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HappyMan

Any Thoughts?

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MickityMike

Hey! Did you guys know that John Kerry served in Vietnam?

My (heavily biased ) reaction is that he played too far to the Left, and was too negative.

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HappyMan

Played too far to the left! Wow, I never would have thought of that! I', guessing he will move to the center as november nears....but this speech was a little left....too left for my comfort.

MickityMike

Played too far to the left! Wow, I never would have thought of that!

Yeah, I bet no one woulda ever thought I’d think that about Kerry, eh? ....

I think bringing up Vietnam as often as they did was a big mistake. Americans don't want to re-fight Vietnam, we want to fight our current war - and we want to win.

You'd think Kerry's political handlers would be smart enough to realize the negative connotations that accompany the Vietnam War, and they should realize that it's probably a bad idea to associate their candidate with America's only true national defeat.

HappyMan

I don't know . . . his Vietnam experience did give him insight into what it is like to be on the ground during a war. That might play well to people who question his knowledge of military issues . . .the war on terror is a major issue and he needs to frame himself as capable of leading it. His record as a senator regarding defense issues is highly questionable. He has always played far to the left on national defense and the military. This seems to me to be a move toward the right to draw in some moderates….

Those negative connotations are alive and well during this war. Kerry has to convince the generation that fought in Vietnam that he learned from its mistakes and will not repeat them in Iraq or with the large issue of Terrorism.
As for the defeat, well, I can debate that in another thread...but the U.S. did go on to win the cold war. Analogies between Iraq, Vietnam, the cold war, and the war on Terrorism can be drawn...

 

MickityMike

I agree. Vietnam was one campaign in the larger Cold War...

HappyMan

and the more than a few Vietnamese who I spoke to last month (I spent all June there) said that the war was a mistake and the country would have been better off if the U.S. had One. On Man whose parents died fighting as Viet Con, told me they were fools and misguided....but that is a story for another time.

My thoughts on Kerry's Speach...I thought it was the some old crap politicans fart out. He said what he thought people wanted to hear. Some of which I consider to be direct lies. Such has his statement that he would Balance the budget, reduce taxes, fund health care and increase the size of the military...well how? How can that all be done. It is absurd and insulting that he would try to pass that off on me. The finances do not add up. It is impossible to reduce revenue and increase spending AND balance a budget. I know better and I believe that most Americans aren't that stupid.
His position on free trade, this worth of a debate in and of itself, is scarey. I am a firm and vocal support of free trade and a globalized martket. Quite simply because most people in this world can not afford to pay Americans for their labor. But, since labor is the single most significant cost of any product or service, even the poor countries can afford to pay each other.
I will let this thread develop a little.

DonkeyPunch

The most notable thing I noticed had very little to do with the content of the speech. Kerry kept the pace of the speech going very quickly, which I was more than happy about. Usually, these things turn into a State of the Union type address, where applause makes the speaker stop for 2 minutes every 30 seconds. I believe he must have feared that TV would cut out of his speech, or else he remembers how loooong Bill Clinton's pre-nomination speech was in '88.

As far as contnet, no major surprises and nothing we won't hear again in the next few months. But I was just curious, is hope on the way?

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nateddi

my favorite part was definitely when kerry said he would double our special forces in order to help us conduct terrorist operations.

Niteshift

I don't know . . . his Vietnam experience did give him insight into what it is like to be on the ground during a war.

Ok, let's be realistic here for a second.

Kerry was in Vietnam for 4 months. He was on river boats. His "ground" experience is somewhat limited. To hear him talk, he spend a year or two slogging through rice paddies and dodging land mines.

Personally, when this campaign started, I respected his service a lot. But he has harped on it and hammered on it so much, it's starting to piss me off.

To hear him talk, you'd think he was the only sonofab*tch in the world who has been in combat or defended his country. The way he starts talking about himself, you'd think he was Patton, Audie Murphy and John Wayne all rolled into one and it's starting to wear thin with me.

I still respect his service, but I wonder if he can make a speech WITHOUT making it an issue.


As for other parts of the speech.........most of it was tired BS. The same half-truths and misdirection from his ads, like "opening firehouses in Baghdad......." and it was, in general, a declaration of class warfare.

Some specific things to "nitpick"

I fought to put 100,000 police officers on the streets of America.

Now he is co-opting Clintons lie.

And then I reached out across the aisle with John McCain to work to find the truth about our POWs and missing in action and to finally make peace in Vietnam.

Uh huh........and COINCIDENTALLY, your cousin was then able to become the exclusive commercial real estate developer in Vietnam because of this and got a deal worth $905 MILLION.

You don't value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break.

What a JOKE. Nobody can show me any special treatment by the Bush administration of Enron, but I can show a TON of special treatment by Democrats towards Enron.

You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service

Bunch of crap. The ones in front line, COMBAT units had body armor. Just because someone in a support unit WANTED armor and wasn't issued it, doesn't mean we aren't taking care of them.

or if you tell middle class families to wait for a tax cut, so that the wealthiest among us can get even more.

Who had to wait? I got 2 tax breaks and I'm DAMN SURE not wealthy.

What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job? What does it mean when workers I've met had to train their foreign replacements?

Let's be real. Only 2.5% of the unemployed people are there because of foreign outsourcing. And it's not because of Bush policies, it's because we tax at 30%, but places like Mexico and China tax at less than 10%. Then we try to tax the money when it comes back into the country, encouraging businesses to keep it out of the country. The problem isn't anything Bush did or didn't do, it's our tax system from BOTH Democrats and Republicans that created this.

And Kerry's plan won't change that.

Since 2000, four million people have lost their health insurance. Millions more are struggling to afford it.

You know what's happening. Your premiums, your co-payments, your deductibles have all gone through the roof.

Here is one easy way to keep the premiums down, have attorneys like your running mate John Edwards stop using junk science to steal millions of dollars at a time from insurance companies.

I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.

PURE Moore-ism.

A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a little chip the size of a fingernail? We did, and that too changed the world forever.

Really? A chip the size of a fingernail? Last time I looked, it took a whole CD just to do a set of encyclopedias. But a WHOLE LIBRARY on a chip the size of my fingernail..........must be some technology that only multi-millionaires like Kerry has access to.

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