it handled *Plan A* (Iraq War). Manipulate the evidence until it fits your own agenda and then impose it on America. One doctor's personal religious views now control the FDA and every woman in America.
The Debate Over Plan B
Nov. 27, 2005 (CBS) When the “morning after pill,” also known as “Plan B,” was put on the market in 1999, it was described as an emergency contraceptive that prevents a pregnancy in cases of rape or accidents like condom breaks.
It is only available by prescription. But because women need to take it within 72 hours, the drug's manufacturer applied to the Food and Drug Administration two years ago for permission to sell Plan B over the counter.
The drug is considered totally safe, so the request was seen as a slam dunk. But then Plan B became the target of anti-abortion rights groups, and part of the wider controversy over whether religious beliefs are encroaching on scientific decision-making. 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
Until last August, Dr. Susan Wood headed the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health and was one of the scientists inside the agency arguing that Plan B should be available without a prescription. “If it's safe, and it is, and effective, it's more effective the quicker you have it. This is why it needs to be over-the-counter,” she says.
“If you need it on Saturday morning, Monday morning is too late. Getting to a physician to get a prescription, getting that prescription to a pharmacy and getting it filled takes time, as we all know. Then what are you going to do?” says Wood.
That’s a question that a woman named Evelyn faced last year, when she was raped at a New York nightclub.
Evelyn, age 22 at the time, was rushed to St. Vincent’s hospital, the nearest emergency room.
She says the hospital did not offer her an emergency contraceptive.
“It was something that they were supposed to offer,” says Evelyn’s mother, Sandi. “In the situation as my daughter’s, as Evelyn’s situation, they were supposed to offer, you know, and let the person make the decision as to whether or not they wanted it. I didn’t know that it was optional.”
Sandi says she knew about a New York law that says all hospitals must offer rape victims emergency contraception like Plan B.
Sandi called the nurse who had treated Evelyn at St. Vincent’s. “I said, ‘Why did you not give it to her?’ And she very rudely said to me, ‘Well, we're a Catholic hospital. We don't do birth control.’ At which point, I told them what they could do with being a Catholic hospital and their views on birth control — I'd rather not say that on the air,” she recalls. “I was absolutely livid.”
Because of Evelyn's case, St. Vincent’s is under investigation by the state of New York. The hospital told 60 Minutes it is now complying with the law.
Evelyn finally got a prescription for Plan B, and took it 10 hours after the rape. Had she not gotten Plan B and had gotten pregnant, Evelyn says she would have had an abortion. “I'm glad that that didn't have to happen, I never had to experience that, she says.
The Catholic Church opposes Plan B not just because it’s birth control, but because it considers use of Plan B to be, in Cardinal Egan of New York’s words, “a chemical abortion.”
But Wood says this is not an abortion pill. “There is an abortion pill called RU-486, and this is not it,” she says. “An abortion pill interrupts an established pregnancy. This product is contraception. It does not interrupt an established pregnancy.”
She says even if you took it and were already pregnant, it would not end the pregnancy. “The only connection this product has with abortion is that it can prevent them by preventing an unintended pregnancy,” says Wood.
There is some debate about that interpretation. Most of the time, Plan B works by stopping ovulation so that a pregnancy cannot occur. In a small percentage of cases, when a woman is ovulating on the day she has unprotected sex, a fertilized egg could form. In that case, Plan B might prevent the egg from implanting in her uterus.
While most doctors do not consider that an abortion, anti-abortion-rights doctors do, such as David Hager, a gynecologist from Lexington, Ky., who won’t prescribe Plan B for his own patients.
“One of the mechanisms of action can be to inhibit implantation, which means that it may act as an abortifacient,” says Dr. Hager. He says abortifacient means it causes an abortion and that this medication may act to inhibit implantation.
In 2002, Dr. Hager got a call from the Bush White House asking him to serve on the FDA advisory committee charged with reviewing Plan B’s over-the-counter application along with two other anti-abortion-rights physicians. But when Hager argued against Plan B at committee meetings, he didn’t talk about abortion.
