Mark Noonan of Blogs4Bush responds to Senator Kerry’s claim (and the standard liberal talking point) that:
If you don’t get educated you get stuck in the militray
In fact according to this Heritage Foundation Study:
Additionally, in the most recent edition of Population Representation in the Military Services, the Department of Defense reported that the mean reading level of 2004 recruits is a full grade level higher than that of the comparable youth population.[8] Fewer than 2 percent of wartime recruits have no high school credenÂtials…
Kerry’s statement revealed again what an out of touch elitist snob he is. Kerry has always had a disdain for the US Military and his statement only tells Americans what we have always known about the man. Pure and simple. And I can guarantee you that Pelosi, Reid, Shumer,and that other Clinton flunkie phoney Rahm Emanuel cannot be happy about Frenchie Kerry once again putting the War on Terror and national secuity right back on the front page. I don’t care how challenging things are in Iraq, my gut tells me that the vast majority of the American people know that a San Francisco uber-liberal like Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of House (3rd in line to be Commander and Chief) and Alcee Hastings (impeached and removed from office for corruption and perjury) would chair the House Intel Cmt would not make us any safer by cutting and running in Iraq and treating terrorism like a law enforcement issue.
Thanks Senator Kerry for helping to remind Americans.Something tells me Rove was behind this one…The guy is amazing.
You’ve got to hand it to John Kerry. It takes a rare candidate to single handedly blow two elections in a row. How DID Karl Rove get him to do this?
Kerry belittled our troops; there is simply no question about it. Oh wait, apparently there is some question. Liberal media critic and all around good guy Dan Kennedy is asking,
Isn’t it obvious that John Kerry was referring to President Bush â?? and not to American troops â?? as “stupid”?
In a word, NO.
Scrambling to defend the indefensible, Kerry not only insults his supporters, but all American’s intelligence,
“I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.” …If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy.”
Do you feel crazy after watching that? Is he calling â??his good friendâ? John McCain crazy?
Kerry “owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education.”
Is he calling the National Commander of The American Legion crazy?
“As a constituent of Senator Kerry’s I am disappointed. As leader of The American Legion, I am outraged,” said National Commander Paul A. Morin.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we believe Kerry when he says it was simply,
“a botched joke about the president and the president’s people and not about the troops.”
What kind of a moron makes jokes about someone being stupid, when that someone was a better student than he was?
The transcript shows that Kerry’s freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.
Insert your own French joke here. And how about graduate school, surely JFK the Second went to Harvard Law, right? Wrong. He went to Boston College, still a fine school, but no Harvard. George W. Bush, the dummy, went to Harvard Business School.
John Kerry’s not even smart enough to know when to avoid an argument he can’t win,
The simple fact is that John Kerry would not be in such trouble if he did not make his name on the national political stage by trashing our troops. But he did.
He’s finally Swiftboated himself. They’ll still love you here in squalid Massachusetts, but you are toast nationally.
For other blogger reaction, check out Blackfive,
Michelle Malkin, and Gateway Pundit has great stuff and tons of links.
Melanie Morgan, co-author of American Mourning: The Intimate Story of Two Families Joined by War, Torn by Beliefs joined us last evening on Pundit Review Radio,
"American Mourning is the story of two American families whose sons died in the war on terror. Casey Sheehan and Justin Johnson had been best friends since they first met at Fort Hood in Texas; they were killed within five days of each other in separate ambushes in Sadr City, Iraq, during Holy Week of 2004.
As the Sheehan and Johnson families have mourned their unimaginable loss, they have had little else in common and have taken entirely different paths as they mourned."
What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin & Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “Groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.
Victor Davis Hanson, writing about Mitt’s afternoon at The Hoover Institution,
For about one hour, he heard some tough inquiries, answered without notes, kept his cool, and talked analytically rather than in platitudes. I was impressed, and came away thinking that being a conservative governor in Massachusetts must have sharpened his debating skills and given him insights about dealing with the therapeutic mindset. I donâ??t know what he thought of us, but most of us thought him quite impressive.
To listen to VDH on Pundit Review Radio, click here and here.
Paul Mirengoff of Powerline has a similar reaction after an evening with Mitt,
Tonight I had the privilege of attending a dinner with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and two or three dozen journalist types. Romney’s statements were off the record but I can report the following three impressions: (1) in many ways, Romney would be an exceedingly attractive presidential candidate, (2) Romney is an instinctive problem solver and an instinctive conservative; most of the time the two sets of instincts won’t collide, but the problem solver instinct is the stronger of the two, and (3) Mitt Romney is a man of real substance.
