Kerry Shines

Despite the array of top-shelf political theater that has Americans seeing the stars and the end of eight years of Bush-McCain-Rove et al, I have to say that John Kerry was, if not the star, certainly the moral crusader and righteous man whom we hoped all along would hold this outlaw administration accountable.

"President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo -- (audience cheers) -- respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all the United States of America does not torture -- not now, not ever!"



From Lynn Sweet at the Sun Times(Transcript of John Kerry's August 29, 2008 address to the National Democratic Convention.)

DENVER--John Kerry Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention. Transcript courtesy of Federal News Service.

SEN. KERRY: (Cheers, applause.) Thank you so much. Thank you.
Four years ago you gave me the honor of fighting our fight, and I was proud to stand with you then and I am proud to stand with you now to help elect Barack Obama president of the United States.
(Cheers, applause.)
In 2004 we came so close to victory. Well, my friends, we are even closer now. And let me tell you, this time we're going to win.
(Cheers, applause.)
Today -- today the call for change is more powerful than ever, and with more seats in Congress, with more people with more passion in our politics, and with a President Obama, we stand on the brink of the greatest opportunity of our generation to move this country forward.
The stakes could not be higher, because we do know what a Bush -- what a McCain administration would look like. There's a slip. (Laughter.) It would look just like the past, just like George Bush, and this country can't afford a third Bush term.
(Applause.)
Just think -- just think; John McCain voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Ninety percent of George Bush, my friends, is just more than we can take.
(Applause.)
Never in modern history has an administration squandered American power so recklessly. Never has strategy been so replaced by ideology. Never has extremism so crowded out common sense and fundamental American values.
Never has short-term partisan politics so depleted the strength of America's bipartisan foreign policy.
(Cheers, applause.)
George Bush and John McCain at his side promised to spread freedom, but they delivered the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. They misread the threat and misled the country.
(Applause.)
Instead of freedom -- (continued applause) -- instead of freedom, it's Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and dictators everywhere that are on the march. North Korea can build more bombs and Iran is defiantly chasing one.
Our mission is to restore America's influence and position in the world, and we must use all the weapons in our arsenal -- above all, our values.
President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo -- (audience cheers) -- respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all the United States of America does not torture -- not now, not ever!
(Cheers, applause.)
We must listen. We must listen and lead by example, because even a nation as powerful as the United States needs some friends in this world. We need a leader who understands all of our security challenges -- not just bombs and guns, but global warming, global terror, and global AIDS.
And Barack Obama understands there is no way for America to be secure until we create clean energy here at home -- not with a little more oil in 10 or 20 or 30 years, but with an energy revolution that begins now.
(Cheers, applause.)
I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years, but every day now I learn something new about Candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say let's compare Senator McCain to Candidate McCain.
Candidate McCain now supports the very wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once called irresponsible. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote.
Are you kidding me, folks?
(Laughter, cheers, applause.)
Talk about being for it before you're against it!
(Cheers, applause.)
Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.
(Laughter, applause.)
And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target has morphed into Candidate McCain, who is using the same Rove tactics, the same Rove staff, the same old politics of fear and smear.
Well, not this year; not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.
(Cheers, applause.)
So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or on this Earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther and listened harder and listened better and thought harder. And time and again, Barack Obama has proven right.
John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and he proclaimed, next stop -- Baghdad. The judgment immediately from Barack Obama was to see an occupation of undetermined length, undermined consequences, undetermined cost that, in his words, would only fan the flames of the Middle East.
Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.
(Boos from audience.)
So who can we trust to keep America safe?
AUDIENCE: Barack Obama!
SEN. KERRY: When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it the false comfort of appeasement. But today Bush's diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said, talking with Iran.
So who can we trust to keep America safe?
AUDIENCE: Barack Obama!
SEN. KERRY: When democracy rolled out of Russia -- and Russia -- and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain immediately respond with outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a true friend of Georgia and a statesman of the 21st century.
So who can we trust to keep America safe?
AUDIENCE: Barack Obama!
SEN. KERRY: When Democrats called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it cut-and-run. But today, even President Bush has seen the light, and he and Prime Minister Maliki agree on -- guess what? -- a timetable.
So who can we trust to keep America safe?
AUDIENCE: Barack Obama!
SEN. KERRY: The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues.
So a candidate who once campaigned on the promise of a campaign of ideas, not insults, now has nothing left but personal attacks.
How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother, who chose community service over money and privilege, that he doesn't put America first. No one --
(Cheers, applause.)
No one can question Barack -- no one can question Barack Obama's patriotism. Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American by his family -- his grandmother, who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II; his grandfather, who marched in Patton's Army; and his great-uncle, who enlisted in the Army right out of high school at the height of the war. And on a spring day in 1945, that great-uncle helped liberate one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald.
Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama's uncle is here with us tonight. Please join me in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne.
(Cheers, prolonged applause.)
SEN. KERRY: Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division. He will be a president who seeks not to perfect the lies of swift-boating, but to end them once and for all.
(Cheers, applause.)
This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division, you don't decide who loves this country. You don't decide who is a patriot. You don't decide whose service counts and whose doesn't.
Four years ago I said -- and I say it again tonight -- that flag that hangs from the rafters and that you have waved here this evening, that flag doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any political party. It is an enduring symbol of our nation, and it belongs to all the American people.
(Cheers, applause.)
(Audience chants "U-S-A!")
After all, patriotism is not love of power, or some trick. (Chanting continues.) Patriotism is love of country.
Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us, saying, my country, right or wrong. Our answer, absolutely my country, right or wrong. When right, keep it right, and when wrong, make it right.
(Cheers, applause.)
Sometimes loving your country demands that you must tell the truth to power. This is one of those times, and Barack Obama is telling those truths.
In closing, let me say I will always remember how we stood together in 2004, the largest number of Democrats in American history, not just in a campaign, but for a cause.
Now again, we stand together in the ranks ready to fight. The choice is clear, our cause is just, and now is the time to make Barack Obama president of the United States of America.
Thank you.
(Cheers, applause.)

