He does. Or his producer does. He's mentioned that he's found items on Free Republic a couple of times on the show.
I agree that Howie is The Heat. He's the only thing I'll miss if I go someplace more civilised and welcoming than Boston. Like back to Afghanistan.
I have been doing some digging in the VVAW. All their early records are in a library in Wisconsin. (I think Madison). During the time Kerry was in the protests, the real leaders of VVAW, Jan Crumb (later changed his name to Jan Barry), Al Hubbard, Bobby Mueller (sp) and Joe Urgo were overtly aligned with the North Vietnamese. Hubbard and Urgo visited NVN and participated in NV propaganda. I've also been able to document that as Vietnam Veterans go, these guys are pretty shaky. Crumb/Barry was a radio mechanic in ASA in 63 or 64, before the war got hot. Yet by 1970 he's telling atrocity stories. Hubbard never served in Vietnam, not even a day. He also lied about it at the time, got caught, and Kerry stood by him. Urgo is definitely not a combat veteran, still trying to get a read on whether he was ever in Vietnam. SO far it looks like he was in that hotbed of insurgency, Atlantic City. The worst ambush you could get into there in 1968/69 is finding out that your hooker is actually a guy... the reason, then, that guys like Kerry, Mueller and Ron Kovic were important is that they, unlike most of VVAW, were actually combat veterans, unlike the Soviet-line radicals like Crumb/Barry, Hubbard, and Urgo.
Basically, the structure and essence of VVAW was a fraud.. .the whole organization was street theater writ large.
Maybe Kerry figured that if something that big, and that phony, didn't get called on it, why not give his own phony tendencies free reign? Phony hero, phony protester (you should hear his radical pals diss him!), and phony patriot. Phony Irishman (and why would anyone pick that race to aspire to, of all the posssibilities? Oh, wait, I get it -- Boston demographics). Phony man of the people, who's two poor to send his kids to college or put a dollar in the collection basket, but is the beneficiary of three trust funds totalling over $150 million, plus the money he's racked up bedding wealthy women years his senior. (He must have something going for him, either that or women in the Social Security-recipient zone are incredibly hard up).
Anyway, is there anything authentic at all about Kerry? I think his goal is to be like the Mirror of Erised in the Harry Potter stories -- to reflect whatever people want to think about him. Well I want to think he's got all the solidity and value of a plastic Rolex. Let the two-faced traitor reflect that.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F