[typoon]

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/20162.htm

Which is is Senator?

Democratic presidential nominee-to-be John Kerry called Yasser Arafat a "statesman" and a "role model" in a 1997 book that Kerry cites as proof of his own foresight about foreign policy.

Kerry expressed the opposite view eight days ago, when he told Jewish leaders in New York that he shares President Bush's belief that Arafat must be isolated because he's not a "partner for peace" - much less a statesman

[voodoo]

Why isn't something INTERESTING happening in the campaign???

I crave entertainment. This is such a yawn. I'm telling you the Dems totally blew most of the entertainment value of the upcoming election clean off when the didn't vote for Howard Dean.

[dole]

You don't say

[medmuse]

Why the long face?


By 1972, Massachusetts' third congressional seat was firmly held by radical Robert Drinan. Kerry, now 28, left Waltham and bought a house in Worcester, anticipating a run for Congress from the 4th District. But when President Nixon picked the congressman representing the 5th District for an ambassador's post, Kerry leased out his house and moved to the dying old mill city of Lowell to run for the soon-to-be-vacated seat there. The Boston Phoenix, an alternative newspaper whose reporter traveled with Kerry on the 1972 campaign, profiled the candidate in a story headlined, "Cruising with a Carpetbagger."

"Kerry, media superstar, suddenly found himself having to deny that he had political plans lest he be accused of ripping off the veterans by using them as a bow for the arrow of his ambition," the Phoenix reported. "John Kerry is burning with desire to be a congressman, but he has to keep paying off that loan from the Vietnam Veterans [VVAW] by seeming to be cool and indifferent to personal gain, and this underlying dilemma produces an uncomfortable tension around him."

The candidate had trouble balancing himself between Kerry the patriot and Kerry the minion of Hanoi's agitprop apparatus. He tried to distance himself from his brand-new book, The New Soldier. According to a major newspaper in the district, the Lowell Sun, the book cover "carried a picture of three or four bearded youths of the hippie type carrying the American flag in a photo resembling remarkably the immortal photo by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima after its capture from the Japanese during World War II. The big difference between the two pictures, however, is that the photo on John Kerry's book shows the flag being carried upside down in a gesture of contempt."

The book was hard to come by at the time, according to the newspaper, but a rival in the Democratic primary found one in Greenwich Village and tried to publish the cover as an advertisement in the Sun. Kerry tried to cover it up. "Things began to get hot as the old pressure went on to prevent publication of the advertisement showing the cover of the book," the Sun's editors wrote on Oct. 18, 1972. "Permission from the publisher of the book, Macmillan Co. of New York, to reproduce the cover, granted by Macmillan in a telegram on the day publication of the ad was scheduled, was quickly withdrawn hours later by Macmillan with the explanation that the approval of the author, John Kerry, would be required before the cover could be reproduced in a political advertisement. So that killed the ad."

Kerry said it wasn't he who blocked publication. According to the Sun, "Subsequently, efforts were made to obtain Mr. Kerry's okay to reproduce the famous book cover, but Mr. Kerry now says he doesn't have the right to give this permission because the copyright on the book cover belongs to a coeditor of the book, one George Butler." The Sun couldn't locate Butler.

When the book had come out the year before, Macmillan sent a review copy to Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), requesting an endorsement. Byrd wrote back, "I say most respectfully to you, I threw it in the wastebasket after leafing through it."

Having lost the primary in humiliation - his brother had been caught trying to wiretap an opponent's office - Kerry went to Boston College Law School. Later, he was appointed assistant district attorney, then was elected lieutenant governor under Mike Dukakis in 1982. Two years later, he ran for the U.S. Senate - dusting off his veteran's credentials by standing in front of the black Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington to shoot a TV campaign ad, defying regulations that the memorial not be used for political purposes. The ad "was filmed illegally against the wishes of the National Park Service," according to the Boston Globe. Kerry authorized its broadcast anyway.


------from a completely unsubstantiated biography making the rounds on the internet.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by dole:
You don't say