Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.


Hairstyle by Christophe's $75.

Designer shirts: $250.

Forty-two foot luxury yacht: $1 million.

Four lavish mansions and beachfront estate: Over $30 million.

Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people. Priceless.

LMAOROFL! :D

Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

I refuse to believe that he spent more than $8 for that haircut.

I see you saw that commercial. Not as funny as the moveon.org commericals.

Damn, that man just has too much hair.

Re: Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

If he paid $8 for that haircut, it was $8 too much!!

Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

But wait? Isn't his opponent, the President, the guy who owned a baseball team -- among other things?

Playing the "big money family" card ain't gonna work in this election.

Re: Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

I think the point was that neither is, "I'm the man for the working people" when neither was.

What about the botox injections he supposedly had? that should go somewhere in there too.

Kitso
KS 361

Re: Re: Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

Yeah....

It's all a matter of what the "average voter" thinks, and what has influenced them.

Wow DeltAlum... That one flew WAY over your head...

Re: Re: Re: Re: Mass. Senator John Kerry
 

These aren't Canadian elections. Thank you.

-Rudey

On a similar note, I read this article a couple days ago.

Obviously it's a little exaggerated since not every American president has vast swimming pools full of money, but I do think it's sort of ridiculous that either Bush or Kerry thinks he's representative of "the common man."



Clash of Titans
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: March 6, 2004

We're so full of it. We pretend to be a middle-class, democratic nation, but in reality we love our blue bloods. We love our Roosevelts, Rockefellers, Kennedys, Bushes, Deans and Gores. We love the prep school manners, the aristocratic calm, the Skull and Bones mystery, the dappled lawns stretching before the New England summer homes. How else can you explain the Bush vs. Kerry matchup that confronts us this year?

In Britain neither of these guys could lead a major party. Their upper-crust pedigrees would be disqualifying. But here in the land of Ralph Lauren wannabes, one all-scion campaign follows another. Here in the land of middle-class self-loathing, we want to make sure that the guy we elect to the White House has lived a life nothing like our own.

So you have one party, the Republican Party, the so-called party of the heartland, which won't nominate a guy unless he has a ranch the size of Oklahoma. Republicans don't think you're fit to govern unless you're on the north 40 every summer clearing brush. And then you have the Democrats, the so-called party of the people, who won't nominate a guy unless his family had an upper-deck berth on the Mayflower.

This year's nominee, John Kerry, is almost a parody of the East Coast establishment. He's descended from John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his mother is a member of the famously haughty Forbes clan. He spent part of his childhood at a boarding school in Switzerland before his aunt, whose estate included a bowling alley inside the barn, sent him to then-snooty St. Paul's.

In 1962, Kerry sailed with President John Kennedy while visiting the Auchincloss estate. Then it was off to Yale, Skull and Bones, and Vietnam.

When he returned, he testified before Congress, and his accent was still so plummy he sounded like an antiwar version of Thurston Howell III. He went on to marry Julia Thorne, a jet-setting heiress with a family fortune of about $300 million, whose grandfather kept the entire island of Hilton Head, S.C., as a hunting preserve.

Kerry's second wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is worth over $500 million. Between them they have a $4 million mansion in Georgetown, a $6 million townhouse on Louisburg Square in Boston, a $6 million summer home on Nantucket, a $3 million estate in Pittsburgh and a $5 million ski lodge in Idaho, which is a 15th-century English barn that was disassembled and imported to the U.S.

Most Democrats have trouble affording one home, so when they search for a leader who shares their values, of course they nominate a guy who is running for his sixth. Of course they nominate a guy whose 42-foot powerboat, the Scaramouche, sells for upward of $700,000. Of course they choose a guy famous for his Christophe haircuts and his Turnbull & Asser shirts. Of course they choose a couple who paid to have an unsightly fire hydrant moved from the front of their Boston house, and who sought to divert huge amounts of river water to supply their sprawling Idaho lawn.

