Via Hot Air, the complete 15-minute speech by John “Fozzie Bear” Kerry, stumping for Phil Angelides, during which he made his notorious remark at the expense of…President Bush? Troops in Iraq? It’s a matter of disagreement.

My thoughts, having viewed the whole thing:

Via Ace of Spades HQ, South Park’s take on evolution.

Content warning, it contains references to monkeys having sex with squirrels and fish, I think the “F” word that rhymes with “truck” is in there. Can’t remember too clearly, I was laughing too hard.

Via News Blog Central I come to find out about this Yahoo News story with some interesting phraseology, and I’ll let the NBC proprietor, CEO, chief, cook and bottle-washer James Bostwick explain this further.

I love the tone of this article. When Republicans make their case, they’re “attacking” Democrats. When the Dems bid, it’s called “countering.” The verbage throughout the article is very enlightening. Here’s a few highlights of clever word association by author Espo.

Republicans: attack, criticizing, battle…waged, protect seats, Bush’s script, mocked, reeling, ridiculed, accusation.

Democrats: undeterred, countered, change, winning, usher in a new era of divided government, poised to win, decade of struggle, projected confidence, competitive, gained the endorsement.

You can see that the author paints a bleak outlook for Republicans almost characterizing them as cornered animals, lashing out at the establishment. Meanwhile, Democrats are valiantly fighting the fight, and striving towards victory. Shameless.

Follow the link, and you get this parting-shot at the end where several Democratic “countering” ad is analyzed…

Lacking the presidential megaphone, Democrats broadcast their message in television commercials in key districts around the country.

“Rick O’Donnell. He’s George Bush’s candidate for Congress. O’Donnell wanted to send 75,000 more troops to Iraq,” says an ad in a suburban Denver race that Democrats are particularly optimistic about winning.

“Despite a war gone wrong and no plan for victory politicians like Rob Simmons keep voting to stay the course again and again, following George Bush’s failed leadership no matter what the cost,” is the accusation against Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut.

Rep. Dave Reichert “just sides with Bush on Iraq,” says the announcer in the ad against the Washington state congressman. “Iraq is just a disaster. Iraq is a complete disaster. It’s heartbreaking.”

Yet another ad shows Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., saying, “We need to stay the course,” followed by an announcer’s voice saying, “No, we don’t.”

I discussed this whole Iraq thing briefly last night. It’s not complicated at all, in fact, it’s even simpler than most people make it out to be.

Republicans: If we leave Iraq now, it will be a complete disaster. So let’s not do that yet.

Democrats: If we leave Iraq now, it will be a complete disaster. So…what in the hell are we waiting for?

Let’s just go ahead and call this right now. If Democrats capture one chamber of Congress, or the other…certainly, if they capture both…Iraq AND terrorism will simply be “tuned out.” Welfare, minimum wage, medicare, global warming, roll back the tax cuts, rich not paying their fair share. It will be the 1980’s all over again, all domestic issues, all the time. You will go through all of 2007 not hearing anything about terrorists, except maybe from some Republicans forcibly retired from Congress.

I’m calling it: The transformation will start during the holidays. Thanksgiving. You’ll read about poor people and homeless people having shitty Thanksgivings. Thanksgiving will become a major, major event. Microphones shoved into the faces of voluneer workers doling out the turkey and gravy in homeless shelters, so they can discuss what dire circumstances these people are in, and how many of them are going to develop medical problems because it’s going to be so cold this winter.

The drumbeat will continue for two solid years, in preparation for the 2008 presidential elections. All poor people, all the time. Not a peep about dirty little depraved animal-men who want to kill large numbers of us to make political statements. Derelicts, old people, single parents, programs, benefits, premiums, interest, mortgages, taxes.

Just get terrorism the hell OFF the front page. It’s really hard to sell new social programs when the filthy commoners are thinking about terrorists.

If Democrats win, a year from today the September 11 attacks will be as distant from our contemporary mindset as the War of 1812. The terrorists will not have gone away, by any means. We’ll just be directed from our elites to think about other things.

“Bumptious” is a word that means to be self-assertive, saliently so. If you stand up for yourself, you might be bumptious, but that by itself doesn’t do the trick. Bumptious means loud; it means to be offensive, usually, with some measure beyond what’s necessary. It means your strategy is self-preservation, and perhaps there is some nobility in that, but your tactics are unnecessarily shrill. Bumptious is a word I have to work hard to keep from overusing, for if I were to start using it, I can see myself easily wearing it out — it’s such a great word. It’s an addictive word. Besides, it’s a relevant word; we live in some very bumptious times.

