John Kerry for President!!!!!

“Boy,,, does Kerry have an ugly past. You folks actually want that commie sympathizer in office.

He has really worked the system and the way he keeps 'licking' his chops everytime he speaks reminds me of the 'snake in the garden'.

Promises, promises,,promises that is all he's got. I guess the 'sheep' don't mind having the wool pulled over their eyes,,,again.

I heard Dean was still gonna leave his name on the ballot,,any truth to that? Sure which Edwards was getting more press time, I kinda like him even though he is a Democrat.

Kerry is too much of a JFK wannabe. And I wonder if his New Englander Democratic attitude might polarize him from say Southern or Western fence riding Democrats.”

“Hey Nigal - Don't post anything from that disgusting stupid ass, Ted Sampley, without verification from other sources.

Sampley's last stunt was a smear attack on another war hero, John McCain. Sampley claimed McCain was a weak minded coward who collaborated with his North Vietnamese captors - a completely false charge.

See:

The Merry Prankster:
Ted Sampley in Action

and a sampling of Sampley's work on John McCain.”

“Note - I could care less what candidates did during the 60's & 70's.

Once candidates are too young to have been doing anything in "nam" are we going to be looking into what they did during the Gulf Wars?

Once there are no "commies" will we be calling politicians "Muslims"?”

“so it turns out I think I will be moving to College Park. Right near the university. To start off I am just getting a room in someone's house until I know my way around DC. So I should be living in DC in about a month. I hope all you DC TTers are up for some BP'g...”

“Bring it on. Bearmagnet and I hiked Old Rag this weekend (see the trip report), Have you hiked it before? It's just a dayhike, but if you haven't been been there we should hike it when you get to the area.”

“A.B.B.!

Four More Wars!

Take yer heads outta the sand, man!

This First Chump ain't Down With It!

He's one of dumb dare More Rons!

Get With It!

GET DOWN!!!”

“I live in Towson.”

“I used to live in Towson and I loved it there. That is a great town.”

“just signed a lease. Its official. I'm coming to DC!!”

“Where at? College Park?”

“I thought Wesley Clark was the man.....


hmmm...quroius


Del MOnte ketchup is better the Heinz....”

“college park, on University BLVD, just down from campus. Hoping it is a nice area. Its just a temporary move.”

“"I thought Wesley Clark was the man.....


hmmm...quroius...."


Good thing you got yer lips off of that tail pipe when ya did. :P”

“How close to the campus, nash?”

“looks to be about a mile west of UMD. Near the intersection of University and Lyndon.”

“I would not count on him making it very far!”

“well if a dem doesn't get into the whitehouse next year, we still can get the leg. branch and shoot down any and all of Bush's policies. I think either way, something is going to give this coming election. The republicans will not have full control for long.”

“Bear or Bison, do you guys know if that is a bad intersection?”

“area I mean..”

“Super Tuesday is going to be interesting!! I think that Kerry will win a majority and that Edwards will drop out. Then Kerry can focus on Bush and eventually Kerry will announce Edwards his running partner.”

“ABB
Anyone but Bush!”

“I smell a democratic revolution coming. If Bush holds onto the Whitehouse, it will be at the expense of the house and senate falling to the democrats.”

“I think Greenspan gave him the kiss of death the other day with the Social Security issue. That's the third rail of politics.

I agree with the coming Dem. revolution, I sense it too, but then, my vote is usually the other kiss of death.”

“a Kerry / Edwards ticket will be a tough match for Bush. Its going to be another close race. I bet Bush is already putting together his legal team to get a head start on ripping off another election.”

“Kerry looked sharp tonight, and he better!”

“This is kindof interesting. Kerry or Edwards, or... ?

the Vote by Issues Quiz”

“Kerry/Edwards
16 years??”

“Hmmmmmm...

At the end of his second term (in 2020), John Edwards will be 66 years old... still younger than when Reagan *began* his first term.


This cracked me up: on some political show the other day the talking heads were discussing how the Republicans were going to try to associate Kerry with Dukakis, and some guy I'd never seen before piped up and said, "Yes, John Kerry was Michael Dukakis' Lt. Governor, and that alone gave him more first-hand experience with tanks and artillery than George Bush ever had."”

“Party for the people,,, did y'll see that the 'Forbes' list the other day,, ranking presidents by wealth,,,looks like Kerry might be #3 if elected. Did you see all the Democrats in that list.

