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The Forsyth County News
Opinion
; This is a page of opinions ours, yours and others.
Signed columns and cartoons are the opinions of the
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CITY COUNCIL
I Mayor, H. Ford Gravitt
; RO. Box 3177, Cumming, GA 30028; (770) 887-4342
< Mayor Pno-Tem, Lewis Ledbetter
>205 Mountain Brook Dr., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-3019
Ralph Perry
1420 Pilgrim Rd., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-7474
- Quincy Holton
103 Hickory Ridge Dr., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-5279
Rupert Sexton
705 Pine Lake Dr., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-4332
John Pugh
10813th St., Cumming, GA 30040; (770) 887-3342
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
* Charles Laughinghouse, Post 1
■ 3550 Rosewicke Dr., Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 886-7937; office, (770) 886-2810
David “A.J.” Pritchett, Post 2
4840 Chesterfield Court, Suwanee, GA 30024
:• (404) 392-6983; office, (770) 886-2809
John A. “Jack” Conway, Post 3
6130 Polo Club Dr., Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 886-9226; (770) 886-2807
Marcie Kreager, Post 4
9810 Kings Rd., Gainesville, GA 30506
office, (770) 886-2806
Eddie Taylor, Post 5
4195 Morningside Dr., Cumming, GA 30041
(770) 886-2802
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Ann Crow
96 Barker Rd., Cumming, GA 30040
(770) 887-9640; acrow@forsyth.kl2.ga.us
Paul Kreager
9810 Kings Rd., Gainesville, GA 30506
(770) 889-9971; pkreager@forsyth.kl2.ga.us
Chairman Nancy Roche
7840 Chestnut Hill Rd., Cumming, GA 30041
(770) 889-0229; nroche@forsyth.kl2.ga.us
Rebecca K. Dowell
2030 Commonwealth Place, Cumming, GA 30041
(770) 844-0830; rdowell @lbrsyth.kl2.ga.us
Jeffrey Stephens
RO. Box 169, Cumming, GA 30028
(770) 889-1470; jstephens @ forsyth. kl2.ga.us
NATIONAL LEGISLATORS
a U.S. Sen. Zell Miller
Russell Senate Office Building, Room C-3
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-3643; Fax: (202) 228-2090
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss | |
1019 Longworth House Office Building L - -1
Washington, D.C. 205151 . C w
(202)224-3521
HHB U.S. Re P- Nathan Deal, 10th District
2437 Rayburn House Office Building,
r -’»■ ,-adl Washington, D.C. 20515
1 M Gainesville: RO. Box 1015, Gainesville, GA 30503
■ Gainesville, (770) 535-2592
B Washington: (202) 225-5211; Fax: (202) 225-8272
U.S. Rep. John Linder, 7th District Ip w
1727 Longworth House Office Building, !
Washington, D.C. 20515-1011 1 1
Washington: (202) 225-4272; Fax: (202) 225-4696
STATE LEGISLATORS
JBRK Sen. David Shafer, 48th District
|W r ° \ 109 State Capitol
: Y- Atlanta, GA 30334
• j (404)651-7738 pFWT
Sen. Casey Cagle, 49th District J ?
421 State Capitol, Atlanta, GA 30334 ’
(404) 656-6578; (fax) (404) 651 -6768 'Jjj
HSen. Dan Moody, 27th District
(770) 695-3127;
Office (404) 463-8055
Sen. Renee Unterman, 45th District
(770) 466-1507; LT”
Office (404) 463-1368 fl
Rep. Tom Knox, 14th District
Legislative Office Building, Room 504
.*• - 18 Capitol Square, Atlanta, GA 30334
V*- A (404)656-0188, (770)887-0400, law office
Rep. Jan Jones, 38th District
412 Legislative Office Building, Atlanta GA 30334
I**® (404)656-0137
Rep. Jack Murphy, 14th District Jjplu
■■—Legislative Office Building, j
Room 612, Atlanta GA 30334 WO
(404) 656-0325 JER/
(770) 781-9319, home IWI
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Nomination is Kerry's to lose
MANCHESTER. N.H.
Early Tuesday afternoon, fear
gripped those Democrats who
had begun to feel better after
the lowa caucuses. The first
exit polls showed the
Democratic presidential pri
mary much closer than
expected with a possibility
that Howard Dean might over
take Sen. John Kerry. But exit
polls in New Hampshire are
notoriously inaccurate, and
anxieties were soon relieved.
After voting ended at 8 p.m..
it was clear Kerry would win
comfortably.
Beating President Bush
would unify Democrats, but
nominating Howard Dean to
accomplish that end had
grown increasingly less attrac
tive. The anguish engendered
by the flawed polling was not
merely the prospect of nomi
nating Dean, the candidate
desired by Republicans as a
fat target. Kerry turns the page
for 2004 on Al Gore, the
Clintons and left-wing labor
leaders.
Kerry's basic policy con
sists of one new government
program after another.
Nevertheless, as a war hero,
hockey player and hunter, sup
ported by veterans and fire
fighters, he projects the
Democratic Party's image into
the moderate center. Kerry is
also a skilled professional
politician, unlikely to commit
Next ‘Dean moment’ coming from Mrs. Kerry
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-run
ner Sen. John Kerry, Teresa
Heinz. Formerly known as
Maria Teresa Thierstein
Simoes-Ferreira, the hot-head
ed widow of the late
Pennsylvania GOP Sen. John
Heinz is self-aggrandizingly
known among her wealthy lib
eral friends and fellow envi
ronmental radicals as "Saint
Teresa" (and that's pronounced
Teh-RAY-zah, you ninny!).
