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.
Did kerry mention that he was a Viet Nam and killed a guy?
Isn't he the guy who did 4 months in Vietnam?
Kerry couldn't tell a cow from this load of bull he's spewing.
OH MY GOSH!
LOOK AT THAT PICTURE AGAIN!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Take your finger off the trigger, knucklehead.
Yes, I was VERY impressed with his flap jack turning....
If this is what you have done all your life, you have a heartfelt compulsion to do such, then why, oh why, do you strive to become the most powerful man on earth?
My father too loved to plow with a tractor, it beat
walking behind a red mule and turning a plow at the end of the row, one which could stretch for half a mile down in the lowgrounds.
John Kerry, I hope he eats enough BBQ and corn dogs to puke.
Have some more of Graanny Skeltons Rhubarb pie Senator?
This is almost as funny as the article about Kerry's manservant!
Where? Loire? Brittany?
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It's really touching. |
Kind of like Bill Clinton remembering those black churches that were burned down during his childhood in Arkansas.
I'm surprised Reuters released that photo.
If the reporter quotes faithfully, it's possible to hear the stilted cadences even while reading them.
This one, in particular, was a real ROFLMAO.
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,"
Can you say "artificial" and "contrived"? This guy Kerry is a one-man laugh fest...
I can't figure out why nearly every posed photo-op image of Kerry makes him look dorky, plastic, not real, fake, phony. He is not photogenic. I don't know what it is, but most of his photo-ops look eerie; he doesn't look like a real person in them.
AP had an article but they did not use the full quote from Kerry about learning to cuss on a tractor with the guy who was driving it.
Of course the guy who was driving it wasn't a Kerry relative. Just some hired help.
I'm sure it wasn't the "f" word he used in the Rolling Stone interview; nor should it be a badge of honor that he learned his "first cuss word".
Literate people don't need "cuss words".
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