No Bush and No McCain. If Hilary is not an option
Posted By: anon on 2008-06-23
In Reply to: He is NOT my president ... - sunnyflagal
my vote will go to Ralph Nader. I cannot in good faith vote for any republican or democrat with the state of the nation today. Gas prices, offshoring, etc. It is time we show Washington we are not interested in business as usual. Our country is going down the toilet and yet we continue to vote for the same old, same old. I called my DSL provider for tech support last week and spoke to....AN INDIAN! Same with my mother's DSL provider (2 different companies), yet tech support calls are going to India! No more republican! No more democrat! I QUIT!
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Question about Hilary
Is it Hilary or Hillary? Anyway, I'm not really terribly keen on her. Additionally, most folks I know are pretty lukewarm about her to say the least....just wondering if there is anyone out there who is really impressed and supportive of her and why? I fear that she has done as well as she has due to her $$$ available for her campaign. Plus there have to be a lot of people out there that really like her in order to be leading in the polls. I'm hoping I'm just ignorant and not aware of her positive qualities.
I agree with Hilary that something DRASTIC
Although I don't plan to vote for Hilary, I am not against her healthcare plan. I don't think your health insurance premium should cost more than your mortgage, and sadly that is the case for MANY Americans. That is unacceptable in my book.
I plan to vote for Obama, who also wants all Americans to have affordable health insurance. Do we deserve any less? More people are dying every year because of lack of insurance than the number of people who died in the 911 terror attacks, but where is the concern for these Americans slipping through the cracks?
Here's a quote from Barack Obama on healtcare (you can check out his site if you want his detailed plan for health care coverage).
"I...believe that every American has the right to affordable health care. I believe that the millions of Americans who can't take their children to a doctor when they get sick have that right...We now face an opportunity - and an obligation - to turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates. It's time to bring together businesses, the medical community, and members of both parties around a comprehensive solution to this crisis, and it's time to let the drug and insurance industries know that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair."
Hilary is fugly! Get real! ..nm
xx
This is not an option anymore
I've been listening to the news people talking and this is not an option anymore. Barack is being polite about this, but I see no way for them to run together. Her time has passed. He is now looking at other very qualified people to be VP. One is a woman and one is even a republican. A lot of people think that it will be so easy to win over republicans this fall, but if McCain is running against Hillary he for sure will win as there is too much negativity about Hillary. I cannot stand McCain, but I for one would vote for him over Hillary. First I would change my party to independent, and then I would vote for McCain. People are saying there are three parties running here. The republicans, the democrats and the Clintons. The Clintons have put themselves into their own party. Although a vote for Clinton and a vote for McCain are virtually the same thing. She used to be a republican before she switched to democrat years ago, and her voting record is quite conservative. I for one am glad that Obama is looking at other people for VP slot and his list is pretty impressive. The candidates all seem to be very good choices and I hear many people really respect these people. There are even a lot of republicans who do not want McCain in there, however, they want Hillary even less. I believe that if Obama is the nominee he will win as a lot of republicans will back him, but if Hillary is in there McCain will win as she and Bill have so much bad history attached to them. The only people who are now pushing for an Obama/Hillary ticket are the Hillary supporters as they are trying anything and everything to get her in there, but none of the talk of them running together is coming from Obama's side. Makes you kind of think about that.
On another note it seems as if every state she wins she tries to convince people that if you don't win that state you will not win in November. Funny how these states never include the ones she lost in. You don't hear her saying that about Iowa or Minnesota. We sit and laugh and say nice try Hillary. Then we listen to the news and they say the same thing.
Thank God Hillary is not an option
Don't you realize she is the Co-chair of the Senate India Caucus. She is one of the people pushing for our jobs to go overseas. She will not protect our jobs. She was also in favor of NAFTA. Sorry, I want my job. So Thank God she is not one of the choices. With that said...I am protesting both McCain and Obama - I am not voting. Besides doesn't anyone understand whoever is chosen as President will not be the people's choice. Presidents are placed into office, not elected.
you have the option of choosing it too -
anybody can choose it - not just people who do not have access to insurance.
Change is our only option
I'm not debating that. What I'm debating is the idea that passing the same kind of garbage through for the taxpayers to pay for isn't change. And I don't blame Obama for that - I blame the loons in Congress for that, especially when I hear them say things like "The American people don't care."
I know there's a channel for everyone's taste and I know it's not news either - they're all opinion shows.
I'm not trying to garner support for anything or promoting any kind of fear. I see too many people just get so nasty on this board to people who are only giving their opinion. If you don't agree with me, that's fine - tell me why you don't agree instead of personally attacking me. Maybe you know something I don't that would change my mind on something - I can guarantee you won't change my mind with nasty comments.
