It is interesting, and instructive of something (lower standards?), to compare the treatment of Joseph Biden in 1988 and John Kerry today.
Biden, some of you may recall, was forced from the race for the Democratic nomination for what, in retrospect (and to many, even then), seem accusations of very minor plagiarism incidents. Here’s a concise summary of what happened to Biden:
Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also contributed to Biden’s withdrawal: a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.
So, Biden was regarded as unqualified to be a presidential nominee by the press — and, significantly, by the Democrats — because he used without attribution lines from a Neil Kinnock speech, which recalled a plagiarism charge from his law school days.
How innocent those seem now compared to charges of falsifying reports of military heroism, using unearned purple hearts to short circuit military obligations, and dramatizing a non-existent incursion into Cambodia and repeating the story over the years. It would appear that “character” was more important in pre-Clintonian days.
UPDATE [29 Aug. 10:15AM]
I mentioned above that “the Democrats” forced Biden out of the ’88 race for transgressions that were minor compared to the charges today against Kerry, which don’t bother them. This is a relatively general suggestion of hypocrisy. Here’s something more specific:
John Sasso then:
The controversy became two frenzies [sic] in one when it was disclosed that the campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis had earlier secretly distributed to several news media outlets an “attack video” juxtaposing the Biden and Kinnock speeches and revealing Biden’s word theft. The Dukakis campaign at first stonewalled and denied any part in the tape’s distribution, but when the truth emerged Dukakis was forced to fire his campaign manager, John Sasso, and political director, Paul Tully
I don’t see that as a fair comparison. Had these allegations surfaced during the primaries the Democrats would have nominated someone else – perhaps Edwards – but now that Kerry is the nominee the party is obliged to support him.
The difference is simple.
In 1988, Jimmy Carter was still a model for the Democrats to emulate — a man of integrity who could be trusted.
Today the model is Bill Clinton — a bold liar who would always put the blame on his accusers for daring to bring up his transgressions.
Actually, I think it is a fair comparison. It is a comparison of then and now. A comparison of a time when honesty, honor, and integrity still had some meaning, and a time when all that appears to matter to many is appearances.
Plagiarism is lying, pure and simple. A single missed attribution, in a paper containing many, may be an honest mistake. Continuous, ongoing, repeated failure to accredit quotations is deliberate lying, and to me speaks to the character of the individual.
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, spent a great deal of effort parsing the letter of the law, trying convince people, in lawyer-ly fashion, that his lying about his private life was simply a matter of interpretive hair-splitting, while leaving concerns about whether his dishonesty from his personal life spilled over frequently into his professional responsibilities.
The double standards being applied by the left, mostly, are examples of the moral decay which has begun to eat away at this country. This will not end until the generation which spawned it, the Woodstock-flower child-feel good-anything goes generation, are gone. However, I do see hope in young people’s return to many of the standards of morality and ethics that have served our country well since it’s founding. In fact, many of these younger generations are rejecting the archaic, 60’s-era ethos of their parents and grandparents, and returning to traditional values of hard work, merit, decency and respect. I have hope that those giving the current far-left Democrats their voice will see themselves fall by the wayside of history as the anti-survival aberration that they are.
I think the double standard has less to do with the times or circumstances than it does with who they apply to. While Biden was a serious senator, the press didn’t want him running for President. Kerry, however, is the annointed.
I agree with “mj”. The big difference is the treatment of the allegations of the press. I remember that there was significant investigation and press attention to the matter. The lack of interest by the mainstream press coupled with Kerry is the nominee rather than a candidate for the nomination make for a distinct differene. I don’t think there is, at this time, a “Torricelli” option for the Democrats, therefore the vast left wing conspiracy is doing all they can to obfuscate the veracity issue.
Hmmm, Biden was plagarizing Niel Kinnock so can it be argued that Kerry is plagarizing Francis Ford Coppola?
Standards have changed. The failings of man (and woman) are now the basis of new standards. I was just attacked by an old friend for saying Kerry lied about the V (for valor) on his silver star described on his website. She shouted at me “Bush is a deserter”. Quid pro quo. This implys that her perception of Bush being a deserter, justifies Kerry being a liar.
Are we all thieves and liars at heart? Would any of us not steal if our own child were starving? Biden’s plagerism seems a minor incident compared to Kerry’s repeated backtracking on false memories that were “seared, seared” in his mind.
