Bush creates executive pay loophole.
Posted By: Marmann on 2008-12-15
In Reply to:
Right up until the end, Bush is working hard for his "base." I can't wait to see this man leave -- if he leaves. 
Bush Administration created executive pay loophole
John Byrne
Published: Monday December 15, 2008 |
The Bush Administration inserted an eleventh-hour provision into the $750 billion bailout bill to protect executive bonuses, a single sentence that will torpedo efforts to reduce bonuses even as companies slash tens of thousands of jobs and use taxpayer money to gobble up other companies at fire-sale prices.
Pressured by constituents who worried that companies would take government aid and continue to pay their executives eye-popping bonuses, Congress inserted a provision that would penalize companies who took taxpayer money and shelled out outsized bonuses.
But at the last minute, Bush officials insisted on a one-sentence provision that stopped the measure in its tracks, according to congressional aides who spoke to the Washington Post.
The change stipulated that the sanction would only apply to firms that sold mortgage backed securities to the government at auction, which the Bush Treasury Department said would be the method they'd use to infuse troubled companies with bailout cash.
"Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts" who spoke to Post reporter Amit Paley. "In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives."
"The flimsy executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all but gone," Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told Paley.
According to Paley, "The final legislation contained unprecedented restrictions on executive compensation for firms accepting money from the bailout fund. The rules limited incentives that encourage top executives to take excessive risks, provided for the recovery of bonuses based on earnings that never materialize and prohibited 'golden parachute' severance pay. But several analysts said that perhaps the most effective provision was the ban on companies deducting more than $500,000 a year from their taxable income for compensation paid to their top five executives."
This amendment to the Internal Revenue Code was the only part of the bailout measure that had an explicit enforcement mechanism.
Bush officials initially opposed executive compensation rules. Banks, in particular, had been taking heat for "golden parachute" cases, where top executives received lavish pay upon their departure even if they'd done a poor job leading their company.
It remains unclear whether the Administration ever intended to limit executive pay -- if perhaps they knew in advance that Treasury didn't intend to buy mortgage assets at auction all along -- as they'd told Congress.
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Bush loves terrorists..he creates them
Seems to me Bush and his ilk love terrorists, after all, by illegally invading a soverign nonthreatening country, he destabilized it and created a terrorist breeding ground..
Of course, an economy that CREATES jobs, instead
just take care of a lot of that welfare abuse. There should be more OPPORTUNITIES, and fewer loopholes.
Take a 2nd look. She has more executive
nm
She's the only one of the four with executive experience
Obama has little experience even as a legislator, but you believe this smart woman with executive leadership experience is less qualified to be president should it come to that? No, I don't think so.
She already has more executive experience than your guy...
and he is 1st chair. All those negatives you posted are positives for a lot of people. THe state ethics committee investigation is not over yet, and frankly, a state trooper who tasers an 11-year-old (oh he asked me to) SHOULD be fired in my humble opinion. And a state trooper who threatens the life of his estranged wife and her parents should not be wearing the uniform of a state trooper. But that is just me, I guess.
I am sure the people of Alaska are thrilled to hear that the Democrat supporters of Obama are marginalizing them into nothing because they have smaller population than Austin, Texas.
All this kind of post does is show how petty, vindictive and mean people can get when their backs are up against the wall and they think they might lose.
The DNC should have thought about all this before they took on the Clintons. Howard Dean messed up big time.
Executive experience is a big zero
You showed up late today so rather than repeating everything that has already been said on this imponent executive experience media mantra thing, please catch up on your reading. Also, the issue of her not running has been exercised in light of the very real possibility that she would be positioned to take over sooner rather than later. Besides, the Bimbos Unite! cult sure seems to think she is running for president. You will notice just how absent McCain has been from the spotlight since yesterday morning. The notion that our party is somehow fractured or not strongly unified is more of your delusional thinking. McCain took care of that when he decided to insult most of thinking women in this country by selecting a token female he met once to save his sinking ship. Strategy is lame, transparent and has actually created an angry backlash from Hillary supporters and women in general that will make Hurricane Gustav look like a a flushing toilet. You got no idea what you are talking about when you try to analyze the democratic party but please do us all a favor and continue to feed your delusions. theonly thing that's going to come back and bite bigtime is what's-her-name calling Hillary a whiner and McCain calling US economic refugees whiners. We do agree on one thing here. Sweeeeet!
