pudge's Journal: So, This Kerry Joke

I don't care how you spin it: John Kerry insulted the troops. I am perfectly willing to accept Kerry did not mean to insult the troops, but he did anyway: he said Bush is stupid for having us in Iraq, and most of the troops think we should be in Iraq, so therefore most of the troops have a stupid view. Sounds like an insult to me.

However, I also don't care that he insulted the troops. This so incredibly unimportant to me. It's not like I was going to give Kerry an award for his many years of support for the armed services.

Honestly, I think this is one of those cases where the mainstream press is driving this story in part out of guilt for hammering the Republicans so much over the past few months.

Same insult for 34 years and counting.

[GMontag]

See a recent JE of mine. He has been doing the same insult since 1972. His attempting to distance himself from his long-standing position that an volunteer military is full of morons defies the written and voiced record.

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[RailGunner]

I remember Donna Shalala offering a gem about the military not attracting the best and the brightest.. but I can't find it.
Federal Democrats look down their noses at soldiers - and they've done it for years.

How are Christians and soldiers alike?

[NeMon'ess]

Christians convince themselves their denomination is right and the others are wrong. Because if they're in the wrong, and the Protestants/Baptists/Roman Catholics/others are right, then their grandparents and ancestors are burning in Hell for believing wrongly. Likewise, soldiers want to be fighting for the right causes and reasons. If they're not, then they've been killing others and going through hell and it was a mistake. Both groups let faith influence their critical thinking.

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[FroMan]

And stupid atheists go about their day making broad brushed statements. See, we can all paint with an overly broad brush.

It might interest you that various denominations can gather in the same room and see eachother as brothers in Christ. Now minutiae of scripture can cause rifts, such as you mention, but that is found in any gathering or two or more people. Even within the hallowed halls of academia.

Soldiers are not that automatons you and Kerry seem to believe. Your insult to them did not get missed,

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[NeMon'ess]

It might interest you that various denominations can gather in the same room and see eachother as brothers in Christ. Now minutiae of scripture can cause rifts, such as you mention, but that is found in any gathering or two or more people. Even within the hallowed halls of academia.

True, but then there's the believers of each denomination who say that everyone else, even other so-called Christians, will burn in hell for not being part of the right denomination. I was talking exclusively about those people.

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[pudge]

True, but then there's the believers of each denomination who say that everyone else, even other so-called Christians, will burn in hell for not being part of the right denomination. I was talking exclusively about those people.

It's a tiny fraction. We're talking here about a majority of soldiers, and you're comparing that to a tiny fraction of Christians. Sorry, it doesn't work.

Lets just step back from politics for a moment and consider the first five words of your sentence. How well educated are our sol

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[cascadefx]

How do you KNOW it is a tiny faction that is against and a majority that is for the war. Maybe it is just a small faction or a minority faction or a significant minority faction that is against. What's your source that puts the support for the war among the troops as a "tiny" faction?

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[pudge]

How do you KNOW it is a tiny faction that is against and a majority that is for the war.

I never said it was. I said it is a tiny fraction of Christians "who say that everyone else, even other so-called Christians, will burn in hell for not being part of the right denomination," and, by extension, a tiny fraction of soldiers who are for the war merely because they "let faith influence their critical thinking."

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[FroMan]

True, but then there's the believers of each denomination who say that everyone else, even other so-called Christians, will burn in hell for not being part of the right denomination. I was talking exclusively about those people.

Otherwise my comparison wouldn't make any sense now would it.


It doesn't make sense you would argue that a minority of the military would be stuck in your supposed conundrum of "let[ting] faith influence their critical thinking" since the majority of the military supported the effort

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[pudge]

Christians convince themselves their denomination is right and the others are wrong. Because if they're in the wrong, and the Protestants/Baptists/Roman Catholics/others are right, then their grandparents and ancestors are burning in Hell for believing wrongly.

False. Sorry, it's just not true. I know thousands of Christians, and barely any of them think like that. Maybe one percent. You're just making it up.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[eglamkowski]

Kerry definitely called SOMEBODY stupid.

If you don't get an education and don't "make an effort to be smart" (huh?), then you wind up stuck in Iraq.

The implication is very clear - educated, smart people wouldn't end up stuck in Iraq. Therefore, if you are stuck in Iraq, you must not be educated and smart, i.e. you must be stupid and uneducated.

To say he was referring to Bush as being stupid and uneducated makes no sense. The president has a degree from Yale (with a GPA that was acutally slightly HIGHER th

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[pudge]

Actually, no, he didn't.

Actually, yes, he did.

But, no matter, your interpretation is that being stuck in Iraq is the same thing has having us in Iraq.

Well, they are not actually different. Kerry is describing the current circumstances as "being stuck in Iraq," and calls that stupid. Most troops favor the current circumstances.

I don't see what you're complaining about.

Kerry didn't insult the troops.

Not intentionally, no. But in fact, yes.

That's an entirely different thing to creating an unworkable plan to

The worst thing about it

[jdavidb]

Is that I've had 5 hours of commute time per day this week, and with three conservative talk radio stations, this has been all there was to hear.

My wife says I should listen to music.

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[Bill Dog]

Unfortunately we first had the Democrat Party and the mainstream news media (often effectively one and the same) tell everyone that all their neighbors were convinced that the race was over already, the Dems were going to have a sweeping victory, it's already been decided, so don't bother trying to stop it, just accept it. A nice ploy, if you're a sleazebag -- encouraging voters on the other side to not vote.

So then Republicans began worrying that this con-job/psychological scheme might actually have an eff

Two different issues

[John Harrison]

Whether we should be in Iraq now is a different question than whether we should have invaded in the first place.

Kerry is an idiot, which he demonstrated either by saying exactly what he meant or by garbling his joke about Bush so badly. But saying that he is insulting the troops by disagreeing with them is an insult to the ability of the troops to take disagreement well. Aren't they there fighting for the right to disagree?

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[pudge]

But saying that he is insulting the troops by disagreeing with them is an insult to the ability of the troops to take disagreement well.

I didn't say that. I said he insulted them by calling their view stupid, not by merely disagreeing with them.