Perhaps we have set impossible standards, and in fact, the bad news is–none of us are capable of living up to them.
I reject the idea that Carter was a man of integrity. He ran in 1976 on the idea of “zero-base budgeting” and then did nothing to implement it. He ignored the rise of fundamentalism in Iran and did nothing effective about the Soviet adventure, because of his collectivist leanings. He was and is a hypocrite of the worst kind. I won’t even mention Habitat for Humanity, that slimy fraud.
His “peace” with Arafat was more of the same.
“the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event”
THAT is the main point. Do not make your entire campaign upon an indefensible boast.
That is what Kerry has done.
Kerry and Carter are equivalent in integrity. I suspect their presidencies would be similar as well.
Ironic that Carter helped the Ayatollahs to power, then was stung by the mad mullahs resulting in his losing the election.
Kerry is very friendly to the mullahs, with covert liasons already established. Will he also feel the sting of radical Shia betrayal before his time is through?
Nels,
You are wrong. Fundamentally wrong.
No one is “required” to support someone, just because he’s a Party’s nominee. Everyone is required to examine a candidate, and decide whether or not that person deserves his trust, his vote.
You can not vote at all. You can write in “none of the above”. You can vote for someone else.
To support or vote for a despicable human being, just because he’s your Party’s nominee marks you as a despicable person, too.
The real differences are twofold.
First, Kerry is the nominee and Biden was not. Had other Democratic candidates raised the issue of Kerry’s Vietnam service during the primaries, perhaps people would have been more willing to examine the charges. Now that he’s anointed, however, looking into allegations about the medals, or truths about Cambodia and his anti-war activities, creates the possibility he’ll turn into a lame duck candidate.
Second, the Anybody But Bush crowd has decided that nothing matters except the defeat of George W.
These factors combine to produce a media more interested in helping hide the facts than exposing them – and ducking the truth (no pun intended) with the moral comfort that doing so may get Bush out of office.
Blame Terry McAuliffe and the DNC for this mess. By front-loading the primaries in an attempt to anoint an early winner, they also created a nominee who hadn’t been tested before winning the nomination.
The result is the quality of support for Kerry is noticeably weak. No one of any stature will sully their reputation defending a man so apparently guilty. So the Kerry campaign doesn’t have Lieberman, Biden, Clinton, or Daschle out front on this; they’re using Max Cleland, Wes Clark, and a host of campaign staffers on the talk shows. In addition, because these people have no evidence to defend Kerry, they just attack George W. in response to every question.
Greg, it would be unrealistic to expect a major party to abandon its presidential candidate at this point. John’s argument only works if (a) Biden was the nominee in 1988 until being dumped post-convention once the incidents of plagiarism were revealed or (b) the Democrats knew of these Vietnam allegations during the primaries but ignored them to nominate Kerry. Biden obviously wasn’t the nominee and a strong argument could be made that Kerry was selected largely on the belief that he had ironclad military credentials. One can’t compare the standards of the primaries to those of two months out from the election.
I’m not challenging John’s conclusion that Clinton lowered the standards for character; I just think this Biden-Kerry comparison doesn’t lead to that conclusion.
The Biden case was not merely one of technical plagiarism. The words he lifted from the Neil Kinnock speech described how he was the son of coal miners, the first in his family to go to school, etc. Biden was reading a fictitious account of his own life, i.e., baldly lying to the voting public to create a legend or fictitious persona thought to be more marketable than whatever his past was in reality. How this compares to Kerry’s attempt to create a false legend with a Christmas in Cambodia epiphany leading to a life dedicated to fighting for “honesty” in government, I leave to others to assess.
The best reason I could think of for ditching Joe Biden was that he found Neil Kinnock worth stealing from.
Remember Gary Hart? We only heard of Donna Rice because he was a threat to Walter Mondale. Mondale was the party leaders chosen one. Biden was a threat to Dukakis. Dean was unelectable. If he had been electable, Kerry’s whole position especially his flip-flops would have been hit heavily, not to mention his Vietnam embellishments. These have been the party standarts for twenty years.
In the span of my middle-aged life, we have gone from “nobody’s perfect” to “nothing is black or white” to “all grays are the same.”
