Blue Mass Group

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Kerry update: Iraq comment was “a botched joke”

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Kerry’s had his presser on his misstep on education and Iraq.  Here’s part of what he had to say:

“My statement yesterday — and the White House knows this full well — was a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops,” said Kerry.

Kerry served in the Navy in the Vietnam War. Bush was a member of the Texas Air National Guard during that war, spending his time in the United States. Cheney avoid Vietnam with student deferments.

“Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how,” Kerry said. “I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.

“The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe,” Kerry said.

The “joke” (if you can call it that) that he meant to tell was, apparently, something like this:

“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. 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.”

Senator, let’s just try leaving the political comedy to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, shall we?  It’s much funnier when they do it, and nobody gets hurt.

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  2. This is why this guy needs to give away his campaign cash and be happy to be a senator from Massachusetts. Hey, maybe some day he’ll even be the state’s senior senator.

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    Even if he got the joke right it still implies that the soldiers fighting in Iraq are there because they couldn’t do any better. Wow. That’s. Hilarious.

    • I would have read the real joke right and understood what he was saying. I get it now. He’s saying Bush was intellectually lazy and ended up getting us into a war with Iraq.

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      So it’s not as bad as it sounded, but I stand by my opinion that this is the last guy we want running for president.

  3. Maybe it was in his delivery but his “joke” sucked. Senator, I think you’ve helped enough. Take a seat please, oh for let’s say, about A WEEK!!!

  4. the blogosphere and mainstream media are on the same page — taking a non-story and creating a giant storm about it a week before a critical election dealing with a huge number of massively important issues.

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    Unbelievable and pathetic.

  5. Hopefully this kills any thoughts that Kerry had of taking another shot at the oval office.

    • Am I the only one here who hopes that Kerry runs again in ’08 just so that we have a giant political domino effect to talk about here in Massachusetts?

      • The same thing would happen if he’d just retire. Then we could have all the political theatre here at the Mass. level, without having to worry about not winning the White House.

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        p>Then again, I guess he could run and lose the primary…. 

      • “political domino effect”?

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        My take is that, having massively underreacted to right wing nut jobs in 2004, Kerry is now massively overreacting to them.

        • If Kerry doesn’t run for reelection, that will open up at least one House seat as Meehan and maybe Markey run for Senate, of course some State Senators will run for those seats, state Reps will run for Senate and town councilors, selectmen etc for the lege.

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          Yes, the same thing would happen if he just retires, but there’s no way that he retires without running for president.

          • If kerry doesn’t seek re-election in ’08, Deval Patrick will ditch the corner office to run for the prize that he really covets.

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            I’d say that kerry really stepped in it this time, vis-a-vis his Presidential aspirations. Our Fair Commonwealth is the only place that he could actually be considered “electable”.

              • I think Patrick wants to be Senator from Massachusetts.
                No one has asked him for a pledge to serve a full term as Governor, have they?

                • He has said many times that he plans to serve two terms (assuming he wins reelection).

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                  I don’t know if he’s signed anything in blood, if that’s what you’re asking.

                • would he want to go from being governor to senator? I cannot think of many who have done so.

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                  Terry Sanford, who was governor of NC in the 1960s and ran for president a couple of times in the 1970s, became senator in 1986 and did not run for reelection because he disliked the DC culture so much.

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                  Bill Weld ran against Kerry in 1996 while serving as governor and lost.

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                  I can’t think of any others.

          • Keep his Senate seat AND run for President.

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            Lieberman didn’t give up his seat to run for vice-presdident and Kerry doesn’t have to pick one office either.  He can run for both simultaneously.

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            Personally, I thought this self-serving shell game was smarmy when Lieberman did it and I will feel the same way if Kerry tries it.

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  6. What I find fascinating about the reaction to Kerry’s remark is how much radical islam and the Republican bloviators have in common, to wit: an addiction to manufactured outrage. A newspaper in Denmark prints a few cartoons of the prophet and hundreds of thousands go nuts. Or pretend to. On cue. People die in some of the demonstrations. Kerry makes what is at worst a gaffe and the wing nuts–simultaneously–go berserk.  It’s at once scary–because of the level of irrational intensity,paranoid projection, and the unanimity of invective and vocabulary; and reassuring, because these guys and gals are a bunch of pathetic losers.

  7. CNN – every 4 min. loop is bad enough…if the press stops talking about it, it’s a non issue.

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    If “we” stop talking about it….we don’t feed the “animals” on national TV!!!!

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    They are now showing a political event on a news show…..so Pres. Bush can “respond”.  They (CNN and other media) are “breaking into regular programming” for this…..

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    But NOT one word about a Governor’s race, with 1 candidate leading without a single “cheap shot ad”. 

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    I’m sick to death of the MEDIA “telling” me what my “stupid brain” is capable of thinking or not.

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    I love John, I’ve worked on all of his campaigns, but even I want to ask him to take a seat ’til Nov. 8th.  Pleeeeeze!

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    As the conservative Glenn Beck, likes to say,  “If I hear one more trashy ad, I feel like my head will EXPLODE!”

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    ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!

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    Barb

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    It’s 5PM time to turn the TV off, for about an hour, or Home and Garden TV! I won’t be able to watch the Channel, 4, 5, 6 or 7 news.  Shame on them, if they run this thing.  Find your spines…and just say NO! 

    • CNN is just awfull with this stuff.  They even bothered to provide “analysis” evaluating the impact of this “controversy.”

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      mer!

  8. “Get an education so you don’t become cannon fodder” is perfectly sound advice to kids.

