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I knew they'd find a way to punish Ford: The new UAW contract with Ford apparently does not give America's surviving non-bankrupt automaker parity with GM and Chrysler, reports Bloomberg: "The plan doesn’t include cuts to retiree benefits, such as vision coverage, that were granted to GM and Chrysler." Rather, the pain seems even more concentrated on future hires (if there are any) than with the GM/Chrysler deals. ... TTAC wonders whether the UAW had an extra incentive to resist giving concessions that might make Ford more successful now that the union owns a large chunk of its main domestic competitors. ... P.S.: The argument that "the day the union owns the firm is the day workers will need another union" has always seemed a bogus argument against worker ownership. But in this case, where the union actually owns only competing firms, maybe it's not so bogus. Ford, GM and Chrysler workers used to have more or less equal status within the UAW. Now the union has a reason to give GM and Chrysler an edge wherever possible. ... 5:39 P.M.
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One Too Many Cherubim: Blog commenter "Cherubim," who may or may not be Elizabeth Edwards, has resurfaced . She's still a big Michael Jackson fan. ... P.S.: I would say this cuts against the Daily News report that Cherubim = Elizabeth. But others disagree. ... P.P.S.: And yes, there is a Multiple Cherubim Theory. ... 4:52 P.M.
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Unions Bend the Curve! 'Card check' may be stalled in Congress, but Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo report that public employee unions are still successfully bankrupting states and cities. Highlights:
-- Unionization has bent the cost curve of government health benefits--in the wrong direction:
Under the brilliant leadership of Dennis Rivera, 1199 built a top-notch political operation, and with the hospitals, which were barred from political activity, formed a partnership to maximize the flow of government revenue. The union-hospital alliance has been so successful in aligning itself with politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, that not only has 1199 been largely untouched by the downturn, but New York spends as much on Medicaid as California and Texas combined. [E.A.]
That last sentence is stunning. Coming soon to a "public option" near you? ...
-- ACORN, not a straw man! According to Siegel and DiSalvo, it's becoming a real power in New York City thanks to its affiliation with the Working Families Party (WFP):
[T]he WFP is thriving while New York's Democrats atrophy. In last week's New York City primaries, WFP candidates for city council won easily, as did the party's candidates for the city's second and third highest offices: comptroller and public advocate. Those are the best platforms from which to make a run for mayor of New York City when Bloomberg finally gives up his throne.
-- Even Barry Bluestone--the leftish economist who was one of the first to spot the rise in income inequality--worries about the vast gap in the benefits public employees win and the vastly less lucrative benefits ordinary private sector workers get. Thanks in large part to public employee unions, Siegel & DiSalvo note, the price of state and local services is growing rapidly--41% from 2000-2008, vs. 27 percent for private services. Ordinary workers have to pay for them.
The justification for public sector unionism is way weaker than that for private sector unionism. "[Government] workers are not extracting a share of the profits but rather a share of taxes," as former N.Y. Liberal Party leader Alex Rose puts it. And the right to strike, in the hands of key public unions, approaches a blackmail power. But the political strength of the unions is such that even most Republicans, at the state and local level, are scared to question them. They gelded Arnold Schwarzenegger. You want to be next? ... 4:39 P.M.
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Q.: Who would have been a more disastrous nominee for the Democrats: John Edwards or Bill Richardson? A: Edwards, but Richardson is giving him a run for his money. ... 5:12 P.M.
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Where's "Cherubim"? I've been skeptical of the New York Daily News report that Elizabeth Edwards--she about whom no ill can be spoken--has been anonymously slagging her enemies (and others) in Web comments sections under the pseudonym "Cherubim." But I would be more steadfast in this skepticism if a) there had been some kind of denial from the St. E camp and b) the previously prolific "Cherubim" hadn't mysteriously stopped posting after the Daily News story came out. ... At least I can't find anything. ... Not a peep on HuffPo. ... Nothing on Kos. ... You'd think that if Cherubim wasn't Elizabeth (or even if she was) she'd post something saying "I'm not Elizabeth." ... I'm still off board--it's too bizarre--but, hey, maybe Elizabeth Edwards really is the sort of person who thinks Michael Jackson was "murdered by powerful people in the record industry." That would explain a lot. ... It's also possible that the Cherubim story is some kind of trap, attempting to bait the blogosphere and MSM into jumping to irresponsible conclusions. ... Yes, I'm that paranoid. ... 10:57 P.M.