I really don't think Edwards wants to play second fiddle to Kerry and I wouldn't put it past him to turn down Kerry's offer if asked. BUT depending on how greedy Edward's is to get his name in the history books,, I would hope that he knows he would do more for the people if he remained in the Senate.”

“I heard Kerry on NPR today say the Bush criticized him for being wrong on some of the issues. Then he said, "Bush is wrong on all the issues."

Good stuff.

I believe that Bush's excesses will cost him the middle. The middle is what determines elections. He probably would have held onto the middle except for Iraq.

Given the demographics of the last election, Bush had to make significant inroads to the center. I don't see how he could capture the center with extremist actions on the environment, health care, fiscal policy, and plowing into Iraq on the flimsiest of reasons that turned out to be hollow. It's been one charade after another, and folks, those of us in the center might be gullible, but we're not fools.

And he's done no favors for the military either. The promised pay raises, etc, were as hollow as all the rest of his promises.”

“I have several friends in the military (including my best friend), they have been quite happy with their pay raises.”

“I live in a Navy town (2 major and 3 minor facilities here) and I don't know any sailors that are unhappy with Bush.”

“I stand corrected on that issue.”

“Most of the sailors I know are suprised to find out that I'm not pleased with Bush. Lots of them are excited at a chance to use their skills in a combat situation. They train hard for it and want to flex those muscles.”

“consortium news

Kerry & the 'Special Interest' Hit Piece

By Sam Parry
February 19, 2004

One of the new rules of modern campaign coverage is to tailor a script to each candidate and to squeeze developments into that script whatever the facts really are. In 2000, George W. Bush was the blunt straight-shooter and Al Gore was the delusional liar, even if journalists had to change Gore’s words (as with the Love Canal case, “invented the Internet,” etc.) and downplay examples of Bush deceptions.

A new case in point for Campaign 2004 is the portrayal of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts as a captive of Washington “special interests.” This theme has been gaining momentum even though Kerry ranks as a leader in the Senate in supporting environmental causes and is best known for his investigations into foreign policy scandals, such as drug trafficking by CIA-backed Nicaraguan “contra” rebels, not for pushing through corporate-favored legislation.

So what gives? Is this a fair charge against the Democratic front-runner or is it another case of the news media crafting a misleading theme?

Post Article
“The Kerry as captive” theme crystallized with a breathless Washington Post page-one article on Jan. 31, which reported that, in the last 15 years, Kerry had received more campaign contributions from "paid lobbyists" than any other senator, a total of $638,358 since 1989.

The article, written by Jim VandeHei and entitled “Kerry Leads in Lobby Money: Anti-Special-Interest Campaign Contrasts With Funding,” cited figures from the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit that collects and refines data that candidates file with the Federal Election Commission.

The Post report was quickly cited by Kerry’s Democratic rivals and became grist for a new anti-Kerry commercial by the Republican National Committee. It was reprised as a top story on NBC’s evening news on the eve of the Wisconsin primary.

But what has received almost no attention is how misleading the key elements of the story are.

The Post article, for instance, doesn’t identify the lobbyists. The Center for Responsive Politics, which was cited in the Post story, acknowledges that its data doesn’t distinguish who the lobbyists are, what they lobby for or even whether they directly lobbied Kerry on any specific policy issues.

This lack of clarity means that some of these lobbyists may be registered to lobby Congress on public-interest issues, such as the environment, abortion rights or other legislation that most Americans would tend to categorize as public-interest advocacy, not “special interest” influence peddling.

Another potential hole in the data is that there are thousands of Americans who are or at some time were registered as lobbyists, but who no longer lobby on issues before Congress. Such people could be retired or may have changed careers and moved out of Washington but they may still make political contributions.

Towering Totals

A larger fundamental flaw in the Post article is that by concentrating only on lobbyists, the Post’s tally leaves out most donations from contributors that fit the common definition of “special interests” in the minds of most people. Employees of Halliburton or Enron, for instance, would not be included in the Post’s narrow definition.

Corporate executives, who often bundle tens of thousands of dollars for a single campaign, were excluded from the Post’s tabulation because they are listed on FEC forms as executives, not lobbyists. So, perversely, the definition of “special interests” used by the Post in its piece would include an environmental lobbyist who opposes oil drilling in the Arctic wilderness and a lobbyist from a pro-choice group, while leaving out someone like Enron’s Ken Lay.

