Senator Kennedy talks up Senator Kerry for President on Larry King

[wisteria]

last night.

KENNEDY: We've got a contender up in Massachusetts, too, my colleague. I expect John Kerry. He hasn't told me definitely whether he's going...

KING: You think he's going to try again?

KENNEDY: ... I would expect John would. He came very close last time.


http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/20/lkl.01.html


Senator Kennedy has it right, Senator Kerry came very close the last time!

[Der Blaue Engel]

1. So close that they had to flip his win

I hope we can stop the thieving bastards before the next election.

[blm]

2. That means the DNC needs to make sure voting machines are secured BEFORE

the votes are cast.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Interesting thought. I'm all for that--securing the voting machines

and central tabulators, and having some independent computer scientists give them a thorough going over, before and after the elections.

Also, I want the DNC to fund INDEPENDENT EXIT POLLS. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies exit polls are not to be trusted.

As for Kerry, here's what I want: Gore/Kerry in '08.

I'm willing to go with who the American people actually elected, in the order that they elected them. I want the will of the majority to be respected. I like Gore a lot. He's got real fire in his belly, and great focus on the right things. And Kerry could be brought along. But that's not the point. The point is for democracy to be reborn. And we should start with the two men whom the American people WANTED to be president, and who were unjustly denied higher office.

It's the poetic justice ticket.

[blm]

6. It was the ticket I wanted back in 2000. I have always maintained that

it will require ALL of our best and brightest, most HONEST and solution-oriented Democrats to come together and rescue this nation as QUICKLY as possible after we take office. That means ALL of them and I am not willing to dump on any ONE of the people we may need to tap.

We have to hit the ground RUNNING on so many levels when the Bush cabal is gone and Gore and Kerry are two of the few who are ABLE to fulfill that requirement.

[madrchsod]

3. earth to kennedy--he did win ohio

he did win the election. jesus christ these guys live in dreamland. if i know that the governor of ohio sat on the scandal for weeks before the election , there were calls to the whitehouse before the elections from his office,and the un-refuted statement that diebold was going to make sure bush won, why is kennedy being polite to these traitors?

[Peace Patriot]

7. I don't know. It's beyond me to understand Democratic Party leaders'

SILENCE about two rightwing Bushite corporations "counting" all the votes with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. Are they insane, or what?

But don't ever forget--even with a man like Kennedy, whom I hugely admire--that it was in Boston that the anti-war protestors were caged like animals outside the Democratic Convention while, inside, they tried to sell a better, more efficient Mideast war.

Transparent elections are a no-brainer. And either these leaders have lost all their marbles, or they are in some fashion in collusion--perhaps only in so far as the Bush junta makes them look like leftists, and they can thereby sell continued big military budgets (which have only two purposes; wars of choice and porkbarrel contracts), and corporate rule, and the underfunding of social programs, and only a slight cutback in tax breaks for the rich, as reform.

I hate to say this about Kennedy--because he has been so good on policy, and so courageous in many ways--but there it is. The election system is eqregiously non-transparent and fraudulent, and not even Kennedy is saying a word about it.

[DFW]

5. He's not being polite

He's covering not only his own ass, but that of the Democratic party.
Unless he has proof positive, which Diebold erased right after the election,
he can get sued for making an accusation he can't substantiate in court.
That would give the right wing a field day, when there is no need to give it to them.

Kennedy said as much as he could without giving the radical right the ammunition with
which they can mount a legal attack that CNN would carry as hot breaking news for the
next two weeks. Everybody got the message, and the right wing can't touch him. He did OK.

[Peace Patriot]

8. First of all, calling an election fraudulent is not actionable. You don't

have to SAY who exactly inserted the tweaky lines of code, or who gave the orders to short black precincts on voting machines in Ohio. You just have to say what happened, what the conditions of the election were, and what the evidence is. There is something called FREE SPEECH in this country--and it is especially applicable to a matter of great civic concern, and to public officials. You don't have to have "proof positive" to say that an election smells to high heaven. The very fact of its non-transparency--not to mention all the other facts about 2004--makes it stink like a skunk.

Second, you don't even have to say that THAT election was fraudulent. The election SYSTEM is egregiously, inherently, fraudulent, due to non-transparency (not to mention Bushite partisan control of the machnes). It's BLATANT. It's even a stretch to CALL anything an election that occurs under these conditions: Two rightwing Bushite corporations control all vote tabulation in the country with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. And that's just for starters--it doesn't begin to describe the corruption, the secrecy, the hostility toward the voters, the resistance to recounts and audits and paper trails, the fraudulent testing of the machines, the hackability of the machines, the unreliability of the machines, and everything else that now characterizes our election system. But that's enough. That's ALL you need to know. The system is controlled by Bushite corporations and it is NON-TRANSPARENT.

And it is a very great puzzle to me how our Democratic Party leadership was silent about it when it was put into place, and is silent about it now.

All anyone would have to say is: How do we know Bush was elected? We CAN'T KNOW. And that's a fact. And in addition to the non-transparency, there is a mountain of evidence that he wasn't.

You aren't accusing anyone of any particular crime. You are just stating the facts.

