I trust your opinion more, too!

Clinton won because Ross Perot was in the race
Clinton did not win a legitimate race as he won only 41% of the vote

And until Clinton and Bush41 sabatoged Perot, Perot might actually won, and Clinton been in 3rd place

And it was lucky Bush41 was passing it off to him anyhow, so the fix was in, as Clinton is a member of the family.

Which is why odds are good Hillary got this info on Edwards released

Doesn't matter whether you think Clinton would have won without Perot in the race or not. I suspect he would have, but we can never know. Bottom line is he won. And he was president, as is George W. Conspiracy theories don't affect the bottom line.

Well, thanks, Peg .... I think. Although I'm not sure if having my opinion compared to the blogs is a compliment or not

this is the same as a blog

I don't believe in cliques so I consider it an honor not to be a member of one.

Now, will we get to the bottom of who got this released to the public?

I nominate HIllary as the chief suspect in that...we need a complete and full investigation of this
and if fraud, blackmail, payoffs, hush money, extortion was involved, arrests need to be made.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/151783

FIRST PERSON
What Rielle Hunter Told Me

A seeker and a New Age spiritualist, John Edwards's other woman believed she could help him make history.
By Jonathan Darman | NEWSWEEK
Published Aug 9, 2008
Aug. 18-25, 2008 issue


The first time I laid eyes on Rielle Hunter, I could tell she was a story. She had frizzy blond hair with DARK roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room. She was on a cramped commuter flight and she was flirting with a candidate for president of the United States. It was July 7, 2006. I'd been sent to Iowa to write a piece on John Edwards. We were on our way to Des Moines, where I would be the only national reporter following him around the state for two days. From a few rows back, I tried to observe Edwards before the plane took off. Most of the other passengers seemed to have no idea who Edwards was. But this blond woman, putting away her bags, was visibly captivated by him. She tried repeatedly to engage him in conversation, but he seemed uninterested in talking. How the mighty have fallen, I thought. As John Kerry's running mate in 2004, Edwards had his own campaign bubble around him all the time; now he had to deal with strangers who flirt with him on planes. Of course, she wasn't a stranger. Edwards now admits that he had an extramarital affair with her. But at the time I had no reason to suspect there was anything between them.

She showed up at his first event that day in Des Moines with a video camera. She was trying to get as close to the candidate as she could. "Does she work for the campaign?" I asked Edwards's press secretary, Kim Rubey. "Oh, she's working on a documentary project," said Rubey. "We're not sure if it's going to work out." But it was soon clear that she was on Team Edwards. When it came time to drive to the next event, she rode in the car with the candidate. I drove behind in a rental car.

I struck up a conversation with the woman at the next event, as we waited outside. She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.
Click Here

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy." I didn't pursue the topic, and when I filed my story, I made no mention of Rielle. But I was, to say the least, curious. I tried, unsuccessfully, to track her down in the weeks that followed. I thought she would make a good source. She clearly knew I was a reporter, yet she spoke freely and openly about her own life and the Edwards campaign.

Four months later, Rielle found her way to me. It was November 2006. I received an e-mail from her, complimenting me on some stories I'd written on the midterm elections. She wanted to give me a story. Could I come for lunch in New York?

We agreed to meet at Aqua Grill in SoHo on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. When I arrived at the restaurant, she was already seated. She greeted me warmly with surprising intimacy, rising for two kisses on the cheek. "So it's afternoon," I said with a smile. "What do you think, are we drinking wine?" She smiled back at me. "Bottle or glass?"

I would soon learn that there was no such thing as small talk with Rielle Hunter. She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle. Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.

I had been nodding and sipping my wine through all this. "Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?" I asked. "All the time," Rielle replied. "I'll lecture him on it when he's getting too much up in here," she said, gesturing toward her head. "He'll see a look on my face and say, 'Yes, I know, Rielle, "Power of Now" says …' " Rielle wanted me to know all these things because she wanted me to write about them. For the past five months, she said, she'd been traveling with Edwards with a video crew, capturing him in a variety of settings, public and private. She had cut her footage together into a series of short films, "Webisodes" that would run on the Internet. She hoped that with her unique eye for Edwards's true potential, she could show the world the real John Edwards and, in the process, help him to become the better version of himself. She wondered if I might be interested in writing a story. "Sure," I said, "if you let me see the films, we can talk about that."

