Maybe because we heard so many from him last year, each utterance by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., now seems like a waste of his breath and our time. Still, his post-hurricane blast at the White House Monday had some sharp jabs:
“Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to ‘Mission Accomplished’ and ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.’ ” Hmm. Wonder whether an 8-month-old Kerry administration would have been any more prompt and efficient in responding.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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32 Comments
Those jabs were “sharp” because they were to the point, and on point. Would Kerry have been better? All that we know about him and his leadership says, “Yes”.Cecil
Name an issue of national prominence that John Kerry has led after decades in the Senate. John Kerry, meet Michael Dukakis.
We wouldn’t be in Iraq spending a fortune, murdering people of having 22,000 of our soldiers either killed or maimed. The mississippi levy would have been fixed and the Arab/Israeli conflict world be solved, which ends so-called “terrorism.” { big farce, big expense } and gasoline would be cheap.
Would Kerry have been better? Actually the question to ask is how could he have done any worse.
“For the first time, senior Republican consultants and lawmakers are warning the White House that Bush’s base is perilously close to deserting him. The poll underscores their concerns: By an 8-point margin, voters are more likely to call themselves Democrats than Republicans; there was no gap in self-identification a year ago.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050920/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katr...
Hold on to your fantasies, Repubs. It’s looking more and more like it’s all you’ve got left.
Jiminy,
OK. How about terrorist finanacing networks? It was Kerry’s Senate investigation that brought down BCCI. BCCI, you may recall, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, was the preferred money-laundering stop for Latin American drug cartels and Muslim, anti-American extremists. In the late 1980’s, Kerry went after them and brought down the bank. Folks went to jail. Here’s the link, Jiminy:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html
So, Kerry took down a network that did business with those who went on to lead al Qaeda, long before the current threat of terrorism was on anyone’s radar. Oh, and one more thing: BCCI’s web of influence peddling extended to include one George HW Bush.
I’m glad you reminded me of that, CF.
Yes . . . the Carlyle Group, where HW sat on the board of directors and one of their biggest clients was (wait for it) the Bin Laden family.
Just think if that had been Bill Clinton linked to Bin Laden. The Repubs would have lowered him slowly into a shark-tank.
But Pappy Bush doing making money with terrorists? Hey, it’s just business as usual, if you’re a Republican . . .
Galahad,
From Robocop: “Good business is where you find it.”
+
“The business of America is business”
=
Bush Crime Family!
Ah, the fever swamp is full of itself, as usual, with more childish, sanctimonious hatred than anyone needs.
In their twisted, adolescent minds, they don’t realize that their Bush hatred is actually Bush envy.
Watch them now proceed with their “troll” whining.
Bleah, What in the hell is there to envy about Bush??? I think he’s the most incompetent president we’ve seen in our time. Please be more specific, how is our country better off due to his administration?
As the appropriately named ‘Bleah’ demonstrates, the knee-jerk ‘fever swamp’ script is now firmly lodged in the Wingnut mind as a defensive mechanism to ward off the cognitive dissonance between Bush’s image and the reality of his rule.
When ‘Bleah’ and his ilk trot out ‘fever swamp’ rather than define their terms or defend their claims, it can only mean that their fragile world view has taken a direct hit.
Guess that makes you the ‘childish adolescent,’ Bleah.
I’m still waiting to hear the answer to “how is our country better off due to his administration?”. For that matter, how is any one individual, among us common folk, better off?
Ladies, I’m afraid you’re in for a long wait. Bleah (Puny) isn’t here to make a point. He’s not capable of that. All he’s here for is to be a snotty little smart-ass. He’s even sub-par at that. Somebody said “fever swamp’ and being devoid of any original ideas, he’s seized on the term. He thinks he’s cunning…everybody else sees him for the mindless twit he is.
So how’s it feel, Puny? Your conservative allies are embarrassed by you, and we libs think you’re a twit. Boy, aren’t you a real piece of work?
XXX–
whistling noise . . . grows louder . . . louder . . . then
KA-BLAMM!!!
Yup, that missile strike hit home.
Nice salvo. Shocked and awed him.
Libs: Read. Weep.
From factcheck.orgAnd The Associated Press last July found that only eight laws had Kerry as their lead sponsor, five of them “ceremonial,” two relating to the fishing industry, and one providing federal grants to support small businesses owned by women.
Therefore, my apologies to Sen. Kerry…nothing like a good salmon steak. What a leader!
Jiminy, as usual, shows that mindless adherence to Wingnut conventional ‘wisdom’ by damning John Kerry because he hasn’t co-authored many laws.
Big deal, Jiminy. The Senate has other functions too, one of which is oversight, as I pointed out above, others of which are procedural. Senators can make their marks in those ways very importantly. But because you’re so shallow that you can’t dislodge the Right-Wing Think Tank soundbite from your brain, you go on ignoring evidence to the contrary.
The best thing that can be said of you Jiminy, is that you’re a simpleton. The worst thing would be to call you out as the Wingnut drone you are.
Jimmy, I see not sponsoring laws as a plus. Those damned idiots (Ds & Rs) pass too many laws anyway. Might not be so bad if they’d take time to read them. Sometime when you need a good laugh, look up dumb laws. I think there should be a law that says everytime they pass a new law, they should take an old law off the books.
