Howie Carr on C-SPAN today 3-6 pm

C-SPAN will continue its live simulcasts of radio talk show hosts today (10/29/04) with Howie Carr from 3-6 pm Eastern (out of WRKO, Boston). The man who gave Kerry the "liveshot" nickname. you may have seen Carr interviewed on Brian Lamb's show a couple months back.

Howie admitted some of his planned guests, like Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, couldn't be on because of (campaign- related) conflicts.

--- 1st Hour (3-4 ET) Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday will be with us. You might want to check out Chris's new book Character: Profiles In Presidential Courage.

Former Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan (she is on leave until after the election) will be with us to give her impressions of the election and what the results on Tuesday might be.

Senator John E. Sununu (R-NH) (who knew? SUNUNU!) is joining us to discuss the swing state of New Hampshire as well as the national scene.

Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA) on the democratic view of how the election is going. (Plans to run for Kerry's seat if God forbid Lurch gets elected)

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie will be with us to discuss the GOP's efforts on behalf of the President as the clock counts down on the election.

3rd Hour The CHUMP LINE! Call 617-779-3469 and leave Howie, Sandy or Tattoo a message which we may or may not play back on the air.

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, (he was in charge on 9/11) will be joining us to talk about his experiences in New York, Iraq and with President Bush.

A FEW GREAT OLD CARR ARTICLES ON KERRY AS A SAMPLE:

Copyright 1997 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

May 21, 1997 Wednesday THIRD EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 014

LENGTH: 600 words

HEADLINE: At last, hydrant gives Liveshot a real leg-up

BYLINE: By Howie Carr

BODY:
Finally, in his 13th year in the U.S. Senate, John Forbes Liveshot Kerry-Heinz is emerging from the bloated shadow of Teddy Kennedy.

After all these years of everyone drawing a complete blank when asked to list Liveshot's achievements, we all know now exactly what Kerry-Heinz has been able to accomplish.

He got his fire hydrant moved.

This is big. I mean, we once had an acting mayor here in Boston who was tried for soliciting a bribe simply because he arranged a curb cut for a pal. Kerry gets a fireplug moved around the corner and the newspapers say the value of his wife's mansion on Louisburg Square is now increased by maybe 200 or 300 large.

Hey, let ditzy billionaires like Joan Kroc worry about donating $ 15 million for flood relief in the Dakotas. John Kerry is one greed-crazed millionaire who's got his priorities straight.

He got his fire hydrant moved.

I drove by the famous fireplug Saturday afternoon. Some tourists were taking each other's pictures in front of it. Right now that hydrant is the biggest tourist attraction between the Cheers bar at the bottom of the hill and the State House at the top.

See that thar fireplug, Martha? That's the one Sen. Kerry got moved around the corner. Don't that beat all?

Finally, John Kerry is a national figure. His fireplug is under attack by a Republican congressman on C-SPAN, and now Kerry is a big enough (or is it rich enough?) national politician to issue a no-comment.

But when you're a kept man of a woman worth $ 800 million, why, you want to chat up your new book about global crime.

And yet if you do an interview, there's only one question the hosts have for you. How'd you get the fire hydrant moved?

Why, it's making Liveshot so angry he wants to go out and throw somebody else's medals over a wall somewhere. But maybe it'll all be worth it, if he can just establish a separate identity for himself. Get out of the Kennedy orbit once and for all.

All the indignities, all those under-card bouts. Just last month it was the whole annulment flap - vintage Kerry As Second Banana.

Joe Kennedy's ex-wife writes a book about hers. Liveshot's ex-wife Julia contributes a dust-jacket blurb.

Joe K's ex-wife gets the kid-gloves treatment on the "Today" show from Katie Couric. All Liveshot gets is a cable TV bit with Don Imus. Bottom line: a pseudo-Kennedy is interviewed live on NBC. The real Kerry has to settle for a phoner on MSNBC.

Even Kennedy crimes are of greater stature than the Kerry clan's. Here you've got Joe's brother Michael in a photo finish with the district attorney on a statutory rape rap. But his brother, Cam Kerry - he's never made the cover of a supermarket tab. The most Cam's ever been charged with was B&E.

And that was in 1972. In Lowell, which is not Cohasset, let alone Palm Beach.

