More ammunition for Kerry Haters....

dallastigers · Aug 4, 2004

Since the left is posting article after article. I thought I would put some of the articles outside of Iraq and 09/11 on Kerry that go against the version of Kerry that is on TV currently. I posted a part or all of the story with the link, which as of today when I read them were still working except one (last one).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4121890/

Feb. 9 , 2004 issue - John Kerry needed cash, and soon. In July 1996 the Massachusetts senator was locked in a tough re-election fight, so he was more than happy to help when he heard that a generous potential contributor wanted to visit his Capitol Hill office. The donor was Johnny Chung, a glad-handing Taiwanese-American entrepreneur. Chung brought along some friends, including a Hong Kong businesswoman named Liu Chaoying.

Told that Liu was interested in getting one of her companies listed on the U.S. Stock Exchange, Kerry's aides immediately faxed over a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The next day, Liu and Chung were ushered into a private briefing with a senior SEC official. Within weeks, Chung returned the favor: On Sept. 9 he threw Kerry a fund-raiser at a Beverly Hills hotel, raking in $10,000 for the senator's re-election campaign.

In a 30-year career untainted by scandal, Kerry's encounter with Chung and Liu would turn into a political embarrassment. Federal investigators later discovered that Liu was in fact a lieutenant colonel in China's People's Liberation Army and vice president of a Chinese-government-owned aerospace firm. And Chung, who visited the Clinton White House 49 times, went on to become a central figure in the foreign-money scandals of 1996. Chung eventually pleaded guilty to funneling $28,000 in illegal contributions to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and Kerry. According to bank records and Chung's congressional testimony, the contributions came out of $300,000 in overseas wire transfers sent on orders from the chief of Chinese military intelligence—and routed through a Hong Kong bank account controlled by Liu.........
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http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040424-101351-5228r.htm

Mr. Kerry has been unilaterally downsizing the cost of his health-care plan, to which health-care economist Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University independently applied a 10-year price tag of $895 billion. In an interview last summer with Margaret Warner on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," Mr. Kerry confirmed the $900 billion price tag. Last week, however, he told Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel that his plan would cost a maximum of $650 billion over 10 years. At the same time he has been downsizing the cost of his health-care plan, he has been increasing the number of currently uninsured people it would cover. Mr. Thorpe estimated the plan would cover 26.7 million of the 43.6 million uninsured. In his April 7 budget speech at Georgetown, however, Mr. Kerry claimed his plan would "expand health care for all of our children and cover virtually all Americans."
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****Mr. Kerry also promises essentially worthless budget savings and pseudo budget discipline. In the face of federal spending that, according to projections by the Congressional Budget Office, will total at least $30 trillion over the next 10 years, Mr. Kerry's campaign offered these specific examples of fiscal restraint: "Extend Superfund (saves $17 billion over ten years); collect royalties for mineral rights of federal lands (saves $1 billion over ten years); cut electricity used by the federal government by 20 percent in 10 years (saves $14 billion over ten years); . . . freeze the federal travel budget (saves $10 billion over ten years)." To more than double his meager itemized savings, he matter-of-factly promises to reduce spending on federal contractors by $50 billion over 10 years.
****Even granting him the last, undocumented pledge, his itemized spending savings ($92 billion) total a minuscule three-tenths of 1 percent over 10 years, which doesn't even qualify as a rounding error.
****To enforce pseudo budget discipline, Mr. Kerry pledges to enact "budget caps to ensure [total federal] spending does not exceed inflation." His enforcement mechanism would be "an automatic across-the-board cut." This cut, however, would "not apply to defense, homeland security, education, Social Security, Medicare or other mandatory programs." But mandatory programs and interest payments will total $1.485 trillion in 2005. Adding in defense ($450 billion), homeland security ($30 billion) and the non-mandatory spending for education ($79 billion) and health care ($42 billion) brings Kerry-protected spending to $2.1 trillion, which is nearly 90 percent of total federal spending in 2005. This simply is not credible.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/994zlowc.asp

And there is plenty of controversy waiting to erupt over Kerry's assertions that (1) Social Security could be saved by growing the economy, and (2) if this isn't true, then means-testing would make sense for folks like Russert and Kerry. Kerry's got a secret plan for Social Security, and it involves cutting benefits. That much we know. Perhaps the press corps will get around to asking him how the third rail feels.

