The Lies, foibles and misrepresentations of John Kerry

Without a clear and simplified focus that can be summerized in less than ten seconds, most of what Kerry says will simply be ignored by, or fly over the heads of most Americans.

Matthews had asked Hoffa why the union chose to endorse the Massachusetts senator even though Kerry opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

"Well, we talked about that," Hoffa responded. "He says, look, I am against ANWR, but I am going to put that pipeline in and we're going to drill like never before." [..]

When Matthews pressed Hoffa for details on the promises Kerry made, the Teamsters president offered a vague response.

"Well, they are going to drill all over, according to him," Hoffa said. "And he says, we're going to be drilling all over the United States. And he says that is going to create more jobs." [..]

Hoffa's comments have left Kerry's largest environmental backer somewhat confused about what the union chief might mean by Kerry's intentions to "drill like never before."

Ebell added, "It may be the old Bill Clinton routine of telling each person you're talking to exactly what they want to hear, and hoping it never catches up to you."

Kerry's Haiti jab

Faults Bush and says he'd send U.S. troops

By THOMAS M. DeFRANK and MAGGIE HABERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of deliberately helping insurgents in the bloody Haitian uprising and said he would use American militaryforces to stop the violence if he were in office.
In a wide-ranging discussion with the Daily News Editorial Board, the Democratic front-runner also suggested Bush dragged out a nuclear nonproliferation agreement with Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy so he could exploit the deal during his reelection campaign.

Kerry (D-Mass.) said he would have sent troops to Haiti even without international support to quell the revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"President Kerry would never have allowed that to get where it is," Kerry said, though he added he's not "a big Aristide fan."

But he insisted the White House "has empowered the insurgents, and they've done it quite purposely out of their dislike ... for Aristide."

A Kerry administration would have given the rebels a 48-hour ultimatum to come up with a peaceful agreement - "otherwise, we're coming in," he said.

"I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally," he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.

Kerry also suggested Bush sat on December's deal to have Khadafy renounce weapons programs to get a political boost. "Khadafy's been trying to get back into the mainstream for several years now," Kerry said. "There's evidence that we could have had that deal some time ago."

As proof, he said he'd heard "from friends in the British government that the deal was in a slow lock," although he declined to give specifics to back it up.

Bush campaign spokesman Kevin Madden called Kerry's comments "reckless and irresponsible" and accused him of "taking a step deeper into conspiracy politics." He said Kerry's remarks "are not befitting a serious candidate for President."

In the 45-minute interview, Kerry also:


Seemed to flip-flop on his opinion of the controversial security fence Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is constructing.
Kerry insisted a past comment questioning the fence was "a not very artfully drawn paragraph" that reflected "the rush of the campaign." He insisted he "completely supports" the fence and only questioned where it's built.


Slammed the Bush administration for a "sweetheart relationship" with Saudi Arabia that has been bad for the U.S.

Said the electoral map has shifted from the 2000 election, and that he has a good chance to win Southern and Midwestern states that eluded Al Gore. He mentioned Ohio and Wisconsin as possible Dem pickups.

Ducked a chance to join Sen. John Edwards in charging Bush with exploiting Ground Zero in the GOP convention to be held in the summer. "I don't know about that. I wouldn't comment on that," he said. "People will draw their own judgments about that."

On outing Kerry
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist

The junior senator from Massachusetts is a lifelong Catholic whose paternal grandparents appear to have converted from Judaism long before he was born. Though he has known for 15 years that his grandmother was originally Jewish, he rarely spoke about it in public. He didn't bring it up in his 1996 or 2002 re-election campaigns.

But that changed after The Boston Globe reported on Page 1 that his grandfather, too, had been born Jewish. Within hours, Kerry was in a Florida synagogue, extolling his Jewish roots.

"I am so excited," he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee during a dinner last week at Congregation B'nai Israel of Palm Beach. "I've embraced what I have learned, and a light has literally turned on within me -- like an epiphany -- and I am proud to share this special measure of connection with you."

At one level, I think, he was speaking sincerely [..] But I also think he was speaking from a political calculus that never found a Jewish grandparent something to be "excited" about until now -- when for the first time in his career, he has to campaign for Jewish votes outside his home state.

By the same token, it never did Kerry any harm to be universally mistaken for Irish in Massachusetts, a state whose political culture is dominated by Irish Catholics.

[..] His press aides insist he makes a point of speaking up when he sees or hears himself described as Irish. "Kerry has never said he is Irish-American and has always corrected it when people have assumed it because of his name," his spokesman David Wade told The New York Times.

Yet there is no sign that Kerry or his staff have ever alerted the Globe when it mistakenly labeled him Irish, sometimes in front-page stories he couldn't possibly have missed. [..]

Does any of this matter? Obviously the details of Kerry's family tree have no bearing on his fitness for office. His reactions are relevant only because they seem to fit his career-long pattern of equivocation and calculation -- trying whenever possible to have it both ways, always maneuvering to leave himself an out.

It's an old story. When it served Kerry's purposes to be seen trashing his Navy medals in an antiwar protest, he put on a show of doing so ("John Kerry of Waltham . . . said before he threw his medals over the fence: 'I'm not doing this for any violent reasons, but . . . to try to make this country wake up once and for all' " -- Boston Globe, April 24, 1971). But when he ran for the Senate and wanted to upgrade his old image, he put on a different show ("Kerry, after showing a reporter his medals and ribbons on display in his Back Bay apartment, said he had disagreed with other protest leaders on throwing away medals" -- Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 1984).

[..] Ambivalence on a thorny issue is no sin in a politician. An aversion to being pinned down on any issue is.

Now what I need is a Saletan to do with my posts what he does with Kerry quotes ... ;-)

Coming soon to a thread near you....NIMHISMS!

Clinton lied, but nobody died.

Every soldier Clinton sent to war came home alive.

Bush is still lying, and our soldiers are still dying.

And if they are fortunate enough to come home in one piece (or even less than that), Bush will cut their veterans' benefits.

Bush is the Worst. President. Ever.