Wow! A DKos diary that we need to read (positive)

[TayTay]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/30/74947/6017

Wow! This is good stuff. A defense, based on facts, of what happened with the concession in Nov.

[whometense]

1. Wow.

A rational discussion of the election on Dkos?? Amazing.

I'm starting to think the tide is turning back in Kerry's favor. I'm seeing more people coming out and saying they still like and support him. What do you think? Is the great post-election lefty temper tantrum finally over?

[JI7]

2. no

it will never be over since it went on all through the primary and later into the general election.

and just looking at some of the threads outside of his forum it's still out there.

but we should not do things according to some internet sites anyways. Hillary gets bashed a lot but she is really popular among the party as a whole.

[TayTay]

3. And I liked the part of the DKos thread that said

that Kerry is forward-thinking and is trying to take action that will result in something good happening. (What else can you do?)

Still, it makes those pics from Inauguration Day of him sitting there all the sadder. He knew!

[whometense]

4. I know.

Just look at that face. He absolutely knew.

[karynnj]

10. That is a heartbreaking photo

I hadn't seen that one - only those where he had a smile which nust have taken so much effort. I loved the photo where he was playfully pushing Baucus's hat. I didn't watch the innaugeration as much because I didn't want to have to see Kerry where he was or Bush where he was.

[ray of light]

20. yes, he knew!!!!!

[ginnyinWI]

5. I've always believed that he knew.

Nobody gets stuff past this guy--much less something this important!
But he's run into opposition before(!), and knew how to handle it emotionally--I think he's incredibly tough. I think his worst moments must have been thinking about what he could have done for the people and the nation to fix what's wrong.

But he's going forward with the fight, in whatever way he can, as he said in the concession speech. I like how he still refers to it ruefully--as he did during that recent appearance for cancer research. Something like,"I'd rather be doing something else..." I like it because it is honest, and is a gracious nod to those of us who so much wanted him to win. It is saying, "I have not forgotten you--and I thank-you for your support."

I should be used to this by now, but what keeps impressing me about JK is what a classy person, in the truest sense, he really is.

[whometense]

6. Especially by contrast.

I had to avoid the news yesterday. The pictures of that @#$%%$#@ **&%^$#&^ (pardon my language) golfing yesterday while people were drowning and their lives were being ruined - it made me sick. That coupled with that news story about how $71.2 million (9 1/2 hours of Iraq war, btw) was cut from the budget that was supposed to go towards engineering flood prevention in Louisiana. It was a bad day. I think the more days like that we have people see how truly terrible a person he is.

It's more and more like there's no national leader at all. He's just not there.

[ginnyinWI]

7. that's just what I said in a post in GD yesterday:

"If JK were president, we'd have a president!
Right now only the corporations have one. We the people don't."

I, too, am avoiding news of our despotic ruler. :mad:

[whometense]

8. Just announced on Air America news:

Bush cutting his vacation short (by one whole day??? be still, my heart...) to focus on hurricane relief.

I say, a day late and a dollar short, as always. Think Cindy Sheehan might have helped make up his mind???

[ray of light]

22. one day short?

Well he got hammered for his callous treatment of a mother who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his crimes and now he got hammered for ignoring people like he did in the sunami.

If that doesn't show people his and his party's true self then nothing will!

[WildEyedLiberal]

11. OMG ginny

I :loveya: your sig line. That pic is so adorable and the quote so appropriate!

[karynnj]

12. That is a fabulous quote and so perfect

and I agree that his biggest disappointment is that he could be fixing things rather than struggling to stop anything even for a while.

The whole thing is so monstrously unfair - with insult being added to real injury by the whiners attacking him for conceding because he didn't care.

[ginnyinWI]

13. thanks

I like the way it starts, "I love the man...." ;)

[blm]

9. That's the thing with Kerry that the knownothings will NEVER get...he was

probably already working out a plan in his head about the best way to address the theft from a LEGAL and BINDING standpoint that would work to FIX the problem, not just vent about it.

His outward demeanor will always be calm while he's confronting the problem in his mind to put forth a deliberate action later.

[ginnyinWI]

14. what they don't ever seem to grasp--

That things can be going on that they don't know about! That every thought Kerry has ever thought, every action he has ever taken, or every phone call he has ever made is NOT posted on DU! Sheesh--the simplicity of some of these people.