Howie Carr summed up local Republicans feelings for Mitt in a column this week,
But the fact is, Mitt, you should have been the nominee, not Kerry Healey. You could have won – just step back from Bush a bit, like Schwarzenegger, or, closer to home, Jodi Rell in Connecticut. They’re cruising to victory, and you would be, too.
When you run for governor, it’s assumed that if you win you’ll seek re-election. It’s an implied promise, and you broke it. I know, yesterday you had an early-morning press conference and said the state will suffer if Deval is elected. No kidding, Willard. It was too little, too late. So now you think you’re just going to stroll away from the wreckage, right?
Mitt is an impressive guy, smooth, handsome, all that stuff. But he has abandoned the state, after about 18 months of governing. I am not all that impressed with his ability to fight against the likes of DiMasi and Trav, two big fish in a very, very small pond. How would Mitt do against the pros in Washington? No thanks. I’ll have my vanilla in a cone.
This is a great idea, three years too late, but a great idea nonetheless,
The Department of Defense is openly calling for corrections from major media outlets, and even noting when they refuse to publish letters to the editor.
The most recent was this past Tuesday, when the DOD published a letter, that the New York Times refused to run, which contained quotes from five generals (former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, current CENTCOM commander John Abizaid, MNF Commander George Casey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, as well as his successor, Peter Pace) that rebutted a New York Times editorial. This has been picked up by a number of bloggers who have been able to spread the Pentagon’s rebuttal â?? and the efforts of the New York Times to sweep it under the rug â?? across the country.
Strategy Page also notes the following,
The DOD is pushing back, not only putting out requests to correct the record (with the refusals published as well), but also citing stories of heroes that the media has failed to cover â?? usually two or three a week.
Hey, that seems like a great idea?
Milblogger Austin Bay has more thoughts on AlQaeda’s media war here.
Camille Paglia is one of my favorites. She is extremely intelligent and although very liberal on most issues totally nails the Mark Foley “scandal.”
Mark Foley was never on the radar of anyone outside the small circle of news junkies. So his fall and banishment from Washington were nothing but a drip in the torrential flood of current geopolitical problems. The way the Democratic leadership was in clear collusion with the major media to push this story in the month before the midterm election seems to me to have been a big fat gift to Ann Coulter and the other conservative commentators who say the mainstream media are simply the lapdogs of the Democrats. Every time I turned on the news it was “Foley, Foley, Foley!” — and in suspiciously similar language and repetitive talking points.
After three or four days of it, as soon as I heard Foley’s name, I turned the sound off or switched channels. It was gargantuan overkill, and I felt the Democrats were shooting themselves in the foot. I was especially repulsed by the manipulative use of a gay issue for political purposes by my own party. I think it was not only poor judgment but positively evil. Whatever short-term political gain there is, it can only have a negative impact on gay men. When a moralistic, buttoned-up Republican like Foley is revealed to have a secret, seamy gay life, it simply casts all gay men under a shadow and makes people distrust them. Why don’t the Democratic strategists see this? These tactics are extremely foolish. Gay men through history have always been more vulnerable to public hysteria than are lesbians, who — unless they’re out there parading around in all-leather bull-dyke drag — simply fit more easily into the cultural landscape than do gay men, who generally lead a more adventurous, pickup-oriented sex life.
Did it help Democrats?
But what if by jumping on and making a big deal out of this, it delivers the Democrats the House and the Senate? Will it have been worth it?
I completely disagree that the Foley case has helped the Democrats. There’s been so much fudging of the polling data, which long before the Foley case already indicated that many Republicans nationwide were turned off by the direction of their party and were planning to sit home on Election Day. It’s a boldfaced lie that the Foley case caused this. Bedrock Republicans have been dismayed by the Bush administration’s overspending and by its inaction on illegal immigration, among other things. These trends were already quite visible before the Democrats inserted themselves into the Republicans’ slow drift away from the polls. So what they’ve done, in this rabid orchestration of the Foley case, is to risk energizing the Republican base again. Are they mad, or just dumb? They’ve handed the Republicans a reason to go to the polls — to register their contempt for Democrats!
entire interview in Salon today