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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
 Posted - 11/03/2006 : 10:17:56 [Permalink]
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Here's one:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11321
quote:
No, Kerry did not mean to say that U.S. soldiers deserve to be in Iraq because they are stupid or uneducated or lazy – because they didn't work hard in college. He knows very well that relatively few of the nation's mainly poor and working-class troops have ever attended colleges or universities and that many of them enlisted in the military with the hope of attaining college tuition assistance. Of course Kerry was referring to George W. Bush as the person who didn't “make the effort to be smart” therefore got “stuck in Iraq.”
The charge by Team Bush and John McCain that Kerry took a “shameful” slap at the soldiers ordered into Bush's war is transparent, politically motivated deception. It reflects standard operating procedure for a Republican Party that tarred the triple amputee Vietnam veteran Max Cleland as insufficiently patriotic.
But even if Kerry had included those deleted four words (“just ask President Bush”), his word choice would still have left more than a little to be desired in ways that reflect an all-too common elitist Democratic disregard for – and clumsiness about – class divisions in the U.S., the industrialized world's most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society. That indifference and inelegance creates dangerous new opportunities for the more truly vicious and corporate-plutocratic business party (the G.O.P.) to ironically wrap itself in the deceptive flag of populist rebellion.
It is, after all, the lower and working-classes that supply most of the troops who have in fact been murderously “stuck” in an imperial war ordered by military plutocrats like Cheney and Bush, both of whom managed (unlike Kerry) to keep their refined upper-class butts out of Vietnam. In a literal physical sense, it is wrong to say that "Fortunate Son" Bush got “stuck in Iraq” or for that matter that Lyndon Baines Johnson got “stuck in Vietnam.”
Bush and his hyper-plutocratic party may have gotten politically “stuck” by the current imperial quagmire. But the Americans who get most truly and literally mired in the resulting crossfire do not come from the same socioeconomic cohort as top Republicans or top Democrats. They've been “stuck” into bloody Iraq by members of the ruling class that sits atop America's steep and interrelated socioeconomic, political, cultural and educational pyramids.
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Mycroft
Skeptic Friend
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 12:27:31 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
quote:
Mycroft:
What amazes me is the amount of “spin” this insignificant remark has generated. Is it commonly believed that what Kerry says now reflects the whole Democratic party?
Facing the possibility of loosing the house and the senate, the republicans will take what they can get. And of course, the media just goes along for the ride…
How do you explain the sheer volume of spin from the democratic side? |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 16:57:19 [Permalink]
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quote:
Mycroft:
How do you explain the sheer volume of spin from the democratic side?
If the republicans had not spun it, the democrats wouldn't have felt the need to re-spin it. It was self-defense. And it got out of control…
The whole affair is alarmingly stupid…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 18:16:12 [Permalink]
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 19:20:56 [Permalink]
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That cartoon said it all, Filthy.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular
USA
529 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 19:51:46 [Permalink]
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YO: I concur with The MoonMan, Mr. F.: a panel of cartoons that says it all!
Filthy, just for your stellar perspicacity, you don't have to take a shower for two whole weeks, and then, only if you need one.
OY! |
"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan
The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me
"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty
"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde
"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus
"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde |
| Edited by - Orwellingly Yurz on 11/03/2006 19:53:58 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 11/04/2006 : 03:43:01 [Permalink]
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What volume of Democratic spin is that, Mycroft? What spin? I believe there was a written speech with the joke that Kerry erred as evidence. And even if there wasn't to claim college keeps you out of the military and poverty/lack of jobs skills gets you in is not so far from the truth. To make such a statement might inadvertently insult the troops but there is truth in it.
Nonetheless, the joke was bad grades gets us in a war meaning Bush's bad grades. Hardly needs any spinning.
Franken had it right on his program, the Republicans are producing fake outrage over this. They know what they are doing.
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Mycroft
Skeptic Friend
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 12:02:31 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
What volume of Democratic spin is that, Mycroft? What spin? I believe there was a written speech with the joke that Kerry erred as evidence. And even if there wasn't to claim college keeps you out of the military and poverty/lack of jobs skills gets you in is not so far from the truth. To make such a statement might inadvertently insult the troops but there is truth in it.
The audience was full of Ivy-leage students, not one of which would need to join the military to escape poverty.
quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigalNonetheless, the joke was bad grades gets us in a war meaning Bush's bad grades. Hardly needs any spinning.
IIRC, Bush's grades were comparable to Kerry's.
quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigalFranken had it right on his program, the Republicans are producing fake outrage over this. They know what they are doing.
Politicians behave as politicians do. If the Republicans had made a similar faux pas the Dems would be all over it too. The issue really is that Kerry made a statement that reveals a general disdain for the military, and the spin comes from that portion of the left that shares his disdain. |
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 12:25:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Mycroft
The issue really is that Kerry made a statement that reveals a general disdain for the military, and the spin comes from that portion of the left that shares his disdain.
Kerry made a joke that shows a distain for Bush's failed policies which are due in part to Bush's lack of experience and past failures. Everybody knew it. NeoCons spun it because they have little else. More shilling for Bush. |
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
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Mycroft
Skeptic Friend
USA
427 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2006 : 12:40:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Chippewa
Kerry made a joke that shows a distain for Bush's failed policies which are due in part to Bush's lack of experience and past failures. Everybody knew it. NeoCons spun it because they have little else. More shilling for Bush.
You need to break away from this false-dichotomy. A statement about Kerry is just a statement about Kerry. If I want to make it into a statement about the entire democratic party, I will say so, and a criticism of Kerry is not an endorsement of Bush. |
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