Great picture, eh?

John Kerry wouldn't think so. In fact this picture represents the end of his presidential hopes. One can never contemplate John Kerry as command-in-chief without thinking about this picture.

You know who does think its a great picture? Hillary Clinton.

First Mark Warner, now John Kerry. Like Alexander, she's killing all the rival princes to leave the succession a clear field.

UPDATE: Cheney twists the knife

UPDATE: Silent Bob has nixed an appearance with Kerry in Philadelphia.

UPDATE: Claire McCaskill joins the choir.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton speaks and says nothing.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking at a Kingston campaign stop this morning, joined the chorus of Democrats criticizing Sen. John Kerry for what the former presidential candidate has called a joke gone awry.

“What Sen. Kerry said was inappropriate,” she said.

Asked if Kerry should apologize, President Bush and other members of both parties have said, Clinton said “I heard he said he was sorry.”
Clinton tried to deflect attention from the controversy by saying “elections are about the future,” and “we don’t have to be re-fighting the 2004 election, as much as President Bush would like that.”

Aside from her highness' command that we only discuss the topics she personally favors, what does it mean to say something was "inappropriate"? Does that mean "OK to think, but not to express in public?" Woefully inadequate IMO.

UPDATE: Gov. Janet Napolitano, Bob Menendez, and a host of others, have condemned Kerry's remarks.

Kerry has a new statement.

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

Read carefully what this asshole is saying here--I regret that you were to stupid to understand the nuance of what I was trying to say and by the way--its Bush's fault. Well, I am one of those family members he's apologizing to and this is just not working for me. Kerry just doesn't have it in him to rehabilitate himself political, so he might as well resign. Michael Barone noted yesterday on a panel discussion, that his advice to Kerry at the beginning of the 2004 campaign, would have been to have held a press conference and apologized for everything from the Winter Soldier affair to the current day.

That was good advice not taken, and now its far, far too late.

Some interesting comments by Tom Maquire

Dana Milbank blames the sorcerer.

In a season of lies, a bold truth is like a chill wind. It seems to go right through you so that you feel it in your bones.

Austin Bay uttered such a truth yesterday

“I was in Vietnam in 1971,” my buddy continued. “I didn’t commit any war crimes and I didn’t see any. Kerry said we were committing war crimes everywhere all the time.”

Remember, readers, this is 1999. We’re in a creaky barrack, wearing t-shirts, BDU trousers, and boots. Earthquake aftershocks occasionally boom –and the booms sound and feel like heavy artillery. And he mentions John Kerry.

“I despise the man,” my friend said. “He lied and benefited politically from his lies….He lied about me.”

I simply listened — that’s what you do in a moment like this. I remember noticing I still had scotch in my cup. He had barely touched his drink. He took a long sip, put his cup down. Plop. Period. End of moment.

The man had served honorably in Vietnam. He had served nobly (another word those of the noblisse oblige set have trouble with). Twenty-eight years later this admirable American soldier was still pulling duty, this time on a humanitarian mission in another jungle. For some hard cases it may seem odd that in a midnight moment of reflection John Kerry’s ugly Winter Soldier spiel would intrude. But Kerry’s trash talk had tarnished the man’s honor — and that sense of deep insult and betrayal had lit a long, slow fuze of righteous anger.

In 2004 Big Media missed that story. In 2006 the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t.

Bay is getting at something fundamental in the chasm between left and right in this country as well as the reason conservatives can be counted on to come out and vote in large numbers. Kerry in the brief moment where his shoe was going into mouth, simply exemplified an entire buffet of liberal, left-wing nasty vittles.

The contempt and the gloom.

I'm trying to think about the last time a Democrat official made me feel good about being an American--I just can't do it--and that's the problem.

Democrats are experiencing a long-term decline because they simply don't embody the values that Americans respect and honor.

Understanding that Swift-boating is tell the uncomfortable truth about someone, it seems that John Kerry is once again victim to that terrible calumny.

John Kerry appears to have plagiarized parts of his 1971 Senate testimony, notably a line that was again used in 2004 in the context of the Iraq reconstruction.

