THE FULCRUM

Hundreds of pages of President Bush's Vietnam-era military files were released to the media Friday amid questions about whether he completed his required service in the Air National Guard.

About 400 pages of what officials have been able to find of his military records -- from 1968 to 1973 -- were released early in the evening.

The department has subpoenaed at least six hospitals, in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Ann Arbor, Mich., to obtain medical histories for women who have had abortions in the last three years performed by the doctors now suing the government. A federal judge in Chicago has thrown out a subpoena against Northwestern University Medical Center because he said it was a "significant intrusion" on patient privacy, and hospital administrators in other cities are contesting the demand as well.

Mr. Ashcroft told reporters that "if the central issue in the case, an issue raised by those who brought the case, is medical necessity, we need to look at medical records to find out if indeed there was medical necessity." He refused to say whether he had personally signed off on the subpoenas for the records.

Recalls Memphian Mintz, now 63: “I remember that I heard someone was coming to drill with us from Texas. And it was implied that it was somebody with political influence. I was a young bachelor then. I was looking for somebody to prowl around with.” But, says Mintz, that “somebody” -- better known to the world now as the president of the United States -- never showed up at Dannelly in 1972. Nor in 1973, nor at any time that Mintz, a FedEx pilot now and an Eastern Airlines pilot then, when he was a reserve first lieutenant at Dannelly, can remember.

“And I was looking for him,” repeated Mintz, who said that he assumed that Bush “changed his mind and went somewhere else” to do his substitute drill. It was not “somewhere else,” however, but the 187th Air National Guard Tactical squadron at Dannelly to which the young Texas flyer had requested transfer from his regular Texas unit – the reason being Bush’s wish to work in Alabama on the ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of family friend Winton "Red" Blount.

Bold emphasis is mine.

In Alabama, where George W. Bush supposedly was slaving away on Winton "Red" Blount's 1972 U.S. Senate campaign in lieu of National Guard duty, he is remembered by a Blount son as a smartass "cuntsman" from Texas.

All this is to say that someone who goes through such training and who says that they "supported X war" that was happening when they became a pilot would not - under any circumstances - do anything to imperil their flight status and they would do anything they could to put their training to use in a war they believed in.

Does this sound like the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania? He is on record as saying that he didn't want to "go to Canada or shoot out his eardrum with a shotgun," and yet he can still say with a straight face that he supported the Vietnam War.

Continue reading "Get Me a Flight Surgeon."

"The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.

The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the U.S. economy.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
Emphasis mine.

Mail delivery to the Capitol complex is still suspended indefinitely, Capitol Police spokeswoman Contricia Sellers-Ford said yesterday.

Although police have confiscated all unopened mail from congressional offices, Sellers-Ford said the department still hasn't "pinpointed” its testing procedures or decided if mail will be returned.

The police notice said that mail removed during cleanup was “wrapped in protective packaging, catalogued and sealed inside protective containers and will be cleaned,” adding that “every effort is being made to safely return mail.”

Sellers-Ford said “nothing has tested positive.”

1. I didn't bother to count, but there had to be a dozen references to 9/11 in various guises regardless of whether there was reason to link the topic being discussed with the terrorist attacks of 2001. This has been a staple in every public utterance by aWol.

2. I know I mentioned it in my remarks above, but reading his remarks is like reading the ramblings of a 10 year old. His noun-verb agreement problems make me cringe. His remarks bounce erratically from point to point and topic to topic all within what should be a short, easy answer.

3. Bush's verbal "placeholders" and acknowledgments of statements would have gotten me - and most likely him - slapped as a kid. They consisted of "Yeah" and "Uh-huh" and other figurative verbal tics that are impolite at best and uneducated at worst in "polite conversation." Coming from a supposedly well educated man occupying the most powerful seat in the world, they are atrocious. They are not the sign of a common man, aWol is anything but common in his patrician and very privileged rearing and education.

4. He outright lied in several places. This point is well covered in lots of analysis of the interview, and I won't lay out the specifics here, it's been done better on other blogs (see above).