I know a lot of registered Democrats. Some are reasonable, some are not, but all of them have a lot of loyalty to the “home team” above & beyond what they can logically explain. And all of them are bumptious about these loyalties they cannot explain; only on certain days, however. Monday, Wednesday and Friday they might be wisely counseling me that they’re above the fray and see no advantage to highlighting their disagreements with me, opting instead to “agree to disagree.” But such agreements go sailing out the window on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. They’re selective about their contrition and shyness. They choose, judiciously, when to be quiet and when to be loud. It all depends on what’s going on.

I notice that all the Democrats I know, are this way. The extreme ones, the moderate ones. It’s time for some in-your-face table-pounding…when it’s time for it…otherwise, now is not the time. And they always want to be the ones choosing what time it is.

Now, this Kerry thing is most peculiar. People who sympathize with John Kerry now say he was joking; those are the ones who want to talk about it. The rest of them are willing to forfeit the whole issue. Tee hee! Did I say that? No, nobody’s forfeiting anything…the ones who don’t want to talk about Kerry’s “botched joke,” are indignantly instructing the rest of us to think Kerry forgot to stick in a couple of words that would have completely changed the meaning of what he said, and we should do it for him or else we’re “misinterpreting” what he said. I think Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic party, summed it up best.

Howard Dean, in comments to reporters in his home state, said Sen. John Kerry had committed “a blooper,” but the reaction had given Democrats an opportunity to highlight what they describe as the Republicans’ weaknesses on the Iraq war.

“Kerry made a blooper. Bloopers happen,” Dean said at the state party’s campaign headquarters.

“I think we want to focus on the president’s intemperate rhetoric in saying to vote for a Democrat is a vote to help the terrorists win,” Dean said. “That’s clearly untrue and that’s exactly the reason why President Bush is a failed president.”

Nobody with a brain who’s been following this, Republican, Democrat, or anywhere in between, is pretending to believe Dean’s going to be consistent on this. He won’t; Democrats in general won’t; that’s my whole point. Bloopers happen? Does that mean bloopers don’t count, ever — or bloopers don’t count today? Like, next time President Bush makes one, the time-honored blooper will go right back to being an indicator of leadership material or lack thereof?

This selective bumptiousness is okay, I suppose, except for one thing. And it scares the ever-lovin’ crap out of me.

Republicans tell me if we are going to leave Iraq “before the job is done,” disaster will surely follow. They may be right, they may be wrong. But I’m much more concerned about whether this is a middle-of-the-road ponderance of likely future events, or a right-wing talking point. It doesn’t seem, to me, to be a right-wing talking point. Democrats and liberals could take issue with this any day they want to. They’re judiciously bumptious, you see. They could decide to argue with this and say “no, no, we can leave Iraq, and there won’t be a price to be paid by ANYONE for this.” They could say that.

They choose not to. Their sagacious bumptiousness tells them to let this one pass. And in my eyes, by their silence, they’re agreeing with this. Let me guess: That evil President George Bush has got us in a no-win quagmire situation, and we need to get out, but if we do so it will all go to shit. Something like that, right?

Okay. So both sides agree we can’t just pull out of Iraq without disaster following.

Democrats have a platform of doing exactly that thing. Sure, the euphemism is “redeploy.” But their plan is to leave.

So Republicans have an ominous prediction of disaster if a certain thing is done; Democrats share in that recognition of the bad things that will happen if we do that thing. They agree. They only disagree about whether it’s good to discuss it or not. But as to what will happen if we do that thing, they agree.

Well, Democrats want to do that thing — leave — and Republicans don’t.

I mean, do I have that right? That’s the platform, isn’t it…if we pull out of Iraq, the place will become a shitstorm — so let’s do it? Is this election really more complicated than that? Really? A party that wants to do what will lead to a disaster, versus another party that doesn’t? If so, what am I leaving out?

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s a silly question about such a trivial matter. Er…oh wait a minute, no it isn’t.

Is anyone keeping track of all these generalities, and while we’re at it, all the unsubstantiated characterizations? Republicans are morons, the Christian Right runs everything, Republicans are drowning in scandal, white men are angry, troops in Iraq are a bunch of dimwits…Cheney is unscrupulous and Bush is a putz.

I remember a generation ago that a “liberal” was someone who was fighting a Good Fight against generalizations. It started out with an intellectual combat waged against half-assed unthinking statements like “black people are lazy” — the liberal would be there to say, hey, there’s lazy & hard-working white people, there’s lazy & hard-working black people, you shouldn’t be stereotyping. The liberal was right. No matter what your personal experience was, somewhere a black guy was working his ass off…somewhere else, a white guy was being lazier than any black guy you’d ever seen. Individuals are individuals, classes are classes, the two are different.

