Letters to the Editor
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@politicalchase
Please understand, I like Barack; but I hope you won't mind a bit of devil's advocacy.
Foreign Policy magazine has a poll out, surveying a large number of active military officers on how things stand with deployments under Bush.
According to the poll, these officers are not happy about the decision to invade Iraq; nor are they happy about how it has been managed. What a surprise.
There are many other questions in the poll, accessible via CNN and Reuters.
I suggest that the issue of prior military service is a factor in this election, assuming some level of awareness among voters at large of the histories of George W. Bush and most of his leadership circle, and Bill Clinton. There has been some increased tension between the military leadership and recent commanders-in-chief because of the lack of service issue. This tension is borne out in the poll.
Interestingly, the Republicans, more than the Democrats I would say, tried very hard, almost from the start of the Bush era, to blow off the idea that prior military service should be an important item on the resume of a potential president. I'm hardly an expert, but look where that attitude and lack of experience has gotten us.
Well, back to the poll. Nine out of ten officers questioned say today that they have concerns about a presidential candidate who cannot show military service.
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William Timberman
It's been a long day. William, you always make the few last steps toward the sack laughable to me. Seriously.
It's not the tomb end.
If you had two old socks,
yet not matching, you are content.
You're a good holy non-matching sock, geezer
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JerryDampf
George Herbert Walker Bush endorsed McCain this week. Bush's father helped build the Nazi state through his invenstment banking both before and during the war.
From the Guardian, September 25 2004:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to powerRumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
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Maybe the pendulum has swung
we have the incredibly good fortune to have a tranformative politician - a progressive, no less! - who can articulate what an increasing number of us have realized over the past 14 or so years, that the demagogic right wing and their cable TV and newspaper columnist apologists are full of it. Especially the young people can see through it, as can some clear-eyed elders - and all of us are ready to puke the bile out of our system. Consider your reaction to the Cindy McCain statement (oy, that we have to might have to listen to this blonde trophy wife for 4 or 8 years!): is there still 50.1 percent of the electorate who falls for this tired 'gotcha' attempt? I don't think so - the Repugs have worn out their welcome and heartily overstaid their time lording it over us great unwashed. This might finally be the year we overthrow our masters and restore what's left of our democracy. Let's seize the moment, freeze out the trolls, expose them for the reactionary unAmericans that they are - and take back our government. If Obama doesn't win in November, and take office in January, it will be time to take up arms and, by opposing, end them.
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I've known this was coming, but Obama seems able to handle it.
Remember, this is the man who froze out Faux "News" for the better part of a year. They sneered at him, said he was afraid of them, and how would he handle the terrorists if he couldn't handle them, blah blah blah. But it worked fine. It got to the point where Bill "O'Really?" had to assault one of Obama's people just to get a word with him after the New Hampshire primary.
He also handled the "radical madrassa" smear pretty well, though that one is still leaving echoes here and there. And he and his wife are handling the "proud of America" story pretty well also.
I realize this is the big maybe in the campaign. Anyone who thinks the GOP can't make use of this tactic even against Obama is fooling themselves. This is the one real chance they have to hold on to the White House, particularly with the likes of John "hotheaded cretin" McCain as their candidate. But I have real hope that Obama learned the lesson of Gore's and Kerry's failures to let the GOP smear machine have its way. I think he knows he has to quash these smears early and relentlessly, and I think he knows how to do it.