That has been an ongoing tradition for years, not just Bush (nm)
Posted By: Backwards typist on 2008-11-27
In Reply to: Did you see where Bush "pardoned" his - Stardust
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Tradition or not
if Obama really believes in change and wants to give us hope, he could have very well said....you know what guys....I know we do this every year but times are tough and we need to set an example and either foot the bill ourselves or stay here in D.C. and not be wasteful with spending.
Instead....he says....thanks for giving me an excuse to use AirForce One.
8 years under 'Herr Bush' can do that
Heil!
You mean 16 years - Both Bush AND Clinton
Disastrous!
Bush = 6 years before Dems took
a tiny barely majority in Congress, but not enough to override his vetos, and the damage was already done by then, so yes, BUSH and the republicans are completely to blame.
ZERO years. He's done no harm. Now BUSH,
*
Buck up!! We got through the Bush years, and how
did that work out for you? Oh, that's right, we're still living with the consequences of his two terms because of his economic and foreign policy disasters. Whatever Obama does or doesn't do cannot be any WORSE than what Bush has DONE. Bush has brought the US to its knees, and while on your knees, PRAY for this new prez.
Oh yes....let us break tradition
to once again shoot down those who believe in God for the sake of those who spit at the very idea of Him. As long as the non-belivers are happy....who cares about Christians....right? Goodness knows we have taken Him out of schools to make you people happy. Nativity scenes can't be put up without a secular winter solstice sign stating there is no God right next to it. The 10 commandments, no matter how good they are to live by, can't be put in a court house because it is based on religious beliefs. Anything else you would like to take away from us because you can't say Merry Christmas anymore without someone having a cow. Sheesh. I'm so sick of this crap!
I did not say it was right - I said you can't blame O for a tradition -
xx
Absolutely! If you want 8 more years of the Bush Admin! nm
nm
Bush had a republican congress for 6 years and,.sm
for the last 2 years we had a republican president, who was always threatening to veto, and a democratic congress by a very small margin. You can't blame everything on the democrats for the last 2 years.
The economy was great for 6 years of Bush until
nm
Look to the leader of USA for past 8 years GW BUSH nm
n
gee, and it was okay for Bush to be the elusive target for the last 8 years??....s/m
...and probably beyond.....that wasn't unhealthy????? from the DNC, liberal democrats, and the liberal media???
and you haven't had enough of being trampled by Bush for the last eight years?
Bush Presidency - eight years in eight minutes
I watch Olbermann. Sometimes I agree with him. Sometimes I don't.
However, last night he hit it into the park with his attempt to review what Bush did in the last eight years into eight minutes; he ran over time a little bit because there was so much to say.
I would strongly urge anyone who is not too busy whining, moaning, groaning, hating and raging about Obama -- anyone who is truly interested in the future of America -- to watch this, from beginning to end -- especially at the end (since this is done chronologically, not by matter of importance).
THESE are the reasons people voted for Obama. THESE are the reasons that Obama supporters cannot understand why Bush worshippers still support him and reject the man who might undo the wreckage of Bush.
BUSH is the man who claimed to have a direct line to GOD. Obama never claimed anything of the sort; if he had, I probably would not have voted for him for that very reason -- because it creeped me out so much when Bush did it. So the assertion that Obama supporters are "worshippers" is ridiculous, when, in fact, it seems that those who still support Bush (the closest thing to the Anti-Christ that I'VE ever seen) are the ones who seem to think Bush is some sort of god.
Please watch every single SECOND of this video. It will give you just a taste of the grueling task ahead of Obama in trying to correct all the damage that Bush has done. We may, in fact, never know the full extent of the damage because Bush (as is mentioned in the video) has "exempted" himself from the Presidential Records Act.
THIS is why every truly honest, patriotic, honorable American who voted for Obama is so relieved he won. Not so much "happy" -- but RELIEVED -- hoping (yes, HOPING) that our country may once again resemble the USA that once held respect throughout the world, the USA where hard work was once rewarded, the USA where families could afford to feed their children, and the USA where one's ability to obtain something as basic as healthcare wasn't only limited to the wealthy. I'm not naive enough to believe this can all be fixed in four (or even eight) years, because Bush has been like a four-year-old sociopath that was armed with Daddy's credit card, an AXE and an arrogant giggle, each of which he used to its full capacity, and that's a LOT to clean up.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#28699663
No one's "changing the tradition of marriage".
