Republicans split with Bush on ports...sm
Posted By: Democrat on 2006-02-23
In Reply to: Yet more confirmation that Georgie is clueless. - see article inside
Republicans Split With Bush on Ports
White House Vows to Brief Lawmakers On Deal With Firm Run by Arab State
By Jim VandeHei and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 23, 2006; Page A01
Faced with an unprecedented Republican revolt over national security, the White House disclosed yesterday that President Bush was unaware of a Middle Eastern company's planned takeover of operations at six U.S. seaports until recent days and promised to brief members of Congress more fully on the pending deal.
One day after threatening to veto any attempt by Congress to scuttle the controversial $6.8 billion deal, Bush sounded a more conciliatory tone by saying lawmakers should have been given more details about a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates purchasing some terminal operations in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/22/AR2006022201609.html?referrer=email
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
Bush Bashed by Republicans
At the same conference Karl Rove's comments were leaked, President Bush was bashed for two full days, according to participant Robert Novak. He was taken to task on his handling of stem cell research, population control, the Iraq war and, especially, Hurricane Katrina. The critics were no left-wing bloggers. They were rich, mainly Republican and presumably Bush voters in the last two presidential elections.
Though the conference sessions were off-the-record, Novak says the admonition says nothing about personal conversations outside the sessions. Nor do I feel inhibited in quoting myself. Even if I am violating the spirit of secrecy rules, revealing criticism of Bush by this elite group, and the paucity of defense for him, is valuable in reflecting the president's parlous political condition.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire says a Bush adviser frets about increased 'cutting and running' by Republican candidates through the 2006 elections.
Even the republicans blame BUSH, where have u been? nm
n
I felt this way about Republicans under Bush. sm
I am a small government conservative and liberty lover and it knocked me out of that paradigm. Other than Ron Paul, I will not be voting for anymore Republicans or Democrats. The whole system has been taken over by socialists, Dem and Republican. They are going to put our children, grandchildren, and generations after us in debt.
The most insane piece of pork in that bill is Nancy Pelosi's 35 million dollar mouse.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/12/earmark-less-bill-gives-pelosis-mouse-cookie/
Republicans are Stuck to Bush - See RNC Memo Link
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.
Republicans Bush, Paulson, Bernanke, Boehner all
This is supposedly a "bipartisan" initiative. Keynesianism is a fairly popular school of economic theory among academics, fairly obscure to Main Street. Doubtful it will do much in terms of jump-starting the economic freeze and it is absurd to think that "stunts" will instill confidence in the economy on Wall Street, Main Street or in banking institutions. The long haul is what we all are in for, no matter who wins in November.
Ports
I am so dumbfounded by this newest administration debacle that I have not even been able to talk about it for days. The security company hired to protect our seaports is out of Dubai!!!! The ports are in New York, New Jersey, Miami, etc. Has homeland security just completely gone nuts or what...and they are just doing it without congress behind them. I know they are doing whatever they darn well please without the American people's blessing, they have been doing that all along; we are lucky if we even find out what has happened six months after it has happened. The NFL can pat us down at football games for security reasons but we handing our ports of entry over to Dubai....just shoot me now.
21 ports!!!
Now we find out it is 21 ports, not just 6. The other 15 I guess they just,, Scooter-style, forgot about. Also, W forgot that he knew about it a week earlier than he said he did and also forgot who told him, it was Andrew Card, not the media.
I have lived in the UAE. It was not lovely there. They were teeny little islands, all sand and rock. You could buy liquor on one of them at the time. Women were not treated as equals. Granted it was a long time ago but look at the 1950s until now. White people would say the civil rights movement was a roaring success; I doubt many Blacks would feel that way. One cannot legislate emotion, belief systems, prejudice...those all exist still in the US and in the Arab countries. The UAE is 17 miles off the coast of Saudi Arabia, home of the bin Ladens, major oil refineries, home of the extremist Islamic schools or terrorist training schools would be more like it. On the other side of the Persian/Arabian Gulf we have Iraq and Iran. It is difficult to believe that the UAE which is made up of several separate entities would not have some terrorist sympathizers which could all by itself be dangerous. Corporations are in business for 1 reason - money. Soverign state/corporations are also in business for money but they have other agendas as well as do all soverign nations. By the way, if any from the other board are reading this, some Republicans are more angry about this than the Democrats. I say we should storm the Bastille. Enough is enough. It is time for this most inept of presidents to go.
At least he won't select the Arab emirates to protect our ports
x
I have no doubt, we have a split
board. Someone loves arguments and has a heck of a lot of time on her hands. She is never here all at one time, if you watch closely. Uses one moniker to try to sound decent, and multiple others to incite arguing. Let's try ignoring and maybe it will go away.
