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Lies, Damned Liars, and Wingnuts
2004-8-4
I hear that there's a chain mail making the rounds saying very bad things about John Kerry and in particular Teresa Heinz Kerry. So, for your service, here's the entire thing, plus a rebuttal. The email is in italics, my response in regular type. The email has not been edited in any way, so all italicized typos are in the original.
Following is a brief background on Mrs. John Kerry . She hates being called that, by the way: Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry. Married Senator Kerry in 1995. She only took his name eighteen months ago and she is an "interesting" paradox of conflicts.
If you thought John Kerry was scary, he doesn't hold a candle to his wife! Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry was born in Mozambique,the daughter of a Portuguese physician, was educated in Switzerland and South Africa. Fluent in five languages, she was working as a United Nations interpreter in Geneva in the mid-60's when she met a "handsome" young American, H. John Heinz, III, who worked at a bank in Geneva. He told her his family was "in the food business."
Is that a problem? I mean, speaking five languages and having worked as an interpreter? I realize that patriots have a problem with people who are not total ignorami about other nations, but this really crosses a line (click Read More for the real beef).
They were married in 1966 and returned to Pittsburgh where his family ran the giant H. J. Heinz food company He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1971, and in 1976 he was elected to the first of three terms in the United States Senate. A Republican, he wrote a burning diatribe against some of the causes backed by young House member John Kerry.)
Does it mean THK supported him in that? It may come as a surprise to some people, but there exist relationships that are not based on politics. If I marry someone who's, say, anti-abortion (as one of my two best online friends is), and she becomes an anti-abortion activist after I die or we divorce, does it mean she has flip-flopped?
Several years later, in 1991, he was killed when his plane collided with a Sun Oil Company helicopter over a Philadelphia suburb. The senator, his pilot and copilot, and both of Sun's helicopter pilots were killed. He was survived by his wife, Teresa, and their three young sons.
Four years later, having inherited Heinz's $500 million fortune, she married Senator John Forbes Kerry, the liberal then-junior senator from Massachusetts. She became a registered Democrat and the process of her radicalization was set in motion.
I'll forgive the email's author for calling Kerry a liberal, on the grounds that this mistake is common to the vast majority of Americans. But "radicalization" is a complete exaggeration, and the evidence offered below is laughable.
Heinz Kerry is not shy about telling people that she required Kerry to sign a prenuptial agreement before they were married. John Kerry may not have check writing privileges on the Heinz catsup and pickle fortune, but he is certainly a willing and uncomplaining beneficiary of it.
A lot of hard-earned money, made through many years of hawking catsup, mustard, and pickles has fallen into the hands of two people who despise successful entrepreneurship and who believe in the confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
Judging by Kerry's track record on corporate welfare and soft money, the only confiscatory redistribution of wealth he supports is upward (Bush supports even more confiscatory redistribution, dear Republican reader). The point about JFK and THK hating successful entrepreneurship is utter hogwash, for which no evidence is offered, and which actually is at odds with Kerry's support of soft money contributions inthe Senate to the point of gutting an amendment that would eliminate a soft-money loophole. IF at all, JFK hates the poor sods who pay for corporate welfare (i.e. the middle-class).
So how does Mrs. Heinz Kerry spend John Heinz's money?
Just one example: According to the G2 Bulletin, an online intelligence newsletter of WorldNetDaily, in the years between 1995-2001 she gave more than $4 million to an organization called the Tides Foundation. And what does the Tides Foundation do with John Heinz's money?
WorldNetDaily is about as reliable as Indymedia, Saddam's Information Minister, and Pravda at the height of the Cold War. The author of the email can't even produce evidence from more neutral sources, such as the USA Today, the NY Times, CNN, or the Washington Post (even if they have a liberal bias, which they don't, then this bit should appear somewhere if it's true, just in a place where nobody will find it).
The Urban Legends Reference Page has a good refutation of the THK-Tides Foundation link posited in the original version of this email (what I got was apparently a subsequent incarnation) - basically, THK's contributions are non-fungible, i.e. the Tides Foundation can only use them for specific projects in Pennsylvania according to a legally binding contract.
They support numerous antiwar groups, including Ramsey Clark's International Action Center. Clark has offered to defend Saddam Hussein when he's tried.
