Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

John Kerry is releasing all his military records--but then again, he isn't. ._._. The former Democratic presidential nominee was asked if had signed Form SF 180, authorizing the Department of Defense to grant access to all his military records.

''I have signed it," Kerry said. Then, he added that his staff was ''still going through it" and ''very, very shortly, you will have a chance to see it."

The devil is usually in the details. With Kerry, it's also in the dodges and digressions. After the interview, Kerry's communications director, David Wade, was asked to clarify when Kerry signed SF 180 and when public access would be granted. Kerry drifted over to join the conversation, immediately raising the confusion level. He did not answer the question of when he signed the form or when the entire record will be made public.

Several e-mails later, Wade conveyed the following information: On Friday, May 20, Kerry obtained a copy of Form 180 and signed it. ''The next step is to send it to the Navy, which will happen in the next few days. The Navy will then send out the records," e-mailed Wade. Kerry first said he would sign Form 180 when pressed by Tim Russert during a Jan. 30 appearance on ''Meet the Press."

Kerry reiterated that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did not tell the truth about him, and said: "The truth in its entirety will come out . . . the truth will come out." After all this waiting, it better be good.

- Opinion Journal

Maybe someday we will hear the whole Bush/National Guard story as well.

But why drag this Kerry stuff back every other week.

Very few care.

Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

After what waiting? Damn the records regarding the action where made public even up here in Canada during the election campaign... the same records that show that some of the very same Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:rolleyes: that questioned the validity and/or reporting of 'the action' in question where in effect outright liars... these same tools had submitted AAR that collaborated, or in some cases praised, Kerry's account of the actions... hell some where even the people that recomended him for a decoration.

I may not like Kerry, but that doesn't mean I'd be so base as to impugn his combat service or record for cheap political gain... I was just as disgusted when the same tactics where used against McCain.

I guess the only way to make someones dereliction look good is to attack the record of someone who served - by redirecting or subverting the issue before it even comes up that the other candidate was drunk off his ass, living free and easy Stateside.

Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

Several bloggers - including one of the conservatives' best, Opinion Journal - have followed this.

It's not an attack on Kerry's record. it's a report on his honesty. During the campaign he said repeatedly he would release all of his medical records (but didn't) and he told Tim Russert (in Jan.) that he would (but he didn't), and now once again he says he will or has or ??? Rest assured, if the release of records occurs, it will be noted. If he's been hiding something, it will be noted (and, of course, totally ignored by the main-stream media.)

Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

Bloggers, huh? Then it must be legitimate.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

There are quite a few bloggers that are very legitimate. I've noticed you have quite a bit of spite for bloggers since you work with mass media, but you can't just generalize like that.

In fact it was bloggers that revealed quite a bit of news in the past few months, not the main media, wouldn't you agree? I believe some mass media people even had to resign from their jobs due to the truth coming out.

-Rudey

I'd like to see hoosier's war records.

I'll put it in my blog if that will help.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

Some Blogs are excellent. I don't think they're in the majority.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

I could say the same about news networks or papers. There are enough qualified bloggers out there to provide excellent sources and bloggers have already had a major impact revealing news that the major networks ignored (hence the firings and all that).

As with everything, pick and choose what you read. But let's not just randomly bash all bloggers. I can probably see blogging becoming a new way to keep news agencies on their toes in the future and I am very content in that.

-Rudey

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

And many have been wrong. But whatever.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

Unlike major news sources, which (especially of late) have been spot-on?

Honestly, DA, I think here you're showing some homerism, as 'blogging has really taken a deep swipe at the modern media, and the reality is that this new sort of 'check' on 'big media' has (apparently) been needed for quite some time.

It fits the overall motif of the internet, though, and I'll grant you that - it gives everyone a voice, which is not always a good thing. However, to deny the influence or role of 'bloggers in many current media scandels (as well as the way 'big media' has to cover its own ass now against future f- ups) seems pretty disingenuous . . .

One more thing to think of - it seems you really disapprove of using these sources as 'news' compared to those souces that are governed by the rules of journalistic integrity. I'll openly question whether those rules have been taking precedence of late - perhaps instead, the balancing effect of open 'blogging can lead to a return to those ideals by media sources.

Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

Isn't Opinion Journal the Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed pieces and related material online? Or is there a different blogger Opinion Journal?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally (maybe) Kerry ends dodges and digressions
 

This is more in my line of thinking on the whole process. My last year of school, blogging was a big topic of conversation in all of my journalism classes. These professors (all of whom had great credentials in major media markets) also were very cautious in praising the spreading of blogs, instead taking more of DeltAlum's stance.