X
Bush just casually reverses 5 years of rhetoric. sm
How many more lies before everyone wakes up?
Editorial Toledo Blade: Another lie on Iraq
WHEN President Bush declared last week that nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a large segment of the American public must have been very surprised.
They would be the die-hard supporters of the war in Iraq, the one-quarter to one-third of Americans who, according to opinion polls, believe to this day that Saddam was somehow involved in 9/11.
No one likes to think that their President is lying, but for Mr. Bush to casually reverse five years of rhetoric is like Bill Clinton claiming I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
No, there is no DNA evidence that we know of to indict Mr. Bush for perjury. But the public record includes repeated statements by the President, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other administration officials that linked responsibility for the 9/11 attacks to Iraq, both directly and indirectly.
The alleged connection was the administration's strongest selling point for the war, slaking the American people's thirst for revenge for the 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
As Mr. Bush put it on Oct. 7, 2002, We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy - the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. … We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
Here he is again, in his 2003 State of the Union address: And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.
And in his Mission Accomplished photo op, May 1, 2003: In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front.
Mr. Cheney was even more specific: In 2003, the vice president claimed that the government was learning more and more about links, before 9/11, between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This came even after the CIA had debunked any such claims. In 2004, the veep said flatly that Saddam had long-established ties with al-Qaeda.
Now, you can argue all day about whether faulty U.S. intelligence misled Mr. Bush, or about what the meaning of suggested is, but this much is clear: The administration relentlessly blurred what was a clear distinction between the militantly secular regime of Saddam and Islamic extremists like the 9/11 hijackers so as to create a laser-beam connection in the public mind that they were one and the same.
So for Mr. Bush to now claim that nobody has ever suggested that the Sept. 11 attacks were ordered by Iraq, as he did last week, is yet another lie in the chain of mendacity that shackles the Bush presidency.
Bush lost the respect we held for him years ago.
and in no small measure is responsible for the divisions that we all find ourselves grapping with at this very moment. The election is over and the time is here for us to move on into the new age our fellow Americans have delivered to our feet.
Right, it'll be "it's Bush's fault" for at least the next two years. I wonder when O
and his own white house. I'm fearing he won't. It will be "Bush's fault" for a long, long time to come.
Marmann's just proved it.
If it Clinton screwed something up - why didn't Bush fix it? He had 8 years!
As much as you want to blame Bill Clinton......don't forget who held the reins for the last 8 years......who let them run amuck? Why was nothing done?
Check out the mortgage failures.
Tell me which failed more, prime or subprime
Tell me what is the rate of failures under the CRA or even Bush's ADDI (which i attack alll the time)
Once again, REALITY AND THE DATA doesn't fit ya'lls claims.
Basically what happened was.. we reformed bankruptcy laws.. so that people who ran into dire straights could not restructure.
We packaged the loans into commodity derivatives. These are sorta mirror bets on the loans. Sorta..as the same loan will be sold many times in many derivative packages.. that's why the housing derivatives are worth more than all the real estate in the US. Derivatives are actually not that bad.. when a market is stable and only has to deal with natural forces. The housing market was bubbled.. partially due to low interest rates that encouraged everyone to buy, even the rich, and partially due to the CRA and the ADDI.. which did add customers to the market (helping form the bubble was the extent the CRA and the ADDI had in this mess)
All it took was a few failures to pop the bubble..and make real estate prices drop,. and mind you, it was mainly prime loans (READ not loans given to poor people and not loans under the CRA) that failed. The derivative market.,.which like I said, is really mirrors of the same loans.. cause the defaults to explode with ten times the ferocity, because one loan could effect the price of dozens of derivatives.
Really the poor and even irresponsible people .. simply did not have the economic ability to cause this mess. Pool all their money together and waste it on hookers.. it would have zero effect without help from the rich elites and their magnifying packaged derivatives.
