Lurch Alert!

'This won't go away. What happened is much nastier than is being reported'

Gosh, do you think the infamous Heinz EZ Squirt Boxer Shorts are involved?

UPDATE: I replaced the link for the shorts to get a better picture. Observation: Googling for EZ Squirt Shorts with safe off produces an "interesting collection" of sponsored links on the right sidebar.

Household Budget Buster Alert!

John Kerry has a personal budget problem. Of course, it's on a rather different scale than those faced by us little people - $6.4M loan that saved Kerry may also drain him:

Once written off as a Democratic presidential contender, John Kerry survived to become the front-runner thanks to a $6.4 million Christmas Eve loan he made to his campaign.

The loan allowed Kerry's campaign, which was struggling to raise money, to put ads on the air and pay staff until victories in Iowa and New Hampshire produced new funds. But now the loan, which he got using his home in Boston's exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood as collateral, places a financial burden on the Massachusetts senator, with no easy way to pay it off:

• Kerry's financial disclosures show no assets sufficient to pay the loan or even to keep up with the interest payments. Aides say he has assets that aren't listed on the forms but decline to reveal them.

• His wife, heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, has a fortune estimated at more than $500 million. But the law forbids her from paying off a campaign loan for her husband.

• If he wins the nomination, Kerry could pay himself back from campaign contributions made before the Democratic convention in late July. But doing so would siphon off money at a time when he would be running against President Bush, who will have a projected $200 million to spend.

One can't help but ask how the beamish boy got the loan in the first place:

Kerry borrowed the money Dec. 24 from the Mellon Trust of New England. It is payable over 30 years, with interest-only payments for the first 10 years, at a variable interest rate beginning at 3.125%.

Kerry's campaign says he intends to pay off the 30-year mortgage, which carries annual interest payments of about $200,000. But that is more than his $158,000 Senate salary and all his other income put together, according to his financial disclosure statement.

Sounds like a good loan candidate to me! In the "bad old days" he could have used campaign funds to pay off the loan, but the new "campaign reform" bill makes that much tougher:

In 1996, Kerry loaned his Senate re-election campaign $1.9 million, using the same town house as collateral. He struggled to pay off the loan, retiring it three years later by raising the money from campaign donors. At the time, it was legal to do that.

A provision in the new campaign-finance law limits Kerry's ability to raise contributions to pay off the loan, however. The law says candidates can raise money to pay off personal loans to their campaigns only before the election. Once the election has passed, they are limited to a reimbursement of $250,000. In the case of presidential primaries, the election season is defined as the period before the party's convention, which for the Democrats begins July 28.

The section was put into the law to keep politicians from hitting up donors once they are in office to pay off money they loaned to their campaigns — in effect transferring campaign donations directly into their own pockets.

But if Kerry becomes his party's presidential nominee, repaying himself for the campaign loan could mean taking more than $6 million from campaign contributions at a time when the party is desperate to stay financially competitive with Bush. Such a decision could anger donors who want their money used against Bush, not to redeem Kerry's house.

Poor baby! He's also not allowed to just sell his half of the house to Teresa. But the folks at his campaign are hinting at hidden assets:

"Sen. Kerry is a man who has considerable assets," says Michael Meehan, a campaign spokesman.

Kerry's government disclosure form, covering 2002, gives no hint of what those assets might be.

The form doesn't require disclosure of property that is not held for investment purposes, such as the house in question — a $13 million Boston house Kerry owns jointly with his wife and mortgaged to finance his campaign. Aides hint that Kerry may own other non-investment property that could be sold to satisfy the debt, but they won't provide details. "He has disclosed what he needs to disclose" under the law, Meehan says.

Nothing like full disclosure by the party of the people. But here's a puzzle:

Before he was married in 1995, Kerry's disclosure forms ranked him as one of the least wealthy members of the Senate. His 1994 form showed a trust fund worth no more than $100,000 and debts of at least $20,000. Since then, he has inherited other trust funds from his mother.