Kerry to Endorse Obama

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nominee, will endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president in South Carolina today, Democratic sources told Politico.

That's fine.

Most progressive values voters are still POed at Kerry for a series of betrayals to peace and social justice, and crashing the 2004 Democratic nomination.

Maybe Kerry does not wish to be remembered as a consultant-based, do-nothing void.

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Chris Matthews Led the Way in Condemning Taser Attack

Joe Conason at Salon heaps praise on Chris Matthews for his work in condemning the police attack against a U. Fla student asking questions of Sen. John Kerry.

Update: Author Greg Palast Offers Job to Tasered Journalism Student

Update II: Amnesty International, ACLU Condemn Use of Tasers at University of Florida. Those John Kerry haters; they must have some sort of an anti-Kerry agenda!

And Matthews deserves the praise. He was far and away the most incisive television commentator explaining that democracy must suffer, for the better, an occasional long-winded questioner.

Writes Conason:

Appalled by the Tasering of student Andrew Meyer during an appearance by Sen. John Kerry at the University of Florida, Matthews said on "Hardball" that he regards that incident as "an iconic moment" in the degradation of free speech during the Bush years.

As a guest on that segment, along with Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, who is regularly arrested for protesting at public events, I had to agree.

Good for Conason.

But he lets off John Kerry who ineffectually droned on and allowed this police attack to go unchallenged as it transpires before his eyes, and then had his office spend the next two days swiftboating the college student, Andrew Meyer, who we are to believe had it coming, or, gasp, had an "agenda."

Much of the liberal blogosphere (OpEdNews.con, Talking Points Memo) went along with Kerry's damage control efforts, though journals like Salon, Huffington Post and other sites blasted away.

Most disappointing was the commentary of the Kerryites at Daily Kos.

In sum, the juvenile diary commentators defended the tasering and Kerry's do-nothing approach to the incident by noting that Meyer had an "agenda," a "reputation," his questions and statement constituted a "disturbance," and asking questions of Kerry was just a "stunt."

The questions Meyer asked of Kerry pertained to contesting the 2004 presidential election, a book, Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast, black voter disenfranchisement in 2004, the relationship between Kerry and Bush as members of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale, the Iraq/Iran war, and the proposed impeachment of Bush.

Chris Rowthorn at Smirking Chimp leaves us with this question:

As Naomi Wolf has rightfully pointed out, the tasering of Andrew Meyer will be remembered as a watershed moment in American history. That much is certain. The only thing that remains to be seen is how we, as Americans, react to it. Will we sit passively by while our Constitution and our Democracy are murdered right before our eyes? Will we demand that our supposed political leaders take meaningful and principled action? Will we allow our press to make excuses for the fascist takeover of our country?

The choice is clear: either we fight fascism right now with all our power, or we will be the next ones on the ground with a policeman's knee on our throats and 50,000 volts of electricity coursing through our bodies.

For those who have not seen it: Watch this video.

One Man's Rights

It was revealing to read the commentary, but it wasn't commentary just trash talk, from the John Kerry people to a post at Daily Kos regarding Kerry's doing nothing to halt the police attack on college student Andrew Meyer at U. Fla earlier this week, and then personally attacking Meyer.

The Kerry people had no interest in arguing or defending Kerry with reason, they just were trying to shut down any critics who politically damage the name of the great and noble Senator.

But the political health of the Senator is not worth the rights of one man.

Senator Kerry did nothing to halt the police attack on a man who simply posed questions, if long-winded, of Kerry. Kerry revealed himself as the ineffectual man that the Republicans always claimed him to be.

But reading the Kerryites' defense, it is clear that they have much more in common with the Republicans and Karl Rove than they appear capable of realizing.
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Senator Kerry's Position: It Was the Tased College Kid's Fault

I just got off the phone with Kerry's office (and they are taking a lot of angry calls, keep it up), and here is the Senator's position of the tased victim of Florida police:

- “The Senator acted appropriately … “
- Mr. Meyer “wanted this to happen … “

I wish I could take my vote back, the utter arrogance of John Kerry!

Watch this video.

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Kerry’s Macaca Moment

Every once in a while there are political moments (now-a-days captured on video) that show a politician’s true character.

This is what happened when a closeted racist George Allen called a young man of non-white descent “macaca” during the 2006 senatorial elections – and that revelation cost Allen the election.

This is exactly what happened during John Kerry’s lecture at Florida University.

Kerry’s true character was exposed as he stood on stage with an aristocratic bearing, making jokes, as a student’s civil rights were trampled by the campus police who proceeded to publicly torture and taser the 21-year-old man (Andrew Meyers) for asking several excellent questions and being a bit long-winded.

Kerry stood by, useless, ineffectual, and disengaged. Funny, that’s precisely how the Republicans branded him during the 2004 campaign.

Watch this video.

Get upset and do something.

For starters, here's Kerry's D.C. office's phone: (202) 224-2742.

The University of Florida Police Department’s number is (352) 392-1111. Call the pricks and tell what you think. Call them over and over!

And if anyone has a website on Mr. Meyers, please post it.

You know if the cops had pulled this crap at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in room 3650 Humanities (a big lecture hall), the cops would have a riot on their hands. [Most of the U. Florida crowd laughed and cheered; though several screamed for the cops to stop.]

Kerry proved the Republicans correct, and the man ought to be ashamed.

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