“I was concerned about 10, 11, 12-year-old girls buying this product,” says Hager.
He raised moral questions. “I’m not in favor of promotion of a product that would increase sexual activity among teenagers,” he says.
Hager speculated about an increase in sexually-transmitted diseases. “I’m saying that it is possible that with the use of Plan B the individual may put herself at greater risk,” he says.
But the advisory panel reviewed 40 studies that refuted his objections and showed that Plan B does not lead to more cases of sexually transmitted disease, or more risky sexual behavior.
Even Dr. Hager admits Plan B is totally safe. The FDA says there have been no deaths, no heart attacks, no strokes and no evidence of misuse or abuse.
But, he says, one of his major concerns is that young women wouldn’t go to their doctors if such a drug were readily available.
“If we approve this for over-the-counter sale, then what is that going to do as far as what I call access to medical care for younger adolescent women?” Hager asks.
Wood disputes that view. “Is this cutting the doctor out? Would it cut out their relationship? Well, in fact, I think there’s strong argument that the physicians themselves want this product to be over the counter.”
Wood says the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association have all endorsed making this product available over the counter. That includes pediatrics, meaning younger girls.
If Plan B is sold over the counter anyone — any age — could buy it easily in a drugstore, like cough syrup or bubble bath. A big part of this issue is whether pharmacies will stock it. What if they refuse to carry Plan B?
In a survey of drugstores in Kentucky, Dr. Hager’s home state, the American Civil Liberties Union found that most pharmacies didn’t carry Plan B; 83 of them said they would even refuse to order it for women with prescriptions. These include Wal-Mart, which has a nationwide policy against dispensing Plan B.
The American Civil Liberties Union got a prescription for a woman named Fran, and sent her to five pharmacies undercover. 60 Minutes went along with a hidden camera to see what would happen.
Only one pharmacy, Kmart, had Plan B in stock; another drug store offered to order it, but the pharmacist told Fran it would take several days before they could possibly get it.
Remember, it has to be taken within 72 hours.
At another store, Fran was turned down by a pharmacist who explained that she believes it’s an abortion pill. “The morning after pill is after you have that fertilized egg, and that is a baby. You are not allowing it to implant. So it is considered abortive,” the pharmacist said.
The next day, Fran and 60 Minutes went back to that pharmacy together and found the same pharmacist.
“Anyone can walk in off the street and we can refuse to fill a prescription,” the pharmacists said. Asked whether a prescription could be refused on religious grounds, the pharmacists said, “On any grounds. Personal preference. Any reason, we can refuse to fill a prescription.”
But the Kentucky state pharmacy board told 60 Minutes that pharmacists must have a professional medical reason, not simply a personal preference, to turn away a prescription for Plan B or anything else.
The pharmacy did offer birth control but the pharmacist did not consider Plan B birth control.
So, with Plan B mired in the abortion debate, the FDA advisory committee took its vote on recommending whether it should be sold over the counter.
Dr. Hager voted “no.” But his colleagues on the committee rejected his arguments, voting 23 to four in favor of offering the drug over the counter.
Such a lop-sided vote should have meant the application would sail through. But then the saga of Plan B took a strange turn.
Dr. Hager says someone at the FDA — he won’t say who — asked him to write a “minority report” in which he asked for more studies and more data on the use of Plan B by young girls.
A few months later something totally unexpected happened: The FDA ignored the committee’s overwhelming vote and rejected the proposal to sell Plan B over the counter, citing the very concerns in Hager’s report.
Some people believe Hager raised these objections because of his religious beliefs, but that’s something he denies. “The religious aspect did not enter into that decision for me,” he says.
But in to a speech he gave to a Christian college, he seemed to admit his role was all about religion. “God has used me to stand in the breach for the cause of the kingdom,” Hager said at the time.
He was talking about Plan B.
“I argued it from a scientific perspective. And God took that information and He used it through this minority report to influence a decision. You don't have to wave your bible to have an effect as a Christian in the public arena,” says Hager.
