Home     Contact Us    
Main Board Job Seeker's Board Job Wanted Board Resume Bank Company Board Word Help Medquist New MTs Classifieds Offshore Concerns VR/Speech Recognition Tech Help Coding/Medical Billing
Gab Board Politics Comedy Stop Health Issues
ADVERTISEMENT




Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

I would like a link to the story about Laura Bush. SM

Posted By: Brunson on 2005-08-08
In Reply to: Laura Bush - American Woman

Verifiable and trustworthy.  Because I think this is spurious and a horrible thing to post without validity.  I personally know no one who ever mentioned Chelsea Clinton.  The article about the NYT investigating Roberts' adoption is interesting in that Democrat wrote it would be blamed on the leftists. Yes, I can see how she would say that seeing things as you have posted here.  Be careful what you put in writing. 


Complete Discussion Below: marks the location of current message within thread

    The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
    To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu


    Other related messages found in our database

    Laura Bush

    Actually, GT, I heard two stories about her accident:  I also heard, as you did, that she was drunk.  The second story I heard was that she wasn't drinking but that the person who was killed was her fiance.  Don't know what the true story is, but you're right, if it were Hillary or Chelsea, they wouldn't let it drop.


    Any intelligent person can read "I hope he burns in hell" to be akin to telling someone to "Go to hell," or comments of that nature.  NOWHERE have you EVER said you wish anyone dead, and nowhere have you talked about any poster on this board in that vein, and anyone with enough brains to get a headache knows that.


    Don't let these people get to you.  The other poster above is right.  They are obsessed, and they're trying to get to you.  They thrive on this, and they're trying to turn the liberal board into a cesspool like the Conservative board.  I know it's crap.  You know it's crap. 


    This is a quality board with civilized, thoughtful posters, who generally seem to be respectful and just nice people.  So just ignore the ones who aren't.  They aren't even close to being worthy of a response by you.  Don't let them wreck this board and chase people away.  As hostile, idiotic and irritating as they are, if we don't respond to them, they run out of gas.  Let's just ignore them and watch as they just sputter off.


    Laura Bush

    1. Laura Bush is a librarian and Sarah Palin bans books.(Sort of in the way Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor!) Which brings me to the funniest thing about the story of how Sarah Palin, upon becoming mayor of Wasilla, called up the local librarian to inquire about banning books: the idea never went anywhere because she didn't seem to know what books she'd ban. Sarah Palin doesn't read! Duh. Neither, probably, does Cindy McCain. Laura Bush's favorite book is The Brothers Karamazov, a fact that I still find sort of mindblowing, but anyway, that is what makes this sort of sht so funny.


    2. Laura Bush is pro-choice. When Cindy McCain found herself in that messy conundrum over whether Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned earlier this week, to whom did she turn for guidance? According to Katie Couric, Cindy's spokespeople said that she, like Laura Bush, did not want Roe overturned. Who knows why Laura Bush is pro-choice; maybe she read American Tragedy, maybe it's just because she killed someone herself and the law had gone easy on her; maybe she's just a rational person, but whatever the case, women like Laura Bush — not Northeastern Marxists like me or "I Choose Life For My Daughter And Everyone Else In America" Alaskan prophets like Sarah Palin— are ones who live in those crazy states that are always trying to add little "abortion banning" amendments to transportation bills and such, the ones who actually live in states where this stuff comes up on the ballot every November. And as such, women like Laura Bush are the only reason Roe has yet to go back before the Supreme Court.


    3. Laura Bush raised Jenna Bush. Laura Bush's other vocation besides library science was being a mother, and even that Communist organ Us Weekly agrees that Jenna Bush turned out pretty good. Laura Bush raised a fun underage-drinking socially-conscious charter school teacher who spent months in the ghettos of that little country her granddaddy invaded learning about the tragic life of a teenage mom with AIDS for the purpose of writing a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't use condoms. Sarah Palin raised a fun underage-drinking cautionary tale of what happens when you don't use condoms.


    4. Laura Bush is a walking living and in some ways tragic symbol of the emotional core of liberalism, which is to say, our bottomless capacity to forgive. She had a tragedy in her early life and for that reason alone most of us will forgive her unwillingness to try and make herself into some sort of internal dissident in the Cheney White House. She reads Russian lit, she knows how it goes for dissidents. She forgives her ignorant husband the way we all forgive our ignorant racist grandmas. She accepts his differences and we preach acceptance. She is from a Red State and married to a red meat Republican but she defies all the usual pithy pollster cartoonology; she has never had big hair even though she's from Texas, she has never been blonde even though that is a major rule for Republicans in DC; she has never seemed Stepfordy, she smokes cigarettes. And like with Laura, said sentimentality can lead us to be forgiving to a fault! Remember how we hated Clinton for his triangulation and his beholdenness to Wall Street and his generalized moral turpitude? Ha ha ha, yeah. Don't let's let this become the election that gets us all misty-eyed for the Bush years in a couple years time, Laura Bushes of the world! (God did you ever think that would even be a possibility? Christ.)