The Kennedys are one thing. But Liveshot even suffers the same second-banana syndrome in comparison with Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. Liveshot goes to Vietnam and gets a Silver Star. Kerrey gets the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Kerrey dates movie stars. Like Debra Winger. Kerry got movie starlets. Like Morgan Fairchild.

And even that shallow pond was drying up before Liveshot met the wrinkly Teresa. He'd been reduced to dating a law-school student at GWU.

But now it's all changed. Wherever Liveshot goes this Memorial Day weekend, he'll hear the gasps and the whispering that will follow him. That's the guy that got his fire hydrant moved. - Howie Carr's radio show is broadcast every weekday afternoon on WRKO AM 680, WPRO AM 630, WNNZ AM 640 and WXTK-FM 94.9.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1997

Copyright 1995 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

December 1, 1995 Friday SECOND EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 006

LENGTH: 723 words

HEADLINE: Liveshot's just a male Catherine de Castelbajac

BYLINE: By Howie Carr

BODY:
My money's on Liveshot.

Maybe that'll change, but right now, John Forbes Kerry looks very tough. The guy doesn't have a close friend in the world, nobody really likes him, but he's still got all the moves and $ 760 million.

Look at Wednesday night. It's like the old days - Liveshot is doing, what else, liveshots. First with the TV stations, then the radios. He was like Alan Dershowitz - you could pick him up on your dental fillings.

But where was Weldo? Bending a few at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Hey Pink Floyd - wake up! This guy is tough. Check out the yearbook from his Yale Class of '66 with his extracurriculars.

Young Democrats, 1962-63.

Young Republicans, 1965-66.

And that's from back in his youth, when theoretically you're supposed to believe in something.

People say, what has John Forbes Kerry ever done? Let me tell you. His first wife was from the Main Line of Philadelphia - $ 300 million worth. She goes, and is replaced by . . . the ketchup heiress, Teresa Heinz, worth $ 760 million.

He's a male Catherine de Castelbajac. The only difference is, Kate couldn't close the deal with her sugar daddy. Liveshot did. He's a trophy husband. You know the old saying, "He made his money the old-fashioned way - he married it."

Weld's got his hands full here. He's a chief executive of a large state, and five years in, any CEO has to have made at least a few enemies. Here's a partial list of groups that are terminally p.o.'ed at Pink Floyd.

The "sportsmen," aka gun nuts.

The Greenbush rail-line opponents, who are very close to a cult.

Gimme girls.

Western Mass. Voters are still bent out of shape about how Pink Floyd flew to Sacramento instead of Great Barrington after the tornado.

MBTA workers.

Conservative Republicans seething about, among other things, the Corrupt Midget, the legislative pay raise, gay rights, commutations for murderers like Joe Yandle and the Framingham 8, etc, etc.

This is going to be a fun campaign, though. Think about the TV spots. Couldn't you see Kerry coming out of the box early with an old lady, about 85, hobbling through the nursing home with a walker?

Call her Gert.

"I used to like Bill Weld, I voted for him," Gert says, in voice-over, as she hobbles along. "But I don't know what's gotten into him lately, what with all this Newt Gingrich talk. I worked hard all my life and now I need a little help and these Republicans want me to pay more for my Medicare?"

Cut to Liveshot: "Of course we need to reform Medicare. And that's why I voted to make sure it's there, not just for Gert, but for all of us. But $ 270 billion in cuts - over my dead body, Gov. Gingrich - I mean Weld."

So what kind of TV spots does Weld run? Right now, the early days, his guys are talking about exposing Kerry's "triangulation" strategy, as the War Hero's pollster Dickie Morris calls it. Talk one way, vote the other.

My suggestion for Weld? Whack the little lady with the big bankroll. Why not a little . . . investigation . . . of the Heinz empire? Consider that Teresa had an $ 85 million run-up in her assets last year. Are you telling me that the Republican dirty-tricks crew can't find some downsized relish plants? Or how about a class-action suit filed by the parents of little kids who died after inhaling pickle fumes? And tell me, who's picking all those tomatoes that end up in the ketchup bottles?

What the hell, it's worth a shot. He's a tough cookie, Liveshot. I was yapping with him Wednesday night, while the governor was pounding 'em down at the Hard Rock. So we get to talking about the 1993 tax increase and Kerry flat-out lies that it only hit "2 percent" of the American people.

Really, I said. That's funny, I could have sworn you guys raised the tax on a gallon of gasoline. Didn't you, Sen. Kerry?