    • between the economic conditions that make people join the military in order to finance overpriced higher education. To me, that’s the point that should be made in this context.

  9. Kerry doesn’t have great comedic timing, and botched a joke that wasn’t great to begin with.  Not that matters much a week out from the election, but I get it.  Story completed.

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    Now can we go back to pointing out how you need to be filthy rich to benefit from the Republicans’ economic agenda?  Or that the adventure in Iraq was apporached like a 9-year old approaches a game of Risk?  Or that Republicans are funneling my tax dollars into the evangelical, reactionary “Christian” churches? 

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    In short, let’s stop enabling the Republican machine and return to the issues.  Any day we spend talking about Kerry is a day we could and should be spending on that stuff.  Moving on…

  10. “Later, Kerry was asked if he would tell the joke again, given what he now knows about the joke and he said “yes”.”

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    This is just one of a long line of things that just flow out of Kerry…should we really expect him to get any better after 22 years in the Senate?

  11. Please stop.  You have single-handedly managed to upstage the most important candidates in this election cycle with your ill-timed, off the wall, 180 degree turnaround from gutless wonder to Al Sharpton wannabe.  We know it’s Halloween, but please stop scaring the adults and children.

    • you’re the war hero, Vietnam Vet, former Presidential nominee whose patriotism was constantly questioned by a bunch of draft-dodgers during the last election, when you botch a joke CLEARLY aimed at the President and these same bunch of draft-dodgers and worse, war hero, Former POW, soon-to-be presidential nominee John McCain, immediately commense to swift-boat your ass.  What would you do?  The man is human.  He has a right to defend himself.  They were going to swift-boat his misstep regardless of how he responded.  Had he  apologized, they would have taken that as confirmation he was literally talking about the troops.  I’m not a huge Kerry fan but I’m not going to dis the man for defending himself.

      • because if I were John Kerry, I would have stood up for myself, the country and the troops with honesty and dignity long ago without voting for it before I voted against it. 

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        Another note to John Kerry:  The last thing this country needs in the next presidential election cycle is a return of JK and the tin-eared consultants.  We need a leader, and you are not it.

  12. At least this brouhaha is putting the issue of the Iraq war closer to the front page.  Wouldn’t the GOP rather cut-and-run from the “Failed Occupation of Iraq” issue? 

    • both John Kerry’s name and face are on the front page in the context of Iraq. It’s just an unnecessary unforced error for the Dems.

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      And the Howard Dean and a lot of the DC Democrats also seem to want to cut and run from the Iraq issue (and any other potential confrontation with George Bush), because they do not have a coherent message.

      • I normally don’t respond to comment ratings, but I see that some have given my previous comment less-than-stellar ratings, which is fine. But I would seriously like to see an explicit, concrete rebuttal in terms of the lack of coherent message and program from the DC Democrats. (Deval Patrick is another thing entirely, as he does seem to be operating indepedently of both the DC and Beacon Hill mindsets. So I am not including him in my wider criticism.)

  13. It constantly amazes me that bush makes speeches in which he doesn’t even speak coherently and the media and public give him a free pass – consistently.  However, when a democrat make a simple gaffe, the entire media makes that the main story for days on end and runs clips of the “average American” being offended.

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    John Kerry has nothing to apologize for.  Taken in context it was obvious where he was going, and even taken out of context it was actually a valid point on the importance of education and the economic/educational realities of our modern military.

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    It’s time that we the people stop allowing the right-wingnuts to create their feeding frenzies and get back to the important topics at hand.

  14. I am shocked that such educated and loyal democrats as yourselves cannot get passed John Kerry’s minor gaffe at a routine campaign stop and see this story for what it truly is- another republican ploy. If you happened to watch the evening news tonight then, yes, John Kerry was the lead story. What was second in the lineup? Did you stop listening by then? Were you too busy yelling at Kerry through your TV screens? The second story on the evening news, one that has far more influence over the lives of our troops, our elections and our nation, was that today Rumsfeld approved sending more troops to Iraq. I’m willing to bet that most Americans don’t know this earth shattering news- and I blame that on the Republicans. They have decided to create their own “story of the day” in order to get attention away from their colossal gaffe- Iraq. Rumsfeld wasn’t the lead tonight because they made Kerry the lead. Why do we, intelligent democrats, continue to let the Republicans mess with our minds?? Let’s leave poor Kerry alone for once and start focusing on uniting against the Republicans.

  15. Take a piss poor joke out of context and make it the shit storm du jour.  Everybody should just chill the hell out about this.  Everyone (except the liar-in-chief) knows at whom this comment was directed.  Cut the crap and get back to paying attention to real issues.  This is bullshit.

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    We could talk about the real cost of war (in military and civilian lives).

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    We could talk about the financial devestation of this country because of a war based on lies.

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    We could talk about going to war based on lies.

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    We could talk about all the things we could have done with $350 billion.

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    We could talk about “stay the course” even in the face of the truth being revealed.

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    Let’s just talk about the real stuff.  Please.

  16. Any moron with two brain cells to rub together knows what Kerry was trying to say, and did say, when one thinks about it for more than a nano-second.

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    But, the BMG Angry Netroots dumba$$es line up to dig Kerry’s grave for ’08, at the very moment that Kerry reveals to the nation that he finally GETS IT about the Republican smear machine.

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    Why don’t you BMG Angry Netroots nit-wits go to DailyKos and Buzzflash and see how jubilant the REAL netroots are about Kerry coming out swinging, today?

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    When will the BMG Angry Netroot whiners stop urging Democrats to engage in a useless circular firing-squad?

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