OK, I'll admit it...I don't respect John Kerry as a man.

[dkf]

I am a huge romantic and to me John Kerry seems like a user.

I don't like the fact that he married Julia Thorne, who had millions, and left her when she was depressed and suicidal. I don't like that it sounds like he lived off of her for six years after their separation until their divorce during which he had numerous numerous affairs.

I don't like that after their divorce he was flat broke and had to live either with his kids or with his various women friends or in places provided by lobbyists.

I don't like that he married another rich woman, Theresa Heinz and that she saw fit to need a pre-nup.

I don't like that after Theresa was mugged, John Kerry did not stop his campaigning to be with her. She says she "just wanted a hug".

Yeah I know this is all personal stuff and I shouldn't think this way but I can't get over this. Augh...how can I vote for this guy?

Links provided below

[MaineDem]

1. Umm, okay

Read a lot do you or do you know all the circumstances first-hand?

Just wondering.

[dkf]

6. First place I saw it was in a right wing mag but then confirmed it with

stuff in that huge Boston Globe or Herald or whatever 6 part series on him.

Confirmed that Kerry had financial assistance from 1st wife in this
Boston Article and in a CBS article.

Also, you will note stuff coming out on lobbyists paying for his digs. OK, if you need proof I'm off to find the articles.

[MaineDem]

10. Take the prenup for example

Do you know the circumstances behind it?

I didn't know Teresa was mugged.

But like another poster said, you make up your own mind.

[SharonAnn]

35. Well, i insisted on a prenup and I didn't have much, but he had

children from a previous marriage and I wanted to be sure that they were protected and that I was protected.

It's only wise, because lots of funny things can happen. Not to be too morbid but if we were in an accident, he was killed and I died a few days later, my family would've ended up with my estate (which would've included his) and his children might not have been taken care of. I'd like to think they would have been but it was better to be sure.

Pre-nup is very wise, especially when there are significant assets and/or children from a previous marriage.

[NoMoreRedInk]

49. In Kerry's pre-nup, I think it was necessary to make sure...

that he didn't get his hands on a bundle of money that he didn't earn from a woman who has a bunch of money that she didn't earn who got it from another man who didn't earn it.

By the way, I like Kerry, and think he can beat Bush but I think it's a very interesting money trail involving a bunch of people who didn't earn it.

Similar to the Kennedys and the Bushes. Maybe, it makes Kerry even more presidential when you look at it that way.

[liberalnurse]

19. Well. I certainly do.....

and here is just a sample......


http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml

[sangha]

50. Wow!! That's an incredible story!

No wonder I support the man

[jfxgillis]

2. Then vote for Bush if Kerry gets the nomination

This isn't brain surgery, you know.

You pays you money and you takes you choice.

[lancdem]

3. Because Bush is a horrible president?

(BTW, when was Teresa mugged? Recently?)

[MikeG]

4. Where did this stuff come from, if I might ask?

[Old and In the Way]

20. Most likely NewsMax

I thought this was the kind of shit that pissed Democrats off when Republicans do this to our candidates?

[veggiemama]

44. See Ann the Man Coulter's smear piece "Just a Gigolo"

It's pure Annthrax:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36827

[liberalnurse]

5. It shows the character of the individual.

Our life experiences reflect our choices tomorrow. That is indeed key issues to look at with our candidates. Please don't beat yourself up for using your "gut feelings".

*bush's cheat'en, lying and bragot personal attributes show through loud and clear with his choices made as pResident.

[HazMat]

7. Ok, Drudge.

[spooky3]

8. sounds as if you need to work for John Edwards if personal

issues are important and relevant to you. As far as I'm aware, he has led a good life, respectful of his wife and dedicated to his family.

I think you should provide a link if you wish to post negative things about Kerry.

You have choices in this primary, so why not work for the candidate you like best?

[girl gone mad]

9. You are going to get flamed.

And I won't comment on any of the above.

You have the right to an opinion. Personally, I won't let a candidate's private dalliances influence my opinion of their public service, else I could never respect JFK or Martin Luther King.

What mires my respect for Kerry the most is his political opportunism, wich includes throwing fake medals over the wall so that he would still have his real medals to show off later when it was beneficial to his career.

[MoonRiver]

11. Can you provide links to all this?

I've never heard one iota of it before.

[blondeatlast]

12. Citations, please? I can't help it, it is the ex-English teacher turned

librarian in me.

[patricia92243]

13. It is especially bad when compared to Gov. Dean and how obviously devoted

his is to his wife.

[MaineDem]

17. And John isn't devoted to Teresa?

I give up.

[jpgray]

14. Well, at least you also hate JFK, MLK, FDR, and Bill Clinton

Because they've done much worse than Kerry did--they messed around without bothering to split with their wives.