I really think it is a dividing line between new and old journalism at this point, and there can be parallels drawn to the journalism of the early 20th century (Hearst, Henry Luce, etc.). Granted blogs give much more people more access, which can limit credibility, but there are some bloggers out there who really are doing a great job.

I don't think the media has fallen as hard as people say it has, but at the same time I think competition from blogs can help raise the quality of all media.

Here's at least part of what it comes down to for me.

While news media (even major ones) make mistakes, there is a certain ethical code that the majority of journalists believe in and their organizations adhere to.

I suspect that if you take the number of mistakes (or downright misconduct on the part of journalists as in two or three cases recently) that professional journalists make and compare them to the number of mistakes, or really baseless "stories" on the blogs, that the latter would win hands down.

Within the past couple of weeks, our much quoted Mr. Drudge published that the President of NBC News had been fired and even named his replacement. Remember his story about the huge misconduct story that was supposed to come out on Senator Kerry during the campaign?

Totally wrong.

So who does answer to? Only himself. Had he been writing for a major news organization, he would have been fired long ago.

Which is another point. The journalists who lied about sources or made major mistakes are out of work. The blogs go on.

Is Drudge a blogger even?

-Rudey

I think he's considered a blogger, isn't he? When I hear or see him quoted it is usually attributed to his "blog."

Not sure.

Here is a pretty good blog: http://www.crookedtimber.org/

There are quite a few out there that are run by experts and nobel prize winners - people with reputations on the line.

-Rudey

The majority following this ethical code, it would seem, is becoming smaller - I'm not one to push the "good ol' days" agenda, but the reality is that some of the biggest improprieties in network news have been exposed by 'bloggers -or did this stuff exist before, and no one caught it? It's a quintessential catch-22, but only for the viewer.

Do 'blogs decrease the signal-to-noise ratio? Of course. Is Matt Drudge overexposed, and often wrong? Sure, but he's a douche, and probably well outside what Rudey and I would consider a "blog" of any credibility. [note that drudge does walk well with anti-censorship circles, if you want to bring that up] My point is that the next era of 'big media' news will have to adjust to the influence and scrutiny of 'blogs, especially those published by ACTUAL insiders or experts that haven't been washed through corporate news. This means even more 'raw dirt' than the "anonymous Washington tipster" of yore, as well as more crap to slog through. For a real journalist, this should be viewed as a wonderful opportunity to clean off these sources and get closer to actual, factual, unbiased reporting.

It seems that this element is positive, and more than offsets the increased noise.

Given the amount of news put out by "the media," I don't think that the relatively few major blunders make much of a dent in the "majority."

It's a little like and airplane crash. They are pretty few and far between, but make big news when they happen.

During one hot Indiana summer, all of my records melted and warped. I've replaced most of them with eight-tracks, and then cassettes, and then DVDs.

Since Brandon decided to lock a thread on a new article for no reason, I will post the article in here. It's nothing huge, but it's a little humorous about the French class (anyone with a sense of humor will admit that) :).

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...tudent?mode=PF

Yale grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student
His 4-year average on par with Bush's
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | June 7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- During last year's presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.

But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

The grade transcript, which Kerry has always declined to release, was included in his Navy record. During the campaign the Globe sought Kerry's naval records, but he refused to waive privacy restrictions for the full file. Late last month, Kerry gave the Navy permission to send the documents to the Globe.

Kerry appeared to be responding to critics who suspected that there might be damaging information in the file about his activities in Vietnam. The military and medical records, however, appear identical to what Kerry has already released. This marks the first time Kerry's grades have been publicly reported.

The transcript shows that Kerry's freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.

Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade. In addition to Kerry's four D's in his freshman year, he received one D in his sophomore year. He did not fail any courses.

''I always told my Dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said yesterday in a written response to questions, noting that he has previously acknowledged that he spent a lot of time learning to fly instead of focusing on his studies.

Kerry's weak grades came despite years of education at some of the world's most elite prep schools, ranging from Fessenden School in Massachusetts to St. Paul's School in New Hampshire.

It is noteworthy, however, that Kerry received a high honor at Yale despite his mediocre grades: He was chosen to deliver his senior class oration, a testament to his reputation as a public speaker. He delivered a speech questioning the wisdom of the Vietnam War, in which he would soon see combat.

