This just in from John Kerry:

It's a toss-up between Spain and France, so I pick Spain. I'm with the history professor and the soccer Hooligans asserting themselves...

Beware the sleeping truffle!
 
Cap’n AMatrixca said:
It's a toss-up between Spain and France, so I pick Spain. I'm with the history professor and the soccer Hooligans asserting themselves...

Beware the sleeping truffle!

If it weren't for Hitler I'd pick Germany. But the arabs have too much admiration for the guy. I'd say the UK if they can sneak a bomb in.

Ishmael
 
wazhazhe said:
Bullshit! Saddam had no nuclear program after the Gulf War. There was no connection between Saddam and terrorism. Why do keep repeating these lies? how about backing them up with evidence?
The 9/11 commision established that there was a connection between Saddam and al quida, but no connection between Saddam and 9/11.

You probably wont read this, since I'm on iggy because your mind is incapable of sorting out what "racism" is.
 
there are STILL so many who say the "plans" ended in 1991

as I have written on this thread and my OTHER thread

The DOCUMENTS themselves ALSO sho 2002

Further

The NYTimes itself had the dates 1991 AND 2002 in the story

Then having realized what THAT meant, they EDITED out 2002 to fit THEIR agenda
 
busybody said:
there are STILL so many who say the "plans" ended in 1991

as I have written on this thread and my OTHER thread

The DOCUMENTS themselves ALSO sho 2002

Further

The NYTimes itself had the dates 1991 AND 2002 in the story

Then having realized what THAT meant, they EDITED out 2002 to fit THEIR agenda

Too late. I copied the original story. *chuckle* I suppose you did too.

Ishmael
 
The Germans were a tough nut even for Rome.

The Gauls and Ibernians took to the yoke easy...

Furthermore, there's a reason Hadrian had to build a wall.
 
Cap’n AMatrixca said:
The Germans were a tough nut even for Rome.

The Gauls and Ibernians took to the yoke easy...

Furthermore, there's a reason Hadrian had to build a wall.

I thought it was his version of a WPA project. :D

Ishmael
 
RobDownSouth said:
Wazhazhe, it's Ham Murabi. Lies are his stock in trade. He serves his Republican masters well. He'll be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic allllllllllll the way down to the bottom.

3 more days before Morning Again In America.
I didn't really expect him to respond. :shrug:
 
busybody said:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/NotAsSmart03.jpg Piling On

At last night's Army-Air Force football game, someone unfurled this banner. It's reported that cadets on both sides cheered wildly.


John Kerry is a gift that hasn't stopped giving yet.
:nana: :nana: :nana: :nana:

:chuckling:

I see you're still clinging to this last bit of hope like a man who knows he's sliding over the edge of a cliff, with only a few scattered blades of grass to cling to.

Last I looked, John Kerry wasn't on any ballots, hon. Nor does he hold any elected office.


I'm off to see a movie now. Have a great night guys.
 
sigh said:
:chuckling:

I see you're still clinging to this last bit of hope like a man who knows he's sliding over the edge of a cliff, with only a few scattered blades of grass to cling to.

Last I looked, John Kerry wasn't on any ballots, hon. Nor does he hold any elected office.


I'm off to see a movie now. Have a great night guys.

Before YOU go

read THIS

http://www.sweetness-light.com/wp-content/photos/Sheehan/With Pelosi.jpg


you are wrong

he IS running
 
sweet soft kiss said:
So Senator is no longer an elected office? Or have they just suspended it in Mass?

In Mass. senators are appointed for life, voting is just a way of getting a few hours off work.

Ishmael
 
Ishmael said:
In Mass. senators are appointed for life, voting is just a way of getting a few hours off work.

Ishmael

Kennedy was a senator and had killed his first woman before half the Litsters were born.
 
Ham Murabi said:
Kennedy was a senator and had killed his first woman before half the Litsters were born.

Knowledge of history is in serious shortage on this board.

Ishmael
 
Military service, John Kerry, and honor
Filed under: General— site admin @ 4:04 pm

Via neo-neocon — a 21st century irony. The son serves, the father sounds like Abbie Hoffman (and if you don’t know who Abbie Hoffman was, no sweat.)


Hitchens kicks Kerry in today’s Wall St Journal. The kicks are hard (it’s Hitchens) but given we’re dealing with thirty-five years of condescension, slander, and insult, I’d have liked to see two or three more paragraphs of Hitch using a steel-toe. Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” insult is uniquely trans-generational. It immediately connects with his 1971 “Winter Soldier” slanders where he asserted American troops were committing war crimes through out Vietnam, crimes on par with those of “Jing-gis Khan.” The anti-Vietnam War movement shaped Kerry politically and that decayed fossil still propels him– an ancient addiction he and his cohorts can’t shake. Simultaneously stuck in the past and stuck on stupid, the Junior Senator from Massachusetts has now insulted three generations of American troops.


