deserter in chief

[rone]

(via ratphooey) I'm not Michael Moore's biggest fan, but you should read this. Money quote (from MoveOn.org):

Bush was apparently absent without official leave from his assigned military service for as little as seven months (New York Times) or as much as 17 months (Boston Globe) during a time when 500,000 American troops were fighting the Vietnam War. The Army defines a "deserter" — also known as a DFR, for "dropped from rolls" — as one who is AWOL 31 days or more.

I don't see how anyone can vote, in good conscience, for George W. Bush given this information, added to all of the things he's done. If he's done such a good thing for Iraq, he can go run for president there. We don't want him here anymore.

Comments

[palecur.livejournal.com]

He spends like a thing there isn't an appropriate metaphor for. A drunken sailor would at least get laid instead of flinging cash into the gutter.

He's weak as all get-out on free trade. The steel and airline protectionism makes me seethe.

While the OMGPATRIOTACT stuff can get pretty exaggerated, and it is, it's pretty safe to say he's not the hugest booster of individual liberties.

I'm still voting for him.

Why?

Two reasons.

Imprimis:

A genuine commitment to breaking down and reshaping the culture that breeds terrorists. Blaming our crappy foreign policy for terrorism is insufficent; where are the Guatemalan, German, Japanese, Colombian terrorists? The Italian fanatics blowing themselves up in shopping malls? There's a long list of regions with arguable grievances of similar, if not greater, scope vs. the US. 'Ask yourselves why they hate you' does not suffice. There are specific pathological things wrong with this specific culture, and the conquest of Iraq is a critical first step in the decades-long process of destroying that culture and replacing it with something less relentlessly inimical. The President is the only person standing for election this cycle that has a strong commitment to that process, and I consider it vital to the long-term well-being of the nation.

Secundus:

Judicial appointments. The judiciary has become a de facto legislative branch; judicial fiat reshapes and flat-out creates more and more of our laws. I want to restrain that trend, or failing that, balance the courts with roughly equal activism on both sides. Strict constructionists would be ideal, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. I consider four years of Democratic judicial appointments an unacceptable risk. Republican judiciary appointments have a spotty record of partisanship (coughSoutercough), but Demo judiciary appointments are a lot more reliably (to me) bad.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

"A genuine commitment to breaking down and reshaping the culture that breeds terrorists."

That's pretty much utterly wrong. The attempt to "break down" the culture that breeds terrorists will fail. Look at Israel and how well they've done in that department. What Bush has done in the last 3 years doesn't make me feel any safer. And also consider how his administration grievously ignored any anti-terrorist information passed on by the Clinton administration.

Constructionism is an attempt to regard the Constitution as holy writ, and it should be considered pass´. If you want to see a restrained judiciary, maybe we should start with a legislative branch that passes cleaner and smarter laws, instead of crap that has riders hanging on it like the leech scene in "Stand By Me", or poorly thought-out crap like the Communications Decency Act.

How bad is Bush? I registered as a Democrat last week. That's how bad he is.