As you can see from the post under this one — from an interview Sept. 28 — I’m trying to catch up with all the interviews we’ve done over the last month or so. I’m about eight or ten candidates behind. My goal is to catch up before the week is over. We’ll see if that’s possible.
One of the great ironies of blogging is that if you spend a lot of time having experiences and gathering information worth sharing, you don’t have time to blog. The days that I go from one interesting meeting to another, and have dozens of blogging ideas, are the very ones when I can’t even pause to sit at the computer, even to glance at the blog, during that 24 hours. And I seldom get back to the missed material, because other stuff that has come up is more timely. It’s frustrating. I envy those people who blog for a living.
The last few weeks have been intense, and writing just one of these notebook-dump types of posts is pretty time-consuming. If they get briefer and briefer as I go, forgive me. But I’d rather give you something rather than nothing on each of the candidates we’ve talked to.
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Brad, keep the data flowing. You have been focusing on the state political scene while John Kerry has been doing his best to tilt voters into the GOP column. His latest insults to all of our brave military should convince the independents and moderates that the Democrat leadership should not be leading national security or military programs. Liebermann, who is a military supporter, was bounced out of the Democrat party, while Kerry was their flag bearer in 04. Quite telling.
I think Kerry may have gotten a lot ovotes for Republicans with that idiotic statement.
I love it when Democrats blurt out their elitist contempt of real America.
OK
Imagine this: You’re tied to a stake and savages are about to light the logs under your feet.
So, class, what do you do?
Cut and run!
How about this one? Evil-doers have tied you to the railroad tracks and the Teheran Express is bearing down on you. If you have any brains at all, whatcha gonna do?
Cut and run!
President George Bush has been accusing Democrats of having a reasonable, coherent Iraq policy: getting out alive. “Cut and run” for short.
Of course, most Democrats have denied having a “clear-cut” program on Iraq, preferring, “setting a firm date for phased withdrawal.” We don’t know what that date is, but if it’s anything later than Thursday, the policy is a fudge. Sorry, but “gnaw and wiggle” won’t do. Cut and run gets the job done. Gets you the heck out of harm’s way. When that runaway truck is careening down the jogging track, you don’t Stay the Course.
Try it yourself: Cut and run can be fun!
If pirates tie a boulder to your neck, what should you do, kids? Cut and run!
Or, let’s say you’ve got the wires to Dick Cheney’s pacemaker in your hand. What should you do? (No, no, no! Be kind.)
Greg Palast
Dave, it was clear what Kerry meant, namely, that someone who doesn’t use his education and do his homework can wind up getting stuck in Iraq. Namely, Bush, the commander, who has in fact gotten stuck in Iraq, by failing to use his education and do his homework.
The remarks about education came as the last in a series of riffs on Bush, in which Kerry said, for example, that Bush claimed to be from Texas but now lives in a state of denial. Are you seriously suggesting that Kerry, a combat veteran, in the midst of a series of riffs on Bush, suddenly veered to to gratuitously slam our soldiers? Are you saying that Kerry, who himself served in combat, was suggesting that combat service results from a lack of education?
Isn’t it common to talk of a commander being “stuck” or “bogged down”? I mean, who is it that’s “stuck” in Iraq? Is it the individual soldiers? No, it’s the U.S. military, and by extension, the commander of the mliitary.
No, the fact is that everyone knows what Kerry meant, and what he said is plain and unmistakable. It is clearly not a criticism of our soldiers; it is just as clearly a criticism of Bush. Bush, the Republicans, and you, deliberately misinterpreted what Kerry said in order to use the bodies of our soldiers as shields to deflect criticism away from themselves. It is the height of cowardice for them, and for you, to pretend that criticism of the commanders amounts to criticism of the troops.
But of course, that’s all you are, a worthless, lazy, freeloading coward. You don’t care about our troops and you don’t care about America. All you care about is sitting on your sofa living off handouts, and pretending that because you are willing to sit on your sofa while our soldiers go off to die, that makes you brave.
Well, a willingness for other people to die doesn’t make you brave.
If you can’t blame Clinton or Gore, I guess Kerry will have to do.
Can’t wait for the spin next Wednesday.
Of course Kerry wasn’t trying to impune the valor and spirit of the American soldiers in Iraq. This is a gigantic tempest in a very small teapot. He served in a dangerous war zone so he knows what it’s like. This is simply a ridiculous, desperate ploy by the Repugs.
And let’s not forget another desparate, dispicable attack. I love this quote (from Buzzflash writing in praise of Michael J. Fox):
“Let the Limbaughs of the world enjoy their hedonistic sex trips to the Dominican Republic and their illegal medications. Nobility of the spirit is not measured by the depth of one’s depravity; it is derived from the compassion of one’s inner soul.”
The next 6 days will see more of this flailing about. Sadly, it may actually have some effect if the Dems don’t fight back hard. But the truth is this: Republican leadership has failed to make us safer. Failed to make us wealthier or healthier. And it has certainly has failed, big-time, in creating a high standard of ethical values in congress. A Democratic controlled house and senate will go a long way toward returning America and the world to the high standards we took for granted during the Clinton years.
Kerry said the military was filled with uneducated losers, unlike himself and his elite audience.
In fact, the modern military is smarter and better-educated than the general population.
Kerry is not only ignorant and a liar, he is still living in his racist, class lies of Vietnam.
No, Lee, this is what you say when you want to say the military is full of uneducated losers:
“The military is full of uneducated losers”
Kerry said that failure to use one’s education, failure to do one’s homework and try to be smart can cause one to wind up getting stuck in Iraq. There’s one person that applies to, and that’s the Commander in Chief, who is not actually in the military.
Now, no doubt the reason you couldn’t read plain English well enough to understand what Kerry said is that your home is full of uneducated losers.
The Democrats managed to hide Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the last month but Kerry somehow got off the reservation. The fact that Dem candidates are shunning this guy like the plague speaks volumes. Bush had higher college grades than Kerry, interesting fact. So the pro-Kerry people can spin all they want, but this loser is like the gift that keeps on giving. I am trying to figure out how Karl Rove (aka genius) managed to subconsciously control Kerry’s brain and get him to say this. Anyone have any ideas?
Dave, it’s you that’s, well, not “spinning” the issue, but lying about it. Again, Kerry was riffing on Bush’s failure to use his education, and his consequant getting stuck in Iraq. But of course, you aren’t going to be able to understand plain English words because
a) you don’t want to understand them
b) you’re stupid.
You would have us believe that Kerry, a combat veteran, was deliberately insulting our soldiers by making elitist comments at Pasadena CITY College, a two-year institution. Now, I know that for many people in South Carolina, a two-year school is in fact an elite insitution, but in California, the Pasadena City College and the other 2-year schools aren’t elite and the people who go there aren’t elitist.
You would have us believe that in the midst of a riff on Bush, Kerry suddenly veered off to make a gratuitous insult about our troops to students at a 2-year college.
Harry Reid hasn’t been hidden, he came out just yesterday and excoriated House Republian Whip John Boner for insulting our troops by telling Wolf Blitzer that it wasn’t fair to blame Donald Rumsfeld for the failure in Iraq, that it’s the troops who are to blame. But you aren’t going to say a word about Boner’s remarks, because you don’t actually care about our troops, only about using them as shields to deflect criticism of your viewpoint.