Not to split hairs,
which you KNOW I would never do. But having just completed my tax return, I remember seeing stuff about ensuring 'voluntary compliance' and still I feel very legally compelled to go along with it. Voluntary compliance means they don't send a goon to each and every taxpayer's house to make them file at gunpoint, but that does not make it a willing compliance.
Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.
Arabs Split Over Saddam
Arabs Split Over Saddam |
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 
CAIRO, Egypt — Across the Arab world, some watched intently as Saddam Hussein (search) went on trial Wednesday for crimes against Iraqis but others seemed not to care — a sign the former Iraqi leader still divides this region two years after his fall.
The region's influential satellite television networks, Al-Jazeera (search) and Al-Arabiya (search), carried nonstop coverage starting hours before the trial began. Pan-Arab dailies like al-Hayat also splashed the opening day on their front pages.
But Saudi Arabia's Arabic language-daily Al-Watan used the headline: Saddam's Trial: No one cares and added: The curtains have opened, the cast is ready and the audience is busy with other issues ... Even if we concede that the majority of Iraqis hate Saddam, they also hate how things have developed.
Yet in Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, feelings in support of the trial ran strong.
We have been waiting for this trial for a long time — not only us, but the Iraqi people and Iranian people as well. We say this is the end of every oppressor, said Omar Al-Murad, a 43-year-old architect.
Many Palestinians also watched closely, but with the opposite view.
Weal Naser, a 42-year-old Palestinian owner of a Gaza vegetable shop, said Palestinians can never forget Saddam's past support for their cause. At the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, Saddam paid $15,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers, later raising it to $25,000.
He supported the martyrs' families and he helped many students in Palestine or during their studies in Iraq, he said.
Saddam is paying now the price for being a hero, for saying 'No' to America and to (President) Bush, Naser said.
If the world wants justice, as they claim, they should bring Bush and (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon to trial before Saddam.
Palestinian taxi driver Saed Souror, 32, was more ambivalent about Saddam but equally critical of the trial.
I am not a Saddam supporter, but I am against this trial because it came upon American orders, Souror said. If Saddam was a murderer, what can we call the American acts there?
Egypt's state-owned press chose to mostly ignore the trial, with a few carrying small stories inside but none putting it on the front page.
Jordan's media reported on Saddam's trial but provided no independent commentary or analysis, apparently to avoid stirring public anger already high because of opposition to the U.S. invasion.
A columnist in respected pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat said the trial has lost much of its meaning because of the bloody insurgency that now attacks Iraqis daily. Some of the worst terror attacks are blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It should have been held when Iraqis' memory was full of images of humiliation and that of tens of thousands of the victims and handicapped of the wars, Lebanese columnist Samir Attallah wrote.
Instead, he added: Al-Zarqawi has erased from the minds and hearts all the past horrors. Innocent Iraqis used to die in prison and in their homes, now the occupation resistance is killing the Iraqi innocents and their children in the streets.
In Dubai, the Gulf News paper said in an editorial that not just Saddam, but Iraq itself is on trial, to see whether its new government can rise to the occasion and give Saddam a fair hearing.
Anything less will be a permanent scar upon Iraq and its future, the paper said. |
You better hope he does split the vote...
because that is the ONLY way Billary will get elected.
And oh...by the way...if Ron Paul IS elected and Republicans get back a majority in COngress....your little gravy train is going to derail big time.
One can only hope.
And if one wants to split a rather large hair....
Barry from Chicago must be a war monger too because he said we belonged in Afghanistan, has always said so, and has expanded our operations there. Soooo....I guess that makes him a war monger too? Or Iraq is the only war that counts in the war monger equation...?
I watch Daily Show & O'Reilly and split the difference! NM
X
Russian Professor of Economics Believes U.S. Will Split into Six States
What the Republicans Don't Want You to See.
Stephen Crockett posted this twice (at least) on the Conservative Board, in response to an old quote of his being used out of context and distorted by the usual suspects there. Each time he posted it, it was deleted from the board. It's certainly easy to understand why they don't want anyone to see this.
Please read quickly. They think they should control our board, as well as their own, so it probably won't last very long here, either. 
African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List
Published by Greg Palast June 16th, 2006 in Articles
Massacre of the Buffalo Soldiers
by Greg Palast
As reported for Democracy Now!
Palast, who first reported this story for BBC Television Newsnight (UK) and
Democracy Now! (USA), is author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed
Madhouse.
The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.
A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority
precincts. Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by
Republican operatives to a non-party website.
One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.
