Will You Watch the Debate?

The first paragraph of your source indicates there are a few more rules than just "serving in combat."



This link has military pay info and indicates who qualifies for the tax break you referenced. http://www.dfas.mil/money/milpay/pay/2004paytable.pdf

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Getting Junior's Goat

By MAUREEN DOWD


How strange that George W. Bush had his appointment in Samarra: his commanders taking a stand against the relentless Iraqi insurgents, trying once more to turn the corner in a war with endless corners.

Mr. Bush is reminiscent of the protagonist of "Appointment in Samarra," by John O'Hara - Julian English, the son of a WASP-y, aristocratic, renowned, ineffectual father. Julian's pals were "the spenders and drinkers and socially secure, who could thumb their noses and not have to answer to anyone except their own families."

Bristling with filial tension and nurturing the chip on his privileged shoulder, the son refuses to follow in the proper father's footsteps and instead engages in, as John Updike put it, "impulsive bellicosity," falling into a self-destructive spiral that starts when he throws a drink into an ally's face at the club.

O'Hara prefaced the novel, his most brilliant, with a quotation from Somerset Maugham about the futility of using a reverse playbook to avoid your fate: The servant of a Baghdad merchant runs into Death at the marketplace and gallops off as fast as he can to Samarra, thinking Death will not find him. But, it turns out, their appointment is not for Baghdad on that day, but for Samarra that night.

W. has rocked the nation and the world as he gallops fast, frantically trying to avoid his dad's electoral fate.

He no longer has to chafe at his father's imposing shadow. If he wants to go to war with Saddam without even discussing it with his dad, he can. If he wants to keep his dad from having a speaking slot at the Republican convention, he can.

Even though the president, waving off any attempts to put him "on the couch," refuses to acknowledge any Oedipal sensitivities, John Kerry artfully drilled into the sore spot in the first debate.

Senator Kerry evoked the voice of Bush 41 to get under 43's thin skin. The more Mr. Kerry played the square, proper, moderate, internationalist war hero, the more the president was reduced to childish scowling and fidgeting, acting like a naughty little boy who refuses to sit in his seat and eat his spinach and do all the hard things a parent wants you to do.

"You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad beyond Basra," Mr. Kerry said, as W. blinked and burned. "And the reason he didn't is, he said, he wrote in his book, because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation."

Mr. Kerry told the now-and-then Guardsman about the "extraordinarily difficult missions" of our troops in Iraq: "I know what it's like to go out on one of those missions where you don't know what's around the corner. And I believe our troops need other allies helping."

Playing the Daddy card was part of the Kerry makeover by the Clintonistas - Bubba eye for the Brahmin guy.

In their '92 debate, Bill Clinton used the same psychological trick to rattle Bush 41. Objecting to the Republican pinko innuendo about a trip he had taken as a young man to Moscow, Mr. Clinton reminded the first President Bush that his father, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, had stood up to Joe McCarthy: "Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy. You were wrong to attack my patriotism."

The Bushes get very agitated when confronted with the specters of fathers who made them feel that they never measured up.

And even though Mr. Kerry is more of a stiff loner than Poppy Bush, they share enough - that patrician, dutiful son, star of the class and the playing fields, hero on the killing fields, stuffed résumé, Council on Foreign Relations, multilateral mojo - that he can easily get W.'s goat.

It was a sign of how unnerved W. was that he had to rely on his own dark, foreboding and pathologically unapologetic surrogate Daddy, Dick Cheney, to clean up his debate mess and get the red team back in the game.

The vice president shielded the kid by treating John Edwards as even more of a kid.

Mr. Kerry may take on the voice of Daddy Bush again in Friday's domestic debate, pointing out that W.'s father tried to fix the deficit, rather than mushrooming it to $415 billion.

The Clintonistas have infused the Kerry campaign with a new motto: "It's the couch, stupid

BBB
This is Maureen Dowd's best column on George W. Bush. A scathing, deadly correct analysis of the life-long tormented son many of us have always believed W. to be.

Now, however, W. faces a new challenge. How does he measure up to Cheney's good debate performance as compared to his own pitiful debate? Once again, W. doesn't measure up---this time to his underling Vice President---not someone above his own status. How miserable he must be while still not admitting to himself his life-long serial failures in everything he undertakes.

I think these events could provoke George W. into even more risky behavior that will put America in greater danger as well as the rest of the world. Something even Poppy and his friends won't be able to fix to get him off the hook. All the more reason to remove him from office in November 2004. I would like it even sooner, like today. If I had my drothers, a sane president Cheney would be less risky than W. at the helm until W. is back in Crawford, Texas, permanently.