Mondale ran in 1984. Gary Hart and Donna Rice are circa the 1988 election cycle.
The biggest difference is that Biden was never seen as the only hope to defeat G.H.W. Bush. It is one thing to torpedo an also-ran. It is different doing this to a front-runner. By the time the Kerry accusations came out, Kerry had the nomination sewn up. I think that the press has a lot more reservations about de-railing the actual candidate.
Of course, these reservations are flexible. They have no trouble going through Bush’s military records multiple times.
Hart did campaign against Mondale in 1984. One of the great lines of that campaign was when Mondale repeated a line from a well-known television commercial “Where’s the Beef?!” when Gary Hart was proclaiming his campaign as one of “New Ideas”.
Anyway, did you ever hear of the Chinese proverb “Too much Rice is bad for Hart”?
The difference is Clinton. The Dems had to swallow a lot of crap in order to keep that guy in office. They had to say it was OK for a married President to be “doing” a 21 year old intern. They had to say it was OK to lie to EVERYONE about it. They had to say it was OK to absolutely trash anyone–no matter how innocent–who stood in the way, mostly Ken Starr. They also had to say that everyone lies about sex, even under oath, and that all politicians are liars. Have you not noticed how much of the criticism of Bush involves Bush lying? I don’t think that’s coincidence. It’s payback.
“In the span of my middle-aged life, we have gone from ‘nobody’s perfect’ to ‘nothing is black or white’ to ‘all grays are the same.'”
Impressive statement. In the span of my adult life as well…
In order to evaluate the liars who would rule us, too many of us mince words, conditions, and definitions. More simply we should say that we have few statesmen left to run this country- no, strike that. To run the skeletal business of federal government as it should be run: With profound humility and respect for the Republic, not with low character.
Nowadays, Biden could merely say he meant to properly attribute that passage, but forgot to do so. He’d be forgiven now. No question that standards have changed dramatically.
Another Then and Now thought experiment: compare the media attention, then, to Watergate, and media attention, now, to Bergergate . The implications for our country of the Watergate crime were orders of magnitude less than the implications of Berger’s crime, yet there’s nary a mention of Berger in the press. Sometimes it seems to me we are living in a 3D Dali painting.
The difference between “then” and “now” is the “in-between” – Clinton.
KERRY BEAT THE SYSTEM (with the help of the system, NYT ect)
It is a great mistake and a fraudulent one at that to buy into/accept/reason that somehow because Kerry went to Viet Nam, (in spite of whatever happened during his four month “visit”)—that—that in itself somehow makes him honorable, noble, —-ad nauseum—an effort calculated by himself and his supporting media to give him some kind of recognition of his “service” thus transposing him into “war hero status”. Never mind that he lied about it before/during/after!—and the “hero” is purely fictional, a perverted calculation, suspiciously based on and influenced by the equally dubious film, Apocalypse Now. Much to Hollywood’s delight, the Kerry/Sheen character is the central casting hero being foisted upon the masses with no basis in fact, just slick Hollywood pretense all under the welcoming guise of the media, —both entities— driven by a hatred of and desire to depose, President Bush.
In an effort to want to put VN behind us, there is too great of rush to sweep under the rug the facts and to gloss over Kerry’s motives, simply give him the benefit of the doubt and agree that his “service” was noble, something to be proud of.
If Kerry had genuinely volunteered to go to VN, put his life in some sort of danger via that action and then became disillusioned with the war—that would be one thing.
BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED
Kerry is a premeditated, scheming opportunist—has been all his life and continues the ploy with his carefully engineered, central casting of “Kerry, the war hero, Kerry the man’s man” and all that type of Hollywood fluff.
We have all seen Kerry in our every day lives. Remember back to school. Kerry was/is the “brown-noser”, “apple polisher”, “suck-ass”, the loser always trying to take credit for someone else’s achievements, the rodent who would stab anyone in the back to get notice, attention, credit. Back before “girlie-man” became popular, Kerry was what was then known as a sissy, a pansy, he was and is effeminate and his big mouth has always gotten him in trouble and he would run to others for protection, “to make it all right”. Kerry is Sgt Bilko. Kerry is the athlete who “enhances” his lacking ability with performance drugs to win. The Kerry twisted persona can justify anything to win—to him it matters not how he wins, only that he wins, he will crush anything that gets in his way, not from his own strength and courage, but using money from his sugar mamma to buy what he can’t achieve on his own.