*******
For Greg Palast’’s discussion with broadcaster Amy Goodman on the Black soldier purge of 2004, go to
http://gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/palastDN6-14-06.mp3
*******
Here’’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, Do not forward, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as undeliverable.
The lists of soldiers of undeliverable letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.
One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.
[See this scrub sheet at http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=160156893&context=set-72157594155273706&size=o
Our team contacted the homes of several on the caging list, such as Randall Prausa, a serviceman, whose wife said he had been ordered overseas.
A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be
required to vote by provisional ballot.
Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread
multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. The operation, of which the purge of Black soldiers was a small part, was the first mass challenge to voting America had seen in two decades.
The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP
Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, Caging.xls. Each of these contained several hundred
to a few thousand voters and their addresses.
A check of the demographics of the addresses on the caging lists, as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.
Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this - these might be individuals that
will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.
These GOP caging lists were obtained by the same BBC team that first exposed the wrongful purge of African-American felon voters in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Eliminating the voting rights of those voters —— 94,000 were targeted —— likely caused Al Gore’’s defeat in that race.
The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery. However, in Tallahassee, the Florida Bush
campaign’’s spokespeople offered several explanations for the list.
Joseph Agostini, speaking for the GOP, suggested the lists were of potential donors to the Bush campaign. Oddly, the supposed donor list included residents of the Sulzbacher Center a shelter for homeless families.
Another spokesperson for the Bush campaign, Mindy Tucker Fletcher, ultimately changed the official response, acknowledging that these were voters, we mailed to, where the letter came back - bad addresses.
The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having bad addresses subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad.
The apparent challenge campaign was not inexpensive. The GOP mailed the letters first class, at a total cost likely exceeding millions of dollars, so that the addresses would be returned to cage workers.
This is not a challenge list, insisted the Republican spokesmistress. However, she modified that assertion by adding, That’’s not what it’’s set up to be.
Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws mass challenges of voters where race is a factor in choosing the targeted group.
While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. However, Tucker Fletcher asserted Republicans could still employ the list to deny ballots to those they considered suspect voters. When asked if Republicans would use the list to block voters, Tucker Fletcher replied, Where it’’s stated in the law, yeah.
It is not possible at this time to determine how many on the potential blacklist were ultimately challenged and lost their vote. Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a
challenge.
__________________________________
For the full story of caging lists and voter purges of 2004, plus the documents, read Greg Palast’’s New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: Who’’s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, Armed Madhouse: Who’’s Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal ‘‘08, No Child’’s Behind Left and other
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.
http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo-soldiers
what about republicans?
As John Dean recently said I'm still a Goldwater conservative. Today, that places me left of center
What is says is that I and many others, Republicans,
Independents, Progressives, Green Party are sick of having these insane **wars that cannot be won** wars that have no **definition or reason** foisted upon us. You think that winning, whatever that is, is worth whatever it takes including more American and Iraqi lives. We did not leave Viet Nam because of the left and we sure as heck won't be leaving Iraq because of the left. The **American people** the majority (even on Fox news) are dissatisfied with Iraq, the lies and the incompetence. The same was true for Viet Nam. They would take the hill, then lose the hill, then take the hill, then lose the hill, never knowing what having the hill was all about but a whole slew of people would be dead at the end of it. Incompetence, arrogance and ignorance. That is what got us into both these wars. Some times you just have to suck it up and move on, cut your losses and get out. We, the liberals, did not start this nor is it our fault that it will end the way it will and it will end and it won't be pretty. We do not belong there. We cannot win anything. There are those who will hold on till the bitter end and even then will refuse to give up. Years after Viet Nam you guys are still fighting that war, er, conflict. When the state I grew up in, Indiana, is voting Democratic, you know the gig is up. Although Hoosiers vote for Democrats on a local basis, I cannot remember a time the state did not send all of its electoral votes to the Republican party and Indiana is usually the first state to be called for the Republican side, but not today. As much as you would like to malign the left and blame us if we do leave Iraq before you think it is time to, for the first time in a long time, you are in the minority. Middle class middle America, Indiana, is voting Democratic. That is huge. Many of them on exit polls cited the corruption in Congress as a second reason they were not voting Republican.
But the same can be said for many republicans.
To decide you will never vote democrat again based on the actions and words of a few radical examples on an internet message board for medical transcriptionists is hardly objective. I can think of extreme examples of republicans, too, but I do not judge all republicans based on those examples. There are plenty of republicans who support Bush just because he's republican. No difference.
Republicans
amen sister!