Kerry and his wife bought the house together after they were married. It is not clear whether Kerry used his assets to acquire his share of the town house, or whether it was a gift from his wife, whose wealth comes from the Heinz ketchup fortune. The Kerry campaign declines to say.

Since his marriage in 1995, Kerry has repeatedly refused to fill in the missing details of his financial holdings. When he renegotiated terms of a divorce from his first wife that year, he took the unusual step of having the court records on his finances sealed.

So where did these mystery assests come from? C'mon John, you can be straight with us. What's "The Real Deal"?

And if Lurch is still hard up for cash - how about a second job? Gigolo is out, since he married his last customer, but maybe Simon and Schuster could come up with a Clinton style book advance? Nah, he just wrote a snoozer campaign book. I know! How about running a boarding house for press interns of the female persuasion? I'm sure they would be elevated by the experience and Lurch could haul down some cash.

Unintended Consequences Alert!

(Via Drudge) It's too early in the morning for stuff like Canada Condemns 'Racist' Conan O'Brien TV Show:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's government on Friday condemned a show by U.S. late-night television host Conan O'Brien that insulted people in French-speaking Quebec and seemed to suggest everyone in the province was homosexual.

Ottawa and the province of Ontario paid $760,000 to help O'Brien -- who appears on the NBC television network -- bring his show to Toronto for a week to boost the city's profile after a deadly SARS outbreak last year.

But the federal government said O'Brien had gone far too far with the show broadcast on Thursday in which he went to Quebec, a province which has had separatist governments for much of the last 20 years and is a delicate political topic in Canada.

Hey, that's OK - it was Ontario that was subsidizing it!

At one point in the show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog -- a hand puppet that is a regular on the show -- said to a Quebecer: "You're French, you're obnoxious and you no speekay English." It told another: "I can smell your crotch from here."

There's a photo of the repartee here. Triumph is apparently wearing a beret.

O'Brien's team were also shown replacing street signs in the province with those that read "Quebecqueer Street" and "Rue des Pussies."

Well, it's certainly not a comedy classic.

But the Toronto Sun editorializes Conan sketch a Triumph:

Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog, we love you!

You took Don Cherry off the language hotseat and planted the politically correct butts of all our politicians in Ottawa on it.

You taught us the humbling lesson that while we love to mock Americans, Americans know how to mock back.

And you sent the whole country into an uproar - at least those of us who aren't killing ourselves laughing - by drilling through, as the Sun's Bill Brioux rightly put it yesterday, our most painful scab. That is, the rest of Canada's love-hate relationship with Quebec.

All that via a few minutes of vulgar, on-air ranting by a politically incorrect, cigar-chomping dog puppet - performed by Robert Smigel - a writer for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

His rude, crude, mocking, over-the-top ragging of unsuspecting Quebecers, separatism and the province's language laws - was brilliant, vicious satire. It produced exactly what the best satire does - guilty, gutt-busting laughter, huge controversy and buried underneath it all, a better understanding of what makes us tick.

About how, for all our polite talk and politically correct denials, we continue to be so utterly defined as Canadians by the delicate relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Spare us the self-righteous sanctimony from all the usual suspects in Ottawa yesterday - on all sides of the Commons - screaming like stuck pigs about the allegedly racist rantings of a puppet. Get a life. No one has done more to divide Canadians against each other than the lot of you, so don't go lecturing us about a sock puppet - especially not one on a show you helped bring to Toronto with $1 million of our tax money.

Indeed. And if you aren't familiar with the Don Cherry story, here's a summary. They thought Don's comments were really controversial. Bwahaha!

And about the cash:

Well, here's the perfect end to a perfect week of revelations about Ottawa wasting our money. Turns out Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson's state visit to Russia, Iceland and Finland last year with what seemed like half of Canada's chattering classes, did not cost $1 million of taxpayers' money as first reported. It cost $5.3 million. Oink.

Maybe vodka was scarce and they had to pay a premium!

I'm certainly upset!

Forget John Kerry's hot pants! Check out something really important - Greeting card picture evokes race stereotype:

American Greetings Corp. calls it a regrettable printing error.

