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You are here: Home / Politics / Things That Keep Democrats Awake at Night

Things That Keep Democrats Awake at Night

by John Cole|  February 20, 20047:04 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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Wanna spook a Democrat? Sneak up behind them and yell “Nader in ’04!” Frightens the hell out of them, so much so that they are bringing out the goons:

Party boss Terry McAuliffe has just admitted meeting repeatedly with Nader to beg him not to run.

“I don’t want Ralph Nader’s legacy that he got George Bush for eight years in this country,” McAuliffe fretted on CNN.

“I’m urging everybody to talk to Ralph Nader. I’d love him to take a role with our party, to energize people, to get out there and get the message out.”

Speaking of that asshole McAuliffe- he was on the Big Show with John Gibson making the Bush AWOL charges again. According to McAuliffe, the records Bush has released ‘prove nothing.’

Trouble in Iraq, enormous deficits, numerous issues with which to capitalize upon, yet they seem to be happy to keep pushing moderates away from their party by either being outright liars or transparent phonies. The Democrats are unfit to lead.

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20Comments

  1. 1.

    M. Scott Eiland

    February 20, 2004 at 8:43 pm

    McAuliffe going to try to warn Nader off is like sending a guy in a clown suit with a red cape to calm a corral full of bulls down–it’s deeply counterproductive to the point of guaranteeing the result the Democrats don’t want. . .and you know, I feel just *terrible* about it.

    *Scott wanders off, giggling*

  2. 2.

    dg

    February 20, 2004 at 10:31 pm

    Bush’s records only confirm that he DID NOT serve from May ’72 to Oct. ’72. There are no pay stubs. But Calhoun was the only one who ”seen” Bush–on a base of 800 people–during this same period.

    Bush’s records also show that he was discharged 8 months early to attend class at Harvard.

    Bush’s records also do not explain why the Air Force invested so much money training a pilot only to let him stop flying without a flight evaluation.

  3. 3.

    alabamaconservative

    February 20, 2004 at 10:55 pm

    with the entry of nader, and the results of zogbys latest poll comparing red vs blue states (see excellent analysis at http://www.electionprojection.com), it is looking real good for bush even at these dark grey days…

  4. 4.

    dg

    February 20, 2004 at 11:11 pm

    Here’s something that’ll keep Republicans awake at night:

    Bush digging for WMD

  5. 5.

    HH

    February 21, 2004 at 12:40 am

    Calhoun’s not the only witness, there have been at least a couple others as well.

  6. 6.

    Kimmitt

    February 21, 2004 at 6:50 am

    “Fitness to Lead” apparently consists exclusively of the moral capacity to blow off service obligations in order to avoid drug testing.

  7. 7.

    addison

    February 21, 2004 at 6:56 am

    The above-linked gwbush.com site is the quintessential Lefist bumper-sticker slogan site. No ideas, no thought, just platitudes and emotion.

    The comparison of Bush to Milosevic? How crass, how simplistic, how immoral.

  8. 8.

    Slartibartfast

    February 21, 2004 at 9:27 am

    Kimmitt, there was no drug testing in the military back then. Drug testing didn’t show up until 1978 or so. Try to get your facts in some semblance of order before you attempt a drive-by, k?

  9. 9.

    Andrew J. Lazarus

    February 21, 2004 at 2:37 pm

    Kimmitt, there was no drug testing in the military back then. Drug testing didn’t show up until 1978 or so. Try to get your facts in some semblance of order before you attempt a drive-by, k?

    Sorry, Slart. Below, right down to the number of the regulation beginning tests in 1972, is excerpted from Salon.

    Which is where Air Force Regulation 160-23, also known as the Medical Service Drug Abuse Testing Program, comes in. The new drug-testing effort was officially launched by the Air Force on April 21, 1972, following a Jan. 11, 1972, directive issued by the Department of Defense. That initiative, in response to increased drug use among soldiers in Vietnam, instructed the military branches to “establish the requirement for a systematic drug abuse testing program of all military personnel on active duty, effective 1 July 1972.”

    It’s true that in 1972 Bush was not on “active” duty: His Texas Guard unit was never mobilized. But according to Maj. Jeff Washburn, the chief of the National Guard’s substance abuse program, a random drug-testing program was born out of that regulation and administered to guardsmen such as Bush. The random tests were unrelated to the scheduled annual physical exams, such as the one that Bush failed to take in 1972, a failure that resulted in his grounding.