[karynnj]

15. How dare he think or do anything without telling us

Just because in the Vietnam he appeared to think and speak on at least two or three separate levels - why doesn't he blurt everything out at one time. (The most interesting thing in the post was that he and Teresa were looking at things together. Judging by the story of how she, not Kerry's doctor, saw a disturbing multi-year trend that ended up on follow up tests finding cancer, Teresa obviously has a natural ability to look at tables of numbers and pick up patterns.)

The other thing they really don't see is how quickly most people are turned off by bad behavior. The media doesn't report any of Bush's less tactful or impolite actions, but they gleefully reported (out of context) Dean's comments on not liking Republicans and the Republican party being the party of white Christians. Each of those Dean statements was spun for at least a week - and he was DNC head not Presidential candidate.

I have seen hundreds of posts comparing Kerry unfavorably to Paul Hackett - saying Kerry would have won if he called Bush a chicken hawk. The idea that the threshold was different for a potential president than a congressman running in a special election in the summer never occurs to them. It would have increased the number of people who wouldn't have given him a second look.

[whometense]

16. On Paul Hackett -

I wasn't going to say anything, but since you mentioned his name I think I will.

I saw him on Bill Maher's first show of the season a couple of weeks ago - he took Cindy Sheehan's place when she had to go take care of her mother. He was lively and intelligent. But, even though I take a backseat to no one in my loathing of Bush, when I heard his outspokenness it immediately struck me as a little over the top and undignified.

One of Kerry's finest qualities (often remarked on among those of us who love him best) is his abiltiy to be a strong critic while still dignified and presidential. I can't see how people don't get this. I've seen a lot of those posts too - Hackett for president!!! - and it's ridiculous.

I sort of feel about these people the way Butch and Sundance felt about their trackers - Who are those guys? And why are they on Democratic Underground?????

[karynnj]

17. I agree that Kerry is able to make remarkably strong

comments while appearing Presidential and rational. That's why it's fun watching what some here call"Pissed off Kerry". You watch with no fear that he will go over the top and be embarassing.

The Rove would have had a field day with Hackett, who could have made a good Representative. But I can't think of anyone with Kerry's natural dignity. I did get to see the "Unfinished Sympany" when it replayed - when they talked to Kerry when he was marching, he seemed so special and projected such peacefulness. I am so glad the information on it was posted. Combined with the Going Upriver protest footage, it is clear that Kerry was looking for peace in this country (which needed to heal) as well as in Vietnam.

[whometense]

18. Oh, thanks so much for

mentioning the movie!! I'd set the vcr to record it, but forgot about it. I just went to check, and it's there in the vcr!! I've only watched a few minutes so far - just long enought to hear Kerry ask his question at the Winter Soldier hearing. It looks like an extremely powerful piece of filmmaking.

[karynnj]

23. I thought it was great

First because it did a great job in covering the town's reaction. It also showed many of the protesters - many of them were quite articulate and all of them seemed to respect the townspeople. I hope this gets more distribution for 2 reasons.

The current anti-war crowd would see that you can make an impact with polite protesting. Neutral people are more likely to listen when they are not screamed at or annoyed by vulgar posters. They should see that Cindy Sheehan is effective because she is asking a poignant question, for what did her son die.

The second reason is that the media over the last several decades has rewritten events - partially by movies. There was an idealism that seems to have been left out of the picture. This film interviews so many of the protesters - and they were rational, likable and were connectd to values they grew up with. I don't know how involved Kerry was with this event, but both it and the Dewey Canyon II were peaceful attempts to petition the government. The Republicans would have liked him to be Jerry Rubin, or even Tom Hayden, but he wasn't.

[whometense]

29. I watched the rest of it last night.

And absolutely loved it. The soundtrack was gorgeous. I loved watching all that on-the-scene footage. The veterans were so articulate and so sad. It was really like being there. Which I would have been if I hadn't been a freshman away at college at the time - protesting the war out-of-state.

The scenes at the end as they walked into Charlestown were amazing - Kerry's comments were entirely accurate - the people handing them cans of soda and bags of chips were the Boston area version of conservatives. Of course, these were also the people whose kids would have been fighting in Vietnam instead of off at college.