To put this omission into perspective, George Bush’s lifetime campaign contributions from Enron -- $736,800 -- eclipses by nearly $100,000 Kerry’s donations from all lobbyists over these 15 years.

Also not counted in the Post’s tabulation are donations from political action committees, which pull together donations from executives of a single company or from an entire industry and then funnel them to politicians. Kerry is among the members of Congress who has refused to accept PAC donations even while many senators raised tens of thousands of dollars from PACs.

Though the Post leaves out various sources of bundled industry money, those donations actually tower over the sums contributed by “lobbyists.” During the 15-year period, for instance, lobbyists contributed a total of $76 million to political candidates, less than one-quarter what many individual industries donated, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

By comparison, donors from the agribusiness sector contributed $311 million during this period; donors from the health-care sector poured in $460 million; the communications-and-electronics industry chipped in almost $470 million; and, the finance/insurance/real estate sector donated more than $1.2 billion, 16 times more than “lobbyists.”

Another way to put the Post’s numbers into context is to compare the total contributions for this year’s presidential campaigns to the amounts donated by “lobbyists.” Through the end of January, George Bush had raised a total of $131.8 million for his 2004 campaign, but only $842,262 of this came from lobbyists. Out of $28.2 million that John Kerry has raised for his presidential campaign, only $234,920 came from lobbyists. In both cases, lobbyist contributions add up to less than one percent of the total money raised.

The Post further prejudiced the case against Kerry by tallying donations made during a 15-year period that effectively excluded from the top recipient rankings senators who left office during that time or who came to the Senate more recently. Only 33 senators – out of 100 – have served for all of those 15 years.

During these years, Kerry has had to face reelection four times and has had to raise money in each cycle to compete in a state that ranks as the 13th largest in the country by population and boasts one of the most expensive media markets. This helps explain why Kerry’s cumulative totals over this 15-year period put him near the top of the lobbyist money even though he led this category of donations in only one two-year election cycle, his first reelection campaign in 1990.

In Kerry’s last reelection cycle in 2002, he ranked sixth among senators in accepting donations from lobbyists. Kerry trailed other Democrats, such as Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Max Baucus of Montana and Tom Harkin of Iowa – each of whom comes from a much smaller state.

In addition, Kerry was only $200 ahead of #7 on the list, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. Harkin and Durbin are notable on this list because they are widely regarded as two of the most liberal U.S. senators, suggesting again that lobbyist contributions represent a mix of interests, both from industry "special interests" and from public-interest groups.

Similarly, other liberal Democratic senators – such as Hillary Clinton of New York, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Barbara Boxer of California – have appeared near the top of lobbyist-contributions lists in various election cycles.

Ignored, too, is Kerry’s record of supporting many campaign finance reform measures, including serving as a cosponsor of the “Clean Money, Clean Elections” bill for voluntary public financing of federal campaigns, which was introduced by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota.

Finally, and most misleadingly, Kerry appears at the top of the Senate list only because the Center for Responsive Politics added the $226,450 in lobbyist contributions raised in his presidential campaign to the totals from his four Senate races. Only a handful of sitting senators have run for president, and only Bob Dole, in his 1996 campaign, raised significant lobbyist money during those campaigns.

Given the need to raise money for four statewide races in a relatively large state and his current national campaign against George Bush, it would be more surprising if Kerry weren't at or at least near the top of cumulative fundraising lists for lobbyists than the fact that he is near the top.

RNC Ad
Despite the inaccurate impression left by the Post’s figures, the article has become a major factor in “defining” Kerry. The RNC posted an Internet advertisement denouncing Kerry as “unprincipled,” a hypocrite who decries special interests on the campaign trail while taking “more special-interest money than any other senator.”

As noted above, the RNC’s charge is not exactly true – money from lobbyists is only a small subset of “special-interest money” and may not even represent “special interests” as most Americans understand the term. But, thanks largely to the Post’s hit piece, the RNC ad has garnered a lot of play and has contributed to the emerging conventional theme of Kerry as beholden to “special interests.”

In a Feb. 15 column, Post reporter Dana Milbank noted this RNC’s ad and said its contents, including the line about Kerry taking “more special-interest money than any other senator,” present the facts “accurately.” Milbank added that the RNC’s ad “fairly questions whether Kerry is disingenuous to accept money from those he would vanquish.”