Kerry is the personification of “Catch 22”. Kerry is a “user”, —wives, people, fantasies, ever upward climbing. How to get ahead in business without even trying, or, more personalized in Kerry’s case, how to steal an election through fraud and deceit. And watch, if and when he loses, he will not go down as easy as Algore. Kerry will fight to contest the outcome, even if it is a 50 State sweep for the President,— already Kerry has the mechanism in place to undo the election results, teams of lawyers throughout the U.S. ready to pounce, U.N. observers to make sure a “fair” election takes place(translation, one that delivers the Presidency to Kerry).
What Kerry actually did in Viet Nam was realize he could improve his credentials for eventually gaining the White House as his hero JFK before him did, by creating “another” PT109 episode. Kerry tried to avoid actual service, asking for deferments etc, but when it become inevitable that he should go, he then looked around for the “safest” way to create “Kerry the war hero”. Initially, by volunteering for Naval duty, his thinking was he could stay out of harm’s way by remaining off shore in a big naval vessel, which he did for a while. But being another face in the crowd on a large Navy vessel cramped his style, made it almost impossible to dream up ways to put in for phony medals, kept him under too much scrutiny to where he couldn’t creat his destined “hero” image. Then, it occurred to him that piloting a swift boat could be used to create even more of an appearance of “combat” while not exposing himself to any real danger, at the time he applied, the swift boats were not involved or even close to any of the real fighting and he was driven by his delusion of grandeur as the rightful heir to JFK, PT 109, and ascendancy to the Presidency—and besides, he would have lots of time and opportunities to make his “home movies”.
Now this is the real motive why Kerry was there in the first place. And the fact that he took along his “brownie” and had himself filmed in staged combat settings should be painfully awakening to any casual observer— other than those who wish not to see,—ie the mainstream media who wishes Bush out, Kerry in AT ANY PRICE! (There are none so blind as those who will not see). Think about it if you find this somewhat extreme—what other military service personnel brought along (which shows premeditation) filming capability and then went to the trouble to “stage” combat sequences???—For what reason???? And this cold, calculated effort has significant basis to be workable as these purveyors of history “re-write” are counting on the average arm chair American to accept this fiction as fact because—“there it is on T.V., in film, if it is on T.V. and the talking heads say it is real, then by gosh, it must be real, it must be what really happened”.
So, in essence, we have a phony cartoon character, much like Bubba, who goes to VN simply to create credentials for himself, not out of patriotic belief in his country or the war itself,— instead we have the pitiful, disgusting charade that is now being spun by the mouthpiece of the “donks” and Kerry himself, ranting: “never mind the fine details of what actually happened, at least he volunteered, at least he was there”—what does it really matter if he was in or near Cambodia, at least he was in VN.
It matters because a lie is a lie.
Kerry’s “service” in VN and to our country was no different than if Michael Moore went today to Iraq to film a twisted phony version of U.S. aggression in Iraq and in doing so, returned as a “veteran” who had put his life at risk in “service” to his country. There is no difference between these two, the ketchup/pickle king and the fat slob Moore. They both would— and have— sold their country out in a flat minute for any self-seeking, self-promoting, self-aggrandizement goal they felt they could gain by their fraudulent “service” to gain their perverted ends— no matter what the cost, what the lie, who has to be hurt. In their twisted philosophy, the end result justifies the means used to achieve it.
To not really examine the true motive of Kerry’s “service” and to give him a pass on all this by saying that at least he volunteered, he was there, he did sustain “some kind of injury”, (even if it was self inflicted) is to sugar coat the fraud and play into his game plan of reaching the White House, where, in his twisted, fantasy mind, he believes he rightfully belongs and he is counting on “coach potato America” to apathetically accept his fraud due to the credential of Hollywood and the Media. If Streisand, perky Katie, Dan and all the rest of them say it is so, then it must be so!
Kerry’s war “hero” status cannot stand up to any serious scrutiny, witness the cracks since the book, Unfit for Command, Kerry’s refusal to release pertinent military records (until he gets them laundered) and the recent statement by Secretary of the Navy, Lehman, that the document supposedly carrying his signature for Kerry’s Silver Star is FALSE. Kerry has wrapped himself as worthy due to his 4 months in Viet Nam, he cannot stand on his 20 undistinguished, practically useless years in the Senate. The man has no accomplishment in life other than living off of other men’s money inherited by their widows who Kerry has sucked up to.
