Bloodthirsty Liberal

Earlier today, we read about John Kerry, wannabe Founding Father.

But he’s obsessed with more recent national leaders, as well:

Friends of John Kerry, is it time for an intervention?

First there’s the whole “JFK” thing, and the fact that he talked about being the second JFK president back in high school.

Then there’s the obsession with the Hyannis lifestyle, the haughty “Kennedy-wannabe” air.

Now we find out that he’s obsessed with the Kennedy’s furniture. With the arrival of Senator Scott Brown, he’s claiming possession of Ted Kennedy’s desk. This after sitting for years at RFK’s old desk. He wants Teddy’s desk in part because it used to be JFK’s.

Does he keep Rose’s desiccated body in a rocking chair in the attic? Is Caroline in a dungeon somewhere, “putting the lotion on its skin”? Does he “see dead people” (all with abnormally toothy smiles)?

When I first saw this on Best of the Web Today, I thought Taranto was joking.

The only joke, needless to say, is the now senior senator (though very much junior in popularity and influence) from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Tuesday said he’d support the uphill battle to amend the Constitution to gut the impact of a Supreme Court decision lifting restrictions on corporate campaign spending.

“I think we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear, once and for all, that corporations do not have the same free-speech rights as individuals,” Kerry said during a Senate Rules Committee hearing.

…

“The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the States may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity,” the amendment says. “Nothing contained in this Article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.’’

Cool how he made it all constitution-y sounding. Maybe an extra “e” or two at the end of a word and an “oye” would have helped, but all very powdered wig.

I’m no lawyer, but I wonder if the wording on the proposed amendment wasn’t carefully crafted to allow unions to slip through the cracks. The Democrats have been awfully slippery in their criticism of this SCOTUS decision, too often neglecting to mention McCain-Feingold was just as restrictive on organized labor as it was on the corporate bosses. Unless the AFL-CIO falls under the category of “corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity”, it will be free to poor millions into the political process without any offsetting funding from management.

What a grandstanding move by our senator. Is it any wonder that he has only one other co-sponsor so far?

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) is the only other senator so far to back the idea of a constitutional amendment.

PS: More on the unions:

The two-sentence amendment does not address the prospect of unlimited union spending on independent campaign expenditures, which experts say would be another result of the decision.

Quelle surprise.

John Kerry may have failed in his bid to become president, but his bid for irrelevancy looks unbeatable.

No windsurfing in the Persian Gulf, for you, Sen. Kerry:

Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media.

“Members of the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue,” Hassan Ebrahimi, head of the committee, told the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Several Iranian news outlets reported last week that Kerry had submitted an official request to visit Tehran in an emissary role.

Kerry spokesman Frederick Jones told the Wall Street Journal before Christmas, though, that no trip had been scheduled. “Is he planning now on going to Iran? The answer is no,” said Jones.

We’re agreed on that, at least.

It’s no surprise that John Kerry was against talking to Iran before he was for it:

We are all inspired by Iran’s peaceful demonstrations, the likes of which have not been seen there in three decades. Our sympathies are with those Iranians who seek a more respectful, cooperative relationship with the world. Watching heartbreaking video images of Basij paramilitaries terrorizing protesters, we feel the temptation to respond emotionally.

There’s just one problem. If we actually want to empower the Iranian people, we have to understand how our words can be manipulated and used against us to strengthen the clerical establishment, distract Iranians from a failing economy and rally a fiercely independent populace against outside interference. Iran’s hard-liners are already working hard to pin the election dispute, and the protests, as the result of American meddling.
John Kerry, op ed, New York Times, June 18, 2009

The White House appears fine with letting John Kerry head over to Tehran to chat up Iran’s leaders, but the senator will be doing so of his own accord, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The Massachusett Democrat’s office has not yet said whether Kerry will go, but if he does, it would be the highest-ranking visit by a U.S. envoy to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution that put the mullahs in charge. Also unclear is whether Iran would welcome a Kerry visit.

“This is the kind of trip that is appropriate for the chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the official told Fox News. “This is a Kerry initiative and not at the behest of the White House.”
Fox News story, December 24, 2009

Now, you could rightly argue that the two stories not only don’t contradict, they reinforce each other. Or you could try.

But in what sort of magical language does he intend to speak to them that will accomplish his “initiative” without “meddling”? And why is the executive branch, where foreign policy is decided, so apathetic? The most destabilizing country in the world today is simultaneously on the verge of civil war and of gaining nuclear weapons—and the best we have to offer in response is Botox Buttocks himself, the Windsurfin’ Kid?