Liberals got so militant about this, that even sensible generalizations based on empirical observations, or cause-and-effect, were off-limits. “Obese people seem to buy food in large quantities,” would have gotten you a censure from our liberals…even as they indignantly noted our egghead scientists might be saying that very thing, and not enough people were paying attention to the egghead scientists. You might say our liberals, outwardly dedicated to everyone being equal, simultaneously crusaded for generalizations to be enjoyed only by our academic elites. Wage-slaves were not to indulge in this. So there’s some irony — your caste determined your license to think in certain ways. Elites could generalize, commoners could not.

Then things got even funnier and more ironic. Telling people what to think, is always easier than telling people how to think, and the liberal movement took the path of least resistance. Liberals made it known were were not allowed to have such thoughts in our heads. They effectively said, we will discipline you if you’re caught thinking Chinese people run laundromats, or Mexicans drive big old cars with messed-up suspension systems, or that women are shrill gold-diggers…and you know what? We don’t give a damn anymore if it’s stereotyping, or an honest observation of an individual. Sure enough, within a decade a man could be divorced, with his ex-wife taking everything all his material possessions because she never had a job in her life and didn’t want one…and he could state, factually, “I just got divorced and my ex-wife took all my material possessions, because she’s never had a job in her life and she doesn’t want one” — and a liberal would be right there, waggling the liberal finger in his face, tut-tutting him into obedient silence.

So there’s some more irony. Generalizations no longer had anything to do with it.

And now, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, our liberals have become exactly what they swore to oppose. It’s all about telling the masses what to think about this class of person or that class of person. In fact, if the stereotypes aren’t disseminated far and wide, and too many of us keep in mind that individuals are individuals and classes are classes, our liberals just aren’t happy. To simply make an observation that some Euro-centric white men (who aren’t Democrats) might have honest motives and might work hard — just some — is to create a state of war, in which the liberal must have the last word.

Senator Kerry says his line about the troops was a “botched joke” that was aimed at the White House, not at the troops. “The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe…It’s a stunning statement about their willingness to reduce anything in America to raw politics.” You know, if I predicted this little exchange a year ago, it would have been clumsy political satire. Kerry says…aw hell, let’s just try to go beyond factual history and venture into outlandish, unprecedented theory — difficult as that is. Kerry says the troops in Iraq are disease-infested, raping, ignorant brutes who set dogs on fire for fun. President Bush says “that’s not fair and you owe the troops an apology” and Kerry replies…”The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable blah blah blah…reduce anything in America to raw politics.”

That’s a pretty poor excuse for satire, but it’s the best I can manage and that’s my point. Satire is supposed to go above and beyond the plane of reality — and that has become prohibitively difficult in the Senator’s case. He has arrived at his zenith. He can say anything…about anyone…in any context he chooses…and once called on it, he’ll accuse the accuser. He has pushed it to such outlandish extremes that you can’t even poke fun at it anymore.

So let’s take a look at what he said, although by doing so, we’re clearly excusing ourselves from Kerry’s intended audience since he doesn’t want anyone examining anything. Kerry says the White House is attempting to distort his true statement which was a “botched joke” directed at President Bush and his “failed policies.” Okay. What he said…was…

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq. [emphasis mine]

My point is…and I’m sure others have made the same point somewhere by now, perhaps more concisely…there’s no distortion present and none required. If you don’t make an effort to be smart, you get stuck in Iraq. So those guys “stuck in Iraq” did not make the effort to be smart.

It’s what he said.

It wasn’t taken out of context. Go on, do a Google for anything you care to Google — not hard now! — and sift through the avalanche of news about Kerry’s “botched joke” here. Try to find a way he was unfairly taken out of context. Just try it.

As the Boston Herald pointed out, not only is Kerry guilty of the kind of generalization our liberals used to fight with every fiber of their being…his implications are not even factually sustainable. It’s simplemindedness and bigotry…presented to us in as pure and as acrid a form as we’ve ever seen such things.

You know, I’m just sure the pressure of campaigning the last week before the election is incredible. But it’s part of the job, and for Sen. Kerry to get in trouble over this, is just plain fair. He spoke from the heart. Central to the real platform of the Democratic party, is an axiom that our troops serving in Iraq are, not dedicated professionals trying to do a job, but just a bunch of simple-minded dolts. I see a lot of Democrats and other left-wingers getting all huffy-puffy when someone makes that observation about what they think, but I don’t see a lot of them directly contesting it. Getting huffy-puffy is where the argument starts, and where it ends.