Somehow, boxes of SpongeBob SquarePants Valentine's Day cards are popping up in local Wal-Mart stores -- but the popular cartoon character found inside isn't his traditional yellow color.

He's black. And with his trademark big teeth and wide eyes, this SpongeBob seems similar to offensive images of African Americans portrayed in minstrel shows decades ago.

There's a picture in the article and what it mostly looks like is a printing error. You can compare it with the "real" SpongeBob here.

American Greetings officials said Thursday they were surprised and puzzled when the Free Press made them aware of a complaint about the product.

"We absolutely fell out of our chairs when we saw it," said Carol Miller, director of business development for the Cleveland-based company. "We're obviously going to be talking to Wal-Mart as well as Nickelodeon . . . to offer our sincere apologies for this product making it to market."

Miller said the cards, which were printed and packaged in China, are mistakes, but she and other officials said they were trying to determine how that happened.

David Blinderman, director of global product development for the company, said the printing facility is one of the company's most reliable.

"Culturally, the guys on press in China wouldn't have the faintest idea of who a SpongeBob was or who a black SpongeBob was," Blinderman said.

They probably don't have too firm a grasp on valentines either.

But as you might expect, you can find someone who's all upset:

Jemeka Garcia of Flint Township was skeptical of a mistake, in part because the cards appear to be well made. Garcia and her husband, Scott, complained to the Free Press earlier this week after their 6-year-old daughter discovered the different SpongeBob. The family purchased the cards at a Wal-Mart near their home so the girl could hand them out to her first-grade classmates.

"I want to know why the person did it," Jemeka Garcia said Thursday. "That's kind of a horrible prank. And what if some kid gets it" as a valentine?

You caught 'em red-handed, Jemeka - it's the Chinese branch of the VRWC!

But not everyone has donned their tinfoil beanies:

A Wal-Mart official said customers who want refunds can have them, but there were no plans to take the boxes off shelves. "It was a very popular item, and there aren't very many left out there," said corporate spokeswoman Danette Thompson. She said the company had received no other complaints.

Well, at least no one mentioned lawsuit, but then Jesse Jackson probably hasn't heard about it yet. And congratulations to the Detroit Free Press on their news judgement.

How the other half lives

In Today's Page Six gossip column in the NY Daily News:

THAT was some hen party at Marlo Thomas' Park Avenue pad the other night promoting Marie Wilson and Eve Ensler's White House Project, aimed at electing more women. Imagine dozens of women chanting, "Vote with your vagina!"

I'm trying hard to, but that doesn't happen much around here.

One participant was standing in the foyer and noticed a large Picasso drawing of a nude woman, legs akimbo. "I thought, 'This is perfect.' Not only are they screaming 'vagina!' - there's one staring at me."

That either.

Also on hand: Tina Brown, Katie Ford, Jane Rosenthal and Cosmo editrix Kate White.

The doyennes of "style". Nothing like a class act.

Pond Scum

Rich Lowry takes a look at John Kerry's latest Vietnam lie in Kerry vs. Vietnam vets:

The campaign season is still young, yet we already have a strong contender for what might be the most dishonest paragraph of this election year. It was spoken by Sen. John Kerry, by way of explaining how a candidate wrapping himself in Vietnam veterans made his public reputation by accusing them of war crimes.

I was wondering about that too.

In his famed 1971 anti-war congressional testimony, Kerry cited the so-called Winter Soldier Investigation, which gathered falsified testimonials of atrocities committed by American soldiers. Kerry regurgitated stories of rapes, beheadings, torture and pillaging ("in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan") as part of his indictment against the Vietnam War. So it is odd that Kerry would celebrate the "band of brothers" he now says are fighting on behalf of his candidacy the way they once fought for their country. Does that mean they will behead Howard Dean and pillage the John Edwards campaign headquarters?

That would liven up things!

Asked about the testimony the other day by Knight Ridder, Kerry said he relied on the Winter Soldier Investigation "because some of it was highly documented and very disturbing. I did in my heart what I thought was correct to help people understand what was going on. I've always honored the service of people over there. I never insinuated that everybody fell into one pot. I was looking forward to telling the truth about some of the things that were happening."

