AP And Reuters Put Out Hit Pieces On Kerry's Down Time (And Praise Bush)

DrFunkenstein

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Mon Jun-21-04 12:44 AM
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AP And Reuters Put Out Hit Pieces On Kerry's Down Time (And Praise Bush)

Kerry Vacations With Wealthy in Nantucket

NANTUCKET, Mass. - After a week of campaigning for the less fortunate, John Kerry went on vacation with the fabulously wealthy. Kerry is a rich man who promotes the Democratic ideal that government should do more to help the poor. He moves between both worlds, spending the past week traveling to downtrodden places like South-side Columbus, Ohio, and the affluent island playground of Nantucket.

Like Kerry, President Bush is a Yale graduate who has benefited from his wealth and family connections. But Bush spends his down time as more of an everyman, preferring to spend vacations at his Texas ranch clearing brush. "Most Americans don't sit in Martha's Vineyard, swilling white wine," he said at the ranch two years ago.

Kerry says he and Bush are both lucky to come from privilege, but that the difference between them is in the values they now fight for. Kerry says Bush favors the wealthy, and Kerry plans to raise taxes on people making more than $200,000 a year to pay for health care, education and other programs he says would uplift all Americans.

Still, Kerry doesn't hide his membership as one of America's moneyed elite.

Kerry's two daughters joined the couple for a weekend of boating and dinner Saturday at The Pearl, where such delicacies as Tempura of Maryland Soft Shell Crabs cost $33.

1. How many "regular" Americans do you know that clear brush on their million dollar ranches?

2. Notice the fixation on taxes (rather than, say, corporate subsidies, off-shore havens, or malfeasance), which is presented as "help for the poor" (as opposed to conservative belief in "personal responsibility").

3. C'mon, was it really necessary to mention the $33 crabs? That's not even a ridiculous price...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&e=5&u=/ap/kerry

Kerry Tests Waters on Vacation in Posh Nantucket

NANTUCKET, Mass. (Reuters) - Sometimes a vacation is just a vacation, even if you're Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and you spend the weekend boating, dining out and searching for just the right wind to kite surf in one of America's most exclusive summer playgrounds.

On Sunday he took to the water in a 32-foot boat that Starr estimated cost about $150,000. Kerry, between bouts on a cell phone, tested the conditions for kite surfing -- a relatively new water sport that harnesses the power of a kite for water skiing or surfing. It requires about $2,500 worth of equipment.

"He's an outdoorsman," Wade said, predicting: "He'll be America's most active president since Teddy Roosevelt."

That might be news to Bush, who prides himself on his fitness and the rigor of his exercise regimen. The president works out daily, used to run a seven-minute-mile before a knee problem set in earlier this year and is perhaps happiest clearing brush and fishing on his 1,600-acre ranch in Crawford, Texas -- a very different kind of vacation destination.

Bush, who was born in Connecticut and spent many summers at his family's Atlantic compound in fashionable Kennebunkport, Maine, once chided reporters for complaining about temperatures hovering around the century mark and said he knew they would rather be sitting on an East Coast beach "sipping white wine."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=4&u=/nm/campaign_kerry_dc

Tell me this isn't straight out of the GOP talking points. The two articles even repeat themselves (despite being two separate newswires). Beware of people that drink white wine. They are elitist. Apparently, Bush preferred sitting on an East Coast beach "sniffing white lines."