What Kerry was supposed to say (Taylor Marsh)

[Mass]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/kerrys-mangled-statement_b_32911.html

Below is what Kerry actually meant to say, which I got straight from the Kerry team, which Kerry uses all the time.

"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 John Kerry

[beachmom]

1. ONE FRICKING WORD, and it's all over the MSM?

They ARE lapdogs!! This thing should not have made cable but stayed in the right wing underworld.

[wisteria]

2. It's election time.

it reminds me of the stunt by Lynn Chaney after the last debate.

The media does need to hear our side. If they continue to only hear from the repubs, they will run with that.

I think it is an outrage that any media outlet would believe Kerry would deliberately bash our troops. Call them on it.

[ginnyinWI]

6. and such a double standard.

Bush gets to say all manner of outrageous gaffs and NO response comes except maybe a chuckle. But let a Dem do it, and oh brother!

But I still think it's a good chance to call them all out. ;)

[sandnsea]

8. Really is what happened

We didn't even get Chris Matthews standing up for Kerry in 2004, we didn't have Keith. We had nothing on the tv except the right wing smears - and plenty of our own people ate them up or used them for their own sour grapes purposes.

[kerrygoddess]

and she also says

he screwed up - she wasn't there in the freakin room. I was - no big shock in the context of the speech

[wisteria]

4. Tell her your point of view. n/t

[whometense]

3. Salon War Room:

Hairtrigger, anyone? My god, the total vacuousness is stunning. They must be monitoring every word every prominent dem utters, looking to change the subject. Truly sickening.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/10/31/kerry/index.html

White House: Kerry insulted the troops. Kerry: No, I insulted Bush

Campaigning with California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides Monday, John Kerry told a crowd at Pasadena City College: "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Kerry spokesman David Wade tells us that the senator was referring to George W. Bush -- a president not exactly known for his intellectual curiosity or academic successes -- but the GOP isn't buying it. The Republican National Committee says that Kerry, who volunteered for Vietnam after graduating from Yale, was belittling U.S. troops now serving in Iraq; John McCain has declared Kerry's comments "insensitive" and "ill-considered"; and Tony Snow said today that Kerry "not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who have given their lives in this." Snow said that Democratic candidates like Jim Webb and Tammy Duckworth should be asked whether they're in accord with Kerry's "absolute insult."

Kerry will hold a press conference later today. In the meantime, he has issued a statement in which he pushes back hard. "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," Kerry said. "This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did."

Kerry said he won't be "lectured" by a "stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium" or by "doughy Rush Limbaugh," and that he's disgusted when "Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country, lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have." If anyone owes the troops an apology, he said, it's "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it."

-- Tim Grieve

[whometense]

5. War Room followup

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/10/31/swift/index.html

Kerry: I won't let them Swift Boat me again

At a press conference in Seattle this afternoon, John Kerry said -- and showed -- that he's learned a thing or two since he was Swift-Boated out of the presidency in 2004. Pushing back hard against GOP criticism of words he uttered in Southern California Monday, Kerry said that he's learned a lesson "deep and heard": A Demcrat can never give "one ounce of daylight" to Republicans who want to "spread their lies."

Kerry said that he "botched" a "joke" when he said Monday that, "if you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well," but that if you don't "you get stuck in Iraq." But he insisted that the White House and its Republican allies knew full well what he meant: Not that members of the U.S. military are stupid or uneducated, but that the president and his people might be.

"This president and his administration didn't do their homework," Kerry said. "They didn't study what would happen in Iraq. They didn't study and listen to the people who were the experts and would have told them. And they know that's what I was talking about yesterday."

Kerry was just getting started.

"I think Americans are sick and tired of this game. These Republicans are afraid to stand up and debate a real veteran on this topic. And they're afraid to debate -- you know, they want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men. Well, we're going to have a real debate in this country about this policy. The bottom line is: These Republicans want to distort this policy. And, this time, it won't work because we are going to stay in their face with the truth. No Democrat is going to be bullied by these people, by these kinds of attacks that have no place in American politics. It's time to set our policy correct. They have a stand-still-and-lose policy in Iraq, and they have a cut-and-run policy in Afghanistan. And the fact is, our troops, who have served heroically, who deserve better, deserve leadership that is up to their sacrifice -- period."

Asked about John McCain's criticisms of his remarks, Kerry said that McCain knows what he really meant. "John McCain ought to ask for an apology from Dick Cheney for misleading America," he said. "He ought to ask for an apology from the president for lying about the nuclear program in Africa. He ought to ask for an apology for once again a week ago referring to al-Qaida as being the central problem in Iraq, when al-Qaida is not the central problem. Enough is enough. I'm not going to stand for these people trying to shift the topic and make it politics. America deserves a real discussion about real policy. And that's what this election is going to be about next Tuesday."

Minutes after Kerry's staff circulated a transcript of his press conference, the Republican National Committee responded with a blast e-mail under its "America Weakly" banner. The headline: "Kerry Apologizes to No One: 2004 Dem Presidential Nominee John Kerry Refuses To Apologize For Belittling U.S. Troops."

-- Tim Grieve

[sandnsea]

7. Do we have the other examples?

I thought he used this all the time - why can't we get the clips??