Police Taser student at Kerry speech - caught on film
 

This is really bothersome to watch, especially listening to Kerry then continue to answer the question as the kid is tasered and is writhing and screaming in agony and the whole back half of the theater starts yelling at the police.

Link to article with movie included at bottom.

I can't belive my eyes. Are those cops just incompetent morons or what? FOUR officers can't handle some angry kid without using a teaser which is more like a torture device than police officer's tool.. A little over the top? wtf is happening in this world?

And yes kerry's actions are more than disturbing.

Kerry is disturbing period. It's a sad comment on our society that a man like this who is all smoke and mirrors got as far as being a presidential candidate. His nauseating misrepresentation of himself as a Viet Nam veteran* turned self-righteous war protester is really ironic in light of this event.


*How accurate this is I don't know, but in a petition circulated before the last election by some veterans who served with him I read he spent three weeks in Nam on a gun boat, almost got his fellow soldiers killed numerous times, then recommended himself for a Purple Heart for a small shrapnel scratch on his arm. My husband, who did 2 tours in Korea and one in Nam says it agrees with his memories of scuttlebutt at the time.

Don't worry. Today Kerry will say Bush is to blame for the violence. Tomorrow Kerry will say Bush is too easy on crime. The day after Kerry will say it was Bush that got tazer'd.

Like magerette said in another thread, Kerry is all smoke. I like to call him a mirror—he reflects back whatever you put in front of him.

I'm not a big fan of Kerry either (IMO about the best thing that can be said about him is that he's not an utter moron), but the incident you're referring to is widely regarded as one of the most blatant smear jobs ever successfully pulled off on a politician. It's even spawned a term — "Swift Boating."

There's a fairly good (and IMO surprisingly neutral) description of the hoopla on Wikipedia; if you want to do more research, there's plenty to chew on on the Net.

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ke…ce_controversy ]

a mirror at least implies a person has enough intelligence to respond and understand what the person talking to them said. whether or not care is a smoe or an honesty guy has never bothered me. its amazing how effective though the media machine can turn a no worse than anyotherpolitician into a complete duchebag though.

about 3 years ago, not to long before the 2004 election i was at a friends house who definately didn't vote for kerry or any of his family (my friends) when i was watching some pool (billards) being played and pulled a book off the bookshelf. it was a 70's college book with some political essays or such. in that book though was a great anti-war essay from none other than john kerry. up until the primaries i didn't even know who john kerry was, but after that book i gained a respect for him and knew that i would vote for him. unfortunately most peoples opinons of "the man" are based on heresy. blowhard howard dean made kerry seem much more middle ground compared to him when in fact i'm sure he would end the war if he had the chance. he may not have made a great president who knows but he certainly was a good canidate in my opinion.


oh and by the way kerry actual "kept talking" by saying he wanted to respond to the disrupters question. why are people not focusing on the idiotic florida police. if i recall theres been at least 1 other incident with them tasering children which is even more outrageous. but i guess in the game of politics you get to throw bigger stones.

While all that is true, what she is talking about is that the issue came up *long* before the Presidential Election - I recall it coming up more than once during the 70's and 80's, like Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, and apparently Magerette recalls it from earlier.

Sorry, C.U.—I certainly don't want to blacken anyone's name unjustifiably. Skimming through the wikipedia artcile, I can see that a lot of this is indeed hearsay and one guy's word against another.

As Mike brought up, however, the reputation Kerry has with many servicemen including my spouse comes from the time when he threw his medals away and started denouncing the war—AFTER the anti-war, anti-Nixon movement became fashionable with the main stream media—to their minds as a tool to get into office, while they were still under fire or returning home to be called baby killers. This is an emotional assessment, and how strictly factual it is I don't know.

If he also wrote an essay that can move human beings to stop senselessly killing each other, I can respect the achievement even if perhaps I question the motive. :)

you could be right about his motives. he as after all from the same stock as our current president. his character though seems eschelons above, although i'm sure if i spent enough time i would uncover truthful things about him that would probably make me like him a whole lot less. but screw kerry anyhow, i'm focusing my hopes on obama;)

and i have the utmost respect for all veterens, for risking their lives for our country even though i personally am against war and its means. both my grandfathers were in the navy and my mom and dad were in the army (my mom was in the reserves 10 years and served 6 months in kentucky in 2003). all except for my living grandfather are life long donkeys. i think people would be suprised if they saw the nonexistent statistics on veterans who were actually anti-war, even in todays world where there is no draft and the servicemen and women are far from an average sampling of the population in either beliefs or talents.

I've often found that the more you know about someone the harder it is to admire them.;) I stopped reading biographies of my musical idols because finding out they were junkie burn-outs and/or just plain mean bastards made it hard to feel the same about their work.

