"As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we [presumably the editorial "we"] loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election," Kerry said in the email, supposedly emailed to 3 million "supporters." (I'm not a supporter, but it also showed up in my email.)
"But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it's not enough to complain about a past we can't change when our challenge is to win the future--which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears."
Why should we stop Swiftboating? It's just pointing out the lies that a candidate tells about his past.
Remember in late 2003 when Al Gore, the loser of the previous election, endorsed Howard Dean? Well, John Kerry, the loser of the previous election, has endorsed Barack Obama.
Kerry is flying to South Carolina for an event to be held shortly after 11 a.m. in Charleston, the sources said. Obama is holding a "Rally for Change" at the College of Charleston ahead of the Democrats' South Carolina primary on Jan. 26.
Is it just me, or is this "change" mantra already getting ancient?
John Kerry said Monday there might be a next time for his presidential aspirations, and if there is, the 63-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts says he’ll be ready for the political torpedoes that helped sink his 2004 White House bid.
Kerry, whose service as a U.S. Navy Swift boat skipper during the Vietnam War came under attack in his race against President Bush, said he has compiled a dossier on his war record critics that he wishes he had as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Note in particular that Kerry does not claim to have a dossier that shows him being in Cambodia. He claims to have some dirt on the Swift Boat Vets; who cares? They aren't running for President.
Eventually they start to believe kooky things like that John Kerry won the 2004 election, and they become irrational, and eventually have to be tased. He's a typical crank, getting into the "Skull & Bones" thing before being dragged off. Huge entertainment value!
Allah may have been influenced by our posts over at Screw Loose Change, which he linked. I'll admit that there's an argument to be made that Kerry had to know what the questioners were really implying, but from our standpoint at SLC we don't want to chide Democrats and liberals for dodging the Truthers as long as they don't really encourage them. We try to be non-partisan at that site (although both of us are Republicans).
If Kerry replies about this stuff being crackpottery, the questioner may start on about "free fall speeds" and "NORAD stand-downs" that a) Kerry's not equipped to answer and b) that doesn't sell copies of his book. And in fairness to Kerry, the questions were oblique enough that they didn't require a forceful refutation.
If a Democrat wants to dodge the Truthers, I'm willing to cut them a break, just as I would cut Republicans a break who dodge the North American Union nonsense, and all politicians dodged that "notch-baby" crap. I don't like Kerry; I've got pretty good credentials in that regard.
The New York Times (of all places!) publishes an article calling Al Gore to task for his enviro-wackism:
Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.
Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”
The medieval warm period which resulted in English wineries gets a mention:
So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore’s portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.
As does the general variability of climate:
Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.
“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”
In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.
"This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future" by Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, will be released on March 26.
"As a society, we are sliding dangerously backwards in almost every sector of environmental concern," Kerry said in a statement about the book. "Even caring about the environment has been marginalized in recent years by a calculated assault from special interests.
"Teresa and I are writing this book because we share a sense of urgency about the need to reinvigorate grassroots action which takes these concerns into the ballot box," he said. "This book shows what a lot of individuals are doing in common sense, practical and yet visionary ways, in the hope that their example can once again galvanize Americans into action."
Anybody seen Kerry's utility bills for his five mansions?