You must have EXECUTIVE experience
nm
Executive travel
Executives who travel for business on private jets may actually be doing something line buy or sell a product, bring in revenue, broker a deal that will create jobs.
Politicians traveling that way are mostly being seen. Example: Was it truly necessary for O to fly to the Southwest just to sign a bill and stand in front of some solar panels? He doesn't have pens in the oval office? Does Pelosi really rate a government plane to get her back and forth to California? Not sure if she actually got the privilege, but know she requested it because she is sooooo important to the nation, being assistant president and all, that she has to travel efficiently.
Before you jump all over me with 'Bush did....' yes, I know, they ALL get face time this way. That was then, this is now. If we're supposed to be going 'green' how about cutting out politicians' needless self-promoting travel on our dime?
Obama's take on his own executive experience...
Obama: Running campaign counts as executive experience
Tuesday September 2, 2008
Talk about resume padding! He compares his experience running a campaign (which, btw should come as a surprise to his campaign manager) with her experience as mayor and totally ignores her experience as governor and Cooper lets him get away with it.
COOPER: And, Senator Obama, my final question -- your -- some of your Republican critics have said you don't have the experience to handle a situation like this. They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience, as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state of Alaska.
What's your response?
OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year.
You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.
So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years. And, certainly, in terms of the legislation that I passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina of how we handle emergency management, the fact that many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place as we speak, I think, indicates the degree to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.
Maybe he should practice this response a little more before he plants it with another reporter.
BTW, Hot Air has the unedited transcript if you are interested in how he really sounded when he answered the question. He is quite liberal in his use of "uh." For someone with a reputation of being articulate, he sure uses a lot of them.
Update: Here's the McCain campaign's response:
"For Barack Obama to argue that he's experienced enough to be president because he's running for president is desperate circular logic and it's laughable. It is a testament to Barack Obama's inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin's executive experience managing a budget of over 10 billion dollar dollars, and more than 24,000 employees." --Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008
McCain has no EXECUTIVE experience
"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/29/clark.mccain/index.html
She does have more executive experience than McCain has...
McCain has no executive experience. None of them but Palin do. McCain does have more experience in the Senate and with foreign affairs, the military, et al, than Obama has. Much more. Those are the two running against each other. Joe Biden also has more experience than Obama has. Obama has the least experience of the 4. Obama has been a state senator and has spent most of his US senate career running for President. He is the least experienced of the 4, and he will be in the chair day 1. I don't feel real good about that possibility, especially in the war on terror. I really don't think he gets it. Talking to O'reilly about radical islam he kept saying something about factions, and you have to figure out what faction you are dealing with...that is talking like a senator. Have a committee and discuss it for 6 months. We can't afford that, in my opinion. I agree with Biden, and I don't mean to make fun, I'm serious...he is not ready for the job, IMO. That is one reason I am not voting for Obama.
Very funny. NOT! Executive experience!
nm
She has more executive experience than the #1 candidate on the other ticket...
she is, in fact, the only one of the 4 who has executive experience. SHE is not running for President. Obama IS. You decide where you would rather have limited experience, the #1 seat or the #2 seat. But of course i know the answer. ITs ok if he doesn't have any executive experience...after all, he has biden to fall back on, right?
As far as John McCain...he has more years of experience as a senator than Obama, he has years more experience in foreign policy than Obama, he does not bow to the Republican Party, Obama does bow to the Democratic party, McCain has bucked the Republican Party, Obama has never and I would guess will never buck the Democratic party, it is clear his first allegiance is there. Both McCain and Palin have demonstrated that their first allegiance is to the American people. She has an 80% favorability rating in Alaska...I am relatively sure 90% of Alaska is not Republican. Obama has never had an 80% rating...well except from NARAL, who gave him 100%. For me, McCain is more experienced and I want someone who is interested in what is best for me, not what is best for his political career and his all-important party.
