More Top Picks Best Fish Finders Under 500 Dollars
player ready...Howard Dean didn’t take many swipes at his Democratic opponents Friday, but he did take a shot at someone much more powerful.
“I’m very concerned about [Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan and would not reappoint him because I believe in the last year or so, Alan Greenspan has allowed his political considerations to interfere with his judgment,” Dean said in New Hampshire.
The former Vermont governor said Greenspan had supported “irresponsible” tax cuts pushed by President Bush, but added that the Fed chairman had “served the country well.”
–John McCormick
CAMPAIGN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE CAMPAIGN
It’s the Richard Gephardt primary.
The moment the congressman from Missouri abandoned his presidential bid last week, his rivals began scooping up his staff. A few dozen aides went to the Wesley Clark campaign. John Edwards tried to lure some too.
The biggest catch, though, came Friday night when Gephardt’s former chief of staff, Steve Elmendorf, was snatched by John Kerry. In a telephone call late Friday to the Tribune, Elmendorf announced he had changed loyalties.
Just in time too. Missouri, Gephardt’s home state, has a critical primary on Feb. 3.
–Jeff Zeleny
MAYBE HE SHOULD HAVE SLURRED HIS WORDS
John Kerry’s campaign touted the endorsement last week of Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) as a boost for the Massachusetts senator in his campaign for Southern support.
But the irascible Hollings, who is retiring after 38 years in the Senate, may have turned off some Asian-American and African-American voters when he introduced Kerry at a rally Friday in Manchester, N.H.
Hollings decried seeing his “favorite textile plant” along the Merrimack River occupied by a furniture store, noting that much of the furniture in the country is made in China. At that moment, a loud boom from the loudspeakers interrupted him.
“Some Chinaman got mad at that,” Hollings said in his thick Southern drawl.
And before turning over the microphone to Kerry, Hollings said he liked “little George W.” Bush but believed that Vice President Dick Cheney is pushing the president to seek more tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Vice President Cheney is the Jesse Jackson of the Republican Party: He wants it all. His time has come,” Hollings said.
–Dan Mihalopoulos