This is a joke, right? Please, tell me this is a joke.

I’ve linked to Ralph Peters several times, so his displeasure with President Obama’s reported mini-surge in Afghanistan is no surprise.

But his rhetoric would be a shame to miss:

Tonight, he’ll announce a measured troop surge, justifying it with boilerplate remarks. He won’t tell us why holding Afghan dirt matters more than killing America’s enemies.

But he’ll also seek to soothe his base on the left, hinting at sharp limits on our commitment.

It’s the worst of both worlds: As if, during World War II, we’d told the Japanese and Germans that we really meant business, but intended to quit by 1944.

I believe that increasing our commitment to the loathsome Afghan government and occupying worthless Afghan real estate is folly. Yet, given a decision by the president to surge more troops, I want the effort to succeed. It won’t have a chance, though, if the Taliban are told that they just have to hang on. Afghans are very good at hanging on.

I’m in no position to mediate between General McChrystal and Colonel Peters, but I think McChrystal would agree with this:

The key word to listen for in tonight’s speech is “Pakistan.” Afghanistan’s an elusive booby prize — while, next door, we’re supporting (and strategically hostage to) a country that revels in anti-Americanism, harbors terrorists and sponsors terrorism. We have met the enemy — and written him a big, fat check.

Any strategy that doesn’t come to grips with Pakistan — beyond generalities about enhanced cooperation — is doomed.

But Peters is just preparing the triple lutz to finish his program off with a bang:

But strategic success isn’t Obama’s ultimate concern. He wants political cover and is doing all he can to ensure that he’s not on the blame-line, no matter what happens.

…

You’ll find this strategic gift is half bicycle, half pony — and charged to your account.

Half bicycle, half pony—I think that’s his invention, and it’s brilliant.

Less brilliant, but just as bummed out, is Bob Herbert on the left:

I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

Sometimes, even hating Bush and Cheney isn’t enough.

But there is one person, David Brooks, who likes what he sees. He’s been taken in by Obama’s charm before, and it looks like it’s happened again:

President Obama faces such a devilishly complex set of constraints that the policy he announces will be partially unsatisfying to every American and to every member of his administration. The fights inside have been so brutal that there have been accusations that the Defense and State Departments have withheld documents from the president to bias his thinking.

Nonetheless, my impression, pre-speech, is that Obama has negotiated these constraints in a serious manner, and improved some of his options — for example, by accelerating troop deployments. He has not been enthusiastic about expanding the U.S. role in Afghanistan, but he has not evaded his responsibility as commander in chief, and he’s taking brave political risks.

“A serious manner”! Why not mention “responsible” and “inspiring”?

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring.

Brooks wrote that in March. He has had many occasions to rue those words in the month since. But danged if he didn’t just repeat them.

Last point: I’ve already covered John Kerry’s deathbed conversion to bellicosity, but he’s also the traitor behind the canard that President Bush let Osama bin Laden go back in ‘02.

Anybody else find it curious that this “revelation” appears on the eve of Obama’s great oration?

President Obama unveils his new Afghanistan strategy today, and in the nick of time Senator John Kerry has arrived with a report claiming that none of this would be necessary if former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops eight years ago. Yes, he really said more troops.

In a 43-page report issued yesterday by his Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry says bin Laden and deputy Ayman Zawahiri were poised for capture at the Tora Bora cave complex in late 2001. But because of the “unwillingness” of Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals “to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden,” the al Qaeda leaders escaped.

This in turn “paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid—a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora.”

The timing of the report’s release suggests that Mr. Kerry intends this as political cover for Mr. Obama and Democrats, and some in the press corps have even taken it seriously. But coming from Mr. Kerry, of all people, this criticism is nothing short of astonishing.

In 2001, readers may recall, the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops.

…

“For the moment what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way.”

…

Adapting his legendary 2004 campaign locution, Mr. Kerry is now in favor of more troops after he was against them, but in any case not for very long.

I could say so much, but let me just offer this advice to Democrats: the truth is so much easier.

Turns out there’s someone who’s dithered and dilly-dallied on Afghanistan even longer than President Obama.

Who? Hint: he was against the strategy before he was for it:

Senator John F. Kerry is poised to endorse the outline of President Obama’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan, a position that would put him at odds with a number of fellow Democrats in Massachusetts and in Congress.