More than the records deception and more than Social Security foot-in-mouth, however, the most damaging of Kerry's statements was this statement: "Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the U.N. and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America's relationship with the world, which will do a number of things."

One thing such a move would be sure to do is embarrass and outrage the American public. "Literally, formally rejoin the community of nations?" What can that mean except that Kerry believes that: (1) The United States and its many allies have been acted unlawfully in liberating Iraq from Saddam; (2) the French, Russians, and Chinese should have a veto over American foreign policy; (3) an apology is in order for exposing the massive corruption of the oil-for-food program; and (4) we should be sorry for having disarmed Libya of its nuclear ambitions and mustard gas.

In fact all President Bush did was demand that the United Nations honor its own commitments, and then enforce U.N. Resolution 1441. John Kerry would seem to believe that post-9/11 America is not safe for the rest of the world and needs taming--or reintegration into the "community of nations." James Lileks wrote that Kerry clearly intends a Jolson-on-bended-knee appearance before the General Assembly, an apology to dwarf all of Clinton's apologies of the past. That indignity and more, I think. Kyoto, the Law of the Sea treaty, the International Criminal Court--you name the U.N. auspice, and Kerry will be there for it, in a "literal, formal" way.
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http://www.drudgereport.com/mattjk11.htm

NUMBER ONE: KERRY RANKED 'MOST LIBERAL' IN SENATE ROLL CALL VOTES, TOPS KENNEDY, CLINTON

NATIONAL JOURNAL on Friday claimed Democrat frontrunner John Kerry has the "most liberal" voting record in the Senate.

The results of Senate vote ratings show that Kerry was the most liberal senator in 2003, with a composite liberal score of 96.5 -- far ahead of such Democrat stalwarts as Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

NATIONAL JOURNAL's scores, which have been compiled each year since 1981, are based on lawmakers' votes in three areas: economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy.

"To be sure, Kerry's ranking as the No. 1 Senate liberal in 2003 -- and his earning of similar honors three times during his first term, from 1985 to 1990 -- will probably have opposition researchers licking their chops," NATIONAL JOURNAL reports.

Developing...

[The ratings system was first devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator at CNN, and a contributing editor to National Journal, who continues to guide the calculation process. Data processing and statistical analysis were performed by Information Technology Services of the Brookings Institution. A panel of National Journal editors and reporters initially compiled a list of 140 key congressional roll-call votes for 2003 -- 63 votes for the Senate and 77 for the House -- and classified them as relating to economic, social, or foreign policy. Roll-call data was drawn from the Congressional Record.]
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http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/g...Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/02/27&ID=Ar00800

*Taking a look at Mr. Kerry’s much-promoted Vietnam service, his military record was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor,W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry’s recollection of their discussions:

****“[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo Zumwalt,told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam,just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.‘We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,’ the admiral said. ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.” And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

****Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

****By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

****Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”And within four days of his third Purple Heart, Mr. Kerry applied to take advantage of a technicality which allowed him to request immediate transfer to a stateside post.

****Once back in the States, Mr. Kerry joined “the struggle for our veterans,” as he called it last week in Atlanta, by joining a scruffy organization called the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The VVAW’s executive director, Al Hubbard, supposedly a former Air Force captain wounded in Vietnam, quickly appointed Mr. Kerry to the executive committee.

****Mr. Kerry participated with the VVAW at agitprop rallies such as Valley Forge and the “Winter Soldier” guerrilla theater atrocity trials in Detroit, finally testifying in April 1971 before the Senate as an authority on the war crimes his fellow American servicemen had committed in Vietnam.

****Outside of his own “accidents of war,” there is no evidence that Mr. Kerry had then or has now the least idea what may or may not have been the realities of ground combat. However, he had no problem reeling off

for the Senate a series of unproven, secondhand allegations that would have been perfectly at home at the Nuremberg trials indicting his fellow veterans.

