Kerostasis

Well, I consider myself a pretty core "GOP general public" and McCain's the kind of candidate that would finally convince me to vote Democrat. Except maybe if the opponent was Hillary. Even then it would be a stretch.

I think McCain might do okay in the general election, but he's gonna have a hell of a time getting nominated in the republican primary, because he's infuriated a lot of conservatives by being SO moderate and media-friendly. Specifically, friendly to the media that, true or not, is widely perceived by the republican base to be the "liberal media".

__________________

CingularDuality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biparti...ign_Reform_Act

I think that both sides are displeased with it. I think it went way too far, and didn't do anything to really address the problems with campaign fundraising.

__________________

Become a supporting member! -- Shop at the Tactical Market!

Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Switchcraft

From the wikipedia article:
Because, you know, talking about an issue is something you shouldn't do during election season, lest you might influence a voter with an "idea."

This act hurt everyone's ability to speak about the government, and seems to me wholly constructed to keep incumbants in power. I don't know if it's a "GOP strong" sentiment. The circles I run in call it the "incumbant protection act."

The GOP is like a big tent with a whole bunch of different (and sometimes contradictory) groups/ideologies in it. It's just about impossible to say "the GOP as a whole believes this..." because I would believe any sentance that started like that was probably a lie.

Private Book

great picture. Goes a long way to showing how the media noise machine works. Doesnt matter what context Kerry said it in to his critics and the news media just repeats the he said she said white noise and people just buy into it or believe what they want to believe. (Im reminded of Apophis recent suggestion). In the full transcript of what kerry said his botched joke about Bush appears at the end of other lame jokes about bush, bush being in a state of denial etc. But the critics just ignored that. Once the rush limbaughs and hannitys, and whoever set up the you tube edit excluded those remarks from what he said, it was easy for the white house to claim he meant something else. And it doesnt seem to matter to them that its a bald faced lie. I dont understand why there isnt a youtube video of his FULL remarks. Or why no one seems to be asking what he said before or after. (maybe they are and I just havent seen it) In fact their attack on Kerry was so scripted they (Tony Snow etc) actually went on all day calling for his apology, hours after he had apologized. According to the actual statement written for the speech he missed the joke by four or five words. Pretty amazing to get attacked for mangling a joke by the henchmen of president strategery.

I'm simply amazed the news media ran with this as front page news, reporting what is clearly in context a lame joke about bush without any checking at all. . Do these people do ANY research anymore?

__________________

Switchcraft

Could you post a link to the "full transcript?"

dfg872

I think that it goes something like this: “You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” He then said later that he forget to insert the word "us" His intent was to poke fun at bush's lackluster grades in college. "you get us stuck in Iraq" either way... dumb comment. Kerry should just stay in a hole somewhere far far away.

__________________
|TG-Irr| Dfg872

Switchcraft

Yeah, I've heard the audio...he said he had read the full transcript, which I have not been able to find. The Kerry website only has the speeches about how his words were twisted, but not the words that were twisted. Go figure.

JMJ

From Neal Boortz:

John Kerry seems to have a deep-seated disdain (bordering on hatred) for those in uniform. Remember, please, that it was John Kerry who, many years ago, talked about our troops in Vietnam regularly committing atrocities against innocent women and children. It was also John Kerry who remarked earlier this year about American troops in Iraq "terrorizing" women and children. How dare that pompous ass suggest that it is our troops who are doing the terrorizing over there?

For the record, Kerry is dead wrong. Not that he cares. Just four days ago The Heritage Foundation issued a report by Tim Kane entitled "Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003-2005." You have the link, go and read the report for yourself. If you do you will find that a higher percentage of military recruits have graduated from high school than the general population. In 2004 82.7% of recruits were high school graduates while another 7.03% had their GEDs. The national high school graduation rate that year was 79.8%. Even today, in 2006, the high school graduation rate for recruits is still higher than the high school graduation rate for the civilian population. Looks to me like the recruits are doing pretty well. You'll also find that "the Department of Defense reported that the mean reading level of 2004 recruits is a full grade level higher than that of the comparable youth population."

leejo

Apparently Kerry was for his "joke" before he was against it:

Remember, he supports the troops, just not the war.

Private Book

Full video of the event.

http://video.johnkerry.com/video/flash/103006_ca.html

JMJ. Anything the heritage foundation says should be ignored and even suspect."These critiques may seem mild, but as Chris Preble of the Cato Institute explains: “At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.”

"Micromanaging and emulating U.S. institutions was also the instinct of Jay Hallen, the clueless 24-year-old in charge of reopening the Baghdad stock market. His approach was to create one patterned after the New York Stock Exchange. (No, it didn't work.) Nor was Hallen the only inexperienced twentysomething CPA staffer given responsibilities for which he was utterly unprepared. Six of the "ten young gofers" that the CPA had requested from the Pentagon to handle minor administrative tasks found themselves managing Iraq's $13-billion budget. Where did the Pentagon recruit them? From the Heritage Foundation; they had sent their resumes there, looking for work in that conservative think tank."- Inside the green zone

GED HSDG | Some Coll./AA |BA/BS |MA/PhD | Other/Unk.
Officer 0% | <0.1% | 1.3% | 58.4% | 40.3% | <0.1%
Warrant <0.1% | 8.4% | 61.3% | 24.9% | 5.2% | <0.1%
Enlisted 6.9% | 76.0% | 7.2% | 4.7% | 0.6% | 4.6% [cant figure out the bb code to make this format right]

Heres where to get the demographics on the entire armed services. No other source should be trusted.http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/demographics.asp

Anything the heritage foundation says about anything should be thrown in the trash. they are one of the main reasons Iraq is a mess to begin with. Just ask yourself, why is the heritage foundation Re-doing a demographic study the military does on it's own every year and why don't their numbers match? They are part of the problem not the solution.

hehe. I went to coffee then came back and edited out a really lame sarcastic remark I was trying to make. Irony is a bitch.