    The 1972 drug-testing program took months, and in some cases years, to implement at Guard units across the country. And the percentage of guardsmen tested then was much lower than today’s 40 percent rate. But as of April 1972, Air National guardsmen knew random drug testing was going to be implemented.

    During the 2000 campaign, when Bush’s spokesman was asked about the possibility of Bush facing a drug test back in 1972, the spokesman told the Times of London that Bush “was not aware of any [military] changes that required a drug test.” Still, at the time when Bush, perhaps for the first time in his life, faced the prospect of a random drug test, his military records show he virtually disappeared, failing for at least one year to report for Guard duty. White House officials insist that if Bush missed any weekend Guard drills in 1972, he made up for them during the summer of 1973. If this is true, he would have been vulnerable to random drug tests during his makeup days. But again, Bush’s own discharge papers fail to conclusively back up his claim that he performed Guard service in 1973. [This last sentence is no longer quite true, the gap is now measured in months.–ajl]

  10. 10.

    rick

    February 21, 2004 at 5:35 pm

    Andrew,

    With the release of the ANG point records, the dental business, and the undisputed DD-214, the phoney issue is embalmed.

    Didn’t you get the Do Not Resuscitate order?

    Drug testing in the military didn’t really get rolling (routine and programmatic) until the 80s. Lucky for me, as I “experimented” a couple hundred times in the late 70s.

    Cordially…

  11. 11.

    Riggs

    February 21, 2004 at 8:38 pm

    Funny how the neolibs are just hanging on to this Bush military duty story. How badly they want it to have an overwhelming effect. Sorry dimwits but as Bush has already proven himself capable of leading the country in war, his service record dispute is a moot point.
    You might want to worry more about Kerry playing footsie with Hanoi Jane Fonda…lot of Nam veterans out there who remember.

  12. 12.

    Kimmitt

    February 21, 2004 at 9:12 pm

    Various accounts place the beginning of random drug screening (especially during physicals) as at the end of 1971 or beginning of 1972. Comprehensive screenings were not started until the 1980s.

    This is the origin of my (admittedly hyperbolic) statement.

  13. 13.

    Greyhawk

    February 21, 2004 at 10:43 pm

    What, exactly, is commendable about abandoning your command after less than four months?

  14. 14.

    Slartibartfast

    February 22, 2004 at 12:22 am

    “…a random drug-testing program was born out of that regulation…”

    In other word, you have zero evidence that drug testing was any sort of factor here.

    Odd that everything I found on military drug testing was reference to 1978. I’ll have to reGoogle.

  15. 15.

    Dean

    February 22, 2004 at 1:04 pm

    Slarti:

    Remember, only Kimmitt is allowed to move the goal posts around here!

  16. 16.

    Slartibartfast

    February 23, 2004 at 9:14 am

    It turns out that Kimmitt is correct. Doesn’t surprise me, when it comes to verifiable fact he’s usually right on.

    The new drug policy was two-pronged: to refuse entry to those who were drug-dependent, and to rehabilitate those in-service who were drug-dependent. Bring forth someone credible who documented suspicion that Bush was taking drugs at the time, or that actually saw Bush doing drugs, and this may have some traction. Until then, though, this is still an unevidenced accusation.

  17. 17.

    Kimmitt

    February 23, 2004 at 1:30 pm

    “Doesn’t surprise me, when it comes to verifiable fact he’s usually right on.”

    Hey, thank you. It really is my ideal to have discussions/debates where the facts are essentially agreed-upon and the difference comes in the interpretation of those facts.

    Bush’s alleged drug use is my personal theory as to why he skipped the physical and got himself grounded.

  18. 18.

    Slartibartfast

    February 23, 2004 at 1:57 pm

    My own personal theory is he was abducted by space aliens, but I have no evidence at all for that.

  19. 19.

    Kimmitt

    February 23, 2004 at 7:06 pm

    I think mine’s ahead; we can at least definitively establish the existence of illegal drugs in 1974.

  20. 20.

    Slartibartfast

    February 24, 2004 at 9:30 am

    Oh, Kimmitt, don’t go there.

    Chariots of the Gods, copyright 1968.

    See? Evidence!

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