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Charles Peters argues that any health care reform bill should simply prohibit doctors from owning the outfits that administer expensive tests (like CAT scans and MRIs).** This seems like a simple prophylactic measure that could do a lot to curtail excess ordering-up of services--the sort of thing that got Atul Gawande (and through him, Barack Obama) so riled about McAllen Texas. And it would do it without the grand untested curve-bending suggestions--including "difficult democratic conversations" about end of life treatment--that have only succeed in scaring the elderly into opposing, and perhaps sinking, Obama's reform.
But Peters tells me the ownership ban is not in the bill. ... What, they can come after bloggers for conflicts of interest, but not doctors?
**--Update: Alert reader A.K. notes I've mis-summarized Peters' point. A 1992 law already prohibits doctors from owning the imaging outfits to which they refer patients. But there's an exception for when the X-ray or MRI device is located within the doctor's office, a loophole that's gotten bigger as the machines have gotten smaller. It's this "in-office" loophole that Peters (and some in Congress) would like to see closed. ... That still seems like a simple change that would save money. If doctors want to give patients instant service, they could contract to have machines owned by others stationed in their offices, the way some water coolers are owned by bottled water companies, no?. ...10:56 P.M.
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Here's an aerial photo of Iran's once-secret centrifuge facility at Qom. Does it look non-blowupable to you? Me neither. I suppose it depends on how deep its tunnels go--but those certainly don't look like mountains it's under. And, as Mike Murphy's twitter feed notes, American weapons experts have been developing fancy new non-nuclear bunker-busting bombs that seem maybe capable of doing the trick. (You have to like the one with the Gatlin' gun on its nose.) ... Obviously I'm not advocating a strike against Qom. Even if it wouldn't be a geopolitical calamity, we may not know what other secret, buried facilities Iran has. I'm just saying that when pundits say we can't strike because the facilities are buried and hardened, I don't believe them. Do the Iranians? ... Bloggingheads discussion here. ... 10:55 P.M.
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kf Unburies the Lede in Ben Smith's piece on John Edwards' ex-aide and Fall Guy Andrew Young (who was talked into claiming paternity for Edwards' mistress' love child). It's not the sex tape! Kf and N.Y. Daily News readers have known about the sex tape for a while. I'd say the lede is Smith's report about the spring of 2008, after Young had publicly claimed paternity, after Edwards had dropped out of the primary and after he had endorsed Obama--but when he still had hopes of being named Attorney General or VP:
Young was under the impression that Edwards would, after dropping out, step forward and claim paternity - which he showed no inclination of doing.
Elizabeth Edwards, meanwhile, had been leaving messages on Young's and Young's wife's voice mail, two sources say Young told them, demanding that he reassert his paternity to clear the cloud over her husband.
Is this really just more hurt-wife denial or are we heading into the active careerist cover-up zone? Elizabeth Edwards had to know at least that there was a good chance Young was not the father--and that her husband was. She certainly had known for a long time that her husband had had an affair with the mother, Rielle Hunter. Perhaps she wasn't proceeding with sure knowledge that she was asking Young to lie for her again, but it's hard to see how she wasn't proceeding with at least what libel lawyers call "reckless disregard for the truth." ... Did she ask Young if he was really the father before "demanding"?. ...
#2 Lede: Smith reports that in late 2006 "worries about a possible affair coursed through Edwards’s organization." Just as suspected! Did Edwards aides (for example, Jonathan Prince and Mudcat Saunders) really not hear about these coursing worries? Or did they hear them but nevertheless set up the Democrats for a possible epic PR debacle (if Edwards had won)? "Reckless disregard," anyone? ... P.S.: You make the call about Edwards aide Joe Trippi's excuse, available here. ... 2:20 P.M.
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UPDATE: This blogger claims the Daily News story is false, though I don't quite follow his argument ... MORE: But I'm beginning to have grave doubts about the Daily News report myself. 1) Would Elizabeth Edwards rail against "New World Order corporations"? 2) Would she go on about Larry Summers' speaking fees? 3) It's not that there are too few "Cherubim" postings. There are almost too many. They defend Eliot Spitzer. They attack Diane Sawyer. They praise Michael Jackson and ... the Isley Brothers. They all seem to cohere as the opinions of a passionately opinionated, quirky, not wildly sophisticated die-hard Edwards loyalist blog commenter who is nevertheless distanced from the Edwardses herself. It's a big country. There's bound to be someone like that out there. It would be a huge, and seemingly inexplicable, effort for Elizabeth Edwards to have created this persona and stayed in character. ...
