the difference between bribery and honest pay? How would I know if I were he? I mean this literally, not as any kind of snide joke. He has no life experience working for any other kind of pay, except perhaps as the governor of Texas, which didn't involve either much pay or much work. Filial loyalty and his self interest as a certified halfwit both mandated his acceptance of the stream of cash that came his way. Now in that germinal narrative you can see the reason why nothing his administration is doing is morally corrupt, at least not in the manner you seem to be thinking of.They aren't doing it for the money. Not their own wallets anyway. They're doing it out of loyalty. All those 5 and 6 figure salaries George W got for doing nothing on the boards of failing oil companies were favors from people who wanted to demonstrate their friendship and loyalty to his father. It was all between social acquaintances and friends. George W got the payback if we must use that concept, over the entire 55 year course of his life of extreme privilege. So, it 's not what he hopes to get, but what he has already received that binds him, that has determined his allegiances and has generally molded his character and his views. Duty required him to accept help since he was utterly helpless on his own, (the one social pressure the rich suffer that is akin in painfulness to what the not-rich feel is the pressure not to embarass the family by becoming poor) and he would be a cad not to have accepted a lifelong duty to the people from whom he received all his fives and sixes (5&6 figure stipends). He got it all from members of his own social class (roughly speaking) and that is why you see his adminstration taking care of the interests of people like himself to the contempt of the interests and lives of ordinary people, including the ordinary morons who voted for him. (I said he was stupid not disloyal. He's not President because people voted for him so much as because his People are in the ascendancy and his family is
...in line for succession.)
As for the rest of us out here in TVland, what did we ever do for him? (Except go to Viet Nam in his place and work on the dangerous oilrigs that made his family money, and defeat the Nazis who made the Bush family's original fortune, and a thousand other invisible services which may be found in historical records, payrolls and balancesheets, but nowhere in his conscience).
Can you see why people like Bush do what they do? They are being loyal and ethical - towards the people that matter to them and according to the streamlined ethical standards that hold in their social order. We are ghosts in their world, less substantial than air. And you can't be accused of selling out a ghost. When lowermiddle class slobs and trailertrash show up to cheer and vote for him, he doesn't even laugh about them screwing themselves and voting against their own interests. He takes it as a validation of the social order that has brushed aside Utopian meritocracy and egalitarian nonsense put him on top. "See, even the unruly proles recognize the Social Order, and its apex, their King".
What looks like corrupt government on the outside to you is simply, to his way of thinking, trying to be a standup guy for people who matter and who like to refer to themselves as "representatives of the forces that made this country great" (that is, able to afford to keep idiot man-children like himself in luxury) What those rich corporate friends of his want of course is to own everything that presently belongs to their rich corporate peers, unless they have settled into stable cartels and oligopolies that characterize "mature" sectors of American business. And clearly some eggs will have to be broken to make an omelette that size. They want to change things wholesale without reference to rules that cropped up in the period of say 1865 to the present. Those rules were put in by usurpers acting out their tyrannical dreams under the color of doing the People's Will and protecting the interests of the People. Those ordinary people, though all sweet folk they might be, just AREN'T LIKE THE PEOPLE GEORGE BUSH KNOWS. Not only doesn't he know them personally, like he knows Steve Ballmer personally, or Ken Lay, but as Jack Welch and his sockpuppet Tim Russert will tell you, their ordinary lives are of no particularly great moment in the destiny of the American Empi.. -er- Republic. GE matters. Enron matters. Microsoft matters. These are our leading citizens from whom the Emp... from whom the Republic draws its strength in a world full of foreign dangers (forgetting a moment that they pay income taxes only sporadically as a unwelcome result when something has gone wrong) President George will break any and all eggs for them, since it's their shared political faith that any rule standing in the way of their dreams was erected by ne'erdowells jealous of the success of their genetic superiors. How could he think otherwise? I mean these are the people who have been there for him over the course of his life. He's learned alot of difficult lessons , as he himself says, in his transition from witless wayward youth with a twenty dollar bill stuck up his nose, to witless, wayward adult with a White House pretzel stuck up his nose, and one of those lessons surely has been to love and accept the wisdom of the Hand that has been feeding him all his life. It was already way too late to change when went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. He owed too much to the insititution of class privilege from then onwards and the hole would just get deeper.
He doesn't just owe these people, he identifies himself with their causes as a member of the same aggrieved, put upon, but resurgent minority: the filthy rich and powerful.
No doubt, if he had made his own way in life he would be far less "tool-like" and servile and smug in his agreement with the Ken Lays and Jack Welches. But then, they wouldn't have selected him as their party's candidate for President either.