Well, maybe that’s a bit of an oversimplification. This isn’t 1987, Washington isn’t Berlin, and Senator Kerry never acted in a movie where he co-starred with a chimpanzee. But there’s no doubt he feels as strongly about standing up against the excesses of the White House and its Republican supporters as any Cold War president ever did about those of the now-defunct Soviet Union.

The American people are getting throughly fed up with the current Administration’s disregard for the core Constitutional principles of honesty, accountability, and adherence to the rule of law. There’s no need to go into the long laundry list of egregious offenses on the part of those in the executive branch here; if somebody still doesn’t know that those who would be kings are trying to ride rough-shod over the fundamental system of governmental checks and balances that this democratic republic of ours was founded on, then they just haven’t been paying attention.

Pick up any newspaper, turn on any TV, read any blog, and you can tell that the American people have finally starting taking the words of playwright Paddy Chayefsky to heart. In his prescient script for 1976’s seminal film “Network, ” Chayefsky had his key character, ‘UBS Evening News’ anchor Howard Beale, encourage enraged Americans who had had enough of an arrogant, imperial administration to each send a telegram to the White House proclaiming that “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!”

The American people are in the same mood now as they were in the mid-1970’s— only more so, and with many more crucial reasons on which to base their righteous anger this time. Faced with an administration that publicly states that it considers itself above the rule of law and that it can abrogate the Constitution any time it chooses, citizens everywhere are telling Congress in no uncertain terms that they are mad as hell and they’re not going to take this any more.

But far too many of their elected representatives, especially those on the Republican side of the aisle, are still pretending that they can’t hear the voices of the people who elected them to office. Far too many of those Republicans are still digging in their heels and throwing up roadblocks against those same core Constitutional principles of honesty, accountability, and adherence to the rule of law.

And, along with most other Americans, Senator Kerry has had more than enough of this systematic obstruction of truth and justice by those who are rapidly becoming known as Roadblock Republicans. He’s had more than enough of their politics of division, of their partisan sectarianism, of their ethical inconsistencies, of their undignified attempts to derail democracy so they can pander to the lowest common denominators of personal power instead.

The Senator left no doubt about how he feels about this deliberate obstructionism on the part of the Republican supporters of the increasingly-discredited Bush administration when he delivered a scathing speech on the floor of the Senate earlier this afternoon. It was a real barnburner of a speech, a frank indictment of the Roadblock Republicans and their failed political policies, a speech that made it unequivocally clear that JK is firmly on the side of that great majority of Americans who are mad as hell and are not going to take this any more.

I won’t try to excerpt the speech itself in this blog post — it’s much too intense, and much too carefully constructed to make its case against obstructionism in government, to snip and tuck into short textbites here on the blog. But the full copy of Senator Kerry’s speech as prepared for delivery is included in a statement that is posted on the jk.com website in the Press Release section here, in a message unflinchingly titled “Kerry Challenges Bush, Republican Allies to Stop Obstructionism.” It’s also posted in as-delivered video format here as well.

I strongly encourage you to go watch and listen to JK’s speech against the Roadblock Republicans from this afternoon for yourselves instead of just reading about it online. Yes, it really is that good. But I also encourage you to join his campaign to block them from power and to repeal their ability to keep obstructing truth, justice, and the Constitutional rule of law in Congress. You can find plenty of information about that on the top page of this website, including specific information on how you can help target specific Republican obstructionists who are due for re-election in 2008.

But there’s something more you can do to derail the Roadblock Republicans, too. Starting tomorrow, you can do more than just figuratively make your voices heard — you can make them literally heard as well, as part of a new push to make the obstructionists listen to the American public and tear down their roadblocks once and for all. You can use your own voice amplified by the power of the new media to make them hear you — not just once, but a million times over and then some.

So here’s the text of an email that’s going out to all 3 million of Senator Kerry’s online subscribers, complete with a live link that you can follow so that can start making your own voices heard by millions right away:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Republicans are feeling the pressure for change on Iraq. But I’m not a patient person. Especially when the lives of our troops are at stake. I refuse to wait around for the Republicans to move without giving them a little more pushing.

Quite simply, we want to take an unusual step — and we want to do it early. I think we need to run radio ads in the states of the Roadblock Republicans, making it crystal clear that they don’t deserve to be reelected because of their continued support for the Bush Doctrine of escalation without end. We need to turn up the heat even higher.

It’s the pressure of activists and the voice of the people that have gotten us this far in the Iraq debate, not the cookie-cutter ads and thirty second soundbites of Madison Avenue media firms.

So we decided, why don’t we let you speak in this radio campaign? If user generated content can change presidential debates, I know it can help change the next election on the most pivotal of issues.

That’s why we’re running a contest. We want you to send in a script for a 30 second radio spot (that’s about 65 words long), we’ll whittle it down some to the top 20, and then we’ll open up the voting to everyone. The winner that’s chosen by the people will be what we air in the states. And we’ll fundraise for the airing of that spot, with each of you able to choose with your contribution where you think we should run the ad. No political professionals making the spot, or choosing where to run it. It’s all done by you.

You can make the spot sad, or satirical, or hard-hitting. Whatever you want to do. You can make it a personal story from your life (maybe you know someone in Iraq or have a family member there or maybe you are one of the many veterans in this community), or you can make a factual case on why voters should consider someone else because of this issue, or anything else you’d like. You get it — it’s up to you. And what you do can be the ad that goes on the air targeting the Roadblock Republicans.

So click here to submit your script.

You have until midnight ET on Saturday August 11th to get your script in, so get thinking and start writing. And forward this email to everyone you think might be interested in submitting a radio spot to this contest. If you know someone who has a way with words and wants to make a difference, send this along. We’d love to get their scripts.

Thank you, and let’s make sure we get a change in course in Iraq very soon.

Good luck,

John Kerry

[UPDATE: The as-delivered text transcripts of JK’s July 26 floor speech on the Roadblock Repulicans’ policy of obstructionism is available on this website here.]