You could also make large paper ones with a record of the various Kerry 'for/against' positions on different issues and give them to people passing by.
Similar to this pair (but maybe just 2 or 3 on each insole in larger print:
Posted on 04/07/2004 10:25:07 PM PDT by RonDog
You could also make large paper ones with a record of the various Kerry 'for/against' positions on different issues and give them to people passing by.
Similar to this pair (but maybe just 2 or 3 on each insole in larger print:
What was my story last time?
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 03/07/04 | Damien McElroy
Posted on 03/06/2004 4:41:12 PM PST by Pokey78
Last week, John Kerry secured the Democratic nomination.
As the Republicans amass the ammunition to fight back, Damien McElroy reports on the senator's record to dateLook up "flip-flop" in the dictionary and definitions include: a rubber-soled sandal, a backward handspring, a complete change of opinion. Wearing sandals would hardly do John Kerry's presidential campaign much good, and, at 60, he is long past the days when a backward handspring is something he could sensibly contemplate. He is, however, proving to be a master of the "complete change of opinion". The Republicans are noting his flip-flopping with glee.Forget the occasional about-face on defence policy and the Iraq war, in the mawkish world of American politics one of the most fundamental questions a candidate can face is: Do they have any Irish blood? The Massachusetts senator has been and hasn't been Irish - at the same time. A name such as Kerry, with its Irish overtones, is an obvious bonus in Mr Kerry's Irish-dominated home state. Maybe this is why he has left his ancestors' real identities - Jewish emigres from Moravia and French merchants - unmentioned. In a speech to the Senate in 1986 he even said: "For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions [of] Irish-Americans."
When presented with proof that Mr Kerry's grandfather was the Jewish-born Fritz Kohn, the senator's aides reversed their position without a backward glance. "He has never indicated to anyone that he was Irish and corrected people over the years who assumed he was," said Kelly Benander, a Democrat spokeswoman.
Aides to George Bush can barely conceal their joy at the long list of contradictory positions taken by Mr Kerry over three decades in public office. Republican attempts to portray him as a flip-flopper without equal stepped up a gear yesterday with the launch of a website boxing game. Over 30 rounds, the gangly senator is depicted striking blows both for and against contentious issues.As the campaign gets under way, it's a fair bet there will be a role for Wallace Carter, a constituent of Sen Kerry's from Massachusetts. Two letters dispatched to Mr Carter in 1991 provide evidence of the speed with which Mr Kerry can change his mind.
"Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns," the first letter assures Mr Carter. "I voted in favour of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the President the immediate authority to go to war."
Just nine days later Mr Carter was surprised to receive another letter with an opposing view. "Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait," it said. "From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."
Mr Kerry eventually voted against the Gulf war but was hit by another bout of second thoughts after it. When the campaign ended in March, 1991, he said: "If the President had told me that there would be only 100 casualties and it would just take a week, I would have voted in favour of using military force."In the mid-1990s Mr Kerry emerged as a hawk on Iraq making numerous speeches in favour of regime change, even arguing that America should go it alone to oust Saddam. In a 1997 Senate debate, he said: "If in the final analysis we face what we truly believe to be a grave threat to the well-being of our nation or the entire world and it cannot be removed peacefully, we must have the courage to do what we believe is right and wise."
Mr Kerry's record on Iraq has been consistent - at least in one respect: as an exercise in flip-flopping. During the run-up to the war last March, Mr Kerry voted to give Mr Bush the authority to launch military action. At the time of the vote, Mr Kerry was robust: "We need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime," he said in January, 2003. "We all know the litany of his offences. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction."
Last autumn, under pressure from the anti-war insurgency of Howard Dean, he said he did not expect the White House to use the authority it had been granted. As a close race loomed in New Hampshire, the candidate turned against the war. "I was misled," Kerry said. "This administration has to be accountable for that. And they haven't yet accounted for it."
Perhaps Mr Kerry is merely showing his feminine side: it is after all supposed to be a woman's prerogative to change her mind. Then again, he could just be being contradictory. Since he entered the public arena in the early 1970s, Mr Kerry secured his place in the popular imagination as the war hero who campaigned for a pullout from Vietnam. Three decades later Vietnam has become the base camp of his march on the White House. Campaign stops feature his "band of brothers", and the candidate has even been known to recite the Kipling poem Gunga Din while talking about his battle experiences.An earlier John Kerry, however, deplored the use of Vietnam as a campaign card. In the run-up to the 1992 election Mr Kerry said: "I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign. What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary."
When Marc Raciot, the chairman of Bush/Cheney 2004, wrote to Mr Kerry last month, informing him that his record of voting for cuts in defence spending would be an issue put before voters, Mr Kerry quickly reached for his Vietnam shield.
"No one is going to question my commitment to the defence of our nation," he said. And as controversy raged over whether Mr Bush had been absent without leave during a posting to the Alabama National Guard, Mr Kerry's message carried a sting. "If you want to debate the Vietnam era, and the impact of our experiences on our approaches to presidential leadership, I am prepared to do so." In response, the Bush campaign mined stacks of files compiled at its Arlington headquarters on Mr Kerry. "The beauty of John Kerry is 32 years of votes and public pronouncements," said Mark McKinnon, the campaign's chief media adviser. "He's been wrong for 32 years, he's wrong now."