Anyway, the real issue here isn't Kerry's personality or integrity, but how far authority is willing to go to "keep control." This student was out of line and rude, but most people don't have a squad of police jump them for making an ass of themselves. The bleed-through of abused power is self-evident here (btw, do we all know who is governor of Florida?) and the real issue is how dangerous free speech is perceived to be by those who don't want to hear it.

Was this guy really a danger to others in the auditorium? If he was, then he needed to be removed. If all he was doing was ranting and being an attention whore, a lack of response might have done more than an over-response. If he genuinely had something to add to the debate, maybe he could have been encouraged to make his point a little less disruptively. I see many solutions besides zapping him upside the head with 50,000 volts.

Someone could have escorted him outside- there was no need to use the taser. Huge overreaction.

It could have been handled much better, and Kerry could have done wonders by actively participating from the stage in an effort to quiet the situation.

In Force We Trust

It's very hard to know what really motivates someone. Sometimes you don't even know yourself. It's entirely possible that John Kerry realized the horror and futility of the Vietnam war and became a dedicated supporter of the anti-war movement out of personal conviction. It's equally possible that he saw which way the wind was blowing and joined the movement out of opportunism. It's even more possible that both things factored into the decision — after all, it's always easier to work up a good, solid set of principles if it's also a good career move.

In either case, the timing of the move doesn't really say much about it.

My personal impression of Kerry is that he would be much more at home in European politics. He has a nuanced, complex view of things and tends to look at them — and discuss them — from multiple points of view. The advantage is that he doesn't oversimplify complex issues as much as most other politicians. The downside is that it appears to make it very difficult for him to formulate a consistent policy and stick to it. Flexibility and adapting to changing circumstances and new information as it becomes available is one thing; blowing with the wind is another — and I do get the impression that Kerry is too much of the latter to be a very effective president, especially in difficult times.

IOW, had he and Lieberman been elected, I'm pretty sure America would be more or less where it is now — except that he would be taking the blame with the real architects of the problems coming out smelling like a rose.

I wrote this (in a completely different context) in November, 2004:

Nice and interesting throw-in.

Because in Iraq the government believed the same.

Is this kind of a cultural difference between the U.S. and Europe as well ?

I think European police is just as much capable of using excessive force.

The timing says a lot about it, but indeed doesn't, as I think you meant, really prove anything about the motivation. It's nice to see a non-cynical view from you, Prime J and therefore I'll agree that Kerry may have had an epiphany about the evils of war that just happened to coincide with the rising popularity of the anti-war movement. :)

Agreed; though there might be different profiteers, commanders and events, the end result might not be much different. On the other hand, there was some anti-war sentiment in the early part of Bush's second term; it's possible Kerry might have been able to build a powerbase then, and with the loss of the Republican majority in Congress, there would be at least the potential to listen to reason now, since Congress is screaming for troop withdrawals and would support any president who initiated them I think.

It's impossible to tell, really, how the cards would have played out. I know that your statement has made me regret even more not voting against Bush, because actually it might have made a difference.

First, may I say your writing style has matured since 2004. :)

Next,I don't know about seeing Bush in a war crimes tribunal, but I guarantee he has gone from being golden to one of the most villified presidents in our history, and by people of all political affiliations. You're just as likely to hear violent criticism of Bush from the far right, the middle or the left right now. He seems bent on using this "lame duck" period to alienate as many segments of the political base as possible in order to push his agenda through—his "legacy."

I also agree that this lesson needed to be learned, and that it may indeed be better this way. I don't think though, that you'll ever see a time when an attack like 9-11 won't result in a defensive retaliation (unless, of course, we become too conflicted and feeble to make one.) That's where at least the start of this war differed from Viet Nam, and how the political machine was able to turn it to account.

I can't recall him ever being 'golden' - he was laughed at and about during the 2000 campaign and only won by the slimmest of margins because of 'Clinton fatigue', a sense of 'anything has to be better than this' and the fact that Gore is made out of cardboard.

Oh, I think he shared a halo with Guiliani for a bit in the early days, but I may have exaggerated. Down here in the Red States, Bush was pretty well supported. Up there in the Blue World, I know you had better sense. :)

yes, but at least gore is made out of recycled cardboard now. i voted for nader in 2000 anyhow…

much like Prime Junta feeling we "needed" bush to be reelected i felt a simlar way in 2000. while i didn't write anything i expressed it many times to my friends that bush would win anyhow and thought i might vote for him just to make it sure it happened. the country seemed in a lackidasical state of unconcerdness and only someone as vile as bush would bring about protest and change. of course i had no idea how bad everything would turn out, but like others have said i think there has hopefully been lessons learned. specifically being a last year gen-x-er i think there hadn't been any world events to truly test the will and character of our poor souls.