How a wingnut distortion exposed absurdity in the media and the mentality to pile on

[ProSense]

John Kerry speaks a rally in Pasadena (October 30)

Kerry charmed the crowd with tales of surfing at Mission Beach and got laughs for a series of one liners, including telling the crowd he had just returned from Texas, "Where the president used to live - now he lives in a state of denial."

Kerry then told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps.

Snip...

Afterward, students said they were pleasantly surprised with Angelides - although many said they would have voted for him regardless.

"It made me feel better about giving my vote to him," Kandist Mallett said.

But she added, "The highlight was definitely John Kerry."

more...

John Kerry said what?!

By Michelle Malkin · October 31, 2006 12:32 AM

***10/31 7:35am updated with more reax below...

...909am update San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Pasadena Star News reports on the Angelides campaign event at Pasadena City College where Kerry trashed the troops..."Kerry then told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps."***

915am update. Here's a pic of Kerry and Angelides from the event posted by the Angelides campaign...

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006237.htm

Attention GOP: Spread this video;
Attention readers: Help support the troops

By Michelle Malkin · October 31, 2006 09:54 AM

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006238.htm

president called Kerry's statement "insulting and shameful."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxqWAjnlp2A

Senator McCain Wants an Apology from John Kerry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPInnyAcLd0

Colbert Sets the Kerry Smear Straight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB2d98sDbWU

Desperate, Pathetic Republicans Attack Kerry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t24rUzNSfa0

Re: Bush Spins Kerrys Comments (has nothing to do with this RW attack, but shows how absurd it is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln_L4INxXu0

Former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry opened his mouth. He called his remarks a “botched joke,” aimed, he says, at President Bush’s policies on the Iraq War. Where I’m from, war is not a joking matter. Rather, it’s very serious business. To criticize a president’s policies is one thing; to make a joke out of it is another matter entirely. (emphasis added)

more...

Kerry should bury lingering presidential aspirations

Democrat John Kerry, who came within a hair’s breadth of winning the presidency in 2004, might as well forget another try in 2008.

Snip...

Twice this year Kerry has visited South Carolina, one of the early primary states, and been warmly received.

Snip...

The senator acted and looked like a candidate on his recent trip to South Carolina.

He was smiling, signing autographs and embracing well-wishers as they came by his table at Adriana’s at Five Points, a favorite hangout for the senator when he’s in town.

more...

Botched

Assessing the damage done to Democrats—and his own chances in ’08—by John Kerry’s epically flubbed joke.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Susannah Meadows
Newsweek
Updated: 5:13 p.m. ET Nov 4, 2006

Nov. 4, 2006 - Chuck Schumer got right to the point. On Thursday afternoon, the New York Senator, who’s leading the Democrats’ efforts to win back the Senate, called John Kerry and let him have it. The Massachussetts Senator’s supposed “botched joke” about the president's handling of Iraq had become a feast for Republicans—sucking up tons of airtime and knocking Democrats off message in the crucial remaining days before the midterm election. Kerry’s attempts to fight back, by calling the Republicans “stuffed suits” and “right wing nutjobs,” was only prolonging the story and making things worse. Apologize now, Schumer told him, according to a high-ranking party official who didn’t want to be named talking about a private conversation. (A source close to Kerry said the exchange was cordial.)

Commentary

Malkin: The Democrats’ military disdain

MICHELLE MALKIN

November 5, 2006

The Democrats' failed 2004 presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, may have just sabotaged his party's highest hopes for the 2006 midterm elections. Karl Rove himself couldn't have engineered a better campaign reminder of the Democrats' utter lack of credibility when it comes to supporting, respecting and leading America's military.

more...

Six days ago Keith Olbermann offered the sane perspective:

Keith Olbermann discusses John Kerry's remarks on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

Guess absurdity trumps sanity, but only for those willing to accept it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2926965&mesg_id=2926965

[ProSense]

1. "Republicans have a network of partisan outlets that can create a news story out of thin air."

Jonathan Chait:

Jonathan Chait: GOP wants election to be about Kerry

Everyone knows the senator botched a joke, but the ensuing controversy shows how powerful the Republican media machine is.

November 5, 2006

I WROTE IN THIS space a week ago that the Republicans were desperate to avoid having Tuesday's election be a referendum on President Bush, Congress or even a comparison between the Republicans and the Democrats. Well, now we can see what they want the election to be: a referendum on John Kerry. When you go to cast your ballot Tuesday, the primary question Karl Rove wants you to have in mind is how much you dislike the guy who ran for president two years ago and lost.