    OH AND BONUS EXTRA THING I FORGOT: She defended Michelle Obama against those ridiculous attacks on her patriotism that both Cindy and Sarah Palin have milked well into elementary school at this point.


    laura stepford bush

    Nah, terrorists are not nice guys who need a hug..but, yes Bush's two daughters are ugly alcoholic freaks who need to go to daddy's war.. As far as Laura?? The one who killed a childhood friend, yeah, she is a Stepford wife, a dumming down wife..and also a murderer who killed a friend years ago..If we will not forgive and forget Ted Kennedy, we most certainly cannot forgive or forget what dumn arse Laura did who rides the coat tails of the Bush family.  May Bush, Laura and the two alcoholic ugly daughters burn in Hell for eternity..


    I believe it was Barbara not Laura Bush sm
    In an effort to further divide America, this writer must have gotten some of that rabid drool on his keyboard.
    Laura Bush Recalls Painful Past
    There are many hits of this on the internet, but a few I found credible.

    The Associated Press
    Thursday, March 2, 2000; 7:15 p.m. EST

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. –– Laura Bush, wife of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, on Thursday recalled the pain of a 1963 accident that killed her boyfriend, saying "it was crushing."

    "All I can say about that (is) it was a very, very, tragic accident I was involved in when I was 17 years old, almost 40-something years ago," Bush said. "It was a terrible accident. It was terrible for everyone involved."

    Bush said the grief remains.

    "I know this as an adult, and even more as a parent, it was crushing ... for the family involved and for me as well," she said.

    Bush would not comment further and quickly resumed talking about her husband.

    The accident occurred Nov. 5, 1963, when Bush was talking to a friend while she was driving to a party in her hometown of Midland, Texas, the New York Post reported.

    At an intersection, she apparently failed to see her boyfriend, Mike Douglas, driving south. The vehicles collided and Douglas was thrown from his doorless Jeep, breaking his neck. He died instantly.

    Midland officials would not release the full accident report, referring Freedom of Information requests for the document to the attorney general of Texas. He has until May 15 to decide if he will make the report public.

    An abbreviated version of the report concluded neither Douglas or Bush could be blamed for the accident, the Post reported.

    © Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
    ---------------------
    Question from the "Ask the White House" web site.
    Jay R. Fazek , from Akron, OH writes:
    The legal blood alcohol limit in Ohio was officially lowered at midnight this morning to .08. What is your opinion on this, considering your extensive experience with drunk driving in your family?
    Mrs. Bush:
    Most of our Republican friends keep maps of the Red and Blue states that designate which stretches of desolate brush voted for my husband. Bushies' and my map, however, keeps track of which states are just tempting fate to drive in. Thanks to a call from Diana Ross and your e-mail, I am managing to keep all 50 states current. Thank you so much for your kind help in that regard!



    Spoken by someone who posted about Laura Bush's accident about 40 years ago. sm
    But I guess we were supposed to forget about that, too?
    Lesley Ridge had a graduation party at the WH via gracious Laura Bush...
    Think there were any kegs? Were the forefathers rolling in their graves or were the graduates rolling between the sheets? DISRESPECTFUL! WASTEFUL SPENDING!!
    Here is the link to story..
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/30/mccain-camp-busses-in-sch_n_139300.html
    Here is a link to the story.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29170141/


    Whoops! Here's the link to the Times story...
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/01/curl-cost-nyc-weekend/
    Excuse me. All I did was post a link to a CBS news story
    the ideas you brought up in your original post trying to imply that O's AG nominee was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I think that kind of inaccurate accusation deserves some sort of defense. You evidently have a tough time digesting data that in any way contradicts your thinking, so now we have gotten to the place where I am a pouncing, bug-squashing know-it-all who slaughters innocent insects with my windshield? For posting a link to a reputable news article written directly in the aftermath of 9/11 (YEARS before Mr. Holder's nomination). Really? Don't you think you may be over-reacting just a tad?
    You don't back up your hearsay/story overheard with any link or data.
    Anyone accepting it at face value with no way to back it up would be a fool.
    More on the story...Bayh Urges GOP to Stand Up to Bush...sm
    July 19, 2006
    Bayh Urges GOP to Stand Up to Bush

    Yesterday, the Senate passed legislation expanding federal support for stem cell research. In an exclusive to Political Wire, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) urges Republicans to fight President Bush's expected veto.