Hager says he did not mean to suggest that God wanted Plan B to fail, and that he was His instrument. “I thought that God used me, He'd used my individual gifts of, whatever, in an individual way to be able to express my opinion.”
But with the speech, Hager may have fueled the fire of those who say that all he did was try to cloak religious beliefs in scientific language.
“If the idea in the population of this country is that a person can’t be a person of faith and also be a person of science, I strongly disagree with that,” says Hager.
Should agencies like the FDA be completely divorced from the debates that go on in society?
“Again, the question the agency has to deal with is, is it safe? And is it safe for teens? Yes, it is,” says Wood. “Have we asked that question about other contraceptive methods? Are we going to label, take condoms behind the counter? Make them prescription? I don't think we should.
“I think most Americans would like to leave those decisions as private decisions, and decisions within the family.”
Plan B’s manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals, submitted a new application to the FDA with an age cut-off, so that girls 16 and younger would still need a prescription to get the drug. This seemed to address Hager’s objections and those of the anti-abortion rights lobby.
But last August, then-FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford surprised just about everyone when he announced that the agency had postponed a decision on the new application for what could be months or years. He took the unprecedented step of overruling his own scientific staff.
“I think the Plan B decision to cut the scientists out is sort of a poster child of this concern about science and politics,” says Wood.
She’s talking about fears that religious forces are hijacking government decision-making. Wood was so outraged by the FDA postponement that she promptly resigned as director of the Office of Women’s Health in protest.
“What I saw was the science being ignored. That the scientific and medical staff (was) being cut out of decision making,” says Wood.
In fact, according to a government investigation, top FDA officials had decided to reject Plan B’s over the counter application months before the scientific staff completed its review.
Was there pressure from the White House? The investigators said they couldn’t find out because e-mails and documents relating to the matter were destroyed.
As for Plan B as an over-the-counter drug, nobody knows when a decision on that will be made.
The White House on Friday threw its support behind a plan to speed release of $25 billion in existing loans to the Big Three automakers but rejected a Democratic proposal to use money from a financial bailout to help the troubled industry.
The $700 billion financial rescue package was never intended to help automakers and shouldn't be now, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told The Associated Press. But since Democratic leaders in Congress are pressing forward with a proposal to carve out a piece of its for the auto industry, she said the White House has decided to pursue a different approach: accelerating the availability of federal loans Congress first approved in September.
Those loans were approved to help automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles and become more competitive companies in the global marketplace. The administration now supports allowing the loans to be released more quickly than the original legislation prescribed and to be used for more urgent purposes as the companies struggle to stay afloat.
"Democrats are choosing a path that would only lead to partisan gridlock," she said. "We are now actively calling on Congress to amend the loan program."
As for your other points, I'm sure there are home-grown terrorists in the USA. Will Bush limit his target to those people? That's the problem. Nobody knows for sure. All people can be certain of is how he feels about swiftboating and getting revenge on anyone who disagrees with him. And that's why this man should be forced to follow the law and use warrants when spying on Americans. He simply can't be trusted.
I do question which troops he will be using, though. They're too busy fighting Bush's war in Iraq (not to mention likely war in Iran) to be able to fight Bush's war against Americans who don't agree with him.
This bird is not protecting the
constitution. But then maybe he'll succeed and Hillary will be the candidate to replace Obama..........could that have anything to do with the case doyathink? Come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea, I doubt McCain would have a snowball's chance againt her.
Hey - did you know that old bird is still alive?
seriously, she's like 96. I bet she gets really offended when she hears people saying that her son is too old to be president or that he'll croak while he's in office. I just assumed she was dead. Learn something new everyday!
Okay if you weren't shooting me the bird
then what were you trying to tell me oh and high and mighty one?
An alleged pandemic of the bird flu would do that. (NT)
:-(
Chertoff says bird flu = police state.
It may not be foreign terrorists you have to fear at your door! - This week Chertoff announced that in the event of a widespread bird flu epidemic here it would not be the medical authorities or health departments who will be running the show - the Department of Homeland Security intends to take over and make our medical and quarantine decisions for us.
