Average Joe take on the Kerry remark

Curious as to what the average person out there thinks of what Kerry said, I decided to do a little technorati search for the term "Kerry". Turns out, some average folks are pissed at Kerry. I also stumbled across a few commentators who said exactly what Rush said they would: Well, even though it may be true, Kerry still shouldn't have said it. Some of them are politically oriented but I added them any way because I have a few choice words for them.

Live Journal

One of the older gentleman who gave Lex candy thanked Doug for his service and also told him he bet he was very "well educated" too. When I asked Doug about it he sort of got upset and told me the comment John Kerry said. Im not one to discuss politics, but to basically say that the only people in the military are non intelligent ones is a total smack int he face. I am pretty sure he knows about the percentages of people in the military who have college educations. It just makes me angry and that is all I have to say. Doug is damn smart and well educated and Im sick of the military being shit on becuase of higher up decisions out of their control. If you do not like the war FINE, but do not disrespect what my husband has dedicated his life to, which happens to be serving his country AND fighting for the freedoms that we ALL have to benefit from. Including people born with silver spoons in their mouths OR the poor.
Sigh.. Ok Im done. No comments necessary to be honest. Most of you know me well enough to know I do not stoop low and argue about politics. Hell I barely ever even mention anything like this.. but I felt it necessary to bitch about it for my own sanity.

Live Journal

See, what I don't get about Kerry's recent gaffe, is that whichever way you understand it, it's not particularly funny. I mean, he's speaking to a bunch of college students, encouraging them to make the most of their education, and citing George W. Bush as an example of what'll happen if they don't. But Bush went to Yale and Harvard! Surely he's an argument against an Ivy League education rather than for one?

And this assclown agrees that the military is uneducated. Although he makes the distinction between uneducated and stupid to his slight credit completely missing that the military IS BETTER EDUCATED than a comparison of the same demographics with the general public- you dont have to get a high school degree or GED to work for Wal Mart but you do for the military in almost all instances. He just thinks Kerry was stupid for saying the truth out loud. But at least he is not biased, just very misinformed and the general tenor is pretty accurate.

A) Kerry didn’t mean to call the troops stupid, but doing so is way more accurate than insinuating the President himself is stupid.  Yeah, we all like to think of Bush as a dumb hick.  It’s not true, and John Kerry knows it.  So, he intended to lie about Bush’s intelligence (which would have been ok, and totally par for the Democratic course) and ended up with a more accurate (but politically suicidal) comment about our soldiers being the ones who didn’t go to school.  And people wonder why there’s no truth in politics.
B) I’m not saying soldiers are dumb, but often people sign up for the Army in lieu of going to college.  See, they get money for college so they can go later.  It’s intelligence deferred.

C) Having said that, going to college has very little to do with one’s intelligence, and often very much to do with one’s indoctrination into liberal ideas.  I’m obviously overgeneralizing here, but the whole idea that going to college makes you generally or politcally smarter (as opposed to specifically or occupationally smarter) strikes me as naive and weird and blue-state “demonizing” of the worst order.  It also brings to light the very thing that Kerry is claiming he didn’t mean, namely that people in the military are dumb because they haven’t gone to college.  You see what a snake-pit this is?

The fact is, both parties think everyone is stupid, and seek to exploit that stupidity for their own purposes.  How else do you explain all the obvious spin an lying that goes on? This Bush-Kerry flap is but one example of a process that’s repeated thousands of times before any election.  And Olbermann, Limbaugh, Mikey Savage, etc., all think everyone is stupid, too.  Their ratings depend on it.

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And really, I don't think he meant to damage anyone but President Bush, but it doesn't even matter. The soundbite is out, and it doesn't even need to be taken out of context to sound bad. Even his "explanation" and rebuttal to Bush's criticism sounds bad! Smerconish (who I'm proud to say was NOT simply reading the Republican talking points today, nor does he ever) took calls this morning and virtually every single caller believed that John Kerry made a slur against the troops. And let's face it, HE DID! Smerconish even asked the callers, "Well, don't you think maybe it was just a slip of the tongue, and he actually meant it for Bush.." and most of the callers said no and had fairly good reasons to back up that assertion. I don't think Kerry wanted to, I don't think that's what he believes, but that's what he said!

Blog This guy is clueless: As Rush Limbaugh predicted, some on the left think Kerry was right, but it should have been kept as our dirty little secret.

Thats right, I said it. I think he's getting a bum rap here. This is one of those times where Kerry said something that many many people would agree with, but its turned into an issue.

Blog I looked and didnt see too much political talk on this guys blog.

Dear Senator Kerry,
f@#$ YOU!

Thatisall...

This guy in true NYT and WP fashion blames the republicans for what Kerry said (granted that Kerry shouldn't have said it, of course, as we all know, hurumf hurumf.....)