Maybe you didn't go to Harvard (I didn't either), but that doesn't mean that we're not intelligent people and can't debate things that are important in this world. Don't believe everything you hear or that you read - that's why debate is a good thing and I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts on why this stimulus package is such a great idea - without the suicide pact, thank you =)
Correct. You have the homeschool option.
Otherwise, leave public SECULAR schools alone. Teach your children what you wish to teach them. If they don't learn from you better than from society at large, you're not doing your job. Besides, right now it's all the rest of us who are being slammed by religious absurdities forcing themselves into the classroom - book bannings, stupid ineffective (and often based on lies) sex education, stupid activist school board members who have no respect for learning and only want to teach Christian fundamentalist ideology - forget it! America's schools were fully adequate until this religious nonsense began to grow like a cancer, disrupting discussion and making everyone fearful of crossing their eyes and always looking over their shoulders for the pious thought police.
It's a terrible situation that is exacerbated further by the religious nannies aligning themselves with the current government so that no student is free to question, or speak their mind, or explore the way other societies do things. A pox on your quest for freedom - if the only thing that satisfies you is stealing freedom from everyone else, what good are you? What kind of religion is that which puts a yoke of oppression on young people, twists their minds and emphasizes the evil all around them? It's sick.
I don't care what you say, schools were better when people could read what they wanted, when discussion could be heard, when no one group of parents could demand changes for everyone, when respect for others and appreciation for diversity was taught - as well as practical and truthful sex ed. We didn't take God out of the schools - we took civic responsibility out. We took tolerance out. We took the feeling of being one important part of a global community out. All that horrible liberal stuff you know, that elevated America to the highest standards and made us the envy of the world for so many decades. That's what you complain about being stuffed down your throat? Well maybe you should be glad that in America, you still have the choice to opt out if you hate all that secular stuff. Too bad you're so fixed on making certain that NOBODY ELSE has that freedom anymore once you get done with them.
No one would listen and he is not an option anymore sm
I started preparing and investing in sound money 2 years ago because of him. My silver may end up being worth $200 an ounce and all the Federal Reserve Notes will be worth the same as Monopoly money. We all knew this was coming and it is going to get worse. Note the date:
Congressman Ron Paul
U.S. House of Representatives
July 16, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act. This legislation restores a free market in housing by repealing special privileges for housing-related government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). These entities are the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie), and the National Home Loan Bank Board (HLBB). According to the Congressional Budget Office, the housing-related GSEs received $13.6 billion worth of indirect federal subsidies in fiscal year 2000 alone.
One of the major government privileges granted these GSEs is a line of credit to the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out these GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps them attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a massive unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.
The Free Housing Market Enhancement Act also repeals the explicit grant of legal authority given to the Federal Reserve to purchase the debt of housing-related GSEs. GSEs are the only institutions besides the United States Treasury granted explicit statutory authority to monetize their debt through the Federal Reserve. This provision gives the GSEs a source of liquidity unavailable to their competitors.
Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges of Fannie, Freddie, and HLBB have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policies of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has expressed concern that government subsidies provided to the GSEs make investors underestimate the risk of investing in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. Speaker, it is time for Congress to act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors misled by foolish government interference in the market. I therefore hope my colleagues will stand up for American taxpayers and investors by cosponsoring the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act.
I don't think it is an option - I think it is obvious they dislike each other immensely! nm
x
Bush/McCain/Obama
I already hid my money. Might be if Obama is elected I can bring it out of hiding. Keep it hid if McCain is elected...........more of G.W. Bush.
McCain at the end distanced himself from Bush.....
because he thought that this might bring him victory.
Isn't this, as you state...'changing the message to suit the audience......?'
What better democratic shoo-in did you expect? The WHOLE WORLD supported and would have voted for BARAK OBAMA.
Obama got 44% of the white votes, 2004 Bush got 58% of the white votes.
It was BUSH and MCCAIN who wanted to
not the dems, check your facts
She said she voted for Bush&Mccain.
NM
McCain voted 90% on Bush's side...
That tells me - OH, YES, all over again. Palin is just a sideshow. They put 'em in office and big business runs the country - puppets - just like Bush. They don't care about the country - they care about MONEY, POWER, GREED.
I think McCain/Palin would be even WORSE than Bush!
^
McCain listens to BUSH... that's a thousand
Ol' Dubya doesn't have the brains to cross the street by himself.
Here is the Obama vs McCain/Bush tax calculator sm
http://alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut/
That's pretty silly.....McCain disagreed with Bush about as much as...
the Dems did. LOL. And yes, I have heard the Obama ad that McCain "voted with Bush" 90% of the time. Problem with that is...Bush can't vote. Only Congress can. Sheeshhhh. LOL.
The present crisis was not caused by Bush or McCain...
both approached the Democrats a total of 4 times trying to get Fannie/Freddie regulated. We can't afford Reid, Pelosi, Dodd, Frank, AND a Democratic president. Whatever else Bush is or is not, he is NOT responsible for this current financial MESS.