The whole thing had special resonance for me because I know those places so well. I picnicked many times with my kids on the Lexington Green when they were little. The first man killed in the Revolutionary War was from the town where I grew up. The town library had a glass case that displayed his bloody uniform and scarf and his musket, so every time I went to the library from the time I was a small child I would see that bloody scarf. The entire town would retrace the route of the Minutemens' march to Concord that first day of the war every year on Patriot's Day (April 19, which is a state holiday).

So you can see the kind of resonance this particular VVAW protest had for the locals. Eugenia Kaledin:

If historians remain unsure about who shot the first round on the Green in 1775, few question the fierce sense of injustice that propelled colonists to rebel against the Crown. If in the 1770s, as in the 1970s, most people wanted to respect law and order as part of a new country’s obligation to civic tranquility, moral outrage nevertheless propelled many good citizens into breaking their king’s laws. When Bostonians dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor in 1776, when local abolitionists hid fugitive slaves in the 1850s, New Englanders were proud to be breaking man’s laws for what they saw as a higher law. And when in 1971, in a gesture of solidarity with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), many local citizens chose to break a town ordinance forbidding anyone to sleep on the sacred Green, the arrest that followed became the largest arrest in Massachusetts’ history.

In terms of the history of protest in the Bay State the future should note the significance of the Lexington arrest alongside the Boston Tea Party and Shay’s Rebellion, especially because it was a community gesture of civil disobedience, not of violence. If the police had arrested the crowd at ten p.m., the moment the ordinance became effective, twice as many people would have gone to jail. But no place in town could have held so many dissenters. The protest was entirely peaceable. No shots were fired; no menacing gestures were necessary. The police treated their law-breaking neighbors with respect. Indeed, the largest local repercussion was political; at the next election, the people of Lexington voted in great numbers to turn out of office the powerful selectman most responsible for the arrest. . .

[ginnyinWI]

19. there is one up-and-coming Senator who also has natural dignity

I think so, anyway: Barak Obama. But he has to "sharpen the pencils" for a few years first, as he has said. :)

[ray of light]

21. everything

mole333 said was true according to my source too. I just have not been asked to put it out there, so I haven't. *But since it is...I will confirm it.*

[TayTay]

24. I suspect this fight is not over.

It's just not in the man's nature to give up. If it was, he never would have come back after that loss in '71. (TayTay says again. I mean, f*ck, that was so friggin personal.) I have read all the same irritating comments that others have read on the LibBlogs: Kerry is too 'nice' to fight (gag!), Kerry is soft, and the ever popular Kerry doesn't stand for anything. Bullsh*t.

People confuse thoughtfulness with inaction. They confuse taking the time to think something through, consider the consequences of an action before that action is taken (did any know Sen. Kerry served in VN, btw?) as weakness. It is not weakness. It is what he is supposed to be doing, what the citizens of MA elected him to do: go be a credible, intelligent and compelling voice in the Senate for positive change.

BTW, I truly suspect a change in Congress next week. A big change. We, as a country need to mourn our dead, assess the damage from this killer storm and then begin to figure out what proper and thoughtful action could have done to lessen this horrible tragedy. We need avengers, warriors and people who revel in rooting out deception, stupidity and cronyism in government. That is the tipping point I sense. A moment that no amount of spin can derail.

[ray of light]

25. kerry had to have suffered knowing the election was "stolen"

and the peoples' votes were suppressed and he knows there is no hard core facts that a specific person is criminally liable.

I think he will find a way to fight it even if it's not toe to toe with blackwell.

But he's a patient man and i think he knows the best way to catch a theif is waiting for the theif to hit again.

[TayTay]

26. And Blackwell is in a world of trouble

He is in up to his neck in Coingate, right? His day will come.

I agree that Kerry is patient. He is also smart enough to figure out that he wasn't rejected, he was criminally screwed out of the Presidency by a gang of theives and crooks.

And I don't sense defeatism in him this year. If anything, he has fought louder and better than before. (And he wasn't bad before.) Sometime people take defeat and quit, other take defeat and use it as a platform to begin to build a victory. (A bit corny, but true.)

[ginnyinWI]

27. the the fact that he's fighting louder and better

is evidence that he was empowered by the experience, which is evidence that he knows he should be president now.
No slinking back to the Senate into a comfortable back row and anonymity for JK. He's out there in the front line, one of the leading generals in the battle.

[JanusAscending]

28. GOTTA LOVE HIM !!!!

and I do, I do, I do!!!!:loveya: :hi: DC