Apparently with the migrations of the world's birds about to begin, all the experts are saying that this bird flu could rapidly spread across the world and become a really serious threat.
What has the Bush Admin. done to prepare? They bought themselves 100,000 doses of Tamiflu. You, on the other hand, can wing it. There's no more left. Let's see, 100,000 doses ought to just about make sure his haves and have-more base will have plenty to go around.
Bush supporters in la la land will have no trouble believing those doses are meant for babies and the elderly, and of course somehow for themselves. For the rest of us, the word is: Garlic, goldenseal and echinacea, and stop filling the bird baths.
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Plan B.
I can't imagine Bush releasing funds intended for the banks and insurance companies to be released to the auto industry without imposing more stringent conditions on the UAW workers than the republican caucus and parochial southern senators have already tried to enact. Gettelfinger stands behind his "bankruptcy is not an option" statement. If Bush does not step forward, looks like liquidation could be just around the corner. JMHO.
bad plan
I do believe our senators need to go focus on this crisis, but, a few hours spared for a debate is not a waste of time. The election is close and people need to hear what both of the candidates have to say.
More on O's plan for
What I had in mind was his proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for start-up and small businesses, the making work pay tax credit to help reduce the double taxation paid by self-employed (that "special" self-employment tax you pay if you are an IC) and the proposed $250 million annual investment in the National Network of Business Incubators designed to increase the number and size of small businesses.
Here's part of the answer to the earlier question about small businesses and health insurance cost/fine. He proposes a Small Business Health Tax Credit program of up to 50% of the premiums they pay for health care benefits for their employees. If you want to read more, here's the link:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/SmallBusinessFINAL.pdf Under O's plan, you will keep more of it.
x
That's not a bad plan
But the article itself says that France does not have socialized medicine - it's something completely different, especially with the lowered malpractice insurance and the tuition-free universities. I don't see that anything like that would be set up in the US, do you? It's not a bad idea, though. Definitley something to think about.
LOL. I like that plan.
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God has a plan for everything
His main objective is that none of us die but, as loving as He is, He gives us choices. Many of us will make the wrong choice and die for it.
health plan
I have an idea, why doesnt Bush stop waging immoral wars and use our tax dollars for something constructive and life saving, like health coverage for those who die each year without it? You know why I would love a universal health plan? Because I care about my brother and sister and I care about making every Americans life better. Of course, you conservatives care about no one but yourselves. You make a few bucks, buy a home in a gated community, take the other streets so you dont pass the ghetto..and yet you claim you are christian..that is the most hypocritical statement of all. Do you not realize if Jesus walked this earth today, he would be a liberal democrat, helping the poor, the starving, the sick, the homeless, accepting all. Im so glad Im a liberal democrat. I dont think I could look at myself in the mirror or get a good nights sleep knowing my ideology is actually harming America, not helping it one bit.
Obama's plan
I assume you watched both conventions????? I watched the Dems and now I'm watching the Pubs. I am an INDEPENDENT. I would support Obama were it not for my research of the church he has been associated with for 20 years. This church, in my humble opinion, belongs to an extreme, radical, racist group. We don't need that in the White House. With the exception of illegal immigration, he pretty much addressed all the things that I feel are important to the future of my children and grandchildren and were it not for his affiliation with his chosen church, I would probably vote for him. . At least he had the good sense to select a person as his running mate who actually might be "ready on day one" to lead this country.
Secondly, again in my humble opinion, McCain has a few screws loose rattling around upstairs. He answers every question, even about how many houses he owns, with something like, "well, the longest time I spent anywhere was when I was a POW." Other than that it has been all about bashing Obama and his not having "experience." Then look what he did. Picked a little-known female who has been abroad exactly once and tries to pass her off as "experienced." Truth: She is a female and her state is the second largest producer of oil. Bush governed the biggest oil producing state. Enjoying those prices at the pumps? To this point all the pub speakers have pushed McCain's war record. What????? Do we need more war? I think a peacemaker would be better.
