Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
There are so many things to say about the John Kerry gaffe, it's hard to know where to start.
Just the idea of President Bush’s scolding Kerry and telling him that "words are important" is beyond belief. This, after
all, is the guy who for five years has been warning Americans about various "nookular" threats facing us. A guy who has his
every utterance scripted for him and yet still manages to screw up his lines with regularity. A guy who had to have a cueing
device hidden in his ear canal during his debates with that selfsame Kerry, so he'd avoid just standing at the lectern and
saying "duh" in response to questions.
But let's not stop there. Kerry himself was right in character. He clearly didn't write his own joke, and was too slow-witted
to get the joke he was supposed to deliver, which reportedly was that if students didn't work and study hard might end up
someday being ignorant incurious leaders like President Bush, and getting the country into another mess like Iraq. It wasn't
much of a joke, but by bunging it up, Kerry revealed his Boston Brahman snobbishness, saying instead that if students didn't
study hard, they'd end up in Iraq--the clear implication being that he thinks that the US troops fighting and dying in Iraq
are there because they’re uneducated.
Kerry, the candidate who voted for the war but opposes the war, who voted for funding for the war and voted against it,
is now trying to say that the joke he told is not the joke that was written for him, but that's not going to work. He certainly
should have understood instantly what he was saying when he said it, and realized how smarmy it was. What we're left with
is the unavoidable conclusion that Kerry doesn't know anything about what he's saying when he says it. Like Bush, he's just
reading a script, and like Bush, he's bungling it badly.
That said, Republicans should be taking no pleasure in this. While it's always fun to see a stuffed-shirt like Kerry get
exposed and humiliated, the president is in no position to mock.
Besides,
there is the reality that most of the men and women fighting and dying
for the US in the deserts and urban jungles of Iraq and Afghanistan are
there, not because they are stupid or intellectually lazy, as Kerry
said, but because they were too poor to pay for their college or to
have their parents pay for their college the way Bush's and Kerry's
parents did for them. They're there because Bush and his Republican
Congress have for six years slashed federal aid for higher education,
driving students into ROTC programs, where they became easy pickings
for Bush's wars upon graduation. They're also there because people like
Bush and Kerry have conspired to encourage American firms to ship
well-paying jobs overseas, leaving students with little but retail
clerical work and waitering to help them pay their bills.
As
for the active duty troops fighting alongside them, while some may just
be patriotic kids from military families who wanted a little
excitement, and some may be sadists with a passion for killing, torture
and fancy weaponry, most are there because there were no other jobs
available. They're not stupid, John. But neither are they happy to be
there, George. They're there because both of you have betrayed them in
the name of "globalization."
In
the end, the joke's really on us, because ever since the presidency of
Ronald Reagan, we Americans have accepted uncritically the idea that
our political leaders will be simply animated noisemakers for
transmitting the carefully scripted "talking points," sound bites,
polemics and yes, even jokes written for them by a backroom group of
political strategists--all presented as though they were coming from
the brains of the people doing the talking.
We get the government, and the politicians, we deserve.
Let’s at least be thankful for the laughs they give us, inadvertently.
You smack of the truth. written by brotherbruz,
November 02, 2006
You are right on...Next in line after bush gets up from his deserved spanking, allow the pink-tie, Rick Santorium, take his turn. Oh, (I would not wear an outfit like Sanitarium Insane Asylum outfit to bed if I'd lost my pj's) or (if Jane Fonda jumped into the public arena) how does one find the proper non-cuss words? thanks.
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shrub and Kerry? They are both clueless written by enemy of the people,
November 02, 2006
But from different perspectives. Shrub is because he is determined to destroy our Federal system of government and sees government in all ways as a bad thing. If he could, he would see to privatization of all aspects of our government. I would not be surprised to hear that there has been discussion in the West Wing about somehow calling a Constitutional Convention to rid us of that pesky document in favor of one more business friendly. Kerry is clueless because he truly is not one of us. Any more than the rest of the "elites" he consorts with. I sincerely think his heart is in the right place and at least he did SOMETHING right in Viet Nam. There is no real defense for either man and their inability to actually do some good. However, truth be told, many of the youngsters in Iraq ARE there because they lack the education necessary to make good decisions. This is partly due to the dumbing down of public education in America over the last few decades and partly due to where some of the service people are actually coming from. Since the military has been missing its goals for enlistments, they have lowered the bar to include non-high school grads, and those with only a GED. Another feature in the lack of education is that many of these kids join specifically to get money so they can GET an education. It is a cart before the horse argument in many ways but still valid. In my own case during the Viet Nam War, among many reasons I volunteered for the Marine Corps and a four-year enlistment was so that I could go to college if I lived through the war. In those days 2 years of service yielded 2 years of college and so on. The national guard in that era had no GI Bill benefits. In the latter part of the Viet Nam War that all changed but when I went in, that was the way it was. Excuses for Kerry and shrub? No way. they both need to be backshelfed. Hopefully, some real progressives with real backbone will dominate and actually make some changes. I am not holding my breath.
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Poor Uncle Sam written by Jimmy Montague,
November 03, 2006
300 million people in this country and it seems the best we can do for leaders is a pair of flannel-mouthed, lying morons. Where do we go from here? Chaos or community? That's sort of a no-brainer, ain't it?
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