Thanks, JOE! Exactly what came to mind when I saw the headline! Perfect!
Posted on 07/03/2004 3:15:39 PM PDT by tgslTakoma
INDEPENDENCE, Wis. (Reuters) - John Kerry, veteran senator from Massachusetts, New England blue blood and Democratic White House hopeful, learned to swear from a farmer, loved to drive a tractor and once had a passion for plowing.· 'Kid from the East' Kerry Feels Farmers' Pain.
"When I was a kid, this kid from the East, I had an aunt and uncle who owned a dairy farm," Kerry told a town hall meeting on Saturday in Independence, midway through a 546-mile July 4 weekend road trip across America's heartland to win over rural voters.
The son of a diplomat who was educated at exclusive schools, attended Yale, volunteered to serve in the Vietnam War and was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, Kerry has been trying to connect with middle America and shake off the Northeastern liberal label pinned on him by President Bush and his Republican allies.
"I've been out here a lot over 20 years plus," he told about 150 invited guests at the Dejno family farm, where he toured the aromatic calving shed and milking center. "And we actually have farms in Massachusetts."
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who this month will be formally anointed the party's challenger to Bush in the Nov. 2 election, vowed to fight for family farmers by banning unfair trade practices and fully implementing country-of-origin labeling so Americans "know where the products they buy are coming from."
Kerry charged Bush's economic, trade and energy policies had hurt rural America.
"They say this is the best we can do," he said. "Don't tell us losing 3,200 dairy farms in Wisconsin is the best we can do. We have the best family farmers in America but we're denying them the fair chance to compete."
HEARTLAND BATTLEGROUND
On a three-day bus trip through Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, Kerry hoped to cut into support for Bush in rural areas that could help tip the balance in battleground states.
"I was driving down here ... and I was saying, 'Look at the power of that land.' You can just feel it, you see it. I know what you love, I know why you're here, I know what you feel about this and we've got to help," he said.
Kerry's schedule has been packed with all-American activities to celebrate the Independence Day holiday, from the name of the town chosen for Saturday's forum, to throwing a football, eating barbecue and watching fireworks from a boat on the Mississippi, a far cry from the posh New England sailing meccas of Cape Cod and Nantucket where he said he normally spent the Fourth of July.
At the Gunslick Trap Club in Holmen, Kerry shouldered a borrowed 12-gauge shotgun and picked off 17 out of 25 clay "birds." Afterward, he said he preferred to hunt because of the open-air experience of tracking and finding game.
"I just do what I normally do," Kerry told reporters who asked whether an outdoorsman image was important to his campaign. "This is stuff I've done all my life."
During the discussion of agricultural issues, the senator said he lived on a farm when he was very young and had "learned my first cuss word sitting on a tractor with the guy who was driving it."
"When I was 12 years old, my passion was being allowed to go out and sit on the John Deere and drive it around the fields and plow. And I learned as a kid what it was like looking back and see those furrows, and see that pattern and feel a sense of accomplishment, and end up dusty and dirty and tired, but feeling great, looking back at that field that you'd plowed," Kerry said.
I like the "I wear these Levis all the time in Boston, really" rumpled looked
to his jeans....must be a bitch for his valet to give them that lived-in look.hehe! I'm sure. Must be a terrible life, huh? LOL!
Phew!
Thanks, JOE! Exactly what came to mind when I saw the headline! Perfect!
You don't just start doing this out of the blue.
Bump!
What bloviating. I wish he'd go back to the farm and leave us alone, lol !
And then there's the Granpa McCoy impersonation:
Add in some Oklahoma-quality sandburrs we used to call goatheads and I'd buy the popcorn...
"...Oklahoma-quality sandburrs..."
Surely Texas-quality goatheads would be good enough! LOL!! I remember when I was a kid and stepped on one of those things barefoot! OUCH!!
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