    Yesterday, I proudly walked onto the Senate floor and cast my vote in favor of expanded stem cell research. My vote for H.R. 810 was a vote for discovery and technology, and for new knowledge and cures. It was a vote that, I believe, could potentially save millions of lives.

    Rarely in Washington do we have a vote with such broad bipartisan support. Fortunately, most members of Congress recognize that this bill is more important than partisan politics. Almost every family has been or will be affected by disease in some way -- whether it is juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, ALS, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis or, in my family's case, cancer.

    I was so proud of my mother’s efforts on behalf of people with cancer after she was diagnosed with the disease. I know she would have supported stem cell research. We all look to the day when we will have cures for diseases that shorten the lives of those close to us.

    H.R. 810 is now headed for the President’s desk for his signature. He has signed 1,116 consecutive bills into law and never vetoed a single bill. But he says he will veto this one. I hope you will take the time to urge the president to sign this legislation. And I would ask the President to listen to the voice of the American people and the many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who support this bill because of how much it could mean to the people we love.

    America must stand at the forefront of technology and science -- we have the best and brightest doctors and scientists in the world, but they have been handcuffed by politics and, as a result, research has lagged behind that in Europe and Asia. Our research labs must be incubators of hope and promise for a better life. This bill is a crucial step in bringing this promise to those who need it most.

    I applaud Majority Leader Frist for casting his vote for what he knows is right and just. I hope that he will now lead his fellow Republicans to urge the President to do what's best for America's families: sign this bill into law.

    -- Guest contributor Evan Bayh is the former Governor and current U.S. Senator from Indiana, and is the Honorary Chairman of the All America PAC.
    Bush is trying to pardon himself - link included
    If this is not enough to get you going I don't know what is.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RwoFcLgxA0


    Republicans are Stuck to Bush - See RNC Memo Link

    Republicans are Stuck to Bush

    In a memo to RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen argues that it's dangerous for Republican congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush.

    President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop.
    Don't you mean Laura's husband
    should have been doing his job?? Lots of intel on the attacks, but nothing was done.

    Did you see the look on George & Laura's face?sm
    You know George bounced off the walls when he got home. There is only one look I found more hilarious, and that was the look on Mike Myer's face when Kanye West made the famous statement George Bush does not care about black people.
    do you think laura read this? Probably not but great letter anyway
     No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame
        By Sharon Olds
        The Nation

        Monday 19 September 2005

    For reasons spelled out below, the poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington, which, coincidentally or not, takes place September 24, the day of an antiwar mobilization in the capital. Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush to read from their works. Three years ago artist Jules Feiffer declined to attend the festival's White House breakfast as a protest against the Iraq War (Mr. Feiffer Regrets, November 11, 2002). We suggest that invitees to this year's event consider following their example.
    - Editors, The Nation

        Laura Bush
        First Lady
        The White House

        Dear Mrs. Bush,

        I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

        In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents - all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.

        And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students - long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

        When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit - and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

        So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country - with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain - did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made at the top and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism - the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

        I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness - as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing - against this undeclared and devastating war.

        But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

        What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting extraordinary rendition: flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

        So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

        Sincerely,
        Sharon Olds


    Yes, Ronnie and Nancy, and George and Laura...
    for one another.


    The color was gorgeous on Michele, liked Laura's coat too nm
    nm
    If you go back and reread the post gt posted about Laura I responded to that. sm

    And, if you were following what I was saying I was talking about the posts on the neocon board between Nan, AG and the Nameless Trolls.


    Get the picture?


    post the link only, not the whole article and the link. See rules for posting.
    x
    Here's the story. sm
    Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005 10:51 p.m. EDT

    RFK Jr.: Bush, Barbour to Blame for Katrina

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, along with President Bush, for causing Hurricane Katrina.

    As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2, Kennedy blogged Tuesday on HuffingtonPost.com. The influential Democrat's enviro-conspiracy theory had the sinister Gov. Barbour engineering Bush's energy policy on behalf of the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry.

    Kennedy charges that in March 2001, the former Republican National Committee chairman issued an urgent memo to the White House on CO2 emissions.

    With that, the president dropped his pro-environment campaign promise like a hot potato.

    Because of Bush and Barbour's CO2 folly, said Kennedy: Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged.

    RFK, Jr., even suggested that Katrina's last minute detour through Mississippi was a bit of Divine payback, declaring:

    Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.


    Another take on the story....
    Republicans on the Record

    What does the record say about Republicans and the battle for civil rights and specifically for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352)?

    Since Abraham Lincoln, Republicans have been there for blacks when it counted. Nevertheless, Democrats invariably take all the credit for the success of the civil rights movement and invariably fail to give any credit to Republicans.

    In fact, the civil rights movement was not about politics. Nor was it about which politicians did what and which political party should take the most credit. When it came to civil rights, America's politicians merely saw the handwriting on the wall and wrote the legislation to make into federal law the historical changes that had already taken place. There was nothing else they could do.

