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• (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)

[hackess]

Rich Choices in November
 
 By Terry M. Neal (From the Washington Post, Friday, June 4, 2004)
 
The Bush-Cheney  campaign this week stepped up its assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for being a rich guy. No, make that for being a really, really rich guy.
 
"Most Americans can't afford yachts, private planes, thousand dollar haircuts or homes in Nantucket," Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke said in a news release announcing a new video game on the RNC Web site.  The game is called Kerryopoly. It's similar to Monopoly, but the properties belong to the Kerry family.
 
It's a curious line of attack. The logic of Dyke's statement would seem to suggest that most Americans can afford mansions on hundreds of acres in Texas and are fortunate enough to receive retirement or severance packages worth tens of millions of dollars, as Vice President Cheney and some members of the Bush cabinet did when they left private industry to join the government.
 
So why is a free enterprise, capitalistic, big business-dominated party that often accuses Democrats of dividing people on class busting a guy's chops for having a lot of dough?
 
"We are speaking to the inherent contradiction in the life story of John Kerry," said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt on Wednesday. "He is someone who purports to campaign as a man of the people, but who resides in a whole series of wealthy million dollar chateaus and mansions. It's just one more contradiction and example of him being out of the mainstream with America."
 
In other words, Holt explains, Republicans are pointing out the hypocrisy of Democrats who play class warfare, but they're not playing it themselves. The issue, Holt and other Republican officials said, is not so much that Kerry is rich, but that he's a phony.
 
"John Kerry is dividing Americans on class and income," Holt said. "Republicans don't do that. Republicans, for example, fight for tax relief that is fair for everyone." Kerry, on the other hand, "supports repealing tax cuts for people who make over $200,000."
 
Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade responded: "Boneheaded attacks from this bunch are as insulting as they are ironic. It's downright hypocritical coming from the campaign of a president whose connections got him into a 'Champagne Unit' of the National Guard during Vietnam and whose path was paved with privilege from Andover to Arbusto oil to the Texas Rangers…This guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple is going to engage in a sad game of class warfare? . . . I don't think a lot of Americans remember Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy because of where they came from, they remember them for what they did to make America stronger. Good luck finding Americans who think that way about George Bush."
 
It's Not All Fun and Games
Here's how the RNC news release described the Kerryopoly game: "With a roll of the electronic dice, players can land on properties like Nantucket, worth $9.18 million, Beacon Hill, worth $6.9 million, or Idaho, worth $4.9 million.  Players may also land on squares for John Kerry's thousand-dollar haircut or his $5,000 bicycle.
 
"Each player starts the game with $40,000 in Kerryopoly money, the average national household income. The goal is to make it around the board with as little debt as possible, meaning players must try to avoid landing on pricey properties like Kerry's Georgetown home, worth $4.7 million, or the space for the Scaramouche, Kerry's $700,000 yacht."
 
Asked what the point of this game was, RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson said this was just the latest of four or five Web games the RNC has put on its Web site poking fun at Kerry. The most popular one so far was called Kerry vs. Kerry, which highlights the candidate's purported flip-flops on various issues over the years.
 
"Kerryopoly is yet another way to familiarize voters with John Kerry," she said. "It's interactive and a little more light-hearted."
 
But if most voters can't identify with Kerry's wealth, can they identify with Bush and Cheney's?
 
"I'm happy with what I just told you," she said.
 
But doesn't this theme contradict with Republican criticism of Democrats for playing class warfare?
 
Pause.

"No," she said. "No."

Said Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera: "We gave them an A for it—an A for audacity."
 
The DNC e-mailed the following statement this week:
 
"Yesterday the Republican National Committee, chaired by Ed Gillespie (whose lobbying firm collected at least $27 million from corporate clients like Enron in the two years before he became RNC chair), unveiled a new internet game poking fun at the personal finances of John Kerry.
 
"It is unclear whether the campaign of George Walker Bush (son of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandson of Connecticut Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush) and Dick Cheney (worth between $24 million - $107 million; former Chairman and CEO of Halliburton who received a $20 million retirement package to run for vice president) has endorsed this line of attack. Bush (a CT-born Yankee who summered in Kennebunkport, Maine, and attended the Kinkaid school in Houston before moving to Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, where he became head cheerleader and earned the nickname the Lip from his chums for his rapier wit), was unavailable for comment."
 
   
Frivolous Maybe, but It Matters
There are important things going on this election, two wars being fought abroad, an economy inching out of the doldrums, older Americans struggling to pay for prescription drugs. So why does this matter?

Well, because it could help determine who the next president will be, that's why.

Issues matter first and foremost for voters, but intangible personal traits are also important. Most political experts agree that, fair or not, Al Gore's reputation for stretching the truth hurt him in 2000, just as Bob Dole's reputation for meanness hurt him in 1996, just as George H.W. Bush's reputation for being out of touch hurt him in 1992 and Jimmy Carter's reputation for grinning cluelessness hurt him in 1980.
 
