Another one of those Herald headlines

Whichever editor writes these things is just worthless. The story itself is actually multidimensional.

And note: the article was written by Jessica Fargen, Boston Herald Health & Medical Reporter??? What's that about??

http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=172628&format=text

endorsing Dean in 04 in Massachusetts, so seing him staying that positive about Kerry is good.

As for the article, I could not make any sense of it. People are not outraged because Kerry does not matter? And Larry Sabato is the one who says it. By now, I guess that Larry has that on a prerecorded tape because he has been saying that for the last 4 years. At some point, people should wonder why they have to repeat that again and again if he really does not matter.

I knew the Herald was having trouble, but how this article relates to Health is beyond me. The Herald has been so irrelevant recently that it is amazing.

a serious idiot!

that Allen said the N-word all the time, that everyone knew it.

people who distort Kerry's record repeatedly to build up another candidate. That is Sabato.

I don't appreciate support for the Democratic Party, but why should it come at Kerry's expense? When Repubs say something nice it's fine, but it doesn't negate the other awful things they do and say!

Um, memo to the Herald: It wasn't a political trip. If it was, explain just why Dodd is also going. This article keeps that perception out there.

Sabato is a nasty little shit. "Meet with all the dictators in the world"... yeah, very mature, "professor." That type of remark definitely, certainly doesn't advance the Bush agenda of no diplomacy, oh no, not at all. I agree -- he's an idiot. And an ill-mannered idiot at that. I wouldn't want to be in a class with this guy; I have a strong feeling he's one of those professors with an ego the size of Texas who think that their words are Holy Writ.

And why in the hell is a GOP strategist cited? Who CARES what the Republican Party has to say about him? Last time I checked, the Republican Party wouldn't be choosing the Democratic nominee for President.

This is an effort to silence opposition and make others believe that that pesky little Congress has no right to interfere in the affairs of kings. It is a deliberate attempt to prevent the Senate from doing it's oversight job, as mandated in the Constitution.

If nobody investigates and explores alternative actions to what the King says, then the King can't be proved wrong now can he? This is the point.

The Bush Admin just sent some really heavy-hitters to China to ask for concessions. The Bush Admin, because they have rolled over for China on every occasion, we have very little leverage with the Chinese govt to affect change.

This involves big, big money.

Who is the new incoming Chair of the East Asia and Pacific Affairs Committee on SFRC. Who has spoken about confronting China on their unfair practices and who wants a currency re-evaluation and wants to inforce copyright law there. (Remember, money talks.)

There is a warped Repub logic to wanting to discourage the good Dems from speaking up and in wanting to undermine their authority as Senators.

This argument, mark my words, will come up again. The RWers want to discredit the reform people. China does not exist on it's own as a foreign policy issue. The outsourcing of jobs and the tax code provisions that make that possible affect Americans and American law. (This is a 3-fer for Kerry. It calls into question his SFRC experience and those voting privileges in the Finance Committee. Small Business also has a high place in this discussion. No wonder the discreditors are out there. Take this guy out, not just because of '08 Dem politics, but because of the 110th Congress' ability to pass regulations and repeal very lucrative tax code provisions.)

Must control "fist of death"... :mad:

They have just raised the specter that the trip matters by this lame attempt (by, as Mass points out, the health and medical reporter) to counter it.

BoHerd dung!

The RW commentariat wanted to drum up some outrage over the Democratic (but not Repub) Senators who went to the Middle East to meet with Syria and discuss the issues. The RW tried to use this as another opportunity to paint Democrats as soft on National Defense. Nobody in the 'talking heads' universe of punditry bought into the spin and it stayed in RW bizarro world.

So, now they are counter-spinning that the reason there was no outrage over Democratic Senators going to the Middle East to talk to world leaders when Bush didn't want them to is because they don't matter. (Cuz if they did matter, people surely would have been outraged over Democrats trying to make peace, the traitorous rascals.)

This shows the circularity of RW thinking. "Bad Dems" trying to do their jobs, how simply awful. Who do they think they are anyway? (Hey, Sens Kerry and Dodd are 'duly elected and sworn' members of the US Senate, have long-terms seats on the Foreign Relations Committee and are active and instrumental members of the Senate body that 'advises and consents' with the Executive Branch on treaties and matters of Foreign Policy. They have elected duties to perform, like Article I of the Constitution states.) This interferes with the Imperial Presidency, or what the wingnuts like to now call the Unitary Executive and makes the haughty statement that Congress is a co-equal branch of government in our Representative Democracy. (How could they? Congress' job is to approve what the President tells them to approve. We can't have Senators and Congressmen thinking for themselves and providing independent oversight. Why that might upset the King and it might be distasteful to the punditry. How outrageously democratic.)

negotiating when Reagan was President. They also went after Nelson first - and I doubt even his wife and kids are pushing him for 2008. This is really them wanting to continue the story and save face.

Maybe they should look closely at the photos - in many you see the US Ambassador - none of whom look the least unhappy with Senato Kerry - who looks like the one speaking in most pictures.