__________________

leejo

Aren't the Cato and Heritage institutes competitors for funding and talent? I'm not surprised to see one trash the other. I'm disappointed to see you, a library employee, devote several paragraphs to trashing the Heritage Foundation without ever making a salient point. The Heritage and US Mil numbers are basically the same. In fact, Heritage numbers make GIs look slightly less well educated.

For example, Heritage claims, according to JMJ's summary, that in '04 82% of enlisted men were HS graduates and another 7% had their GEDs.

According to your source 92% of enlisted were HS graduates or better in 2004. 83.1% had their HS "or some" college. 6.5% (round up to 7?) had their GEDs.

So other than encouraging people not to read an opinion that differs from your own, what's your point? Or is there one?

leejo

FWIW here is the military.com discussion about these remarks and their reactions. http://forums.military.com/eve/forum.../6360025590001

Anyone know some good forums where active duty military and vets sound off? It would be interesting to see how many weren't offended and how many "misinterpreted" his remarks.

Private Book

No the Cato institute does not compete with the heritage foundation for funds and talent. The term 'talent' doesn’t even apply here. The heritage numbers are nothing near the us mil numbers because they ignore the way the army/military breaks down it's population. It's statistically dishonest to try to try to homogenize numbers that way. Ask yourself why the heritage foundation doesn’t follow the break down system of the US Military then ask yourself why the US military breaks down their statistics by ranks to begin with. The Military has been keeping their statistics this way for decades because it reflects the difference in recruitment types and age. By ignoring those recruitment types heritage fudges the numbers to make a political point. [b]The point [\b] of showing you the numbers isn’t to argue over whether the military is well educated. It is to show you that heritage is cooking their books yet again.

Further. I went to the link provided by JMJ and the conclusions he suggests are not there. The term 82.7% does not appear on the page. The term High school graduate appears once, in this sentence “Recruits have a higher percent¬age of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas “ ( I think he just means to be citing another study and referred us to this one by accident.) Then I checked the heritage foundations bibliography and the US militaries demographic data ISN’T THERE. Then you check the technical appendix and see that the demographics they did use were provided ONLY to the heritage foundation by the undersecretary of defense! Then when you look at THAT data and it covers precisely October 2003 to September 2004. Dude. They are cooking the books by cherry picking their data. Sound familiar?

Heritage foundation routinely decides their solutions then fixes facts around their theory. The numbers the military makes on their demographics are the correct numbers but Heritage wasn’t satisfied with them as they were presented by the military. Why is that? You admit the heritage numbers are different. (by saying they are "basically" the same yet different.) Why is that? Does rank have anything to do with education levels? if it doesn’t why does the military break it down like that? If it does, why does heritage ignore it? Could it have something to do with military academies? Could it have to do with the total numbers of enlisted men far outnumbering offices? If you blend the percentages into one big number, wouldn’t that blow the solution? I do trash the Heritage foundation, because they are hacks and because they are partially to blame for the F-up in Iraq. I've got plenty of evidence if we want to debate heritage foundation predictions.

PS What does my being a library employee have to do with anything?

Post Post script. Oh my freaking god. Then I go to the heritage study demographics he's citing from in his bibliography, this one, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Nat...ad/95512_1.pdf.
which Kane wrote himself, and I find his conclusion on education level in the general population is drawn from the military recruits in 1999 and the military comes in below the general population in every category EXCEPT high school equivalency. Cooked books Again! I think his conclusions are TOTALLY wrong. I believe military education levels are equal to the general populations, yet here is heritage foundation faking the numbers to say they are better educated then the rest of the population. Man those guys are hacks.

__________________

leejo

It has to do with the sad fact that you choose to spend a lot of your time telling us why we shouldn't bother with the Heritage Institute's opinions or studies instead of simply explaining what a better source may be. You are still looking silly because you insist that the Heritage numbers are junk when they are in fact more conservative than the military's own. This is explained by the fact that Heritage's numbers are for recruits and the military's are for their entire population. I would bet you a lot that the average recruit is younger and less well educated than the average soldier, who is likely older and has accomplished more in life with that extra time.

If you return to JMJ's site and browse to the section on education and click the click to view table link in the big graphic immediately below that section, you will see this:



So there's your 82.7% (round 82.66 up .04% points), etc. They cite their sources so any enterprising person could prove them wrong instead of taking intellectually lazy cheap shots.

With regard to your question about why Heritage isn't breaking down their numbers by rank, I think that's obvious: that's not their point. Their study is an effort to determine if the stories are true or not. So they aggregate officers and enlisted men who joined the service in 2004 to determine if the average recruit's education is going down, or is lower than the US population at large. They even take the extra, and intellectually honest, step of eliminating prior-service recruits - those old farts who decide to re-up and get in the fight. Their education levels are ALWAYS higher than the average because the military doesn't take those older types unless they are well-qualified.

So again, do you have a point other than we shouldn't pay attention to Heritage?

Switchcraft

Could you post a link to the full transcript that you read, please? The one you were talking about in the post where you said you couldn't find full video.