By this point, we were each well into our second glass of wine. "So tell me," I asked, "what do you think of Elizabeth Edwards?" "I've only met her once," Rielle said. "She does not give off good energy. She didn't make eye contact with me."

In NEWSWEEK, I wrote a short story about how Edwards had brought this rather unorthodox woman, whom he'd met in a bar, into his campaign to make videos that showed off his unseen side—a less slick, packaged Edwards. We ran it in the PERISCOPE section under the headline EDWARDS UNTUCKED. I didn't mention Rielle's belief in Edwards's potential to be Gandhi or her distaste for Elizabeth. I wanted to keep her as a source.
Vote for Barack Obama

When I next saw Rielle weeks later, she told me that she'd been fired by the Edwards campaign. She seemed perfectly cheerful about it, but she proceeded to tell me a tale of woe—how the campaign hadn't understood her, how they'd ruined the Webisodes, how they'd impeded her vision and how Edwards himself had failed to defend her. The chief villain in this saga was Elizabeth Edwards. "Someday," Rielle said, "the truth about her is going to come out."

By then, I had decided that Rielle was a less than reliable source. I continued to see her, but more out of curiosity than a belief that I was going to learn much about Edwards from her. I liked Rielle. I let her do my astrological chart. I began to feel a little like the nun in that old joke who complains about receiving a three-hour obscene phone call …Why didn't I just hang up?

But I didn't. I stayed in touch with Rielle for months. At lunch at the Soho House in late spring of '07, Rielle told me that she and novelist Jay McInerney were working on a "genius" idea for a television show about women who help men get out of failing marriages by having affairs with them. She said they wanted to pitch this idea to Darren Star, creator of "Melrose Place" and "Sex and the City." At lunch early that summer, I asked Rielle if she was dating anyone. She answered simply, "I'm in love." I asked, "Who with?" "I can't tell you," she said, "but maybe someday we'll all be friends."

That October, the National Enquirer wrote a story claiming that Rielle and Edwards were having an affair. Rielle called me to ask, should she put out a statement denying it? I asked her if she would give a statement to NEWSWEEK, which seemed to make her mad. She said she was talking to me as a friend, not a journalist. Though she said that our conversations had been "between you and me," we had never actually gone off the record. Our conversation ended abruptly. I never got to ask her the most important question: whether she had had an affair with Edwards. I tried to contact her several times in the months that followed, but she didn't return my calls. It occurred to me she was saddened that she had come to think of me as a friend, but I saw her as a story. In December, the Enquirer ran an article claiming she was pregnant with Edwards's child. (Edwards denies he is the father, and has offered to take a paternity test to prove it. Prior to the child's birth, an Edwards aide, Andrew Young, told the Enquirer he was the father of Rielle's child. An Edwards adviser, speaking on Edwards's behalf, declined to comment for this story. Rielle did not respond to e-mails I sent her last week seeking comment.) In early January, I was surprised to receive an e-mail from her saying she was thinking about me and hoping I was OK. I haven't heard from her since. But I believe she really did hope I was OK. When my father died later that month, she sent me flowers.

© 2008

Why the gray lady took a pass for so long.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10pubed.html

The Public Editor
Sometimes, There’s News in the Gutter


By CLARK HOYT
Published: August 9, 2008

THE John Edwards “love child” story finally hit the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the Internet was abuzz, and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage.


They could ignore it no longer when Edwards, who had been running away from reporters for weeks, sat down with ABC News and admitted he had an extra-marital affair and lied repeatedly about it. He denied he fathered Rielle Hunter’s 5-month-old daughter, as the National Enquirer reported in December before the baby was born.

