Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

How stupid are these people?

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

In my day, never was longer.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

This really is a full service blog.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

We won’t go back.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Come on, man.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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31Comments

  2. 2.

    David Neiwert

    I guess once you disrespect someone, you don’t even both to spell their name correctly.

    BTW, tghat’s a pretty persuasive marshalling of facts in your counterargument there, John.

  3. 3.

    Andrew

    I don’t think respect has anything to do with it, since people that I’m reasonably sure respect me still spell my name wrong.

  6. 6.

    Hipocrite

    Shorter Right-Wing-Punditry: “The statement ‘Bush is a deserter,’ depends on what the definition of is is.”

  8. 8.

    triticale

    Gary, you omitted the balance of that rule. It’s “i before e, except after c, or pronounced as long A, as in neighbor and weigh.” I learned that watching “Bacholer Father”. Furthermore, Germanic last names also get “e before i”.

  9. 9.

    Charlie

    Triticale, you’re off on one thing there: Germanic names may have either ‘ei’ or ‘ie’. Those digraphs have disinct and specific sounds — long ‘e’ (eee) vs long ‘i’ (aye).

  10. 10.

    nikto

    Sounds like you righties are having an allergy attack as a result of exposure to that deadly substance (to the American-hating Right)–Truth!!

    This is not going to go away.

    This is starting to get fun.

  11. 11.

    Hermit

    OK, OK..forget “deserter”..AWOL will do just fine…..

    And as Neiwert points out, we shouldn’t hear any more references to Clinton as a “draft dodger” from the now semantically correct right wing anymore…..

  14. 14.

    Gryn

    So everyone seems to agree:

    • AWOL – Yes beyond a shadow of a doubt
    • Deserter – Debatable

    I’m glad we all see eye to eye on this.

  17. 17.

    Gryn

    Evading the point eh Startibartfast? Glad to see projection is alive and well.

    What exactly is your point then. Do you care to elucidate me?

  18. 18.

    Brautigan

    Just because he ain’t a convicted deserter doesn’t mean he’s not guilty of desertion.

    And the facts, although certainly not conclusive, weigh heavily in favor of the latter.

  19. 19.

    Slartibartfast

    Elucidate you? And before we’ve been properly introduced?

    Look, if you think that there’s an iota of evidence that Bush has been AWOL, then take a look at it. Then read this, follow the links, and let us know what new and revolutionary bit of factoid you have that hasn’t been beaten to a bloody pulp countless times already.

  20. 20.

    Ricky

    ***Just because he ain’t a convicted deserter doesn’t mean he’s not guilty of desertion.***

    And just because Howard Dean hasn’t been convicted of beating his wife doesn’t mean he’s not guilty.

    Where was that attitude during the Clinton administration years, again? (oh yeah, fighting the ‘witch hunts’ of false allegations that couldn’t be proven….)

  21. 21.

    Gryn

    Yes in fact I slogged through those links.

    The defense rests on wishful thinking about NG being bad at paperwork, a couple of campaign buddies being pretty sure they remembered him leaving for “drills” (ha ha! and my uncle likes to go “fishing” a lot too!), and the “factesque” assertion that you get to blow off commitments if you do extra duty during the first few years in the NG.

    I don’t recall any real documents cited, nor a substantial refuting of the two main points.

    Bush blew off his physical in the spring of 1972, thereby ignoring a direct order from his superiors.

    Bush then definitely performed no drills at all for any unit of the National Guard between early May 1972 and late November 1972 at the earliest. This is a period of nearly seven months.

    This is being as generous as possible to Bush’s defenders line of argumentation! Which a thorough review of FOIA docs, signed statements, witness testimony and newspaper clippings at the time push for an even more damning conviction to the objective observer.

    How ever, I don’t want to trouble your feable mind with such annoying things like facts. Please continue your little Bush cheerleader dance.

  24. 24.

    Neil

    My, such touching concern for semantics! I guess the right wing really does regret calling Clinton a draft dodger.

    Any word on whether they also regret the terms “rapist” and “murderer”?

  25. 25.

    Slartibartfast

    “My, such touching concern for semantics! I guess the right wing really does regret calling Clinton a draft dodger.

    Any word on whether they also regret the terms “rapist” and “murderer”?”