Kerry has tentatively decided to back Obama’s new strategy, but wants to go over details, including precise troop numbers, with the president at a White House meeting today, said a Kerry aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not final.

The president is expected to announce in a nationally televised address at 8 tonight that he is sending at least 30,000 more US troops into the eight-year war. It is a watershed moment for Obama’s foreign-policy agenda that carries large political as well as strategic risks.

Kerry’s support is considered crucial because of his experience as a Vietnam War veteran and antiwar leader in the 1970s, and his current post as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If Kerry were to turn strongly against Obama after months of trying to shape the president’s new policy, it could influence wavering Democrats and undermine Obama’s effort.

This story is so Kerry and so Boston Glob, from the headline (”Kerry close to supporting troop buildup”) to the last period. Show of hands among our readers around America and the globe: who cares what Kerry thinks, let alone when he thinks it?

Anybody?

We live in Boston, and we don’t give a crap. About the only influence he has on his colleagues is where to get their hair cut.

And who knew he served in Vietnam?

But I just love the picture of John Kerry, corncob pipe jutting from clenched jaw, moving toy soldiers across a map of the Hindu Kush. I would tell this man to get over himself, but if there is one person more afflicted with terminal narcissism than President Obama it is Senator Jean Kerré (who by the way served in Vietnam).

Not really, but close enough:

Inhofe Point by Point Rebuttal to Senator Kerry 30 Minute Filibuster

“In reading through the document, one will see that Sen. Kerry is badly misinformed about many of the key details and issues surrounding the climate change policy debate.”

On October 27, 2009, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) appeared before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to speak on behalf of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill. Sen. Kerry spoke uncontested for 28 minutes, allowing no time for questions by members of the Committee.

The following is a line-by-line analysis of Sen. Kerry’s assertions. In reading through the document, one will see that Sen. Kerry is badly misinformed about many of the key details and issues surrounding the climate change policy debate.

KERRY: “Are there some costs? Yes sir, there are some costs.”

FACT: Sen. Kerry is correct that cap-and-trade will impose costs in the form of higher prices for electricity and gasoline. Cap-and-trade will also destroy jobs, even after accounting for so-called “green jobs.”

…

KERRY: “NASA scientists - the best experts we have - tell us that the last ten years have been the hottest decade on record.”

FACT: In an October 9 story titled, “What happened to global warming,” the BBC (no friend to climate skeptics) wrote: “This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. Moreover, the BBC added: “And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.”

KERRY: “That’s why the countries of the world-including India, China and the United States-have agreed to limit the global rise in temperature to two degrees Celsius.”

FACT: China is the world’s leading emitter of CO2; India is the 3rd largest. Sen. Kerry never mentioned that China and India continue to reject mandatory, verifiable, binding emissions reductions.

…

KERRY: “Third, climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a threat to our national security. There’s nothing conservative about remaining indebted to hostile regimes for our energy.”

FACT: Sen. Kerry is right, which is why the United States should focus on developing its own resources. According to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, America’s combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal resources are the largest on Earth. Yet because of government policies that Sen. Kerry strongly supports, 83% of federal onshore land is inaccessible or restricted.

And on and on, lie after lie, misstatement after misstatement—just like his mentor Al Gore. They are lying so fast and furious, one can’t draw any other conclusion but that they’re actually trying to bankrupt the country.

Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we make money the old-fashioned way: we hold you upside down and shake you until your eyeballs rattle.

A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The EARMARK, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The item is drawing fire from fiscal watchdog groups, who assert that military funds should not be raided to pay for an institution that has nothing to do with improving military readiness.

“Whatever beneficial value civic education may have, it’s hard to see why the Defense Department should pay for it,’’ said Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington. “It would seem the location of this hefty earmark has more to do with the powerful position of its sponsor than [the Defense Department’s] responsibility to educate elementary school children.’’

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

May I remind the newly senior senator from the Commonwealth that the former senior senator is stone cold dead, and you don’t have to kiss his pimply, broad keister anymore?

Besides, I thought President Obama didn’t allow earmarks anymore.

And in a delicious epilogue worthy of Chicago politics:

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kirk, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, has also served as a member of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board and has played a key role in helping plan and raise funds for the new center. If he casts a vote in favor of the defense bill, he also will be voting in favor of an institute to which he has had close personal and professional connections.

What, like that’s a problem? C’mon!

