Unfit indeed. Anti-Kerry Book Author Sorry for Slurs By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - One of the authors of a new anti-John Kerry book frequently posted comments on a conservative Web site describing Muslims and Catholics as pedophiles and Pope John Paul II as senile. But as he prepared to launch the book, "Unfit for Command," Jerry Corsi apologized for the remarks in an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday, saying they were meant as a joke and he never intended to offend anyone. In chat room entry last year on freerepublic.com, Corsi writes: "Islam is a peaceful religion — just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed." In another entry, he says: "So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it." Corsi, who described himself as a "devout Catholic," said the comments are being taken out of context. "I considered them a joke," said Corsi, who owns a financial services company and has written extensively on the anti-war movement. In a March posting, Corsi discussed Kerry's faith, writing: "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judaism? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?" Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are Catholic. "I don't stand by any of those comments and I apologize if they offended anybody," Corsi said. The Kerry campaign called Corsi's Web chat postings disgusting. "President Bush should immediately condemn this sleazy book written by a virulent anti-Catholic bigot. It says something about the smear campaign against John Kerry that it has stooped to enlist a hatemonger," said campaign spokesman Chad Clanton. Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said neither the president nor his campaign has ever questioned Kerry's military service. "It's shameful for the Kerry campaign to suggest so by falsely associating us with this effort," Holt said. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...10&u=/ap/20040810/ap_on_el_pr/anti_kerry_book
... and you did? I can relate the unflattering version of events and you can relate the flattering version of events. The truth lay somewhere inbetween I would imagine.
Or you could maybe not assume the worst about someone who volunteered to go to Vietnam, unlike our current President. I'm sure Kerry would've been in the same position as Clinton, Bush, Cheney, list of numerous other Republican chicken-hawks who didn't go to Vietnam. It's not like he was a minority or poor kid who had no way of avoiding a draft.
basso this should make you happy! Seems your little smear tact is working... from Josh I just saw a preview of a study that finds the Swift Boat ads quite effective among independents in raising doubts about John Kerry's war record. And that suggests that Karl Rove will want to send more money toward the group running the ad. This of course is only the beginning. The temperature will get much higher in the next couple months since, as Charlie Cook, aptly argues this week, President Bush is in the process of losing this election unless there's a major change in the dynamic of the race. -- Josh Marshall
I don't think I've assumed too much. In most instances, I've written something such as "I've heard.." or "I read.." I was throwing it out there for discussion and/or correction. People keep correcting me but they source something as objective as JohnKerry.com. As I said, I think the truth lay somewhere inbetween.
ahhh, but what you're missing is that it's not an important lie, just like clinton's lies. and republican focusing on lying and character issues just distracts from the real, important issues of this campaign, like whether W missed a check-in in alabama one night, or whether he showed to much deference to the sensibilities of small children on 9/11...
Or how he has gutted environmental regulation, or how his tax cuts have been a massive giveaway to the rich during time of war, or how he has stymied scientific research, or how he started an unjustified war based on "intelligence" given to us by an Irani agent, or how people in his administration have outed 2 anti-terror operatives, or how he has left children behind on education, or how he has increased spending more than Clinton ever did... The list of criticism over real issues is a long one and one that has not been answered.
