disconnect

Sometimes I feel a bit redundant on this blog because there are so many other bloggers out there doing such a great job covering the important stories. This developing story with Bush and his National Guard service is one of those times, because Josh Marshall is covering things so thoroughly on his site. You can head on over there and read up on things, but I'll give a brief summary about it on this site all the same.

I was going to give my take on this compared to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story, but then this article took the words right out of my mouth:

This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day. In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying. Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.

Now this story is important because of many reasons - first, whether or not Bush skipped out on National Guard duty and/or was given preferential treatment says a lot about his character and something about his willingness to sacrifice to serve and protect his country. Given that those two things and "terrorists are going to kill you if you don't vote for me" are basically his entire re-election platform, it's a pretty relevant story. Second, there's the small matter as to his repeated assertions over the past 10 years that he served honorably and fulfilled all his obligations like he was supposed to. More on that in a second. Finally, in the week or so leading up to the Republican convention, Republicans were giddy over Bush's bounce in the polls. Was the bounce due to success in Iraq, or good economic news? No, it was due to the Swift Boat Vets smear campaign against John Kerry, something with not even a fraction of the facts supporting these allegations. Karma's a bitch, ain't it?

Speaking about Bush serving "honorably", here is the full transcript of CBS News's interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, portions of which appeared on 60 Minutes last night. In it, he repeats the phrase "honorably discharged" about 10,000 times, the idea being that no matter what Bush did or didn't do, it must have been by the book enough to earn him an honorable discharge. The problem with that is that if the Bush name carries enough clout to get you into the National Guard ahead of a bunch of others on a waiting list, it probably has enough clout to smooth over some of the rules you broke. It appears that this is, in fact, the case:

On Oct. 1, 1973, Bush received an honorable discharge from the Texas Air National Guard in order to move to Boston and attend Harvard Business School, where he was still obligated to find a unit in Massachusetts to fulfill his remaining nine months of duty, or face being placed on active duty. Once again, Bush made no such effort. But the Air Force in Denver, acting retroactively, in effect overturned Bush's honorable discharge and placed him on "Inactive Status" effective Sept. 15, 1973. When Bush left Texas, his personnel file was sent to Denver for review. The ARPC quickly realized Bush had failed to take a required physical exam, his Texas superior could not account for his whereabouts covering nearly a 12-month period, and because of absenteeism Bush had failed to "satisfactorily participate" as a member of the Texas Air National Guard. Bush's "Inactive Status" meant his relationship with the Air Force (and the Guard) was severed and he was therefore eligible for the draft.

Soon afterward, large gaps began appearing in Bush's paper trail. Lukasiak concludes that only last-minute intervention, likely from Bush's local Houston draft board, saved him from active duty, as well as finally securing his honorable discharge, removing his "Inactive Status." Ironically, that means strings were pulled to get Bush out of the Guard in 1973, just as they were pulled to get him enrolled in 1968.

That article on salon.com is pretty damning and covers a lot of other details I won't list on this site. Last night's 60 Minutes story had some good info, and you can find that online here. And finally you can head to any number of left-leaning blogs to read more, as I'm sure they'll be swarming all over this story, though again, Talking Points Memo is particularly credible and thorough.

You see, when your whole life is based on getting favors based on your family name, getting others to do the dirty work for you, not taking responsibility for your mistakes, and general dishonesty, it ought to catch up to you. Nixon's shiftiness caught up to him with Watergate. Clinton's dishonesty with his marital infidelity caught up to him with the Starr report. Now we can only hope that Bush's dereliction of service and lifelong pattern of screwing stuff up and getting away with it is finally catching up to him.

I didn't comment on Dick Cheney's comment yesterday that if we make the wrong choice in November (i.e. vote for Kerry) we'll get hit by another terrorist attack, because it got plenty of airtime in the media and I figured everyone already heard it and can figure out for themselves that Cheney's a mean-spirited troll trying to scare everyone into re-electing him. But just in case, Maureen Dowd takes care of it for me:

Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn't protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and President Bush didn't protect us from the real 9/11.

It really doesn't take much more than that to knock down these silly scare tactic arguments they use.