Before Edwards’s admission, The Times never made a serious effort to investigate the story, even as the Enquirer wrote one sensational report after another: a 2:40 a.m. ambush by the tabloid’s reporters at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles after Edwards spent hours in a room with Hunter and her baby; an allegation of $15,000 a month in “hush money;” a grainy “spy photo” of him with a baby.

Murray Bromberg of Bellmore, N.Y., was glad The Times was not touching this seamy business. “I heartily approve,” he said. But everyone else I heard from over the past several weeks was either puzzled or outraged that the newspaper, which carried front-page allegations of a John McCain affair, was ignoring the relationship between Edwards and Hunter. John Boyle of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said, “I hope you will find the time to tell me why this news story is not reported by your paper.” Some readers, like Bert A. Getz Jr. of Winnetka, Ill., were sure they already knew the answer: liberal bias.

I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times — like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services — was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer’s reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong. Until the ABC report, only one mainstream news organization, McClatchy newspapers, seemed to be making headway with the story.

Not that it would have been easy. David Perel, the editor of the Enquirer, said, “This is a very hard story to prove, and I think that has frozen people in place.”

It is also the kind of story that The Times seems instinctively to recoil from, just as it ignored such stories in its own backyard as A-Rod and Madonna and Christie Brinkley’s ugly divorce, and played down the “love child” scandal involving New York City’s only Republican congressman, Vito Fossella, earlier this year. But Edwards was different. When the Enquirer first published its allegations, he was a major presidential candidate with a compelling personal story that included a wife of 30 years with incurable breast cancer.

As he told Katie Couric on “60 Minutes” early last year, “I think every single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic, have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation ... to look at what kind of human beings each of us are.”

Still, Edwards-Hunter was “classically not a Times-like story,” said Craig Whitney, the standards editor.

Times editors said that when the first Enquirer story appeared and they could not verify it after fairly cursory inquiries, they left it alone. “I’m not going to recycle a supermarket tabloid’s anonymously sourced story,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor. By the time the Enquirer reported on its hotel stakeout, Edwards was no longer a presidential candidate and, according to Times reporting, not even under serious consideration as a running mate to Barack Obama.

“Edwards isn’t a player at the moment,” said Richard Stevenson, who directs the newspaper’s campaign coverage. “There are a lot of big issues facing the country. The two candidates are compelling figures, and we have finite resources.” He said he agreed that Edwards was “fair game for journalism of this sort, but this hasn’t seemed to me to be a high priority for us at this moment.” I spoke with Stevenson and Keller last week before Edwards’s ABC interview.

Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator’s dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. “Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life,” Keller said. “It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort.”

I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth. I would not have recycled the National Enquirer story, either. But I think it was a mistake for Times editors to turn up their noses and not pursue it. “There was a tendency, fair or not, to dismiss what you read in the National Enquirer,” Keller said. “I know they are sometimes right.” When the Enquirer published its first “love child” report, The Times was going energetically after the McCain story. It should have pursued the other story as well.

Later, after the July confrontation at the Beverly Hilton, some other news organizations made serious efforts to report the story, but not The Times. The Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy newspaper in Edwards’s home state of North Carolina, reported Thursday that because Edwards had been ducking questions about his relationship with Hunter and her child for weeks, he was in danger of being pushed aside as a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention.

Richard Berke, an assistant managing editor, said that The Times has sometimes struggled in an increasingly tabloid news environment to figure out how to deal with such stories. “We are still feeling our way on this,” he said.

Berke said he convened a luncheon of Times editors late last year after controversy in the newsroom over a decision to put an article about Paris Hilton on the front page. Some staffers thought the paper was finally getting with it, while others were embarrassed, he said. Berke said there was a consensus at the luncheon that The Times should “be a little more open and flexible.”

It is a delicate balance to strike for a newspaper like The Times, with a long history of serious purpose and few tabloid instincts.

“We run the risk of looking like we’re totally out of it,” Berke said, “or we’re just like the rest of them — we have no standards.”

