Kerry's Botched Joke

Yeah he did. Immediately before the “stuck in Iraq” statement. He said Bush.

No he didn’t. He never said soldiers.

One other point I forgot. I really don’t hold it against Kerry that he ad libbed something dumb. I’m sure if you followed me around with a mike all day you’d get a lot worse. But his follow-up statement was beyond disgraceful. All he had to do was say “Sorry about that. I was trying to make a joke and it came out wrong.” And then STFU.

I read his statement and I honestly thought it was satire. I clicked on the link to see who wrote it.

While the right-wing smear machine go on and on unchallenged? That is what lost the election in 2004, letting them get away with it without fighting back. I say kick 'em in the teeth with it, over and over, unitil *they * STFU.

As they say in Latin “Res ipso loquitor” or something like that. After the slander he committed agianst Vietnam vets I don’t think this adds anything new. But if some people have a need to be as defensive about Kerry as…as John Kerry, then I won’t interfere anymore.

That’s because that’s all they do, talk.

IAVA calculated which senators and congressmen had a history of supporting the troops, and which didn’t, and graded them on a curve.

Guess who had A’s & B’s.

List of democratic vets running for office

snip** The war of words, tough even for this hard-fought campaign season, came after Kerry told a group of California students on Monday that those unable to navigate the country’s education system “get stuck in Iraq.”**

from this website - Examiner is back - Examiner.com

This is the worst sort of editorialising, the reporter has placed her own interpretation on the comment, and then reported it as fact - SHAME ON HER

Perhaps how you interpret the comments depend on your own predjudices?

To me at least it is perfectly clear that Kerry is reffering to Bush. Haven’t we heard many many times that the “homework” was not done before the invasion, that there is a lack of Iraq experts, that no plan for the peace existed? Isn’t this a recurrent theme with relation to Iraq? Why would you need to think any different

Der Trihs? :smiley:

I think Kerry was talking about the troops. Making a funny-funny “Study hard and do your homework or you’ll wind up toting a rifle in [del]Viet Nam[/del] Iraq.”
You know, just like they used to tell you that if you didn’t do your homework you’d wind up being a garbage man or digging ditches.

Then it got to Kerry’s spin-doctors:
Gaffe plus two hours: “OMG, the Big Guy fucked up!”
“Yeah, what are we gonna do?”
“Send out for some Starbucks, the double caffeine kind. This is gonna take some time”

Gaffe plus six hours:
No, no and NO! Nothin works!”
“Can’t we just deny that he said it?”
Love to, but can’t. Some bastard’s bound to have it recorded.”
“Shit!”

Gaffe plus eight hours:
“I got it! Everybody hates Bush. We’ll have him say he was talkin’ about Bush!”
“Nobody’s gonna believe that. I mean, they can, you know, actually read and hear what he said…… ‘You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.’”
“Yeah, I know that the Bush excuse is weak as water, but other than that, we got nothin.”
“Ok, lets run with the ‘It was about Bush’ thingy.”
“Yeah, it ain’t much, but it’s all we got.”

So yes, I think the explanation is trying to crawl out of a hole.
Since Kerry’s not running, I don’t think it will make much difference in the up-coming elections. Probably kills any chance he had of another presidential run, however.

Right. In a year and a half, people will definitely still be talking about this one thing he said and not the Presidential campaign he ran in 2004.

I guess I’m being very sarcastic in this thread, but I’m seeing a lot of interpretations of this comment that don’t make any sense.

Doesn’t someone actually have to say something to have said something? By what magic does Kerry convey that he is no longer talking about Bush, but is now talking about our soldiers, without using a word like “soldier”? The cite above will be accepted as fact just as soon as a Certificate of Telepathy is offered for inspection.

