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July 30, 2004
Don't Get Kerried Away, Now ...
We know that Kerry mispronounced a woman's name as he misled America last night, but did you catch this? This is where I ended up scratching my head: I ... I wish, I wish my parents could share this moment. They went to their rest in the last few years. But their example, their inspiration, their gift of opened eyes, of own ... open mind, and, and endless heart, and, and world that doesn't have an end are bigger and more lasting than any words at all. Now if someone had told you George W. Bush said, "gift of opened eyes, of own ... open mind, and, and endless heart, and, and world that doesn't have an end are bigger and more lasting than any words at all," you'd believe it and you'd roll your eyes, or laugh. The official transcript made sense out of it: I wish my parents could share this moment. They went to their rest in the last few years, but their example, their inspiration, their gift of open eyes, open mind, and endless world are bigger and more lasting than any words. PBS too reproduces the official "transcript" which is not at all a transcript: "a written record (usually typewritten) of dictated or recorded speech." Interestingly, both also omit the silly opening line, "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty." It struck me immediately as a mistake, and I would suspect that his handlers felt the same way, hence its quiet demise in the official version. It felt like a cheap line, and it was surely meant to conjure images of Kerry the soldier. However, they do retain the bit about being born in the "west wing" -- of the hospital. Then there was the anecdote about riding his bike into Communist East Berlin, and there's little doubt that it changed him. Before long he was riding his political career into communist apologetics, and has spent the better part of his adult life passing freely from one side of the divide to the other as it suited him. But enough about the past. John Kerry doesn't want to talk about his lies about war crimes in Vietnam. That would damage his current claim to war heroism. It's time to look at his record, as he invited us to do last night. And according to John Kerry his record is this: I ask you to judge me by my record: As a young prosecutor, I fought for victim's rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street. Now that's some record. I'm curious first how many (assistant) prosecutors don't care about victims, and how many pick and choose which the kinds of cases they prosecute. I wonder if Kerry ever said, "violence against a man? Let's put that case on the back burner." Of course not. That's just silly. But claiming that as a county prosecutor he made prosecuting violence against women a priority is equally silly. His jobwas to prosecute, not to prosecute certain cases, or to prosecute in certain ways. This kind of rhetoric is designed to buy the votes of women, and true to the leftist mindset, it fails to give women credit for seeing through cheap appeals. Every prosecutor prosecutes violent offenders regardless of the gender of the victim. Your pain hurts no more than my own. Now, in two decades as a senator Kerry did only three things: But now he's just being modest. He has apparently led the fight on numerous issues in the Senate. In fact, while he only claims to have broken with his party to vote for a balanced budget, as recently as January he claimed that he led the fight: [C]laiming to have "led the fight" for the balanced-budget measure is political puffery. Now there's leadership. Consider the fact that from his two decades in the Senate he listed three accomplishment when asking us to look at his record, and one of those accomplishments consisted of walking into a room at the end of a news conference and saying, essentially, "well, okay." As for the 100,000 cops (a number never actually reached), thank not John Kerry, but Joe Biden of Delaware, who was at the head, and who is one Democrat who might make a serious run with the American people (which means the Democrats will never nominate him). And yet, this bill is remembered not as the project of any senator, but as the project of President Clinton. (One more note. Don't forget that the bill ultimately failed. Republicans were right: the new police went where they were needed least.) Which leaves the record Kerry outlined for us with one issue: John McCain and Vietnam. Okay. So John Kerry worked with John McCain, and supported two bills led by others. Is there nothing else in his record he could direct us to? Is it that his Senate career has been uneventful, that he has authored only 8 bills, and that the bulk of them had no real importance? Asked recently what he has accomplished that wouldn't have happened had he not served in the Senate, Kerry replied: "There are actually a lot of things." As I said above, that's some record. Now, there wasn't much else of interest. Of course it was fun to see Jack Tripper, I mean John Edwards, appear to be directing an airplane with those rigid gestures, the point and then the thumbs up, over and over again when Kerry acknowledged him. And it was a challenging to grapple with Kerry's new math which makes it four years since 9/11 (I finally decided he must be counting inclusively, which means he has at least one classical value). And we saw that the piercing logic of John Edwards is as strong in Kerry: You don't value families by kicking kids out of after school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break. That's almost as sensible as the line about "senators and menators [sic] of congress," which the official "transcript" corrects to "senators and members of congress." Now, why am I picking on flubs? Because, by gum, enough misstatement by Bush makes the rounds unedited, while these cats get a white-washing! Oh yeah ... and because "menators of congress" just cracks me up. posted by Dennis on 07.30.04 at 01:30 PM
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» Critiques from DON'T BE DUMB!
