Don't look away.... here's JFnK crawling for votes with Bill Nelson at Cape Canaveral today - July 26, 2004 -
Posted on 07/26/2004 4:42:20 PM PDT by Pokey78
There's a bumper sticker I see on a lot of Vermont cars these days: "BE PATRIOTIC – VOTE GEORGE BUSH OUT". The trouble is you can't vote Bush out, you have to vote the other fellow in. And convention week marks the point when Americans begin to get to know the challenger the way they know the incumbent. I find it hard to believe that getting to know John F Kerry can possibly work to his advantage.
He was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. "I'd have to say deer," said the senator. "I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach... That's hunting."
This caused huge hilarity among my New Hampshire neighbours. None of us has ever heard of anybody deer hunting by crawling around on his stomach, even in Massachusetts. The trick is to blend in with the woods and, given that John Kerry already looks like a forlorn tree in late fall, it's hard to see why he'd give up his natural advantage in order to hunt horizontally.
Possibly his weird Vietnam nostalgia is getting out of control. Still, if I come across a guy in the woods in deer season inching through the undergrowth with a mouthful of bear scat, at least I'll know who it is.
Conversely, if you're a 14-point buck and get shot in the toe this autumn, you'll know who to sue.
Crawling around on your stomach is a lousy way to hunt deer, but it's proved a smart way to campaign for president. For months now, George W Bush has been up there getting fired on from all directions. Meanwhile, down in the scrub, John Kerry was crawling forward on his stomach, a stealth candidate advancing slowly, off the radar, prone alone.
Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren't too sure Americans are going to like what they see.
If I were a mad scientist hired by Bush svengali Karl Rove to construct the most unelectable Democratic presidential candidate possible, I'd start with a load of big-government one-size-fits-all dependency-culture domestic policies. Next I'd throw in a consistent two-decade voting-record aversion to American military power. Then make him the kind of fellow whose stump speeches are always butt-numbingly ponderous and go on way too long because someone told him that if you intone a platitude slowly and sonorously enough it sounds like the Kennedy inaugural address.
He'd probably be a senator because, in a business that attracts pompous blowhards, senators are the crème de la crème. A senator from Massachusetts, because that's as near as you can get to running Jacques Chirac while still meeting the citizenship eligibility requirements. He'd have to be an aristocratic Massachusetts senator, because there don't seem to be any other kinds, but he wouldn't be glamorously high-class, like Jack and Camelot, just aloof and condescending and affected. And every time he tries to talk a little guy talk, a little hunting or baseball, it doesn't come out quite right. And he's so nuanced he's running not only as America's most famous war hero but also as America's most famous anti-war protester.
No, scrub that last bit. No one would believe it.
But what do I know? My ne plus ultra of unelectability was chosen by Democratic primary voters this spring mainly because he was perceived to be "electable". I don't know where they got that idea from. Probably from the American media, who seem barely to recognise Kerry's principal defect – his boring self-righteousness – perhaps because it's also theirs. Nevertheless, if this week the senator gives the kind of speech he's given for the last year, Americans will flee in horror from the prospect of spending four years listening to this guy.
About 20 per cent of the electorate are Bush-haters, but another 20 per cent seem to be suffering from so-called "Bush fatigue", which is, more accurately, a weariness with the epic nature of politics since 9/11. They want a break. As Andrew Sullivan put it in the Sunday Times: "Much of the hard work has now been done. Nobody seriously believes that Bush will start another war. And in some ways Kerry may be better suited to the difficult task of nation building than Bush."
The notion that you can take a four-year intermission from the war is appealing, but a fantasy. Both Iran and North Korea are likely to come to the boil during the next presidential term, and nothing in either John Kerry's record or temperament suggests he's up to settling either of those crises in America's favour. So our hopes of avoiding Armageddon may rest on how effectively Kerry bores his candidacy into the ground.
The other day, he attended a glitzy fundraiser at which Whoopi Goldberg did a little riff comparing the Bush in the White House to her own, ah, pudenda.
The senator, in his own anatomical response, said these celebrities represented the "heart and soul of America".