Remember, these people do not believe that mere citizens or mere Democrats or mere Senators have the right to any say in negotiations on foreign policy. They believe this despite what the Constitution of the US says (Article I) and despite the fact that our system is built on a series of 'checks and balances.' These people do not believe that any little peasants have to right to question them. At all. Ever. They resent the hell out of this and dig into their bag of discrediting tricks and always come up with 'they are being unpatriotic' first.

Senators have to right to investigate and to go to talk to foreign leaders. It is profouncly undemocratic to claim that only the President has this right. This is dangerous to representative democracy, ignores checks and balances and makes the executive branch into a sort of dictatorship of privilege. All these things undermine democracy itself.

as they attempt to strangle it. At least none of the Democrats jumped onto the bandwagon this time. I was really disturbed to see some DUers question the visits here - it shows thay have no idea that being a Senator is a very serious job or that maybe Kerry's diligence in speaking to these leaders - who I doubt he likes - is why he was right on so much and understands what the neighboring contries consisder their self interest.

Wrong.

In-thread at http://blog.johnkerry.com/2006/12/on_the_ground_in_iraq.html --


"Thanks for taking care of business, Senator Kerry.

"I know some people are saying that it's none of your business what's going on overseas right now, that you should keep yourself here and let the folks in the White House just keep on staying the course without your going to the Middle East.

"Well, to heck with that. You're a Senator, you're a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and if this ain't foreign relations then I don't know what is.

"You're doing your job. You're doing the peoples' business over there. It is your business. And that means it's my business too.

"So you just keep right on doing what you're doing, Senator. And safe home, too. We'll leave the light on for you."

Fascism with a twist of idiocy:



:wtf: :crazy:

Before I moved back to Lowell. I went from one right-wing rag (the Eagle-Tribune) to another. (the Lowell Sun)

This will be the criticism. Why? Who is helped and who is hurt if the Democratic reform movement for US policy in Iraq and in the Middle East is discredited.

This is, in a sense, not about Kerry at all. It's above preserving the divine right of Kings (like Bush) to set policy. This is antithetical to democracy. You cannot have a democracy without oversight.

for Rice's policy of creating democracy by force or from chaos doesn't work.

One article or comment said something about people in these countries resenting the US because Kery and the others prop up their despotic leader by speaking to them. It sounds dumb, but isn't that part of the PNAC description of what didn't work in the past.

No one has done more to hold up despotic regimes in the Middle East than the Republican regimes of the last 26 years. No one. We are in bed with the Saudis and other Middle East despots now with the express consent and encouragement of the Bush regime.

More like, undermining Bush's (NONEXISTENT) credibility. Puh-leeze.

Edited to add: and if Kerry is undermining Bush's (NONEXISTENT) credibility, GOOD FOR HIM. Someone needs to be out there representing us who makes some sense.

Rove thought he had knocked him out again.

Oh, and I thought Kerry was a first tier candidate.

Time's running out fast for that.

The first-tier candidates that no one's arguing with are Hillary, Edwards, and Obama. I'll go out on a limb and put Richardson and Clark on the second tier, because Clark has (weirdly) a fair amount of Internet support, and Richardson was quite the money machine as governor and has a decent resume. The third tier is Vilsack, Biden, Dodd, and Kucinich.

The man is #4, within striking distance of #3, and rising. It's patently obvious which group Kerry belongs with, and foolish of the media not to see that. --Except they do see it, of course.

Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry!

Too busy for Iran (why won't he go now), sending wrong message (diplomacy), wants to hold talks (dangerous), Irak (got nothing else)...

READ ME, from 1985. Same old, same old.


Shultz Assails Democrats for Managua Visit
Los Angeles Times, (05-24-1985)
By LE McMANUS
Times Staff Writer. Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON

Secretary of State George P. Shultz attacked congressional Democrats on Thursday for going to Nicaragua as "self-appointed emissaries to the Communist regime" and suggested that they may have broken the law. But he later said he had not meant to criticize anyone personally.

Shultz charged at a meeting of the American Bar Assn. that "a climate of bitter partisanship" in Congress is making it difficult for the Reagan Administration to carry out its foreign policy, and he called on Democrats to support the Administration's request for aid to rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist regime.

"We cannot conduct a successful policy when (congressmen) take trips or write 'Dear Comandante' letters with the aim of negotiating" with the Nicaraguan government, Shultz said. ". . . Bipartisanship must include the recognition that we have only one President at a time.

"It's presumably not lawful for citizens to appoint themselves as negotiators for the United States," Shultz said. He added that he believes that congressmen who tried to bargain with Nicaragua should be censured rather than prosecuted.

Shultz was referring to Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and John Kerry (D-Mass.), who met in Managua with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega last month, as well as to 10 House Democrats who wrote to Ortega last year. Both groups asked Ortega to liberalize his regime and suggested that Congress would find it easier to reject the President's aid requests for anti-Sandinista rebels if he did.

