John Kerry is right - mostly. Imagine my surprise.

I have to admit Kerry's not my favorite ex-Navy guy. As a politician he wasn't my cup of tea. But when I saw this piece and the quote from Kerry I was floored. He nailed it:

On Sunday in an interview with CNN Former Democratic Presidential Nominee, as well as having previously served as Secretary of State and Senator, John Kerry described how the recent decades of witch-hunts and investigations against Presidents in bids to incapacitate them for purely partisan purposes is destructive to our republican norms and constitutional order.
“You had the Whitewater probe, this interminable investigation, which was legitimate perhaps in its beginning, initial effort…but went way beyond that, and on and on and on…but more than that, you had a concerted effort to destroy a presidency. And that now seems to have become the norm. New president comes in? We're going to destroy him. We're not going to see how we can work together."

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Kerry's words and the rest of the piece are stunning. We freguently argue "Just because Trump said/did it . . ." or "Just because Obama said/did it . . ." and just yell past each other. Or question each other's intelligence, patriotism or motives.


I'll be the first to say, that even though I TRY to keep discussions issue-centered I do go off in the weeds on occasion; sometimes even before the person I am engaging. :3oops:

The day after the 2009 election, on another forum, I made a post about how it was time to give the newly-elected President a chance to form his government and and take office. Some of Obama's early pronouncements and appointments were actually encouraging to me that he really was intent on pulling us together and creating a "post-racial America". TBH, it didn't take long for that to be shattered by reality.

For the rest of his terms I tried to focus (mostly successfully, IMHO) on criticizing his policies and not the man. Sure, I threw jabs at some of his foibles - still do. Point being that there is, IMHO, a difference between attacking a person's ideology, actions, and pronouncements and attacking him as a person. As the article suggests we've lost that distinction.


The article is a great thinking piece for those who want to approach our politics as something deeper than them vs us. Enjoy.

Bullseye said:

I have to admit Kerry's not my favorite ex-Navy guy. As a politician he wasn't my cup of tea. But when I saw this piece and the quote from Kerry I was floored. He nailed it:




Kerry's words and the rest of the piece are stunning. We freguently argue "Just because Trump said/did it . . ." or "Just because Obama said/did it . . ." and just yell past each other. Or question each other's intelligence, patriotism or motives.


I'll be the first to say, that even though I TRY to keep discussions issue-centered I do go off in the weeds on occasion; sometimes even before the person I am engaging. :3oops:

The day after the 2009 election, on another forum, I made a post about how it was time to give the newly-elected President a chance to form his government and and take office. Some of Obama's early pronouncements and appointments were actually encouraging to me that he really was intent on pulling us together and creating a "post-racial America". TBH, it didn't take long for that to be shattered by reality.

For the rest of his terms I tried to focus (mostly successfully, IMHO) on criticizing his policies and not the man. Sure, I threw jabs at some of his foibles - still do. Point being that there is, IMHO, a difference between attacking a person's ideology, actions, and pronouncements and attacking him as a person. As the article suggests we've lost that distinction.


The article is a great thinking piece for those who want to approach our politics as something deeper than them vs us. Enjoy.

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Don't give Krazy Kerry too much credit...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry said the country faces "a genuine constitutional crisis" following Bob Woodward's reporting on President Donald Trump's dysfunctional White House and the unnamed senior administration official's op-ed assailing Trump in The New York Times on Wednesday.

"We have a presidency which is off the rails," Kerry told Anderson Cooper on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "We have a President who is not capable of doing the job, who clearly has these temper tantrums, doesn't know enough to be making many of the decisions he makes."

"We see the evidence of people stealing a presidential document off his desk," Kerry said, referencing Woodward's reporting. "We see a general, the secretary of defense, ordered to kill another leader -- a leader of another country -- who turns to everybody after the phone is hung up and says, 'I'm not gonna do that. We're not gonna do that.' "

"This is unbelievable," Kerry said, and said the constitutional "crisis" is heightened because Republican senators are defending, "not the Constitution, not the institution of the Senate -- they're defending party and the President, who simply doesn't know what he's doing."

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/politics/john-kerry-constitutional-crisis-cnntv/index.html

trixare4kids said:

Don't give Krazy Kerry too much credit...



https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/politics/john-kerry-constitutional-crisis-cnntv/index.html

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Yeah, he's still a politician spewing partisan talking points. I still don't like him but I'm willing to give him credit when he gets something correct.

Bullseye said:

I have to admit Kerry's not my favorite ex-Navy guy. As a politician he wasn't my cup of tea. But when I saw this piece and the quote from Kerry I was floored. He nailed it:




Kerry's words and the rest of the piece are stunning. We freguently argue "Just because Trump said/did it . . ." or "Just because Obama said/did it . . ." and just yell past each other. Or question each other's intelligence, patriotism or motives.


I'll be the first to say, that even though I TRY to keep discussions issue-centered I do go off in the weeds on occasion; sometimes even before the person I am engaging. :3oops:

The day after the 2009 election, on another forum, I made a post about how it was time to give the newly-elected President a chance to form his government and and take office. Some of Obama's early pronouncements and appointments were actually encouraging to me that he really was intent on pulling us together and creating a "post-racial America". TBH, it didn't take long for that to be shattered by reality.