Excuse me....the Presidency is an executive position...
Palin is the only one of the four who has executive appearance. She is as ready to lead right now as Obama is. Obama has zero international experience other than one trip to talk to the Germans in a political speech.
And I would think the fact that your #1 has less experience than McCain's #2 you would stay away from the experience thing...?
He picked her because she shares his ideals..wants change in washington. Obama wants that too. McCain picked a REAL Washington outsider. Obama didn't. Soooo..they are saying some of the same things Obama is saying, but when Obama says it is good, when they say it, it is bad?
Hello President McCain, and VP Palin!
Executive experience = running a government...
McCain hasn't, Obama hasn't, Biden hasn't. She HAS. Bill Clinton had only been a governor before he was elected President. Double standard alive and well on the left?? Of course it is.
But the fact remains...she has more executive experience than your #1 guy.
That is indisputable. In fact, more than her running mate and your #2. To say she is inexperienced only shines the same light on Barack Obama. That is not a slam, it is a fact.
Yeah, Obama's executive experience
nm
JOHN MCCAIN HAS HAD NO EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE
"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.
(Ret) General Wesley Clark
"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.
"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark,
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/29/clark.mccain/index.html
Words in the form of an executive order
If you are content to subscribe in all this voodoo spell casting and foreboding pronouncements to nowhere, be my guest. I prefer to stay grounded in the reality of the moment and give time for the plan to unfold.
Executive power survey by presidential candidates.
In case you haven't seen this article, I am posting the link:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/22/candidates_on_executive_power_a_full_spectrum/?page=2
This is very enlightening for those who want to know their candidates thoughts about executive power.
She has 12 months in an executive position, actually running a government...
Obama does not. She is going to be 2nd chair, not 1st. If either of them is going to be training on the job, better it be 2nd chair. She also served as mayor, which is also executive work. She has more experience to be President now (and that is not the position she is running for) than he does. Just fact, based entirely on experience. And the only reason I posted that at all is that is the first criticism of her that surfaced here. Personally, with Obama's limited experience going into the first chair, not the second chair...I would think his campaign and his followers would want the conversation to avoid that...that make an issue of it. Just an observation.
Executive experience media mantra no answer.
nm
Obama had no trouble signing 5 executive orders
if he is so opposed to bombing Pakistan, why did he give the order to do so? US drones bombing Pakistan. He is now in charge.....Bush can't call those shots.
Like I said, as long as Dems are in control, they suddenly have no problem with bombing ANYONE......just goes to show you what they will be doing to this country........just bend over and take it like a good little girl
Fact remains, she has made executive decisions for a year and a half...
as governor, and before that as a mayor. He has made none. Zero, zilch, nada. The only time she will "legislate" is if she has to vote to break a tie Not hardly the same thing as running a state...or a country.
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."
Yeah right. Served under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II
x
Stop bringing up Bush - this post was not about Bush
I even said we have had some good presidents and some bad ones, but this post was not about Bush. It was about Obama. Yes Bush was one of the worst presidents I'm not arguing with you on that one, but everytime anyone brings up something about our current president they are shot back with Bush this or Bush that and on things that have nothing to do with what the current topic is about. Again, this was not about Bush. It was about Obama.
Oh, more "blame Bush" - except Bush didn't send these out, now did he?
Here's a news flash for you since you apparently haven't heard: BUSH IS NOT IN OFFICE and just today Gallup did a poll showing that THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS THINK OBAMA SHOULD START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS ON HIS WATCH.
G E T A C L U E.
Bush is gone, YEA!!! and yeah, it could darn well be Bush! LOL.
Chimp boy!! But, the cartoon is NOT about Bush, now is it? Give me a break.
George Bush HIMSELF makes it so easy to make fun of George Bush!!!! oh where would I start, so litt
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Yes, Bush and Bush alone did this whole mess all my himself
Your speaking as though nobody else had a hand in this, just Bush nobody else. Last I knew we had a democratic congress and they are the ones who got us into this mess. Time to put fault where it belongs - congress. Bush is only a talking head.
Bush....they will still blame Bush.