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ex-mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards said Saturday she will not participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her daughter.

Rielle Hunter’s lawyer, Robert Gordon, says his client is a private individual who is not running for public office and that she wishes to maintain the privacy of her and her daughter.

“Rielle is therefore making no statement now or in the future,” Gordon said in a statement. “Furthermore, Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter’s privacy now or in the future.”

On Friday, Edwards admitted to having an extramarital affair with Hunter in 2006 but denied that he was the father of Hunter’s 5-month-old daughter. Edwards offered to take a paternity test to prove he is not the father.

Hunter’s decision means that the issue of who the father is remains an open question.

Hunter’s daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born on Feb. 27 this year, and no father’s name is given on the birth certificate filed in California.
A former Edwards campaign staff member professes to be the father.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, confessed to ABC News that he had lied repeatedly about the affair with Hunter, then 42, who produced videos for Edwards as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign.

In an interview which aired on ABC’s “Nightline” on Friday night, Edwards said he would be willing to take a paternity test to put the issue to rest but wasn’t sure whether Hunter would be willing to.

“I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established,” Edwards said.

The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, in the run-up to the Democratic primaries, and Edwards denied it.

Last month, the Enquirer carried another story — the blaring headline referred to an Edwards “love child” — stating that its reporters had accosted Edwards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles where he had met with Hunter after her child’s birth. Edwards called it “tabloid trash.”

In her statement Friday, Elizabeth Edwards said it wasn’t easy to find out about the extramarital affair in 2006 but indicated she did not believe that her husband was the father of Hunter’s daughter.

“This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well,” she said. “Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.”

Edwards declared his presidential candidacy in December 2006. His wife campaigned enthusiastically with him and by herself in the months that followed. She announced in March 2007 that her cancer, formerly in remission, had returned and there apparently was no cure.

Edwards dropped out midway through this year’s primaries. He recently endorsed Barack Obama and had been mentioned as a possible running mate. But as rumors spread of Edwards’ possible affair it became clear that he would not likely speak at the Democratic National Convention later this month in Denver.

The NY Times no longer reports news as a leader

They are a follower.

What with their love for Hillary, they are 100% as biased as Fox.

I no longer buy it every day...if not for the Sunday crossword puzzle in the mag and the Arts & Entertainment
I would not really care.

All the news THEY DEEM to print

Miss Rielle sounds like a really great person

I believe her. She has no reason to lie.

Just about everything she says here is what I have believed all along.

Miss Rielle sounds like a sweet and innocent and somewhat naive person who got screwed big time.

Seems like she was used by this reporter.
What do you expect from Newsweek. Newsweek , the NY Times, and Time are the Trash.

While not wanting to sound like I'm letting Edwards off the hook here, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME GRAHAM!

Sweet, innocent and naive? Well I gotta agree she got screwed, but we are thinking about it in entirely different contexts here.

What are you smoking tonight? Sounds like a slut to me. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but .....

So because its John I AM GOD Edwards and SAINT Elizabeth Edwards
we can now at will slur anyone else?????

Blame the victim indeed.

HYPOCRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One should just admit- the Edwards and their entire story were a complete SHAM!!!!!

A power hungry Yuppie couple who thought they could BAMBOOOZLE the nation with their pure as the ivory snow Prince Charming and Snow White routine the nation fell for
(in the spirit of the Olympics Tai & Randy)

As much a script as Bush saying he was a compassionate conservative who had integrity and was honest but a little slow
We wuz taken. We wuz lied to. We wuz cheated on. WE the People were USED...
NOW,finding out that they were just a lie, THAT IS CREEPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


A certain dailyKos blogger must be smiling whereever she is!
Putting on my ole' DJ cap and spinning the platters...
I would like to send this one out to her, and hope she and her son and family is doin' alrite!!!
Sometimes it takes a long time to be proven right, and let her now this Sunday morning you are on my mind, and you were in always right on the money on this one!!!
Reminds me of a song from the 1980s (how 1980s is that???)