For the rest of his terms I tried to focus (mostly successfully, IMHO) on criticizing his policies and not the man. Sure, I threw jabs at some of his foibles - still do. Point being that there is, IMHO, a difference between attacking a person's ideology, actions, and pronouncements and attacking him as a person. As the article suggests we've lost that distinction.


The article is a great thinking piece for those who want to approach our politics as something deeper than them vs us. Enjoy.

Click to expand...

All this means is that he's a hypocrite. Is anyone surprised?

". . . recent decades of witch-hunts and investigations against Presidents in bids to incapacitate them for purely partisan purposes is destructive to our republican norms and constitutional order."

Sounds like a good sign that the current system of governance is breaking down and it's time to build another system.

Good for Kerry. He recognizes what most are missing.

Bullseye said:

Yeah, he's still a politician spewing partisan talking points. I still don't like him but I'm willing to give him credit when he gets something correct.

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Every once in awhile a blind squirrel finds a nut.

Not sure if you remember me mentioning that team Kerry/Edwards 2004 was the catalyst that made me crossover into the light.

Mycroft said:

All this means is that he's a hypocrite. Is anyone surprised?

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He talks out of both sides of his pie hole. Even though his statement in the O/P is right on the money, days earlier he was doing exactly the opposite with his Constitutional crisis blathering while on CNN.
Yep, very hypocritical, indeed.

trixare4kids said:

Don't give Krazy Kerry too much credit...



https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/politics/john-kerry-constitutional-crisis-cnntv/index.html

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Sound like he was against before he was for it.LAFFF

So Trump supporters support Kerry when he says something that appears to be in support of the current President. It's not especially shocking that a trump supporter's standard for whether somebody is right or wrong is dependent on whether or not that person says or does something in support of the President.

Agreeing or disagreeing with a single point that someone states doesn't necessarily translate into total support or total lack of support for that person nor all their other statements or positions.

Viewing it that way seems awfully black and white in a world of gray, smacking of being totally ideologically or totally partisan driven person.

Bullseye said:

Removed due to character-length.

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I honestly don't know what to think of the whole ordeal. Unlike some others on the left, I'm not eagerly awaiting Trump's impeachment. I don't look forward to a Mike Pence presidency, and I feel that impeaching Trump and cutting his first term short would just give his supporters a reasons to blame establishment Republicans and Democrats (if we see that blue wave in congress) for results stemming from his policy decisions. I would much rather see a race between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and I think that makes me less inclined to get reallly excited about this investigation.

I absolutely don't care about Stormy Daniels any more than I did Monica Lewinski. I'm not a religious person, and while I don't look too kindly on infildelity, that bit is none of my god damn business, and that's between he and his wife. Campaign finance infractions are a bit of a sticking point with me, though.

The first time I ever heard anything about Russian collusion was when it was suggested that Russia was Wikileaks' source. Personally, I was more interested in the content of those DNC emails, rather than who leaked them. If that's the extent of Russian meddeling, then I don't really care, to be honest. I expect rival and even allied nations to spy on each other, or attempt to influence each other's politics. I don't care about leaked information, especially information that we, the public, should see; however, if the Russians hacked ballot boxes or anything of the sort, then that would very much be a different story.

Donald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin bothers me. It would bother me if Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin had a meeting where we couldn't verify what was said, but I feel like Trump is especially incompetant, and I don't see a scenario where he isn't easily manipulated by the former KGB head, and that's ignoring any possibility of any corrupt intentions or ties on the part of Trump. The mere fact that he keeps tweeting during an active investigation leads me to wonder what exactly the motor-mouth said to the Russian president.

Given what I've seen in regards to his previous business dealings and the conflict-of-interests that we know about, It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if it turned out that he's dirty as hell, and he should be held accountable for that if that's the case. However, if I'm being completely honest, this can easily be politically-motivated, and if that's the case, I'm going to agree with Kerry in that I absolutely don't want to see this turn into a trend.

As far as Obama being a racially divisive character is concerned, I don't ever remember coming out and saying, "White people; they're racists, homophobes, but I assume that some are good people." I feel like the Democratic party is guilty of paying lip-service to identity-politics when conveinant, particularly when it comes to distracting from their corporate ties--we 'Bernie Bros' got a little taste of that from Clinton's campaign, but I faill to see how Obama is especially devisive, other than the fact that Republicans hated him.

I'm not of the mind-set that everyone who hated/hates Obama is a racist, just to get that out of the way. I do think that there was certainly a portion of people who voted against him based on his name and the color of his skin, just like I feel that there's a portion of Democrats who voted the way they did just to finnally get a black guy into the office. The rest is just echo-chambers. It would be easy to reverberate the notion that Obama was racially divisive in his rhetoric and actions until it's said so many times that it becomes true in the minds of those who already don't support him.

When it comes to the socially polarized reality we've found ourselves in, I feel like that's something that's been brewing for decades now. The Republicans have been silently exploiting and picking at theiir bases' social anxieties for far longer than Trump's been in the picture, and the Democrats have become far too comfortable with coasting on the fact that they aren't the Republicans. I'm definetely not going to give the left a pass when it comes to their part in the emoldenment of the so-called alt-right. From my perspective, both extremes of the social spectrum are more than capable of feeding off each other without any help from a former or sitting president.

Then there's the Internet. Who knows where we'd be if the dumbest and most insane people on both sides of the fence didn't have a platform and were not handing each other ammo.