The "most important speech of John Kerry's life" has been examined by about a million columnists and bloggers today. Here are two very good critiques, from different points of view: First, The Revolution directs us to a terrific analysis by [Read More] Tracked on July 30, 2004 11:19 PM
Comments
"You don't value families by kicking kids out of after school programs and taking cops off our streets..." You don't value the Tenth Amendment by federalizing everything that has traditionally been local. Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato the Elder) the Lesbian-worshipping gun-loving selfish aesthete · July 31, 2004 11:22 PM "Communist Apologetics?" Are you for real? Plus, I can't believe you linked Linda Chavez. A partisan columnist is hardly a quality source of information. Her mendacity and hypocracy is well known. If you choose to see Vietnam as a war about "fighting communists" and that Kerry's opposition to that war amounted to defending communism, I don't know what to say. Are you interested in the record at all or do you just parrot what you hear the Republicans say? You do realize that they (including your buddy Linda Chavez) want to put guys like you and me in jail, don't you? SixFootPole · July 31, 2004 11:54 PM Linda Chavez did indeed reprehensibly defend Santorum, who wants to put homosexuals in jail -- just as Kerry and Moore defend Castro, who puts homosexuals in "re-education camps". Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato the Elder) the Lesbian-worshipping gun-loving selfish aesthete · August 1, 2004 12:28 PM I'll try to respond soon, but I gotta jet ... Linda and Rush are outside honkin' the horn. We're headin' over to Ollie's place to shoot some hoops and brainstorm on drumming up more digital brownshirts. I gotta bring my 'A' game 'cause Santorum's got a killer jump shot. oh yeah... Plus, I'm gonna to try to convince them not to throw guys like you and me in jail. l8r! Varius Contrarius · August 1, 2004 03:04 PM Linda Chavez's views on Rick Santorum or sodomy laws are about as relevant to what she says about Kerry's Vietnam era actions as would be her position on abortion. No matter what her beliefs, it hasn't been shown that she got her quotes or facts wrong. They do think pretty highly of Kerry in Vietnam, actually. But I digress from the gay issue (or was that the topic?) Anyway, here's a report from Vietnam in 2002: ****Vietnam's state-run media recently declared homosexuality a "social evil" on par with drug use and prostitution and proposed laws to allow the arrest of gay couples. A report by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs said the number of gay couples is on the rise, though it offered no statistics. The government reported that homosexuals have infiltrated the tourism, restaurant and karaoke bar industries and that their "eccentric behavior" went hand in hand with prostitution, drug use and HIV/AIDS. Complaining that there are no laws against homosexuality in Vietnam, the newspaper concluded, "Everyone is now waiting for a legal framework to fight this social evil." Vietnam has repeatedly linked prostitution, drug use and gambling together as "social evils."**** While a number of Americans would like to do something like that in this country, centralized crackdowns are a little easier in a Stalinist gerontocracy. Of course, Vietnam also shows a compassionate side: ****“Homosexuality exists in our society, we can not change that by force. I think that besides accepting the mainstream culture as standard, we must educate people who are thinking of acting like gays even though they are not”.
“We must show them how anormalous homosexuality would be, help them to change their sexual behavious. For the truly homosexual people, the medical technology should help them to unify their body with their real nature by offering a sex-change operation”, Dr Anh said. **** Eric Scheie · August 1, 2004 09:42 PM |
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Nice post.
How about Stalinist values?
Here's Christopher Hitchens on number magic:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/print_mon.php?book_num=2002_11_01_book_arch.html
"Stalin's fans claimed to have completed the "Five Year Plan" in only four years, and the slogan for the slow on the uptake was "2+2=5" ."
Go figure!