But I've been wrong before! If it turns out Elizabeth Edwards is also a diehard Michael Jackson defender who thinks he was "murdered by powerful people in the record industry," I'll certainly reconsider. ...
ORIGINAL ITEM: If--big if--St. Elizabeth Edwards is the blog commenter "cherubim"--as the N.Y. Daily News' Rush & Molloy argue--it raises as many questions as it answers! In particular, this one: Is "cherubim" a) deluded (actually believing Edwards clearly "was not the father" of Rielle Hunter's child,etc.), or b) deceiving (trying to sell the Web on a story she might well not be true, a story she was in fact working out in her comments)? Or--the inevitable consensus choice (c)--some wacky combo of both? ... As usual, I urge readers not to overlook possibility (b) ... This Daily Beast web page (worth a screen cap just in case) is one of those with juicy "cherubim" comments that now seem much juicier. ... P.S.: Note that on this page "cherubim" is accused of being Elizabeth Edwards back on June 22 by another commenter, "Ohseriously." ... 2:20 P.M.
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sofas? ... 12:23 P.M.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
This impressive timeline of the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal** alludes to an obvious John Edwards lie I'd forgotten about (it's hard to remember them all). In his alleged "confession" on Nightline, Edwards was asked by Bob Woodruff about a photo that seemed to show him holding a baby in the Beverly Hilton, when he was visiting Hunter [emphasis added]:
WOODRUFF: And that picture is absolutely you and you are holding that baby.
EDWARDS: The picture in the tabloid. I have no idea what that picture is.
WOODRUFF: But you've seen it right?
EDWARDS: I did see it and I cannot make any sense out of that. When I went to this meeting you've already asked me about, uh, I was not wearing a t-shirt, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I don't know who that picture -- I don't know if that picture is me, it could well be, it looks like me. I don't know who that baby is, I have no idea what that picture is.
***
WOODRUFF: But are you saying you don't remember holding that child of Miss Hunter?
EDWARDS: I'm saying you asked me about this photograph, I don't know anything about that photograph, I don't know who that baby is. I don't know if the picture has been altered, manufactured, if it's a picture of me taken some other time, holding another baby -- I have no idea. I was not at this meeting holding a child for my photograph to be taken I can tell you that.
WOODRUFF: You did say you did meet her at a hotel in California.
EDWARDS: She was there, Mr. McGovern was present, and that's where the meeting took place.
WOODRUFF: But you don't remember a baby being there?
EDWARDS: No.
Does anyone believe this? Even if the baby is (as he claimed***) not his, how could he not remember the baby being there? If the pictures were from another visit, then he still knows perfectly well "what that picture is." ... Even his wife seems to have given up on this line of defense, resorting to the contradictory, but equally implausible 'politicians-hold-babies-all-the-time' response.
P.S.: Is it true that the Center for American Progress' Jennifer Palmieri, last seen emasculating poor Matthew Yglesias, really "helped [Edwards] prepare" for the dissembling Nightline interview, as reported by Walter Shapiro? There's a line she can put on her resume! ...
P.P.S.: Even the liberal New Republic is getting into the business of spotting St. Elizabeth's dissembling. Like Lee Stranahan yesterday, TNR's Jason Zengerle notes that on "Larry King" Mrs. Edwards said she "dismissed" tabloid reports of the Hunter affair on 'they-write-about-airplanes-on-the-moon' grounds, even though by her own account her husband had confessed to at least a one-night stand a year earlier. ...
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**--My main problem with this timeline is that, by focusing on Rielle Hunter and Edwards, it creates the appearance that Hunter was Edwards' only extramarital affair, something that's very much unclear at this point. If that's not true--if Edwards had been screwing around for years, for example--it would cast the subsequent agonizing and dissembling in a very different light, no?
***--In his televised "confession," remember, John Edwards claimed not only that the baby wasn't his but that it couldn't possibly be his, a certainty Elizabeth now seems to have abandoned (she says she doesn know--"I don't have any information" -but that it might be "discovered" that the child is his.) ... 5:09 P.M.