Though she has been mar
ried 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 Elie maga
zine last summer. "I don't tell
them to shut up. ... I don't
give a s-t, you know."
Robert
Novak
W t / ;
■HITTai
WTimMiJiiiMn*..
the blunders of Dean or the
Clintonian alternative. Gen.
Wesley Clark. Win or lose in
November, Kerry saves the
Democrats from the disaster
that beckoned a month ago.
The false impression from
exit polls early Tuesday after
noon resulted from samples
by upscale morning voters
who, said one analyst, "looked
like the catalogue mailing list
of Neiman-Marcus." The only
subgroup carried by Dean
Tuesday self-identified as
"very liberal," comprising just
15 percent of the state's
Democratic electorate. Vastly
more numerous "moderates"
preferred Kerry, four-to-one.
The Dean campaign,
forged by longtime political
operative Joe Trippi's brilliant
use of the Internet, can be said
to have effectively ended in
New Hampshire. In no state
did Dean enjoy such hard-core
support welded into a careful
ly constructed organization.
This was the state he had to
win to regain momentum after
lowa.
With Dean's candidacy
hanging in the balance, his
most important endorser was
Michelle ” Jh
Malkin 'w jp
OK then. We’ll just call her
Howard Dean in haute cou
ture.
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, shut
ting the door on the bewil
dered 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.
Sympathetic media profil
ers attribute this anger to the
tragic losses she has suffered
in her life; several family
members died of disease or
accidents. A more honest
explanation for why she acts
up and lashes out at the little
people as often as she does is
that she has felt entitled to do
so all her life. The daughter of
a prosperous Portuguese doc
tor based in Mozambique, she
married into the Heinz
ketchup fortune and has lived
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS Friday, January 30,2004
nowhere to be seen here. He
wasn't wanted. Al Gore had
swooped in with the surprise
endorsement at Dean's apex
just before he began his pre
cipitous decline. While
Democratic activists maintain
that the 2000 election was
stolen from Gore, they blame
the former vice president for
his maladroit campaign.
Gore's use of the Dean phe
nomenon as a ticket back to
prominence did not help either
of them.
Prior to Kerry’s resurgence,
the seeming alternative to
Dean did not relieve the
party's malaise. In Democratic
circles, Wes Clark was viewed
as the candidate of the
"Clintonistas" probably not
of Bill and Hillary themselves,
but of their close political
friends. It was assumed
Clinton intimate Eli Segal
would not have become
Clark's campaign manager
without approval from the for
mer president and/or Sen.
Clinton.
Clark's bleak performance
as a campaigner in the week
prior to Tuesday questioned
the wisdom of convincing the
career officer that he could
open his political career by
running for president. He
ended a week full of gaffes the •
day before the election by giv
ing the impression that he
wanted voters to-think that, as
in a privileged, fawning echo
chamber ever since.
Heinz/Heinz Kerry/Her
Highness/The Big She first
burst publicly onto the politi
cal scene during the 1994
Senate race in Pennsylvania to
fill her husband's seat after he
died in a tragic plane crash.
The "moderate" Republican
Heinz objected to GOP candi
date Rick Santorum's social
and fiscal conservatism,
branding him a "Forrest Gump
with attitude" who offers us
"leadership by aphorism."
Fumed Teh-RAY-zah: "We all
know these types critical of
everything, impossible to
please. . . . They occasionally
may mean well, but the effect
of even their good intentions
is to destroy."
Who knew she'd end up
marrying exactly one of those
types? Sen. John Kerry, fits
Heinz's description to a T.
Only he's Forrest Gump with
out the charm. Watch him on
the campaign trail as he stares
into a TV camera, blandly
reciting his sappy aphorisms:
"We need to offer answers, not
just anger. We need to offer
solutions, not just slogans."
Right. Not just slogans.
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
a poor boy, he had worked his
way through West Point. All
this campaign did was tarnish
his desirability as a vice-presi
dential selection.
Sen. John Edwards, not
taken seriously until his strong
second-place finish in lowa,
disappointed in New
Hampshire by virtually tying
with Clark for third and fourth
place. Edwards campaigned
just as hard and effectively
here as in lowa, but the magic
did not travel well. He failed
to get the needed boost for the
Feb. 3 primaries.
Kerry's aides won't admit it
publicly, but they see a chance
to sweep the board in next
Tuesday's seven primaries and
thus wrap up the nomination
at an early date. His weakest
state in this group is South
Carolina, where Edwards
leads narrowly in the polls and
Clark will try to save his can
didacy. This cluster of non
liberal states is ill-suited for
Dean, who may make the tac
tical blunder of skipping Feb.
3 and looking ahead to a more
congenial environment in
Michigan and the state of
Washington. The nomination
now is John Kerry's to lose,
and he doesn't make many
mistakes.
Robert Novak is a nation
ally syndicated columnist and
television commentator.
duplicitous. He supported the
war. He doesn't. He supports
the death penalHe 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 hav
ing 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."
With the help of media
savvy "handlers," Heinz/Heinz
Kerry has toned down the rage
at least temporarily. She
doesn't sulk so much at cam
paign events and hasn't
mocked her husband openly in
a while. But it's clear she finds
her husband's campaign an
exasperating drain on her
energies. Which, of course,
begs the question: If his own
uninspired wife can barely
muster up a public showing of
respect for candidate Kerry,
why should voters?
Michelle Malkin is a
nationally syndicated colum
nist. Her e-mail address is
malkin @ comcast. net.
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