Kerry gradually improved his grades, averaging 81 in his senior year. His highest single grade was an 89, for a political science class in his senior year. Despite his slow start, he went on to be a top student at Naval Candidate School, command a patrol boat in Vietnam, graduate from law school, and become a prosecutor, lieutenant governor, US senator, and presidential candidate.

In his Navy application, Kerry made clear that he spent much of his college time on extracurricular activities, including the Yale Political Union, the Debating Association, soccer, hockey, fencing, and membership in the elite Skull and Bones Society. Asked to describe nonschool training that qualified him for the Navy, Kerry wrote: ''A great deal of sailing -- ocean and otherwise, including some navigation. Scuba diving. Rifle. Beginning of life saving." He said his special interests were ''filming," writing, and politics, noting that the latter subject occupied 15 hours per week.

Gaddis Smith, a retired Yale history professor who taught both Kerry and Bush, said in a telephone interview that he vividly remembers Kerry as a student during the 1964-1965 school year, when Kerry would have been a junior. However, Smith said he doesn't have a specific memory about Bush.

Based on what Smith recalls teaching that year, Kerry scored a 71 and 79 in two of Smith's courses. When Smith was told those scores, he responded: ''Uh, oh. I thought he was good student. Those aren't very good grades." To put the grades in perspective, Smith said that he had a well-earned reputation for being tough, and noted that such grades would probably be about 10 points higher in a similar class today because of the impact of what he called ''grade inflation."

Bush went to Yale from 1964 to 1968; his highest grades were 88s in anthropology, history, and philosophy, according to The New Yorker article. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy. Bush has said he was a C student.

Like Kerry, Bush reportedly suffered through a difficult freshman year and then pulled his grades up.

-Rudey

Funny they rip on Kerry for something else than why they wanted his records released. Kerry comes off as more intellectual than Bush. I don't think Kerry ever claimed he was smarter or Bush was stupid.

More intellectual in French :)

Either way most voters thought that. In all honesty, I thought Kerry was probably smarter until I saw this. But then again if being smart made you president, one of those weird genius kids would be elected president.

-Rudey

I saw this earlier. Pretty funny. Neither set any academic worlds on fire, did they?

Hell, didnt even want to look at it!

Both are Moroons, one is President and the other is a sitter for Ted Kennedy, DA!

OKAY DA ,Liberal or Conservative, Dremo Or Republo?

God I Just love watching these phony Basturds trying to reasure their Jobs.:o

Oh, watch For Sam Brownback. The Snake Oil Salesman from Ks.

He is troiling already! Oh Pres. Job.

He is a Moroon. I vote against Him every time!

Oh, didnt THEY GO TO HARVARD?:rolleyes:

Wow, Proud I went To PSU, Ks!

Oh, We could park Our Cars, did not have Havaarad Yard!

I think we need to put it all in perspective. The article said that Bush had an average of 78 and Kerry an average of 76 at YALE. This wasn't at Podunk Loser University. They had to be pretty smart just to get there. When you think about taking the top .5% of the brain power and then splitting THAT group into A's, B's, C's and D's, it's a little different than taking the population at your local community college and putting them on a bell curve.

They obviously both have book smarts. Common sense? Now that's not measurable by a GPA!

Dee

They got in because of wealth, not because they discovered nuclear fusion.

-Rudey

There is that.

How quickly you forget.

Show me this quote where he says he is smarter than Bush please.

Whether you're pro-Kerry or pro-Bush
 

I've been trying to avoid this thread, mostly because I feel that after ANY election, it's more important to pull together than keeping destroying each other. Should I repeat that, or did it sink through?

Kerry's war history is not my concern at this time. What does bother me is that he testified in front of Congress and lied. He called himself and all the others who served in Viet Nam "rapists, baby killers" and something about the worst plunderers since Ghengis Khan.

Senator Kerry, when you defamed the Americans who served in Viet Nam, you lied about my brother. You lied about his friends, you lied about hundreds of thousands of good, decent men, many of whom did not live to protest your base portrayal. You did not have the right to lie about these men, and should never have the chance to be Commander In Chief of any military man! I will remember your lies next week, as I'm visiting the very momument to those you disparage.

