KERRY THE CANDIDATE


Less than twelve hours after John Kerry’s smashing upset victory in last night’s Iowa Caucuses, let’s do a quick and dirty examination of Kerry the Candidate:

1) Thirty four years ago when I was a 16-year old boarding school student in North Andover, Mass., a tall, gangly fellow appeared frequently on our campus while he was campaigning for a seat in the US House of Representatives. It was John Kerry. He lost that race, then went to law school, became an assistant District Attorney, Lt. Governor to Mike “the Duke” Dukakis, and then in 1984 won a seat to the US Senate. The point here is: Kerry is a long-time, seasoned, professional candidate and campaigner. He is not to be underestimated.

2) Vietnam: Kerry is going to play his ‘hero’ card for all it is worth. He was particularly incensed – as was Wesley Clark – when George W. Bush dressed up like a Navy pilot and ‘pranced,’ as Clark calls it, around the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. That is why Kerry made his formal announcement with the USS Yorktown as the backdrop in Charleston, South Carolina. Both Kerry and Clark are going to go after Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record – including the time he was allegedly AWOL in Alabama – as a contrast to their Vietnam wounds and medals.

3) Veterans: Kerry is making a big push for these crucial voters. His Achilles Heel may yet turn out to be his Chairmanship of the US Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs. This was a disgraceful and shameless cover-up of the truth about our abandoned men – all to ‘clear the decks’ for normalization of relations with Hanoi.

4) McCain: Kerry and John McCain are best friends. And they both hate G.W. Bush. McCain remains bitter over Bush’s campaign against him in the South Carolina primary four years ago. Do not rule out the possibility that Kerry will ask McCain to be his running mate. Why? To corner the all-important independent vote that McCain won in 2000.

5) Edwards: the other hot candidate coming out of Iowa, Edwards is perfectly positioned to be anyone’s Veep candidate. Young, attractive and smart, this southerner is a Major Player from here on out.

6) Weaknesses: The Democratic Party convention this summer is in Boston – home of the Kennedy and Mike Dukakis. If John Kerry wins the nomination – and make no mistake about it: he is not is possession of the Big Mo in New Hampshire – can the Democrats win with yet another Northeastern Liberal? That image of the Kennedys and all the other lefties surrounding Kerry and his running mate will not play well in Bush’s red states.

7) Candidate skills: Kerry is not that great a speaker. He is boring and looks like an undertaker. He does not have the smile or glibness or charm of Edwards. But he won’t make a big blunder and he won’t behave like Al Gore, either. He is hungry to win, will do anything to win and should not be underestimated.

8) Mainstream Media: the leftists who parade around as ‘objective’ media members all are for Kerry precisely because he is an inside-the-beltway ‘establishment Democrat.’ They were scared of the Dean insurgency because they were not a part of it.

9) Dean is on his way down and out. That awful concession speech last night should scare the pants off everyone. When he is gone a questions remains: what of the ‘us against them’ insurgency that is very much alive in this country? If the race ends up as Kerry versus Bush, millions of voters may be against both. The split in America is clear: establishment elites versus everyone else. There is an underlying populism that is still searching for a better alternative. That is why Perot and McCain caught fire in the past elections. No one has yet harnessed those voters. Will someone new step forward?

10) Conclusion: Team Bush is reeling a little today. They were certain that Dean would be their opponent. In fact, they made that so clearly known that Dean’s electability became a major issue in Iowa and New Hampshire. Voters who want to beat Bush began to ask, “If Bush and Karl Rove want to run against Dean so badly then maybe we ought to ask why?”

Kerry is hot now. He will win New Hampshire next week. Then come some southern states. Will he play well down there? Or will Edwards start winning some primaries?

We still have a long, long way to go.

BLANK SLATE


Let us review the 2004 presidential campaign as of today:

1) Dean’s upward momentum has clearly stalled. He is, in fact, declining in New Hampshire. In Iowa his lead over Richard Gephardt, according to today’s Zogby poll, is down to a mere 2 points.

Why has this happened to the clear front-runner?

Well, because he has been running away with the race, all the other candidates – and the Bush campaign, too – have been attacking him. And the result is a predictable stalling of his momentum.

Dean has also given his opponents much ammo with which to attack him. The Canadian Television tapes are a virtual gold mine for his enemies!

Every day – heck, every news cycle – Dean is now on the defensive about some previous statement he has made. Simple political rule: if you become the issue in the race, you will lose. No, you want to make the other guy the issue.

2) Clark is the only Democrat to have upward momentum. He is gaining steadily in New Hampshire. While he may not threaten Dean for a win there in 2 weeks, Clark’s goal is simply to score a respectable second place as they head to the South. Clark wants to make this a two-man race: Clark versus Dean. Clark has improved as a candidate, has raised a lot of money considering he was a late entrant into the race and – most important of all – he has no record. He is a blank slate, unlike Dean.