U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq:

As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Andrew Sullivan is a gay conservative blogger. Many on the left dislike him for his harsh pro-war, anti-dissent stands in 2001/2002/2003. Some appreciate the fact that he appears to be turning against the Bush administration now. I'm going to link to (and quote) this post of his though because I think it sums up all that was wrong about the Republican National Convention and the Bush/Cheney campaign in general:

One other thing has troubled me, after mulling the NYC convention for a few days. It struck me that John Kerry at his convention did something politically shrewd but also historically significant. He took a reluctant Democratic base and emphatically backed the war on terror. Yes, he did not relinquish criticism of the war in Iraq, nor of the way in which the Bush administration had made the case for war. But it was not a left-wing convention, and it signaled a welcome shift among Democrats to a more war-oriented approach. The Republicans essentially responded by throwing back this concession in John Kerry's face. They refused to take "yes, but" for an answer, and dredged up the divisions of the Vietnam War as a means to further polarize the electorate. Again, this might be good politics, but it is surely bad for the country. I believe in this war, which is also why I believe it is important to get as many Democrats to support it. But the Republicans have all but declared that this is a Republican war - and can only be conducted by a Republican president. I think they will live to regret this almost as much as the country will. And I fear the animosity and division that are already part of the cultural fabric (by no means all fomented by the president) could get worse in the coming years - to the glee of our enemies. In wartime, unity matters. When a campaign deliberately tries to maximize polarization to its advantage, it simultaneously undermines the war. Winning this war is more important than building a new Republican majority. But somehow I don't think that's how Karl Rove sees it.

I think there's a decent chance this country will continue to tear itself apart based on "liberal" vs. "conservative" ideologies no matter who wins this election. But it's almost a certainty if Bush wins, given that the entire convention was about putting a wedge into the split and hammering it for four days as hard as they could. Yet, of course, he's a "uniter, not a divider."

From Bush's remarks in Lee's Summit, Missouri:

THE PRESIDENT: To create more jobs, we must stop the junk lawsuits that threaten small businesses. The cost to our economy of litigation is conservatively estimated to be over $230 billion a year.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Now, listen, I understand my opponent changes positions a lot, but for 20 years he's been one of the trial lawyers' most reliable allies in the Senate. We have a difference of opinion. He's consistently voted against legal reform that would protect workers and entrepreneurs. His fellow lawyers have responded with millions of dollars in campaign donations. I have another view. I disagree with his position. I am for ending junk lawsuits. (Applause.) Personal injury lawyers should not get richer at the expense of hard-working Americans. (Applause.)

From the Center for Justice & Democracy:

In 1999, Bush sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car over a minor fender-bender involving one of his daughters in which no one was hurt. Although his insurance would have covered the repair costs making a lawsuit unnecessary, Bush sought additional money from Enterprise, which had rented a car to someone with a suspended license. In this case, Bush seemed to understand one of the most important functions of civil lawsuits — to deter further wrongdoing. The case settled for $2,000 to $2,500.

The expected federal budget deficit over the next 10 years: $2.29 trillion.

Current U.S. population: 294,209,159.

That's $7,783 for every man, woman and child in the country, payable with interest (not included in that figure). And it assumes Bush's tax cuts will expire in 2011, while Bush has pledged to make them permanent should he be re-elected. Start saving.

One thing I find absurd is when people claim these deficits, which are the largest ever in dollar terms, aren't that bad because they were higher under Reagan as a share of GDP. So let me get this straight... if I make $50K/year today and borrow $10,000 a year, and then 20 years later I make $100K/year and borrow $15,000 a year, that's OK because I'm now borrowing a smaller percentage of my income? What about the $200,000+ of debt I accumulated over that period of time? How long can you keep borrowing 1/5th of your budget before a) no one will lend you money anymore, b) you have to pay it back, or c) the interest on this mammoth debt shadows anything else you pay for?

If grown-ups were running the economy, I could at least be assured that people more intelligent than myself were working on making sure the economy is stable as I advance into middle-age and the baby boomers retire. Unfortunately, our budget is determined by what gets the most electoral votes, not what will avoid fiscal collapse over the next 20 years, so I need to worry.

