We post below an article from New York Times highlighting how huge sums are raised in just one evening by the opposition and how fun is heaped on the incumbent President. This is the mood in USA today with some exasperation of what is a happening in Iraq. In India K Subrahmanyam has advocated that now USA  should look to Iran and India to help solve the Iraqi mess. Perhaps our politicians and the Election Commission may take note of the transparent manner in which funds are raised for electioneering!

Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash

By Jodi Wilgoren

A star-studded salute to Senators John Kerry and John Edwards Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall slid into an unsparing skewering of the Bush administration, with actors and comedians denouncing the president as a liar, making off-color jokes about his name, and accusing him of risking soldiers' lives for political gain.

The racy Hollywood humor and harsh attacks were a sharp shift from the relentlessly positive focus on American values the new Democratic ticket has been trying to maintain this week.

"Texas Bandito, how much money did you put in your pocket today?" John Mellencamp crooned in a country ballad. "You better split from that Texas Bandito, he's made this world unsafe today. Our thoughts are not free from the Texas Bandito, he's just another cheap thug that sacrifices our young."

In a two-and-a-half hour gala that raised $7.5 million, a record for a single event, Chevy Chase poked fun at the president's pronunciation of "nuclear" and "terrorist" and said Mr. Bush had invaded Iraq "just so he could be called a wartime president." Paul Newman decried "tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me" as "borderline criminal." The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid." And Whoopi Goldberg, after joking about refusing to submit her material to campaign censors, made an extended sexual pun on the president's surname.

Then the Academy-Award-winning actress Meryl Streep asked which candidates Jesus might support.

"I wondered to myself during 'Shock and Awe,' I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?" Ms. Streep said.Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, denounced the event as "a Hollywood fund-raiser filled with enough hate and vitriol to make Michael Moore blush."

After the concert, Mr. Kerry's press secretary, David Wade, said, "Obviously John Kerry and John Edwards do not agree with everything that was said tonight," adding: "Performers have a right to speak their minds even when we don't agree with everything they say. That's the freedom John Kerry put his life on the line to defend."

But unlike one of Mr. Kerry's vanquished primary rivals, Howard Dean, who denounced racial humor and profanity at one of his own fundraisers in New York, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry hardly veered from their script when they mounted the stage at the end of the extravaganza, looking more subdued than they had all week.

"This campaign will be a celebration of real American values" Mr. Edwards promised, saying that voters "deserve a president who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong."

Mr. Kerry, inviting his and Mr. Edwards's adult children onstage for a sing-along of "This Land Is Your Land," told the crowd that "every single performer" on the bill had "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

Campaign aides said the performers would not allow broadcast journalists to record the concert.

Postponed from last month because of Ronald Reagan's death, the concert brought 6,200 people, paying $250 to $25,000 each, to the historic hall, beating the $6.8 million haul from a parallel gala last month in Los Angeles featuring Barbra Streisand, Willie Nelson and Billy Crystal. The take will be split based on limits on direct contributions to candidates: about $5 million will go to the Democratic National Committee and about $2 million to the campaign.

President Bush's best night, bringing in $4 million, was also in New York City, on June 23. His record day netted $5.3 million from a pair of fundraisers, in Chicago and Cincinnati, last September.

On an extensive bill featuring the Dave Matthews Band and Jon Bon Jovi, Mary J. Blige and John Fogerty, Ms. Goldberg stood out for her brash assessment of the Bush administration, as well as her teasing of the Democratic standard bearers.

"Where's the kid? Where's the young Mr. Edwards?" she said at the start, ignoring the questions Republicans have raised about his age and experience. "He looks like he's about 18," she said later, joking that she would check his identification before serving him a drink.

(Ms. Goldberg's was the only riff Mr. Kerry addressed directly, saying of his new political partner, "I have a man, Whoopi, who through his lifetime of experience ")

The concert capped the second day of joint campaigning by the newly minted Democratic ticket, part of a multimedia effort that included an hourlong interview with Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, on "Larry King Live." Asked about warnings on Thursday about the possibility of a Qaeda attack this year, Mr. Kerry told Mr. King that he had not yet had time to be briefed on the subject. He also said that he does not plan to see Mr. Moore's anti-Bush polemic, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The day dawned with a classic tarmac rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., near the epicenter of the vote-counting controversy of the 2000 election.

Continuing his running commentary on Mr. Edwards's children, Mr. Kerry told the crowd that 6-year-old Emma Claire and her brother Jack, 4, are "really good at math."

"They really know how to count," he said. "So I've given them a special duty in this election. We're sending Jack and Emma Claire down here to help those Republicans in West Palm Beach count those votes."

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