The Lessons Kerry Taught Us
By Brian Yates (08/03/04)
With a jerky, forced salute, John F. Kerry awkwardly opened his acceptance speech saying “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.” Gee thanks. We’ve been a country at war for almost three years and you’re just now offering your help? While the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post were unimpressed with Kerry’s primetime address, it did some good; providing insomniacs all across America with a cure for their affliction.
The Washington Post described Kerry’s speech as a “missed opportunity,” a “disappointment,” and said that he “fell short of demonstrating the kind of leadership the nation needs.” In reality though, the speech wasn’t that bad. We, the people, learned plenty of the life and times of John F-bomb Kerry. His memories of growing up in divided Berlin: “On one occasion, I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin. And when I proudly told my dad, he promptly grounded me.” Too late, dad, the love affair with socialism had begun.
Early in his tedious speech, Kerry even asked us to judge him by his record. Isn’t that just what we’ve been attempting to do? Or is his senatorial record excluded from scrutiny? It’s understandable that Kerry would want to gloss over his career on the Hill; as this column noted in last week’s edition, the man claiming to be working for a stronger America has actually spent a career trying to create a weaker, more subversive America.
We learned that while Kerry opposes adding to the Constitution, he has already added social security benefits to the Ten Commandments. (Also similar to Moses, when Kerry was in Vietnam he didn’t use a Swift boat; he simply spread his arms and parted the Mekong Delta.) “We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ As president, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits.” Have any of you readers figured out how one manages to link upholding the Ten Commandments with not privatizing social security or are you as confused as I am?
We learned that Kerry has a strong economic plan to make America better: “we will trade and compete in the world.” Um, we don’t do that now?
We learned that a President Kerry will cut the deficit in half by returning to “fiscal responsibility.” Maybe he really does feel like Moses because apparently he plans work a miracle: he will cut spending by increasing it. Of the 70 planks included within his fiscal policy platform, 65 of them would increase spending. Should these promises actually become law, total federal expenditures would increase by $226 billion in Kerry’s first year! This sounds an awful lot like “I voted for it before I voted against it.” Now it’s, “I’m going to cut spending by increasing it.”
Now I know what some of you are going to say, “You’re wrong Yates, you’re misrepresenting the facts. Kerry is going to increase spending, but cancel the tax cuts; he’ll really be saving money.” Well the only tax cuts that Kerry will cancel are those breaks for individuals making more than $200,000 a year. He’s going to cut middle and lower class taxes, and cut taxes on small businesses. All the while proposing a grab-bag of government handouts. The only way a President Kerry is going to shrink the deficit is by employing some of that Enron accounting he so despises.
The American people who bothered to stay awake – all four of them – learned that the Kerry plan calls for energy independence: “We value an America that controls its own destiny because it’s finally and forever independent of Mideast oil.” Yet he opposes drilling for oil in Alaska. One may wonder (correctly) just how exactly Kerry intends to become energy independent? Simple! We’re going to invest in “the cars of the future.” All this time I thought that the Kerry plan was based on one too many viewings of Fahrenheit 9/11 when it really comes from I, Robot.
In the end – which finally came although no one was awake to see – Kerry closed by asking “what if?” What if the president believed in science; what if our kids were safe after school; and what if the days of bigotry and hatred are over in America? The F-bomb claimed to know the answer to this what if because he “learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta.” I can see it now: Kerry ferociously churning up the Mekong Delta; bullets whizzing all around; and there’s John Kerry, engaged in a serious debate over funding after-school programs in the back of the Swift boat.
Yes, what if we elected Kerry? That may have been the biggest lesson we learned.
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