There's a lot of competition for Today's Hoot

Howie Carr in the Boston Herald (subscription required) - Move over Big Oil, 'cause here comes Big Ketchup

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Botox rules.

For the third time in 16 years, a Massachusetts Democrat wins the New Hampshire primary. M. Stanley Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and now John Forbes Kerry - the only thing different about last night was that this latest Bay State Democrat is a guy who was for all practical purposes homeless at the age of 50.

Then Liveshot met Teresa, and by the way, how long did she have to wear that orange sash last night to win the bet?

It's quite audacious, isn't it, for a gigolo who's living off his second wife's first husband's trust fund to go out and denounce ``powerful special interests . . . influence-peddlers . . . wealthy Americans'' and ``the privileged.'' Not to mention ``millionaires.''

If - excuse me, when - John Kerry is elected, the White House will be closed to what he calls ``Big Oil.'' But not, presumably, to Big Ketchup.
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These guys really don't seem to like each other. Usually the candidates have it all worked out so that the losers concede and then the winner claims the prize.

But last night, John Kerry spoke first. Do you get the feeling that Mrs. Ketchup wanted to get back to Louisburg Square before the snow started. She's done a lot of slumming these last few days - Wesley Clark shook her hand at the Merrimack Restaurant yesterday, and appeared to have not the slightest clue that he was greeting $550 million in the flesh.

The next question for Kerry is, whose name is on the deeds of the mansions in, say, Georgetown, Aspen and Nantucket? He borrowed $6 million on his ``share'' of the Beacon Hill manse - isn't the communal-property statute wonderful?

So now the fop of Naushon moves on, shedding wrinkles the way he's always shed press secretaries. And Teresa will do whatever it takes. She's the Martha Stewart of national Democratic politics.
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Sen. John Edwards suddenly went MIA last evening. Doing his concession speech, the ambulance chaser sounded like an old LP record album being played at 45 rpm. It was Alvin the Chipmunk ripping through his stump speech, which means he was angry. Good thing you can't sue anybody when you finish third, because Edwards looked like he was in a litigating mood. Last week, he was being compared to Bobby Kennedy. Now Edwards suddenly looks like your first wife's divorce lawyer.

As for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the question about him has always been, why would he give up a safe House seat when the alternative is ending up back living in that old car he's always talking about down by the river.

And Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com - Howard Dean in a dress

It's only a matter of time before we witness another Howard Dean Moment in the Democratic presidential race -- but not, I predict, from any of the Democratic presidential candidates. Skulking in the campaign background is a ticking time bombette with a volatile temper and acid tongue who makes Dean look like Mr. Rogers on Prozac.


She's the wife of front-runner Sen. John Kerry, Teresa Heinz. Formerly known as Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira, the hot-headed widow of the late Pennsylvania GOP Sen. John Heinz is self-aggrandizingly known among her wealthy liberal friends and fellow environmental radicals as "Saint Teresa" (and that's pronounced Teh-RAY-zah, you ninny!).

Though she has been married to Sen. Kerry since 1995 -- "I would have bashed him over the head" if he hadn't proposed, she, uh, joked -- she only recently and reluctantly allowed herself to be known as "Teresa Heinz Kerry" in hubby's political brochures and during campaign events and press interviews. "They'll call me Mrs. Kerry, because that's what's natural to them," she complained to Elle magazine last summer. "I don't tell them to shut up. . . . I don't give a s--t, you know."

Elle was also where she described her devotion to Botox injections. And seeing how Johnnie is looking so "smooth" lately, I guess I won't have problems referring to him as a "bald faced" liar.

Okay then. We'll just call her Howard Dean in haute couture.

Boston Magazine reports that she once snapped on Halloween, yelling at three children who had rung her doorbell on Beacon Hill: "I had a big barrel of candy, and it's all gone!" she ranted, shutting the door on the bewildered youngsters. Yeeearghh! She has reportedly chewed out members of her late husband's campaign staff, her current husband's campaign staff, her children, her stepchildren, waiters and sales clerks.

Hmm, I wonder if she's heard of the burning bag of dog poop trick?

No wonder the missus is so frosted. Her comfy life has been disrupted by the electoral ambitions of an insufficiently attentive spouse who is not only dull, but also annoyingly duplicitous. He supported the war. He doesn't. He supports the death penalty. He doesn't, sort of. He wants to end the double taxation of dividends. It's an evil tax break for the rich. He loves teachers' unions. He loves them not. Unable to bear his lies, Heinz/Heinz Kerry had a famous fit during a Washington Post interview in 2002 when Kerry denied having Vietnam War flashbacks. Mimicking her husband screaming in panic, she told reporter Mark Leibovich: "I haven't gotten slapped yet," she says. "But there were times when I thought I might get throttled."

Indeed.