Still a lying crapsack.

This is a statement shot through with mendacity. Let's take it sentence by sentence: 1) The Winter Soldier testimony was not "highly documented," but -- as Mack Owens of the Naval War College has reported -- totally unsubstantiated. The fantastic stories of atrocities should have been unbelievable to any Vietnam vet. 2) Kerry didn't "help people understand what was going on," but rather helped publicize lies. 3) Kerry didn't "honor" the service of vets, but said, "We are ashamed of ... what we are called on to do in Southeast Asia," and maintained that in the vets, America "has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence." 4) Kerry did insinuate that the atrocities were widespread, noting that they were "not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." These crimes tainted the nation -- "the crimes threaten [the country], not Reds," as "America lose[s] her sense of morality." 5) If Kerry wanted to tell the truth, he shouldn't have traded in falsehoods.

Lurch will do anything and say anything to get elected. That's what he does, that's all he does.

Dishonesty must be official policy at the Kerry campaign when it comes to his anti-Vietnam record. A Kerry spokeswoman has said that, back then, "he praised the noble service of his fellow servicemen and -women." Yeah, right. Are we to believe that Kerry thought they were "noble" beheadings? "Noble" acts of torture?

So which is it, Kerry?

Curiouser and curiouser

CLARK DID WHAT?!

Senior staff to Wesley Clark rose in objection on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning on news from their former candidate that he intended to endorse Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic nomination.

Clark told his senior staff that he had talked to Kerry and that he intended to back his former competitor. Clark never spoke to other Democratic hopefuls Sen. John Edwards and former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean.

Perhaps the most stung by Clark's decision was his senior adviser Chris Lehane, who prior to joining Clark's staff had briefly advised Kerry's campaign.

Lehane is now the focus of a media whirlwind over negative stories about Kerry he is said to have spun to reporters over the past few weeks.

Dang, just when the intern story was going so good! And that kind of thing is Lehane's trademark. But that's not the Prowler's theory:

In reality, though, stories about Kerry's behavior behind closed doors appear to be coming off of Capitol Hill, where Kerry is probably known best.

"Everyone up here talks, and in the case of the stories that are now developing, we've known about this stuff for years. It was only a matter of time," says one staffer for a Democratic Senator from a mid-Atlantic state. "Reporters have been feeding off this stuff for months up here."

I still think Hillary had a hand in it.

Not again!

Drudge's siren is up over CAMPAIGN DRAMA ROCKS DEMOCRATS: KERRY FIGHTS OFF MEDIA PROBE OF RECENT ALLEGED INFIDELITY, RIVALS PREDICT RUIN:

A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.

Well since Teresa has threatened er, a significant impairment of John's vital functions if he were ever caught cheating, at least we won't have to sit through a "Stand by your man" interview on 60 Minutes.

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

If Weasley's involved it means the Clintons are behind it. First Deano and now Lurch. They're going for 2 for 2.

That's our boy!

Jeff Jacoby has fun with John Kerry's shifting stands:

In the 2004 presidential field, there is a candidate for nearly every point of view. His name is John Kerry.

One stop shopping!

Equivocating politicians are sometimes accused of trying to be "all things to all people," but few have taken the practice of expedience and shifty opportunism to Kerry's level. Massachusetts residents have known this about their junior senator for a long time. Now the rest of the country is going to find out.

Here's how it works: Say you're in favor of capital punishment for terrorists. Well, so is Kerry. "I am for the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists have declared war on your country," he said in December 2002. "I support killing people who declare war on our country."

But if you're opposed to capital punishment even for terrorists, that's OK -- Kerry is too! Between 1989 and 1993, he voted at least three times to exempt terrorists from the death penalty. In a debate with former governor William Weld, his opponent in the 1996 Senate race, Kerry scorned the idea of executing terrorists. Anti-death penalty nations would refuse to extradite them to the United States, he said. "Your policy," he told Weld, "would amount to a terrorist protection policy. Mine would put them in jail."