But what do I care? We’re only one of fifty (or so) states, so we have to pay only 1/50th of the cost. The rest of youse is picking up the balance. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Sucks to be USA!

Ahhhh!!!

Senator John F. Kerry is reluctant to say he will take up Edward M. Kennedy’s mantle on health care - it sounds “presumptuous’’ to him - but he appears primed to take on a larger, more public role in the debate.

…

Kennedy’s death left Democrats without their chief advocate of health care overhaul, left the Senate without its best bipartisan dealmaker, and left one of Massachusetts’ most important industries without its leading voice in Washington.

At a town hall meeting in Somerville Wednesday night, Kerry told a Cambridge woman who asked whether he would try to take up Kennedy’s health care mantle that he was still “too raw from the loss’’ and that aiming to fill Kennedy’s shoes would be “presumptuous to say the least.’’

But he said the need for change was urgent, and he had great regard for the state’s long history of leading on the national stage, going back to John Adams and Daniel Webster.

Hurl!

Don’t forget Sacco and Vanzetti, John.

What a gas bag. What a self-important little twerp (who by the way served in Vietnam). I bet Ted is spinning furiously in his freshly dug grave. I bet Obama is wishing he were in one too.

If my doctor looked like this, I’d OD on a cocktail of blue and red pills.

The emotion that gripped the state in the days following Kennedy’s death seemed to hover at the Somerville meeting. Speaking with unusual feeling, Kerry fielded questions for more than 2 1/2 hours, standing up to answer each one even though he is still recovering from hip surgery. The audience was almost exclusively pro-overhaul, given the politics of the neighborhood and the numerous activists present, and several people asked why the Democrats could not just pass a single-payer plan.

Kerry responded by recalling Kennedy’s advice to him: Focus on the goal.

“He said, ‘You know, there are 15 ways to do this, there are all kinds of ways to do this. The key is to get it done.’’’

This from a guy who thought there was more than one way to drive across a bridge.

The Boston Globe has made the mistake before of publishing fiction not identified as such. In fact, that’s how Mike Barnicle became a national figure—losing his column in the Glob for the twin sins of plagiarism and just making stuff up.

But now they’ve gone and done it again. They’re trying to convince us that John Forbes Kerry, multimillionaire and blue-blood, has become Senator Pothole:

When the longtime mayor of North Adams, John Barrett III, picks up the phone these days, he often hears a familiar deep voice that he once acidly complained wasn’t heard very much in his city or other smaller venues in Massachusetts.

“He’ll say, ‘What do you need? What’s going on back there? How can I help you?’ ’’ Barrett said.

Could you lend me a couple of hundred till next month would be my response.

But the Glob swears Kerry is a new man:

For decades, Kerry has been dogged by a reputation for a lack of interest in local affairs and aloofness around his Senate colleagues - an attitude that, combined with his patrician habits, often got him labeled as arrogant. Even when he rode the strength of his foreign policy experience and the drama of his personal story to his party’s presidential nomination, a lack of affection for him hampered his candidacy.

But the Kerry who returned to the Senate from the presidential trail was a different man, many colleagues noted, and now, with his presidential ambitions behind him and the senior colleague who long dominated his state sidelined by cancer, Kerry is experiencing what fellow lawmakers describe as a midcareer metamorphosis.

Midcareer? MID-career??? He’s in his fifth term, and we’re supposed to endure another couple of decades of his humorless monotony?

Not so, says the Glob. He’s a regular Joe now. A back and knee slapper:

Long regarded as a loner, Kerry now lingers on the Senate floor during votes, talking with colleagues. Once known more for his solo speeches on the floor, Kerry for months has been leading weekly strategy sessions with other senators to find consensus on a climate change bill - a tactic usually identified with Senator Edward M. Kennedy - and following up with friendly meetings with individual senators to address their objections.

Kerry’s Senate schedule is heavily packed with hearings, speeches and international travel associated with his new role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in Massachusetts, Kerry has taken an elevated role, keeping in close contact with local officials and securing federal grants for in-state projects. His staff has been directed to hold “office hours’’ in more than 350 communities, and has completed about 200 of the sessions this year to hear constituent concerns.

Note that’s his staff that is dispatched to Belchertown and Athol to talk to the yokels. “Live Shot” himself has never been west of Cambridge, unless it’s to Tanglewood, where he choppers in and out.

Come on, Boston Globe. Next you’ll tell us Barney Frank is dating Megan Fox. I’d believe that first.