I think his comments could easily be interpreted to be directed at Bush, and that was my first reaction when I heard it. I was on a long drive yesterday and was listening to a few talk stations. I stuck on Rush and then Sean Hannity, because to hear them describe it, Kerry had made a comment along the lines of, “F@#$ those worthless morons.” I couldn’t wait to hear it. When I actually did, my reaction was that it could well have meant Bush (but I could also understand an interpretation of it being conveyed toward the troops, context aside).

That said, it was a really poor choice of words, given the baggage (deserved or not) that Kerry carries. Caesar’s wife, and all that. On Hannity and on Rush, they played Kerry’s comments from back in the day about the atrocities Viet Nam soldiers perpetrated (rape, beheadings, behaving like Genghis Khan), over and over and over. They kept quoting his comments (again, out of context perhaps) about how soldiers in Iraq have no business storming into private homes in the dead of night, terrorizing women and children. Again, lest my point be misinterpreted, regardless of whether or not you think every comment he ever made was a beacon of noble truth (I don’t), it’s irrelevant politically. He should have known better, or he needs to develop much better speaking skills. I don’t think it affects this election cycle much, but it could well be the final nail in the coffin of his presidential ambitions.

It’s all about The Base … all the angry white men pissed about Foley and depressed with all the Rush bashing. They aren’t going to take this lieing down and they’ll make sure mama gets to the polls too!

As for the Dem Base… anybody going to be excited to be reminded what a frickin’ idiot Kerry is?

Looks like they’re starting to run away from him.

Prediction: He will eventually nuance his way to what could arguably be an apology to try to kill the story.

Wow, you’re right, I bet he loses the election.

This is not a good thing for Republicans either. It makes them look like they would rather win the last election over again, than face the issues that voters care about in this one. It takes the Republicans off message as well, at a time they can least afford it. If Bush is focusing on Kerry and the soldiers in Iraq, he can’t scare us about the terrorist boogeyman, or crow about his phantom economic boom.

…it was an accurate statement about how the aristocrat Kerry feels about the proles. his contempt for working men and women is profound…his actions and words reveal him for what he is- amoney grubbing, social climber. He isn’t referred to as ‘live shot’ for nothing!
An interesting aside; Kerry’s family owns an island in Buzzards Bay, MA-not far from Woods Hole . The Island is called Nashaweena Island. A friend of mine once was sailing in Buzzards bay, and broke a boom. He therefore had to anchor off Nashaweena I sland for the night- the next morning, a member of the Kerry clan came out and “asked” him to leave, apparently a mariner in diustress musn’t be allowed to upset the Forbes family enclave!

Botched joke or not, I did like Kerry’s response to some questions. Where was this fire a few years ago?

Is there any truly undecided voter in VA, TN. MO, or NJ (which have the tightest Senate races) for which this will truly make a difference?

The Bush DUI came out a week before the election and didn’t make enough of a difference.

No, Bush was ahead in the polls in Maine and lost there, because that’s where it got the most coverage.

This is just what tthe Pubs want. the message is: We can protect you; the Dems can’t.

As for the economic boom, for some reason they don’t seem to want to push that. Go figure. I think this is one thing we can agree on. They don’t do a great job of getting their message out. I can’t imagine Clinton - or most politicians on both sides - doing such a bad job of not taking credit for this kind of prosperity.

Great story - I love it. I lived in Boston for many years and still have lots of friends there. Apparently local talk show hosts could fill lots of time by inviting callers to call in with their personal experiences of run-ins with Kerry. Lots of funny arrogance and conceit.

Kerry may have meant Bush, but he referred to anyone who got stuck in Iraq. He can spin as hard as he wants, but…

Still, it seems characteristic (and stupid) as other things that Kerry has said.

He says everyone in Viet Nam committed war crimes on a daily basis. After he got back from Viet Nam.

Everyone who got us stuck in Iraq is stupid and uneducated. After he voted in favor of invading Iraq.

:shrugs:

Maybe he was talking about somebody else who flunked out of law school and divinity school, and wound up in Viet Nam.

Regards,
Shodan