I didn't want to do this: But I'm going to get all political again, and over one of thedumber issues that could possibly come up. You don't expect serious issues debate at FauxPolitik, do you? So here goes.

John Kerry has the IQ of dog crap. This is not meant as an insult to John Kerry. I would never go personal in a campaign like this, unlike these evil Republican henchmen like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. No, I honestly just worry about the Junior Senator from Massachusetts and his ability to feed and clothe himself without serious injury. Perhaps he should be institutionalized?

Seriously, though, I completely disagree with Radley's take on this, although he does allow that Kerry is a "bumblefuck blowhard" which is an excellent descriptive phrase. He buys Kerry's explanation, though, that it was just a muffed line intended to zing Bush. That just doesn't make sense. The language just doesn't work very well, and such an eloquent speaker as Kerry (well, he does have the President beat in that category, even if it's like playing against the "special" team) would have come up with a better way to deliver the intended line. This was most certainly not off the cuff.

Neither, though, do I think Kerry "hates" the military or veterans, though, and there is a lot of opportunistic and over-heated language from the right to this effect. He doesn't hate them, but I think he honestly doesn't understand them, and to an extent pities them. The Vietnam mentality is impossible for him to shake, that you into the military if you're unlucky and/or poor. Bush was rich and lucky, he wasn't (although I don't recall that he was "born a poor black child," either - Navin R. Johnson he ain't). He doesn't understand that some people actually joined the Army knowing they might have to go fight, and in fact expected to. I know a few who have been to Iraq and they honestly looked at it as , if not exactly a positive experience, at least an opportunity to do what they signed up to do, risks understood just fine, thank you.

The fact is the military population is a fairly good cross section of the country, from a racial, education, economic and geographic perspective (here's one example of this). People join for a lot of reasons, including lack of other apparent options. But by no means does his statement that if you don't study and aren't too bright you'll end up in Iraq hold true in any meaningful sense. But I think he still believes that, as do a lot of people I talk to.

I'm not impressed by the statements of indignation coming from the right (and probably from Democrats as well who don't want to get dragged down by this). I don't think it's something to get all rattled about, because I think the feeling is pretty widespread by those of Kerry's generation. Their entire view of the war and confronting Islamic Terrorism is often clouded by this feeling.