I wanted to respond to this thread. John Kerry is articulate, not especially a product of the rich elite, as George Bush is. Kerry is a well-educated man and the fact that he speaks French is offensive to only the most ignorant. He can speak well and not in short snide little phrases. He has been victimized by a lying and deceitful group who call themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The reason they are discredited as being dishonest is because none of them actually served with Kerry including John O Neill, the Texas ringleader who has had a grudge match with Kerry for years.

Do we want someone to represent our presidency who is inarticulate, a man who places the corporate values above human values, a man who is so ardently pious that he places his limited knowledge of religion above those who have had an enlightened education? Only during this Administration has it become fashionable to denegrate education and to entrust it to corporate privitization to furthur destroy it as evidenced by the inability of charter schools to compete with the better public schools. Do we want a president who cares nothing for the working class of America and is not concerned with the struggle of the middle class to survive? Do we want someone who puts
power before civil liberties and incarcerates innocent people with impugnity?

Last, do we want someone who plays politics to the detriment of statesmanship and representing America as a great nation to the rest of the world?

Do we need to turn back the clock on all of the progressive reforms we've had since Roosevelt such as a decent minimum wage, religious tolerance, civil rights, parity for women in the workplace, the hard-fought creation of social security which is in danger now, environmental protection and public health care benefits?

In the past, both Democrats and Republicans alike were responsible for these beneficial policies. Under Bush, they are all in danger of being gutted in favor of corporate interests and a rabid minority who have been brain-washed into thinking that
Science and Education are somehow evil and that their religous convictions are all that matter even if they are based on narrow scriptural views. There is no comparison between Kerry and Bush. (Ralph Nader is wrong about that.) Kerry thinks, acts, speaks like a statesman and there was a time when speaking well, thinking logically, and possessing a good education was a virtue. Now, because of Bush, ignorance is lauded and many people take pride in it.

It's a reverse snobbery. Those that adhere to a dogmatic theological narrow-minded scriptural approach actually think they are better than others and they will somehow be saved.
Others champion the sword and gun over rational thinking and believe that somehow they are superior to the rest of us.

Frank