RICKIE LEE JONES-her only hit

How come he don't come and p.i.p. with me
Down at the meter no more?
How come he turn off the t.v.
And he hang that sign on the door?
We call and we call 'How come?' we say
What could make a boy behave this way?
He learn all of the lines, and every time he
don't suffer when he talk
And it's true! It's true! He sure is aquired a
cool and inspired sorta jazz when he walk
Where's his jacket and his old blue jeans?
If this ain't healthy is it some kinda clean?

I think Chuck E's in love

I don't believe what you're saying to me
This is something I gotta see Is he here?
Look in the poolhall Is he here?
Look in the drugstore Is he here?
No, he don't come here no more

I'll tell you what I saw him
He was sittin' us down at the Pantages
And whatever is that he got up his sleeve
I hope it isn't contagious
What's her name? Is that her there?
Christ, I think he's even combed his hair!
Is that her? What's her name?
Oh, it's never going to be same.
But that's not her
I know what's wrong--
Chuck E's in love
Chuck E's in love with me

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dTkNF_25BF4

a special dedication to SJ with this A.M.

from today's NY Times News of the week in review- this fantabulous op-ed

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/weekinre...amp;oref=slogin
August 10, 2008
True or False: Everyone Looks 10 Pounds Guiltier on TV
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

It’s not impossible to understand why John Edwards had an affair. It’s not so hard to imagine why he thought he could get away with it. What is baffling is why he thought talking about it on television would help. The answer was not in the solemn, carefully worded interview he gave on “Nightline” on Friday. It is buried in the campaign “Webisodes” taped in 2006 by his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, just before he formally declared his candidacy in the Democratic race for president.

Sprawled on a private jet in faded jeans and open-collar blue shirt, Mr. Edwards is glowing with confidence and self-regard, laughing and flirting a little, but earnestly convinced that it was necessary and wise to have the filmmaker and her crew recording his every movement and offstage thought.

“I have come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I really am,” he says in the slow, emphatic tone of a man under the spell of his own centrality. Those Webisodes, which were removed from the Internet when rumors about the affair surfaced, are back up and also flashing furiously on television, another widening ripple in the scandal he stirred up by telling his version of the story to ABC News.

For politicians, television is the triumph of hope over experience; time after time, scandal after scandal, officials in disgrace agree to a television interview in the hope of quelling the fuss and restoring their reputations. (Television is so critical to starting a political career that it may well lead elected officials to believe it has the power to resurrect one.)

Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho didn’t have to go on “Today” to defend himself; he chose to speak to Matt Lauer and, if anything, made matters worse.

Even if he acted to pre-empt another wave of reports, Mr. Edwards didn’t need to put himself in front of a camera. Silence, or a written statement followed by a tactical retreat from public life, would have sufficed. But apparently Mr. Edwards is not ready to leave the stage; he just wanted to have more control over the script.

“Nightline” was fascinating, but not because it showed a disgraced, humbled man self-immolating in front of the camera. Mr. Edwards, who repeatedly referred to the affair as “my mistake,” was poised, earnest and at times almost combative, alluding to other politicians, including John McCain, who he said had survived extramarital missteps. “I mean, I’m not the first person to do this,” he said. Mr. Edwards looked genuinely surprised, and almost indignant, when the ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff suggested that his career was coming to a close. “I don’t think anything has ended,” he said firmly. “My Lord and my wife have forgiven me, so I am going to move on.”

And he made a point of telling Mr. Woodruff that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Ms. Hunter. Elizabeth Edwards has since been told by doctors that she has had an incurable recurrence of the disease. Mr. Edwards’s performance was buttressed by Mrs. Edwards, who issued a statement after the interview praising her husband’s “courage.”