There is so much in the Kerry convoluted smoking gun that a fair and unbiased press would be all over his dillusions/falsehoods with a microscope, but no, the mainstream media refuses and has accepted the fictional Kerry farce because they want Bush defeated more than they want the truth. Rather than investigate Kerry, the mainstream media, ie the New York Times chooses to attack those who expose Kerry for the fraud that he is. Kerry is their candidate and they will ignore, look the other way, even fabricate for Kerry, whatever it takes to get “their” man in.
We, the American people cannot let this happen. No one elected perky Katie, Dan, Peter, Tom, George Soros, the NYT—the list goes on, but these people have more power than anyone else simply because of their celebrity status and Soros’s money. If the next Presidential election is stolen/bought by the likes of these self appointed cronies of the fourth estate, America will lose her greatness, the word must go out to expose what is happening and people, regular people must take back our country before it is too late and get everyone possible involved in exposing this sham, the phony Kerry, the disgrace that has become the media, the threat to our country to be defeated from within.
It should be noted that most of the basic allegations against Kerry’s war record were, in fact, made during the Democratic primaries. The problem was, his primary opponents, the press, and the voters did not pay attention.
When Kerry got the nomination, it then became easy for the Swifties to find a few hundred dollars to promote the cause that they started back in May during the Democratic debates.
Joe Biden
Did plagarism kill Biden? No unfortunately Delaware killed Biden.
What got Biden in so much trouble wasn’t so much that he didn’t credit Kinnock; he had to have known his statements were false. That was the man’s own family history, and Biden knew the moment he uttered it that it was a bald-faced lie.
Have you compared Bush’s 2000 website’s description of Bush’s TANG service with the current story? (Much less the reality hidden in the records Bush has still failed to release, after so many promises he would.)
So far, the Swift Boat stories on the medals have been completely repudiated by all sorts of witnesses (not all favorable to Kerry’s politics) and all contemporaneous written records (which the Swifties claim must therefore be Kerry’s forgeries). What’s left is a complacent press (or actively Republican, in the case of FOX) echoing the sorts of arguments used by Holocaust deniers, who pick out small discrepancies or even exaggerations in the accounts of concentration camp operations to support their claims that the entire narrative is a fraud.
The Cambodia picture is a little murkier. I’m intrigued by suggestions that Kerry confused Christmas with Tet in Feb 1969, which is when his biographer says he crossed the border. Why the claims of the Swifties and their publicity machine, known liars in the case of the medals, are given such credence on this issue is pure politics of a most disgustinng sort. (And don’t tell me we have no documents verifying Kerry in Cambodia, because we have no documents on three months at least of Bush TANG service, and we damn sure have no documents where Bush saw the first WTC attack from his “My Pet Goat” classroom, thinking “That’s some bad pilot”, an anecdote he has fabricated for campaign purposes.)
Andrew – I continue to think that you’re overstating the “repudiation” of the Swiftees criticism by such a vast amount as to be almost off the wall. I have not seen the disproof by witnesses and evidence that you claim. Also, if you’ve been reading Beldar you should be specifying which of Kerry’s inconsistent and conflicting reports of the same incident (Rassmann) and medal (three different citations for the Silver Star, saying different things by different people) you think the witnesses and evidence support. Even Kerry has repudiated his Christmas Eve Cambodia incursion and confirmed doubt about the legitimacy of his first Purple Heart. Are you still supporting his original claims?
Bronze Star
The key issue appears to me to be: Was Kerry under hostile fire when he rescued Rassman? Saying yes we have
And Team Swift Boat for “Truth”? They have their own unsupported say-so without a single contemporaneous record in agreement. The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence is with Kerry.
Silver Star
Kerry’s version is corroborated by
And Team Swift Boat? They leak to Bob Novak a contradictory story from a political independent (not so!) who turns out to be a frequent Republican contributor ($1000 to Bush 2000 and 2004) and who recently lobbied a $40MM Federal contract for a client. How can you deny that here, too, Kerry’s version is supported by the overwhelming preponderance of the available evidence? (I’ve even heard, but have been unable to verify, that the Swift Boaters for “Truth” account of the Silver Star mission agrees that Schachte was not aboard, as he says he was. They settle for ridiculing Kerry’s encounter with an armed Viet Cong.)