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Sunday, May 10, 2009
"Elizabeth is not really a member of the reality-based community." Melinda Henneberger wrote an informative but ... incomplete look "inside the Edwards marriage" for Slate in 2007. The scales have now fallen from Henneberger's eyes! In an excellent post-Oprah column, she outlines Elizabeth Edwards' "surreal" structure of denial and her drive for publicity:
The bottom line in Elizabeth World is that "I have a husband who adores me, who's unbelievable with my children, who's provided for us in ways we never could have imagined.''
"He's fed you,'' Oprah puts in. "He has,'' Elizabeth agrees.
One of the things she feels he's given her is light - and spotlight. In explaining why it was important to her that "this person's'' name not be mentioned, she says that anyone who would "work at destroying my family and my home in order to get in that light, I'm really not interested in them being in that light too much. It's not about this woman. It's about this family.''
So, get out of my shot?
Of course, without Rielle Hunter Elizabeth wouldn't have this big a spotlight. ... Henneberger also offers more evidence that one purpose of Elizabeth Edwards' seemingly destructive self-exposure is indeed to rehabilitate John ("'I think we're getting to a good place,' he says ...")
P.S.:
When Oprah remarks that hmm, she doesn't know a lot of men who would run off to a hotel somewhere in the middle of the night to hold a baby that wasn't theirs, she repeats her husband's lie - or maybe he'd repeated hers: "Golly, then you don't know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.''
Did Elizabeth Edwards really say that? Does she really think it? The really alarming thing would be if she does. [Second thought: She can't possibly think it. That much self-delusion would be clinical. She's BSing. See Update below.**]
P.P.S.: I should have noted the impressively long period of tongue-tied fumfawing in Elizabeth Edwards' NPR interview after she is asked "Do your children have a sister?" Starts at around 6:38. ...
** Update--Three Theories of E: Of course, Henneberger's thesis--that Elizabeth lives in a semi-delusional world of her own--can itself become a form of exculpation. Elizabeth's in heavy denial, poor thing! But I'd say that, at best, the jury is still out on whether Elizabeth Edwards is 1) deluded (e.g., she actually believes the crap about how John "doesn't know any more than I do'' about whether he's the father of Rielle Hunter's daughter); 2) pretending to be deluded (e.g. she knows the truth but she's damned if she's going to admit it on her book tour); or 3) in it up to her eyeballs (i.e. she knows what she's saying is BS, but she's still actively covering up for John to further his ambitions as much as possible, given the circumstances).
How would saying she doesn't know if John's the father advance his interests under #3? That's easy. John hasn't said he doesn't know if he's the father. He has vehemently denied, in his televised Nightline "confession", that he could possibly be the father because he had ended the affair long before. ("I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible.") Admitting that he might be the father, and that this might be OK with his wife, is a useful halfway house on the road to confronting voters with the likely truth (he's the father and he lied about it even in his "confession.") If you were a PR agent retained by the Edwardses, this could well be the strategy you'd come up with.
That Elizabeth, in her current tour of interviews, doesn't even grapple with what now looks like his big Nightline lie--that he couldn't be the father--even as she substantively concedes it (by allowing that he could) gives support to view #3, no? Why isn't she more annoyed he lied on Nightline (and, presumably, to her)? Why ignore it? Come to think of it, Elizabeth herself once flat out denied, in one of her earlier damage control efforts, that John had fathered the child. Is delusion--at least non-clinical delusion--really the most plausible explanation for the seamless, unremarked shift in Elizabeth's own line---from righteous allegations of "wrongly alleged" to the solipsistic "whatever the facts are it doesn't change my life"? The shift fits awfully comfortably into the PR template for political survival famously sketched out by James Boyd--'Admit what is known. Deny what is unknown ....'
That MSM interviewers don't confront her with these contradictions says something too. ... Even Henneberger may have a few scales left to fall. .. 9:36 A.M.
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Limits of the Groucho Marx Principle: The Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party after the White House Correspondents' Dinner was so exclusive that nobody wanted to go. I think there's a Yogi Berra quote in there somewhere. ...
P.S.: Isn't the point of the modern White House Correspondents' Dinner (assuming it has one) to generate a culture clash between Hollywood and Washington, to revel in the discomfitting celebrity/nerd interface? That point's being lost as bigger and bigger celebrities demand (in some cases with good reason) exclusive partying room. At one event, they were penned in a narrow, brightly lit area as if they were prize animals on display. At least it was still awkward! Next year it will be less so, as Obama's D.C. becomes more skilled at star-greasing. ..
