CAMPAIGN PROPS


Next week down in Charleston, South Carolina at the site of the USS Yorktown Memorial, Senator John F. Kerry will formally announce his presidential campaign. He will use the carrier as a visual backdrop for the announcement – and as a metaphorical backdrop for his campaign.

Kerry – desperate to regain some momentum to the surging Howard Dean – has arranged this ‘pro-military’ event to contrast his Vietnam War record to George Bush’s and to mock Bush’s May 1 carrier landing off the coast of San Diego.

Kerry, of course, is a total political prostitute. He voted last October for the Iraq campaign; now that it has soured he is aping Howard Dean’s strong anti-war stance. But Kerry was also bothered by Bush’s flight-suit-wearing carrier landing. He thought that was wrong for someone who never served in the military.

Both Kerry and Bush were – and are – wrong for using US Navy carriers as campaign props – especially when neither of them ever served on a carrier.

If the first President Bush or Senator John McCain – both carrier pilots – had used their old carriers in their campaigns it would be totally defensible. But this President Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. And John Kerry piloted Navy patrol boats in Vietnam.

It is unseemly to use our fighting men and women as ‘campaign props’ – especially when they are dying daily in Iraq.

Both Bush and Kerry are playing politics with our soldiers. But I guess we should not be surprised. Let us examine a few facts:

Team Bush has lied and covered up about our US POWs from the Vietnam War – and they lied back in 1991 about Navy Pilot Scott Speicher when he was shot down in Iraq.

High-ranking members of the administration have served for up to thirty years in previous White Houses. During that time they had a hands-on role in the intelligence about living US POWs held against their will in Vietnam and Laos. And in June 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin personally told NBC News and President George H.W. Bush that there “might” be living US POWs from the Vietnam War alive “in the territory of the former Soviet Union.”

What did the first Bush Administration do about this earth-shattering claim from the elected President of Russia? Did they rush teams to the former USSR to search? Did they pay Russia to help us ‘find’ these American heroes? No! They mocked Yeltsin! National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft backgrounded the press that Yeltsin "must be drunk."

Almost every member of the first Bush Administration’s national security team is now a member of this Bush Administration including Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice and Scowcroft.

At the same time that Team Bush was ignoring Yeltsin’s claim, up on Capitol Hill the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POWs was also purposefully downplaying the possibility that some American POWs were still alive in the former USSR. He was holding hearings – rigged hearings – that he used to ‘close the books on the POW issue’ as an impediment to normalizing relations with Hanoi.

That chairman was Senator John F. Kerry.

Now the two camps – Bush and Kerry – are vying for the pro-military audience.

And yet they have both run roughshod over thousands of pages of hard intelligence – much harder than that indicating WMD in Iraq – that has shown US POWs still being held against their will in SE Asia.

Kerry’s USS Yorktown escapade particularly rankles: in 1944 my uncle, John LeBoutillier (after whom I am named) was a carrier pilot on the Yorktown. He took off one day on a bombing mission and was shot down over the tiny island of Rota. They never found him, his plane or his body. His mother – my grandmother -never got over the loss of her “baby.” She waited six months after the September 1945 end of the war and when all the POWs had come home and there was no John LeBoutillier she died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The stress, worry and despair literally killed her.

To think of John LeBout’s ship being used as a campaign prop by a weasel senator who helped cover-up the existence of POWs from another war is enough to make all of us sick.

TROJAN HORSES



As candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to not answer specific questions about his stances on issues – and as his poll numbers decline – Republicans should ask one question: if we nominate and elect a candidate who will not tell us where he stands, why are we so in love with him?

“Because he can win!”

That is the reply from many who want the power in GOP hands – no matter what.

But let us examine the case of New York City and the so-called Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Mr. Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire, was a life-long Democrat who voted in 2000 for both Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. He then decided to run for Mayor in 2001 and was quickly informed that as a rich white man he probably could not win the Democratic nod for Mayor.

No problem, said Bloomberg. He quickly changed his party registration and proceeded to pour cash into the virtually broke New York City GOP coffers. Quickly the party leaders happily endorsed Bloomberg.

Then came 9/11 and a split Democrat field and Rudi Giuliani’s attempt to stay in power for an extra 6 months. When all was said and done, Bloomberg narrowly squeaked by Mark Green.

Within a year and a half, the Republican Bloomberg has done the following in New York City: raised taxes, raised rents, raised the cost of water, limited the number of words and numbers on awnings, banned smoking in all public places – which has caused a 40% loss of business in city bars and restaurants – taken over the public schools and created the nation’s first all-Gay High School.

This is a Republican?

No, the problem here in New York is that the GOP was for sale and Bloomberg’s billions bought the nomination.