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to dies in Vietnam? How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

John Boyle, a Vietnam-era veteran notes for Greyhawk that everytime he hears this, he's reminded of a VC propaganda pamphlet his squad found during the war. Here's the front.

...and here's the back. Note the final sentence.

"Do try to avoid the unfortunate fate of the last G.I. killed in this war"

More at the ">Mudville Gazette, including an account of the last G.I. killed in Vietnam.

Now I suppose it could be a mere coincidence, afterall, great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ.

Kerry seems to signaling that he is still in the running for his party's nomination.

Kerry has recently begun to bolster his Senate and campaign staff in preparation for what some Kerry insiders insist is a likely run for president. Kerry has signed on Erik Smith to serve as a senior adviser to his Senate campaign committee and Vince Morris to be communications director in his Senate office.

I don't know whether to be sick or admire him for his never-say-die attitude.

Perhaps no recent political episode openly displayed the blatant dishonesty of political campaigns that the Swiftboat Veterans campaign to expose John Kerry's Vietnam shenanigans and CBS News abortive attempt to declare George W. Bush AWOL from the National Guard.

CBS News was caught collaborating with the Kerry campaign and perpetrating a fraud on the American public. The evidence was so overwhelming, it ended Dan Rather's career. In spite of this, many of the left still believe unquestionably that Bush was indeed AWOL--such is the nature of quasi-religious faith.

On the other hand, the Swiftboat Veterans built a compelling case, both on the internet and with the publication "Unfit for Command", that Kerry had seriously misrepresented his service in Vietnam. I was blogging at the time and read everything on their website, and then read the book. It was a devastating indictment, ironically, considering the Killian memo fiasco, because it was so well-documented and witnessed.

The Kerry-cheering section in the media was at a complete loss--unable to refute the charges, they blamed the campaign for not giving them anything to work with. I recall an especially lame attempt by Chris Wallace to discredit a Swiftboat veteran he was interviewing. His eagerness and the pathetic quality of his refutation were disturbing.

Its unknown what effect the Killian memo scandal and the Swiftboat vets had on the outcome of the election, but the left always resents Republicans for actually fighting the election instead of just rolling over and playing dead. Old-line Democrats had long come to expect a sympathetic media culture to cover for them, to bury the inconvenient and ugly truths and to help in creating felicitous public images (i.e. Hillary Clinton is so-o-o-o experienced....).

Unable to deal with the substance of the Swiftboat veteran's accusations, the media in particular has taken to foisting a logical fallacy on the public--equivocating between the exposure of John Kerry as a fraud, and the kind of character assassination attempted by CBS news.

As usual, the left accuses the right of its own crimes and sins, that what should have been "Rathering" has become "Swift-boating" instead.

As an epilogue to this sad tale, Beldarblog has noted that John Kerry has not sought legal redress to clear his name, as is his right.

When I first brought it to his attention in September 2005, I reminded Sen. John F. Kerry that — based on the publication date on or about August 25, 2004, of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi — Sen. Kerry had already allowed the one-year statutes of limitations for defamation to expire in Texas (where Mr. O'Neill resides), New Jersey (where Dr. Corsi resides), and the District of Columbia (where their publisher Regnery Publishing, Inc. has its principal place of business and Sen. Kerry has his own regular place of business).

But as I noted then, Sen. Kerry's home state of Massachusetts has a very unusual, extremely generous and pro-plaintiff three-year limitations period for defamation claims. Massachusetts' three-year statute of limitations for defamation claims made it the very last feasible venue in which Sen. Kerry conceivably could file suit and gain his public vindication, if the SwiftVets' allegations about him were false. Those claims were certainly, indeed deliberately, injurious to his reputation; his damages arguably include the loss of the 2004 presidential election, however that might be valued in dollars and cents; and if John Kerry could hope to find a home-town advantage anywhere, surely it would be there. But now he's let the incredibly generous Massachusetts statute of limitations run out, too.

I am not surprised. A trial would have brought out the facts and forever established the Swiftboat Veteran's credibility--better to let that sleeping dog lie and let media Ad Hominem work to characterize John Kerry as a victim of the right-wing noise machine.

You're never a bad guy in politics until you go to prison.

