I think this is the right link to hear today's debate live

[karynnj]

http://www.wtkk.com/

It's suppose to start at 1pm

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. Beatty

is being a total jerk just like the last debate.

[karynnj]

4. Exactly - but the male host was better in calling Beatty on it

[karynnj]

2. Debate starting

Loose ends, Margery asked about his VA and GA addresses and businesses, given his attacks on Kerry. Moved in 1973 to Harwich and it has been his home - says he also worked out of Harwich. He says that Kerry's job is to be in DC and MA

Question to Kerry, on IWR - asked about Shrum's letter. Kerry will release it - he summarized it as he did last time. He got all kinds of advice, but the conversation with Powell was what sealed it. Got personal briefing from CIA and Pentagon. Beatty: "Kerry deceived us" Kerry then spoke more about his meeting with Powell. Kerry spoke of what he was voting for.

[beachmom]

3. Listening now. Kerry answered question about whether

his decision to vote for the IWR was political.

Kerry is doing really well, smacking down Beatty. Beatty asked "do you have that letter on you?". So unprofessional.

[beachmom]

5. The moderator is really giving it to Beatty. Good.

And wow some crap charges being levelled at Kerry!!!!!

[fedupinBushcountry]

6. I swear

Beatty is so not Senatorial and sounds just like EOR, he is so not electable.

[karynnj]

7. Kerry is explaining what is happening now in the financial markets

That it is still going down as people are deleveraging. Asked about McCain's proposal to buy mortgages borrowed from HRC. Kerry said that he got money in - male host then ended talk and said it was in the bailout bill. Beatty accused Kerry of building up the FMs and that Kerry dumped stock. He has been called twice to answer the question - says he likes the HRC/McCain mortgage idea. It's not about placing blame?!!! After he just accused Kerry of impropriety.

Beatty is a complete jerk. "I'm not running against McCain, I'm running against this guy" Kerry "Maybe we can have an intelligent debate without personal attacks." Kerry never owned stock in FM. He spoke again about the predatory lending bill.

[TayTay]

8. What is it with Repubs and the "This one" or "That one"

Apparently, rudeness is a prized quality in Repubs.

[fedupinBushcountry]

9. That was a great response

by JK.

[beachmom]

10. Kerry is doing an awesome job today!

Now he is tying Beatty to Bush/McCain.

[karynnj]

11. Kerry speaks of Beatty backing Bush and John McCain

Speaks of Proposition 1 - an irresponsible position and wants guns to be allowed in schools.

Kerry backs pay as you go.

Next question - on proposition 1 to Beatty.

Beatty is now saying that proposition is a symbolic vote - as the legislature won't honor it. This is crazy - Beatty is trying to minimize his error in saying this. Kerry spoke of having written with others a bill on campaign finance reform and until campaign financing was passed he hadn't taken PAC money. Mentioned Duke Cunningham bill.

[fedupinBushcountry]

12. Dog lover, marijuana

answer the damn question.

[beachmom]

14. Best for Kerry to stay quiet during that. Beatty sounds like he is smoking marijuana!

[karynnj]

17. Hey, I was in college in the 60s - my friends who smoked sounded

much more sensible.

[fedupinBushcountry]

21. LOL

[beachmom]

13. Beatty says he is not a partisan, then spills out the conservative doctrine

of smaller government, lower taxes, "more liberty", etc.

Then he talks about some dog initiative. WTF?

Then he weasels out of Initiative 1, that Beacon Hill will not honor it anyway. WTF?

[fedupinBushcountry]

15. Then he compares his answer

to asking Mrs. Lincoln about would she have gone to the play. This guy is a jerk, period.

[TayTay]

16. I'm sorry about this.

We know the MA Repub Party is bad, but this is even beyond that.

Beatty did "win" the Repub nomination because the other guy didn't file enough sigs.

Ahm, this is the MA Repub Party. Not a pretty picture, is it.

[karynnj]

18. No Tay Tay, I am sorry - he spent his entire formative life in Passic NJ

unlike the pure MA roots of your wonderful Senator

[fedupinBushcountry]

20. JK is so right

on how to take a step on preventing such violence that we have in this country today. But he has always been on top of that issue.

[Mass]

22. I wonder if there will be a question about guns, after the terrible tragedy yesterday

in Westfield.

I cannot watch the debate, but it seems to be the same than last week. Was Kerry asked about question 2 (decriminalization of small quantities of marijuana?).

From what I have heard of Beatty, he makes EOR look like a genius.

[fedupinBushcountry]

24. This is a radio debate

can't watch it. No JK was not asked, Beatty brought it up that and being a dog lover instead of answering on the Prop #1 (I think that is what it is called) question.

To me EOR and Beatty come from the same genre, they have nothing so they just attack and disrupt.

[karynnj]

19. "Farm system for prisons"

That explanation was so Kerry - he sees the roots of the problem and he has fought to make lives better.

[karynnj]

23. Kerry was asked about the 2 Iraq bills

Kerry said the vote on the first war was because there were more steps that could be taken. The IWR said he would have wanted the power given to Bush - wanted to give Bush leverage. Only go to war as a last resort - President broke every promise. Said when he voted he said he would speak out and he did. Said "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place". Explained the surge - that it didn't start it.
(great answers on IWR and surge)

Beatty speaking of Biden bringing him to the Senate. He used his Tom Clancy line. Beatty claimed Kerry signed onto Biden's plan.

[fedupinBushcountry]

25. Is JK still part of the debate

he has not been allowed to speak for quite awhile.