Now in California the same thing may be happening. Arnold Schwarzenegger – an entertaining and humorous actor – speaks only in vague generalities. And his aides and campaign spokesmen keep leaking that he may have to raise taxes.

The Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, married to a Kennedy, appears to be a typical western European socialist. This particular brand of thinking believes in capitalism - but also they believe in interventionist government with ‘cradle-to-grave’ health and security programs.

Even before running for office, Mr. Schwarzenegger campaigned for and won a ballot initiative to provide after-school programs for poor kids. Noble in intent, such a program will cost the California taxpayers more than $500 million this year – in a year with a $38 billion dollar deficit.

He is for gun control, gay marriages and gay adoption. And his chief economic advisor, investor Warren Buffet, a day after joining the Schwarzenegger campaign, came out for higher California property taxes. And Arnold refuses to can him.

These mixed signals indicate that Mr. Schwarzenegger may be – like Mike Bloomberg in New York City – a Trojan Horse. They take power under the GOP party label and then once in office they reveal themselves to be Big Government liberals.

The father of modern day Republicansim – Ronald Reagan – used to say that the key to victory was to have “no pale pastels.” In other words, to clearly contrast yourself from your opponent. But today too many Republicans want to hide or shade their views in hopes of sneaking into office.

What is wrong with running for office and making it quite clear what you are going to do – and what you are not going to do?

Isn’t that really the only honest way to run?

MORE KENNEDY THAN REAGAN



In the ten days since Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surprise TONIGHT SHOW announcement that he is indeed running for governor of California, he has already begun to reveal himself.

He is yet to make one substantive statement about the crisis which has reduced the great state of California into a junk bond financial disaster.

You would think that a candidate - any candidate - who runs for office does so precisely because he or she has ideas about how to fix things. Otherwise, to run for office is mere ego self-gratification.

Yet here we are ten days after a passionate attack on the state of affairs in California and Ahnold has still not told the voters publicly what he would do to fix the problems in Sacramento.

Instead we are ‘leaked’ stories that his wife – and Kennedy niece – Maria Shriver is an ‘equal partner’ in running the campaign. And the campaign announces that financier Warren Buffet is now advising the campaign. But then a day later Mr. Buffet writes in the WALL STREET JOURNAL that California’s property taxes are too low. And just last night – in another carefully orchestrated leak - we learn that Ahnold has told his campaign advisors that he is not ruling out raising taxes.

The result of this ‘too-clever-by-half’ campaign strategy is the creation of a GOP candidate for governor who is partial to tax increases and may want to repeal the landmark Proposition 13 which lowered property taxes and launched a national tax revolt back in 1978.

This is insane!

The problem is simple: Mr. Schwarzenegger thought by simply throwing his hat into the ring that the whole campaign would happily be about his movie one-liners and his engaging personality. But, in fact, his problem is that he either does not know what he stands for or believes in or he does not want to tell the voters. Thus he is adopting positions from people like Warren Buffet that are not consistent with Ahnold’s public – GOP – support. Indeed, so far Ahnold sounds more like a Kennedy than a Reagan.

The oft-asked question: Is Schwarzenegger another Reagan can be answered quite crisply. No. Ronnie Reagan was politically active from the later 1940’s and was so fascinated by policy debates that his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, actually divorced him because all he wanted to talk about was politics. Reagan was the exact opposite of Ahnold: he loved taking positions in the public debate of an issue.

By the time Reagan made his national speech in behalf of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, Old Dutch was a consistent-thinking, true-blue conservative who soon became the unquestioned leader of the Right. He did not need stock-pickers to tell him about public policy.

True, this race is still early. The latest Field Poll, however, already shows a decline since the TONIGHT SHOW for Mr. Schwarzenegger. This is probably attributable to Ahnold’s baffling disappearing act and refusal to come out and state what he would do to fix the financial mess in Sacramento.

All the other candidates have clearly stated what they would do. Bill Simon and Tom Mclintock – the two stalwart conservatives – have made it clear how they would cut spending and regulations in Sacramento and not increase taxes. And yet they are so far getting nowhere because of the star power of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It is a shame that a golden opportunity in the Golden State has been hijacked by a Big Government Tax Raiser. It is even more of a shame that the Republican Party in their eagerness to win has fallen all over themselves for a candidate who repudiates virtually every position championed by California’s greatest gift to America: Ronald Reagan.

THE KENNEDY CURSE


Edward Klein has written THE KENNEDY CURSE (St. Martin’s Press) and it is currently ranked number 7 on this week’s NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list.

Mr. Klein has granted me an exclusive interview about his fascinating book – and about his many years covering the Kennedys:



1) JLeB: Is there a real ‘Kennedy Curse’ or is it just a turn of phrase?