Great idea, XXX!! I’ve always used that philosophy when it came to my closets, how well that could work for government and it’s over regulation in our lives!
Well, they have laws on the books that don’t apply anymore or are just plain stupid. Some of them….well, you just have to wonder. A few years ago, I read an article about dumb laws. Until reciently, you could draw a death sentence in Texas if you were caught with wire cutters (old law). At one time in California, you could be denied food stamps for displaying a vasectomy scar in mixed company (WTF?!?!?). How kinky!
You guys said Kerry was a leader. I demonstrated that he’s not. Deal with it.
I fail to see in any way how Kerry could have been any worse.
I note attacks on “what Kerry has done”
Now aside from getting the rich a whole lot richer at the expense of just about everyone and everything else. I query, just what has bush done? Takers?
Nada, nothing, zero, empty set . . . need I continue?
Jiminy,
Your ‘demonstration’ only succeeds if you ignore evidence to the contrary. Which is to say, it fails.
Yesterday I recounted the BCCI episode where, as junior Senator, John Kerry spearheaded an investigation of a criminal enterprise that had ties to senior Democratic figures like Clark Clifford (to say nothing of George HW Bush). Kerry was told by senior leadership in his own party to back off. He did not. He went ahead, made the results of the investigation public, BCCI collapsed and folks went to jail.
Sounds like leadership to me.
Your intellectual dishonesty doesn’t seem to have served you very well here, Jiminy, now has it? Tell us, Jiminy, how does that crow taste?
CF, you buttress my point by your arguments against it.
Kerry has been in the Senate for 20 years. I’ll grant you he played a role in one minor investigation. Goody. So one investigation and 8 bills in 20 years. You would have thought a guy who had worse grades than W at Yale could do better! I guess your liberal standards for Senators are the same as yours for public schools….everyone passes, everyone gets gold stars! The real world isn’t so charitable. But then, the election demonstrated that, didn’t it?chortle
Yer playing with fire, there, JimBob.
The “real world” hasn’t been to good to Mr. Bush and Company.
In fact, I’d be interested to hear one good thing you think Bush has done so far since he’s been pResident, besides tax cuts.
Not what he’s gonna do (privatize social security for instance or free Iraq).
What he’s DONE (other than tax cuts) that you think is good.
As an investment broker, isn’t BushCo. costing you some major commissions since the stock market sucks blue whale ever since THEY took over?
You Liberals must not have any 401K money going for you. Mine dropped 35% the last year of Clinton. You might notice the DOW has nearly healed, thanks to GW.
Are you all on welfare or something?
Joe C.–
My wife and I invest money in mutual funds every month in a 401k.
I think you’ve got your dates confused.
Here’s a graph at Standard and Poors.com http://www2.standardandpoors.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=sp/Page/IndicesIndexGraphPg&l=EN&b=4&f=1&s=6&ig=48&i=56&r=1&xcd=500&fd=ALL&fs=TOTthat shows the S&P 500 going back to 1989.
The S&P is considered a better overall measure of stock performance than the Dow (at least that’s what I heard from a knowledgable source), but the Dow shows virtually the same thing anyway.
What do we see on this graph?
Fantastic growth from Sept ‘89 at 360 to Sept ‘00 when it peaked at 1500. Bush was elected in Nov ‘00. It fell to 970 in a year, a gut-wrenching drop of 46 percent. And that was BEFORE 9-11.
By Sept ‘02, it was down to almost HALF of its previous high. A year later, and it was back to where it was in ‘01 (oh, goodie, two years just to claw my way back to 64 percent of what I HAD).
By Sept ‘04, and it was up 10 points, over ten percent. Not bad but still way off its high.
By now (Sept ‘05), it’s climed another 8.5 percent or so, to 1230.
But that means in FIVE FULL YEARS, the market is still only 82 percent of what it was. It is still DOWN 18 percent after FIVE YEARS.
Granted, you can say that the market started falling in Sept. and Bush wasn’t elected until Nov. of ‘00. But on the other hand, remember markets ANTICIPATE events. If GW is so good for business and so good for investors, why did the market TANK as soon as he was the pres-elect?
And why haven’t they fully recovered after FIVE YEARS.
It’s awfully hard to blame this one on the Dems. But I’m sure you’ll try . . .
My clients largest single holding is ExxonMobile (XOM)…they’re quite pleased with me and XOM. Thanks ever so much for caring.
Well, that was a safe bet under Bush. I suppose you’ve got them in Halliburton too.
“To hell with everybody else, just give me mine,” the conservative creed . . .
BTW, you didn’t answer my question, Jimbo.
What one good thing has Bush done (not attitude, not outlook) for this country, some one thing that he did that made a demonstrable and measurable change for the better?
(Theme from “Jeopardy” plays)
That jeapordy theme is just gonna play on Galahad.
Bush has done good things for folks like Bisoni, whose posts prove that he is also a bad person.
In the end I think the whole bush debacle will be seen by history as “when bad people help other bad people do their worst”
Agreed!