See- you just have to vote Republican now:

    John Kerry said what?!

    By Michelle Malkin · October 31, 2006 12:32 AM

    **10/31 7:35am updated with more reax below...

    ...909am update San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Pasadena Star News reports on the Angelides campaign event at Pasadena City College where Kerry trashed the troops..."Kerry then told the students that if they were able to navigate the education system, they could get comfortable jobs - "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq," he said to a mixture of laughter and gasps."**

A general rule of thumb regarding controversies like this is to count how many posts Michelle Malkin has about the issue, and to note that there is a positive correlation to how trivial the matter is and how many posts she has about it. At my last count, she had four on her site, two on her spin-off site Hot Air (who I still think ripped their name off from me). That would tell me that this issue would be somewhere between Cindy Sheehan and crescent-shaped 9/11 memorials and Terri Schaivo in importance, but the possibility is there for a new record.

Predictably, lamentably, the right-wing blogosphere is grievously insulted and has put the grass-roots outrage machine in high gear. Expect record levels of umbrage from all corners.

I wish Kerry had not made the remark (even though he was trying to insult the President and not the troops), but I do find it a little amusing that the people who are `upset' about this remark managed (if my memory is correct) to remain completely silent about this:

I am sure we all remember the Bush supporters wearing fake purple heart stickers at the 2004 RNC to mock Kerry's service. Additionally, I note that Malkin and company have not yet moved to condemn the treatment Vietnam war hero Jim Webb is getting at the hands of Red State, where he has been compared to John Mark Karr and today called a pervert.

For all those who say Bush is a moron let us now put to rest the idea that Kerry is smarter then the president.

My statement yesterday -- and the White House knows this full well -- was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about 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 America, the raw politics. It's their willingness to distort, their willingness to mislead Americans, their willingness to exploit the troops as they have so many times at backdrops, at so many speeches in which they have not told the American people the truth.

I'm not going to stand for it. What our troops deserve is a winning strategy, and what they deserve is leadership that is up to the sacrifice that they're making. Sadly, this is the best that this administration can do in a month when we have lost 100 young men and women who have given their lives for a failed policy. Over half the names on the Vietnam wall were put there after our leaders knew that our policy was wrong, and it was wrong that leaders were quiet then, and I'm not going to be quiet now. This is a textbook Republican campaign strategy: try to change the topic, try to make someone else the issue, try to make something else said the issue, not the policy, not their responsibility.

Like all things if he just says it was a mistake and then ignores the firestorm it will go away.

Instead he will issue silly partisan responses and this will take on a life of it's own.

Nobody misquoted him.  Why shouldn't republicans get mad about this?

Save the comments that what he says is true etc... and admit that this was a major screw-up and the words can't be taken back.  

  Rather than telling absurd lies why not defend what he said as while perhaps not being the most politic thing to say as containing more than a kernel of truth.

  It only  compounds any problem caused by the original statement to tell woefully transparent lies about what he meant.  I'd much prefer someone who has the guts to stand by an unpopular truth than a mealy-mouthed politician who lies to me when he realizes some  take offense.

From his initial statement to his defense of his remarks he was telling the truth, they were both true.

Is anyone in here gonna deny that alot of people who go into the military and die in Iraq are victims of missed opportunities or a lack of money to pursue a college education?

Are anyone in here going to deny that Irag is the cluster&uck of the new century and Bush and his cohorts are responsible?

Frank Schaeffer and John Schaeffer, father and son, wrote a book called "Keeping Faith", about the latter's enlistment in the Marines.
One surprising thing comes from the book, IMO.  That is, Frank is a writer.  Of fiction.  He's supposed to know about people--isn't he?--or to be able to understand and put himself in others' shoes so as to write believably.  But he had, as he says, no clue about the people whose kids served. None at all.  He was from the excessively-educated, tree-hugging, Volvo-driving well-off microdemographic, as he says. He, whose job required knowing about people, unless his recurring plot was a middle-aged writer having writer's block, knew squat about a large number of his fellow citizens.
What was not surprising was that his precious friends acted and spoke exactly as Kerry is being understood to have spoken and thought.
There are people who think like that, may they rot, and that's another reason Kerry is being understood to have slimed the troops again.  He's not the first.  There's plenty of precedent.

Anyway, I did some work for a family recently where hubby is a cement laborer. He'll make $55,000 this year, and the wife works for the DMV.  Between them, they'll gross about $90k.  The cost of living isn't that high where they live--flyover country--so that's pretty good.  No college.
The Maytag guy, should anything Maytagish actually break, gets $85 an hour and we stay home to greet him when he deigns to arrive.

  I'll accept (without knowing it's actually true) that statistically, the military cohort is in aggregate "better educated" than its overall age cohort, but that doesn't really refute Kerry's observation.

  MANY kids from comfortable circumstances can get mediocre grades and SAT scores and have no problem paying for college (or rather having tyheir parents pay). For them it's not do well in school, flounder in the economic underclass or join the military. But, for many kids of limited means it is much more difficult unless they have above-average grades. it's not just the financial aid aspect either.

  Kids from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds receive less attention in their high schools, from college recruiters, etc., unless they stand out from the crowd. Often lacking the family support and sophistication more well to do kids have,  they might miss out on opportunities that are actually available for them because no one guides them through the rather cumbersome process of applying to school and for financial aid.

   I'd presume that it is mostly the "best and the brightest" of this disadvantaged class that has the motivation and determination to join the military to get ahead. That doesn't change the fact though that if they had focused on school more at a younger age they might have reached young adulthood with a broader array of opportunities.

   What Kerry should have said is that he in no way intended to disparage those in the military (and I don't think he did-- not even he is quite that dense and tone-deaf) but merely was pointing out to young people the advantage of having options for upward mobility that don't involve a high risk of injury and death and that because he cares about the young he wishes more of them had safer options. It's not putting the military down to implore kids to expand their options. (at least if you choose your words a bit more carefully).

   I think Kerry's excuse made it much worse. He was "joking" and screwed up the punchline? I feel safe in saying more people will be offended by having their intelligence insulted by a really bad lie than by what he said initially.

  That lame ploy is just another example of behavior that makes him seem simulataneously weak and duplicitous.

  The problem is it's not irrelevant because he is a United States Senator and our most recent nominee. It might be a widely shared wish (on both sides of the aisle) but he is far from irrelevant.

You want uncheckable assertions?

Here's one.  Over the last twenty years or so, I have encountered five or six teachers who've taught at DOD schools here and abroad.  Without exception, they all thought the schools did well and the kids were easier to teach than in some other systems they'd taught in.

I know some public school teachers who've been in different systems holding different demographics.  The most affluent systems have the best facilities and an excess of whining, entitled snobs whose parents are bullying and want all kinds of nutty exceptions for their kid.  The poorest systems have lots of kids with problems and poor facilities.

The best system demographic, according to my friends who've taught all around, is the far 'burbs, into the rural areas.  Facilties are adequate to adequate-plus, the kids are far less snotty than their affluent peers and don't have the baggage the inner-city kids have.

And what demographic to the DOD schools have?  Most like the latter.