"Uh, I believe we did," he admitted. "But the price at the pump went down that year, so it really wasn't an increase."

This is a guy, in short, who would you-know-what down your back and then tell you it was raining. A natural-born solon, in other words. If you want to win, Pink Floyd, you'd better turn the hounds loose on Heinz. Otherwise, it's sayo-bleepin'-nara. Have you seen the early line from Vegas?

Kerry, 3-5. Weld, 3-1. Over-under: $ 15,000,000.

- Howie Carr's radio show is broadcast every weekday from 3-7 p.m. on WRKO 680 AM.

LOAD-DATE: December 01, 1995

Copyright 1996 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

October 20, 1996 Sunday FIRST EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 006

LENGTH: 698 words

HEADLINE: Kerry's memory is so bad he forgot he was homeless

BYLINE: By Howie Carr

BODY:
Now we know what the "F" in John F. Kerry stands for.

Forgetful.

It's amazing, this selective amnesia. Debate after debate, the junior senator can remember how he voted on every major issue - although, to be fair, it's a lot easier for Liveshot than most solons, because on the big bills he likes to vote both ways, just in case the political winds shift.

A couple of days ago, things were looking up for John F. Kerry-Heinz. Finally he looked to be putting a little distance between himself and Gov. Weld. His "gypsy days" were behind him. He no longer identified with Nick Nolte in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."

But then he started forgetting.

Now we learn that when ketchup queen Teresa Heinz's hubby was asked where he lived in Boston between December 1986 and September 1988, his amazing memory failed him. He drew a complete blank on his home address.

"I don't know," he fibbed. "I'll have to find out."

What he actually had to find out was who was talking, and how much the reporters knew. Too much, unfortunately.

The scribes had already discovered that various fat cats, greedheads, coatholders and alligator-shoes-wearing lobbyists spent much of the Decade of Greed providing Kerry with cut-rate accommodations, but only when they weren't letting him totally freeload at their mansions.

John Freeloader Kerry.

"I must have forgot," he prevaricated. "It was for such a short time. I just must have forgot about it."

It's sad, in a way. Here's John Kerry, a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the commonwealth, and in his mid-40's he found himself . . . homeless.

A message was left Friday for the senator, asking him if he would like to comment on the plight of the homeless, namely himself. But you know how it is with people living on the streets. Sometimes they don't get by the Pine Street Inn to pick up their messages for weeks at a time.

"You're waiting for him to call you back?" Gov. Weld inquired Friday evening. "I hope you packed a lunch."

Naturally, the mean-spirited and un-compassionate governor is already trying to make an issue of this, since Kerry seems to have been up to the same tricks as Good Time Charlie Flaherty.

Taking housing handouts from lobbyists.

Perhaps, though, Good Time Johnny ought to take this lemon and make lemonade. Almost every debate, he mentions his plan for saving fishermen from bankruptcy - by having the feds buy back their boats. That's very thoughtful, but how many commercial fishermen are there?

On the other hand, everyone pays rent or a mortgage. And who wouldn't appreciate the same kind of deal Liveshot had - if he didn't actually spend the night in the greedhead developer's apartment, he didn't pay any rent.

For instance, I was in Florida for five days last month. No one was in my house. But did the bank give me a 16 percent break on my monthly mortgage? It did not. And that's just not fair, dammit.

Please, Sen. Kerry, introduce some legislation to correct this injustice. Have pity on the working man. Just give us the same deal you had.

Despite his six-figure salary and all the other perks and writeoffs, not to mention his per-diem rent, Kerry was still strapped for cash. So in 1989 he worked out an even better deal. A no-rent arrangement in Georgetown with Bob Farmer, then a lobbyist, now the counsel general to Bermuda.

Personally, if I were looking for a crash pad, Bob Farmer would not be the first name I'd pull out of the Rolodex. But any port in a storm, right, Liveshot?

No doubt Weld will have a 30-second spot on the air by midweek with some tasteless title like "Bermuda Bob's Pajama Parties."

But even if Kerry hangs on and rides the War Hero's coattails to victory in two weeks, Kerry still has to be concerned about his failing memory. Wrinkly old guys who can't remember where they live - we all know where they end up. In front of the $ 2 window at Wonderland or Raynham, with an empty wallet, sans all IDs.

And wouldn't that be a sad ending for a solon who once dreamed of being president. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Dogtrack).

