<p>He is being swiftboated, by himself. Just like when he fragged himself with the rice-fanny grenade and got another Purple Heart.</p>
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</p>
<p>I agree with Hereshoping that Kerry’s supposed “excuse” for his remarks is disgusting. I am so very tired of the insults and degrading name-calling that are repeatedly hurled at our president. To me it tells more about the integrity of the speaker than of his/her subject. You can disagree with a person…calling him “Mr. Sleaze” or other things does nothing to strengthen your arguments. This is just a further example of “negative campaigning” that disgusts me, and it comes from both parties. What a shame that people of integrity are surely driven from the idea of running for political office and public service out of disgust…</p>
<p>He was awarded a medal for being a dork under fire? Wow! </p>
<p>I wonder if needed his sights to shoot himself in the butt, or was it instinctive point-fire? Wait…you wrote hand grenade, then it was only necessary to be close.</p>
<p>p2noles, least Kerry was THERE unlike Bush who ran and hid and then didn’t even do his duty to completion, couldn’t even complete his own duties</p>
<p>wow, it is amazing that you will attack a war vet like that</p>
<p>my uncle was in Nam and I am angry that you would question the vets from that war, wow, what a hypocrite you are</p>
<p>With all due respect to you and your uncle, who I’m sure did his duty honorably, Kerry was apparently gaming the system for medals. He becomes a target for criticism when he makes certain questionable public remarks.</p>
<p>Bush isn’t the issue. He beat Kerry and that’s that.</p>
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</p>
<p>No, that would be John Kerry who claimed that the vets from that war cut off ears, etc. on a regular basis.</p>
<p>Conyat,you need to understand Driver. When she writes something like:
she’s just repeating her standard post, which is “I’m right and you’re stupid [insert pop cultural reference] hahahahhahahahah!” The pop culture reference doesn’t have to have any relevance to the subject at hand, and usually doesn’t; the post will invariably lack any substantive content. It’s Driver’s way of saying that she has absolutely no rational response to your post (i.e., you’re right, and she knows it) so she wants to (a) offend you, and (b) strike a pose that communicates the pretense that she’s more clever than you. </p>
<p>Learn to ignore it.</p>
<p>It could also be my way of saying that I know I’m right and I’m done arguing with children.</p>
<p>Or, I could have been on my own Hershey-induced sugar high. Halloween, and all that (I was giving out full-sized Hershey-with-almonds bars).</p>
<p>Either way, ignoring me would be your best bet, although try to do a better job of it than Kluge, who remains irresistibly drawn to me like a moth to flame. Perhaps he’s trying to tell you to leave me to the old pros, like himself–those who dare to doggie-paddle into the deep end.
[Why is “irresistibly” so hard to spell? Discuss.]</p>
<p>In effect and aftermath not unlike the Heimlick-Maneuver. </p>
<p>Having experienced this vomit inducing embrace myself, I can assure you that anyone not bobbing their head in agreement while the guy pontificates will be assumed to be either choking to death or a threat to the public good. </p>
<p>The tactic can be startling when first experienced and even while recognizing that his rhetorical methods are considered by most unorthodox and unsafe, I do believe he means well. </p>
<p>Still,
fyi, keep your head up…and watch out for flying food.</p>
<p>Should we distribute KM bags? :)</p>
<p>Kluge once administered the Kluge-Maneuver on me. It was a sticky situation. I still have nightmares.</p>
<p><a href=“Alien: Resurrection (1997) - Photo Gallery - IMDb”>Alien: Resurrection (1997) - Photo Gallery - IMDb;
<p>I changed jobs this morning, so I will be here a little less. But I do want to respond to a couple of posts:</p>
<p>UCLAri: No, I think I’m right about forestation on the Eastern Seaboard. It’s not a question of tree farms. Areas like Connecticut, central Massachusetts, and southern Maine were under much more intensive agricultural exploitation 200 years ago compared to now. Except for northern Maine and the Adirondacks, I believe there are no primeval forests in the East. (I used to go hiking in southwestern Maine a lot. You run into stone walls in the woods all the time.) There are lots of non-tree-farm woods there now.</p>
<p>Hereshoping, browninfall, driver: When driver first called our attention to it, long before Kerry addressed it publicly, my first, unmediated, purely private reaction was: “That sentence is about George Bush, not the troops. It’s probably being taken out of context.” Everything I’ve read or heard since then has confirmed that my first impression was correct (including the fact that the written text of the remarks distributed to the press before the whole thing blew up was completely unambiguous, and Kerry just muffed the delivery).</p>
<p>I understand that you all hate Kerry. It’s fine to hate Kerry, to hate what he stands for, his policy positions, his personal qualities. There are plenty of reasons to hate Kerry. But it is the height of intellectual dishonesty to pretend that he has ever said anything remotely like what you claim to believe he meant on Monday, or that a neutral analyst could conclude that he meant that. You may, without dishonesty, think that other “liberals” or Kerry supporters believe that. Maybe it’s true, although I have certainly never met such people. But not Kerry.</p>
<p>So fine. It’s your privilege to be intellectually dishonest. But I’m going to be a little more jaundiced next time you complain about the cheapening of educational and moral standards in our society. They are being cheapened, and you are enthusiastic participants in the process.</p>
<p>JHS: Do you have a link to the written speech? I haven’t been able to locate it.