This is the land of "Masterpiece Theatre" liberals and Town & Country conservatives. Sure, we want our toffs to flatter us, and abase themselves while campaigning at our diners and cheesesteak counters. We want our Republican candidates to embrace the cultural populism of the Bible Belt. We want our Democratic candidates to embrace the economic populism of the working class. The Democrats even have a campaign consultant, Bob Shrum, who has made a large fortune taking multizillionaires like Al Gore, John Kerry and others and making sure that they run for office as born-again proletarians.

But we don't actually want to be governed by people like ourselves. We want the bloodlines.

The anthropologist Lionel Tiger points out that in many primate communities, the offspring of high-status females are immediately accorded membership in the troop's elite.

Tiger points out that politics is a visceral business. It's a tremendous advantage to have been instilled with the habit of self-assertion since infancy. If you can project a physiological comfort with power, others around you will begin to accept your sense of self-worth.

There aren't too many normal people waking up in normal suburban split-levels assuming they should rule the world. But God bless the upper class. They've lost their legitimacy, but they haven't lost their self-confidence.

Yeah, that's the paradox of what Americans want in our President. We want him to be of the people, and above the people, all at the same time.

The NYTimes Op-Ed piece you pulled up is a decent read. Brooks, by the way, went to my school.

-Rudey
--Go Chicago!

Should I assume that he is butt-ugly and lacking in social skills then? ;)

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/...brooks.184.jpg

Social skills I can't comment on. But regardless, the guys at my school were a lot more normal than the girls.

-Rudey

Off-topic, but did your school have a good journalism program; I remember considering it as a choice but not hearing much about the journalism dept.

Yeah it was up there with engineering in the Department of programs that don't exist. :)

-Rudey

Haha...ok fair enough.

Well, at least he's running to increase his own taxes, and not decrease them.

It doesn't put a huge dent in the finances of multimillionaires. The tax increase does, however, hurt a lot of upper middle class families that are just on the edge of making it into that tax bracket. Those hard working people are penalized for their success.

My father's an attorney in OKC. I won't lie, he makes lots of $. But when I see what they have to pay out for taxes its' just pretty shocking. What he makes (for this area) is a pretty big chunk of change, but around tax season, large amounts usually have to be borrowed in order to pay the taxman.

I don't think Senator Kerry will ever have to borrow a dime in his life. He has no clue how hard it is to succeed on your own. He'll never know. He's just a self-hating liberal who thinks everything he does is what the "common" man/woman wants.

How the hell would he know what the common man/woman was thinking?

At least GWB has business experience and has done quite a bit to help the small-business people who make up the fastest growing part of the economy.

Well, as an estimation, I think truely both are non connected to the Real World!

Bush, Business owned Texas Rangers! Did not know S**t about Base Ball!

Kerry is tied in with The Kennedys, Da, Boat People ($$$$), Mass. and The Heinz Family!

Need Money, Hell NO!

Second Mortgage on ONE of His Houses, (Brown Stone) yea, kiss a fat lady in the Buttockus!:(

Kerry, voted anti, Mil. Spending, for Mil. Raises, Benefits, Dependants Benefits, and Mil. Equipment such as Flak Jackets , Ammo, B1-B2 Bombers, Bradely Tanks!:(

While These are Bookums comments and I cannot disagree, I am signing off ! But, TTFN!:p

Well no, he won't have to borrow any money, but he is on the side of acknowledging that what he has is a privilege and should be taxed, unlike his competitor, who would has put in place taxes and tax breaks that decrease the amount of revenue from "people who will never have to borrow in their life".

And my parents are from the same tax bracket that yours are (or since they are now divorced, my Dad is, and my Mom isn’t), and I hope to someday to make the same. But I still think I should pay more taxes (in percent) than people who make less. Taxes stress everyone, but they are necessary to support programs and run a government that we take for granted.

Also, who cares if he has millions? We’d love to see someone who made it from nothing, but the fact is, both candidates are ridiculously rich, and had help getting there. What matters now is how they can do the job.


