Posted on 05/19/2010 6:21:19 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Christopher Shays of Connecticut found it puzzling: over time, his friend Attorney General Richard Blumenthal kept revising how he talked about his military service during the Vietnam War.
Mr. Shays, a conscientious objector who avoided the Vietnam War, has his own theory about Mr. Blumenthal’s evolving descriptions of his service: “I think that it was a way that he quickly bonded with people I am sure he admired and respected.”
When Paul Kingman, a Navy veteran who lost feeling in his feet after chemotherapy, called Mr. Blumenthal’s office in 2007, he was trying to get a hearing for disability payments from the Social Security Administration. So it came as a surprise when Mr. Blumenthal himself got on the line.
“He’s a nice guy; he was cordial,” Mr. Kingman, 50, said from his home in Naugatuck. “Busy people like him, with all the rest going on in the state, I was surprised he’d have time for little old me.”
A week after his conversation with Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Kingman learned that his hearing, which he had been trying to get for nearly four years, had been scheduled.
“I don’t know who he talked to, but next thing you know, I had a hearing,” said Mr. Kingman, who at the time was living on $200 a month and food stamps. “He stood up for me.”
Cecelia Louis had a similar story: after five years trying to obtain health care from the Connecticut Veterans Affairs Department for her 78-year-old husband, a Korean War veteran, she reached out to the attorney general’s office, which resolved the issue in a matter of weeks.
“He realizes, especially now with all the veterans coming home with great needs, how important this is,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That'd be like wanting to quickly bond with the Lakers by saying you played for them in the '70s.
Try again, Chris.
is the NYT starting to spin Blumenthal’s lies as lies in the service of a greater good? They’ve done it before. You could practically see contempt dripping of the NYT pages when they suggested any lie Clinton told was OK to defend against that “trailer trash”, “right wing tool” Paula Jones. To them, lies don’t matter as long as you support the correct agenda.
One word: POSER!
My husband was off the coast of Nam on the USS Midway, pulling the last ones out. That little piper cub with a Vietnamese pilot and his family aboard which landed on the USS Midway is in the Pensacola Naval Museum.
Hubby cannot claim, nor would he, service in Vietnam as he was never on land.
Yet this POSER does.
Retired Senior Chief’s wife.
This article and story is a cheap shot.
Blumenthal DID serve in the Marines during the VietNam era.
He served as an attorney and as such was exposed to back sprains while sitting in his leather chair and also vicious paper cuts as he thumbed through various legal briefs.
Enough it enough. Give the man a break!
“There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon of exaggerating military service by people who feel nostalgic because they missed their war,”
Nostalgic? WHF does this mean? Nostalgic? Nostalgic because they missed the war? I have no idea if this POS had any draft deferrments or not, but would any of you care to make a few side bets?
Their elitism could not be bothered by something the little people could take care of. Does clintoon come to mind? Gutless pieces of shit not worthy of being called an American. Nor worthy of being called a man.
Anytime, anywhere asshole.
Thank your brother for his service, and thank you for your refreshing attitude. “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.”
In my opinion, if you served on a ship off the coast of Vietnam during the Vietnam War, you did serve in Vietnam
Those were bamboo pungee sticks that caused Bluminthal’s vicious paper cuts
I have to wonder at the motivation of this socialist PR mechanism in this endeavor.
Why did the NY Times write this story? I bet there is a good story behind that decision.
Not according to the government.
He was also off the coast of Cuba during the Missile Crisis.
Or, wanting to quickly bond with the tech-savvy younger generation by claiming to have invented the internet.
Get the story out there now and water it down before the 'Rat primary in August.
Just one of many examples over the years was the lie that the Bush administration "outed" Valerie Plame in order to retaliate against her husband, Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about Saddam Hussein's attempts to buy uranium. The lie was invented by a (Democrat) journalist despite the fact that (on its face) it made no sense, picked up and endlessly repeated as a talking point by legions of Democrat talking heads and politicos, and is still fervently believed by them and their fellow travelers even though no evidence to support that lie has ever surfaced, and to the contrary, the outing was revealed to have been done by Richard Armitage and not by Dick Cheney or his staff.
The lies just never seem to die for Democrats...
John Kerry had no problem with that. It is seared in his mind! Maybe that is why Blumenthal tried it. Kerry made it look easy, until his shipmates outed him.
Those paper cuts can be painful if not treated right away. Had he consulted John Kerry he could have probably finagled a way to get a Purple Heart out of it. Maybe even a Silver Star.
True! dems think they can get away with murder...teddy did.
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