Prison is a politician's signal that the jig is up, that the public is just not buying anymore, but everything short of prison is an opportunity to blame your political opposition for distorting your record or just flat out lying about you because "they'll do anything to win."

John Kerry of course, would not do "anything" to win. He's good, brilliant and gosh darn it--a hero.

Now, after three years, he's finally able to prove it to you.

John Kerry said Monday there might be a next time for his presidential aspirations, and if there is, the 63-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts says he’ll be ready for the political torpedoes that helped sink his 2004 White House bid.

Kerry, whose service as a U.S. Navy Swift boat skipper during the Vietnam War came under attack in his race against President Bush, said he has compiled a dossier on his war record critics that he wishes he had as the Democratic presidential nominee.

``We have put together a documented portfolio that frankly puts their lies in such a total light of absurdity and indecency, that should they ever rear their ugly heads again, we have every single ‘t’ crossed and ‘i’ dotted, and I welcome that in a sense,'' Kerry said following a morning address to the South Shore Chamber fo Commerce. ``It’s a shame we weren’t able to produce all that at the time.''

Kerry said he regrets his slowness to counter accusations from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which faulted Kerry’s war record and his subsequent anti-war activism.

``I think the bigger problem was the campaign should have spent more money putting the truth out there,'' Kerry said. ``I think there was an assumption that is was out there, it was sufficiently out there.''

While Kerry is sitting out the 2008 presidential election n he’s instead focusing on his own his race next year for a sixth term as U.S. senator n he expects he’d be dogged by the same war record critics in a subsequent race for the White House.

``I have no doubt at all that some of the people involved on the other side don’t care about the truth, think nothing about distorting it, will not hesitate to say and do whatever they think is necessary to win,'' Kerry said. ``But I think we are now much more prepared and savvy about those kind of things, and certainly in my own involvement, I will make certain that people don’t get away with that.''

I'd love to see what Kerry has come up with--three years late or not. I actually read and reread the Swiftboat Veteran's website and then "Unfit for Command". I then followed the media's pathetic attempt to defend and then dismiss the Swifties arguments. There is a reason Kerry has remained silent and has let all the deadlines to file suit lapse--there simply is no answering this mountain of evidence against him.

Nevertheless, I look forward to see him try.

The Democrats impotence on Kerry's misrepresentation of his service record is attested to by the fact that their only response has been to fashion a new shibboleth--swiftboating as a euphemism for character assassination. They simply assert it by constant repetition--Bill Clinton is perhaps the most recent user--accusing her rivals of "swiftboating" Hillary during the last Democrat debate.

No doubt he meant the term to be understood as "cheapshot", but ironically the situation most closely resembles its true meaning--pulling back the curtain and letting the public see a politician's true nature.

Its a virtual certainty that Kerry's refutation is nothing of the kind. What Kerry is really saying is that he has a strategy for dealing with political attacks that reference his misrepresentation of his military career. What could take three years to complete such a strategy? How about detailed investigation into the lives and careers of his former Swiftboaters?

I sincerely doubt he'll every get a chance to use it.

Let's consider Bill Clinton sexual misadventures with Monica Lewinsky. Democrats defended him ferociously, and then it was over--Bill was out of office and then I see Rosie O'Donnell make a stunning admission. She defended Bill while he was in office because she saw it as defending her own political interests. After he left and she no longer had a show, she was very comfortable telling the public how angry she was with him.

Hey, its what Democrats do--they circle the wagons, no matter how egregious someone's actions have been, they simply won't throw people under the bus who could plausibly still be of some use to them. Kerry the presidential candidate, was quite obviously still of some use to the party, but now?

Cricket's chirping.

When he made his infamous remarks about poor students having to enlist and go to Iraq, he was left twisting in the wind, his comeback over and done with.

The fact is that Kerry is an embarrassment to the liberal media and the Democrat party elite. They simply won't go to bat for him because after its all said and done, privately they all know that the Swiftboat vet allegations are true.

No one is going to bring it up--not his primary rivals, not his Republican rivals because the damage is done. You don't punch a staggering drunk, you just push him over.

Just One Minute

I still hope that reporters ask to see the relevant portions of Kerry's War Notes to evaluate his contemporaneous account of his first combat and first medal - should be easy, now that Kerry is ready.