Finally, Kerry apologizes for ‘a botched joke’

Daily Dish got Kerry quite right.

Is Kerry not content to lose just one election? Does his enormous ego have to insist on losing two?

Kerry now says he meant the joke to be aimed at Bush and botched the delivery. If so, why didn’t he apologize immediately?? Instead, his elitist comment, saying only the stupid and presumably lower class end up in Iraq, merely shows him to be out of touch and disconnected from the real world of real people. His ‘joke’ certainly qualifies him for the Upper Class Twit of the Year award, given his obvious contempt for and ignorance of the working class.

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Green Lisa updates us on Confused Koslings No More. The DailyKos Thought Police have now purged references to antiwar candidate Byron De Lear. Oh yes, they do this sort of thing all the time. How deeply liberal and open minded of them, eh?

From Alex, posted to Green Party LA County forum:

Live and learn!

My Dailykos “Diary” stayed on the front page for barely four hours before it disappeared beneath the waves, forever.

There were just a handful of comments and all but one was strictly negative.

I expected that, but what was shocking is that you could tell from the comments that nobody actually read what I wrote.

It’s a funny feeling when you’ve devoted some time and efort into documenting an argument and the only feedback is a bunch of cliches. my link to the Washington Monthly article about the unintended effects of gerrymandered districts, alone, was deserving of a serious comment.

And of course, they were all completely indifferent to the things I wrote about civil rights and growing up in the South.

Amazing, truly amazing! No Democrat would ever be elected to high office anywhere in this country were it not for those ridiculously lopsided votes by African-Americans and Latino-Americans. And it is clear — painfully, painfully clear that all that doesn’t mean a damn things to these hyper-partisan Democrats.

The Title is:

“CA-28: Byron DeLear versus Howard Berman - What is My Duty?”

and here is the Link:
http://www.dailykos.com/stroyonly/2006/10/31/185258/33

I tried to stand the “wasted vote” argument on its head by pointing out that for antiwar voters like me in California, running out and voting for some Democratic Party hack who is likely to be reelected with 70% or 80% of the vote is truly a wasted vote.

This demonstrates how shallow and manipulative the Kos world is. They pretend at being antiwar, yet rabidly back the prowar incumbent Democrat Howard Berman over the antiwar Byron De Lear, even to the point of killing the entire post about De Lear, making a mockery of the openness they profess to believe in.

Netroots and the Kos world are antiwar only as far as they think it hurts Republicans. Other than that, they don’t really care about it. Nor, as Alex points out, do they care much about the traditional Democratic constituency of minorities, labor, and the poor. Instead, it’s all about them and how important they are. Their rank classism and patronizing attitudes speaks volumes about their real agenda. They are no different than those they want to displace.

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From the always excellent RockRap Confidential listserv, this will also appear in the print edition.

The calamity caused by the liquidation of Tower Records doesn’t just consist of the 2700 workers fired and the dozens of small label releases that will lose their most important national outlet. It isn’t just that Tower will certainly take down with it some indie labels and distributors to whom it owed a fortune. It certainly isn’t just the eight-figure losses each of the major labels will absorb, probably resulting in more firings at those that aren’t already pared to the bone.

Tower Records was a poster child for “hip capitalism,” a fig leaf term meant to cover a system which justifies itself by providing “competition” that leads to “innovation”–until the reckoning comes and the cartel or monopoly begins to take shape, driving out all not on the inside. The idea that this has made our society wealthy, efficient and convenient is lunacy, as Tower’s demise confirms.

RockRap is edited by Grammy-winning writer Dave Marsh and it lives at the intersection of politics and music. There’s no other publication like it.

A sub is to the print edition is $15 year and well worth it. You can join the email list for free.

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