Shultz's targets reacted furiously. Harkin denounced the charges as "international McCarthyism" and said: "The Democrats have gone the extra mile to find a bipartisan approach to the problems of Central America. It is President Reagan who refuses to meet us even half way."

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante Fascell (D-Fla.), a moderate Democrat, dismissed Shultz's charges as "the usual myths and complaints." If President Reagan wants cooperation from Congress, Fascell said, he "has to extend both arms and say, 'I really want a bipartisan foreign policy.' "

Later in the day, Shultz spoke privately with House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.)--a signer of the "Dear Comandante" letter--and backed down.

"I do want to say that any phrase that might be interpreted as criticism of one of these gentlemen or their associates is not a proper interpretation, because I think they have conducted themselves in the spirit of a bipartisan foreign policy," Shultz said, with Wright at his side.

The 1799 Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments without the approval of the President. But no one has ever been convicted of violating the act, and it has never been invoked against a member of Congress. Shultz's targets argued that their actions fell far short of negotiation.

"We did not negotiate," Kerry said. "Nor has any senator I know of, nor any congressman . . . nor is it appropriate to negotiate with the head of a foreign state."

'Political Partisanship'

In his speech, Shultz said he sees signs of a new bipartisan consensus "on the main elements of our foreign policy"--U.S.-Soviet relations, nuclear arms control, the Middle East and southern Africa. But on the issue of Central America, he said, "political partisanship . . . has burdened our task."

"We seem to have general and growing agreement that the Nicaraguan Communist regime poses a threat to the security of the region," he said. " . . . The dispute in this country is about some of the tactics of addressing the problem."

He called on Congress to approve the President's pending requests for a total of $42 million in aid for the anti-Sandinista rebels, known as contras , and warned that rejecting it will "hasten the day . . . when we will be faced with an agonizing choice about the use of American combat troops."

:sarcasm:




:eyes:

White House contender backed fight vs Marcos
Philippine Daily Inquirer, p 1 (02-25-2004)
By Miner Generalao

A STRONG contender for the US Democratic presidential nomination played a low-key but important role in the fight of the Philippines and its allies to oust Ferdinand Marcos.

During the twilight years of the Marcos dictatorship, Sen. John Kerry, then a first-term legislator from Massachusetts and a member of the US Senate foreign relations committee, stood on the wintry morning of Feb. 24, 1986 (evening of Feb. 24 in Manila) before members of the Ninoy Aquino Movement (NAM) who had gathered in front of the White House in Washington to pressure the strongman to give up without a fight.

"opefully, Marcos will come to see the writing on the wall and there will be a peaceful transition of power," a report by Agence France Presse from the US capital had quoted Kerry as saying on Feb. 24, 1986.

Kerry also said that it "was not a total surprise" that Juan Ponce Enrile, then minister for defense and a key ally of Marcos, and Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, then chief of the Philippine Constabulary-Integrated National Police (PC-INP) and a relative of the dictator, had abandoned their boss.

Kerry maintained that Corazon Aquino, widow of slain Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., was the "rightful elected president of the Philippines."

Filipino groups in the United States led by NAM held a rally to parallel what was happening on Edsa. They also denounced the massive cheating in the Feb. 7, 1986 snap elections that robbed Aquino of votes to favor Marcos.

Protesters slammed then US President Ronald Reagan for his remarks that the opposition had also cheated in the snap polls, according to Jose Abueva in the book "Chronology of a Revolution." He said they protested because Reagan appeared to side with Marcos.

According to Cecilia Guidote-Alvarez, who was the NAM rally's mistress of ceremonies, Senators Steve Solarz and Ted Kennedy likewise backed the democratic movement in the Philippines.

Concurrent with the Mid-east trips that they are in such a lather about, there are a bunch of congressfolk hanging out ("hobnobbing") with Cuban officials. CUBAN officials? So....is the lack of "outrage" about the Cuban "negotiations" due to not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time?

Oh, wait....on re-reading the article, I notice they all seem to be REPUBLICANS.

IOKIYAR.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_CUBA_US_FLOL-?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Goldwater, of all people, got pissed back in 1985. He got over it. It was a big tempest in a teapot. (Republicans suck. Honest, they just all have God complexes and suck. That is short hand version of what is wrong with them.)

GOLDWATER SUGGESTS REPRIMANDS OF KERRY, HARKIN FOR TRIP
BOSTON GLOBE, p 17 (04-24-1985)
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON

Sen. Barry Goldwater yesterday accused Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Tom Harkin of Iowa of violating a federal law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.

Goldwater, expressing what Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) called "the repressed anger" of Senate Republicans, suggested that the freshman Democrats be formally chided for meeting last week in Managua with Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra.

Kerry and Harkin said yesterday that they went to Nicaragua on a fact- finding trip and that they were not negotiating with the Sandinista leader.

"I don't like the idea of two senators wandering off to Nicaragua and making foreign policy. It's a violation of the Logan Act and I think they should be reprimanded," Goldwater, an Arizona Republican, said.

The Herald, that beacon of truth and fairness, is at it again. This is the third hit piece in as many days on the fact-finding trip.