Now, about President Bush: I'm 100% sure that having had relatives matriculate at Yale helped his chances of acceptance there. But what are the odds of staying in an Ivy League School, if you don't make the grades? This was a time when staying in school meant staying out of the service; while many professors were more than happy to inflate grades to help out students, many more were happy to flunk men for the same reason.

That's my 2¢ - take it or leave it. I don't plan to check this thread to see how people who know little about the situation pontificate on my views. Frankly, DeltAlum is one of the few people with whom I would calmly discuss this, as he is a contemporary of my brother and most other Viet Nam veterans.

Best of the Web Today - June 7, 2005

By JAMES TARANTO

A C Man in the Navy
On Jan. 30, John Kerry* told NBC's Tim Russert that he would release his full military records to the public, something he had refused to do during last year's campaign. It took 128 days, but today the Boston Globe reports that he had done so. The records revealed what many of us had suspected: Kerry served in Vietnam. But according to the Globe, "the lack of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions."

A second Globe story, however, answers that question. Included in Kerry's military files were his transcripts from Yale, which were part of his application for officer training. Kerry, it turns out, had a 76 average for his years at Yale--the equivalent of a C and one point below George W. Bush's 77 average. Kerry had a difficult freshman year, scoring four D's, though he did manage a C in French.

So Kerry was almost as distinguished a scholar as the schoolmate who went on to become president of the United States. That doesn't seem so bad--but for candidate Kerry, it would have been devastating. After all, much of Kerry's appeal, such as it was, rested on intellectual snobbery.

His supporters described him, in the words of a March 2004 New York Times report, as "an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process." In this view, Kerry's nose for nuance contrasted favorably with Bush's simplisme.

But what if Kerry simply lacked the ability to express himself clearly? Consider his answer when asked in a September 2003 debate to reconcile his vote for Iraq's liberation with his subsequent opposition: "The vote is the vote. I voted to authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make two points if I may._._._."

He went on in this vein for 248 words (quoted in full here), and only someone with a superior intellect and too much time on his hands could possibly have made sense of his answer. "People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can't understand," IQ expert Linda Gottfredson told the Times' John Tierney last year. The revelation that Kerry was no better a student than Bush suggests that this is just what happened.

Kerry's appeal to intellectual vanity was in any case a politically dubious one. The last egghead to win the White House was Woodrow Wilson, and he was a genuinely accomplished scholar. In 1956, a supporter is said to have told Adlai Stevenson, "You have the support of every thinking person." He replied: "That's not enough. I need a majority."

Still, let's not sell Kerry short. He is, after all, a United States senator--which isn't bad for a C student. At least no one will ever again call him an underachiever.

This is a comment on a comment made by Kerry supporters. It is not a comment by Kerry.

It doesn't prove to me -- or anyone else I would think -- that Kerry said he is smarter than President Bush.

What am I missing?

Ok that is a post about Kerry's supporters but Kerry said no such thing. Nice try. You could have quoted me if you wanted to post about supporters.

Okay a couple of points...

One, you can be an intellectual without being a stellar scholar (it helps), nor does being a stellar scholar make you an intellectual... there are many people currently or historically that I consider intellectuals, but that weren't all that scholarlly (or didn't have the time to bury themselves in their schoolwork).

Two, this one is for honeychile - Kerry said we, as in American soldiers, when testifying before congress; he didn't say all of the soldiers, or all of us (in the all Americans sense) - it's a fine ditinction, but one that I though members of GLOs could grasp... and one that doesn't make him a liar by any stretch of the imagination. Finally I gotta ask - what would give Kerry the right to speak about Vietnam and the record there?

Re: Whether you're pro-Kerry or pro-Bush
 

I am by no means a scholar of Viet Nam, but weren't there people who raped and people who killed babies there? Weren't there plunderers?

Who's ripping on Kerry for his grades? First of all, the article was in the Globe, which has been a staunch supporter of Kerry since he announced his candidacy. Second, I don't think anyone really cares; it's just kind of funny that his grades were so close to the President's when there was a general assumption that Kerry's GPA would have been higher.

He has problems seeing anything other than his viewpoint.

Kerry is not smart, is not scholarly, and is not an intellectual, but his team was quite successful at portraying him that way. That's the best summary of the article.

-Rudey

Once again, Rudey puts a long article into three sentnces, and gets the entire message correct. It's a gift, for sure.

And going back to 2000, Bush - who earned an MBA from Harvard - was called "dumb" in relation to Gore who flunked out of law school and the seminary.