Like many a politician, Mr. Edwards was still trying to win over his audience. At times, his voice rang with the conviction of a trial lawyer who believes that all he has to do is get in front of a jury to prevail. At other times, he showed a lawyerly deftness, denying he had paid Ms. Hunter hush money, with caveats. “If someone was being paid,” he said, “it wasn’t being paid on my behalf.” (Later, Fred Baron, his former campaign finance chairman, told ABC News that he paid Ms. Hunter but did not tell Mr. Edwards about it.)

On Friday afternoon, the former senator from North Carolina ended a long written statement with a promise: “I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.” He then promptly said more. Before ABC had a chance to show the “Nightline” exclusive, Mr. Edwards upstaged “Nightline” by contacting CBS.

At the top of the “CBS Evening News,” Bob Schieffer went on the air holding a yellow legal pad and told viewers that Mr. Edwards had called him shortly before the broadcast to explain himself further. Mr. Schieffer said he asked to speak to Mrs. Edwards, who came to the phone, as he put it, “obviously in tears.” Mr. Schieffer reported that when he asked Mrs. Edwards how she was holding up, she told Mr. Schieffer, “This is really, really tough.”

Mr. Edwards said he came forward to put an end to the incessant tabloid stalking. Instead, his revelation spurred every network, newspaper blog and cheesy entertainment program to new heights: he was the lead piece on “The Insider” on Friday, ahead of Clay Aiken’s new baby and the pop singer John Mayer, shirtless in a hot tub and far from his latest flame, Jennifer Aniston.

Cable news showed over and over the interview Ms. Hunter gave the show “Extra” in 2007, about her time on the Edwards campaign, lingering over one sound bite in particular: “He is so open and willing to try new things.”

Mr. Edwards, who dropped out of the presidential race in January, was well on his way to becoming a private citizen when he made his admission. He said the sin of hubris drove him to have an affair, telling Mr. Woodruff that he strayed because political campaigns “fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.”

Narcissism doesn’t lead politicians to believe that they can have an affair and get away with it. It leads them to believe that they can go on television and dispel it.
================================================================================
=======================

FROM THE ABOVE ARTICLE-
THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE GREATEST QUOTE OF THE YEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/weekinre...amp;oref=slogin
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Narcissism doesn’t lead politicians to believe that they can have an affair and get away with it. It leads them to believe that they can go on television and dispel it.
================================================================================
=======================

Gimme a break, Graham......Sweet?? Innocent?? Naive?? What a crock!!

If she was a young girl, I'd tend to agree with you. But this is a 40+ year old woman who knew precisely what she was doing, and I sense no remorse on her part either.

I hate what Edwards did, but I hate what she did, too. There's an old saying, "It takes two to tango!" and Edwards and Rielle were dancing together.......willingly!

why the need to smear a private citizen who is not running for VP or AG?

Seems the more people try to smear her, the more right people have to smear the Edwards'.

After all, the phrase JUST SAY NO comes to mind. Most people know how to say no.
If someone told me they and all their friends were jumping off the Sears tower (as the WTC don't exist since the Bushies put their
missiles into it), doesn't mean I would join them.
And also doesn't mean I would strongarm my way OJ style into a hotel room late at night trying to silence,or payoff someone to keep quiet
either.

Give it a rest Graham. She is, or was, a NY party girl who bragged about sleeping with more men than a dog has fleas to anyone who would listen, she told a reporter she and a writer friend were developing a movie plot about a woman helping married men who wanted out of their marriages by having affairs with them. She's about as pure as coal tar.

Edwards was a fool and an utter cad and what he did was abysmally stupid but he was in one relationship since his college years. He was a piece of cake for a pro like her. It doesn't excuse a thing, but stop with the phony BS.

CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

I wonder if all the people who donated to Edwards THEIR HARD EARNED MONEY on a dream that WE KNOW NOW IS A FRAUD

Can file a class action lawsuit to recover their money

Reports are of many millions of dollars in the til UNUSED...

I wonder if people can demand their money back...I am sure there are lawyers out there who would salivate at a case like this and take it free until split of the profits...