Purple Hearts
There isn’t any question that Kerry didn’t leave limbs in Vietnam. That doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve any of the Purple Hearts. Even the claim that one of the wounds was accidentally self-inflicted (of course, in the VWRC echo chamber this morphed into the insinuation that Kerry had deliberately injured himself with a grenade) wouldn’t disqualify him. One of Bob Dole’s Purple Hearts is for a minor, self-inflicted accidental injury. Personally, I think making fun of vets for being lucky enough not to be injured badly is in poor taste, especially from the youthful Bush supporters who’ve never been in anything more dangerous than a video arcade. Even here, though, the Swift Boaters’ epistemology is baffling. Letson, for example, asks us to take his word that he patched Kerry up, despite the fact that someone else’s name appears on the official records. Now, even if it’s true, as Letson states, that medics sometimes filled out forms for doctors, this leaves us with absolutely no evidence for Letson (other than his own word) against Kerry plus the value of the records, such as they are.
Cambodia
For Cambodia, the evidence is at least closer to balanced, and I don’t have time to rehearse it here. As I mentioned, I’m intrigued by the suggestion that Kerry confused an incursion in February 1969 at Tet with Christmas 1968. Certainly O’Neill’s claim that he himself had never been in Cambodia is contradicted by his own earlier interview: his current claim was absolute and unqualified until the self-contradiction turned up. Only then did he start to discuss that near the border means over the border, while the right-blogossphere created distictions between when he was or wasn’t in Cambodia that aren’t in evidence in his own claims. It’s possible that Kerry is mistaken or even lying about Cambodia, but based on the verifiable evidence about medals, the Swift Boater for Truth assertions are not to be believed in the absence of other evidence.
Andy – Each of your defenses of Kerry has been discussed at some length, and I believe with great skill and sensitivity to the evidence, on BeldarBlog over the past several months, and I am not going to repeat the various arguments here. What I object to in your discussion is not your defense of Kerry or criticism of the arguments made by the Swiftees but your dismissal of their arguments as no more than lying smears made only for partisan reasons. My point is neither that all these criticisms are so clearly true that all reasonable people would have to agree with them nor that all Kerry’s defenders are themselves partisan liars, but from reading as much as I can I do not believe the charges have been clearly and convincingly refuted. If it were as simple as that there would have been no reason for Kerry not to clearly refute them, not to release his records that would provide final resolution of many of the issues, which he still refuses to do, nor would he have needed as a first resort to threaten legal action against TV stations and the publisher.
I have now made a visit to Beldarblog, and “sensitivity” is not the word that comes to mind. This post, for example, ridicules the rapidity with which Kerry accumulated medals. Couldn’t that also be a function of his frequently being under fire? This post ridicules Jim Rassmann’s recollection of the rescue, using a variation of the bank robber’s defense “Why, Your Honor, for every witness you have who saw me in that bank, I can find ten who didn’t.” to dismiss the considerable evidence of a firefight. Interestingly enough, one of Beldar’s points of evidence is that there were no bullet holes. But when we found out that there were bullet holes, at least in Thurlow’s boat, the SBVfT story changed so that the bullet holes came from a previous day. It’s hard to imagine that Kerry boat bullet holes (and I don’t know if any exist or not) existed, there would be some similar story to explain them away.
Apropos of the bank robber defense, how about the Swift Boat Veteran, the Oregon prosecutor who made an affidavit based on second-hand anti-Kerry stories and swore it was based on his own “personal knowledge and belief”. That’s generally seen as excluding hearsay. I don’t mind that so many of Kerry’s comrades hate him for his antiwar activities, but the idea they all served “with” him and they say him then as unfit to command is a distortion of the worst type.
Beldar is a lawyer doing the best job he can with lying witnesses.
Wake up and smell the BS.
You guys are supporting a president who is destroying this country to give his rich friends a big dividend.
There is very little truth in the Bush campaign. Only hatred probably brought about from the fear that a new president will find all the evidence that would have impeached GW.
The way I can tell a Republican today is that he is afraid to discuss politics with a Democrat face to face.