THE CRA and ADDI both had stricter requirements than loans you got from normal banks.. both required income data.. where many prime loans did not.. they also greatly limited you on how much home you could purchase..whereas private banks did not care if you tried to buy something you could not afford.
Don't believe me?.. Look in the phone book.. call your own housing authority - you can get a loan for 106% the purchase price of a home even today.. if you're poor enough.
Ask to hear the red tape and hoops you must go through.. Heck, it is probably easier to just get a real job and earn real money than go through the FHA.
I stated 8 years ago that Bush' foreign "Policies"
,
Hello?! 8 years of Bush cratered the country & caused this
nightmare in the first place. They are all frantically trying to keep us from another Great Depression caused by Bush & republican control. I personally think the damage runs so deep that it can't be stopped in time, but at least they're trying! Maybe next time the idiots will remember what Bush & his cronies have done & will be smarter than to vote republican...
Spoken by someone who posted about Laura Bush's accident about 40 years ago. sm
But I guess we were supposed to forget about that, too?
They towed Bush's line for 6 long years. Ask any progressive
better still, branch out and listen to opposing media views, including progressive radio and newspapers...those guys have yet to get mainstream coverage. To get any kind of decent international coverage, one is forced to go to media source outside of our own country. You might be REALLY surpised at what you find there. Get real.
Yeah, and guess who he'll blame the whole four years....yep...bush...nm
It will take YEARS for repubs to recover from PALIN AND BUSH AND FOX NEWS... sm
Because they have demeaned themselves and truly hurt the republican party.
There are still several other lawsuits ongoing.
nm
ongoing debate about BC
still beating that dead horse?geeeeeezzzzz!
It is an ongoing process but...(sm)
it is seriously under-funded, which is why Obama signed legislation to delay the deadline for conversion. That, I believe, was the whole point of putting funds for it in the stimulus. I would guess that a lot of people do not have TVs and/or digital cable, and the coupons that the stimulus talks about would help those people who would not otherwise be able to afford to change equipment by the deadline. Changed from Feb to (I think) July.
As far as stimulus for the economy, these coupons act as money which would go to the cable companies which creates more demand = jobs, jobs, jobs. -- people have to hook this stuff up -- people who build converter boxes -- people who make the parts for the converter boxes........etc.
Any time money is spent for, in particular, a product, it creates demand and therefore creates jobs.
It's an ongoing litany of complaints. sm
And the attack on the moderator is reprehensible. But it is typical. Teddy and Lurker seem to be obsessed with the fact of who I am, though truthfully, I could care less who they are. But the moderator bit is really something. No respect at all.
The 1st suit is still ongoing. O has been ordered by
nm
What it probably is....is the ongoing effort of those who shall remain nameless...
but have a lot to gain by Obama losing this election.
I have a nightmare...ongoing, starts Jan. 20th.....and for the next
This has been ongoing for almost a year if not longer. Links inside. sm
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-2433
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4600891
On December 7, 2007, Obama introduced the Senate version of the Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S.2433). On February 13, the bill cleared the ...
The gov't already takes enough of my money. If this passes, the gov't will be taking even MORE of my money, your money, EVERYBODY'S money.
Be scared, be very scared.
The digital conversion was rolled out over a year ago and has been ongoing constantly since...
$650 million for digital-TV coupons.
TV is going digital and it is necessary for people to be able to get converter boxes. Otherwise, no news, no TV, etc.
For this you have to wait at least 3 years and 8 months , maybe 7 years and 8 mohths...nm
nm
Not quite- 2 years Catholic, 2 years Muslim. NM
X
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
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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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In 100 years, no one will that's for sure. NM
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Could be, he's never come on TV? Years ago maybe?
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oh, okay, but he followed him for 20 years!
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Which was 4 years ago....
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You were 16 years old once...
what if it was said about you, about your daughter if you had one....or about your mother when you were 16?.....come ON now. YOu know how vulnerable girls are at that age. That was a really really really LOW below the belt hit. Mean and nasty.
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