W. Bush should have taken his oath on a psychiatrist's couch instead of a bible. Presidents Bush 1 and 2 are a good example of why we should never elect the son of a previous president to the presidency.

BBB

Re: BBB


You may find it interesting that the only other son-of-a-Pres, John Quincy Adams, was even less popular.

He once said of himself:
"I am a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners: my political adversaries say, a gloomy misanthropist, and my personal enemies, an unsocial savage. With a knowledge of the actual defect in my character, I have not the pliability to reform it"


If fact, he is the only U.S. President to ever win despite finishing second in both Electoral Votes and the Popular Vote.

1824 Results.

Jackson..... 99 Electoral Votes.... 153,544 Popular Votes
Adams....... 84 Electoral Votes.... 108,740 Popular Votes
Crawford... 41 Electoral Votes...... 46,618 Popular Votes
Clay........... 37 Electoral Votes...... 47,136 Popular Votes

Since no candidate had received a "clear majority", by the terms of Article II of the Constitution, the House of Representatives had the task of choosing the new President.

Since Clay had the fewest electoral Votes, he was forced to drop out of the race. By throwing his support behind Adams in what Jackson and Crawford screamed was a "corrupt bargain", Clay effectively swayed the House's vote to Adams. Clay was then named Secretary of State.

The angry Andrew Jackson wrote of Clay, "The Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver."

John Quincy Adams was also a fiercely religious man... reportedly read the Bible at least once every year.

That's where the similarities ended though. He was also fluent in several languages and was all about using the Federal Government for wide ranging public improvements to "the benefit of the people". He got zero cooperation from Congress and was badly defeated by Andrew Jackson in the next election. He spent the rest of his reportedly miserable life serving in Congress where he died in the office of the Speaker of the House. After working in public office through the administrations of the first 11 Presidents of the United States, he finally succeeded in having the "gag rule" abolished in 1845, finally allowing discussion of the "Slavery Question".

P.s. I don't have an online source, but I did reference David C. Whitney's "The American Presidents"... a quick reference book that I highly recommend.

OB
Thanks, OB, such interesting similarities.

In W. Bush's case, in addition to his father-son relationship, he also has an extremely strong mother. The combination seems to have deeply scarred W. The only son of this Bush parent combination that seems to be normal is Jeb.

BBB

Re: BBB


hi bumblebee. hope all's well !

this really caught my eye. " a sane president cheney". huh??? i'm not sure that there is such a thing. imho, he's the one that's been running the show all along.

and after all, he is a founding father of the project for the new american century.

Both Cheney and Bush are pretty maniacal in their neoconservative approach to destroying the world and America's credibility. And they are the biggest liars to EVER taint a U.S. administration.

Naw, that dubious honor goes to our former President, who repeatedly lied under oath as a sitting President and got himself impeached, disbarred from the practice of law, and fined a couple of times.

Yeah, but the severity of his lies were paltry compared to those of the sitting admin, which has directly led to the deaths of over a thousand American troops....

Cycloptichorn

At the hands of the terrorists, those lives were lost.

And I do not consider a sitting President's lies under oath a "paltry" matter.

Obviously, lying about BJ's is more important to you than lying about a war and the deaths of thousands.

You've always shown your true colors in that regard, Pragmaticone.

Be careful of what you wish for BBB.. :wink:

Bush said bring 'em on, Larry434. He said this was a crusade. Why don't you go over and ask the troops whether they appreciated those remarks or not?

You certainly seem to think that the current admin's lies are paltry. What is the difference?

Cycloptichorn

Larry434 seems to represent the white, heterosexual conservative Republican who is more concerned with a Democratic President lying about a BJ than a neoconservative Republican President lying about this war.

A proven and admitted lie under oath by a sitting President is of more significance to me than unproven allegations of lies.

Innocent until proven guilty is the way I see it and it is the way of our Republic.

Why do you introduce race?

Haven't said that. I have questioned some of the allegations of lies by this administration, however.

How anyone can equate the lies that Clinton told to the lies that Bush told is beyond imagination.
How many people were killed as a result of Clinton's lies? How much treasury was spent?
Personally I would not give a damn if the entire White House staff lined up to give Clinton a blow job as long as he did the job he was elected to do. And the only thing he found hard was keeping it hard.
Bush through his lies and deceit has killed thousands, both Americans and Iraqi's and wasted untold billions that could have been used to finance many worthwhile and sorely needed projects. There are lies and there are LIES

Can't make that comparison yet. When Bush's alleged lies are proven, or admitted, as Clinton's were, then we can make a comparison of the onerousness of the two.