On Conan O'Brien this weekend, Conan talked to Zell Miller... or at least a picture of Zell Miller with someone else's mouth doing the talking. Anyway, Zell challenged him to a duel baboon-style, and I'll leave it to you to find out what that entails.

You can watch the segment in XviD format here. (If you have problems playing it try installing this.)

Well, I have to give the Republicans credit for something - they're doing a very good job of fighting dirty. Iraq, the economy, health care, the deficit... all those things are forgotten now. The big deal is that Kerry won't keep you safe against terrorists (note how I didn't say "bin Laden"... forget about him, just worry about "terror") because he votes against a strong national defense. Don't think about why he would favor a weaker America, why someone who's actually killed enemies of America in war would let them off as president. Don't listen to people telling you that Kerry doesn't actually support weakening our military and intelligence, just lap up what we give you. And if he tells you we're lying, don't listen to him, he's just a politician who'll flip-flop around and say anything to get elected.

Again I have to say that the worst thing about this isn't the fact that it seems to be working and hurting Kerry today, it's the implications for the future. If this works, what incentive is there for a presidential election to ever be debated on the facts again? If it doesn't matter how well you governed, but you can win if shady smear groups attack your opponent and you can portray him as endangering people's personal security, then there's no incentive to govern well. If you can get people to believe falsehoods and spin about your opponent (not to mention your own record) then what is the incentive to tell the truth? I would like to think that America can survive four more years of Bush. I don't know that America can survive becoming a place where lies become the truth, fear trumpets everything, and 2 + 2 = 5 if the president and Fox News says it does..

I think everything that happened over the past week made me appreciate having John Kerry as a candidate. That might not be obvious, but imagine if Howard Dean was the Democratic nominee instead of Kerry. All the flip-flopper stuff would work just as well on Dean given that he was relatively conservative as governor of Vermont. Bush would be portrayed as a strong and experienced leader in times of crisis, something they're trying to do now but something that would have been easy as pie running against the governor of a small state with no national experience. And I can't even imagine the kind of pummeling that Dean would have taken over being fit to be commander-in-chief. If they can portray a war hero as weak on defense, Dean would have been a sitting duck. Knowing his real (although often exaggerated) temper, I think his head would have exploded about two weeks ago.

I guess the striking thing to me was how much hate was on display at the Republican convention. Such a huge deal was made during the Democratic primaries of how much Democrats hated Bush. Howard Dean was really the epitome of irrational Bush-hatred among the left, a group that you were told wanted to elect anyone but Bush and do it at any cost. But at last week's convention, the ferocity towards Kerry was much higher than anything seen during the Democratic primaries. And it wasn't manufactured either - during moments like the Zell Miller speech you could tell the crowd was with it 100%. These people really believed that if John Kerry was elected, everything they held dear would be attacked, taken away and destroyed. I'm not really sure what this was based on - certainly it wasn't Kerry's speeches after winning the primaries as they contradicted most of the charges against him. I imagine it came from eating up Republican attack machine propaganda, spinning his Senate record enough to make it look like he would coddle terrorists and not defend the country when it was under attack.

The thing about liberal hatred of George W. Bush though is that it didn't come from nowhere. During the 2000 election, I thought Bush was an idiot, but I didn't hate him. I think the general opinion among the left that there wasn't much difference between Gore and Bush, the kind of opinion that led to all the Nader votes, pretty much shows this. I know I couldn't have imagined all the things that Bush would do. I don't think most people could have imagined an amendment to the constitution outlawing gay marriage. I don't think most people could have imagined the size of our budget deficit given the surpluses we were running. I don't think most people could have imagined the war in Iraq, both in the run-up to it and the lack of WMDs and general chaos in the country in the aftermath. I don't think anyone could have imagined not one, but two tax cuts even after the surplus disappeared. And I don't think anyone could have imagined Alan Greenspan talking about how we need to cut Social Security benefits, after all the talk of a "lockbox" in the primaries. That's where the hatred of Bush came from, not from campaign talking points about the guy, but about what he's done in the past four years. The success of the Bush campaign over the past few weeks, during the Swift Boat thing and now the convention, has really been its ability to manufacture hate along with fear.