Clinton and Ford are full of shit too. Anyone who thinks Kerry was talking about the troops is either lying or a retard.
Actually, I have no problem with the Dems rallying around the anti-Kerry position. He needs to get out of the way and let the next wave of leaders come forward.
The above statement was meant to apply to politicos only. I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone in this thread.
You quoted me, Apos, so I feel I am required to reply.
I have said, repeatedly, that I think Kerry was taking a shot at Bush getting us stuck in Iraq. But that’s not exactly what Kerry said. Now, I (a registered Republican voter) am not insisting that he meant it “the bad way”.
Well, I dunno. Since I was never issued a mind reading cap, I can only “judge” what people mean by what they say, how they say it (voice inflection), the situational context of where they say it, and what thier “body language” and other visual cues seem to indicate.
I have no other tools available to me.
Using these tools, I have decided that Kerry flubbed, and didn’t mean to be mean to the troops.
I never insisted I can read his mind. But I can insist what I thought he meant, based on what I heard and saw.
It’s not up to Kerry (or you) to decide if someone else (aka me) should get upset at something the Kerry uttered, especially if he was not clear about what he meant.
I reserve the right to be upset with whatever I choose to be upset about.
Wow. So, no middle ground, eh?
If you think Hillary “ex Goldwater Republican” Clinton is conservative, you’ve been watching too much Fox News. 
Are you calling Hillary Clinton a whore? From what I heard on the radio today she’s not too complimentary about Kerry’s stupidity this time.
James Taranto is clearly my second favorite commentator these days. He’s lived up to his reputation in today’s post on Kerry:
He includes the famous 1971 quote in which Kerry slanders Vietnam vets.
Urmm… no. I called her a Dem… did I miss the joke?
Apologies for post #268. It was hardly inclusive. As of today here’s a"roundup of right-wing nutjobs."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTQzZTMzMjAyYjQ4NzcxMjE1OTkxNTc2YWQ5YzI5ZjQ=
I can’t believe the horse is getting beat so long after its death. He obviously meant no offense to the troops and he obviously can’t tell a joke. It’s John Kerry, not Shecky Kerry. And if I was in the military, I’d be a whole lot more upset with Bush for putting me in a shooting gallery than with Kerry for muffing a punch line. And enough with this hyper-concern for our poor troops. They really don’t need constant verbal fellation in order to do their jobs- they need a plan to get home.
Well, to be fair, they’re not all “right-wing nutjobs”. Some of them are also “politicians who want to distance themselves as far as possible from Kerry so they have a chance of being elected.”
Any politician who wants to have a chance of being elected will denounce Kerry’s statement, whether they believe it was a flub or intentional.
Now they’ll bitch that he’s “flip-flopping again”. I’m still not sure why they bitched when he decided to “stay the course” rather than apologize- I thought they believed in that.
New here, aintcha?
Sure would! Which, of course, is one good reason not to do it. You have, I’m sure, a list of Democratic politicians who have done so, and a specific list of the statements that prove it? You think Ms. Duckworth, war vet and amputee, running for Congress as a Democrat…is she on your list of “a party of haters”? Got cites, bring cites.
But you make one good point: dissing the troops is bad politics. Which kind of leaves you in a lurch, doesn’t it? If you are to claim that Kerry deliberately bad-mouthed American troops, what could have been his motivation? Sabotage? What you have pointed out is that dissing the troops is the *least likely * interpretation. Yet you insist in ignoring the ambiguity and stating, as if fact, that such is precisely what he intended to do!
Well, then, why wasn’t he more explicit? If such were his intent, why shilly-shally about? Certainly has no problem in stating his case the Bush bites the bag, says so clearly and unambiguously.
Not only is your case built on an ambiguity, its an inference based on an ambiguity, and then taken as proof for the least likely of all interpretations!
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“Best and brightest”- that’s catchy. They ought to copyright that. (Anyone else remember the Rush Limbaugh to-do over that a few years back when nobody in D.C. seemed to have any clue that the columnist who said the military were not from the children of “the best and the brightest” was clearly referring to tb&tb as defined by Halberstam’s book and not taking a swipe at the intelligence/backgrounds of the military?)
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I’m glad the president is honored to be their c-i-c. So much so that unlike his other military duties he actually shows up for this one.
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He made the comment TWO FREAKING DAYS AGO but his apology “came late”. What… did 20,000 troops have to undergo grief counselling or throw themselves on their swords or get disowned by their families who hang on Kerry’s every syllable like it was issued from the mouth of their god of choice or… what, exactly?
And where the hell’s the apology for using torture, bugging telephones without warrants, leaking Valerie Plame etc etc ad nauseum. Have they ever demanded an apology for senator’s who make homophobic, racist, sexist or otherwise ignorant and hateful remarks that are clearly NOT taken out of context? Or for sending hundreds of thousands of troops into an area with faulty intelligence and… well, you get the drift.
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For the sake of Christ, Allah, El-ahrairah, God, St. George and St. Michael and the seven blind gods of the Iowa City Water Works, there were more than 100 troops killed in Iraq in the month that Kerry made that comment. They are surrounded on all sounds by people who hate their guts and outnumber them by a terrifying ratio (but luckily lack the arms and leadership and training to take them out). If a speech by a failed presidential candidate who is himself a veteran of the armed forces and an unpopular war and who not even the people who voted for him liked or even listen to anymore and a remark that was very believably a jab at Bush in the first place is the worst thing that happened to them in October then I for one am glad.
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I have no dog in the fight over the intelligence or lack of regarding members of the military. I’ve known brilliant people and total morons who had military backgrounds with most I know falling somewhere in between, pretty much the same ratio of brilliant:average:idiot as the rest of the population (including education professionals). There’s little generalization to make on their intelligence one way or the other but the idea of a man who has never fought in a war and used family pull to get his stupid ass out of service to call them categorically “the best and brightest” is sickeningly patronizing, up there with praising God while upholding death sentences and sanctioning torture or posing gay marriage as one of the great threats of our time in a climate his own people admit made the world MORE dangerous for terrorist attacks.
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If Democrats don’t gain a significant number of seats this coming Tuesday (not that they’re a flawless party) we really need to rethink that popular election thingy as it ain’t a workin’.
Again, note that White House essentially pushes the idea that there is no ambiguity at all: Kerry said that the troops are stupid, that’s that. Very slimy.
Well, Bush IS the decidinator, after all.
Sampiro–
- If Democrats don’t gain a significant number of seats this coming Tuesday (not that they’re a flawless party) we really need to rethink that popular election thingy as it ain’t a workin’.
What do you mean by this?
To recap, yesterday Kerry said he wasn’t going to apologize to anyone.
This morning, on the Imus show, he apologizes for a “botched joke”
This afternoon, he apologizes to the troops.
Three distinct positions, within a roughly 24 hour period.
If that’s not a “flip-flop”, what would you call it?