[TayTay]

26. Ah, when your opponent is drowning, hand him an anvil

Mr. Beatty kindly supplied the anvils today.

[YvonneCa]

32. ...

...:7

[karynnj]

27. Beatty is speaking of Somalia

and following the RW line that it led to all the Al Qaeda stuff.

Immigration:
- protect the border
- the problem is that you need to stop people from hiring illegals
- you need a gate way to citizenship

Kerry spoke of needing to deal with people humanely. Beatty is now attacking Kerry as "coddling" the immigrants. Beatty is for "asset forfeiture" for illegals.

Roe vs Wade - pro adoption He is refusing to say if he is for Roe vs Wade. He is refusing to answer. He finally said he was pro-life. Kerry says no litmus test. Need to have less abortions - referenced the Pepperdine speech - he said he is personally against abortion. Could he vote for people who are pro-life. Kerry said "no way" if it was a deciding bill.

Picture id to vote - Beatty some sort of proof. Kerry needs adequate proof.

Term limits - Beatty supports term limits. Kerry says they are anti-Democratic - that they remove experienced people. Obama will have women register.

Fairness doctrine - Beatty opposes as it limits, Kerry for it to restore civil speech. Children should be able to get special schools based on opportunity - but they need to fix schools.

[Luftmensch067]

28. I didn't hear the whole thing

But did Beatty actually clearly answer any single question? He seems to be a yeller and fast talker with no substance whatsoever. "Pro-adoption", however, is a new low in eluding a question!

[karynnj]

30. I wish the moderators would have pointed out that there

have been votes that deal with abortion. I do think that people were able to see where he was - I hope he annoyed his own base by not taking a strong prolife position - especially as he placed himself as anti-war on Iraq (which they still think was needed)

I like Kerry's answer - his call for common ground and fewer abortions - as well as the outrage in his voice on the immigration question where he spoke of pulling mothers away from babies.

[beachmom]

29. Kerry did a great job and really owned the debate. When Beatty

would go off on a bizarre tangent, Kerry just stayed silent.

I was too busy guffawing at the end to hear about the Fairness Doctrine. So Kerry is for restoring it? Cool.

[fedupinBushcountry]

31. Yes he is for restoring it

When he was given the Distinguished American award at the Kennedy Libray in '05 he spoke about it in response to a question from Tom Oliphant. You can watch or listen to the whole thing http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=1814">here This is one of my favorite videos of JK.

MR. OLIPHANT: This is not an irrelevant follow-up, actually, from the audience, recognizing that you did for a second up there discuss my troubled racket. And the question is how to stop the media from creating and perpetuating the divisive red state/blue state situation?

SENATOR KERRY: Tom, I swear I don’t have the answer to that, and I'm looking for it just like everybody else is. I don't have the answer right now. I think it is linked to what I was just talking about. I was talking earlier about accountability and citizen structure. And I think part of what we have to do is have an impact on the economics. The corporatization of the media in America has taken away some of the willingness of the media to do the great muckraking they used to do and be the accountability folks they used to be. And so you have so many different media outlets that are just bottom line, and they go where the ratings tell them to go, and there's a top down hierarchical administration of what they’ll go after and what they’ll do and it’s driven by the economics more than anything. I think if we were to change those economics a little bit through grassroots effort, then you might begin to see a shift.

Now, beyond that an epiphany of some kind, people who … It’s very difficult and it is particularly challenging because, as I say, a lot of the mainstream media were very responsible during the course of the campaign. They tried to put out a balanced view and they did show what they thought to be the truth in certain situations of attack, both sides. But it never penetrated. And when you look at the statistics and understand that about 80 percent of America gets 100 percent of its news from television, and a great deal of that news comes from either MTV, John Stewart, Bill Maher, Jay Leno, David Letterman, you begin to see the size of this challenge. And so I don't have a total answer. I just know it’s something that we’ve really got to grapple with and …

MR. OLIPHANT: Going back to the economics of it, though, isn’t this why God created the Sherman and Clayton Acts?

SENATOR KERRY: But you see, that's something that a President with a veto pen and with the right of proposal you can achieve. But in this particular political dynamic, don’t hold your breath. There ain’t going to be no effort to change that or to restore the fairness doctrine either. This all began, incidentally, when the fairness doctrine ended. You would have had a dramatic change in the discussion in this country had we still had a fairness doctrine in the course of the last campaign. But the absence of a fairness doctrine and the corporatization structure of the media has changed dramatically the ability of -- and the filter through which -- certain kinds of information gets to the American people. The internet has provided a different outlet; bloggers and so forth is one way around it. But we still have a large part of America that doesn’t have access to the internet. We have a digital divide. We have a serious question about how we’re going to reach that. So America’s democracy, trust me, is great and important and vibrant, but it’s also deeply challenged by this question of flow of information and how we’re going to have accountability.

[TayTay]

33. First pictures from the debate

http://www.flickr.com/photos/picsjkfs/sets/72157608420964572/



Senator greeting supporters outside the WTTK studios.


Supporters gather to cheer Sen. Kerry on before the radio debate today.

[karynnj]

34. Here is the real estate record for Beatty's sale of his VA house in 2007

RYDER CUP DR.,15676-Jeffrey K. Beatty to Raul A. Berrios, $770,000.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102831_pf.html

But, of course this was not his permanent residence - everyone owns $770,000 houses that they really don't live in that are within commuting distance of the the place their company is located - They prefer to live about 8 plus hours away by car in a 1,200 sq foot home on Cape Cod.

(google is fun)