That's all John F. Kerry needs to tell himself he is tonight and he'll be just fine. That and to remember the sage words of Eminem: "You only get one shot, do *not* miss your chance to blow, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime...No more games, I'ma change what you call rage, tear this mothafuckin roof off like 2 dogs caged I was playin in the beginnin, but the mood all changed, I been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage But I kept rhymin and stepwritin the next cypher, Best believe somebody's payin the pied piper"
I know this offer is coming late but I will buy *hundreds* of bottles of Heinz ketchup if Kerry says that onstage tonight.
I'm listening to the Clash's "Straight to Hell" right now, one of the best songs ever about Vietnam, and it's naturally making me think of these two guys. A lot of people say that this campaign has been about Vietnam, but it should be about Iraq. But that's dumb because people should realize that Iraq is Vietnam II: The Baghdad Ultimatum I think it's absolutely relevant that one guy spilled his blood in the Mekong and the other one, who smirked his way through a boozing, coke snorting frat boy haze, but never missed a chance to salute Old Glory in the morning, questions, through his sneering toadies, whether or not he shed a sufficient amount of that blood, even as they polish off the old lower income kid/anonymous dark skinned foreigner meat grinder. One of the great advantages of being born in the twentieth century is access to so much information about what war is. How it's always horrific, and almost always pointless. The thing about access is you still have to be open to learning about it. Sometimes it's easier to close your eyes and ears. George W. Bush, whom I've argued many times is not either a stupid man, nor an evil one, simply closed his eyes and ears many, many years ago. Kerry never had a choice, 'cause once you see what he's seen, you don't forget it. But whatever, he's a flip flopper.
Jon Stewart was interviewed in the Chicago Sun Times today and he said that the mudslinging rhetoric is so nasty this year that even Aaron Burr would want to tell them to chill out. I've said many times that a good Aaron Burr joke is the height of comedy. Actually I've never said that before, but it's true.
All I'm saying is, I think Kerry--and everyone else, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth/Against Kerry/what have you--has played up the Vietnam thing waaaaaaay too much. Clinton never served in the armed forces, and aside from a few snide draft-dodging remarks, no one seemed to have a problem about it. More people seemed concerned with the fact he "didn't inhale".
Who *really* gives a care whether or not someone served abroad, or at home, or didn't at all, 30 years ago? With less and less people serving in the Armed Forces, I hope that someday we'll have multiple candidates (of more than the two major parties) who have never served in any kind of military unit. While I'm proud of my grandfathers, great-uncles, cousins and friends in the armed forces (one currently in Iraq for six months after he should've gotten out of the Army), I really don't think in the arena of politics it matters if someone went through boot camp.
Indeed, those guys in the World Trade Center were only in those buildings for *a few minutes*. And it was in the first hour or two of the morning shift. You want to talk heroism, let's put in some OT OK?
Tell it, sister. Six measly months? Everyone knows that the minimum amount of time necessary to qualify for heroism is two years, and even then you have to get a stamp from the office of heroic affairs. This is the most disgraceful case of cheating since those damn firefighter guys a few years ago.
"They jest at scars that never felt a wound."
-William Shakespeare
"Every man who ever got a statue made out of him was one kind of son of a bitch or another."
-Joss Whedon
This is RNC spin, the facts are these: he was in the Navy and he served aboard a destroyer patroling the Gulf of Tonkin for a year. Nobody knows about this because there were no thrilling heroics to speak of, but it was still a war zone. After this tour of duty was over he had the option of going home but he volunteered to go in for a second tour, this was when he was transfered "in country" to command of a swift boat in the Mekong, ferrying personnel and peforming recon operations. Those boats were shooting galleries for Vietcong snipers and American sailors were killed in massive numbers, when those boats took fire, they frequently lost around 90 % of their crews. Every man who served under Kerry's command confirms he was a hero. The so called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" did not serve on Kerry's boat, they served on other boats, that participated in many of the same actions. When they say they served with Kerry, they're lying, they served *near* him. By the way, not only did Kerry save the lives of his own men, by drawing sniper fire, he saved a lot of men on the other boats. For me, Kerry's true heroism was in his postwar activities, with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. That's when Richard Nixon singled him out for destruction, and that's why a lot of Kerry's fellow vets hate him, because they don't want to accept that their friends died because their government lied to them, it's easier to believe it was long haired freaks like Kerry and Bill Clinton and Ron Kovic who betrayed them. The anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command" was written by John O'Neil, a Nixon stooge who's been trying to take Kerry down for thirty five years and Jerome Corsi, a real sweetheart of a right wing operative who's fond of saying things like "This country is being fucked up the ass by the atheists and the faggots", if that's the kind of guy you want to be on the side of, go ahead. Oh yeah, and Kerry's tour on the Swift Boat lasted four and a half months, not six, before three Purple Hearts got him his ticket home. A doctor who didn't treat those wounds says they didn't merit Purple Hearts, which is a hip new way of practicing medicine. Am I mad yet? No, not yet, not until we get to the Republican convention where rich, happy young conservatives were wearing purple colored band-aids to mock Kerry's wounds, which goes beyond insulting Kerry and insults every soldier who's ever been wounded under the American banner. And these are the troop supporters huh? But let's say it was true that Kerry was only in combat for a few months, which it essentially is. That matters? Four and a half months of getting shot at and having grenades thrown at you is a longer four and a half months than you and I have ever lived. Do you think every one of the 58,000 American men who lost their lives to make Southeast Asia safe for democracy took more than six months to do it? As for McCain, nobody on this here blog has ever questioned his heroism. You'd have to look to the current occupant of the Oval Office and his cronies to find someone who would do that. They're the ones who started the whispering campaign that he cooperated with his North Vietnamese captors and betrayed his fellow soldiers. And no one was angrier than McCain at the recent attempts to smear Kerry's record, or at the earlier attempts to impugn the patriotism of Max Cleland, who came back from that war with one arm and not much else in the way of limbs. The people who create these falsehoods are without conscience, they care about power and nothing else. They've always been among us and they always will be. But I won't be silent about it.
With the sole purpose of playing devil's advocate: Kerry represents himself as a huge war hero. Yet how long was he actually *in* Vietnam? Six months. That's it! Six paltry, measly months. Compare that to Sen. John McCain, who was in a prisoner-of-war camp for years. Years!
That's all I have to say right now. And no, Rockford Republican that I am, I'm not voting for Bush this time.
