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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (54848)	9/7/2004 2:34:59 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Hello. My name is Mary Jo Kopechne. I would have been 65 years of age this year. Read about me and my killer below. -------------- When Sen. Ted Kennedy was merely just another Democrat bloating on Capitol Hill on behalf of liberal causes, it was perhaps excusable to ignore his deplorable past. But now that he's become Sen. John Kerry's leading campaign attack dog, positioning himself as Washington's leading arbiter of truth and integrity, the days for such indulgence are now over. It's time for the GOP to stand up and remind America why Sen. Kerry's chief spokesman had to abandon his own presidential bid in 1980 - time to say the words Mary Jo Kopechne out loud. As is often the case, Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that most Americans already know the story of how this "Conscience of the Democratic Party" left Miss Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown Bridge in July 1969, after a night of drinking and partying with the young blonde campaign worker. But most Americans under 40 have never heard that story, or details of how Kennedy swam to safety, then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he was behind the wheel. Those young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died, while the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of. Neither does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier -- for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Or why the US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on tests. As they listen to the Democrats' "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don't know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town, an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape. It's time for Republicans to state unabashedly that they will no longer "go along with the gag" when it comes to Uncle Ted's rants about deception and moral turpitude inside the Bush White House. And if the Republicans don't, let's do it ourselves by passing this forgotten disgrace around the Internet to wake up memories of what a fraud and fake Teddy really is. The Democratic Party, not to mention Sen. John Kerry, should be ashamed to have the national disgrace from Massachusetts as their spokesman. And the GOP needs to say so out loud. I remember all of this and I'm sure most of you do, too "More on Mary Jo & Uncle Ted here:) ytedk.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (54848)	9/7/2004 2:36:17 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The War The hoo-ha about John Kerry's Vietnam War record reminds me of a conversation I had with a teenage baby sitter back in the 1960s when the war was actually going on in Vietnam. The girl had brought her high-school history book with her, so I asked her if she liked history. "It's OK," she said, "except for that real old stuff like World War II." For most of today's voters, the Vietnam War has become "that real old stuff." It is enough to know that Kerry volunteered to serve and George Bush did not, nor did Vice President Dick Cheney. That's the only relevance that the now-long-ago war has for this campaign. The new war is in Iraq and Afghanistan. It doesn't matter what happened in the old war. What is relevant is how the president, whoever he is next January, conducts the new one. We know how the Bush administration has handled the war: It fouled up royally. First, it had bad intelligence. Second, administration members shut their eyes and their minds to all advice, to all of the caveats from the intelligence community, that didn't justify going to war. Third, the administration disregarded sound military advice that a lot more troops would be needed than it was sending. Fourth, by not giving the U.N. weapons inspectors time to finish their job, the Bush administration lost the support of France, Germany, Russia and most of the rest of the world. Fifth, it did not stop the looting. Sixth, it did not anticipate and prepare for the resistance. Seventh, its occupation has been nothing but a cluster-blunder. And eighth, it has overextended the U.S. military but stubbornly refuses to admit it. It would be difficult for Kerry — or anybody else, for that matter — to do a worse job as commander in chief than the incumbent. Whatever reason people find to vote for President Bush, certainly no rational person can base his or her vote on Bush's conduct of the war. It has been characterized by one foul-up after another. I noticed that Mr. Bush has added Afghanistan and Iraq to the roster of democracies in one of his campaign ads, which, in a bizarre fashion, has clips of the Olympics. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is a democracy. They are both led by U.S.-appointed people. Both rely on U.S. forces for security. Both are unstable, are dominated by warlords and are far from peaceful. Mr. Bush seems to have a talent (some would call it a mental aberration) of believing that things are so if he merely says they are so. Thus, Iraq, which he once said had weapons of mass destruction, is now a democracy in his mind, despite the fact that no elections have been held. He also believes that we have a robust economy, which is something else that is not in sync with reality. That's what worries me most about President Bush. He seems to live inside a bubble created by his staff and cronies and to be genuinely unaware of what's going on outside his bubble. It is very dangerous to have a president who cannot see the world as it really is. Novelist Ayn Rand once observed that while we can ignore reality, we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. President Bush has proven to be all campaign and no governance. Every word out of his mouth, every policy, seems to have been crafted by campaign aides with the goal of not accomplishing anything but his re-election. That, too, is a dangerous situation. Every president has to keep an eye on the electorate, but the best ones have always tried to do the right thing even if their campaign aides objected. A true leader will do the right thing and then try to convince the voters that he has done so. An empty suit will do whatever his campaign manipulators tell him is best for the re-election campaign. And right now, devoid of a record that can be defended, the president's campaign aides are telling him to attack Kerry. You'd almost think Kerry was the incumbent instead of the challenger. reese.king-online.com