While reciting this emerging storyline about Kerry, Milbank noted that Bush and the Republicans have their own hypocrisy issue on the question of campaign cash from lobbyists. “The president raised $842,262 from lobbyists in the current election cycle – almost four times the $226,450 Kerry raised,” Milbank wrote. “And if you take away the funds Kerry collected for the presidential campaign, he is no longer the Senate’s top recipient of special-interest funds.”

The original Post story omitted this last fact, a remarkable oversight considering the thrust of the piece.

Media Distortion?
The bigger question may be whether the U.S. news media is again going off on a tangent in which it misrepresents a narrow body of “facts” and then extrapolates broad conclusions that “define” a candidate.

In 2000, Gore was pummeled by repetitious reporting about his supposed lies and exaggerations – a press “theme” that survived detailed stories on this and other Web sites explaining how it was the press, often following the lead of the RNC, that had actually engaged in the lies and exaggerations.

Without those erroneous stories in newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, it is very likely that Gore would have become president of the United States. [For details on the inaccurate press coverage, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Al Gore vs. the Media” and “Protecting Bush-Cheney.”]

Now, in 2004, the national press corps is busily “defining” Kerry as a hypocrite who can’t be trusted. This judgment is based largely on a semantic blurring of the word “lobbyist” into the totality of “special interests.” The press corps seems to have blinded itself to the obvious point that donations from “lobbyists” represent only a tiny fraction of industry-related money.

Ironically, as in 2000, this kind of press coverage could again end up installing in the White House a candidate who represents the opposite of what the news media pretends that it cares about.”

“yadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayada

ad nauseum”

“Oh look - if you put manuka on ignore, the formatting is fixed.”

“Wow. How does that work?”

“go Kerry go go go!!!

Kerry is already working on picking a running mate. Who will it be? I still say John Edwards.”

“nah, doubt it, somebody from texas perhaps - Anne Richards?”

“Edwards definitely. I think he stayed in the race so long to build excitement. I am looking to Kerry to name his running mate soon.”

“this is gonna be a slam dunk. the dood voted FOR everything he now says he's AGAINST.....


i'm voting for Nader....”

“Nader! Nader! Masturbator!

When will the other idnies step up?”

“I heard it was to be DENNIS RODMAN!!”

“I would like to hear at least one Kerry supporter tell me why he/she supports Kerry without mentioning George W. Bush.”

“I say, Nigal and Me in '04!!”

“1. He served his country honorably in the armed forces and after fulfilling his duty without trying to escape combat, he spoke against the political motivations of the US in Vietnam. History has shown that he was right to do so.

2. He stands against the death penalty in all cases other than terrorism. This is very close to my personal view on the death penalty.

3. He believes in leadership of the international community rather than unilateral bullying. I believe this is the correct ideological stance.

“Americans deserve a principled diplomacy...backed by undoubted military might...based on enlightened self-interest, not the zero-sum logic of power politics...a diplomacy that commits America to lead the world toward liberty and prosperity. A bold progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent, but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease. These are not just issues of international order, but vital issues of our own national security.”

-John Kerry


4. He believes in progressive taxation.

5. He supports strong public education initiatives.

6. He is a strong supporter or Israel.

7. He believes in preparing the US military for unconventional warefare - building a more cohesive and higher-tech armed service.”

“1. He left Vietnam early to avoid combat.

2. I give you that.

3. He voted for the Iraq War.

4. He believes in Excessive taxation.

5. He has offered no plan for education initiatives.

6. Kerry is the 6th leading recient of PAC money. He owes the Jewish community.

7. Kerry has voted against every new weapon system currently in use.”

“1. Okay, he left Vietnam early to "avoid" combat after recieving three purple hearts, a bonze star and a silver star. Keeping in mind that he was against the war in the first place, and that he was to be drafted unless he enlisted, I give him credit for doing his duty in a very honorable fashion. He saw combat, was wounded and handled himself well.
2. -
3. As he has stated often (and this is an issue that I disagreed with him on) he voted to give the president the power to use military force at the president's discretion. The president had no discretion and was a miserable statesman.
4. Progressive taxation is something I believe in, as well. The rich pay a higher percentage of money they earn for being rich, free and alive all at the same time.
5. Either you're lying or have no idea what you're talking about. College Opportunity Tax Credit, Service for College, high school reform for advanced placement, and a national education trust fund as a part of his plan for the first 100 days of office are all part of his education iniatives.
6. Who cares? I support Israel as a democratic ally of the US in the middle east.
7. This should take care of that lie.”