    The movement of blacks to the North, as well as their contributions as fighting men in the world wars, plus the hard work of millions of blacks and their families and churches, along with the efforts of many private groups and individuals made the civil rights movement succeed.

    Civil rights for blacks found its historical moment after 1945. Bills introduced in Congress regarding employment policy brought the issue of civil rights to the attention of representatives and senators.

    In 1945, 1947 and 1949, the House of Representatives voted to abolish the poll tax restricting the right to vote. Although the Senate did not join in this effort, the bills signaled a growing interest in protecting civil rights through federal action.

    The executive branch of government, by presidential order, likewise became active by ending discrimination in the nation's military forces and in federal employment and work done under government contract.

    Harry Truman ordered the integration of the military. However, his Republican opponent in the election of 1948, Tom Dewey, was just as strong a proponent for that effort as any Democrat.

    As a matter of fact, the record shows that since 1933 Republicans had a more positive record on civil rights than the Democrats.

    In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.

    [See http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html and http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/3/82.03.04.x.html.]


    It has been maintained all the Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.

    Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.

    I know. I was there.

    When I moved to Georgia in 1970, the Democratic Party had a total lock on Georgia. Newt Gingrich was one of the first outsiders to break that lock. He did so in a West Georgia area into which many Northerners were moving. He gained the support of rural West Georgians over issues that had absolutely nothing to do with race.



    JFK – The Reluctant Civil Rights President

    JFK evolved into a true believer in the civil rights movement when it became such an overwhelming historical and moral imperative that he had no choice. As a matter of record, when Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts, he had an opportunity to vote on the 1957 Civil Rights Act pushed by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Instead, he voted to send it to the conservative Senate Judiciary Committee, where it would have been pigeonholed.

    His lukewarm support for theAct included his vote to allow juries to hear contempt cases. Dixiecrats preferred the jury system to trials presided over and decided by judges because all-white juries rarely convicted white civil rights violators.

    His record in the 1950s did not mark Kennedy as a civil rights activist. Yet the 1957Act to benefit African-Americans was passed with the help of Republicans. It was a watered- down version of the later 1964 bill, which Kennedy backed.

    The record on JFK shows he was a man of his times and a true politician, more given to equivocation and pragmatism than to activism. Kennedy outlined civil rights legislation only after most of the country was behind it and ready for him to act.

    For the most part, in the 1960 presidential campaign he avoided the civil rights issue altogether. He did endorse some kind of federal action, but he could not afford to antagonize Southern Democrats, whose support he desperately needed to defeat Richard Nixon. Basically, he could not jeopardize the political support of the Dixiecrats and many politicians in the rest of the country who were concerned about the radical change that was in the offing.

    After he was elected president, Kennedy failed to suggest any new civil rights proposals in 1961 or 1962. That failure was for pragmatic political reasons and so that he could get the rest of his agenda passed.

    Introducing specific civil rights legislation in the Senate would have meant a filibuster and the obstruction of other business he felt was just as crucial as civil rights legislation. A filibuster would have happened for sure and it would have taken 67 members to support cloture to end such a filibuster. Sixty-seven votes Kennedy believed he did not have.

    As it was, Kennedy had other fish to fry, including the growing threat of Russian imperialism, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs as Cuba went down the communist rat hole, his increase in the numbers of troops and advisers he was sending to Vietnam, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    In addition, the steel business was in crisis and he needed a major tax rate cut to stimulate a sluggish economy. Kennedy understood his options and he chose to be realistic.

    When Kennedy did act in June 1963 to propose a civil rights bill, it was because the climate of opinion and the political situation forced him to act.

    The climate of opinion had changed dramatically between World War II and 1964. Various efforts by groups of Protestant and Catholic clergy, along with the Urban League, NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality, black activists, individuals both white and black and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other subsets of his movement, are what forced civil rights to be crafted into federal law.

    The National Opinion Research Center discovered that by 1963 the number of Americans who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30 percent in 20 years, to 72 percent. Americans supporting school integration had risen even more impressively, to 75 percent.

    The efforts of politicians were needed to write all the changes and efforts into law. Politicians did not lead charge on civil rights – again, they just took credit, especially the Democrats.

    The 1964 Civil Rights Act

    When all the historical forces had come together, Kennedy decided to act. John Kennedy began the process of gaining support for the legislation in a nationally televised address on June 11, 1963.

    Gathering business and religious leaders and telling the more violent activists in the black leadership to tone down the confrontational aspects of the movement, Kennedy outlined the Civil Rights Act. In it, the Justice Department was given the responsibility of addressing the worst problems of racial discrimination.

