Kerry still holding military records
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Kerry still holding military records
| Wed, 09-15-2004 - 8:04am |
So exactly why WON'T Kerry release his military records?
www.villagevoice.com/issues/0437/hentoff.php
An article from The Village Voice

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" Bennett wants laws against or heightened social disapproval of activities that have no direct harmful effects on anyone except the participants. He argues that the activities in question are encouraging other, more harmful activities or are eroding general social norms in some vague way. Empower America, one of Bennett's several shirt-pocket mass movements, officially opposes the spread of legalized gambling, and the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, one of Bennett's cleverer PR conceits, includes "problem" gambling as a negative indicator of cultural health. So, Bennett doesn't believe that gambling is harmless. He just believes that his own gambling is harmless. But by the standards he applies to everything else, it is not harmless.
Bennett has been especially critical of libertarian sentiments coming from intellectuals and the media elite. Smoking a bit of pot may not ruin their middle-class lives, but by smoking pot, they create an atmosphere of toleration that can be disastrous for others who are not so well-grounded. The Bill Bennett who can ooze disdain over this is the same Bill Bennett who apparently thinks he has no connection to all those "problem" gamblers because he makes millions preaching virtue and they don't."
The only person in government more liberal than Kerry is Ted Kennedy, and it is by the slimmest of margins.
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Two weeks ago, socialists and anarchists were clowns and today they're paragons of integrity?
The Voice hates Kerry because he's a moderate."
"The only person in government more liberal than Kerry is Ted Kennedy, and it is by the slimmest of margins."
This article calls that into question.
To support the "most liberal senator" claim, the Bush-Cheney campaign points to the congressional vote ratings prepared by the National Journal. At a campaign stop in Minnesota Friday, Cheney said Kerry is "by National Journal ratings, the most liberal member of the United States Senate. Ted Kennedy is the more conservative of the two senators from Massachusetts. It's true. All you got to do is go look at the ratings systems. And that captures a lot, I think, in terms of somebody's philosophy. And it's not based on one vote, or one year, it's based on 20 years of service in the United States Senate."
The thing is, Cheney's claim is not "true." It's that other thing: "false." Earlier this year, National Journal identified Kerry as the senator with the most liberal voting record in 2003. When the National Journal looked at Kerry's entire Senate voting record -- "on 20 years of service in the United States Senate," as Cheney put it -- the magazine determined that Kerry was not the "most liberal" senator. In fact, the National Journal reported in March that "10 other current senators have a lifetime composite liberal score that is higher than Kerry's. And, yes, the top-10 list includes Massachusetts' other senator, Edward Kennedy, D-Mass." For the record, the National Journal's list of the top 10 "most liberal" sitting senators is: Mark Dayton, Paul Sarbanes, Jack Reid, Jon Corzine, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, Richard Durbin, Frank Lautenberg and Patrick Leahy.
The "11th most liberal senator" doesn't carry quite the sting that "most liberal senator" does, so the Bush-Cheney campaign and some in the media keep pushing the flashier -- but false -- charge. Last week on "Crossfire," for example, Tucker Carlson called Kerry "the most liberal member of the Senate by any measure of his votes."
But even the single "measure" the Republicans can cite credibly -- the National Journal's rating on Kerry's 2003 voting record -- can fairly be called into question. The National Journal ranks senators based on their votes in three categories: economic policy, social policy and foreign policy. However, because Kerry missed so many votes while campaigning in 2003, the National Journal lacked sufficient data to grade him on social policy or foreign policy. Thus, Kerry's 2003 ranking is based solely on his 2003 votes on economic policy -- an area in which the National Journal has traditionally seen Kerry as significantly more liberal than he is on, say, foreign policy.
And even when it comes to the 2003 economic policy votes the National Journal counted, it's not entirely clear that Kerry's views should be deemed "liberal." The National Journal included 32 Senate roll calls in its economic policy rankings. Kerry voted in 19 of those. In each of those 19, Kerry's vote was exactly the same as that cast by a majority of the Senate's Democrats. As the Democratic Leadership Council's Al From and Bruce Reed argued in a recent Op-Ed piece, the National Journal rankings are "based more on partisan than ideological differences, ensuring that most Democrats will have very liberal rankings."