[in_cog_ni_to]

29. This is about Johnny Kerry

not Bill Clinton, JFK, MLK or FDR. Geez....this is starting to sound like the RWers have taken over DU...they ALWAYS bring up OTHER people to fight their battles with. Bill Clinton is their favorite. I see you included him too. :eyes:

[jpgray]

37. So cheating on your wife is fine, but dating after separation isn't?

Yeah, makes sense to me.

[dkf]

15. It was the Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml

An unsettled private life

Kerry's personal life, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly tumultuous. He had separated from his first wife, Julia Thorne, in 1982, and the divorce became final in 1988. For much of their marriage, Julia, who came from a wealthy Long Island family, had provided significant financial contributions. The divorce left Kerry strapped for cash and looking for ways to meet child-support payments, campaign debts, and tuition costs.

He took out a $473,000 loan to purchase a home in Washington, thinking his daughters would be staying with him for periods of time. It was "a huge mistake," he says, as he found himself returning to Boston most weekends to maintain his ties to his children and the state. He sold the D.C. home and bought a Boston condo but "lost his shirt" when he sold it a few years later, as he told the Globe in 1996. "He was broke," Blum says.

To make ends meet, Kerry collected speaking fees, averaging about $1,400 apiece and $26,000 a year total during his first five years in the Senate. Most of the honoraria were from think tanks and schools; some were paid by trade associations such as the Massachusetts Bankers Association or corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Chevron, which had legislative interests before Congress.

Kerry pocketed another $21,000 in a low-risk real estate deal in 1986, arranged by his campaign treasurer, developer Wesley Finch. In a business brochure the next year, Finch boasted about his relationship with Kerry, stating he "works closely with the senator and his colleagues on tax and economic issues that come to the floor of the United States Senate."

[in_cog_ni_to]

16. Well, those things go directly

to the man's character or lack thereof. :( Damn, I didn't know most of that stuff about him before this. Now I like him even less...if that's at all possible.

This all looks like more fodder for the KKKRove war machine to use against him in the GE. Holy moly!....he cannot be the nominee...they will crucify him.

[IndianaGreen]

39. It does reflect on the candidate's character!

and this is why I prefer a real war hero like Wes Clark to John Kerry's "Phoney Deal"!

[KFC]

18. Then just vote for Bush

If that makes you feel better

[EXE619K]

32. Why vote for Bush?

When you could vote for ____________!

[mb7588a]

21. Three cheers for no link. nt

[IndianaGreen]

30. The link to the Boston Globe story is in post #15

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=241621#241720

[Lexingtonian]

22. Oh, come on

There was a long article in the Boston Globe about and an interview with Julia Thorne sometime late last year.

None of it is as you try to portray it. She simply hated "public life" and says they weren't as well matched for his leading a life in politics as she had thought at first. No games, nothing to back the insinuations you claim some kind of knowledge of.

Test that oppo research distortion somewhere else. You seem like such a romantic :D

[dkf]

23. Info on mugging - from the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96aug/beatty/beatty.htm

His current wife, Teresa Heinz, was born in Mozambique, then a Portuguese colony. The widow of the late John Heinz, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, she is the heiress to the $650 million Heinz catsup fortune. Last year, when Heinz was mugged in Washington, Kerry kept to his round of fundraising events instead of rushing to her side. Did she miss him? "I just needed hugs," she confided to Margery Eagan, of the Boston Herald. Those may have been the four most frightening words spoken in Massachusetts Democratic politics in decades.

[tishaLA]

24. I can see this thread

is gonna be number one with a bullet today.

Now I'd like to start several more:
OK, I'll admit it: I don't respect John Kerry as a Woman
OK, I'll admit it: I don't respect John Kerry as a Yak
OK, I'll admit it: I don't respect John Kerry as a (fill in the blank)

[Hippo_Tron]

25. Because he's better than Bush...

No matter what information you can find on Kerry's past, Bush's past is much worse.

[Eloriel]

41. Lesser Evilism is SUCH an attractive campaign strategy

:puke:

[conservdem]

26. I do not respect him much either. I voted for him as my Senator and

will vote for him again if he is nominated. My first choice is Clark.

[Devlzown]

27. Sounds like the plot of a soap opera!

Are you sure you didn't see all this on "All My Children?"

[Closer]

28. This is nothing

I've heard MUCH worse about Kerry's personal life.


I'm sure it will all come out eventually.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

31. Posts like this are going to perform the impossible

& make me into a Kerry supporter.

[frustrated_lefty]

33. Frontrunner status sucks, don't it?

[sandnsea]

34. Her brother is his best friend

Working on his campaign. If he'd done anything to her, I doubt that would happen. And, Teresa said he was "slow on the uptake" so I also doubt he was having numerous affairs when he and Julia were separated. Nice Weld talking points. They didn't work in 1996, they won't work now.