I know we are jealous of uour canidates, but that doesn't mean we have to bash them for it.

ok, addition... I guess I am on the side that what we want from our govt and what the govt needs to do or should do aren't necessarily the same things. Like, nobody wants to pay taxes, and we all want the goverment to continue spending money, but I think the govt should cut spending and raise taxes to cover the deficit.

Not only that, I know I'm no expert in a lot of governmental stuff, and I want someone who is an expert and can make informed choices in there for me. I'd take an educated representative over a publicity pleaser any day.

Our government isn't about putting in career politicians.

-Rudey
--And I see Kerry as far from being an expert.

All i know is that i won't be voting for Kerry, i'll be voting against bush.

As a resident of the DC area, the same as you, I've heard this from a few people...what'd they all have in common? They were all completely ignorant about politics and the issues. Honestly, you are worse than those bloody ignorant LaRouche supports that parade through Foggy Bottom every week. At the very least they know what their canidate stands for...granted they/he are nuts and it might as well be a cult, but I digress.

They were exercising their right of free expression. Then they will exercise their right to vote as they please for whomever they please.

At least they aren't voting for a party name just because they learned it from their parents or friends.

If they don't like the President, that's their choice.

Calling someone "ignorant" seldom changes a mind or wins an argument.

So that's what Sydney was doing during those two missing years...

(If you watch Alias, you'll get it.)

[/stupid joke:p]

Huh? Guess you'd better explain. Never watched that show.

Career politicians are the rule, not the exception. Try again! Career politicians are the ones who do anything to get re-elected. At least if your rich, your next job doesn't depend on if the public likes you, and you can base decisions in facts insetad of public opinion. Some say that's why people voted for Arnold.

I liked this piece until I read this. That's a load of crap, and apparently when poor Mr. Brooks was at Chicago he never learned about the new class.

I have to go pick cotton now because I guess I'm poor or something. Also, Colonist, those Lyndon LaRouche people attacked us at the Cap South Metro stop - they called my mommy a capitalist pig. :p

Try coming out of the Foggy Bottom metro or walking through GW's campus down H street they are always here. To my knowledge there have been at least three fights that broke out between students and the LaRouche cult members.

Probably not the place to put it, but I heard this little factoid: the Heinz Company has 57 factories outside the United States.

How many do they have inside the country?

I always like to hear both sides of a story.

Oh, and last I heard, Kerry's wife's family wasn't running for office.

Not arguing - I just thought the 57 was funny!

Guess I should have put a winkie or something... :(

Yeah, actually the 57 didn't hit me until I had posted. We always bought that other kind anyway. Whatever it was.

I heard the "57" comment too!

Scary Kerry-can't stand the man.

DA, I have a hard time understanding your defense of him. I'm not saying this in comparison to Bush, because he has his share of negatives too.
I can list the things I see wrong with Bush, but I wonder if you can see anything troubling about Kerry.

No one gets this far in politics without some skeletons.

dont insult christophe with being the one who cut his hair because it looks like a fantasic sams cut for $8

Well, I've been known to defent the President as well. What I don't like is totally one sided arguments -- especially when they are not particularly pertinant or well supported.

Truth is, I don't like either of them much, but the thought of another four years of expanding the deficit while decreasing in income (tax cuts) scares the hell out of me. That's especially true of one who is approaching (only nine years now) Social Security age with the strong possibility of present government money management largely limiting or even eliminating those benefits. I won't be in as bad a shape as many (as long as the market is reasonable), but from a purely shefish standpoint, I've paid into Social Security since I was fifteen, and I want the benefits. Period.

Do the math. You simply can't keep spending more money while cutting income.

I also don't like being lied to, and that continues. There is an arrogance in the White House that I've never seen before. I'll leave it at that.

Having said that, when someone (Democrat or other) brings an unfair or impertinent argument against the President, you'll see my hackles up on that as well.