On average, 46 senators -- including 3.6 Republicans -- sided with Kerry on the 19 votes used in his National Journal ranking. On 12 of the 19 votes, at least one Republican joined Kerry. On three of them -- votes against loans for the construction of nuclear power plants, against the study of offshore oil and gas drilling and against the privatization of air traffic controllers -- 10 or more Republicans joined Kerry. And it wasn't just crossover moderates like McCain or Maine's Olympia Snowe. North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole voted with Kerry on the offshore drilling measure; Missouri Sen. Jim Talent and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe voted with Kerry on the air traffic controllers; and Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel voted with Kerry on a Medicare issue.
While Kerry led the National Journal's liberal rankings during the first few years of his Senate tenure, he moved to the middle after he was reelected in 1990. "Kerry was especially moderate in his second term when it came to foreign policy issues," the National Journal's Richard E. Cohen wrote in February as the magazine unveiled its 2003 rankings. "He opposed the liberal position in key Senate showdowns on missile defense and intelligence spending in 1993 and on procurement of additional F-18 Navy fighters in 1996 ... Kerry also voted with President Clinton and congressional Republicans, but against many liberals, in favor of welfare reform in 1996, and he occasionally split from organized labor on workplace issues."
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/08/10/kerry_record/index1.html
Back in March, the Voice ran run-downs on the three Dem contenders they thought had a chance to beat Bush. They call Kerry's brand of politics "Clintonism with a patrician face." Here's what they had to say about John Kerry:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/primary.php
Kerry for President
Yes, He Can
It's not easy for freethinkers to back the front-runner. There's always a better candidate at the back of the pack, or a heroic populist who promises to kick out the jams of politics as usual. But this year we face a clear and present danger in George W. Bush, and the salient question is, Who can defeat him? A large majority of Voice writers and editors who convened to consider this question agree: That man, warts and all, is John Kerry. Nothing we have read about him—including the cover story in this week's Voice—convinces us otherwise.
This wouldn't be such a plausible choice if the front-runner were someone like Joe Lieberman, whose sanctimony hid a host of sins. But nothing in Kerry's public life suggests that he would behave like a Republican. He represents something more subtly objectionable to progressives: Clintonism with a patrician face. Kerry walks and talks like a free-trade Democrat with a commitment to racial and sexual equality. Don't count on him to abrogate NAFTA, but he will act to ease its traumatic impact on American workers. He won't soak the rich, but he will pursue tax policies that strengthen the real backbone of our economy: people of modest means. He'll pursue a foreign policy based on security rather than profiteering or paranoia. He'll end the politics of coded racism and overt homophobia, preserve reproductive rights, stop schemes to despoil the environment, and end Bush's crusade to turn America into a theocratic, authoritarian society. Kerry will give us plenty to complain about, but if politics is the art of the possible, this year it's the art of the bearable—and he's a good deal better than that.
We're sick of hearing about Kerry's horse face or his somnambulant effect on the stump. A fiery speaker with good cheekbones does not a great leader make. We wish it weren't necessary for a presidential candidate to strut his macho stuff, but in the face of Karl Rove's dream machine, apparently it is. We're thankful that Kerry can carry that man thing off without looking like he's out to destroy the world.
Polls show Kerry with a wide lead in New York, so why not go for Dennis Kucinich, the prog's favorite son? Because voting from the heart can have disastrous consequences, as it did in 2000 when some of us were drawn to Ralph Nader. (Hopefully that won't happen again.) There's a more practical case to be made for Edwards, but not a persuasive one. On the crucial issue of experience, Bush will wipe the floor with him. There's something unsettling about a 50-year-old candidate who strikes many people as a newbie. What's more, voting for Edwards is less likely to stop Kerry than to prolong the nominating process, wasting resources on a rivalry between two men who basically agree. This is no time for a cliff-hanger—not when we're already at the precipice.
Kerry's lead in current polls is concentrated in the populous "blue states" that vote Democratic. But as the Zogby poll points out, Bush is leading in every state he won in 2000. This is a very steep uphill battle, though not a Sisyphean one. We can win, but only if we learn to move as the right wing has: with will, unity, and a full grasp of the danger that lies ahead if we fail. It's no exaggeration to say that this election is a matter of life and death. So get your sh*) together and vote for Kerry.
"It would be irresponsible of any Senator to vote against the appropriations bill"...Sen. Kerry's comments on the $87 billion for the Iraq war.
Sen. Kerry's vote on the $87 billion: Nay
His explanation: "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
The problem.....there was only one vote on the appropriations bill.
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