    Because of the problem with a possible Senate filibuster, which would be imposed by Southern Democrats, the diverse aspects of theAct were first dealt with in the House of Representatives. The roadblock would be that Southern senators chaired both the Judiciary and the Commerce committees.

    Kennedy and LBJ understood that a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats was the key to the bill's final success.

    Remember that the Republicans were the minority party at the time. Nonetheless, H.R.7152 passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964. Of the 420 members who voted, 290 supported the civil rights bill and 130 opposed it.

    Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96. Republicans supported it in higher proportions than Democrats. Even though those Democrats were Southern segregationists, without Republicans the bill would have failed. Republicans were the other much-needed leg of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    The Man From Illinois

    In the Senate, Hubert Humphrey was the point man for the Civil Rights Act. That is not unusual considering the Democrats held both houses of Congress and the presidency.

    Sen. Thomas Kuchel of California led the Republican pro-civil rights forces. But it became clear who among the Republicans was going to get the job done; that man was conservative Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen.

    He was the master key to victory for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Without him and the Republican vote, theAct would have been dead in the water for years to come. LBJ and Humphrey knew that without Dirksen the Civil Rights Act was going nowhere.

    Dirksen became a tireless supporter, suffering bouts of ill health because of his efforts in behalf of crafting and passing the Civil Rights Act. Nonetheless, Sen. Dirksen suffered the same fate as many Republicans and conservatives do today.

    Even though Dirksen had an exemplary voting record in support of bills furthering the cause of African-Americans, activist groups in Illinois did not support Dirksen for re-election to the Senate in 1962.

    Believing that Dirksen could be forced into voting for the Civil Rights Act, they demonstrated and picketed and there were threats by CORE to continue demonstrations and violence against Dirksen's offices in Illinois. James Farmer of CORE stated that people will march en masse to the post offices there to file handwritten letters in protest.

    Dirksen blew it off in a statement typical of him: When the day comes that picketing, distress, duress, and coercion can push me from the rock of conviction, that is the day that I shall gather up my togs and walk out of here and say that my usefulness in the Senate has come to an end.

    Dirksen began the tactical arrangements for passage of the bill. He organized Republican support by choosing floor captains for each of the bill's seven sections.

    The Republican swing votes were from rural states without racial problems and so were uncommitted. The floor captains and Dirksen himself created an imperative for these rural Republicans to vote in favor of cloture on filibuster and then for the Act itself.

    As they worked through objections to the bill, Dirksen explained his goal as first, to get a bill; second, to get an acceptable bill; third, to get a workable bill; and, finally, to get an equitable bill.

    In any event, there were still 52 days of filibuster and five negotiation sessions. Senators Dirksen and Humphrey, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy agreed to propose a clean bill as a substitute for H. R. 7152. Senators Dirksen, Mansfield, Humphrey and Kuchel would cosponsor the substitute.

    This agreement did not mean the end of the filibuster, but it did provide Dirksen with a compromise measure, which was crucial to obtain the support of the swing Republicans.

    On June 17, the Senate voted by a 76 to 18 margin to adopt the bipartisan substitute worked out by Dirksen in his office in May and to give the bill its third reading. Two days later, the Senate passed the bill by a 73 to 27 roll call vote. Six Republicans and 21 Democrats held firm and voted against passage.

    In all, the 1964 civil rights debate had lasted a total of 83 days, slightly over 730 hours, and had taken up almost 3,000 pages in the Congressional Record.

    On May 19, Dirksen called a press conference told the gathering about the moral need for a civil rights bill. On June 10, 1964, with all 100 senators present, Dirksen rose from his seat to address the Senate. By this time he was very ill from the killing work he had put in on getting the bill passed. In a voice reflecting his fatigue, he still spoke from the heart:

    There are many reasons why cloture should be invoked and a good civil rights measure enacted. It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment, 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.' The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing of government, in education, and in employment. It must not be stayed or denied.

    After the civil rights bill was passed, Dirksen was asked why he had done it. What could possibly be in it for him given the fact that the African-Americans in his own state had not voted for him? Why should he champion a bill that would be in their interest? Why should he offer himself as a crusader in this cause?

    Dirksen's reply speaks well for the man, for Republicans and for conservatives like him: I am involved in mankind, and whatever the skin, we are all included in mankind.

    The bill was signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964.


    This does not tell the whole story either...
    See below:
    What is SCHIP?

    The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was created by Congress in 1997 and is funded by both the federal government and the states. The program is designed to help states initiate and expand the provision of child health insurance to uninsured, low-income children.