Afterwards, asked about his apparent enthusiasm for the potty-mouthed has-beens, he replied thus: "When I talked about the heart and soul, I'm talking about the artistic expression. I'm talking about sort of the, I mean, I believe in the arts. I think that there's a great expression in it, and there's always this struggle. You know, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Which comes first? It's a little of both.
"I do think we have a responsibility, as leaders, to stand up. I think there were people at that concert we had in New York who stepped over the line. I've said that. They don't speak for me. They speak for themselves. I will stand up and struggle, as others have, to try to get that right balance between violence and sex and things."
If on Thursday John Kerry stands up and struggles to get the right balance between violence and sex and things, it should be a helluva speech. If, on the other hand, he sounds like he sounds at the end of that sound bite – as if the more he talks about standing up and struggling the more he's struggling to stay awake – he's done for.
Mule Deer Hunting in the West is the complete opposite of East Coast Whitetail hunting; you're practically on top of the deer when you shoot them in the East, and there's a lot more population, so that's why some states have banned rifles for deer; out West you're picking off deer from one mountain to the next mountain...odd they'd ban shotguns since I can't imagine why someone would want to use them.
Ah. Thanks for the explanation.
Kerry "hunts" on his belly because that's how serpents hunt...duhhhh
"KERRY CAN'T SHOOT DEER OR STOP TERROR."
Or throw a baseball hard enough to reach home plate from the pitchers mound at a Red Sox game.
FMCDH(BITS)
The funniest line in a hilarious article - and it's a quote from the candidate trying to sound serious. And people are still going to vote for this guy? THAT'S funny.
If Kerry the Klown gets elected this election cycle, we're coming out the other side in a civil war.
I laughed all the way through this one. Great, vintage Steyn.
FMCDH(BITS)
Make up your own - get a photo of the Sears Tower and put the caption, "Vote Kerry - the Sears Tower is an eyesore anyway."
They might hunt deer with a 12 guage. I don't hunt anymore,cuz it's banned in eastern RI,even on my own land, but I don't believe you can hunt with a rifle in Ma, except .22.
For deer, I think there's only slug, archery and black powder for a couple days.
Not that the overpopulation of deer isn't a problem, but nothing overcomes the rampant communism of the Gay State, (sodo)Massachussetts.
Don't look away.... here's JFnK crawling for votes with Bill Nelson at Cape Canaveral today - July 26, 2004 -
Photo from Yahoo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1178918/posts
Caption Kerry at Cape Canaveral (Extreme Dork Factor)
yahoo ^ | 7/26/04
Posted on 07/26/2004 4:45:55 PM EDT by finnman69
> Do they hunt deer with a "12-guage double-barrel" back East?
They do in Iowa. Required by law.
That's the problem of a significant number of American voters too (hello baby boomers.) These voters won't notice that Kerry is dangerously self-absorbed and couldn't possibly possess the vision necessary to run a country at war. But these voters won't care in the least, because they want someone "compassionate" and "intelligent" in the Oval Office - someone "like me."
And that scares me. I mean, even money says Kerry wins. I pray for Bush, and in all honesty I pray for a Bush win. But frankly I'm preparing myself emotionally now for a Kerry victory. Sorry if this drags people down.
uh....how many people actually hunt deer with a 12-guage???????????
Maybe he hunts in Illinois. They can't use rifles there
Yup, the law in Massachusetts says deer can only be hunted in the "regular season" with shotguns loaded with slugs. They do have an archery and black powder seasons.
Figures. They might hit someone in anther state
IIRC, in my old home state of Oklahoma, deer can be taken by means of bow/arrow, crossbow (for
archers with physical challenges), blackpowder rifle, shotgun (with slugs and
maybe also with "buckshot") and rifle.
(I suspect that high-powered pistols, such as .357 Mag, .44 Mag, or chambered for
high-powered rounds, like with the Thompson Contender Pistol might also be legal).
One year the biggest buck taken in the state was brought down by a young boy (early teen?)
with a single shotgun slug at a range of about 30 yards.
Or throw a baseball hard enough to reach home plate from the pitchers mound at a Red Sox game.
From the front of the mound no less.
That caught my attention too...but I did recall there being such a thing as "buck-shot".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.