3) The Bush Campaign has made one huge mistake: beginning last summer when Karl Rove went up to New England and let it be known that the GOP wanted to run against Dean, we read this these over and over again. This is now beginning to have an impact inside the Democrat party: voters who are desperate to beat Bush are now beginning to wonder exactly why Bush/Rove want to run against Dean so much?

4) The lousy jobs report Friday was a big blow to the Bush and GOP. With a supposedly expanding economy – 8.2% growth rate in the third quarter – how can the economy only produce 1000 new jobs? And with 300,000 workers dropping out of the job market what does this portend for the jobs issue in the fall?

5) Make no mistake about it: the Democratic Party badly, badly wants to beat Bush. Their primary voters are shopping for a winner. Dean may have their hearts as an anti-war leftist. But doubt about his delectability is creeping into the race. Clark is the flavor of the day because he is new and because he has no record.

6) Blank Slate: Clark can fill in those blanks any way he sees fit. He already has smartly moved to the right of Bush on the failure to get Osama Bin Laden. And his latest gambit was to proclaim that no 9/11-style attack would happen on his “watch.”

Conclusion: The race is fluid and there is momentum for Clark. Dean is still the front-runner but he may have peaked. His mouth may cost him.

PREDICTIONS – 2004



The New Year – a Presidential elections year – is upon us. Here is the outlook for what promises to be a wild leap year:


1) First some unfinished business from last year when I predicted a ‘major scandal’ involving both parties combined with a book exposing years of perfidy in Washington DC. Obviously it did not happen last year. But it will happen this year. And, if it happens before November’s elections, it will alter their outcome. This is a moral and political scandal that no previous scandal – Watergate, Teapot Dome, Monicagate - can match.

2) The Democrats will nominate Howard Dean as their presidential nominee. He will pick retiring Florida Senator Bob Graham of Florida as his Veep running mate. They will savage G.W. Bush on pre-9/11 intelligence failures and on the failure to get Osama Bin Laden.

3) Tom Kean’s 9/11 Commission will aim its fire at mid-to-low level bureaucrats in the FBI, INS, and Customs for failing to “connect the dots” that could have prevented the attacks. But President Bush and Condy Rice will be ambiguously ‘cleared’ of malfeasance. Kean’s report will not satisfy anyone.

4) No WMD will be found in Iraq.

5) The Shiites in Iraq will begin to erupt. Chaos will loom. There will be no ‘democracy’ as we know it in Iraq. It is more likely to descend into a chaotic mess of tribal hatreds and pay-backs.

6) A Ross Perot-type third presidential candidate – from the conservative side of the spectrum – may emerge by the spring. This new candidate will catch fire and will threaten to turn the whole race upside down.

7) The Medicaid prescription drug benefit will end up by election day as a huge negative among senior citizens for President Bush and those in the Congress who voted for it. This is because the more seniors hear about it the less they like it. In key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Oho and Michigan with large populations of seniors, this could become a major problem.

8) The economy will continue to recover. But the gap between rich and middle class will grow. And the middle class won’t think the economy is so gang-busters for another year or so.

9) Some job growth will occur this year. But the perception will continue that it is a ‘jobless recovery.’

10) The Clintons will try to sabotage Dean if Dean looks like he might upset Bush.

11) Al Qaeda will not attack the US this year.

12) Al Qaeda will try an awful, spectacular attack on US troops in Iraq. Remember Lebanon in 1983? (Hopefully it will fail.)

13) CIA Director George Tenet – the lone Clinton holdover in the Bush cabinet – will survive for yet another year.

14) There will be new revelations of CIA – and intelligence community – scandal this year. Ignoring good intelligence and relying on bad intelligence will be seen as the prevalent way of doing business in DC.

15) 2004’s Biggest Losers will be John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards.

16) They will all fade away from public view – forever.

17) Hillary Clinton will maintain her hold on the hearts and minds of the Democrat Party rank and file.

18) The Presidential election will have several major twists and turns before it is over. Bush should prevail.


Happy New Year!!!

DEAN-KAKIS


Howard Dean just self-destructed. Not for the primaries but for next fall’s general election against President Bush.

His off-the-cuff, knee-jerk – and, thus insightful as to his real personality – comment that he “would not prejudge” Osama Bin Laden before a trial is the single worst presidential campaign mistake since Mike Dukakis in 1988.

Back then, the short and determined governor of a liberal, northeastern state was asked during one of the presidential debates against the first President Bush what he would do if he caught a man raping and murdering his wife.

