Salon: retired officer saw Bush natl. guard records in trash

[Ronnie Raygun]

"Find me the first main press story you can after 9/11 mentioning W. stupidity or richboy connections. Late night talk shows stopped making fuun of the guy. Slate stopped publishing Bushisms for over a year, which I think is a tragedy for the history of comedy." - Max

I wasn't reffering to what happened after 9/11. I was talking about what happened before and after the election. Who cares if people stopped making fun of Bush for a year....other than people who view it as wasted opportunity to further their political agenda. After facing the worst attack in our nations history the vast majority of Americans didn't want to hear or see their president being made fun of or criticized unfairly. Even comedians themselves refrained........It was a more serious time unlike now. "Comedy",where the president was concerned, just wasn't very important to most people....there were more important things going on.

"I agree, the situation was unprecedented, but I'm guessing the Bush free ride after 9/11 went on longer than FDR's after Pearl Harbor." - Max

9/11 was worse than Pearl Harbor....anyways, I think your guess was wrong.

" Congress gave W a blank check for war in Iraq. - Max
The press didn't dig at what turned out to be ludicrous statements. I'm not talking about the general disagreement over WMD, I'm talking Cheney saying Iraq had nuclear weapons."

The Congress and the Senate saw the same exact intelligence that the president saw. They made up their own minds about the security risk in Iraq. There was NO blank check in Iraq or at least the kind that you are talking about.

"The patriot act? Congress for the most part admits it was passed WITHOUT BEING READ. The whole country lined up behind W, and perhaps they should have. It would be nice to feel W had risen to the occasion. Personally I feel his cabal of weasels and wolves used it to get everything on a political wish list that predated 9/11 and in many cases was not even tangientially related. But that's neither here nor there, since this issue is about free rides." - Max

Whether or not you agree with The Patriot Act is a whole seperate issue. It sounds like your argument here is with Congress, not Bush.

"W was an investigation free zone for well over a year. For a guy who immediately acted as if he had a sweeping mandate when in fact most people didn't vote for him, that's a historically unprecedented free ride." - Max

Well, his approval rating was in the mid 80's so I don't think your complaint is really with the media here.....it's with the American people.