Howie Carr's radio show is broadcast every weekday from 3-7 p.m. on WRKO 680 AM, WPRO 630 AM and WXTK-FM 94.9.

LOAD-DATE: October 21, 1996

Copyright 2002 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

November 27, 2002 Wednesday ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 008

LENGTH: 693 words

HEADLINE: Kerry profile on target? Now that's rich!

BYLINE: By HOWIE CARR

BODY:
John "Liveshot" Kerry stories? I got a million of 'em.

So, apparently, does everybody else, which is why, in the fawning profile of him this week in The New Yorker, Liveshot attempts to innoculate himself once and for all:

"Look," he says, "I was a very serious guy except for when I was a non-serious guy. I knew how to have a lot of fun, sometimes too much. There were plenty of times when I was disengaged, frivolous, four sheets to the wind."

Henceforward, every sordid little anecdote can be dismissed as "old news." It's the Clinton m. o. Mistakes were made. Move on.

Remember the Eliot Lounge in the Back Bay? One Friday night, Liveshot decides to take a pass on the Eurotrash scene at Biba's and instead heads over to the Eliot to scout out the local talent. He waves to bartender Tommy Leonard and begins chatting up two unattached babes at the bar.

After awhile, it becomes clear that the two cupcakes do not comprehend just how privileged they are this evening, prompting the junior senator to pose the eternal question:

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah," says one of the gals. "You're Bob Lobel."

Oh, the pain. Liveshot was the first male politician I ever saw wearing makeup outside a TV studio. It was during his first Senate campaign, at a hotel fund-raiser, and I was there to do - what else? - a live shot.

"John," I asked him, "are you wearing makeup?"

"Why yes," he sniffed. "I have a bit of a cold."

There's much to respect about Liveshot, and by the way, despite what The New Yorker says, I'm the one who hung the "Liveshot" moniker on him, not Billy Bulger. Bulger called him "JFK - Just for Kerry."

JFK indeed. How many hours did he have to practice his signature to get it to look just like the real JFK's? He has so much clout, the city moved a fire hydrant from in front of his wife's Beacon Hill mansion. But above all else, the man is a gigolo's gigolo. How many guys could dump a first wife from a blueblood family worth $ 300 million, and end up on the rebound with a second wife worth $ 600 million?

Bob Lobel never pulled that off.

"Put down that I saw him cut in line once at Legal Sea Food in Chestnut Hill," said another guy. "More than once, as a matter of fact. He's a line-cutter and a name-dropper."

Here's another Liveshot story, told to me by a major Boston nightclub owner who had a luscious young galpal. One night, they're all getting down, and among the guests is a four-sheets-to-the-wind Liveshot. The girl, who's up on current events, starts tearing into Kerry for his weathervane-like voting record, telling him he needs to make a "commitment."

"Baby," he finally says, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze, "I am ready right now to make a commitment. To you."

In those days, before he tracked down 63-year-old ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz, Liveshot was known as a cheapskate tipper. Between heiresses, he could flash cash for a convertible and a fancy imported motorcycle, yet he had nothing to give to charity. Beautiful People seldom do, have you noticed?

But the 58-year-old boytoy has changed his ways. He no longer flies to Florida on private jets belonging to S&L bandidos. No more quick flips of condos to raise cash.

Now he summers at the Heinz mansion on Nantucket, and when he has a party, the servants haul porta-toilets onto the spacious oceanfront lawn so that the hoi polloi need never defile the master's water closet.

Speaking of plebeians, do you recall the late state rep from Revere, Billy Reinstein? During one of his occasional meet-the-peasants tours, Liveshot deigned to address some legislators. Reinstein told his pals, watch this, and then sauntered up to Kerry and introduced himself - as Butch Cataldo, the state rep he'd defeated to win the seat.

"Why Butch, good to see you again!" Liveshot began. "How are you doing Butch! How's the family, Butch!"

Bush vs. Kerry. Andover vs. St. Paul's. Yale '68 vs. Yale '66. Right now you'd have to bet on Bush, unless the game is marrying heiresses.

Howie Carr's radio show can be heard every weekday afternoon on WRKO AM 680, WHYN AM 560, WGAN AM 560, WEIM AM 1280, WXTK 95.1 FM or online at howiecarr.org.

LOAD-DATE: November 27, 2002

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