16 Comments

Obligations associated with National Guard service have varied widely over the years. LBJ wouldn't call up the Guard to fight in Vietnam, so it became the haven for draft-dodging football players. The post Vietnam Cold War was a pretty cushy time to be in the Guard if you hoped never to be called up beyond your annual training. And Guard is smart enough to make it easy for powerful politicians to serve; there's a lot of flexibility on when and where they serve.

That said, <i>a lot </i>of Guardsmen got called up, sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, and saw combat.

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True. But also the Army and the Army Guard in particular recognized that the LBJ's draft-the-hippies policy was a disaster for them. One of Vietnam-veteran Colin Powell's changes as JCS chairman was to restructure the military so that it could not mount a big operation without calling up the Guard.

"Calling up the Guard" is of course also known as "mobilization," which was what led to WW I. So it's sensitive.

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<i>so it became the haven for draft-dodging Republican politicians' sons.</i>

FIFY

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Ten bucks says his daughters will be voting for Shaheen.

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Don't know why, but I have the strangest urge to play a game of solitaire right now...

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<i>¡Es verdad! </i>But also the sportsballers.

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Not, however, Scott Brown.

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"Vote for Scott Brown because of reasons," is basically the gist of it then?

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"This is a man that just desperately cares about other people and wants to help."

Unless you don't re-elect him and then he's all like, "Screw you guys, I'm going home, which has always been New Hampshire and not Massachusetts, of course!"

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"Scott will do for New Hampshire what he does to me, but probably more often and thoroughly."

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He'd do anything for a neighbor unless the neighbor is in Massachusetts because not enough of those ungrateful bastards voted for him.

--Gail Brown

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and with less crying afterwards

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What can Brown do for you?

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I don't want to hear ONE WORD from a woman who could sit next to her husband while he's wearing that sweater and not make him go upstairs and change.

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It's pretty amazing that you can retire as a colonel with, apparently, three widely separated weeks of overseas duty.

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Pretty good puppet routine, but I saw his lips moving.

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