[frustrated_lefty]

42. This is a large part of why

I have trouble with the Kerry campaign and Kerry supporters. My views on this have nothing to do with Kerry. You're taking substantial issues and replying by saying "it's just not important." In middle America, it IS important, and you guys are doing squat to counter it. Closing your eyes and hoping it goes away is a crappy strategy. He got away with it in 1996. Newsflash: it isn't 1996, and he's not running for the senate in the most liberal state in the nation, he's running for frigging president of the country! Get off your asses and put some spin on this or offer a defense or do SOMETHING. It didn't work in 1996 and it won't work now is so incredibly lame I could spit.

If your man is getting the nod, make him grow a spine, it's your job.

[IndianaGreen]

47. Julia Thorne's brother was Kerry's fellow Bonesman at Yale

Interesting that John Heinz was also a Bonesman. Kerry seems to prefer Skull & Bones women. Is this a coincidence or what?

[quinnox]

36. That is ok

As long as you vote for him against Bush.

[polpilot]

38. Soooooooooo....his first 'special interests' with $$$ were 'girlfriends'??

The modus operandi...$$$$ = attraction.

Dean '04...

[rumguy]

40. this sounds pretty good - from the Globe article

The Vietnam skipper who once beached his boat to kill an enemy guerrilla assembled a combative and single-minded crew inside the Russell Senate Office Building. Kerry's scrappy staff had minimal Washington experience and, like Kerry, little desire to fit in with the normally genteel style of the US Senate. In his choice of aides, like the senators he sought out as partners, Kerry was eclectic.

"John formed nonconventional alliances," says former chief of staff Frances Zwenig. "You can't pigeonhole him. He likes feisty people who are fighters like him."

Another former chief of staff, Ronald Rosenblith, offers a telling description of his own personality: "I piss people off sometimes. I annoy people. All I know how to do is tell the truth."

[Edge]

43. Don't worry....I don't know how I could vote for him either.

He seems like a creep if what you say is true.

If I can't respect a man for who he is, then I can't respect him for who he will be if he were president.

[Lurker Number001976]

45. I'll vote for the nominee

But that Leno/motorcycle appearance is what really turned me off.

[MikeG]

46. I am more concerned with what Karl Rove will do with this.

I'm sure all of the candidates have flaws. You don't get through life without making mistakes.

[seaglass]

48. Here's a different take of the mugging from the Herald

Copyright 1995 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

October 24, 1995 Tuesday SECOND EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 004

LENGTH: 397 words

HEADLINE: Kerry says his wife's 'angry' about mugging

BYLINE: By TIM CORNELL and ANDREW MIGA


Two days after Teresa Heinz was mugged in the nation's capital, Sen. John F. Kerry used his bride's brush with a gun-wielding thief as an opportunity to score some hits for the Democrats' crime bill.

"She's angry, but a lot of people are angry about the violence," said Kerry (D-Mass.) outside the Agency for Boston Community Development across from Boston Common.

"On their way home, they saw four people breaking into a car, and a block over, they saw another car being broken into," Kerry said. "Of course we need 100,000 police officers on the street. We need to do something to stop this violence."

The senator, who was in Boston for a political fund-raising event on Friday, flew to Puerto Rico Saturday afternoon from Boston.

There he attended a fund-raising event for his 1996 re-election on the island and stayed the night. His wife reached him by telephone in Puerto Rico after the robbery.

Kerry said his wife was upset, but she was "fine" and "she was comfortable" with him staying in Boston.

"She wanted me to stay here," he said.

"She's just very angry about it, and she should be," Kerry said. "This happens every day, right here in Boston and Springfield As a former prosecutor I've seen plenty of crime."

...Sorry, this is from Lexis-Nexis, I couldn't get a link through google.

[dkf]

51. Ack...he wanted his first marriage annulled.

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=4710

Another Massachusetts Politician Seeks Annulment
BOSTON (CWN) - A second senior Massachusetts politician who

US Sen. John Kerry joins US Rep. Joseph Kennedy in seeking the annulment with both cases bearing striking similarities. Both men's ex-wives are not Catholic and both women have opposed the annulments, calling the process hypocritical.

Julia Thorne said on Wednesday she does not recognize the validity of the annulment process. She said that while she supports her ex-husband politically and wishes him well, she said the annulment process "was disrespectful to me ... and devoid of any sense of the humanity of what this means to me and the children."

News reports and assertions by Thorne, as well as Kennedy's ex-wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy, have misrepresented the Church's teaching on annulments. Thorne said she wrote to Church officials that she considered its "ecclesiastical investigation as hypocritical, anti-family, and dishonest," as well hurtful to her children. Thorne and Kerry, who wed in 1970 and divorced in 1988, have two daughters.

[Moderator]

52. Locking.....

1. If you start a thread in this forum, you must present your opinion in a manner that is not inflammatory, which respects differences in opinion, and which is likely to lead to respectful discussion rather than flaming. The moderators have the sole authority to decide whether a thread topic is inflammatory.




DU Moderator