let's look at this one, shall we? http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005467 -- The (Political) Science of Stem Cells Far from banning research, Bush is expanding federal funding. Thursday, August 12, 2004 12:01 a.m. You might not know about it from listening to the news lately, [but] the President also looks forward to medical breakthroughs that may arise from stem cell research. Few people know that George W. Bush is the only President to ever authorize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. --Laura Bush The First Lady was way too polite: The way stem cells have been reported, you'd think we were in a new Dark Ages, with government-backed religious inquisitors threatening scientists on the cusp of life-saving treatments. Reinforcing this misimpression are the headlines and commentators talking up a "ban" on research. "First lady Laura Bush defends ban on stem-cell research" is how the Philadelphia Inquirer spun Mrs. Bush's talk. A sampling of other headlines shows the Inquirer is far from alone: "Rethink the stem-cell ban" (Des Moines Register); "Stem cell ban stays, despite Reagan pleas" (Newark Star-Ledger); "Kerry says he'd reverse stem cell ban" (The Grand Rapids Press); "Kerry 'would lift stem cell ban' "(BBC), and on and on. You get the drift. The problem is that the drift is wrong. As Mrs. Bush gently reminded her audience in Pennsylvania this week, far from banning embryonic stem cell research, George W. Bush is the first President to expand federal funding for it. The nearby table shows that, as a result of his decision, federal funding went from zero in 2000 to nearly $25 million today--and this doesn't include the many tens of millions more being spent by the private sector. As Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson points out, the supply of embryonic stem cell shipments available is today greater than the demand. In other words, this is not, as Ron Reagan characterized it during his prime time slot at the Democratic convention, a battle between "reason and ignorance." It's an argument about taxpayer money and how to draw the lines around it. On the whole this would be a healthy debate for America to have. But the Kerry campaign seems more interested in politicizing the issue by continuing to advance claims for a ban that simply does not exist. Typical was the press release by the campaign Web site this week entitled "Edwards Calls for an End to Stem Cell Ban and a Return to Scientific Excellence in America." This is no slip: It's the same language Mr. Kerry used in his radio address when he declared he intends to "lift the ban on stem cell research." And it's the same language Hillary Clinton used during her own convention speech, drawing cheers when she invoked the "need to lift the ban on stem cell research." All these people know better. The issue is federal subsidies. The need for a Presidential decision arose from an appropriations rider passed by Congress in the mid-1990s forbidding federal funding for any research that creates, injures or destroys human embryos. What Funding Ban? Amount spent by the National Institutes of Health on stem cell research, in millions. 2001 2002 2003 Human Embryonic $0.0 $10.7 $24.8 Human Non-Embryonic 151.6 170.9 190.7 Non-Human Embryonic 40.5 71.5 113.5 Non-Human Non-Embryonic 113.9 134.0 192.1 Total 306.0 387.1 521.1 Source: Office of Management and budget. The President's answer was that there ought to be no restrictions on the private sector but that federal subsidies should be limited to lines that had already been harvested and should not be used to encourage the destruction of embryos. In short, it was a reasonable middle ground. It's worth noting that other countries, such as Germany, Ireland and Austria, ban even the private sector from creating embryos for stem cell research. The potential for embryonic stem cells is that they are malleable and can differentiate themselves into needed cells. That gives them tremendous potential, but it also presents a liability because we can't yet control what these cells will turn into. In one animal study, a fifth of the mice injected with embryonic stem cells developed brain tumors. Which helps explain why we still have not had a single human trial for embryonic stem cells. And it means that political claims that cures for diabetes or Parkinson's are just around the corner are cruelly raising false hopes. Meanwhile there is another alternative we don't hear much about in the headlines: adult stem cells. Unlike embryonic research, adult stem cells do not get us into questions about the destruction of human life. In addition, a report in the journal Nature this summer suggests that adult stem cells may have a broader differentiation potential than previously thought. Plainly this is one of those subjects that involves clashes of goods, in this case the sanctity of human life versus the needs of scientific research. The best way to resolve the issue of taxpayer funding is to let the American people make that decision themselves, through their elected representatives. And dealing, we hope, with the science--not just the Kerry campaign sound bites.
I was talking about far more than just stem cells. New York Times: "Although the Bush administration is hardly the first to politicize science, no administration in recent memory has so shamelessly distorted scientific findings for policy reasons or suppressed them when they conflict with political goals. This is the nub of an indictment delivered last week by more than 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. Their statement was accompanied by a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, listing cases where the administration has manipulated science on environmental and other issues. President Bush's supporters promptly denounced the statement and the report as an overdrawn and politically motivated work issued in an election year by an advocacy group known for its liberal disposition. Tellingly, however, neither Mr. Bush's friends nor the White House denied that any of the incidents listed in the report — all had been reported before in newspapers, trade magazines and scientific journals — had occurred. The best they could muster was a lame rejoinder from Dr. John Marburger III, Mr. Bush's science adviser, who said that these were disconnected episodes reflecting normal bureaucratic disagreements, none of them adding up to a "a pattern" of distortion or disrespect for science. We respectfully urge Dr. Marburger to look again. On global warming alone, the administration belittled, misrepresented, altered or quashed multiple reports suggesting a clear link between greenhouse gas emissions and the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. A study detailing the impact of mercury emissions from power plants was sanitized to industry specifications. Another study suggesting that a Congressional clean-air bill would achieve greater pollution reductions than Mr. Bush's own plan, at approximately the same cost, was withheld. It does not take much effort to find a pattern of suppressing inconvenient facts that might force Mr. Bush's friends in the oil, gas and coal industries to spend more on pollution control." The Globe and Mail: "Some of the most influential scientists in the United States have gone public with disquieting accusations that the Bush administration has suppressed and distorted scientific findings, manipulated research and stacked government advisory panels to suit its political objectives. "When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions," the Union of Concerned Scientists said last week after releasing the results of its investigation into the alleged abuses. Politicians often must weigh conflicting scientific claims or inconclusive evidence when setting policy, and they may ignore scientists' recommendations for any number of reasons. But it is quite another matter to interfere blatantly in their work and misuse their results on the scale cited by the scientists' group. Among the examples provided: A report on high mercury levels in women of child-bearing age was delayed; antibiotic research that could have had an adverse effect on major hog producers was squelched; and a committee examining lead poisoning in children was filled with researchers connected to the lead industry. If the complaining scientists were simply diehard Democrats opposed to the administration's conservative agenda or a few cranks upset by cutbacks in research funding, their claims would be easy to dismiss. But this is a group of more than 60 respected academics, a dozen of whom are Nobel laureates and most of whom rarely speak out on political topics. Their fields of expertise include molecular biology, particle physics, biochemistry, environmental, ecological and climate issues, medicine, nuclear weapons, engineering and agriculture. Not even the White House is disputing their credentials, only their conclusions." http://www.onrelease.org/index.php?p=79770340
I did, but this is the wrong forum for that kind of talk. Keep your basketball jabbering in the GARM.
