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I personally find this gaffe more amusing than damning. However, it does add to his long line of poorly chosen words...
From today's Trib...
Kirk has been dogged by misstatements, exaggerations and controversial comments through much of his public life. Some of the questionable comments came after his 2012 stroke, but not all.
Kirk served in the House for nearly 10 years before beating Democrat Alexi Giannoulias in the contest for the Senate seat in 2010. Leading up to that victory, Kirk exaggerated his military record, his private-sector resume and his political accomplishments, claiming credit for the demise of the so-called Bridge to Nowhere planned for Alaska.
During the Senate campaign, Kirk apologized for inaccurate claims that he had come under enemy fire in Iraq, that he ran the Pentagon war room and that he was the Navy's intelligence officer of the year. It was Kirk's unit that won an award, not him individually.
Kirk retired from the Navy Reserve in May 2013. A 23-year veteran, he served as a naval intelligence officer and attained the rank of commander.
Kirk was criticized in 2013 for his call for the mass arrest of what he called the 18,000-strong Gangster Disciples. He later said he still supported mass arrests of gang members but that he used the 18,000 figure to shock Illinoisans into seeing the full extent of the state's gang issue.
Several months after his Gangster Disciples roundup idea, Kirk described a ride-along with Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. Kirk said a "guy got popped" while they were on patrol. McCarthy later explained that it was a nonfatal, gang-related shooting in which the victim did not cooperate with police.
In another eyebrow-raising remark last December, Kirk reacted to a Senate committee report on harsh CIA interrogations by condemning Democratic committee staffers as "little zombies" reaching up from their "political graves."
In an interview this year with the Peoria Journal Star, Kirk said people drive faster through black neighborhoods.
"With this state and all of its resources, we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators like George Washington Carver and eventually have a class of African-American billionaires," he told the newspaper. "That would really adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through."
His office later defended his commitment to African-Americans and said he was combating gang violence, trying to keep assault weapons off the street and working within the black community to find aspiring entrepreneurs.
Kirk also had to clarify his view on climate change after complaining that "political correctness" had taken over climate science and misidentifying Leif Eriksson as the discoverer of Greenland. Eriksson's father, Erik Thorvaldsson, founded the first European settlement on Greenland.
In a clarification, the senator remarked that climate change is real and human activity contributed to it.
In May, Kirk took heat from The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, after a speech the senator gave at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that month. The headline: "Mark Kirk's bizarre claim that Nelson Mandela dismantled South Africa's nuclear program."
The article earned Kirk three "Pinocchios" for distorting the facts. Among other things, it pointed out that South African President F.W. de Klerk, the last white president of the country, announced in 1989 that he was dismantling the country's nuclear weapons program. Mandela wasn't released from prison until 1990.
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If we nominate Trump we will get destroyed & we'll deserve it.- L Graham
I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.- DJT 2016
MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!- DJT 12/25/23
Last edited by Zippy-The-Pinhead on Fri Jun 12, 2015 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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