Now, before anyone pounces on me, I support NEITHER of these candidates and NEITHER will receive my vote. Either way, the middle class Americans, to which I expect most MTs belong, lose. Our government will change when and if the majority of Americans quit using their heads as a hatrack for the Democrat and Republican parties, kick them out and bring back government "of the people, by the people and for the people." Won't happen this time but maybe next time won't be too late.
First of all, let me say I was undecided on this election until yesterday. Obama's tax plan scares me to death. I heard him on an interview yesterday, and he said that the top 5% of the country could *afford to help out those less fortunate to us*, meaning those that make above $200,000. He also said that someone making under $45,000 would *probably* not have to pay income taxes, because all the tax revenue would be generated from the top 5% of the country, again, who could *afford* to help out his fellow man.
So, here's my question. If I work my BUTT off making a great living for my family, who the heck is he to say I have to share it? My husband and I put ourselves through school to get a good education for ourselves, searched for good jobs, worked more than one sometimes, and enjoy or standard of living, because we worked hard for it and EARNED it. How dare he suggest that I have to share that with ANYONE, just because they dont' have as much. We give to quite a few neighborhood organizations and national charities, we do not keep every penny for ourselves.
If he does get elected and puts this new plan in place, why would people work hard to make a good living if quite a bit chunk of it is going to be taken away? Why not just sit back, work as little as you want, stay under that $40,000 radar, not pay income taxes, and have the government give you some other *rich* guy's money because you don't have as much?
This really made my mind up for me. It's time this county taught some personal responsibility and accountability, and I do not think he is the one for the job!
And so how exactly does McCain plan to fix
He could sell Alaska to the Japanese. They need the land & the natural resources, and they most definitely have the money.
McCain's plan...
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ba2f1c-c03f-4ac2-8cd5-5cf2edb527cf.htm
Not as described above.
Obama's Plan:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/
They seem very similar to me...big difference is Obama wants the government to control it and McCain wants individuals to control their own health care. I don't see a problem with that.
you will need to keep things like OBAMA and OSAMA straight. The political system was based on the assumption that voters would know the difference between a tall black man running for president and a tall man in a sheet running for cover. Study up. Only a few more weeks . . . I'm betting you can do it.
If it doesn't apply to you, then nothing about your mortgage would change. How is that unfair to you? Would it be more fair to charge the taxpayers, including you, whether in you're arrears or not or owning a mortgage or not, the $700 billion dollars?
I don't get what about this is upsetting to you. You already have a better rate and your credit must be great. Any resolution to this problem should not result in someone making out better than before the problem started.
You are correct about his plan not being...sm
socialized medicine. I don't think the majority of people have insurance through their employers anymore. If you don't you will be insured based on what you can afford to pay, and you will keep your own doctor. Vermont already has such a plan and it works great.
His plan includes ---
He wants to provide coverage for everyone that needs it. If you have coverage already, then you keep it. If you don't have coverage, then you are able to buy the same coverage the federal employees have. He only wants to mandate that a family have coverage for their children and you can get it anywhere you want to.
My state already is using almost the same plan as....sm
Obama's and it seems to be working just fine.
He's changed his plan but yet again..
The McCain-Palin campaign has critized his tax plans as welfare, so Barack’s campaign has come back and tweaked it to add a work requirement. (They will materialize things out of thin air as needed to get elected.) This comes from the New Hampshire Union Leader in reply.
I haven't been here for a while, and if this has already been posted below somewhere, I apologize for duplicating it.
The following link will take you to a site that will show you how much money Barack Obama will save you on taxes, compared to John McCain. (Remember, McCain will be taxing your health insurance benefits for the first time in American history.) Depending on your income, there is quite a difference between the two plans.
McCain may be taxing us, but he is anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage
the EIC is a tiered plan, Sam -
If you get earned income it is very low paying at the bottom of the scale, then tops out in the middle, and progressively drops out to 0 by the time you get to the top.
You have to work to get it, so therefore it encourages people to work and not just live off the government.
