Kerry’s Ketchup

by Sher Khan  

Ketchup, a pasty sauce made of tomatoes, tastes good with fries and other foods but never served as a main dish. In the recent election, Kerry’s agenda worked like ketchup, it looked good but failed to stimulate core issues.  

Coincidentally, Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz Kerry owns the billion-dollar Heinz ketchup industry that she inherited from her first husband John Heinz, the republican senator of Pennsylvania who died in 1991. Born in Mozambique and highly educated Teresa speaks five languages fluently. In1992, being an active republican she was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to represent US non-governmental organizations at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio. While summit was in progress, Teresa met Kerry for the second time on the branch of a huge tree because they found mutual interest in environmental issues.  

Teresa is a bright and successful woman but she acted weird while in the campaign trail. Although, biased media tried to downplay her unbalanced comments and unusual behavior, voters keenly noticed and remembered her actions. At the primary, Kerry took a $6 million mortgage against the house, since then Teresa was surely worried about her money, even though Kerry signed a prenuptial agreement, a contract that spells out how assets will be distributed in the event of divorce or death.   

In contrast to Teresa’s disappointing behavior, Laura Bush maintained a pleasant appearance throughout the campaign. Actually, pre-election polls showed that the barometer of survey surged when Laura appeared with the President.  

There are other bottles of Ketchup that ruined Kerry’s fate too; Michael Moore’s short film Funky hype 9/11 is one of them. I would not call this film a documentary like many people did because documentaries are about research, impartial information and a short version of a bigger picture. Nevertheless, Moore ’s film lacks all of these qualities. American people love gossips, rumors and conspiracy theory but they are smart enough to think pragmatically when dealing with real business.  

Moore ’s film definitely amused many devoted democrats but it failed to portray an honest picture, so far critiques have discovered at least 56 deceits in this film. Many found this film as unpatriotic, paranoid and a sickening fantasy, causing them to drift away from Kerry.  

Iraq war was another barrel of Ketchup that Kerry sputtered all over the place. It’s possible that Weapons of Mass destruction is still hidden or they may have been transported to another country before the fall of Saddam regime. However, Kerry surely voted for Iraq war based on the same intelligence report that was made available to both Bush and Kerry. The report may have been faulty too. The world of intelligence and counter-intelligence is full of deception and distraction that outshines the thriller of James Bond 007. Since the Gulf war, Saddam was playing hide and seek with his WMD to scare his neighboring countries and America . He acted like an innocent baby in front of the UN inspectors but also created a smokescreen of having WMD. It’s possible that Saddam fed misleading information to CIA and other agencies.  

Now, Bush will look like a fool if he admits that CIA grasped the bait of Saddam. Based on the report, Kerry voted for the war and Bush planned for a mass attack on Iraq . Bush expected that piles of WMD would be discovered, to publicize the discovery he allowed journalists to accompany the army. Whereas Kerry changed his mind and proclaimed, “I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war” and called the invasion of Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time". It was scary when Kerry said, “Help is on the way” to our troops, as if they have been thrown into a lion’s cage for no reason.  

With or without WMD, Saddam was a threat to America . In 1997, Saddam appealed Arab nations to attack Americans and British interests. His regime also called for suicide attacks on Americans on the first anniversary of 9/11. Throwing SCUD missiles to Israel and helping Palestinian suicide bombers are not very peaceful act either.  

Obsessed by Clinton ’s economic legacy, many believed that Kerry would change the clock of economic downturn to 180º, yet he had no tangible agenda to improve the economy. No kidding, President of the United States does not control the economy, it’s the Federal Reserve chairperson, Alan Greenspan who plays “Rubik’s cube” with the economy. Sometimes he solves the puzzle and sometimes he fails, usually Presidents don’t challenge his decision.  

In Clinton ’s era, the Fed shifted the strategy on unemployment. It was believed that inflation would accelerate if unemployment rate goes under six percent. The Fed abandoned this theory and allowed unemployment rate to hit 4 percent without pulling the plug. During this time, computer technology advanced abruptly, giving a boost to the economy. Also stock market bubble helped but it busted while Clinton was still in power. Clinton should be credited for creating short-term jobs and balancing the budget. Nonetheless, short-term jobs were not investment-led.    

Despite Greenspan’s contribution, Presidents surely take many steps that directly or indirectly affect the economy, Clinton ’s NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is one of them. Sadly, NAFTA caused the loss of 750,000 good paying manufacturing jobs. Sure enough, democrats won’t talk about NAFTA and Republicans won’t either because Sr. Bush initiated this plan. NAFTA caused job loss and it also fetched a ballooning trade deficit with Mexico and Canada . China ’s inclusion in world trade center, another blunder of Clinton caused the same affect and America will have to pay for this mistake dearly for years to come. In 2003, US suffered $124 billion trade deficit with China , the largest bilateral trade deficit in the world. John Kerry critiqued Bush for the deficit but he forgot to mention that Clinton made this deal stubbornly and almost single-handedly.  

Economy has its own mind; it goes through economic boom-slowdown-recession- recovery and starts all over again. Clinton went through economic boom and left in the period of slowdown. Actually President Bush handled the economy fairly well despite the heavy blow from recession, impact of 9/11 and two wars. His tax cut worked as an anti-biotic and supplied enough energy for a jump-start. Kerry may not have done any better.  

Many democrats vowed to leave the country if Bush wins, which certainly did not happen. They panicked and they had reasons for panicking. It was expected that Bush’s win would cause the rise of Christianity. (Which is of course better than the “rise of Mummies”, I mean Islam). Conservatives of Republican party will push for a ban on human cloning, abortion and gay marriage. They will also seek for strict obscenity laws, school voucher and conservative supreme court Judges. Despite maintaining opposite views on these issues, a lot of liberals voted Bush for his decisiveness, his enthusiasm to combat security threats and for upholding values that many Americans cherish.  

Human cloning is a tragic issue that saddened many secular humanists. Religion and science do not mix very well, whenever science advances, religion commands, “Thou shalt remain ignorant”.  The Vatican sentenced Galileo for his discovery of “Earth goes round the sun”. Probably, human cloning is facing the same fate that Galileo’s discovery encountered centuries ago.  

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