Please, Louise.

[No Elephants]

Massachusetts has a rich Irish heritage. And Boston was an Irish town politically for many years, including under Mayor "Honey Fitz," Rose Kennedy's dad.

For at least 25 years, John Kerry allowed Massachusetts to believe that he was at least in great part Irish, like, you know, that other JFK.

Kerry attended the annual St. Patrick's Day galas, making jokes about the Irish politicians presents and allowing them to make Irish jokes about him. They all sang the Irish songs together. (I know this because these galas are televised on local stations and I'd watched since moving to Massachusetts.)

Then, in 2003, when Kerry looked as though he'd run for President, the usual happened: some geneaologist looked up his ancestors.

Turned out that Kerry was Jewish on his father's side, Kerry's grandparents having changed their surname and religion before immigrating to the United States. (His mother's side is WASP--Forbes, Winthrop, etc.)

I was stunned. Naively, I thought that a deception that huge would disqualify him. Had I been discovered in deception that blatant, that fundamental to Massachusetts politics, that longstanding, I can't imagine how I could have even survived. Maybe if I had never left my home again--and blackened the windows? Continue running for President after that? Never.

Kerry, however, did not seem to me to be the least bit embarrassed or apologetic about this. When asked, he'd say jocularly, Oh, he had a little bit of this and a little bit of that in him--and, as he rattled off alleged ethnicities, he would include "a little bit of irish." Well, I don't know how true that is, but Obama has a bit of Irish too, and you don't catch him trying to pass for Irish in Irish Boston.

Well, to my amazement, Kerry did become the nominee of the Democrats, despite the massive and long lasting deception; and I, foolishly thinking that Kerry was the liberal, anti-war guy I'd seen in film clips, voted for him. And, after all, I had it on very good authority that, no matter what else Kerry might or might ot be, Kerry definitely wasn't Bush.

Now, Kerry is telling us that he has slam dunk intelligence that Saddam Hussein acquired yellow cake chemicals were used in Syria and Assad is most definitely the one responsible for their being used. Uh huh. I imagine there were eyewitnesses to his giving the order?

But, here's the jawdropper. Kerry is telling us--and very emphatically, too--that bombing a nation is not an act of war. He's shouting: "President Obama is not asking you to go to war. There will be no boots on the ground. Not one."


:wtf:

Apparently, D.C. has neatly re-defined war to mean "boots on the ground." The US putting bombs on the ground in an other nation, though? Apparently, not war.

:wtf:

For those of you who remember old school war--you know, the only kind of war that the Framers knew--it was nation against nation. Some nation did something provocative and the other side declared war and Bam! you were at war. Sometimes the allegedly provocative act involved no violence and was allegedly inadvertent. Hence, during the Eisenhower administration, a plane "accidentally" entering Soviet airspace without consent supposedly brought us to the brink of war. Ditto the Soviets simply parking missiles in Cuba, with Cuba's consent, during the Kennedy administration.

But bombing? Pish tosh. Not a war.

:wtf:

About a dozen years ago, some men, mostly Saudis, allegedly not authorized by any nation, flew a plane into the WTC and we've been at war anywhere in the world we wanted to attack ever since. But the US dropping bombs on Syria is not a war?

:wtf:

What if fit was on the other shoot? What if Syria dropped a bomb on the White House or the Capitol Building or even in Boston harbor? Would we consider that an act of War?

Somehow, I think we would. I also think we'd be damn right.

But, that canny ole Irishman, Kerry, says otherwise. Why would anyone doubt him?

[No Elephants]

1. OMG, it gets worse.

Usually, I don't actually look at the TV because I am doing something else while it's on. But, I actually looked up when a clip of Kerry came on. He actually used--wait for it--AIR QUOTATION MARK to say we are not {open air quote} going to war
Air quotes for war.

So, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that was not an act of war?

How embarrassing for the US that we went off half cocked and claimed self defense after that, eh? Even went so far as changing the name of War Department, too, we did.

BTW, what was the last war that the US fought that boots on the ground was all that war entailed?

Classic, my ass.

[Enthusiast]

3. I heard some of Kerry.

I didn't realize he was so persuasive. No wonder he won the presidential election in 2004. He is actually quite appealing. He could almost pass for Irish.

But bombing is war. No question about it.

[No Elephants]

5. Well, I sure botched that post.

Did he convince you that air strikes are not an act of war?

[Enthusiast]

2. I had no idea that Kerry was

actually Jewish. Not that this bothers me so much. But that lack of true Irishness, now that is a problem. I kid. My sainted mother always pointed out that we (her children) were exactly 1/2 Irish. My sainted mother's German half was always overly concerned about a person's ethnic heritage. :-)

[No Elephants]

4. Thanks, Enthusiast. I don't care if he's Martian.

I care that he pretended for so many years to be something that he wasn't.

[No Elephants]

6. If she was 1/2 German and 1/2 Irish, how did you get to be !/2 Irish?

Was your Dad half Irish, too?

[Enthusiast]

7. My dad was Scotts-Irish.

But his heritage isn't as clear as my mother claimed her side was. We're Western European by the looks of us, the entire extended clan going back several generations. No blonds in the bunch, however. My father and his four siblings were an attractive bunch, the young ladies were especially beautiful.

[No Elephants]

8. Webb is Scotts-Irish. Wrote a book about it, too.