****Mr. Kerry stated there were “war crimes committed in Southeast Asia...not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-today basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.”Then Mr. Kerry got specific:

****“They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions,the bombings,the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.”

****In other words, My Lai was just another day in the life of the Vietnam War.
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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/Investigation/kerry_vietnam_medals_040425.html

April 26— Contradicting his statements as a candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry claimed in a 1971 television interview that he threw away as many as nine of his combat medals to protest the war in Vietnam.

"I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals," Kerry said in an interview on a Washington, D.C., news program on WRC-TV called Viewpoints on Nov. 6, 1971, according to a tape obtained by ABCNEWS.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Kerry has denied that he threw away any of his medals during an anti-war protest in April 1971.

Calling it a "phony controversy" instigated by the Republican party, Kerry said on Good Morning America today that he has always accurately said what took place. "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It is very simple."

He also said he — and the military — didn't make a distinction between medals and ribbons. "We threw away the symbols of what our country gave us for what we had gone through," he said.

And in an interview with ABCNEWS' Peter Jennings last December, he said it was a "myth."

But Kerry told a much different story on Viewpoints. Asked about the anti-war veterans who threw their medals away, Kerry said "they decided to give them back to their country."

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. "Well, and above that, gave back the others," he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry's most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. "I never ever implied that I did it, " Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.
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http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004646

BY JOHN F. KERRY

(Editor's note: Sen. Kerry delivered this speech on the Senate floor Feb. 27, 1992. The previous day, Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Vietnam veteran and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke in Atlanta, where he criticized fellow candidate Bill Clinton for his lack of military service during Vietnam.)

Mr. President, I also rise today--and I want to say that I rise reluctantly, but I rise feeling driven by personal reasons of necessity--to express my very deep disappointment over yesterday's turn of events in the Democratic primary in Georgia.

I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way. By that I mean that yesterday, during this presidential campaign, and even throughout recent times, Vietnam has been discussed and written about without an adequate statement of its full meaning.

What is ignored is the way in which our experience during that period reflected in part a positive affirmation of American values and history, not simply the more obvious negatives of loss and confusion.

What is missing is a recognition that there exists today a generation that has come into its own with powerful lessons learned, with a voice that has been grounded in experiences both of those who went to Vietnam and those who did not.

What is missing and what cries out to be said is that neither one group nor the other from that difficult period of time has cornered the market on virtue or rectitude or love of country.

What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be refighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary.
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/09/elec04.kerry.fees.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Back when federal lawmakers legally could be paid for speaking to outside groups, John Kerry collected more than $120,000 in fees from interests as diverse as big oil, tobacco, the liquor lobby and unions, records show.

Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry's first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech in 1987, Miami-based Metalbanc, was later indicted, along with two executives, on charges it helped the Cali drug cartel in Colombia launder money in the United States. The charges eventually were dropped because the firm was defunct.

At the time of the 1987 speech to Metalbanc, Kerry was chairman of the Senate subcommittee that investigated drug trafficking and money laundering.................
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http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200401220835.asp

As a senator with the responsibility to cast a vote on a variety of contentious issues, Kerry has had many opportunities to square off with the president. Yet an analysis of Kerry's 2003 Senate voting record shows that he did not show up for most of the Senate's confrontations with the White House.

The publication Congressional Quarterly examined 119 recorded votes held in 2003 in which the president had taken a position. CQ found that Kerry was present for just 28 percent of those votes. In contrast, Kerry's colleague from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, was present for 97 percent of the votes.

When Kerry showed up, he did indeed vote against the president a significant number of times. In 2003, according to CQ, Kerry sided against the president 70 percent of the time. Kennedy, usually viewed as the gold standard of liberal orthodoxy, voted against Bush 53 percent of the time.

In a larger examination of all Senate votes, CQ found that Kerry and Kennedy have compiled remarkably similar voting records — a fact that will no doubt be used by Republicans who will seek to portray Kerry as a classic Massachusetts liberal, should he win the Democratic nomination and face President Bush in November's general election.