Sorry. IMO it is the republicans that are...sm
constantly comparing Palin to Obama and we wish you would stop, and so does he and has said so several times. I am willing to compare Obama to McCain and Palin to Biden, no problem. You call the dems extremists, look in the mirror.
what does that have to do with republicans? nm
nm
Well...what the Republicans DID NOT...
do for me was cripple the economy. THANK YOU, REPUBLICANS. What they did not do was raise my taxes. THANK YOU, REPUBLICANS. They are right now trying to keep Democrats from a huge wasteful expansion of welfare programs when we are in grave economic straits getting worse by the day...THANK YOU REPUBLICANS. And just for the record...I am a registered Independent.
Kool-aid....good grief. If it comes out of the Great O's mouth people just buy it, hook line and sinker. He doesn't have to explain anything. Hey, we are going to spend a trillion more dollars and help all those poor people, especially the ones who don't even PAY taxes. Bless their hearts. And WHO is paying for this...oh well, that would be you and me. What happened to the middle class tax cuts? Oh well, we can't do that...we are in a recession. But let's spend a trillion on even more programs. Why not??
Do you really not get ANY of that? Just asking.
Because the REPUBLICANS
Obama has tried to engage the Republicans, but as you can see by this board, there is no way they will ever cooperate. No matter what Obama does or says will never be good enough for them.
Just a microcosm of the real world. Republicans need to learn to get along and stop trying to set themselves up for office in 2012. Their posturing is hurting the American people.
Many Republicans were against the ...
bailouts. I sure was and am. Keep in mind that many Americans ARE Republicans. It is certainly not the goal of Republicans to see the country fail. My family and many other families are military families that are more than willing to fight for this country. Nobody laughs about this mess, guaranteed.
I think the republicans have been more ga-ga over...
putting more earmarks in bills coming across Congress. Did you see that over 40% of the earmarks in this omnibus bill are from republicans? I was so excited after almost every one of them voted no on the other bill because of earmarks, but I guess I shouldn't have expected that to last long. These are politicians we're talking about - one side is just as bad as the other.
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."
hey republicans, did it hit a nerve?
For the post of failure=bush to have gotten such a response, IMHAO makes me think we have hit a nerve, LMFAO. If it meant nothing because they thought their leader was so righteous, so smart, so dang right in his policies, they would have dismissed the post about failure=bush..When you protest so loudly, you prove we are right and it irks you..sigh..too bad..
The Republicans actually blew it, thank you.
That sordid little event in Clinton's office never had to become public in the way that it did. It became public because the Republicans desperately, avariciously WANTED it to become public. So no crocodile tears now about how Clinton spoiled everything when that is exactly what you wanted to happen. If the private, cheating, sordid lives of all politicians were to PURPOSEFULLY AND DELIBERATELY be made public - especially including those who most adamantly prosecuted Clinton - I think all the tearful nellies who think our leaders were all fine upstanding moral guardians before Clinton came along would simply have their naive little heads explode from the shock.
not all republicans are liars
No I dont think all republicans are liars. I think many twist the truth to try to justify their opinion and beliefs instead of looking at the cold hard facts. I judge each person individually, however, when someone does lie consistently or believes in a fantasy world, like Bush does..telling us every day Iraq is getting better when we can clearly see that it isnt..when people manipulate the science and change the figures or the intelligence data for their own agenda and gain, then I judge those people harshly and never believe them again. Bush is like the little boy who cried wolf. He has lied so darn much, I dont believe a word he says any more and I dont trust him at all.
Republicans cared, that's who. sm
And this *Christian* pornstar is confused. Bush needs to read her some scripture over dinner. You didn't see Clinton running around professing Christianity to any one who would listen either.
I don't think US preempting another war will bid well for republicans..sm
Or anyone else who supports them. Thus the attempt at 6-party talks, etc with Iran. Though you you musn't rule anything out with this bunch.
BTW, I stopped getting in a tizzy over the terror alerts long time ago. I know it's better safe than sorry, but when there's a terror alert every time you turn on the TV you might as well just live your life.
Democrats vs Republicans...