Both Bush and Kerry have their own potential intangible liabilities this year. Democrats try to tag Bush as a stubborn, not-so-bright cowboy relying on platitudes and an overly simplistic vision of the world. Republicans try to portray Kerry as a flip-flopping, Boston patrician with a phony sense of noblesse oblige.
 
Pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center can help explain what's going on here. Despite a very tough couple of months for Bush, he wins  polls by double-digit margins when voters are asked who has the best judgment in a crisis or who is the most willing to take a stand.  But ask voters who is the most likeable or down to earth or honest, and voters are evenly split.
 
Here's the kicker though: The one place Kerry clearly leads Bush is on the question of "cares about people like you." In the most recent Pew poll, respondents favored Kerry  over Bush, 45 to 34 percent.
 
In March, the Washington Post/ABC News poll asked voters whether "Bush cares more about serving poor and lower income people, middle income people, upper income people, or would you say he cares equally about serving all people?" Forty-four percent said "upper" compared to 41 percent who said "all" and only 7 percent who said "poor or middle."
 
So what the RNC and Bush campaign are trying to do is close the gap on the one big personality issue where Kerry has an advantage.
 
"What the Republican party and their strategist are trying to do is say, 'he may be a Democrat, but he's a limousine liberal and he doesn't get it,'" Kohut said. "It's not an unreasonable position for them to take from a tactical standpoint."
 
   
There's Rich, Then There Is Just Plain Loaded
Wealth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Chris Rock jokes about this in a  stand-up routine. People think Oprah Winfrey is rich, he says. But if Bill Gates woke up with one day with "Oprah money" he'd probably kill himself, Rock jokes.
 
Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, heiress to the Heinz family fortune, are reportedly worth about half a billion dollars. The Associated Press reported in March that Kerry and his wife own "at least five homes and vacation getaways across the country valued at nearly $33 million."
 
That wealth has been an issue since the primaries. Kerry was criticized by both  Democrats and Republicans when he borrowed $6 million against the equity in a Boston town house, a move that allowed him to avoid the strictures of public financing in the primary. Kerry's jetting off to his $5 million ski getaway in Ketchum, Idaho, made big news on the Drudge Report and conservative talk radio. And one of the first negative Kerry ads by a Republican-linked group, Citizens United, poked fun at Kerry's wealth.
 
According to the Los Angeles Times, the 30-second ad ran in 12 states and "flashes photographs of the candidate, boats in a harbor and various pieces of real estate, while a narrator says: 'Massachusetts Sen. 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.'
 
"It then shows Kerry with his home-state Democratic colleague Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, as the narrator adds: 'Another rich, liberal elitist from Massachusetts who claims he's a man of the people. Priceless.'"
 
But Democrats defend Kerry, and say Bush, with his man-of-the-people posturing, is the real fake.
 
"John Kerry has never suggested anything other than the fact that he comes from a privileged background," Cabrera said. "But he's also made it clear that that puts a certain responsibility on his shoulders. John Kerry had this background when he went to Vietnam and made the decision to run for public office. Most importantly, despite John Kerry's background, he has been focused on the needs of others."
 
Cabrera said not only are Bush and Cheney rich, but they've surrounded themselves  with people who are almost all super wealthy.
 
According to personal financial disclosures required by law, Bush's personal wealth is between $8 million and $20 million. Cheney holds assets of between $24 million and $107 million.
 
All that aside, this much is certain: No matter who wins in November, the person who is sworn in next January will be a rich guy.

I think this is the funniest case of Pot Meets Kettle I've ever seen.

[Demosthenes]

It's kind of like the Bush TV ad they've been running around here that calls Kerry "wrong on defense".





Like running around the world, angering our allies, declaring prisoners taken "not applicable to the Geneva Convention", and invading other countries unprovoked is somehow "right" on defense?

[xolik]

Why do you hate America, Demo? NEVAR FORGETT!!1!!!11!!


 

[Demosthenes]

Why do you hate America, Demo? NEVAR FORGETT!!1!!!11!!


 

Heh.  And I called Lacerda "Master Impressionist" earlier.  

[Law]

*cough*

[hackess]

*cough*

I sent that to my ex-boyfriend, who works in Sen. Dave Obey's office in DC. I warned him it was a bit...irreverant.

[MISTER MASSACRE]

Why do you hate America, Demo? NEVAR FORGETT!!1!!!11!!

He is clearly a terrorist, andI think we should deny him business as a result.

[Demosthenes]

Why do you hate America, Demo? NEVAR FORGETT!!1!!!11!!

He is clearly a terrorist, andI think we should deny him business as a result.

If you don't, they can come after you for aiding and abetting, ala the PATRIOT Act....

[wranga]

Why do you hate America, Demo?

Well the problem is obviously that he masturbates, that's an unpatriotic behaviour that causes criminal bahaviour. George Bush said so.

[Binoboy]

Why do you hate America, Demo?

Well the problem is obviously that he masturbates, that's an unpatriotic behaviour that causes criminal bahaviour. George Bush said so.

Indeed, there is something better than masturbation, and his name is Jesus.

*old/10*

[xolik]

Well the problem is obviously that he masturbates, that's an unpatriotic behaviour that causes criminal bahaviour. George Bush said so.

That was mildly amusing.