I am sure I am not the first and probably there is someone already going to file suit Monday morning in Federal or State court somewhere when the doors open at 9AM sharp.

by the way, back a few weeks an esteemed poster on this board started a thread with something like
"I was talking with "A FRIEND" who felt....something was creepy" ( normally I do not like when someone mentions a friend said...it reminds me of the old Dear Abby's or new Dan Savage columns of someone who wondered what the red spots were over their private parts but were afraid to ask, or GASP horrors, friend who turned up preggers)

In a bizarre coincidence, last night I too was talking to a friend, who came up with an inter-est-ing observation

This really is creepy.

That friend said, if someone lies and lies, how in the world does one know if statements, and prior press conferences (like ones after the 2004 election) were indeed true or not, and later press
conferences held were true or not.
Because fool me once...but fool me twice...maybe certain inspiring events of the past never occurred as they were stated either...
EVERYTHING might be a lie my friend said, (to use a line I myself use).

How in God's name do we know what is Ri-ell and what is an out and out FRAUD.

And did btw, This Andy Young and Riell get paid off on the condition that no DNA test is ever done? Is that why this Andrew Young (not the other Andrew Young, I had no idea, I thought it was kinda odd, but then Vernon Jordan stepped into the middle of another scandal a semi bunch of years ago...

ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW FURTHER...

and, what was someone on a payroll of the finance committee to help elect Edwards doing? And, the man who actually paid the funds, something is not Kosher in the Hebrew Nationals' if ya
know what I mean here.

I happen to see this comment on DAILY KOS blogs, thought as we quote comments and bloggers all over quite often I would share it with you


http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/8/9/153941/8596/40#c40
Actually, it IS a story (3+ / 0-)
If you watched Edwards on tv last night, you will see that he was very concerned about this getting out in the public view, and that was why, he claimed, he went to the Beverly Hilton
to meet with his former mistress in a hotel room for five hours on the night of July 21.
The non-disclosure made him susceptible to extortion - not a good thing for someone being eyed as a VP, AG, cabinet member...or even a security clearance.
Frankly, I think he did himself more harm than good in that interview. The parsing in response to several of the questions was Clintonesque.
by Sharon Jumper on Sat Aug 09, 2008 at 02:12:08 PM PDT


and this one followed it
More harm, imo, because some of it ... (1+ / 0-)
...just isn't believable. He confessed to Elizabeth in 2006,
but he didn't tell her he was going to see Rielle on the 21st and didn't tell her until after he saw her
(after his run-in with the NE reporters? Maybe. But wow.

by Meteor Blades on Sat Aug 09, 2008 at 03:02:20 PM PDT

Graham, you don't get it.

No one is sticking up for, or excusing Edwards actions, or how he is handling it, but trying to turn that woman into the Virgin Mary isn't going to work. She's a cheap conniving woman who deliberately set out to have an affair with a married man whose wife is a cancer victim as the whole world knows. And a man who was open to temptation after the ordeal of watching his wife go through what a cancer patient must endure. Any caregiver is affected by that to an inordinate degree. The ultimate decision was his but she was a more than willing partner. One woman simply does NOT do that to another woman, particularly one suffering from cancer. Not if she has an ounce of character or self respect.

She made herself a target for criticism by her actions. No one else did that. She did it herself. And from all accounts was quite proud of the fact. The woman was 42 when this started and is 44 now. Hardly an ingénue. And most assuredly not an innocent.

'

you make this about her

It is about John and Elizabeth Edwards two power people who wanted to be President or Vice President as recent as 2 days ago

that is 100% solely what this is about

And the fraud they committed together to cover up this issue

Because it happened supposedly (though we have no idea), two years ago, and the run for the presidency, and collection of millions and millions
of dollars in donations happened LONG AFTER that time (let alone money in coiffers from 2004)...

And it was gotten for what amounts to fraudulent reasons

We can't clean up the other side, til we clean up our side. The women in this is irrelevant, though slandering her is uncalled for and just as
bad a smear as the poor girls whom Don Imus smeared.