So Kerry is a buffoon (we already knew that) and the worst comedian on earth (we assumed as much), but how desperate and bereft of any positive appeal do these people have to be that they are literally thanking God for delivering them something, anything, that can distract voters from the war and the failures of this majority and this administration?

Another "well he shouldn't have said it even though it is true" buffoon. Hey shit for brains, I came from a middle class family and I joined the miltary because I wanted to be a man and make something of myself more than a 9 to 5er cubicle stuffer (which I am now that I am old). I could just as easily (in fact a lot more easily) have gotten a job at Wal Mart if I just needed a job! Where do you people come from? San Fransico? Now I got Christopher f@#$ing Hitchens giving me intellectual props on Slate magazine and US News and World reports senior writer digging my shit. Pretty good for a dumbass po' boy who just couldn't hack it in the real world eh f@#$tard? I hope every moderate gets why Kerry said it. It is how he and his intellectual elitist base view the military. Well a merry f@#$ YOU to you assholes.

However, lets look at this bigger picture. Why is it not fair game to say what Kerry asserted? I would have more respect for him saying that it is a realtity that for many underprivilged and uneducated kids, the military is not the dream, but rather the only choice they have. That has been true since the beginning of time. Sure the officer class will object as will a healthy percentage of American Flag Waving meatheads that enlist every year. But the sad reality is that for many, it is the only way out. It is a sorry state of affairs when we do not have a lot of alternatives. I can speak from experience. My late step-brother was a very smart young man, but did not have a lot to show for it. He was bright but not overly ambitious and higher education just was not for him at the time. So he joined the Army. As boys we would play war with toy wooden guns and always had a blast (pardon the pun). He excelled in the Army. He went to Ranger school but blew his knee out. He went to Haiti during that mission. Despite my general dislike of the military, I always supported him as did everyone else I knew. But we always knew that he went because he did not have a lot of options.

My feeling is that Kerry should have shut his trap. He needs to realize that his time has come and gone and that he needs to bow out gracefully. At every move to position himself for 2008, he bungles it. Kerry is the intellectual version of Bush. However a bunlgled sentence or joke still has the seme effect, however broad one's vocabulary is. Next time, leave it to Colbert and Stewart.

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It can be hard to be a Democrat sometimes. The party largely reprents my views and values, but the inability to communicate and get elected is very frustrating. John Kerry is the poster child for this phenomenon, Al Gore having redeemed his ability to reach out with An Inconvenient Truth. Here we are just a week away from the midterm elections, with our best chance to make gains in Congress, and Kerry is going out of bounds to make things difficult for Democrats.

As far as I know, John Kerry is a good Senator, and I voted for him in the last Presidential election. But why why why does it take him two years to get a backbone, just in time to misapply it to his current situation where he, according to his own accounts, botched an attempted joke that ended up offending U. S. troops in Iraq? I don't support Bush's war policy but even I was offended by Kerry's remarks, on behalf of those who are serving.

Zero marks for my originality since Michelle Malkin and everybody else is recording how the libs really feel about the military.

Comments

[swamp6]

Great compliation Ray. You seemed as pissed about this as I do.
The guy with the "American Flag Waving meatheads" comment should have his teeth kicked in.

[Ryan]

Well, Ray... for starters thanks for the referals. Also, I do get political on my blog, just usually about things that seriously piss me off. Given the sheer volume of political news, events and geneal crap out there right now, I decided to back away.

That said, as a Navy vet from a family with a long history of military service, I find what that assclown said to be utterly reprehensible and his 'apology' to be FAR short of the mark.

John Kerry disgusts me, as do all of his cronies and sycophants that despise our military and see us only as tools to be distastefuly wielded and only at last resort...followed shortly by a thorough scrubbing and disinfecting from having actually associated themselves with such lowborn, uneducated, redneck losers such as we are.

No apology will ever be enough. For we know him to be insincere and deceitful and seeking only to minimize the political fallout he's currently suffering from letting his true feeling show...for once.

[Ray Robison]

well said swamp 6 and Ryan

[epthnation]

Hey, thanks for the link, even if you did call me an assclown. For the record, I don't think I said that people in the military are stupid. I think I just said that Bush is smart. Read it again.

I don't think of people in the military as any different from people not in the military, except maybe I'm more grateful for them. Thanks again.

Ray Responds: actually I gave you credit for making the distinction between stupid and uneducated, but you did indicate they are uneducated "It’s intelligence deferred" which is completely wrong and earned you the monicur, but I see potential that you can learn from that mistake since you had a pretty good take overall. Almost all army officers have a degree before they serve, nothing is deferred, and they get a lot more education, military and university, while they are in, more than civilian counterparts in many instances.

I for one after getting my degree went to 15 months of additional military schools in my first 4 years as an officer.