The Duke replied to the effect that “l hope that the law would take care of the situation.” Of course, what he should have said was, “I’d take a baseball bat and beat the brains out of the bastard before the cops arrived.”

But overly intellectual lefties just can’t express emotions – if they have them – other than liberal guilt and the automatic desire to blame America for every wrong on the planet.

Dukakis’ mistake sealed the deal for Vice President Bush. Coupled with the Willie Horton fiasco, Dukakis was forever pictured in the eyes of the voters as yet another hopelessly liberal egghead from the northeast.

Now, 18 years later, we have another short and determined governor of a liberal, northeastern state - desperate not to be typed as another Dukakis - who has allowed his undisciplined mouth to get him into major trouble.

Merely ‘sounding’ fair about Osama Bin Laden is politically fatal. After all, Osama himself admitted on the first post-9/11 videotape from Afghanistan that he had planned and authorized the hijackings and even boasted that because of his own background in engineering he suspected the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers would melt to the ground.

Dean’s problem is that he is so hung up on the alleged ‘cooking’ of the Iraq intelligence leading up to that war that he can’t see that Osama is a far different issue altogether. Yes, there may be debate over the threat posed by Saddam; there is no doubt whatsoever that Osama has already attacked us!

Frankly, this is G.W. Bush’s soft underbelly. Any candidate running against him can actually move to the right of Bush by advocating an all-out war against Osama and Al Qaeda featuring 500,000 or more troops, if necessary, to invade both Afghanistan and Pakistan to root out Osama and his top deputy, Ayman Al-Zwahiri. This candidate should advocate going door-to-door or cave-to-cave to find and kill or capture these two international murderers.

And to those who say such an effort would destabilize Pakistan and open the way for a fundamental Islamic coup, guess what? That is about to happen anyway!

President Bush promised two years ago to get Osama “dead or alive.” He followed that with a total effort instead to get Saddam. Why haven’t we expended the same effort to get Osama as we have on Iraq?

This unanswered question is Bush’s Achilles Heel next year.

Now Dean has blown his chance to exploit it.

By sounding so ‘legalistic’ and ‘fair-minded” about a mass-murderer, Dean has given President Bush an opening as big as the one the Duke gave his father back in 1984.

SADDAM: SPEICHER, DRUGS & QUESTIONS



Yes, it is a great, great day. The Capture of Saddam is a Big Day for us all.

Now, before Saddam is turned over to Iraqi control, here is what US forces need to do:

1) Saddam needs to be interrogated - thoroughly - preferably under the use of the best ‘truth-inducing’ drugs we now have. (This is being done on other captured combatants – Iraqis, Al Qaeda and Taliban.)

No one needs to know – including Saddam himself – that these drugs were administered to him. The last thing we need from the Left is a ‘human rights’ debate over the human rights of this murderous bastard.

Let’s get on with it. The truth is more important than a legal debate in the World Court or the Hague.

2) Key Questions: First, we must get to the bottom of the Scott Speicher mystery – now! Presumably we have thoroughly interrogated all other captured Iraqis about our only missing POW from the first Gulf War. Maybe it is true that Speicher was held under the personal control of Saddam and his oldest son, Uday. And when Uday went to meet Allah and receive his 72 black-eyed virgins, he took invaluable knowledge with him. If so, we need to get Saddam to answer each and every unanswered question about Speicher – now!

Speicher is our first priority. Our government has bragged that “we never leave anyone behind.” OK, then let’s recover Scott Speicher – hopefully alive - or then his remains so that his family can rest in peace.

3) Next, of course, is everything to do with WMD – the justification for our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Included in this line of questioning should be everything to do with the acquisition of nuclear material: what did he buy, from which country and where is it?

4) Next is Iraqi connections – if any – to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Let us find out for once and for all if this link truly existed. Was there an Iraqi role in 9/11 and the 1993 WTC bombing?

5) Also, what role did the Russians – especially their military – play in re-arming Iraq in the 12 years since the first Gulf War? Did Moscow help in WMD acquisition?

6) Let’s also put to rest once and for all the role behind the scenes of the French Government. Were they ‘on the take’ from Saddam and thus opposed to the war?

RESULTS: What may happen next in Iraq:

1) With Saddam in captivity, American media talking-head pundits are speculating that this will improve the situation ‘on the ground’ in Iraq. Prediction: it won’t. Here is why:

2) With Saddam under Iraqi control, it will only focus the Resistence’s anger ever more at the Provisional Government Authority. The bad guys will furiously try to free their hero or to kill new Iraqi leaders. (In fact, this has already been going on for several weeks.) Look for it to increase now.

