Reply #19: I've been following the story - except for a weekend in NYC

[karynnj]

The coverage has been very patchy and it is very very political. In the MSM, other than in the Boston papers, Kerry is not really all that highlighted. They have very briefly summarized his letter, but they treat it as "Kerry says" the transactions were all in the Heinz trust. However, that information is in the public disclosures, which I have not bothered to try to find. The disclosure does separate out whose income it is. There is no reason to write Kerry says these are from the Heinz trust - they ARE undeniably from the Heinz trust.

My point the articles take Weitzer's allegations and do not preface them as "Sweitzer says" - yet they do this with Kerry's. This leads a reader to take the former as facts, the later as excuses. Also as Mass pointed out the title in the BG and the order favors Sweitzer.

Then there is the story as a whole. I really do not understand how 60 minutes got pulled into this given that Sweitzer is part of the Palin pack and just reading the Kerry accusations, very sloppy errors are made (ie control of Congress - now ask yourself if this is innocent - especially as they then speak of Kerry spearheading the 2003 bill. Is this the same man they accuse of passing nothing? It is amazing that they write this as if the Bush 2003 drug bill were a Democratic one. That is pretty mind blowing.) In addition, Palin had an op-ed in the WSJ this Sunday (that I heard of rather than read). She is leading this charge against corruption. :vomit:

On the right blogs, this is swiftboating and it works the same way - they have a long list of things they declare likely insider trading. They either ignore that these are in the Heinz trust or pretend that Teresa runs the Heinz trust (using info her husband gives her). The problem is that going through each of the accusations and pointing out errors, ends up with a long post - that no one is likely to read. Just listing errors - to show the poor quality of work leads to people saying that they were beside the point (yet - as in one case morphing Kerry's seat on the Health subcommittee of the Finance committee into one on the Health committee - is the entire basis of assuming that he could have had insider info.) There, I am not sure it helps to even comment because these are clowns who still believe Kerry gave himself all the Vietnam medals he got - a pretty powerful 25 year old! (One new meme is an article that had a Clinton Democrat saying in 2004 that Kerry needed to have everything in blind trusts. The fact is the bulk of their money is in family trusts that they are not the only beneficiary of and have no control of. )

I was more concerned last week, though things have become noisier on this. I am not concerned with the Lieberman, Brown, Gillibrand posturing that an investigation is needed. I agree that there might be cases where it is needed - but there is nothing I saw that looked remotely bad in the Kerry ones I saw. Tightening standards can't be a bad idea.

It is interesting that the Daily Kos article shows a much simpler case of a legislator's decision directly benefiting his own pocket in Brown's actions in favor of the banks. Yet, I really doubt that was the motivation. I have not seen the Boston papers point out that the same connect the dots work here.