Bush III: McCain camp is so desperate they have to resort to swiftboating? nm
nm
it is called politics, remember McCain and Bush hugging?
arent they supposed to be on different sides now? (Say, how does that actually work...people who voted for Bush and are now for McCain, which sides of the issues are they really on? Must be hard to keep it all straight...
Oh, (chuckel) remember Bush raking over McCain, and none to nicely a bunch of times when they were running against each other? That was a hoot
No, it says "versus" McCain which is the bush plan so obama is wayyy better duh!
nm
What they want is to be able to bash McCain, bash Bush, and bash Palin...
in private, their own little hatefest, slap each other on the back and high five...they could not care less about any issues. That should be patently obvious. And rather sad.
Why are you McCain people so desperate? You are just like McCain. No plan. Just criticism of the
other candidate. I guess you want the same old thing we have had for the past 8 years. God forbid McCain win with that wild woman, Palin.
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.
McCain
Not only will he refuse to get out of Iraq unless there is some sort of clear victory, even if it takes "100 years" or "1000 years" (his words), jokes about how to handle Iran is "Bom, bom, bom, bom, bomb Iran" (to the tune of a Beach Boys song), he also wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and not let China or India in. Way to place nice with the up-and-coming superpowers - I'm sure that will do great things for our country in years to come.
There are certain things I like about him (strict belief in Geneva Convention, willing to work across party lines), but his warmongering side scares the you-know-what out of me.
McCain's age
Whether his military uniform helps his image depends on what kind of world we want to be living in tomorrow, not the one we live in now. A lot of people will be showing up at the polls to say that status quo is not acceptable, especially when it comes to solving problems by waging wars. Concerns over his age, senility and/or Alzheimer’s are legitimate if you do the math. Those possibilities are very real and could just as easily happen early in his term as later. He has shown some early signs like his problems with word retrieval, mispronunciation, confusion, forgetting what he is saying and blank staring spells.
The teleprompter comment is also kind of a cheap shot. Besides that, it is not true, unless you believe everything you hear on Fox or YouTube. He is an excellent orator and delivered very spontaneous and inspiring responses in the town hall meetings during the primaries and in news conferences. YHe is a much better speaker than McCain.
McCain....you mean
I can't believe anyone would vote for him after what Bush just did to us for 8 years.
Well, McCain's gas in his car came from
oil from a country that supports terrorism. McCain a supporter of terrorism? You can interpret this any way you like.
if McCain gets in
that will be the tenor of the New Secretary of State.
Why McCain?
http://www.johnmccain.com/Undecided/WhyMcCain.htm
McCain looks
like he hurts. It makes me uncomfortable to watch. Obama has a significantly larger amt of data in his mind (constitutional law professor, etc) to sort through, gather, and assemble before he responds to a question. It is to his favor that he does not immediately yelp out an answer like a trained seal.
Thank you. I think McCain's age ... sm
Is what worries me so much about this situation. I mean, people die at different ages, it's true, but if McCain were 20 years younger, I don't think I'd be quite as worried. But he's 72, has had skin cancer several times, and I read (haven't verified) that both his father and grandfather died suddenly of heart attacks when they were younger than he is now. Now that might not mean anything. After all, isnt' his mother in her 90s? But it just worries me. It would be different if he wanted Palin to have a cabinet position where she could, I don't know, hone her skills, cut her teeth in Washington, so to speak, but to put her is a position of leading our country if something happens to McCain? It just makes me very nervous.
Oh, of course. McCain will get the best...sm
Healthcare. Too bad for the rest of us peons though!
Still, the best healthcare in the U.S. can't turn back time and make him young again. He is really getting up there, and the campaign must be wearing on him. I don't know how any of them can stand all the travel that comes with campaigning.
The New McCain!
The Ugly New McCain
Wednesday, September 17, 2008; Page
Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.
The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.
"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."
Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.
"Actually, they are not lies," he said.
Actually, they are.
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.
I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.
Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.
McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times -- the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month, only five civilians were killed by the American military in an airstrike, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.
McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.
But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.
cohenr@washpost.com
or like when McCain said . . .
Obama called her a pig and then on Monday said he didn't
it has to do with McCain and
Bush systematically deregulating (savings and loans - Keating 5) and wall street so that the souless corporations can do whatever they want without any limits. they have removed the safety factors built into the system after the great depression. Well, now we have the situation that deregulation brings. As Romney said at this years' repub convention - McCain is going to go at all the regulations on industry with a weed wacker.
McCain
Respecting his service to his country is one thing. He is only one of thousands who have done the same thing. or worse, died for their country, and are just as deserving of being honored as McCain. Trusting him to lead this country is another thing entirely.
Seeing as McCain may not . . .
live out his term, she is running for the top spot.
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