I have been hearing that O plan
of sharing the wealth will put us in the GREAT DEPRESSION just like back when Hoover was in office, exept this time, it will be worse because many more people make more than 100,000 a year than they did years ago. So basically it will be spreading the wellfare around.
Martial law plan?!
Things are really getting delusional now. Bush is probably counting the days til he can get out of there and let it be someone else's problem. "Welfare plan"
Hate to break the news to you, but it looks as if there has been a welfare plan in place - its called "Corporate Welfare" and we are the ones who they rob; and every single Republican President from Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 have robbed this country blind
Take all this money and instead of giving to big businesses and letting them do whatever with (because that worked so well with the bailout huh?) just pay off everybody's mortgage. If my house was paid off, I would buy that 1K TV I want for my bedroom. I'd buy new furniture for my living room because mine is 10+ years old. I'd buy curtains and blinds for my windows. I'd buy some nice rugs to put throughout my house. I'd buy that Thomas Kincaid painting I've always wanted to hang on my wall. I'd buy more fencing material to fence in more pasture for my horses. I'd buy those 2 llamas I've been wanting. My husband could buy another Harley like he has been wanting. We would go out to eat more often. These are just things that I would do if my hosue was paid off. That is quite a bit of money back into the system but I can't do these things because I owe on my house. Think about it.
If you didn't have your mortage, what would you buy?
That's a good plan!
I think I'll start doing that. My dad had trouble with his internet over the weekend (SBC) and when he called the help line, he got somebody that spoke terrible English and when he asked where his call had been answered, the man told him India. My dad promplty hung up on him and is getting a new ISP this week.
The Pickens Plan
The Pickens Plan.
There are several pillars to the Pickens Plan:
Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar capacity;
Building a 21st century backbone electrical grid;
Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
Using America's natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel.
While dependence on foreign oil is a critical concern, it is not a problem that can be solved in isolation. We have to think about energy as a whole, and that begins by considering our energy alternatives and thinking about how we will fuel our world in the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.
New jobs from renewable energy and conservation.
Any discussion of alternatives should begin with the 2007 Department of Energy study showing that building out our wind capacity in the Great Plains - from northern Texas to the Canadian border - would produce 138,000 new jobs in the first year, and more than 3.4 million new jobs over a ten-year period, while also producing as much as 20 percent of our needed electricity.
Building out solar energy in the Southwest from western Texas to California would add to the boom of new jobs and provide more of our growing electrical needs - doing so through economically viable, clean, renewable sources.
To move that electricity from where it is being produced to where it is needed will require an upgrade to our national electric grid. A 21st century grid which will, as technology continues to develop, deliver power where it is needed, when it is needed, in the direction it is needed will be the modern equivalent of building the Interstate Highway System in the 1950's.
Beyond that, tremendous improvements in electricity use can be made by creating incentives for owners of homes and commercial buildings to retrofit their spaces with proper insulation. Studies show a significant upgrading of insulation would save the equivalent of one million barrels of oil per day in energy by cutting down on both air conditioning costs in warm weather and heating costs in winter.
Conserving and harnessing renewable forms of electricity not only has incredible economic benefits, but is also a crucial piece of the oil dependence puzzle. We should continue to pursue the promise of electric or hydrogen powered vehicles, but America needs to address transportation fuel today. Fortunately, we are blessed with an abundance of clean, cheap, domestic natural gas.
Currently, domestic natural gas is primarily used to generate electricity. It has the advantage of being cheap and significantly cleaner than coal, but this is not the best use of our natural gas resources.
By generating electricity from wind and solar and conserving the electricity we have, we will be free to shift our use to natural gas to where it can lower our need for foreign oil - helping President Obama reach his goal of zero oil imports from the Middle East within ten years - by replacing diesel as the principal transportation fuel for heavy trucks and fleet vehicles.
Nearly 20% of every barrel of oil we import is used by 18-wheelers moving goods burning imported diesel. An over-the-road truck cannot be moved using current battery technology. Fleet vehicles like buses, taxis, express delivery trucks, and municipal and utility vehicles (any vehicle which returns to the "barn" each night where refueling is a simple matter) should be replaced by vehicles running on clean, cheap, domestic natural gas rather than imported gasoline or diesel fuel.