    SCHIP is administered by the states which have three options for providing SCHIP coverage. They can:

    create separate SCHIP programs;
    expand eligibility for benefits under the state’s Medicaid plan (a Medicaid SCHIP program); or
    use both approaches in combination.
    Within federal guidelines, states determine their SCHIP program(s):

    design,
    eligibility rules,
    benefits packages,
    payment levels, and
    administrative and operating procedures.
    At the federal level, SCHIP is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services though the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

    There is nothing here about enrolling all the children in private insurance. That is at the discretion of the states. According to this they can expand the Medicaid coverage for SCHIP...government administered. At the federal level, it is administered by Medicare/Medicaid. Goverment administered. So to say it is not government administered is an untruth.

    "Dorn says that's not exactly right, either. "This bill would actually put new limits in place to keep states from going to very high-income levels. SCHIP money would no longer be available over 300 percent of the federal poverty level, which is about $60,000 for a family of four."

    That is also an untruth. This is from the bill itself:
    SEC. 110. LIMITATION ON MATCHING RATE FOR STATES THAT PROPOSE TO COVER CHILDREN WITH EFFECTIVE FAMILY INCOME THAT EXCEEDS 300 PERCENT OF THE POVERTY LINE.

    (a) FMAP Applied to Expenditures- Section 2105(c) (42 U.S.C. 1397ee(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

    `(8) LIMITATION ON MATCHING RATE FOR EXPENDITURES FOR CHILD HEALTH ASSISTANCE PROVIDED TO CHILDREN WHOSE EFFECTIVE FAMILY INCOME EXCEEDS 300 PERCENT OF THE POVERTY LINE-

    `(A) FMAP APPLIED TO EXPENDITURES- Except as provided in subparagraph (B), for fiscal years beginning with fiscal year 2008, the Federal medical assistance percentage (as determined under section 1905(b) without regard to clause (4) of such section) shall be substituted for the enhanced FMAP under subsection (a)(1) with respect to any expenditures for providing child health assistance or health benefits coverage for a targeted low-income child whose effective family income would exceed 300 percent of the poverty line but for the application of a general exclusion of a block of income that is not determined by type of expense or type of income.

    `(B) EXCEPTION- Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any State that, on the date of enactment of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007, has an approved State plan amendment or waiver to provide, or has enacted a State law to submit a State plan amendment to provide, expenditures described in such subparagraph under the State child health plan.'.

    It does NOT exclude coverage for those OVER the 300% marker. It only limits matching funds. And you notice it says EXCEEDS 300% of the poverty line. So anything UP TO 300% of the poverty line would be covered under the proposal sent to Bush, which equals the $82,600. Bush understands the bill better than this guy does. It does leave it open for New York or anywhere else to put people on the program right up to $82,600 per year income. Just like Bush said. I did not make this up. It is copied directly from the bill that is posted on the Library of Congress website.

    Just making sure the whole story is told.
    here is that story...
    Commissioner dismissal controversy
    On July 11, 2008, Governor Palin dismissed Walter Monegan as Commissioner of Public Safety and instead offered him a position as executive director of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which he subsequently turned down.[44][45] Monegan alleged shortly after his dismissal that it may have been partly due to his reluctance to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly McCann.[46] In 2006, before Palin was governor, Wooten was briefly suspended for ten days for threatening to kill McCann's (and Palin's) father, tasering his 11-year-old stepson (at the stepson's request), and violating game laws. After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days.[47]

    Governor Palin asserts that her dismissal of Monegan was unrelated to the fact that he had not fired Wooten, and asserts that Monegan was instead dismissed for not adequately filling state trooper vacancies, and because he "did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues."[48] Palin acknowledges that a member of her administration, Frank Bailey, did contact the Department of Public Safety regarding Wooten, but both Palin and Bailey say that happened without her knowledge and was unrelated to her dismissal of Monegan.[48] Bailey was put on leave for two months for acting outside the scope of his authority as the Director of Boards and Commissions.

    In response to Palin's statement that she had nothing to hide, in August 2008 the Alaska Legislature hired Steve Branchflower to investigate Palin and her staff for possible abuse of power surrounding the dismissal, though lawmakers acknowledge that "Monegan and other commissioners serve at will, meaning they can be fired by Palin at any time."[49] The investigation is being overseen by Democratic State Senator Hollis French, who says that the Palin administration has been cooperating and thus subpoenas are unnecessary.[50] The Palin administration itself was the first to release an audiotape of Bailey making inquiries about the status of the Wooten investigation.[48][51]


    I think the story is entirely possible, but unlikely.

    I have done a little bit of poking around and read a few other tidbits here and there and formed my opinion.   


    Everyone keeps saying that her water broke while she was in Texas, but it did not technically.  She was just leaking fluid, and she was not in labor.  She had had 4 kids and knew she was not yet in labor and discussed that with her doctor, who gave her the go-ahead to fly.  That is not that unusual to me. 