3) The Shiite community – the majority of the Iraqi people – are now going to say, “America, thank you for freeing us from Saddam and now for capturing him. Now that he is in captivity, please leave Iraq and let us run our own country.”

The Shiites have had decades of brutal oppression from Saddam. Thus, they have tempered their religious fanaticism during the months since the fall of Baghdad last April. But they have been chafing at the bit and increasingly desirous of the US leaving Iraq. Saddam’s capture will now precipitate even more anxiety among the Shiites that the American ‘occupation’ must end before elections are held that again favor the minority Sunni Muslims.

The Shiites have always been the wild card in the post war Iraq political equation. The nightmare scenario is that they will take to the streets in an Iran-style religious uprising. If they do, all bets are off for peace and democracy in Iraq.

Like Yugoslavia under Tito, Iraq’s three distinct peoples were held together by the common fear of the jackbooted dictator. With him now out of the equation, Iraq may go the route of Yugoslavia: civil wars, lawlessness, paybacks, ethnic cleansings and a totally unmanageable situation – all leading to the formation of independent new nations.

Yes, it is a great, great day. Saddam’s capture is a victory for our wonderful troops. But it may be the beginning of an ever worse situation on the ground in Iraq.

HOW TO WIN WAR ON DRUGS


We are losing the war against drugs – legal and illegal – in part because we have chosen to stigmatize drugs morally instead of focusing on facts.

It is true that the Hollywood/media elites romanticize drug use, but we need to focus instead on facts.

We need a national TV ad campaign simply explaining what science now knows about the damage to your body if you take these drugs.

Just last Friday Reuters ran two short stories illustrating exactly how damaging popular drugs are:


1)Cocaine and Ecstasy Cause DNA Mutation -Italy Study
Fri December 5, 2003 12:25 PM ET

ROME (Reuters) - Cocaine and ecstasy not only cause addiction and raise the risk of cancer but also provoke genetic mutations, Italian scientists said on Friday.
"Cocaine and ecstasy have proved to be more dangerous than we had imagined," said Giorgio Bronzetti, chief scientist at the National Center for Research's (CNR) biotechnology department.

"These drugs, on top of their toxicological effects, attack DNA provoking mutations and altering the hereditary material. This is very worrying for the effects it could have on future generations," he said.

The use of ecstasy, a drug popular at all-night dance parties, increased by 70 percent between 1995 and 2000 according to a United Nations report published in September.

Ecstasy and amphetamines have overtaken cocaine and heroin as the fastest growing global narcotics menace, the study said.

The CNR report, which took more than three years to complete, said animal tests had shown a direct relationship between ecstasy and cocaine intake and the effects on DNA.

"In other words, the longer the time frame of drug consumption, the greater the damage to DNA," Bronzetti said.


2) Study: Smoking Cannabis Causes Damage to Lungs
Fri December 5, 2003 07:14 AM ET

By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Smoking cannabis is not the harmless recreational activity it may seem because it can cause lung damage, researchers said Friday.

Regularly smoking three or four joints a week, even for less than six years, can impair lung function and rob the body of antioxidants that protect cells against damage that can lead to heart disease and cancer.

"Smoking cannabis on a regular basis actually depletes your lung of protective antioxidant substances...and this may have chronic long-term implications for young individuals," said Dr Sarah Nuttall of the University of Birmingham in central England.

In a small study involving 20 people aged 19 to 30, including non-smokers and those who smoked tobacco and cannabis, Nuttall and her team took blood samples, measured lung function and tested for antioxidant markers. She presented the finding at a meeting of the British Thoracic Society in London.

"We found that smokers, compared to non-smokers, had impaired lung function," Nuttall said in an interview.

Cannabis smokers also had significantly lower levels of a protective antioxidant and nitric oxide, which is involved in lung function, than non-smokers.

"These findings are important in young individuals in which the use of cannabis is increasing and may have serious long-term implications for what is currently regarded as a relatively harmless recreational habit," she said.

Dr John Harvey, of the British Thoracic Society, called for more research into the effects of smoking on the lungs.

"It is vital that young people understand the dangers of both cigarette and cannabis smoking since these habits can start having a serious impact on their lungs at an early stage," he said in a statement.

Some European countries have taken a relaxed approach to cannabis use. Although it is technically illegal in the Netherlands, the drug can be bought and used in cannabis coffee shops in the country.

The Netherlands was also the first nation to make cannabis available as a prescription drug in pharmacies for chronically ill patients.

© Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.



Why can’t we take these two reports – and scores of others – and fashion a huge national TV, radio and print campaign to teach our fellow citizens that they are irreparably harming themselves and their future offspring?

No preaching, no moralizing and no pontificating.

Just the facts, ma’am.

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