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Thursday, September 23, 2004 |
Hatch Joins The Zell Miller Crowd
Hatch Joins The Zell Miller Crowd: "Orrin Hatch joins hands with Zell Miller and the rest of the Bush brigade
“If you look at what they're saying on the other side of this equation and this presidential race, they're consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there.”
The Democratic National Committee, in response, sent out a statement from Nita Martin, a Pennsylvania mother and registered Republican whose two sons have served in Iraq.
Martin said it was the Bush administration who has failed to support the troops.
“Before one of my sons left, he went online to buy himself a helmet that would better protect him than the one which was issued to him by the U.S. military,” she said. “If anybody doesn't support the troops it's George W. Bush. He sent my sons to war with no plan. They were ill-prepared and the result is more and more casualties every day.”
The Bush admin response: we don't answer to cannon fodder..."
(Via Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid.)
4:12:50 PM Permalink
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Bush: don't listen to me
Bush: don't listen to me: "Bush comment at a political rally today:You should not listen..."
(Via Daily Kos.)
What an odd thing to say: don't believe what we say when we're running for office? What's the point of him talking then? Here's a full quote, direct from the White House website:
I see we've got some young workers here. I want to talk about Social Security right quick. I told you systems have changed -- or systems haven't changed, and they're stuck in the past. Listen, if you're a senior, you will get your Social Security check. You should not listen to the political nonsense that happens in the course of a campaign. The Social Security trust has got enough money to fulfill its promise to those who are receiving Social Security today .
What the hell is he talking about?
11:22:01 AM Permalink
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from the Times, of all places
from the Times, of all places: "Any questions?
Nineteen seventy-two was the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen.
He abandoned his once-prized status as a National Guard pilot by failing to appear for a required physical. He sought temporary reassignment from the Texas Air National Guard to an Alabama unit but for six months did not show up for training. He signed on as an official in the losing campaign of a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, and even there he left few impressions other than as an amiable bachelor with a good tennis game and a famous father.
"To say he brought in a bunch of initiatives and bright ideas," said a fellow campaign worker, Devere McLennan, "no he didn't."
This year of inconsequence has grown increasingly consequential for President Bush because of persistent, unanswered questions about his National Guard service - why he failed to take his pilot's physical and whether he fulfilled his commitment to the Guard. If anything, those issues became still murkier this past week, with the controversy over the authenticity of four documents disclosed by CBS News and its program "60 Minutes" purporting to shed light on that Guard record.
Still, a wider examination of his life in 1972, based on dozens of interviews and other documents released by the White House over the years, yields a portrait of a young man like many other young men of privilege in that turbulent time - entitled, unanchored and safe from combat, bouncing from a National Guard slot made possible by his family's prominence to a political job arranged through his father.
In a speech on Tuesday at a National Guard convention, Mr. Bush said he was "proud to be one of them," and in his autobiography he writes that his service taught him respect for the chain of command. But a review of records shows that not only did he miss months of duty in 1972, but that he also may have been improperly awarded credit for service, making possible an early honorable discharge so he could turn his attention to a new interest: Harvard Business School.
Mr. Bush, nearly 26, went to Alabama in mid-May 1972 to work on the campaign of Winton M. Blount, a construction magnate known as Red who was a friend of Mr. Bush's father. The Democratic opponent was Senator John J. Sparkman, chairman of the Senate banking committee, a legendary power in what was still a solidly Democratic South.
Mr. Bush, while missing months of the Guard duty that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, was the political director of the Blount campaign, which accused Mr. Sparkman - a hawk on the war - and the national Democrats of supporting "amnesty for all draft dodgers" and of showing "more concern for coddling deserters than for patriotic American young men who have lost their lives in Vietnam." In the last week of the race, the Blount campaign ran a radio advertisement using an edited recording of Mr. Sparkman that made him appear to support forced busing of schoolchildren, which he opposed.
Although campaign records list Mr. Bush as third in command, people who worked in the race said he was not involved in those tactics or with the overall agenda. Mr. Bush's connection was Jimmy Allison, a political operative from Midland, Tex., who was running the campaign and was a close friend of George H. W. Bush, having managed the elder Mr. Bush's 1966 Congressional victory in Houston.
Mr. Allison's widow, Linda, who volunteered in the Blount campaign, said she became curious about the young Mr. Bush's job after noticing his coming into the office late and leaving early.
"I asked Jimmy, 'What does Georgie do?''' Mrs. Allison, 73, said in an interview, repeating the account she had given to Salon, the online publication. "He just said George had called him and told him that Georgie was having some difficulties in Houston. Big George thought it would be beneficial to the family and George Jr. for him to come to Alabama to work on the campaign with Jimmy." "
(Via Sisyphus Shrugged.)
8:19:06 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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