It's almost enough to make you long for the old days when reporters competed to invite the most notorious newsmakers, not the biggest entertainers--when the reigning ethic was: "We Had Hitler at Our Table!" (Mike Kinsley's joke). ..
Update: Rachel Sklar enjoyed it all way too much but is right about the importance of inviting lower-level sources. The event can also be a morale-booster for lower-level journalists (I can atttest). Both purposes are frustrated by Graydon Carter-style status segregation. ... 9:35 A.M.
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George Stephanopoulos reports that Edwards staffers now say they had a "doomsday" strategy in case they actually won the race they were being paid to win:
But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.
Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.
Reactions:
1) Which staffers? Not Joe Trippi, presumably--he says he didn't know the truth about Edwards' affair until the next summer. Jonathan Prince?
2) Mighty convenient for staffers to say this now, just when they were looking a) sleazy for staging the elaborate cover up that intimidated the press (not hard) and kept Democratic primary voters in the dark and b) like potential presidency-destroyers, if they'd nominated a candidate who was fated to implode either before or after the election. If this "doomsday" story is true, why didn't it come out last summer when Edwards "confessed" on Nightline? Or once Obama was safely elected?
3) Why not quit the campaign quietly (or noisily) when they learned the truth? Oh right, they were getting paid.
4) The staffers say they were "Democrats first," according to Stephanopoulos. By leaking this story now, during Elizabeth Edwards' "Why Am I Doing This?" Tour, are the staffers making a comment on Elizabeth's judgment or her party loyalty--suggesting she's maybe not a "Democrat first" but "Elizabeth first"? ...
5) How does Hillary Clinton feel about their willingness to let Edwards finish out his campaign? Edwards stayed in the race through the South Carolina primary, during which time he drained votes from somebody. I find it hard to believe he cost Hillary the nomination, but I wouldn't expect Mrs. Clinton to agree. It would be interesting if somebody attempted a thorough calculation of the effect of Edwards' presence. (By "somebody" I mean Nate Silver--who has already made a quickie run at Edwards' impact in Iowa.) ... 5/11 Update: Mark Blumenthal's calculation today is pretty thorough. His New Hampshire numbers seem especially devastating to the idea that Hillary would have benefitted from Edwards' absence. But, as Blumenthal notes, you can never respond conclusively to a conjecture that 'the whole dynamic of the race would have changed.' ... You could also speculate that Edwards' N.H. supporters lied to the pollsters Blumenthal cites--i.e. they were really non-black voters of the sort who would never have voted for Obama. (If only there were a name for this "effect.") ... I'd still be interested in what Nate SIlver's model shows--if I remember, it assumed that voters ethnicity (along with other demographic factors) was hugely predictive--suggesting Hillary might have picked up a lot of Edwards' white support in early primaries, no matter what a) "second choice" polls showed or b) what those voters told pollsters later in the race when Edwards finally dropped out. ...
6) What about all the Edwards volunteers who worked for him on the mistaken theory that he wasn't doomed? What about Edwards donors who gave him money on the same assumption? (Did any of these contributors donate after presentations by any of the Doomsday staffers? Isn't that a form of fraud?)
7) The strategy was to sabotage Edwards if he won, but let him live to fight another day if he lost. How was the latter a sufficient response? If the National Enquirer hadn't finally busted him, Edwards could have gone on to become Attorney General, or Supreme Court justice, or maybe a senator. Or were the staffers going to trigger the Doomsday Scenario if he came close to one of those offices? In any case, Edwards wasn't going to go away--he'd have continued to drain the time and energy of good-willed Democratic followers as he pursued whatever office he was pursuing.
Backfill: Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson made points 3, 4 and 5 on This Week. ...
Update: Edwards strategist Trippi calls the "doomsday" story "Complete BS." From CNN:
But Trippi, who worked closely with Edwards' most senior advisors, including Campaign Manager David Bonior and Deputy Campaign manager Jonathan Prince, suggested he would have been aware of a plan if one existed.
"I don't think there was an hour Prince wasn't with me," he said, adding later, "I can't conceive of how it was possible that if someone had a secret plan I wasn't aware of it."
