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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Flubbed Joke Makes Kerry a Political Punching Bag, Again - New York Times:

From Ms. Zernike's article in this morning's NYT:

"Mr. Kerry's prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush." In his delivery, he dropped the word "us."

That is not what Kerry said.

Why would the NYT allow an obvious mistake?

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

"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." - Senator John Kerry.

I have been spending months trying to erase the effects of the hyper-partisanship of the past ten years from my political thinking.

I am still solidly Republican but have been trying to keep an open mind on the issues Democrats hold dear - a sort of re-examining of positions I cast judgment upon many years ago.

The estate tax and the cap on Social Security taxes are two issues I have been willing to admit have nothing to do with me and mine and are "painless" ways to raise the taxes necessary to pay for the largess promised by irresponsible politicians and their political parties.

The medicine is coming, so adjusting for it makes good common sense.

However, Senator Kerry's original comment has me in a barely contained rage.

I know his comments only reflect what the liberal elite already believe and have since setting the country on a socially-destructive path 40 years ago. (I'd have said two generations but that would mean 20 years was a generation. The aforementioned path has made one generation closer to 40 years - at least amongst the bone-headed Euro-American classes. )

What bothers me more than Kerry's statement of the obvious is the fact I grew-up in low-income housing where the wise post-high school course of action was college or the military.

Not I'm-smart-and-go-to-college or you're-not-and-go-to-the-military rationing of 18-year-olds as Kerry comment clearly suggests.

As children of those purported constituents of the Democratic PArty, the working class, we accepted these as the wise choices. I was college-bound, as any lower-income class child who shows scholastic aptitude is.

My parents were proud of the ease with which I understood the three RRRs. And they were equally proud of my brother's decision to enlist in the Air Force. And of my friend's decisions to enlist in the Army and the Marines. My mom shed tears as her babies went of to become men.

Never did they believe my brother and our friends were "conscripted" because they didn't "get smart enough" to avoid the military

Of those friends, two have gone on to obtain not only undergraduate degrees but graduate ones too.

Condescension is not what I feel towards my childhood friends.

Maybe when some lefty writes a follow-up to why people in Kansas are so stupid, he'll read this post and feel ashamed.

I am not sure I could ever vote for a party who holds the military in such disdain. To think, 50 years ago, this country was proud of the discipline the armed services provided and the willingness of some to risk their lives to let the rest of us sleep easy.

And some of us lower-class "victims" owe a debt of gratitude to the military for shaping some of our fathers who had much, much rougher lifes than anything our Oprah-ized touchy-feely society can imagine and did not perpetuate the difficulties of their childhood upon the next generation.

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