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Corporation owned media does not bash Bush, they bash those that bash Bush.sm
Google Bush and vote fraud and there is tons of information about how many Americans 'voted' for Bush. Poor us and poor troops.
bush says....
bush says we are safer cause of our Iraq war..No way..we have created a culture of American haters.a culture of terrorists against America due to this so wrong war..hopefully the Downing Street Memo and the people now realizing we have sacrified too much will be the downfall for the warmonger in the White House..
Bush
He is shrub, chimp boy and many other names I cant post here but which I call him at home and among friends..oh yeah, dufus, jerk, imbecile...
As soon as Bush went from
"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.
I guess time will tell if justice truly does prevail.
Bush makes Nixon look like a choir boy.
Bush's oil? sm
Well, you all have blamed Bush for everything except original sin. I guess that is next. Thank the environmentalists partly for the mess we are in with oil. And stop deifying Chavez. He is not a good person.
No, Bush, you certainly are no FDR!
No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Wednesday 31 August 2005
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
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A New Orleans resident waded through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded downtown area on Tuesday, August 30, 2005. |
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Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.
My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.
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Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
Bush's war
We are going to deal with the homecoming veterans of Iraq, their mental and physical troubles, for decades to come. I remember when I was a teenager, there was a man who lived down the street from my best friend where we all hung out..He would sit on his stoop. We would go up to the fence and ask him questions..He was spaced out, shaking, stared into space..We, as punky kids, thought it was funny..Later I found out, he was suffering from *shell shock*, post traumatic stress disorder..FROM WWII..He had never recovered..This was in the 1960's and he still was suffering..OMG..I also have a friend who was in Vietnam and he has never been the same after he came home in 1969..These returning vets are gonna experience hell on earth and we along with them..This war did not have to happen..this was an unnecessary war..a war of convenience, of profit and we will pay the price..Not Bush or his cronies, they will be insulated, locked away in their gated communities counting their money..We the working and caring American people, both democrat and republican, will pay the price..The only difference is democrats will admit it, republicans will still try to make excuses for Bushs war.
What? Not Bush?
Nobel Peace Prize 2005: Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez makes the final list
VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: The
Nobel Commission for the Peace Prize has received 199
nominations including Colin Powell, the U2 singer Bono
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
It's Bush's
I wonder how much Bush (i.e. you and
me as TAXPAYERS) pays Faux News for its' *fair and balanced* reporting.
Ya gotta laugh at the morons who actually BELIEVE this nitwit, though!
Bush
Is he president Bush or dictator Bush? How can he expect to form a democracy in Iraq when at the very same time tear ours apart? What message is his administration trying to send to the terrorist now? We must make sure this does not slide by and be forgiven, not this time, Mr. Bush has gotten away with so many lies and then said I made a mistake. He is like the boy who cried wolf. When we let him get away with this illegal spying, and not even in the least way seeking a legal solution for doing it over 4 years! This is not acceptable, this is the highest disgrace of all of his disgraces done to our country. This is one nation under God, not George Bush. My new name for him is King George because his mindset is that of a dictator not a president. We need to clean up our own democracy before go around setting examples for other countries to do the same.
Bush
We should all be thankful that Bush was re-elected, I cannot imagine Kerry as President of the U. S. and now it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to run for President. If anyone votes for her they would have to be nuts. Cannot imagine getting Billy living back in the White House. If Hillary cannot control her own husband, how is she going to run the U.S.???????
Bush is doing no different
He's not targeting people paying off J.C. Penny Bills, Sears Cards etc. That's just ridiculous. Your argument about Bin Laden would work if he was the only terrorist in the world. You can't Monday morning quarterback in the War on Terror. Bush is not the first person to do this, and he won't be the last. This whole issue is just bizarre, and people who seem to be pro-terrorist are more bizarre.
Bush is not above the law...sm
Glad to see some of his fellow republicans are bringing this to the light for him.
Bush would never be a
Democrat. There is no money in it and he couldn't fake the compassion required.
But...I think that the Bush Adm.
is not the only president adm. this happens or will happen under.
The other ones will not bring back the American worker when China will make something for 10-cents and we make it for 10-dollars. All this outsourcing is here to stay. Sad to say.
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