Ed Klein: The Kennedy Curse is real, and can be measured in lives lost and lives ruined—-at least 20 in the past 40 years. The Kennedys have an obsession with power and a lust for dominance over others. They act as though they are not governed by the rules of God and men, and their fantasy of omnipotence puts them on a fatal collision course with reality.



2) JLeB: What role did Rose Kennedy play in the formation of her sons’ characters? What about their serial infidelity?

Ed Klein: The home of Joseph and Rose Kennedy—-with its harsh, authoritarian father and cold, rejecting mother—-was the perfect hothouse for nurturing narcissists. Jack, Bobby, and Teddy were full of longing for a warm and tender mother. They had an overpowering craving to be close to a woman, and yet they hated this feeling because they feared it meant that they were weak as men. As a result, they put on a tremendous show of Don Juanish behavior to demonstrate they were really strong, powerful men.


3) JLeB: Mr. Klein, this is your third book on the Kennedys. How much cooperation have you had from the Kennedy Family? And how much interference?

Ed Klein: Whenever I write anything the least bit critical about the Kennedys, I can always be sure of one thing: the empire will strike back. The media attacks on The Kennedy Curse have been orchestrated in Senator Ted Kennedy’s Washington office by his press secretary, Melody Miller. Her smear campaign has been conducted through liberals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who has told his friends in the mainstream media that if they want access to the Kennedys in the future, they had better get on the team and attack the author of The Kennedy Curse. And they have.

4) JLeB: What drove Joe Kennedy? What was he trying to overcome? Was it class warfare with him, an Irish immigrant, versus the Boston Brahmin Establishment?


Ed Klein: Joe Kennedy harbored deep feelings of worthlessness. In The Kennedy Curse, I trace these feelings back to the Kennedys' early history, which left an indelible scar on their psyche. Among America's immigrant groups in the nineteenth century, the Irish were the only people who suffered the soul-searing experience of colonialism. Before coming to this country, they lived under the heel of cruel English oppressors for several centuries. Although the Kennedys achieved financial security early in their American sojourn, they were denied social acceptance and status by the Protestant Establishment. Joe and his sons never forgot this slight and they sought revenge all of their lives.


5) JLeB: Was Jackie’s life an extension of the Kennedy Curse? How?


Ed Klein: Jackie certainly thought so. Jackie had an almost pathological obsession with the safety of her children. She worried that John and Caroline were in constant danger of losing their lives. Her anxiety was understandable: She had lost three other children (a stillbirth, a miscarriage, and her two-day-old son Patrick), two husbands (John Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis), a step-son (Onassis’s son Alexander), and a brother-in-law (Robert Kennedy). She had come to the conclusion that in some mystical way she was personally responsible for these tragedies.
"I sometimes feel as though I’m a kind of Typhoid Mary," Jackie once told me. Another time, she said: "If I had known Jack was going to be killed, I would never have named our son John F. Kennedy Jr."
I never knew how to respond to these jawdropping remarks.
"Surely," I would tell Jackie, "you don't believe in a family jinx or curse."
But Jackie was deadly serious about her premonitions of disaster.

CURING OBESITY



Obesity is sweeping America.

It is an epidemic.

And it is already causing major health and economic problems.

The related medical problems are costing our country billions of dollars, not to mention the suffering of the patients and their families.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, joint and orthopedic problems, and cancer are all directly related to being grossly overweight. Depression, too, may result from obesity.

In sum, being overweight is a serious – and deadly – health problem.

Anyone who looks around in an airport or shopping mall is taken aback by the change in the American ‘physique.’ Now it is the thin person who stands out. Twenty years ago the obese ‘fatty’ was noticeable; today this person is the norm.

We all by now know the ‘whys’: too much fast food which is loaded with calories and fat; too little exercise; too much time sitting in front of televisions and computers.

But the cure to this deadly national epidemic is tougher to implement than to articulate: eating less - much less - and exercising more. Losing weight – especially after you become middle aged – is very difficult. Weight goes on much faster than it comes off.

Frankly speaking you have to wonder if most obese people have ‘what it takes’ to get a grip on their problem. Do they have the self-discipline to cut their caloric intake down to about 1200 per day? After probably eating 6,000 to 10,000 per day? Can they withstand the massive hunger pangs that will grip them for weeks until their bodies adjust? Do they have the mental toughness to stay away from a Big Mac or a milkshake?

Well, for those who can’t cut out the overeating there is hope in the form of a new drug that so far has shown great promise in experiments on monkeys. KB-141, a hormonal compound, dropped a whopping 7% of body weight in just one week - with no apparent side effects. KB-141 works on the same principle as the hormone produced by the thyroid gland boosting the metabolic rate without increasing the heartbeat.

Of course, these tests were on monkeys; and we have years to go before the drug could be cleared for use on obese people. But at least it is hopeful.

While most research into obesity has focused on appetite suppression, Gary Grover of Bristol-Meyers Squibb said he decided to look for ways to help burn more energy, but do it in the safest way possible.