Hmm. When Trippi was explaining to me why he wasn't part of the Edwards campaign's elaborate coverup, he emphasized his distance from the rest of the campaign--saying he "never got brought in" to the damage control efforts. "[Deputy campaign manager] Jonathan Prince and other people were dealing with it ... I was on the road a lot." [E.A.] He might not have been taken into the confidence of other Edwards aides, Trippi told me, because he'd worked for another candidate in 2004. "I was the Dean guy."
Now he's joined with Prince at the hip? I sense a tension between these two accounts! But I'm also skeptical of the "doomsday" story. (Maybe it was just a conversation or two between aides in the middle of the night that's now getting blown up into a bigger deal to save the aides' reps. ... On the other hand, you wouldn't have needed to an elaborate "plan" in order to "sabotage" the campaign. You'd have needed a dime.) ...
6:25 P.M.
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Friday, May 8, 2009
Roger Simon criticizes St. Elizabeth Edwards ("not just his co-conspirator but also his attack dog") as does Kathleen Parker:
First, Elizabeth was an integral part of her husband's campaign and knew of the affair, about which both later dissembled. She may have an overburdened heart, but part of that load surely is her own ambition. Although Elizabeth claims to have asked her husband not to run after he told her of the affair, is it really credible that he did it anyway, without her consent? Or that he talked her into it against her will?
Second, Elizabeth is blaming The Other Woman-Rielle Hunter-instead of the man with whom she had a marital covenant. ...
Meanwhile, it must be recognized that Elizabeth's first priority was helping her husband get to the White House. Her formidable, brave presence on the campaign trail was John's armor. As long as she was there, his innocence was assumed. Family unity? Or conspiracy to commit public fraud? [E.A.]
Is Parker too nasty? Or not nasty enough! Here are some questions, for example, that weren't asked in Michelle Norris' nauseating NPR interview with Elizabeth Edwards today.
1) OK, you don't really care whether Rielle Hunter's baby is John's, even though that would mean his Nightline confession was a second edifice of lies (with the affair continuing long after he said on Nightline it had stopped). But you make it seem as if John just slipped up with this one woman who approached him. Do you really think Hunter was the only woman John was unfaithful with? Hello? Are you constructing another elaborate bogus media version of your marriage after the first version collapsed? (None of our business? Er, you're the one who's coming forward to expose your private life for some reason. Nobody asked you to. Asserting that it's not our business means we have to accept your version of it. We did that once before.)
2) Your husband's campaign conducted an elaborate coverup to hide the Hunter affair, which involved lying to the voters and lying to the press and running down Hunter's character. You don't have a reputation as a hands-off politician's wife. Did you know about the coverup and the lies? Did you approve of them? At least you acquiesced in them. Why are you a beloved figure again?
3) You're understandably focused on your own family. You won't say Hunter's name. She's "irrelevant to your life." You don't know if Hunter's child--which you call "it"--is John's. You just know "It doesn't look like my children." You say Hunter had no right to disrupt your marriage. "Women need to have respect for other women." But during the campaign an aide and friend of John Edwards, Andrew Young, stepped up and claimed paternity of Hunter's child. Andrew Young has a wife. How do you think she feels about this? How do her children feel about it, and what other kids say about it, when they go to school? Do you really not care if she's going through whatever she's going through because she's playing her part in a lie constructed in service to your husband's, and your, unstoppable ambition? How are you respecting her and her marriage?
P.S.: Some evidence that Elizabeth's book tour isn't just an attempt to cling to the spotlight, but is also part of a rehabilitation project for John. At about the 5:40 mark, Elizabeth tells Norris that John knows he "deserves to be in this purgatory, in a sense, until he's done some way to prove himself." In other words, you'll absolve him in the future, and we should buy that? ... 4:09 A.M.
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Alert: There's undernews under here! Just sayin'. Might be BS, might not be. That's why it's undernews! But it's boiling. .... 4:06 A.M.
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I've sniped at people who sniped at the famous NYT front-page hype of Dr. Judah Folkman's anti-angiogenesis drugs, so I guess I have an obligation to report hype-deflating setbacks when they occur. Derek Lowe describes two studies in which angiogenesis inhibitors seemed to increase the number of tumors. ... This looks like the sort of bad news that ultimately proves helpful (why did the tumors increase?), but I am not a doctor and do not play one on TV. Lowe has some ideas, though. ... 3:59 A.M.
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