Welcome to News Virginian: Serving the Waynesboro, VA region | The Occasional Ombudsman: "But ask yourself, are you better off today than four years ago? If you have to think about it, then go check your 401(k).


Clinton most certainly was a draft-dodger. But you have to give him this: He openly opposed the war he was dodging.


I also found it nauseating that Bush would spend thousands of tax dollars in a risky public-relations/political stunt. The USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier he landed on to gloat about major combat in Iraq being over, cost $4.5 billion. And since Bush’s tailhook landing, 400 Americans have died in 'minor' combat in Iraq.


I have a real problem with a man who dishonored the National Guard - but somehow got an honorable discharge - and now has no compunction about sending U.S. soldiers to their deaths. (I’m not against the war, although an exit strategy would have been nice.)


If George W. Bush had been the son of a textile-mill worker, he would not have been so honorably discharged. He would have been arrested and charged with desertion. Bush does a disservice to every man and woman who has ever served in the National Guard, including our publisher, Tim Stratton, who spent six years in the Guard and 'would still be in the brig had I pulled that crap.'


Our president’s middle initial apparently stands for 'Wonder,' as in the Wonder years: 'I wonder if I actually showed up for my Guard duty in Alabama?'


That conservatives could go ballistic over Clinton’s lies and then dismiss them under a Republican is hypocritical - blind sheep following their leader off a cliff because he’s a sheep."