    I dunno. Tell me who they are, and I’ll ask them. Or better yet, ask them yourself.

    Gryn, you need to provide a link. And no, I’m not going to accept something Weinert has unattributed on his blog as evidence.

  26. 26.

    Sebastian Holsclaw

    That wouldn’t be Dave “all Repbulicans are neo-Nazis and I can prove it by quoting local Southern democrats when they make racist statements that are obviously the fault of Repbulicans” Neiwart would it? I know, I know his argument is much more subtle .

  28. 28.

    Gryn

    Ugh, I first looked at this and thought to myself “Great! now I have to reproduce whole other websites for the pleasure of a guy who most likely will casually dismiss it anyways.” First I said “Screw that!”, but I’m a stubborn bastard. So here you go – Part 1 of 2

    Ok, so let’s start with Bush shirking his physical.

    Bush suspended from flying on Aug 1st (memo is dated Sep 29th, ’72) – Major General Francis Greenleaf, then Chief of the National Guard Bureau in Washington DC, confirmed the suspension of 1st Lt. George W. Bush from flying status. This written confirmation cites an earlier August 1, 1972 verbal order of the TX 147th Group’s Commanding Officer that suspended and grounded Bush from flying duty for “his failure to accomplish annual medical examination.” It cites the reason “Failure to accomplish annual medical examination”. Interestingly this could be for one of two reasons. 1) He blew it off OR 2) He failed it (most likely due to the new drug testing policyinstitued a couple months before).

    One excuse tossed out earlier was that there weren’t flight surgeons available at TANG. This has been proved false by The Boston Globe.

    Deepening the mystery, Bush was removed from flight status in August 1972 for failing to take his annual flight physical. Bush’s campaign aides have said he did not take the physical because he was in Alabama and his personal physician was in Houston. But flight physicals can be administered only by certified Air Force flight surgeons, and some were assigned at the time to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, where Bush was living.

    Expensively trained pilots are not casually suspended! It was estimated that nearly a million dollars (in modern day currency) had been sunk into his training. Here is Bush stating that “flying is a lifetime pursuit”.

    In either case there is normally a Flight Inquiry Board:

    • If one had been convened, its three senior officer members would have documented why such a severe action was justified in relation to the country’s military objectives at the time, as opposed to the simple desire of a trained pilot to just “give up flying”.
    • There is no evidence now in the public domain that a Flight Inquiry Board was convened to deal with Bush’s official reclassification to a non-flying, grounded status

    This absence of a Flight Inquiry Board is of particular interest to veteran pilots. The implication is that Bush’s misconduct was handled like everything else in his military service: aided and abetted by powerful family connections.

    Phew, that was freakin’ exhausting. I haven’t done anything original here. Just condensed what’s already at Neiwert and most stuff from http://www.awolbush.com.

    part 2 (Bush AWOL for equal to or greater than 7 months) will have to be a while I have to do some real work for today…

  29. 29.

    Gryn

    Wow Sebastian! You rolled together both an ad-hominem and straw-man attack in a single sentence. Not only that but you made the whole premise unprovable since it’s “subtle ” (therefore I can’t really explain it to anyone).

    You get 1000 GOP Team Leader points for that little bit of mendacity my boy!

  30. 30.

    capt joe

    Groan,

    Gryn-ie

    read this:

    http://www.ngaus.org/ngmagazine/main101.asp

    http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_05_04_dish_archive.html#200253615

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70817FD3D5D0C708CDDA80994D8404482

    http://factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=131

    http://www.sgtstryker.com/weblog/archives/003297.php#003297

    http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70817FD3D5D0C708CDDA80994D8404482

    http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004_01_01_archive.html#107495313186595111

    http://web.archive.org/web/20001202233300/http://www2.georgemag.com/bush.html

  31. 31.

    Gryn

    *sigh*

    You really don’t want to get into a link pasting war with me because I will *own* you. I (unlike you) have actually read all the rhetoric people on both sides of the issue have put up.

    My post was a regurgitation of what I found to be the few more compelling pieces of evidence. I now see that this was a waste of my time (predictably), I will hold off on part 2 of 2 until I see someone actually reading and responding (in their own words) to my part 1 of 2 post.

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