    She waited a long time to announce her pregnancy.  Okay, but probably the reason she waited was because she already knew the baby had Down's (she reportedly found out in December) and knew that there was a higher chance that she would miscarry.  Rather than announce her pregnancy, then lose her baby, she chose to keep it private until she was more certain she would indeed carry to term.  I understand that.  I also think that she probably needed the time to process how her family would adapt to a special needs child, and wrap her mind around it, so to speak.  Not to mention the fact that a fifth child is not usually announced with the pomp and circumstance of a first baby.  That is typical.


    As far as her not looking pregnant, that happens all the time.  I remember seeing Pamela Anderson on a talk show and she was 7 or 8 months' pregnant.  I was shocked at how tiny she was.  She looked barely pregnant, and her baby wasn't even extra small when it was born.  DIfferent women carry differently and Governor Palin was dressing in jackets and other clothing which would hide a bulge. 


    I saw the picture of her daughter and that was completely unconvincing as well.  Girls wear shirts tight across the tummy like that all the time, even if they are chubby in the midsection.  It is very common.  If she was pregnant and trying to it it while posing for a family photo, wouldn't she choose different clothing?


    All that being said, even if it were to turn out to be true, I wouldn't hold it against her for claiming the child as her own in order to protect her daughter and the baby.  I don't see anything wrong in hiding a teenage pregnancy if it can be successfully hidden.  No one should be proud of being unwed and pregnant.  It's too bad that so many young girls think absolutely nothing of it, an actually get pregnant on purpose knowing full well that the baby's father will never be a part of its life.  That is part of what is wrong with our society today. 


    thanks for your story

    We must be nearly the same age because I know several women who were pressured into giving their children away and they are still haunted by that decision to this day. You are correct about the damage Palin is doing to her daughter. 


     


    What the..? What was there ONE story about someone
    have been SP's doing ?? You make it sound like she handed down firings to several thousand. LOL But hey, if she's that powerful and good at putting her plans into action, then maybe I will vote for McCain/Palin.
    Let me tell you a story

    Back in the early 70s, I was a single mom, going through a divorce, and no job. My son was only 1-1/2 years old. I needed help and had no one. I went to Welfare to see if they could help me. I got some money for an apartment and food stamps.


    After 5 months, I found a job, told welfare I was going off it because I didn't need the help anymore. Well, they absolutely begged me to stay on it for at least another year. Needless to say, it was harder to get OFF it than to get on it. I just couldn't get it through their heads that I didn't want their handouts. I had a standing invitation to come back anytime.


    Well, fast forward 8 years. My new husband's job went down the tubes and we went through all our savings, living paycheck to paycheck on mine. Went back to welfare to see if we could at least get food stamps for our 2 kids now. Nope! I earned $11 too much. They told us to sell the cars and the house we were buying and then maybe, just maybe, we would qualify for everything. No way!


    Needless to say, we had a friend who owned a bar and served sandwiches and soup. He let my husband work for him doing odd jobs around his property and paid him in leftover soup and sandwiches. Hubby was also able to pick up a few other odd jobs and that's how we survived for 2 years.  We had a woodburner and cut and split our own wood, had seeds given to us and grew our own garden in the summer. We survived, but it wasn't easy. The only thing nice about it was my children learned about survival and my husband and I never gained any weight.The kids ate first, then hubby because his odd jobs were tougher than mine, and I ate last.


    To this day, I can't look at a plate of spaghetti, soup, or chili. LOL


    I actually got the story from CNN ....
    Just sayin ...
    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."
    And in a related story...

    ...*Curious George* wants to know who's visiting porn sites.  Hmmmmmm... thought spying was only supposed to be used to catch *terrorists*....



    U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court



    By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business WriterTue Mar 14, 8:16 AM ET



    The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.


    Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.


    It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.


    The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.


    Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.


    The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.


    The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google — and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.


    Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.


    The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally, Berman said. While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.


    Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.


    Cooperating with the government is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.


    Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.


    The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.


    Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.


    The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.


    I only posted one story. sm
    And the subject, to me, is Ward Churchill has his deception, not AIM.  I would think as an OP, you would be more in tune to what the OP publications are saying about him. 
    Where did you find this story? sm
    I can't find anything anywhere on this.   Thank you!
    I only found one story on this. sm

    From an obscure site called Rogers Cadenhead.  The remainder of the stories, from the LA Times, etc., did not include anything about U.S. Troops protecting the Hezbollah sympathizers. 


