Who's in Charge? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Who’s in Charge?
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KERRY GOES UNDER
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Emergency Operation:

Once again, The Prowler has done an excellent job of getting the story behind the story with his Sept. 7, 2004 “Emergency Operation” piece on the John F. Kerry campaign apparatus. But it cannot amaze only me that Kerry is mentally challenged enough to hand over core operations and the tactics to the Clinton crowd.

Consider the scenarios: if the Clinton crowd gets Kerry elected he stands a good chance of benefiting from the “incumbent” principle and holding office for eight years, on his own steam. That makes the first shot for Hillary for the White House at 2012, and she would be 65 (born October 26th, 1947). Considering her recent photos I expect by then she could need a bit more than Botox and pancake make-up for the campaign trail.

But the alternative strategy is for the Clinton crowd to keep Kerry like Tantalus, with true political firepower always just out of reach, closing the gap with Bush, but never quite overtaking him. Kerry loses the election, and the Clintons don’t get the blame: Kerry does.

The result? Kerry becomes the Dukakis of the 20th century and goes back to his role as Ted Kennedy’s sidekick, and Hillary can run for the Democrats in 2008 on the Joan of Arc-zeitgeist of both rescue and restoration, even though the Clintons have been in charge of the party apparatus the whole time.

In 2008 Hillary Rodham Clinton will be 61 and a seasoned U.S. Senator. Daily Stairmaster sessions, long weekends in Palm Beach, and Botox can improve on her photos for that campaign trail.

By taking in the whole Clinton apparatus, the Kerry campaign has downloaded a Trojan Horse. Kerry doesn’t know it, but it is so brazen it astonishes me he has missed the implications.
James N. Ward
Breux-Jouy, France

They can bring in a three-ring circus of aides to rehabilitate Kerry’s campaign but it won’t help. The problem is Kerry. If you notice, unlike the President’s ads the Kerry ads never use his voice in the body of his commercials or in the voiceovers. The man is too ponderous. Someone described his delivery as if he was reading from a lease. I wouldn’t even give him that much credit. At least a lease has a point.
Al Hassinger
Little Silver, New Jersey

I suppose the get well calls were dictated by protocol — but suggesting as David Frum does that President Bush should utilize Clinton’s political skills in some diplomacy post is uncalled for. After all, there is not an honest bone or organ in his body or his wife’s. Haven’t they garnered enough ill-gotten gain from the American taxpayer without being further rewarded by the Republicans? If President Bush gathers these two snakes to his bosom, following their nature, they’ll bite.
James Wheatley

Finally, John Kerry has a campaign manager and communications director for both sides of every issue.
Bill Attinger
Del Mar, California

TWIN KILLING
Re: Paul Beston’s Remember Me to Herald Square:

What do you mean “floozy”? [Jenna and Barbara] came across as very young, unsophisticated, well-protected kids. Maybe they “should” have a little more gravitas having made it through college into adulthood, but that is a very small sin and obviously the result of a concerted effort not to make them grow up too fast as a sacrifice to their father’s ambition. I can’t believe the cattiness of the responses to their speech. Their very ordinariness is a tribute to their parents, particularly in juxtaposition to the Clintons’ shameless and ruthless subordinating the needs of their pathetic daughter to political expedience.
Ann Blumenthal

CAPTAIN BLIGH
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Listless Kerry:

Just by the way, the recent famous images of Mr. Kerry windsurfing off Nantucket reveal a bit more about the man to the expert eye. Kerry was sailing on what we call “light air” gear, that is, a gigantic sail ( I would estimate something in the 11 square meter range) and a huge board with much, much flotation.

No hard-core windsurfer would be caught dead on a rig like that. If you need a sail that big and a board the size of the Titanic, then guess what ? IT ISN’T WINDY ENOUGH TO GO SAILING !

Real sailors head out when high winds call for sails in the 5 square meter size, or smaller, and boards so small ( and therefore fast and maneuverable) that they won’t even float the sailor unless they are moving along at a decent clip. They are big skis, not small boats.

Kerry’s wussy rig is what you use when you must be seen to be windsurfing. Sailing a rig like that is to real windsurfing what skippering a supertanker is to riding a jetski.

Now, I know John Kerry is a decent windsurfer, but these photos are just more phony baloney. The hardcore windsurfer’s credo is “Just say ‘no” to six-point-oh”, meaning that if you need a sail in a size bigger than 5.0 square meters, there ain’t no point.
Paul Kotik
Plantation, Florida

WEED EATERS
Re: Steve Sailer’s The Kinds Are Alwrong:

Mr. Sailer; With all due respect, stick to being a movie critic and leave the drug de-criminalization discussion to those qualified to make coherent arguments. The War on Drugs (aka the War on Drug Addicts) was, is, and always will be, an abject failure. Reason, National Review and Cato are probably (I’m going to go out on a limb here) better sources for information on the drug war and drug abuse than a Quentin Tarantino pseudo slasher movie.

