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July 12, 2004

Comments

Jonathan

How anyone can take either of those two seriously is beyond me. That exchange is more entertaining than "Who's on First."

Mark Buehner

Count the number of times you hear the word 'terrorism' at the dnc convention. Then count the number of times you hear 'jobs'. Could make for quite a drinking game. If someone has a lot of time on their hands, i'd love to see a breakdown of how often each issue gets mentioned at the convention. I guarantee terrorism shows up below jobs, healthcare, and education. Probably by quite a margin.

Mitch H.

I have to admit, that excerpt set off my "Scrappleface" alarm. Maybe it's set a hair too sensitively?

dorf

J dou mean who's on Frist?

Patrick R. Sullivan

This was the best part:

---------quote-----
KERRY: Significantly. First of all, Homeland Security left ports unsecured. .... Second, second, the cooperative effort with other countries .... Third, we have a set of other global issues .... Third...

EDWARDS: Fourth. You already did third.

KERRY: That's why he's good.
----------endquote-------

In the same way Theresa is smart?

Patrick R. Sullivan

This was the best part:

---------quote-----
KERRY: Significantly. First of all, Homeland Security left ports unsecured. .... Second, second, the cooperative effort with other countries .... Third, we have a set of other global issues .... Third...

EDWARDS: Fourth. You already did third.

KERRY: That's why he's good.
----------endquote-------

In the same way Theresa is smart?

Kamakazi

This was classic:

Q.What if the vote were today?

KERRY: Look, the vote is not today and that's it. I agree completely with Senator Edwards. It's a waste of time. It's not what this is about. We voted the way we voted based on the information in front of us, based on that moment in time. And it was the right vote at that time based on that information. Period. And this president not only abused the intelligence and the information, for which he is responsible, not just Mr. Tenet - not just the vice president, not Secretary Rumsfeld - the president......

So, basically they are saying based on the information they had it was the right decision, period. Someone please explain how that position is different from the the Presidents? Oh, yeah, I know, Bush made up all the information they based their decision on. It was a sinister trick. It coudn't be that the president based his decision on the same information they based theirs as that would not make THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES A LIAR. Please

Walter Ghent

Thank you for using 'wracked' properly. I've been seeing 'racked' everywhere, even the NYT, and I don't think they mean getting medieval on their ass.

TM

You are being totally unfair, Kamikaze. Bush was making a serious decision with real life and death consequences, for which he was obliged to be properly informed.

Kerry was making a show vote calculated to preserve his "tough on terror" status in preparation for the 2004 election - totally different scenario, and it is not right to expect Kerry's vote to actually reflect his thought process, his decision-making ability, his courage, or anything else.

If he only were not burdened by Senatorial office - if, perhaps, he were President - then the country would see, and benefit from, the real John Kerry.

At least, I think that is the rebuttal to your point.

JC

Senator Kerry (ugh!) is an invertibrate. His solution to any problem is dialogue. Action is not in his vocabulary. If he were implored to get off his butt and do something, his response would be "I Can't."

Brainster

Thanks for the link to the article. What a target rich environment this interview is. The notion that these guys are coherent is a product of their speechwriters. Neither of them can think on their feet and Edwards comes off as completely incomprehensible.

David Banana

I donno I still don't trust him even if he IS more clever these days. http://ludicrosity.com/ had a great comic about Kerry the other day that I think defines quite nicely what it is about the man I can't stand.

Michael Schneider

Is it just me or does Kerry talk a little like Mojo Jojo from the Powerpuff Girls? He seems to deserve the same amount of respect as well....none.

Toby Petzold

I agree with Mitch H. I'm still not sure that was a real NYT interview!

Jon Ihle

This interview shows a clever shift in Kerry's rhetoric about the war. He's saying we're not as safe as we should be, which allows him to attack Bush on the war from the right, much as Kennedy did to Nixon on the Cold War in 1960. Check out Jonathan Rauch in Reason. It's a smart move - and the one Kerry needs to make if he wants to win in November, since the war is a threshold issue/ litmus test for key swing voters, I think.

Pouncer

Okay, to the issue of media bias:

Is the comment, "that's too mushy" a hard-nosed insistance on substantive comment from an aggressive and skeptical journalist seeking truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Or, is it a soft-ball offer by a liberally biased journalist offering to let his candidate-of-choice take a mulligan and "do-over" on the question?

I'll give you two chances to answer...

Mitch H.

I don't know, if it was an invitation to a mulligan, you'd think it would have gotten excised, or re-worded on the write-up to make Kerry sound less like the log-faced tool that he is. Almost as if the writer and editor suddenly had an attack of conscience.

It's part of what set off my satire alarm.

sym

I certainly thought "that's too mushy" was beating on Kerry. If a journalist interrupted a Bush interview (I realize those don't really exist) by saying "that's too stupid", I'm sure you would find it to be left-wing bias.

TM

One for the Pouncer, on the "Mushy mulligan" question - how does this grab you from the transcript:

KERRY: And I believe if you talk with Warren Hoge or you talk to David Sanger, you talk to other people around the world, they will confirm to you, I believe, that it may well take a new president to restore America's credibility on a global basis so that we can deal with other countries and bring people back into alliances. The credibility of this country has been tarnished by this president. We can restore it. We will restore it.

Ahhh, Warren Hoge and David Sanger are NY Times journalists. Is that really what they are telling Kerry and his people?

I smell a post coming on. Or anyway, I smell something.

Big Note

Okee doke. For one thing, let's settle down a bit and stop worrying about sound bites, who said what in which context and with reference to which particular pile of horseshit. That's not what we need to be thinking about here people.

No, what we need to be thinking about is reality, and I say that with a capital R, here, lemme put it in caps; REALITY.

And I hate to get all didactic as if it's my god-given right to educate you lessers, but the point is, is that there really is a difference between Kerry and Bush. Kerry's a democrat --do I need to spell that out?-- and Dubya is a republican. What that means, on the face of it, is that they have two fundamentally different ideas about how the federal government oughtta be run domestically. (Best apologies)

I could personally give a rat's ass. Turns out that for the most part, there ain't no goddamned sanity clause and my life won't change much whether there's a frickin' republican nor democrat in the white house.

Except for when it comes to foreign policy.

What I know is that most folks didn't give a hoot about foreign policy before 9/11.

Then alla sudden they had to. It was brought home with a vengeance by a pack of rabid anti-christ motherfuckers with vague notions of ruling the world or killing everyone else if they couldn't.

Like most Americans I would personally like to pick the eye-balls outt've any Al Quaeda operative with an old spoon and a dull pair of tweezers. I'm getting sidetracked here but it's fun.

Anyhoo, to make a long story short, the main difference betwixt the democrats and Dubya with regards to foreign policy is this; Dubya has it in mind to go it alone and only as a last resort will he cooperate with our traditional allies. The democratic theory is to work with our traditional allies, to build international concensus, and only as a last resort, to go it alone.

According to my theory the problem with the Bush admin is that it is still operating under a set of assumptions that were valid in the last century, but that have no meaning in our increasingly globalized society.

So get with it Dubya or get the fuck out!

I'm tired of your cracker ass!

Git boy! Git!

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