Fair trial is for sissies, apparently. Hell, even the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials got fair trials and had attorneys defending them.
They support the Democratic Justice Fund, a joint venture of the Tides Foundation and billionaire hate-monger George Soros. The Democratic Justice Fund seeks to ease restrictions on Muslim immigration from "terrorist" states.
Soros? Hatemonger? This is preposterous, considering that the hatemonger charge is thrown as a pure slogan and without any evidence. As for easing restrictions on immigration of Muslims, this won't cause one more casualty from terrorism. 9/11 was pulled off by people who were on student visas, but it could have just as well been pulled off by people who were on tourist visas or even on fake visas. If poor Mexicans can stay in the United States illegally, then so can terrorists.
They support the Council for American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are known to have close ties to the terrorist group, Hamas.
As far as words go, the only result on searching for "Hamas" on the CAIR website yields an article that says that Sharon's attacks on the Hamas will only aggravate the situation in Palestine, which turned out to be right. Maybe CAIR has covert links to the Hamas, but the only results on "Council for American-Islamic Relations" hamas that point to a link come from right-wing websites.
They support the National Lawyers Guild, organized as a communist front during the Cold War era. One of their attorneys, Lynne Stewart, has been arrested for helping a client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with terror cells in Egypt. He is the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
What's said about the NLG is a lie. The NLG was created in the 1930s in support of the New Deal. I know that many conservatives can't distinguish between the New Deal and communism, but the fact that they ignore reality is their problem, not mine. The NLG was radical, though - right from its inception it admitted blacks and women as members... As for Lynne Stewart, this successfully connects JFK to the 1993 WTC bombing using 6 degrees of separation: JFK - THK - the Tides Foundation - the NLG - Lynne Stewart - Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman - the 1993 WTC bombing. Compare this to GWB - the GOP - anti-abortion radicals - abortion clinic bombings, at only 3 degrees of separation.
They support the "Barrio Warriors," a radical Hispanic group whose primary goal is to return all of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico.
The only results on Google for barrio warriors tides foundation that point to a link come from this very email in its many incarnations.
These are but a few of the radical groups that benefit, through the anonymity provided by the Tides Foundation, from the generosity of our would-be first lady, the wealthy widow of Republican Senator John Heinz, and now the wife of the Democratic Senator who aspires to be the 44th President of the United States.
Originally this also listed NARAL and Planned Parenthood as radical organizations... the evidence offered here is slim to nonexistent.
Aiding and supporting our enemies is not good for America, regardless of your political views.
At least somewhere between the original article andme, someone had the sense to drop the reference to NARAL and Planned Parenthood as "our enemies." As demonstrated above, not only are THK's contributions to the Tides Foundation not fungible, but also the organizations the Tides Foundation supports are a lot more innocent than the email portrays them as.
If voters will open their eyes, educate themselves and see the real Teresa Heinz Kerry, they will not appreciate her position as ultra rich fairy godmother of the radical left. They will not want to imagine her laying her head on a pillow each night inches away from the President of the United States.
Obviously, the President and his wife must agree on political issues, right? THK has nothing to do with the radical left, and JFK's record shows that he is even more right-wing than she is.
Hopefully they love this country enough to decide that the only way these two will ever be allowed into the White House is with an engraved invitation in hand.
Here comes the patriotism police... I'm getting tired of all the "the other party is unpatriotic!" crap. Especially considering that patriotism essentially means the destruction of the self in the service of some goal. Exalting patriotism is as sensible as exalting communism or religious fundamentalism; all are murderous lies.
Instead of deleting this, pass it on. Let everyone know these people are unfit to represent this great nation. The uninformed will never hear the truth from the press, who wants Kerry elected!
The press wants Kerry elected? The email provides no evidence for that. I have only seen two serious studies about American media bias. One is in the book Manufacturing Consent and points to a clear pro-US government bias in foreign policy reporting; however, it's based too much on case studies and not enough on large-n statistics. The second study is reported in Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and points to a pro-Bush bias.
Those who buy the Kerry facade, beware what you vote for - - - you may regret that you got it!
This warning is good for liberals who think that Kerry is a great liberal, but not for people who think he's moderate.
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