I think you are confusing an election with a legal case. In a legal case, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to establish a crime and guilt. In an election, just the opposite is true. The burden of proof is on election officials and those in power to PROVE that they did NOT fiddle the election in favor of the powerful. They ARE in fact "guilty until proven innocent." That's what transparency MEANS. Absent transparency, you are obliged to presume wrong-doing, when it comes to elections. The presumption of wrong-doing by the powerful IS WHY we have TRANSPARENCY and ACCOUNTABILITY as standards in democratic elections.

The 2004 election was NOT a democratic election--by any stretch of the definition. The condition of transparency was NOT PRESENT.

[second edition]

9. What a great guy! I am pleased that Senator Kennedy supports

Senator Kerry. He even alludes to the closeness of the election. :bounce:

[blm]

10. Kennedy knows he would make a great president - I think it goes beyond

any regional loyalty. Kennedy is far too concerned, insightful, smart and sophisticated for behavior so mindless.

[jenndar]

11. K&R

Go, Teddy!

It was a good interview all around.

[IndyOp]

12. Very close. Post again when Kerry speaks out against Theft 2004 -

He did not fight even as hard as Al Gore.

:grr:

[Peace Patriot]

14. I know it hurts. It hurt me, too. But let's not do this, okay? Let's

not presume that we know all that Kerry was dealing with that night. He was up against the most dangerous people on earth--who knows what kind of threat he was under?; the goddamned DNC did not have his back; he would have been without party support in a challenge; he was facing an extremely hostile Bushite Congress, an extremely hostile press and a bought and paid for Supreme Court--and the press did him in when they FALSIFIED their exit polls (doctoring the exit polls to match Diebold/ES&S's secret vote tabulation software). In addition, I have picked up somewhere that the person advising him on the election system was Christopher Dodd, who assured him all was well.

There are Kerry failures in this story, for sure. For one thing, he should have investigated the election system himself--and should have been on it from the beginning. But there are also large unknowns in this story--including his own level of knowledge, or complicity, in a non-transparent election, and the unknown of Bush junta threats. I am not ready to judge him. I'm really not. And whatever went down, I think it is a huge mistake to bitterly blame one person--as if ANY decision he made could have turned things around--and not understand that election in the CONTEXT of war profiteering and deep corruption and fear--and egregious non-transparency--in which it occurred. We need to address that CONTEXT, and stop dwelling on individual "knights in shining armor" whom we fantasize could save us, or save our democracy. Only WE can save our democracy. We, the people. And it can only be done by structural and fundamental reform--such as, first of all, throwing Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor'! Really, what is a leader without a citizenry? And where were WE when rightwing Bushite corporations got control of the vote counting?

[Laurab]

15. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I think Gore's numbers were closer

and he had the legal right to have an automatic recount? Or something similar. Kerry, at the time, did not. He had NOTHING to fight with. He couldn't fight as hard as Gore, the numbers weren't there. The Repukes would have made him into a laughing stock - there was no proof then, and there's no proof now, at least that we know of.

We've been going over and over with this on this board since the election, and the thing I still don't understand is what people expected him to fight with. What he would have needed still isn't available, and that is absolute proof.

I am glad he made the choice he did - the right wing spin machine would have made mincemeat out of him. He is still a respected man, and is able to get things done. Had he gone into that losing battle, he would not be. There's no doubt in my mind that if he had had anything concrete to fight with, he would have done it.

This argument is so old now, I've seen the posts in every Kerry thread, and I'm just not sure what they accomplish. The bottom line is: he had nothing to fight with. NOTHING. Speculation, suspicion, maybe even knowledge, but nothing he could prove. Gore HAD something to fight with. The comparison is unfair.

[sandnsea]

16. Until the last 2 months

Everybody around here said Gore didn't fight, literally for 3 years that's been the line. He rolled over. He didn't stand up for the Black Caucus. Bla bla bla.

Now, literally out of the blue, Gore fought valiantly to save Florida and isn't it a shame Kerry couldn't be more like Gore. I've seen a lot of weird shit on DU, but this seismic shift on the Florida vote is one of the weirdest.

[IndyOp]

17. There's no proof now? 300,000 voters left off rolls in Ohio

(from 70% Dem districts); recent discovery and published pictures of ballots with only Bush votes (no other votes - obviously ballot box stuffing); some Ohio counties with over 100% voter turnout; Ohio board of elections officials under indictment for breaking recount laws...

Are you waiting for the ArchAngel Gabriel to announce it was stolen?

Kerry knew or should have known about the details -- his team of 40,000 lawyers should have been on top of the theft by 1,000 cuts -- destroyed registrations, voters who did register left off voter rolls at polls, voters misdirected to poll locations/precincts; too few and unreliable vote machines sent to Dem districts; bizarre vote hopping on the Ohio SOS website election night...

Theft by 1,000 cuts...

Either the NEXT candidate demonstrates to me that s/he KNOWS and will deal with this or they will not get my full support. I will work my ass off for OUR win -- but will not feel ANY dedication toward that candidate.

:grr:

[politicasista]

13. I like Uncle Ted!

He rocks! :yourock:

[zann725]

18. I was so proud of Ted's support of JK, deflection of Hilary '08 talk.

Of course Larry brought it back to Hilary...ignored Ted's comments re: Kerry as candidate..but still...it WAS said...put out there. Proud of Ted's support and courage to say so.