YOU are the one making it about her with the hypocritical drivel about the poor victim. Riell, whatever her name is, is NOT the victim here !!! Nor is John Edwards. A 31 year marriage and three children are. Have you given a second's thought to those children ? Their father didn't , the press won't, can you ?

You are just distracting the issue

The issue is FRAUD, and abuse of power, and blackmail, payoff, hushmoney, strongarming someone into silence

It is a federal crime to do those things.

John Edwards AND HIS woe begotten wife, should have thought about those things BEFORE HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008

He is a fraud. And his wife abetted the fraud.

Did you see the NY Times article above?

He could have went quietly into the night and thought about HIS WIFE AND KIDS
THEY CHOSE TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT AND THEN VP UP UNTIL 2 DAYS AGO
WITH NO REGARD FOR THEIR KIDS (who they so used in photo ops when it suited them).

Again it is FRAUD!!! A complete lie and a sham.
Eliott Spitzer and John Edwards- what poster boys for the Democrats. Two 100% frauds who both could have been contendas

Don't you think that John and Elizabeth Edwards thought that the affair was behind them and that John might still make a good president (or vice president)? Why broadcast to the public a personal marital problem?

YOU are the one making it about her with the hypocritical drivel about the poor victim. Riell, whatever her name is, is NOT the victim here !!! Nor is John Edwards. A 31 year marriage and three children are. Have you given a second's thought to those children ? Their father didn't , the press won't, can you ?

did you truncate the quote of CO? Being that you both used the word drivel???

JOHN EDWARDS IS A LYING FRAUD.
He admitted he lied.
He is a fraud

Did he go to her hotel room to beat her up if she did not submit? Or to have sex with her again?
We have no idea, being that we know now John Edwards IS A LIAR and a FRAUD

How in the world would a liar, someone who is paying bribe money and takes money on fraudeulent bio would make a good president or vice president. And God forbit an attorney general hired to clean up corrupt. (Good God!!!)

THANK GOD that never will happen.

What about the little kid, John Edwards was holding in his hands when he busted through a women he cheated with?

I guess John Edwards 100s of millions can pay for all that.Like he silenced two people already.

America is now paying for his sins, will he ever refund our money?

Yes. I don't like this new system on here where you quote the person and their quotes are also contained. It's confusing.

yes it is. I said this when Taz did it to me the other day.
I wonder if that is all over, I noticed it somewhere else too

The Jonathan Darman story is very interesting. I think it's understandable why John Edwards would have an affair, despicable though it may be. But this woman sounds weird. She was enraptured with Edwards, obviously, and was deluding herself that Elizabeth Edwards was bad for John, and that she was rescuing him from this bad relationship. Sounds like she AND Edwards have problems with narcissism. Too bad she didn't give any thought to what the American public would think of a man who was running for president having an affair, let alone one whose wife was well-liked by the public.

Beamer they say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" but it IS plagiarism of a sort in this case as well as being confusing for readers.

I'll just assume you really do agree with me.

Wow! Maureen Dowd is down on Edwards big-time!

I agree that describing Ms. Hunter as innocent or whatever IS drivel! Deluded, yes.

here are kids I feel sorry for


Where Are Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Children ?
by Chacounne
Sun Aug 10, 2008 at 02:10:22 AM PDT
Once again, I find myself unable to sleep, because once again I am haunted by the image in my mind's eye.

Every day, several times a day, I am haunted by an image of two little boys, the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who were kidnapped when they were 7 and 9 years old and turned over to the CIA. They have been gone for almost six years, think about that SIX YEARS. We don't even know if they are alive or dead. They are held in YOUR NAME. There are reports that they have been tortured, using insects and food deprivation. Please, demand of your Congressional Representative and your Senators that they ask publically for an accounting of these two little boys who are now teenagers, having spent almost half their lives in US custody.

More details after the break.

Chacounne's diary :: ::
Here is an excerpt from the time of their kidnapping:

http://www.theage.com.au/...

We have your sons: CIA
March 10 2003
By Olga Craig
Kuwait

Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,