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.
hehe !
There was an old lady
who swallowed a horse
(she died, of course)
She swallowed the horse to catch the goat
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
And now she died.
Who is the we he is referring to? East coast trust fund basket cases?, non-midwestern, non fly-over country, east coast liberal bigots?, Massachusetts socialist ubermen types? Superior, harvard trained intellects?, or just more of the little people who pay the taxes (Only the little people pay taxes - Leona Helmsley)
What he and his ilk can't absorb is that we in flyover country are watching the we in Kerryland via the big media they think they own.
If he is trying to ignite a spark of commonality with the little people then lets have a roast - a Kerry wienie roast.
When Kerry was 11, his father was appointed legal adviser to James B. Conant, head of the US High Commission for Germany, which later became the US mission to the country. Kerry was sent for the next two years to boarding schools in Switzerland, joining his family in West Berlin only on vacations.
So from the time he was 11 until at least 13 he was either in Swiss boarding schools or spending his vacations in W. Berlin.
Lack of common sense can lead to that.
In that earlier version the reporter stated that when Kerry came home for vacation from his Swiss boarding school and his parents were out of the country, Kerry was sent to stay with his aunt and uncle on the farm.
Reuters' editors must have yanked that part out of the story. It did read like a hit piece on Kerry, which surprised me being that it was from Reuters.
I'm gonna guess the latter - they have 'continental breakfast', and a guy's got to keep his strength up after all.
LOL !! Good one ! :^D
Man-of-the-People JF'nK during his "Blunder Bus" tour of the Midwest...
I'm sure that if he didn't, it was an oversight on the part of some "SOB" campaign worker, who has by now been fired.
I enjoy watching John Effin' Kerry trying to speak like he imagines "the common man" speaks... He starts out his speeches dropping the "g" from words: ridin', ropin', rasslin'... but soon he slips back to more comfortable speech: sailing, shopping, snubbing, scorning.
**loved to drive a tractor and once had a passion for plowing.·**
And I laughed out loud when he kept saying looking back at the plowed field.
Anyone who drives a tractor, let alone a car, knows you have to keep looking ahead. (I grew up on a farm, and yes, I drove a tractor!)
What a fake!
I bet all the farmers thought the same!
Yes...and the death tax which you favor necessitates the farm be sold to pay the taxes. That's why there are so few family farms these days., you POS.
**I wonder what is the country of origin of the tomatoes that go into Heinz ketchup?**
Good one!
I plowed once - one furrow - behind a span of mules (my great-aunt Ruth's Snowball and Burr-Baby) under the direct supervision of her farm boss. I had my eyes glued to the tree line.
Quick question for extra credit: what do you call the fallow space at the end of the field that you use to turn your team around for the next furrow?
Actually #28, Gore was telling the truth on that one. When he was a lad, his father, Sen. Al Gore Sr. would ship him off every summer to toil dawn-to-dusk on an isolated farm he owned, y'know, to "make a man of him." He never get to do normal teenage boy stuff. That, and the relentless drive to be president his parents pummled into him from birth, has given us the creature you see today.
"'Look at the power of that land.' You can just feel it, you see it."
I'm surprised he didn't yell, "Stop the car!! I gotta go ROLL in that stuff!!" And just imagine how much fun he would have had in that good, old red Oklahoma stuff!
Good one!
Thanks. We can only wonder about the tomatoes. Chiller's post no. 72 hits closer home on the duplicity of Ketchup Boy.
Last I heard President Bush is NOT going around trying to do photo ops, ala Gore, to sway the ignorant masses.
He's a man's man. A real man. He's comfortable in his own skin. Whatcha see is whatcha get.
Being from Iowa, my guess is you are a dung expert!
Of course, in that whole article, only half a sentence dealt with solutions:
[Kerry] 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."
All of the produce and fish I buy at my supermarket is already labelled by country of origin. So that leaves meat, poultry, and ketchup.
Too bad Kerry couldn't tell us what those unfair trade practices are and how he will fight them. I'm sure it was an oversight by his speechwriter. Or maybe he doesn't know what they are or what he'll do about them. That would be par for the course.
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