September 4, 2004
NEWSFLASH: BUSH DRANK!:
George Jr sent out of Texas by father as a 'drunken liability' (Gary Younge, September 3, 2004, The Guardian)
The US president, George Bush, was transferred to the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam war because his drunken behaviour was a political liability to his father in Texas, the wife of one of his father's former confidants revealed yesterday.Linda Allison told the political website Salon.com that throughout the time Mr Bush was in Alabama she never saw him in uniform and had no idea he was supposed to be in the National Guard.
"Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston." Asked if she had ever seen him in uniform Mrs Allison said: "Good Lord, no. I had no idea the National Guard was involved in his life."
Mrs Allison is the wife of the late Jimmy Allison, a former political consultant and newspaper owner from Midland, Texas and one time confidant of the Bush family. Motivated by pride in her husband and pique at the manner in which the Bush family discarded him once they believed he was no longer useful, the interview is the first she has ever given.
The arc of the John Kerry story is that he served in Vietnam 30 years ago and he's ready for war today because he's the same guy who commanded that swift boat. The arc of the George Bush story is that he was an irresponsible drunken failure in his youth but that he was born-again and is a completely different man than he was thirty years ago. That leaves us all with a fairly simple choice: do you want to be lead by the 22-year old lieutenant or the grown-u commander-in-chiefp? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 4, 2004 6:22 PM
It is my understanding that flying a F-102 isn't the easiest feat in the world, If Bush could do it drunk, I don't need to imagine what he can do sober.
Posted by: J_Crater at September 4, 2004 9:26 PMWow, Bush was a drunk 30 years ago!
This is breaking new ground. What's next? There was slavery in much of the US prior to 1863.
Posted by: Bart at September 4, 2004 10:48 PMThrowing out dirt from 30 yrs ago on Bush shouldn't work because, unlike 2000, he has 4 yrs experience as president for the people to judge. The Dems are really getting desperate now.
Posted by: AWW at September 4, 2004 11:11 PMDesperate it is. And just how desperate are they? So desperate that they're talking up a "60 Minutes" segment tomorrow by the former lieutenant-governor of Texas, who will be recounting information that he recorded in a sworn statement _five_ years ago, before GWB's first Presidential campaign. I mean, come _on_, people! Do you really expect me to believe that this wasn't brought out during the huge foofooraw this spring? I don't think the Democrats can have read the WaPo poll earlier this week which said that a whopping 70% of the public didn't believe that Bush's National Guard record was relevant to the current campaign.
And bringing up the drinking is so pitiful as to be laughable. We went through that already in '00, right before the election. I would have thought that if GWB still had a problem it would have cropped up long before now - you just can't keep that kind of thing hidden.
Posted by: Joe at September 4, 2004 11:21 PMJudge Crater:
Even more impressive the accuser claims he flew it into the woods or something.
Posted by: oj at September 5, 2004 12:02 AMYou are right AAW: the public has had 4 years to judge GWB'S experience, but you missed the point. It is not about dirt, it is about integrity, and Bush has none. He lies to your face and you just eat it up asking for more, His record shows major loss of jobs. So what if he say the rate of jobs is up so many percent, it is a percentage based on the amount of jobs left after the major loss. Get it. I have a hundres jobs , lose 50 % so now I have 50 jobs. If I increase the jobs by 50% I stilee only have 75 jobs. And haw can yohe talk about unemployment when he only looks at who is eligible to receive unemployment benefits. He misuses statistics, by quoting average incomes, not thre mode of the median incomes. Why do republicans refuse to do the math?
You are right AAW: the public has had 4 years to judge GWB'S experience, but you missed the point. It is not about dirt, it is about integrity, and Bush has none. He lies to your face and you just eat it up asking for more, His record shows major loss of jobs. So what if he say the rate of jobs is up so many percent, it is a percentage based on the amount of jobs left after the major loss. Get it. I have a hundres jobs , lose 50 % so now I have 50 jobs. If I increase the jobs by 50% I stilee only have 75 jobs. And haw can yohe talk about unemployment when he only looks at who is eligible to receive unemployment benefits. He misuses statistics, by quoting average incomes, not thre mode of the median incomes. Why do republicans refuse to do the math?