Bridgman - Thanks for letting me know that we're not alone in this.

Zarak - I think that quote was from Bridgman. However, I have read the first three books of the Gunslinger series....great books....and the others are on deck to be read. The problem I encountered is that it took so long in between reading the first three and the fourth one that I found that I couldn't just jump back into the series and remember all of the details. Therefore, it's been on my to-do list to restart the series and read it through to the end.

PM - I'm glad you didn't get to ticked off at me for singling you out....I was uneasy about posting those statements. However, you are a level-headed guy who took my statements in context and that's appreciated. I wish all Dems were that way.

The link that you posted is interesting. First of all, I think that many of these are quite obviously stretches by those trying to deflect criticism of Kerry.

Take for example the quote concerning the link between Al Quaida and Iraq. If you read closely, the comments aren't contradictory. He originally said that both are equally part of the war on terror. He then said that the latter did not have anything to do w/ 9/11. They have never stated that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

The same goes w/ the comments about WMDs. The first comment states that they had found weapons, which they did. The second is an admittance that they did not find the STOCKPILES that they ALL thought they would. There is no contradiction in those two statements.

You could probably address each of these in a similar fashion. The core problem is that these references do not represent what is the focus of the Kerry criticism. The attacks on Kerry are based upon direct contradictions between words that come out of his mouth at different times of opportunity. They are based upon the consistent lack of core belief structure that Kerry displays when he changes his positions as he does.

Let's try to put this in another light. Let's take the steel industry tarrif issue for example. I don't know a lot about the issue, but it's a good comparison to work with. Let's assume that this was indeed a change of position (again, don't know context and history around that decision). If that's the case, then you might have a case for a flip-flop. Now, if you want to understand the difference between that and what Kerry does, you would have to fudge the history a bit. First of all, you'd have to have Bush get up on a stage and tout his actions in imposing those tariffs as the right thing to do for America. Then, when the issue came back up at a later date, he would have to publicly say that anyone would be foolish and un-American to vote to roll back those tariffs. Then, once he did vote to roll back those tariffs, he would have to state that he voted for them before he voted against them and that the original tariffs were a bad decision....not on his part, though. When asked about his contradictory language, he'd brush off the questions by saying that he "mispoke" rather than address the contradiction in his own voting.

We can go round and round about flip-flops, but it's tiresome. I can only ask that you read and listen to Kerry's actual words. His problem is that his contradictions go beyond changes in votes....into changes in beliefs...changes in core beliefs. Political give and take always leads to changes in votes. Opportunistic changes in core beliefs is nastier animal entirely.

On a different note, that's an interesting quote at the end of the website. I did a little research into it, because it fit so well with what I've been feeling about where we are in society. What I found is that the quote is most often used by Republicans to combat the Democratic trend towards government dependance and socialism. This makes me wonder whether or not the creator of that site didn't really read and understand the quote. Beyond that, I also found that the authenticity of the quote is in question. There are tons of sites and blogs that quote it, but the origin is very much in question. When people have tried to research the author's books, they cannot locate the particular book or even the quote in the author's real books. At a minimum, it appears that this displays both the power and danger of the Internet as a historical source.