Hitchens wonders if the US military is the new third rail of American politics. Interesting thought, but I think not. (Social Security still rates as the third rail, though as Boomers age perhaps its amps and volts are diminishing.) Here’s the real deal: Service men and women simply won’t accept insults about them and their service. In the 1970s they didn’t have the Internet or talk radio to counter-attack the boys and girls in New Mobe and network producers addicted to images of panhamdling, socio-pathic Vietnam vets. The troops now have the technology. This past week individual American citizens in uniform met Kerry’s insults with politically appropriate ripostes. That’s what nailed Kerry –individual ripostes from serving men and women and vets– not Geore W. Bush’s stump speech or Tony Snow’s press conference responses.



John Kerry’s simply not ready for the YouTube world.



Follow his career, such as it is. Kerry’s made it to the lofty perch of Senator from Massachusetts by:



(1) planning a political career from the age of 15 (if not age 11)



(2) riding the coattails of the Kennedy political machine (ie, brown-nosing and carrying water for the clan)



(3) marrying rich women


This nifty route to power works for a mediocre, arrogant politico in a world where the friendly political machine and a friendly media mask his foibles, incompetencies, and inadequacies.


The friendly machine and media also blunt criticism. The arrogant mediocrity (backed by clan and family cash) can float along within a machine and media bubble, slowly rising from preening young poseur to Beltway Clerk to Senator.



The Internet and talk radio have burst that bubble. The bubble is a puddle of slippery soap. I suspect Kerry now knows it. His Tuesday (October 31) press conference was a dismal failure. He essentially pounded his chest like an eighth grade boy and shouted “I’m a man.” That conference was designed to focus his (Kerry’s) media enablers on the White House, and spin the story as a “Kerry versus Bush” conundrum rather than Kerry responding to the people he’d slandered. The New York Times bought that meme, but the Internet didn’t. Troops responded with the now classic “Jon Cary halp” photo, which Drudge slapped on his page. Kerry then went into “seclusion” — as safe a place as any for a “man” insistently destroying himself. But seclusion sounds so un-manly, doesn’t it? (Seclusion– that’s where Victorian ladies retreat after their latest affair becomes London’s topic du jour.)

Sure, the DNC probably ordered Kerry off the hustings. Seclusion keeps him off YouTube.



The NYDCLA Axis (nid-claw media axis, New York-Washington-Los Angeles) can no longer hide Kerry’s mediocrity from the voting public. George W. Bush is clearly a better politician than Kerry. Bush was also a better student than Kerry. In other words, the “MainStreamMedia” story line that “Bush is stupid” is really a political lie. Is Bush stupid compared to Al Gore? (Gore invented the Internet!!!) Stupid compared to John Kerry? Obviously not.


The “Repubs are stupid” meme gained steam in the 1950s with media fawning over Adlai Stevenson. Ike Eisenhower was portrayed as a kindly dolt. Yes, that’s was the story line. Never mind that Eisenhower had one of the finest strategic minds that blessed any presidential brain. (George Marshall attested to that.) Stevenson was smooth, elegant, and academic in his presentation. Ike? Ike was somebody who had spent his life working with the entire spectrum of humanity, and often working in truly risky and stressful circumstances – he was a soldier. Ike could talk to elites. He could also reach the barbershops and beauty parlors. That’s been the downside of the “Repubs are stupid” meme (and now, the “soldiers are stupid meme”) for the Democrats. It costs them points on Main Street. An example of a Main Street reaction to the meme: “If they think Bush is stupid, and he went to Yale, what do guys like Kerry think of me?”


The “soldiers are stupid” and “soldiers are victims” memes cut even deeper. Example: “If our troops are stupid, and if they are victims, then how will we be protected?” This is an odd and ultimately debilitating route for the political party that billed itself as the party of the “little guy.” Andy Jackson would recoil in digust.


Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” gaffe re-opens more than Vietnam War political wounds. Though the MSM won’t touch it, Kerry’s “Swift Boat” conundrum is back. “Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” was really the “third rail” of the 2004 presidential election. The MSM refused to truly touch the story, prefering to characterize it as pure politics and (Karl) Rovian lies rather than attempting to understand and appreciate what was one of the all-time most effective citizen-run issue groups in US history. An uncontested point in the Swift Boat Vets’ favor, one ignored by virtually every major national media outlet with the exception of the Wall St Journal: the Swifties backed Kerry off on his “Christmas in Cambodia” claim, the memory (faux-memory) that was “seared, seared” in his mind. That’s quite a feat, forcing a presidential candidate to retreat from a bold claim, especially one with a moral and experential dimensions that –if true–would add credibility to Kerry’s critique of his opponent’s defense policy. Kerry tried to obscure his retreat, with a diet of buts, maybes, and ifs –however, he retreated because the claim was false.