"This is really a novel way of looking at obesity," he said.
"It's an interesting and intriguing finding, but it needs more investigation," added Brian Henry of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Grover stressed that he is not administering thyroid hormones, which is permitted only for patients whose thyroids do not function properly. The goal, he said, is to develop a treatment to assist obese people with normal thyroid function.

Some medical breakthrough like KB-141 is going to cure obesity one of these days. We just can’t keep getting fatter as a nation; we need to get back in shape – physically, fiscally and spiritually.

JOHN LEBOUTILLIER APPEARANCE CANCELLED FRIDAY NIGHT

Because of the California recall story, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher has cancelled/postponed my appearance Friday night in behalf of the Counter Clinton Library. They have Governor Gray Davis on and want to focus on him and Arnold The Terminator.

John LeBoutillier will be on HBO's REAL TIME with Bill Maher tomorrow - Friday, August 8 - night.

The show airs live at 11PM East Coast time. I will be on after Governor Gray Davis - and I will only be on for a few minutes to talk about the Counter Clinton Library.

Please watch!

JOHN LEBOUTILLIER ON HBO FRIDAY NIGHT - LIVE

John LeBoutillier will be on HBO's REAL TIME with Bill Maher tomorrow - Friday, August 8 - night.

The show airs live at 11PM East Coast time. I will be on after Governor Gray Davis - and I will only be on for a few minutes to talk about the Counter Clinton Library.

Please watch!

John LeBoutillier will be on HBO's REAL TIME with Bill Maher tomorrow - Friday - night.

The show airs live at 11PM East Coast time. I will be on after Governor Gray Davis - and I will only be on for a few minutes to talk about the Counter Clinton Library.

Please watch!

JOHN LEBOUTILLIER ON HBO FRIDAY NIGHT

John LeBoutillier will be on HBO's REAL TIME with Bill Maher tomorrow - Friday - night.

The show airs live at 11PM East Coast time. I will be on after Governor Gray Davis - and I will only be on for a few minutes to talk about the Counter Clinton Library.

Please watch!

JOHN LEBOUTILLIER ON HBO FRIDAY NIGHT

John LeBoutillier will be on HBO's REAL TIME with Bill Maher tomorrow - Friday - night.

The show airs live at 11PM East Coast time. I will be on after Governor Gray Davis - and I will only be on for a few minutes to talk about the Counter Clinton Library.

Please watch!

NEW LEFT ALIVE AND WELL



The New Left – that particular brand of liberalism that basically hates America and traditional American values is alive and well.

Proof of this ongoing phenomenon slaps you in the face all day long.

Today, for example, we awake to news that both TIME and NEWSWEEK have placed the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates – former Vermont Governor Howard Dean – on their covers five months before the first caucus.

Then we hear that the Episcopal Church is about to appoint its first openly gay bishop – a divorced father of two.

Then we see that there are several summer replacement shows on television that are openly gay.

And then we see President Bush – in the middle of a War on Terror and a job recession – being forced to address the issue of gay marriage.

If you read the sports pages you would also have recently heard a former NBA player estimate that 80% of all current NBA players regularly smoke marijuana. And a retired baseball player claims that 80% of major league baseball players use amphetamines.

By now you may get my drift: 1960’s liberalism is in control of the social agenda of this country. Drugs, promiscuity, anti-military attitudes – all hallmarks of the Jane Fonda-led New Left – are again at the forefront.

Howard Dean on the cover of the two main weekly news magazines says it all. An anti-military leftist who wants nationalized health care, gay marriage and all the standard liberal spending programs, he is the political symbol of today’s New Left. And those two magazines show their stripes by putting him on their covers before he has won anything.

The United States is today on an odd ‘dual course.’ In one way we have changed from the 1960’s; today we are pro-military, anti-criminal, pro-fiscal responsibility and somewhat suspicious of government’s ability to solve problems. But, at the same time, the social fabric of the nation has been torn apart. Drug reliance – both illegal and prescription – is rampant. Sex – in every aspect – is out of control. The pop culture, the commercials, movies, videos, lyrics, slang are all laced with sexual references and images. Why? Sex sells, that’s why.

And these New Leftists are total hypocrites: they rail against the evils of capitalism but are themselves the greediest of all capitalists. Hillary Clinton throughout the 1980’s attacked the Decade of Greed but forgot to include herself – both with her lust for $100,000 in cattle futures and the $8m she raked in on her book.

Hollywood, the networks, the newspapers and the academic elite protected by tenure are the last bastion of the New Left. But from there they are poisoning our culture and hurting our country.

Americans have always been tolerant of different viewpoints and beliefs; that is a hallmark of our country.

But we do not need a ‘revolution’ – and we cannot afford one either.