In the war on terror, Mr Kerry claims that Mr Bush has taken a needlessly draconian approach, particularly with the controversial Patriot Act. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night," Mr Kerry darkly warned. "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." Two years ago, however, Mr Kerry voted for the Act, praising its framers: "It reflects an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them."
On the stump, Mr Kerry has repeatedly condemned the Bush White House as "the biggest say-one-thing-do-another" in American history. Republican activists have retorted that Mr Kerry is a big "say-one-thing-say-another" candidate.
The Bush/Cheney campaign is now confident it can portray Mr Kerry as hopelessly split against himself on key issues. Mr Bush has proposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, an initiative that attracts majority support even from Democrats. Once one of 14 Democratic senators to oppose the Defence of Marriage Act, Mr Kerry now favours outlawing all marriages except those between a man and a woman. "I'm against gay marriage," he said. "Everybody knows that."
Even though Mr Kerry once warned that "reverse discrimination actually engenders racism", the candidate now claims that Mr Bush should be rejected by voters because Supreme Court judges appointed by him would place restrictions on affirmative action and other social policies.
The centrepiece of Mr Bush's "compassionate conservatism", the No Child Left Behind legislation, was backed by Mr Kerry until he started running for president. When it was enacted, he said: "This is groundbreaking legislation that enhances the federal government's commitment to our nation's public education system." However, recently he has promised a repeal of the legislation if he wins the presidency. .
Even the Kerry campaign mission statement cuts directly against the established track record of a 20-year Senate veteran: "From the moment I take office, I will stand up to the special interests and stand with hardworking families so that we can give America back its future and its ideals."Senate records show that Mr Kerry has taken more money from lobbyists than any other senator in the past 15 years. Critics of Mr Kerry's fundraising record have joked that he is like a toll machine: if you put money in, the gates to Capitol Hill are opened up.
To poll votes from blue-collar Democrats he has condemned the "turncoat" multinationals that export jobs overseas. As he does so, his wife Teresa, the heir to the Heinz fortune, a corporation with 57 factories overseas compared to just 22 in America, stands by smiling wanly. And where Mr Kerry once called for free trade agreements that many workers believe are destroying American jobs, he now calls for "fair" trade. Free trade agreements, such as Nafta, as well as a new deal with China, will be subjected to a 90-day review, he says, if he is inaugurated.
Despite his military record, Mr Kerry is also bound to face attacks over his consistent support for cuts in defence spending. John Kerry, voters will soon learn, supported scrapping the B2 bomber, the Apache helicopter and the trident missile system: all, according to one Republican aide, hardware that is "the tip of the spear that not only crushed Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War but also smashed the Taliban in Afghanistan and punched through to Baghdad".
How the race for the White House will develop over the summer is anyone's guess. But the Republicans have one top fashion tip to help their supporters through the campaign: wear, with pride, John Kerry flip-flops.
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
Just two days before that article I designed this graphic:
Subj: Kerry's Flip Flops Graphic Date: 3/4/2004 10:13:41 PM EST 
War not over: USEven as US troops pull down Saddam's statue in Baghdad, Washington warns it will not stop until it has 'finished the job'
By Irene Hoe
ASSISTANT EDITOR
IRAQI President Saddam Hussein came crashing down in the epicentre of his power yesterday as the sun set on Baghdad, and symbolically, on his 24-year rule.
With a little help from a US Marines recovery tank and some steel chain, a huge bronze statue of him was ripped off its marble pedestal in Paradise Square at dusk.
Its right hand reaching out to Jerusalem, the 6-m-tall figure had dominated the square since being inaugurated on April 28 last year, Mr Saddam's 65th birthday.
The delirious crowd pushed past the marines and leapt, cursing, on the fallen figure. Ripping off the head, they dragged it through the streets for people to spank with their shoes. Few gestures are more offensive to Arabs...
-- snip --
'The straightjacket of fear has been broken in front of our eyes,' said BBC correspondent Paul Wood.
Nowhere was proof more evident than in Saddam City, a north-eastern suburb of poor Shi'ite Iraqis.
There, TV cameras showed a white-haired man gleefully and repeatedly slapping his sandal on a ripped poster of Mr Saddam. A day earlier, this extreme insult would have brought certain death...
'Extreme insult'.....no wonder Kerry didn't like it......LOL
Sure hope that Senator Flip-Flop loses it (like Deano) when he sees protesters clapping flip-flops!
Take a look at this thread for more ideas & info on Kerry Flip-Flops.....Julie
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115600/posts
It's tax day -- where's the party?!
[FReep "Flip Flop" Kerry - at the POST OFFICE on April 15?]-- snip --
"Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night...
...shall stay these faithful Freepers.....from FReeping John "FLIP FLOP" Kerry on TAX DAY!
RonDog and FRiends outside the post office near LAXCLICK HERE for the rest of that thread
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