CQ found that in 2003, Kerry voted with Kennedy 93 percent of the time on roll-call votes in which both men were present. While that might seem like a lot, it was, historically, a rather low number for Kerry; who voted with Kennedy 100 percent of the time on key votes in 2001, 1999, 1998, 1993, 1992, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, and 1985, according to a Republican analysis of CQ's designated key votes from those years.
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http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/Archive/200403/NAT20040324a.html

Five days after CNSNews.com reported that Democrat John Kerry had attended a 1971 anti-war meeting at which the possible assassination of U.S. senators was discussed, the presidential hopeful is still backpedaling on statements regarding his whereabouts during that meeting.

Kerry at first denied attending the November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Kansas City, Mo. But according to FBI files obtained by CNSNews.com, Kerry was in attendance at the 1971 meeting that included talk of possibly assassinating U.S. senators. VVAW members discussed targeting then-Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, John Tower of Texas and John Stennis of Mississippi because of their continuing support for the Vietnam war.

Early last week, Kerry's presidential campaign spokesman David Wade told the New York Sun, "Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting." Wade added that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW "sometime in the summer of 1971."

But following the March 18 publication of the CNSNews.com report, in which the FBI files were used to corroborate Kerry''s attendance at the meeting, Wade reversed himself.

"If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war," Wade said in a statement late last week.

Kerry also retreated from an earlier comment he made in response to a CNSNews.com question about former VVAW executive director Al Hubbard. Kerry and Hubbard appeared together on an April 18, 1971 broadcast of the news show Meet the Press to discuss their anti-war efforts.

But Hubbard, who had passed himself off as a decorated Air Force captain, was later shown to have lied about his military record. An investigation in 1971 by a CBS News reporter revealed that there were no military records showing that Hubbard had either served in Vietnam or was injured there.

When asked about his relationship with Hubbard at a televised press conference two weeks ago, Kerry said, "I haven't talked to Al Hubbard since that week" of the April 1971 Meet the Press appearance.

But after CNSNews.com reported that FBI files and eyewitness accounts from former VVAW members had placed Kerry and Hubbard in the same place on several occasions after the Meet the Press appearance, the Kerry campaign conceded that the senator was also incorrect on that point.

Other news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and ABC News picked up on aspects of the stories this week, reporting on the FBI surveillance of Kerry and his group and Kerry's inaccurate assertions regarding when he resigned from the VVAW and the last time he saw Hubbard.

Gerald Nicosia, author of the book Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement and a Kerry supporter, told CNSNews.com last week that Kerry was being less than truthful about his anti-war activities..........
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http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200405\SPE20040520a.html

The 1970 meeting that current Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry conducted with North Vietnamese communists may have violated several U.S. laws, according to an author and researcher who has studied the issue.

Kerry met with representatives from "both delegations" of the Vietnamese peace process in Paris in 1970, according to Kerry's own testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. But Kerry's meetings with the Vietnamese delegations were in direct violation of laws which forbade private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers, according to researcher and author Jerry Corsi, who began studying the anti-war movement in the early 1970s.

According to Corsi, Kerry violated U.S. code 18 U.S.C. 953. "A U.S. citizen cannot go abroad and negotiate with a foreign power," Corsi told CNSNews.com.

By Kerry's own admission, he met in 1970 with delegations from the North Vietnamese communist government and discussed how the Vietnam War should be stopped.

Kerry explained to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright in a question and answer session on Capitol Hill a year after his Paris meetings that the war needed to be stopped "immediately and unilaterally." Then Kerry added, "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PVR)."

However, both of the delegations to which Kerry referred were communist. Neither included the U.S. allied, South Vietnamese or any members of the U.S. delegation. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was the government of the North Vietnamese communists and the Provisional Revolutionary Government was an arm of the North Vietnamese government that included the Vietcong. ....
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http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/05/16/Politics/Kerrys.Disloyal.Nicaraguan.Journey-681125.shtml

In his first major foreign-policy action as a U.S. senator nearly 20 years ago, John Kerry accused the United States of "funding terrorism." Fresh from a trip to the Far East, Kerry made his sensational allegation in Washington before flying to Nicaragua, then in the grip of a Marxist-Leninist junta, to coauthor a propagandistic peace proposal designed to disarm the U.S.-backed forces fighting to oust the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime.

Barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry made his mark, and he made it big, as one of the leading opponents of President Ronald Reagan's effort to defeat Soviet-sponsored revolutionaries in the American hemisphere. The junior senator stopped at nothing: working with the nation's sworn ideological enemies, making damaging, distorted and often baseless allegations about U.S. covert operations, accusing his own government of sponsoring terrorism, and even damaging an FBI operation against a Colombian cocaine cartel.

That April 1985 journey to Nicaragua would become a trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft: making common cause with enemies of the United States - and allowing himself to be used by them - in order to win political battles at home
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14422

Despite the prominence of national security and the war on terrorism as issues in the Presidential campaign -- and despite a disturbing report from the 9/11 Commission linking al Qaeda to Iran -- there has been sparse coverage on how the two major Presidential candidates stand on the issue of how to deal with Iran. This is surprising, because of Iran's longstanding ties to terrorist groups, and because of the ongoing struggle for the future of the country between hardline reactionary leftovers from the Khomeini era, and the pro-democracy and student movements.

The lack of extensive coverage is surprising as well because of the wide gulf between President Bush's and Senator Kerry's Iran policies. This recent Reuters news article reveals that while President Bush would work to support pro-democracy groups that want to displace the Islamic regime, Senator Kerry takes a decidedly different view:

"Reflecting a different approach, Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers told Reuters in an interview: 'Yes, we would be prepared to talk to Iran.'

"He said the Democratic candidate is 'not naïve' and recognizes deep differences between the two countries. These include nuclear proliferation, the Arab-Israeli conflict and policy toward Iran's neighbor Iraq.

"'But we do think there are some issues about which we can talk and can move forward and hopefully those issues would represent building blocks on which to base a broader degree of cooperation,' Beers said."
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http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/KerryEdwards_menu-31Jul04.htm

What was being served inside the bus?

While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, and their families were having a “lite” lunch at Wendy’s in the Town of Newburgh Friday, drumming up local support right after the national convention in Boston, their real lunches were waiting on their bus.

A member of the Kerry advance team called Nikola’s Restaurant at the Newburgh Yacht Club the night before and ordered 19 five-star lunches to go that would be picked up at noon Friday. Management at the restaurant, which is operated by CIA graduate chef Michael Dederick, was told the meals would be for the Kerry and Edwards families and actor Ben Affleck who was with them on the tour.

The gourmet meals to go included shrimp vindallo, grilled diver sea scallops, prosciutto, wrapped stuffed chicken, and steak salad. The meals came to about $200.
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http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004...e.Used.By.Guards.To.Torture.Them-697393.shtml

Vietnam POWs Say Kerry's Words and Deeds Were Used by Guards to Torture Them
Posted Aug. 4, 2004
By Richard Tomkins

John Kerry's bid to become commander in chief of wartime America has opened old wounds among some former Vietnam-era POWs who bristle over Kerry's antiwar activism and atrocity allegations during the Vietnam conflict.

Those activities and statements, pushed out of sight by a campaign that spotlights Kerry's service in Vietnam, were used by the POWs' North Vietnamese captors to sap the morale of prisoners and U.S. troops still in the field in South Vietnam, former POWs told United Press International.

"They were always talking about that [antiwar demonstrations], and they picked right up on Kerry's throw-away line, 'Don't be the last man to die in a lost cause, or die for a lost cause,'" said Kenneth Cordier, an Air Force pilot who spent 2,284 days as a prisoner. "They repeated that incessantly. ... They used these photographs and inputs, voice tapes, whatever, from these peace people to try to convince us the whole country had turned antiwar and we were showing a very bad attitude and would never go home."
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http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/2/144656.shtml

The Democrats' claim has been debunked by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Bush, in fact, has overseen a 27 percent increase in funding for veterans. That number would increase to 37 percent, based on this year's budget proposal.

