BACK AGAIN

SEMI-CONSCIOUS

IS IT ALL BAD NEWS?

It's been a long five weeks, and the outcome was as could be expected: cancer claims another victim-- but at age 85 something's going to get you. Surrounded by family and the good folks of hospice care (courtesy of Medicare). Can't really complain. Lots to be said, but sorted out some other day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: you gotta hand it to Senator John Fitzgerald Kerry for continuing to demonstrate that, when push comes to shove, he basically thinks he's just so much better than almost ANYBODY. This time (yet again) it's the American foot-soldier, and the senator's large designer shoes have taken up familiar residence lodged firmly in his mouth.

The story's all over the place-- how he thinks you end up in Iraq if you're an under-educated slacker-- video here -- but the best follow-up of all has been from the good-humored members of the armed forces themselves, who have this message for the over-puffed Yale C-student senator (who by the way was a self-admitted war criminal in Vietnam):


Heh.

(Our thanks to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard. LOVE the patch, at right.)

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online nails it:

Kerry insists he was making a joke about President Bush, not a joke about students who aren't smart enough to do better than the military. While there's virtually nothing in the text or video of his remarks to lend support for this, save for a wan smile he offered to the mute audience, it's possible that was his intent. After all, Kerry is an awful politician, a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor. One can't rule out the possibility that he simply botched a joke. [emphasis added]

Unfair to Latin tutors.