I hate this forum. RM95: That was WAY out of line, man. You know you can't do that if you expect anyone else not to do the same.
Moe's Tavern's Patrons for Truth Did they really expect the Democrats not to respond? By Steve Young August 9, 2004 -- HOLLYWOOD (apj.us) -- Just as the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth have released their torrid commercial and book attack on John Kerry's Vietnamwar record, another group has stepped forward with an altogether different take. They are all members of one of George Bush's favorite hangouts during his National Guard duty. They will soon be launching their new commercial. Troy McClure: "You may remember me from such Vietnamera war films such as Texas...The Real Frontline, I Never Did Cocaine, But I Sure Liked The Smell and Danger, Danger, We're About To Run Out Of Beer. Bush never showed up for any of the actual filming but I'm pretty sure I saw him at the wrap party. But...if you have any question about what George W. Bush is made of, just spend 3 minutes with the men who served him." Moe Szyslak: "I served George Bush." Sam Malone: "I served George Bush." Barney Gumble: "George W. Bush has not been honest about what happened in the National Guard (buuu-u-u-u-r-rp)." Principal Seymour Skinner: "To this day with his grades I have no idea how George got into Yale or the National Guard . It was almost like he knew someone." Mayor Joe Quimby: "Okay. I might have pulled a few strings, but with the son of George Bush, string-pulling is prerequisite It's not like that idiot Boston prep school kid who volunteered who got shot at. Now that guy obviously didn't know anyone." Carl: "He is lying about his record. I was there that night. He says he downed 45 Singapore Slings which would be one more than Barney's all-time mark. Bush had no more than 20 before he drove home." Apu Nahasapeemapetilon: "Thank you. Come again." Dr. Julius Hibbert: "I know George W. Bush is lying about his first drunk because I treated him for that hangover. He also had one of Moe's two-year old pretzels stuck in his throat. He-he" Lenny: "George W. Bush lied to get that DUI... I know, I was there, I saw what happened." Herschel "Krusty" Krustofski: "His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day...or day and night. I can't be sure. I was pretty loaded too" Reverend Lovejoy: "George W. Bush has not been honest. I personally spoke to God-uh and He told that the only God-uh Bush spoke to was the porcelain one." Robert "Sideshow Bob" Terwilliger: "He betrayed his fellow alcoholics. When he testified in front of that office and said that he was not drunk and neither were his drinking buddies, I nearly cried." Dr. Nick Rivera: "When the chips were down, you could not count on George W. Bush to ever pay for a single round." Lionel Hutz: "I represented Bush that night to the best of my ability and I have apologized to him for that." Duff Man: "We had to close down the brewery the day he got sober and put thousands of Duff workers into the unemployment line. George W. Bush can't be trusted." Nelson Muntz: "Ha-ha." Chief Clancy Wiggins: "Oh yeah. Remember the night well. Pulled Bush out of that ditch. Heh-heh. Kinda slurred that he wasn't at fault. Said he just came back to save the tree his car he ran into." Moe Szyslak: "I served George W. Bush. I still got the $5000 tab to prove it." Moe Szyslak: (off-camera): "George W. Bush cannot be trusted." George W. Bush: "D'oh." Montgomery Burns: "Moe's Tavern's Patrons For Truth is responsible for the content of this advertisement and was paid for by www.moveonplease.org. Ex-cellent!" http://www.americanpolitics.com/20040809Young.html