I agree that problems occur on both sides of the aisle...obviously. What I find troubling, and I am being serious here, is that Democrats seem much less likely to own up to it when they do something wrong, even when caught, and the entire party seems to rally around them and somehow want to twist the wrong into a right or rationalize the wrong (he only lied about sex for example. He committed felony perjury, doesn't matter what the lie was about. If it was no big deal, why didn't he just tell the truth? I guess that depends on what the meaning of truth is?). Republicans generally fall on the sword when caught. There just seems to be something skewed about the Democratic party as a whole and their vision of what is wrong or right and it seems to be directly correlated to whether one of their party is guilty or the other party is guilty. This is just an observation. I am not a registered Republican nor Democrat. I am conservative, I am registered Independent but vote for whoever most closely follows my belief system, though they as a rule don't do as they say...and I mean ALL politicians. I just keep hoping for an honest one. Bush did what he said he would do for a long time, but I see him waffling now, and I am not sure that is a good thing. As I look at the two major parties in this country, it just seems to me that on the Democratic side they are more likely to support each other and try to spin wrongdoing even when caught at it, rarely if ever admitting to wrongdoing. I do not see that so much on the Republican side. I suppose now I should go back to the conservative side and let the process continue. I thought the boards were about opinion and discussion and debate. How can you expect to change any minds if you only talk to the like-minded? Thanks for your time, Lurker. I do enjoy talking to you.
I see it with Democrats and Republicans. sm
Where are all the progressives and antiwar people?
Republicans, Help me to understand
This is not a joke, and not meant to provoke but...
1- Do you think Bush is a good president?
2- Do you like his policies?
3- Would you like 4 more years of that kind of leadership?
Why?
Democrats vs Republicans
1. My research on the black liberation movement of which Obama's church is a part tells me all I need to know about whether or not I want to see him in office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology
2. If McCain is elected I believe we will face a great depression which will make the depression of the 30s look like a Sunday School picnic. People already losing homes, jobs, exploding deficit (and the piper will be paid sooner or later), cost-of-living getting so people can hardly afford to live. McCain's judgement is questionable in his choice of a running mate. Totally reckless to name someone he has only met once but then there's oil in Alaska.
I will not support or vote for either of them as were doomed either way.
Were there Republicans in Denver?
Not only did Joe Lieberman speak, there were signs "Democrats for McCain," and they didn't get beaten or threatened, like the Michelle Malkins out there.
For all the Bush-bashing (I give no one a free pass), when did he openly get credit for Colin Powell, Condi Rice, etc.?
Funny thing about facts that way. Pesky little things, aren't they?
The Republicans are totally AGAINST
Just wait. If they get in office another 4 years, there are freedoms we have today that could disappear tomorrow.
Democrats vs Republicans
Just dropped in to see if either the Dems or Pubs on this board have given an inch. They haven't. Boring and useless. I'm betting McCain will win so we'll never know about big, bad Obama for sure. I'll drop back in after a few years of McCain to see how well y'all like him then. Like about now I'm really wondering if John Kerry wouldn't have been an improvement over George Bush. I understand ole Georgie has an all time low approval rating. Must be a bunch of Republicans who aren't as pleased with him as they thought they would be.
Sometimes I think the republicans are dems in slo-mo....sm
and almost as bad. They can't talk, can't stand up for themselves. Let themselves be run over.
I'm disgusted with everybody on capitol hill.
None of them understand the economy anyway. None of them.
The republicans are listening to their ...
constituents who do not want the bailout. They reported on TV this morning their fax machines and phones ringing off the wall. They don't like the bill as it stands. The fact remains, the Democrats had the votes to pass it had the 69 who voted nay had voted yay. They didn't do it because they don't want to be holding the whole bag if it goes south. So to whine about the Republicans who listened to their constituents and not wanting to stick their necks out caused it to fail...wrong.
But it is totally political...the Dems do not want to vote in majority with "Bush/Paulson" plan...because if it failed...you know the drill.
Sigh.
I think the Republicans should go home...
and let the Democrats, who have the majority anyway, put their money where their mouth is and pass it. Put their country first instead of their political futures. Take a chance. They have it in their power to pass it. The Republicans can't. They don't have enough votes, even if they wanted to.
No, most of the Republicans voted against it...
because their constituency were 99 to 1 against it. The senators added the extra stuff hoping to entice some of those Republicans to vote yes instead of no. Plus to woo the 95 democrats who voted against it.
It is silly on its face for the Democrats to whine so much...if they would stop worrying about voting in the majority with George Bush, they could pass the thing themselves. They have the majority. But they want it to be "bipartisan" so if it does not work, they don't have to live out their congressional terms with "they voted with George Bush and crashed the economy" over their heads.
Politics first, constituents second. And so it goes.
Your cannot even image what the republicans said about...sm
JFK when he was running for president, the first Catholic, junior senator, Harvard graduate, wealthy influential family. Oh my goodness. It was really ugly when he was running against tricky Richard. We all know what happened with that. Americans are not fools. Obama will win.
republicans have been doing it for years
got it down to an art form.
I can think of a few other things Republicans
-
Oh sure - and the republicans are all just so warm
NOT.
Any of you Republicans want to address this? s/m
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America........given to us by Bush, "the decider." And you find Obama "scary?"
|
;)