Kerry has never really faced his fellow Swift Boat vets to discuss their 2004 campaign charges. Why? Because they know the truth and at some reptilian level, so does he. He could have solved his Swift Boat problem in the late 1970s if he had just called his fellow sailors and said “Hey, I’m sorry. I regret the extreme statements I made in 1971. Your service was honorable, guys.” Even his political opponents would have welcomed him back to the brotherhood. I can hear the response from John O’Neill and other Swifties: “John Kerry, you’re a self-absorbed jerk but you’re our self-absorbed jerk. And you showed up in the combat zone. So we’re dropping it.”Soldiers understand this dimension of the Swift Boat affair– the dimension of honor. Kerry’s media enablers never delved into the Swifties deep issues, the restoration of personal dignity and reputation, the demand that their military service be duly recognized, not slandered, because Big Media bought John Kerry’s spin that the Swift Boat vets were all politics. They weren’t and they aren’t.


Imperious elites like Kerry and newshounds are sceptical of honor as a concept, much less as a real issue for real people who’ve done real things, like fight and suffer through the ordeal of war. Of course appeals to “honor” are abused, but appeals to “passion”, “compassion”, “righteousness”– the entire panoply of emotions are, on an hourly basis, twisted and manipulated. And claims of “honorable service” may be suspect. Faux-vets are exposed with regularity.

We know Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff derided honor, but Prince Harry didn’t become Henry V until he escaped the sherry-drenched decadence and vice of Sir John.


Falstaff’s rant in 1 Henry IV Act V states the case for skepticism. Falstaff is afraid for his own life:


Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour

set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery

then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that word honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He

that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my catechism. (Act V, scene I, lines 134-144)

But scepticism all too easily slides to cynicism, and cynicism and habitual decadence don’t do much for a family, tribe, or nation-state in peril.



John Kerry and his Boston brahmins may diss Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day speech, but that’s reason enough for keeping bums like that stuck in little blue enclaves.



Henry V:

If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son…



15th century propaganda idealized by a super-poet? If you think these ideals are dead, if these values are macho posturing, then in the 21st century you should prepate to accept Bin Laden’s interpretation of the Koran –along with a few lifestyle changes like Hollywood starlets in burkas (minor adaptation) and radioactive slag where New York City once stood (major adaptation, especially if you live in New Jersey or on Long Island).



I’ll add a personal story. In 1999 I briefly served as deputy commander of a Hurricane Mitch recovery operation headquartered in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. An earthquake (6.6 magnitude) struck the region and damaged our barracks area as well as several of the dikes our engineers had erected along the Motagua River. We had to evacuate our barracks, in the midst of heavy rains spawned by a tropical depression. The day after the quake I flew to the US air base at Soto Cano, Honduras, to meet with our regional commander. After I met with the brigadier general in command I: (1) washed and dried two sets of BDUs and (2) bought a bottle of Chivas at the PX. The next morning I caught a plane flight back to Guatemala, and transfered to a helicopter to fly back to our base.




That night I took the still-boxed Chivas to one of the troops –a tired, exhausted fellow who had earned a gift so precious. He shook his head when I passed him the scotch. I told him, “You’ve earned it.” He looked at his watch, observed we were ten minutes from midnight, and said “You and I are now off duty.” I sipped a thumbs worth of scotch in my canteen cup (there is no more pleasureable a vessel for imbibing booze).



We chatted for about twenty minutes, about my trip to Soto Cano, about the task force’s new job (earthquake relief), about the lousy weather, about how tired we were. The discussion of weariness led the conversation to our advanced age and years of service, which in part explained the conversation’s next turn. My friend asked, with a glint in his eye: ”You remember what John Kerry said about those of us who served in Vietnam?”


I nodded.



“I was in Vietnam in 1971,” my buddy continued. “I didn’t commit any war crimes and I didn’t see any. Kerry said we were committing war crimes everywhere all the time.”



Remember, readers, this is 1999. We’re in a creaky barrack, wearing t-shirts, BDU trousers, and boots. Earthquake aftershocks occasionally boom –and the booms sound and feel like heavy artillery. And he mentions John Kerry.



“I despise the man,” my friend said. “He lied and benefited politically from his lies….He lied about me.”


I simply listened — that’s what you do in a moment like this. I remember noticing I still had scotch in my cup. He had barely touched his drink. He took a long sip, put his cup down. Plop. Period. End of moment.



The man had served honorably in Vietnam. He had served nobly (another word those of the noblisse oblige set have trouble with). Twenty-eight years later this admirable American soldier was still pulling duty, this time on a humanitarian mission in another jungle. For some hard cases it may seem odd that in a midnight moment of reflection John Kerry’s ugly Winter Soldier spiel would intrude. But Kerry’s trash talk had tarnished the man’s honor — and that sense of deep insult and betrayal had lit a long, slow fuze of righteous anger.


In 2004 Big Media missed that story. In 2006 the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t.
 
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