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Monday, September 27, 2004
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YOU KNOW AN ELECTION IS NEAR WHEN THE REALLY BIG FLAGS COME OUT...
and the other guy starts crying.
The U.S presidential election, the greatest show on Earth that requires pants, will take place in five weeks. If you think things have been ugly thus far, just wait. The home stretch is where the real, hard core savagery occurs. The last 5 weeks is where the cannibals of the body politic break out their steak knives and forks.
John Kerry seems to know this. He knows the horrors that await him and he's a-scared. Real a-scared. So scared that he made the most adorable speech this afternoon.
"Americans need a real conversation over our future," Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
That's true. America does need a real conversation about the future. These are the most desperate, trying times since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. Between the War on Terror, which appears to be predicated on invading everywhere terrorists aren't so that they'll go there (so watch the fuck out, Norway) and the coming economic catastrophe that will come when Americans can no longer afford the government, I think it might be a good idea if everyone asked, "is it better that we be doomed now or later."
Unfortunately, election campaigns aren't about that. They're about balloon drops and saying vicious things about people. Even small children know that.
"What they don't need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away," added the Massachusetts senator.
Actually, yes they do. Here's a little political secret. Politicians hate it when lots of people vote. Large numbers of people are unpredictable. Unpredictable people do weird things, like vote for the other guy.
This is where negative advertisements come in. People hate them. People who hate politics don't tend to vote. Supress the vote, and an election becomes an excerise in base turn out. At that point, all you need to do is get more of your nuts out than the other guy can get of his. So let's cut the shit about "the will of the people" and "counting every vote", okay? If you believe that, I've got all kinds of neat bedtime stories for you.
"I'm calling them 'misleadisments,'" Kerry said of the adverts. "It's all scare tactics ... because (Bush) has no record to run on."
"Misleadments?" Jesus, I thought the President was the one who was supposed to be making up words. Is it cynical to think that Bob Shrum saw some polling, pulled the Senator aside and said, "John, we're getting murdered with the illiterate! You need to get out there and start sounding dyslexic NOW!"
And, point of fact, Bush does have a record to run on. He just chooses not to. Wouldn't you? It's much easier to run on Kerry's record. Starting to see how this works?
Of course, Senator Kerry's pledge to campaign clean only goes so far.
In Wisconsin, Kerry also made a personality attack against the president, saying that he and his rival are both children of privilege, but Bush considers his comfortable position an entitlement.
Kerry said "he and I, we went to the same university, we're both very privileged." Both men attended Yale University.
The Democrat added that from his education "came a sense of fairness and responsibility" while Bush "thinks it's entitlement."
Kerry said America's middle classes had suffered from the huge tax cuts that Bush had presided over and which Democrats say mainly benefit the most wealthy.
"He doesn't care, he's out of touch," said Kerry.
Essentially what Kerry is saying is this, "If Bush wasn't such an evil cocksucker, he'd pull those mean swift boat ads so MoveOn.org could get a clean shot at him."
The debates are going to be neat, too. Especially given this little nugget that nobody noticed today. You know how the Senator keeps saying that he'll get "the allies" to take over in Iraq? Matter of fact, he put an ad up just today that says,
"There he goes again. George Bush said Iraq was 'mission accomplished.' 16 months later, he still doesn't get it. Today: over 1,000 US soldiers dead, kidnappings, even beheadings of Americans. Still Bush has no plan what to do in Iraq. How can you solve a problem when you cant see it? John Kerrys plan: Train Iraqis to handle their own security
real elections
and work with allies to shoulder the burden. Its time for a new direction in Iraq."
"Im John Kerry and I approved this message."
Well, it appears that the "allies" - loosely translated from Kerry-ese as the French and Germans, have a response to the junior senator from Never Neverland: "Fuck you!"
French and German government officials say they will not significantly increase military assistance in Iraq even if John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, is elected on November 2.
(...)
"I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president," Gert Weisskirchen, member of parliament and foreign policy expert for Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party, said in an interview.
(...)
Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, said last week that France, which has tense relations with interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, had no plans to send troops "either now or later".
That view reflects the concerns of many EU and Nato officials, who say the dangers in Iraq and the difficulty of extricating troops already there could make European governments reluctant to send personnel, regardless of the outcome of the US election.
A French government official said: "People don't expect that much would change under a Kerry administration, even if things can only get better. We do not anticipate a sudden honeymoon in the event Kerry replaces Bush.
"A lot depends on who is in power in both Washington and Baghdad. If there's change in both countries then it's possible we would re-examine our position, but I don't expect a massive change either way."
A German government spokesman declined to comment on the outcome of the US presidential election. But the feeling in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's office is that, if anything, Berlin is growing less rather than more likely to change its mind as security conditions deteriorate in Iraq.
Mr Schröder would also be unlikely to renege on his 2002 electoral commitment not to send troops as a new general election looms in 2006.
As much as the French and Germans loathe the President, and make no mistake, they despise him personally, they just saw to it that Christmas came early in the White House.
Kerry's buddies cut his entire Iraq strategy, such as it is, off at the knees today. This just three days before the most important of the presidential debates. Turns out he was full of shit about "the foreign leaders" who want him elected.
I doubt even Jimmy Carter can save Kerry now.
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