Anyone?</p>
<p>Best take, courtesy of Swing State Project:</p>
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</p>
<p>But never mind. The election results next Tuesday are going to be primarily about Iraq: botched premises, botched planning, botched execution, botched assessments, all capped with head-in-the sand denial. </p>
<p>Whether the Dems take over either house of Congress I don’t know, though I think the odds for the House are very good. (Hey, Driver…did you see where the RCCC has run up the white flag and is pulling out of the PA-07? Must warm the cockles of your heart. Here’s to Admiral Sestak.) The estimates on the low end are close but no cigar. The estimates on the high end would make me giddy if I were susceptible to same. But when the RCCC and Bush/Cheney are having to defend the ID-01, NE-03, and WY-03 with hundreds of thousands of dollars each, just to name a few, you know the battle is being fought almost entirely on GOP-controlled territory. (I give them a chance at the GA-08 and GA-12, courtesy of a mid-census gerrymander, but that’s about it.) </p>
<p>And Republicans will have no one but themselves to blame, having surrendered their principles in exchange for the practice of mindless Bushism, rubberstamping every action with no oversight, no accountability, and where mindless robotic loyalty is prized over competence and integrity.</p>
<p>As it is, next Tuesday is only Act I of a four-act play and there’s a lot of time for twists and turns before the concluding act. But we can make a start when we return to a government that doesn’t confuse rigidity with strength, arrogance with decisiveness, and expediency for principles.</p>
<p>Actual text per the Boston Globe:
</p>
<p>When Kerry delivered the speech, the “us” got dropped. BFD in comparison’s to Bush’s outright war on the English language.</p>
<p>TheDad:</p>
<p>The difference?</p>
<p>Kerry comes across as a pretentious snob who looks down on many of us. </p>
<p>Bush makes these kind of verbal gaffes all the time, but he comes across as sincere. People tend to be more forgiving because they expect it out of him. </p>
<p>Whether the perception of either man is correct is up for debate. But that’s the PERCEPTION. And in politics, that means a lot.</p>
<p>I count seven missing words, TD. I guess Nutrooters will believe anything they read on Kos (Boston Globe, same thing). Admiral Sestak is going to have an interesting week, thanks to his brother in arms, the war hero. </p>
<p>How about that Ned Lamont? I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think a major re-study of polling is going to commence on Nov. 8.</p>
<p>Driver, and so? It’s easy to drop words from a prepared text when making a joke. I should know. If I’d been born in Arizona, I’d have a better sense of Yuma.</p>
<p>I don’t think Kerry’s gaffe is going to have any effect. Bottom line: Iraq: botched premises, botched plan, botched execution, botched assessement, capped by head-in-the-sand-denial.</p>
<p>As for Lamont, well, I confess I didn’t think that more than 2/3 of Republicans would vote for Lieberman. Just shows how much he’s the real GOP candidate anyway. And I’m not ready to concede that one yet.</p>
<p>BM: Bush sincere? Maybe a sincerely smug and arrogant moron.</p>
<p>TD:</p>
<p>The point is, many people see these two just as I described them. </p>
<p>That’s why Kerry has stepped in it.</p>
<p>It must be quite disconcerting to Mr. Kerry that his GPA at Yale was lower than the moron’s. How does a Bush hater live with that? </p>
<p>His “stuck in Iraq” comment was a brief shinig moment of self-revalation. Add it to the list of negative comments that he and Durbin, and Kennedy et al along with the dailykos, DU, and Huffington Post crowd make on a daily basis about our troops.</p>