What does Kerry really think? Who knows? He seems to have conveniently switched his stance after Sept. 11, 2001, but he insists that politics had nothing to do with his reversal. Either way, one thing is clear: His willingness to swing both ways fits a longstanding pattern of coming down firmly on both sides of controversial issues.

Take Iraq:

Reviewing the bidding, then, Kerry's position is that he voted against a war he was really for and voted for a war he was really against. But the war he was really for he never said he was for at the time. Except when he was writing to voters to say that he was. And that he wasn't.

Try saying that fast!

Confused? Don't feel bad. Trying to keep up with Kerry's shifting stands can be baffling even to those of us who have followed his career for decades. You'll be hearing a lot more about them before this campaign is over.

Indeed.

It's 'Da Torch' Again!

I thought we'd seen the last of the New Jersey slickster, but he's back - Torricelli's help for Kerry draws rival's fire:

A year after an ethics scandal ended his political career, former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli's fund-raising for Democratic front-runner John Kerry has become an issue in the presidential campaign.

Assailing Kerry during a campaign stop in Milwaukee yesterday, rival candidate Howard Dean seized on reports that Torricelli helped underwrite a group that ran anti-Dean ads.

The former Vermont governor called Torricelli "ethically challenged," and said: "What we now see is that John Kerry is part of the corrupt political culture in Washington. That's exactly what I'm asking Wisconsin voters to stand up against."

Howie, that's what the Democrat party is all about. You just noticed?

Torricelli, who has claimed credit for raising more than $100,000 for Kerry, donated $50,000 last year to an independent group that ran controversial anti-Dean television ads in three early voting states -- Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Now there's a funny thing. Da Torch until recently had only worked for the government but somehow managed to become fabulously wealthy. What's the boy been up to lately, you ask?

Torricelli quit his re-election run in 2002 after the Senate ethics committee "severely admonished" him for accepting gifts from a wealthy campaign contributor. He now works as a government consultant, develops real estate and oversees a major environmental cleanup in Hudson County.

In case that desciption is too obtuse, it means he gets cut in on real state deals and receives cushy political appointments like the big environmental cleanup:

When U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh announced last week that he was appointing his former sponsor -- former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli -- to serve as a "special master" overseeing a $400 million environmental cleanup, to some it looked like a favor to an old friend.

Torricelli had championed Cavanaugh's appointment to the federal bench in New Jersey, and Honeywell International, the firm Cavanaugh has ordered to conduct the cleanup, had been a major contributor to Torricelli's campaign.

Torricelli dropped from public sight last year after he resigned from the Senate race following a long federal probe of his fund-raising activities and censure by Senate colleagues.
...
Special masters are frequently appointed by judges to assist the court in overseeing time-consuming remedies to major cases such as jail overcrowding and labor union corruption and even the payments to families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks. The masters are often named from the ranks of veteran attorneys and retired judges.

According to lawyers familiar with such appointments, a master's fees are technically set by the court, but are usually billed at the attorney's hourly rate.

For a lawyer such as Torricelli, they said, it would not be unusual for his fee to amount to $500 an hour. Under the appointment order, the fees will be picked up by Honeywell, not the public.

And unless his duties are more specifically constrained by the court, one lawyer noted, "His time can really be whatever he wants it to be."
...
But others noted that besides a sizable fee, a valuable side benefit to Torricelli would be the ability to hand out some lucrative contracts of his own: to consultants and other experts who would handle the day-to-day supervision of the cleanup.

"It's great patronage for Torch," one lawyer said, using the former senator's nickname. "In addition to his own fee, this gives him the opportunity to hand out some political favors of his own."
...
One source familiar with the case, however, said he doubted Torricelli would see an exceptionally large payday. The people likely to make the big bucks, he said, will be the people the master selects to handle the day-to-day work.

And we know where their political contributions will go, don't we? But it's great to see a "man of the people" make good through selfless political service. Reminds me of Terry McAuliffe who managed to get rich as a political fundraiser. How come back in high school they never mentioned these jobs on 'Career Day'?