There is no greater testament to the power of the Republican message machine than the fact that, for two days last week, the political news cycle came to be dominated by a bungled Kerry joke. Kerry, according to his prepared remarks, was trying to make a joke about Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity: "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. Just ask President Bush." Alas, Kerry wandered off the prepared text and tried to put the joke in his own words. As all of us who survived the 2004 election know, bad things happen when he tries to do that. And so the joke came out: "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."

Within moments, the entire apparatus of the Republican Party sprung into motion to convince the public that Kerry had slandered the troops. Bush berated Kerry for not understanding "the consequences of words." George W. Bush, grammar marm. Vice President Dick Cheney called it "another swipe at the U.S. military." Couldn't you just as easily have interpreted that as a swipe against Iraqis? (After all, much of the educated Iraqi middle class has fled the country in the postwar chaos.)

John McCain, continuing his descent into shameless hackery, chimed in: "The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night."

Everybody in professional politics, conservative or liberal, understands that Kerry was trying to make a joke about Bush. And yet the GOP has succeeded in convincing the country that he was denigrating American soldiers.

In the classic fashion of political news, media outlets simply covered the "controversy," reporting that Bush insisted Kerry was slamming the troops and that Kerry denied it. Most news stories I saw did not include the prepared text of Kerry's remarks.

The point here isn't that Republicans are liars. Both parties are perfectly willing to shade the truth. The difference is that Republicans have a network of partisan outlets that can create a news story out of thin air. The fact that numerous Democrats have had to denounce Kerry is tribute to the power of this machine.

more...

[Gabi Hayes]

2. exactly...and what the Chait article goes on to mention is that Hastert

has profited enormously from a land deal because of an earmark that he helped push thought the house, a deal which was part of such a pork laden POS legislative package that Bush almost vetoed it

but how many people have heard about it?

and where the F IS Hastert?

and what happened to that Foley story, anyway?

[ProSense]

3. Pile on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBywaYuScCk

[ProSense]

4. "the White House needed to make a mountain out of a molehill"

The Democrats could have used the attack on John Kerry, especially after his strong statement denouncing it, to highlight the RW's use of attacks (on Ford, Tester, Lamont, Webb and all the other Vets running) for political gain and to talk up the Iraq war.

Bush and the White House needed to make a mountain out of a molehill -- and to muster the Swift Boat Kerry bashers -- because they have been swamped by bad news and reports of incompetence related to Iraq.

No wonder they went into a Kerry feeding-frenzy.

In September, an intelligence report said the war in Iraq had heightened, not lessened, the terrorism threat by fueling recruitment of Islamic radicals.

October turned out to be the fourth-deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war began, with 105 deaths reported by the Associated Press. As of Friday, the AP had placed the number of the U.S. military killed since the war began at 2,829.

As for civilian deaths, a study by Johns Hopkins researchers estimated the number of Iraqis killed since the war began at more than 600,000. Bush said the Hopkins report was "not credible" and "flawed," which, oddly enough, are some of the kinder words used to describe Bush and his handling of the war. There are other reasons why Bush needed the distraction Kerry created.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) found discrepancies in records on more than 500,000 weapons given to the Iraqis during the last few years, including grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles. The U.S. military failed to note the serial numbers of all but a few thousand of them; they don't know where the weapons are or whether they have fallen into the wrong hands.

Further, the Times reported, Iraqi security forces still depend heavily on the United States for food, fuel, ammunition, troop transportation, health care and maintenance, and there doesn't seem to be any inclination on the part of the Iraqi government to pay us back for all this support. Wait, there's more!

"The American military," the Times reported, "was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it has trained a computer network crash erased records. These problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on building up Iraqi logistics capabilities."

And more: The inspector general, a Republican attorney named Stuart Bowen, has uncovered millions of dollars in cost overruns of Iraq reconstruction contracts, and his staff accused a State Department agency of cooking some books to hide the rising costs of projects and withholding information from Congress.

And more: The Iraq government doesn't seem inclined to do anything about seeking compromises toward ending sectarian tensions and violence, so more and more military leaders on the ground are moving to the belief that deadlines need to be imposed and a timetable established on the reduction of U.S. forces.

Snip...

Eliot Cohen, another neocon adviser to the Bush administration, says: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess."

John Kerry botched a joke. George Bush botched a war. You tell me what we should be more concerned about on Election Day 2006.

link

This was a perfect time to pounce them on Iraq. Kerry would have been doing that had he remained out on the campaign trail.

[ProSense]

5. There's something happening here: A new protest movement inside the military...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2929661&mesg_id=2929661