    Could it be possible there are 2 sides to the story? sm
    The US, UK, and Israel also have a long and colorful history of 'creating incidents' to further their own agendas. I would say control of the Middle East is something at the top of the list. Hezbollah is wrong to send rockets into Israel. In fact, they are all wrong, but what do you expect them to do just wait there and be incinerated by Israel?
    Here is a follow up to the first story... sm
    http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=448&z=56
    Real story from the MSM?.....sm
    Bush controlled, corporate crony owned media telling the truth - not going to happen. That only happens when you have a democratic republic, not a corporate plutocracy. TV news definitely lies, suppresses, and distorts news.
    Actually that's not the complete story...
    You did not mention that when Summersby was dying of cancer she stated that it had been a romantic affair after all and wrote about it in her book.  This contradicted what she had earlier stated.  Who knows what really happened, and does it really matter?  I doubt it.  It only proves that we're all flawed humans, even some Republicans!!
    I like the semaphore story better....nm

    nm


    yes, he changed the story

    "just a bit" to better prove his point that she was a reformer.  Like his cross in the dirt story as a POW.  When he first told it, it happened to someone else.  It went over better when he changed it to first person. That is dangerous behavior.  We have been through 8 years of information manipulation.  Please no more.


     


    This whole story is absurd, more like a
    fairytale or wishful thinking, right is running scared is all.
    That's not the whole story/reason. (sm)
    I, for one, do not want to pick produce from the fields and do many of the jobs that migrant workers do. I'm not lazy, per se, but I have other opportunities to make my income in ways closer to how I want to live.

    Many Americans do not want to do those menial jobs. So, we do need migrant workers who are willing to fill those positions.

    That isn't the whole story, though. And it doesn't make it acceptable to allow illegals in regardless of the job situation, etc.

    Is this a true story? LOL
    nm
    Here's the rest of the story.
    1. No soup for researching the breakdown on appropriations and who came down for and against as they progressed through time. That "congress did" cop-out does not cover for the fact that between 2002 and 2007, Dems were outnumbered by war zealots with glazed-over eyes as they followed a leader of liars and prevailed on the money issues. Answer: The pubs dominated and ARE credited for building up a $400B debt, no matter how fast you spin it.
    2. Thank you. Obama voted against. Vision, conviction and courage to place principle over politics. Biden voted for, but has since stated he believes it was a mistake because of the W administration mismanagement of the war. Go here for Biden on the issue of Iraq: Does not appear to be part of the fleeced flock anymore. http://www.ontheissues.org/Joe_Biden.htm.
    3. Obama. Ahead of the curve. Petraeus is not running for president.
    4. Petraeus is a military man with a military agenda and a reputation to protect, just like McCain. Trouble is, public is war weary and are looking for nonmilitary solutions…or at least somebody who is willing to consider such notions. There has to be a plan for what lies beyond the surge, which is not an everlasting solution. Question is whose plan? Bush and McCain NOW get it that Obama gots it and are going with his flow. According to you, Petraeus is onboard too. By the way, the Iraqi leadership just might be entitled to weigh in on this one. After all, it IS their country. They backed Obama on international television this past summer, lest we forget.
    5. Well then, according to you, Petraeus is onboard troop draw-down. No highjack here, but a bit slow on the draw.
    6. There has been no political resolution. Iraqis have not taken control of their own nation. Exactly what do you think will happen after troop withdrawal? The Sunni, Shia and Kurds will throw farewell flowers at the troops and each other in gratitude for all the help and Iraq will become the "oasis of democracy" in the Middle East? All the surge has done is prolong the inevitable. We need to step aside NO MATTER WHAT the consequences and hand the Iraqis the keys to the kingdom and let them sort themselves out.

    A story I like to tell about the Ivy League...
    I earned a BBA (Bachelors of Business Administration) from Temple University. Many years ago, I had a pretty high-powered job. I'll never forget a young lady who came in to interview with me for a job in our department. It seemed as though she couldn't mention often enough that she had earned her BBA from the University of Pennsylvania. So, following her lead, I spent quite a bit of time talking to her about her time at Penn, and it didn't take her very long before she was expressing her opinion that an Ivy League education was better than any other, and so she was the best candidate out there. I admired her spunk, but not her flawed logic.

    I told her that the BBA degree was accredited by a single organization, and that the study curriculum at all schools offering the degree was the same. One could argue that faculty in some schools were better or worse than in others, but there was no hard and fast measure of that opinion. The curriculum, however, was the same in every school.

    I asked her what her University of Pennsylvania tuition had been. This was in the early 1980s, and she proudly said it was around $30,000 a year. I told her that tuition at Temple University was about $4000 a year. So the cost of my BBA had been roughly $16,000. The cost of hers had been roughly $120,000. I told her that in my opinion, we had purchased the same product, but that there was a significant difference in the cost of that product. I then asked her if as an employee of our company, I might expect her to likewise overpay on budget items in our department.

    The kicker was, my degree was hanging on the wall in my office. She couldn't help but see it. It really wasn't the way to warm up to the interviewer. My impression of her was that someone paid a lot of money for her education, but she wasn't too smart.
    thats your story and your sticking to it...
    x