During a Democrat primary debate on Feb. 15, Sen. John Kerry raised the issue of the veterans' budget. He suggested that Bush's "cuts" were unpatriotic. His language, even five months later as the party's presidential nominee, continued to resonate last week.

"He's cut the VA budget and not kept faith with veterans across this country," Kerry said in February. "And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country."

But World War II veteran Byron Buckingham of Nashua, N.H., said he had experienced none of the supposed cuts suggested by Kerry.

"I get treatment at the VA hospital, and during the Bush administration, he put $45 billion into the veterans' budget," said Buckingham, commander of the New Hampshire Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Vietnam veteran Paul J. Chevalier of Portsmouth, N.H., said that when compared to other administrations, Bush had done more to help veterans than he's getting credit for.

"In the eight years under President Clinton, the total money allocated to the VA increased 30 percent during those eight years," Chevalier said. "In the first three years of President Bush's administration, it has already gone up 40 percent."

The New Hampshire veterans weren't the only one responding to the Democrats' attacks. Last week 24 recipients of the Medal of Honor released a letter criticizing Kerry for voting against a $1.3 billion increase in veterans' health care benefits and missing some Senate votes related to veterans.

Kerry's Scare Tactics

"We are disturbed that John Kerry would try to scare veterans with his false accusations, and we are disappointed in his lack of support for today's troops," they wrote. "President Bush has led the way on improving veterans' benefits, supporting our troops and restoring honor and dignity to the White House."

One veteran explained the Democrats' use of language as a clever ploy. Vietnam veteran Dana E. Hussey, also of New Hampshire, said veterans would like more money than Bush has proposed, but that doesn't constitute a cut.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4009850,00.html

ITTSBURGH (AP) - Does John Kerry, who supports higher automobile fuel economy standards, own a gas-guzzling SUV? He does, but says it belongs to the family, not to him.

During a conference call Thursday with reporters to discuss his upcoming jobs tour through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, the Democratic presidential candidate was asked whether he owned a Chevrolet Suburban.

``I don't own an SUV,'' said Kerry, who supports increasing existing fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 in order to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies.

Kerry also has made rising gasoline prices an issue in the campaign against President Bush. In Houston on Thursday, Kerry said the president broke a 2000 campaign pledge to ``jawbone'' oil-producing nations by pressuring them to increase their output.

Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.

``The family has it. I don't have it,'' he said.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64727-2004Jan30?language=printer

Kerry Leads in Lobby Money
Anti-Special-Interest Campaign Contrasts With Funding

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made a fight against corporate special interests a centerpiece of his front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show.

Kerry, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who fought and won four expensive political campaigns, has received nearly $640,000 from lobbyists, many representing telecommunications and financial companies with business before his committee, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

For his presidential race, Kerry has raised more than $225,000 from lobbyists, better than twice as much as his nearest Democratic rival. Like President Bush, Kerry has also turned to a number of corporate officials and lobbyists to "bundle" contributions from smaller donors, often in sums of $50,000 or more, records provided by his campaign show.

"Senator Kerry has taken individual contributions from lobbyists, but that has not stopped him from fighting against special interests on behalf of average Americans," said Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "If anyone thinks a contribution can buy Kerry's vote, then they are wasting their money."

Kerry said on Jan. 19 that he would "happily release any lobbyist meeting I've ever had," but he has yet to do so. Cutter said Kerry will not release records until he compiles data on every meeting over the past 19 years, which will be a "pretty lengthy process." Kerry will not release it "piecemeal," she said.

Most members of Congress and presidential candidates turn to corporations and their Washington-based lobbyists for political assistance, most often with fundraising. All the presidential candidates take money from special interests, including Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who like Kerry has targeted corporations and lobbyists in his stump speeches. And Bush has far outpaced them all.

Because Kerry has made his fight against "Washington special interests" a new theme of his presidential campaign, campaign rivals and campaign finance watchdogs have accused him of hypocrisy.

Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a newcomer to national politics, is running a television ad that hits Kerry and others for ties to special interests. "Special interest deals. Promises unkept. Do we really need another Washington politician?" the narrator says in the ad. "A politician won't change the way Washington works."

"John Kerry has been withdrawing money from the special interest bank for his entire career and now -- because it's the popular thing to do -- he wants us to believe that he's going to close the account and go after the people that have funded his political career," said Jay Carson, a spokesman for former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

"The note of reality is he has been brought to you by special interests," said Charles Lewis of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group that has closely studied the senator's relationship with special interests. "It's very hard [for Kerry] to utter this rhetoric without some hollowness to it."

"I think it's harder for someone like Kerry to take on" Bush over special interests "because he's taken money . . . from a lot of the same" corporate sectors, added Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors money in politics. Dean, who has raised more money than Kerry in this campaign, has taken considerably less from lobbyists.

Cutter said her boss would have no problem fighting Bush on the issue because "Kerry has spent his career fighting against special interests, while Bush has never met a special interest he doesn't like. While Kerry was fighting to keep oil companies from drilling in ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge], the White House was inviting them in to tea."

Kerry or any other longtime politician inevitably faces this charge when running for president as a self-styled reformer. Unless the candidate is someone like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has made a name for himself by fighting for reform and against corporate giveaways, or a self-financed independent, like Ross Perot in the 1990s, it is very hard to turn the theme into an effective campaign message, Noble said. "It's the classic situation: Most politicians get money from what they are calling special interests because they are the ones who give."

Kerry, who did not begin his campaign with a heavy emphasis on fighting lobbyists, appears to have usurped the special interest message from Edwards and Dean over the past few months. Now, Kerry's standard campaign refrain includes this warning to the "special interests" and their lobbyists: "We're coming, you're going and don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Kerry says he would extend the current one-year lobbying ban on government officials to five years and issue an executive order requiring a public record of all meetings between government employees and lobbyists. Since the early days of the Bush administration, Democrats, including Kerry, have been pressuring Vice President Cheney to disclose his contacts with energy officials who influenced the White House energy policy, making this a political issue for 2004.

Under current law, lobbyists must register with the federal government, list their clients and in very general terms describe the issues they are working on and which branch of government they are seeking to influence. White House and congressional officials are not required to disclose their meetings.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), co-author of the newest campaign finance law, said Kerry was not one of the half-dozen members who put together the reform package but "he's always been one of our most consistent and strongest supporters." Kerry unilaterally swore off political action committee funds from corporations during his four Senate runs, a popular position for reform advocates before large, unregulated of "soft money" from corporations, unions and rich people started dominating politics in the 1990s. "It's great he didn't take PAC money, but let's not go crazy here," said Lewis.

The reason: As Kerry was pushing reforms and boasting of his PAC-free campaigns, he was aggressively soliciting money from individuals working for companies and ringing up much bigger checks from corporations in the form of soft money. Kerry has not been involved in any of the major fundraising scandals of the past three decades -- although he was one of several politicians who took money from Taiwanese American businessman Johnny Chung, who was convicted of contributing illegally to Bill Clinton and many others.

The Hill, a Washington-based publication covering Capitol Hill, this month reported that Kerry in 1999 lobbied the Coast Guard on a rule-making process that benefited a foreign company represented by Cassidy & Associates. Soon after, employees of Cassidy & Associates sent Kerry $7,250 in bundled contributions. Jim Ruggieri, the Coast Guard official who handled the matter, told the paper it was highly unusual for a senator to intervene on such a matter.

A review of FEC and other data by The Washington Post found that Kerry has raked in millions from U.S. corporations, especially financial companies such as Citigroup and telecom firms, including Rubert Murdoch's News Corp., which also flew one of his Senate staffers to California for a meeting.

In the presidential race, Kerry has accepted contributions from the same "special interests" he accuses Bush of being too cozy with: HMOs, drug companies and energy firms. He has raised nearly $27,000 from oil and gas companies, tops of the remaining Democratic candidates; $34,000 from health maintenance organizations, second to Dean; and $18,500 from pharmaceutical companies, third behind Dean and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.). Even after subtracting money Kerry has raised for his presidential campaign, he ranks in the top four Senate beneficiaries of lobbyist cash, the CRP found.