A plan that brings it all together.
Natural gas is not a permanent or complete solution to imported oil. It is a bridge fuel to slash our oil dependence while buying us time to develop new technologies that will ultimately replace fossil transportation fuels. Natural gas is the critical puzzle piece that will help us keep more of the $350 to $450 billion every year at home, where it can power our economy and pay for our investments in wind energy, a smart grid and energy efficiency.
It is this connection that makes The Pickens Plan not just a collection of good ideas, but a plan. By investing in renewable energy and conservation, we can create millions of new jobs. New alternative energies allow us to shift natural gas to transportation; securing our economy by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and keeping more money at home to pay for the whole thing.
A.Back off and let those men who want to marry men, marry men.
B.Allow those women who want to marry women, marry women.
C.Allow those folks who want to abort their babies, abort their babies.
D.In three generations, there will be no Democrats.
AIG and the Fed. Pension Plan
Hey---don't feel bad, I had egg on my face a few times before I got it through my pea brain that it was alot less embarrassing to check it out on Snope's before I forwarded it. LOL
According to the article on snope's. No private company insures federal pensions. One thing I did discover, you can't cut and paste from snope's I tried to post their comments. Again if you go to the snope's website and key in AIG and congress pension you will find the whole artice. The part about no private insurer is at the very bottom.
Among the alternatives that the GOP is proposing for the 2010 budget:
1. Roll back a significant portion or all of the stimulus that has not yet been distributed as of 2010.
2. Indiiduals earning less than $50,000 or couples earning less than $100,000 could either file under the current tax provisions or pay a flat 10%. Others earning more would pay a flat 25%. All who choose the flat tax rate could literally file their taxes on a form the size of a single index card.
You have to think about some of the implications of these tax ideas to understand the less obvious benefits, among which would be the stanching of the flow of investment outside the country and attraction of foreign investment, and an enormous savings in the waste of time and money that presently go to nothing more productive than filing taxes. A simple scheme like this would also be much more difficult to defraud than the complex system currently in place.
On this last point, just consider all the back taxes that Obama has collected from his tax-scofflaw political appointees - over $100,000! Not one of the excuses that any of them offered for not paying their taxes - i.e., that the tax laws are too complicated even for that "brilliant" idiot, Geithner (who now heads up the IRS). Not one of them could have skated by "paying their back taxes" while apologizing that they just couldn't get a handle on what they're supposed to pay. Now, multiply just those people by all the other tax cheats in this country who couldn't use similar excuses (or schemes, whichever term you prefer).
It's simple: What do you make? Withhold 10% and you owe nothing at the end of the year. Fill out your card, send it in, and you're done. And you tax accountants who have helped your clients avoid taxes for years...we need accountants for other purposes, so you won't starve either.
What worries me most about his plan...
isn't that the supermax prisons won't be able to hold them safely, but what if even one or two aren't convicted? What do we do with them then? Send them home or set them up in the US with their own Medicare card? That possibility isn't even being discussed.
What worries me most about his plan...
isn't that the supermax prisons won't be able to hold them safely, but what if even one or two aren't convicted? What do we do with them then? Send them home or set them up in the US with their own Medicare card? That possibility isn't even being discussed.
Finally, a man with a plan. That's what I'm talking about.
End of 2006? On Monday, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr suggested U.S.-led forces should be able to leave Iraq by the end of next year, saying the one-year extension of the mandate for the multinational force in Iraq by the U.N. Security Council this month could be the last.
“By the middle of next year we will be 75 percent done in building our forces and by the end of next year it will be fully ready,” he told the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera.
This person and a lot of people need to study up on how government and policy work, because when they come out with articles like this they end up looking as ignorant as they obviously are.
We better hope there are some pretty tough contigency plans on Iran, because if Iran actually builds nukes the next mushroom cloud you'll see may be in your backyard.
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