Mr. Sailer states “smoking dope saps the energy from youth, turning them into sedentary couch potatoes.” So? It must have been an oversight on the part of the founding fathers to place individual rights ahead of other peoples stoned children. It is important to note that drugs are much easier to obtain by children than alcohol due to the fact they are sold only on the black market.

The U.S. drug policy is obtuse and shortsighted, has made no progress in 30 years, and is currently funding a large portion of terrorist activity in the world that we are spending billions to fight. De-criminalize drugs, tax them, and regulate them (like booze and cigarettes) and in the process provide the means necessary to fund a real education for all children (the stoned and sober alike).
Ben Berry
Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to Mr. Sailer. At least he is thinking about the repercussions of the legalization of a purposefully intoxicating substance. Legalizers never get the real point to the criminalization of such substances. I will continue to inquire, “For whom do you wish to legalize which drugs?” They never have an answer that is socially acceptable. No one is going to legalize alcoholic beverages and intoxicating chemical substances for minors, period. Of course the criminal black market is aimed at those minors, and minors are the vast majority of the drug problem in this nation, but that just never seems to occur to the “Legalizers.”

The legalization of marijuana would drastically lower the cost, and increase the availability of a debilitating, mind altering drug. Dealing with the associated problems of alcoholic beverages is almost more than society can bear, how much worse could it be? Well… let’s experiment! Go ahead and legalize drugs for everyone (consistency demands no limits be placed on alcohol as well…). No? how about just “adults” — not those 18-20 year-old quasi-minors, just the 21 plus crowd. Hmm… not a solution, either since that crowd has either grown out of the need to be addled in the head, or it is permanently ruined.

Legalization is a truly bad idea. What drug legalization amounts to is a surrender, but that never stopped the socially lazy from arguing hard to abandon the fight. The rich and privileged will be able to afford to insulate themselves from the hoi polloi and provide for their expensive rehab stops. The rest of society, meanwhile, descends into an abyss. The black market will remain, with an endless cheap supply of product to sell. The highway death toll and social services bills will come due.
John W. Schneider, III
Bristow, Virginia

I have to admit, I’m riding the fence on this decriminalization issue. There are compelling arguments on both sides and it’s hard to determine if the benefits outweigh the risks, but Steve Sailer’s argument has to be one of the most amusing. To say that what we need to fear from marijuana is childhood obesity seems fundamentally flawed. My notion of legalized drugs has always been that they would be regulated like alcohol, or at the very minimum, like cigarettes.

While it is true that teen drinking and smoking is not only possible in spite of regulation, but actually commonplace, the key word is teen. Sailer conjured images of kids with their bats and gloves heading to the ballpark. To me, that screams juvenile, not teen. Although I can go to any local heavy metal show and see a hundred teens smoking outside, I’d be hard pressed to find an 11-year-old child smoking at the ballpark. Why should I fear that I would see an 11-year-old smoking marijuana?

Even if I ignore that Sailer appeared to be talking about juveniles and assume he was speaking of teens, the argument doesn’t necessarily hold water. Teens are highly susceptible to peer pressure and that fact could lead to marijuana use and subsequent couchpotatofication and obesity. But in the teen world, as we are constantly reminded by pop culture and endless “Sally Jesse-like” news reports, appearance trumps all. There seems to be far more pressure to look good (read: thin) than to look “cool” by smoking dope. Some of the heavy metal teens I mentioned earlier as cigarette smoking teens, are also dope smoking teens, but they are out of the house nonetheless and, at least from my vantage point, are active and in good shape.

I don’t want to make a case for decriminalization here, but the whole obesity argument seems silly to me. If statistics exist that prove juvenile smoking or drinking is a serious problem, I will respectfully apologize to Mr. Sailer.
Chuck Lazarz

May I suggest that Mr. Sailer read Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It by Judge James P. Gray. Our drug laws have caused increased crime, filled our many prisons, made drug lords wealthy, cost billions, and has failed just as alcohol prohibition failed in earlier times. It’s time that we changed a failed, so-called War on Drugs.
Jim Kilpatrick

If you are so bent on telling others what to do, why not push to make TV illegal? Seems your dislike of technology far outweighs your beef with weed.
Brian

While I consider laws against marijuana acceptable, I think the penalties are too harsh. Most infractions should be settled with drug testing and fines.
Ian Callum

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