One of Kerry's biggest -- and perhaps most controversial -- donors has been the Boston-based law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo. The group, which lobbies on behalf of the telecommunications industry -- and employs the senator's brother, Cameron -- is his single largest contributor over the course of his Senate career. David Leiter, Kerry's former chief of staff, is vice president of a lobbying company affiliated with the Boston-based law firm.

The Center for Public Integrity criticized the senator's relationship with the firm in a little-publicized report released last year, accusing him of pushing the agenda of those helping to pay his bills.

"Kerry, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has sponsored or co-sponsored a number of bills favorable to the industry and has written letters to government agencies on behalf of the clientele of his largest donor," the report said. The Boston law firm's client include the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), an umbrella group for telecommunications companies.

Since 1999, Kerry has sponsored at least two bills and co-sponsored half a dozen that were sought by the CTIA, including industry-backed plans for winning lucrative auctions of spectrum, or airwaves. Thomas Wheeler, the former chief executive of the CTIA, and Christopher Putala, a lobbyist for the group, are both among Kerry's biggest presidential fundraisers.

Cutter, Kerry's spokeswoman, provided a list of several industry-backed bills Kerry opposed. "Kerry has never been swayed by any donation on a vote. He consistently votes to protect consumers and workers," she said.

Political researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
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Only link that still does not work, so I am posting a link to original posting at TF

http://www.tigerforums.com/showpost.php?p=106288&postcount=7

By HOWIE CARR

February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON

ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.

Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest.

The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They later claimed the decision was made on septic, not social, considerations).

It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.

Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that Kerry elbowed out of his way on his march to the top watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in more primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and "the overprivileged."

"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate President William M. Bulger used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.

But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).

Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.

At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.

Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater.

Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."

For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.

In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."

Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.

The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.

Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and syndicated talk-radio host, has been covering John Kerry for 25 years.
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dallastigers · Aug 6, 2004

More Kerry - this time pulling a Michael Moore.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/5/203747.shtml

WASHINGTON - John Kerry said Thursday he would have jumped into action more quickly than President Bush did on Sept. 11, 2001, raising the stakes in the political fight over terrorism as Bush warned that the United States can't afford to "grow timid and weary and afraid" in Iraq or elsewhere.......

Addressing minority journalists in the nation's capital, Kerry was asked what he would have done as president the moment he received word of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Bush spent seven minutes listening to "The Pet Goat" being read at a Florida elementary school after his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered, "America is under attack," as televisions cameras recorded the anxious scene.

"I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to," Kerry said before flying to Missouri to resume his cross-country campaign trip. "And I would have attended to it."
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I think its times are little off since I think it was almost 9:38 when the Pentagon was hit and 9:42 or 9:43 was when the FAA command center learned about the flight crashing into the Pentagon , but going again by what he has done as a Senator:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/8/6/92357.shtml

Hypocrite Kerry 'Couldn't Think' for 40 Minutes on 9/11

John Kerry is getting his comeuppance for his snotty comments about President Bush's actions on 9/11.

Here's what the Massachusetts Democrat said July 8 when Larry King asked where he was on 9/11, according to CNN's own transcript:

'Nobody Could Think'

"I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting - we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation."

How appropriate that Kerry lumps himself in with fellow leftist do-nothing non-thinkers such as Boxer, Daschle and Reid.

Thanks to the several readers today who sent us this fascinating bit from Blog for Bush: "the second plane hit the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., and the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:43 a.m. By Kerry's own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for forty minutes, realizing 'nobody could think.'"

And here's what former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the New York Post about Kerry's latest display of insolence:

"John Kerry must be frustrated in his campaign if he is armchair-quarterbacking based on cues from Michael Moore.

"John Kerry is an indecisive candidate [with] an inconsistent position on the War on Terror, who voted against funding for our troops and who cannot give a clear answer on his position concerning the decision to remove Saddam Hussein."
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More ammunition for Kerry Haters....

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