Edwards' Hotel Hell

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Need2Know

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:27 pm

SavannahStar wrote:

I think it just shows we're all sinful and failible (failable? not sure of spelling). (NOT to get off on a N2K type of discussion, LOL.) We just EXPECT more of leaders....but leaders are people too. I dunno. I'm sorta crushed, myself. I did like him SO much. Adultery is hard to take. But look at JFK and Bill Clinton. I think a politician (even POTUS) can have tremendous faults in their personal life but still do a great job as an elected official. I'm conflicted....still shocked.

N2K type discussion? What type might that be?

N2K

Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 9280

dithers

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:34 pm

pax wrote:

Oil companies won't be ground out of business by closing tax loopholes. Do you believe what's best for oil companies is what's best for the American people?

What's best for the American people is energy independence. Not relying on those who don't have our best interests at heart to supply us with oil.

You act as if oil companies are actually some physical entity. It's a business for God's sake. And like any other business they're in the business of making a profit. Do you honestly believe that whatever energy source eventually replaces oil won't be a huge mega-billion dollar industry too?

How much tax revenue do you think this country gets from oil - between taxes on the companies themselves, gas taxes at the pump and income taxes paid by the workers?

Blame the auto industry. Big oil is only supplying what their product demands.

What do you suggest as an alternative? That the govt. take over the oil companies ala Hugo Chavez?

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

dithers

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:43 pm

pax wrote:

Oil companies won't be ground out of business by closing tax loopholes. Do you believe what's best for oil companies is what's best for the American people?

If you didn't read the article I posted some days ago - "What is a windfall profit" then I suggest you go back and read it in it's entirety. It's in the Politics forum.

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

pax

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:02 pm

There are reasonable differences on how to define windfall profits and how many tax loopholes should be available to large corporations.

Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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dithers

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:13 pm

pax wrote:

There are reasonable differences on how to define windfall profits and how many tax loopholes should be available to large corporations.

Referencing the information from that article then, you're saying it's okay for some companies to make huge windfall profits and not others?

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

Eliza

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:30 am

Change we can believe in!

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Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.

dithers

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:16 am

Re: Change we can believe in!

Eliza wrote:

A snip from an article in today's New York Post. Isn't this the same thing they all say about Obama?

Later, Hunter claimed that the former North Carolina senator could become a "transformational leader" - comparable to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Darman said.

"He had the power to change the world," Hunter told the writer.

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

Need2Know

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:28 am

Instead of changing the world, let's start by getting this country back together again and solving the many problems we face. These sound bytes and grand election productions are nauseating to me.

N2K

Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 9280

Phantom

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:17 am

Rielle trashes Elizabeth Edwards: 'She does not give off good energy'

Rielle Hunter compared John Edwards with Gandhi and went around trashing his cancer-stricken wife, it was reported Sunday.

A Newsweek writer who courted her as a source during Hunter's affair with the presidential candidate portrays Edwards' mistress as a charming but hugely indiscreet muddlehead who called reporters with New Age babble about Edwards' "old soul."

Asked about Elizabeth Edwards, who is unusually well-liked by political operatives and reporters, Hunter told reporter Jonathan Darman, "She does not give off good energy. ... I've only met her once.... She didn't make eye contact with me."

Darman wrote of meeting Hunter, a former yoga instructor hired by the Edwards campaign to shoot Web videos, at a campaign event in 2006 and later getting an e-mail from her, saying she had a story for him.

The story she wanted printed was that Edwards was "an old soul" with a "special energy" who could be a transformational leader like Mahatma Gandhi or the Martin Luther King Jr. if he used his heart more and his head less.

"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," Darman wrote - underscoring yet again the candidate's stunning lack of judgment.

Darman said he asked, "Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?"

Hunter's reply: "All the time."

Darman wrote a small story about Edwards hiring a woman he had met in a bar that appeared in the Dec. 25, 2006, issue of Newsweek.

When he saw her again a few weeks later, Hunter said she'd been fired by the campaign and blamed Elizabeth Edwards.

"'Someday,' Rielle said, 'the truth about her is going to come out,'" Darman wrote.

In the summer of 2007 - long after the affair was over, according to Edwards, and several months after Elizabeth Edwards got a grim cancer diagnosis that gave her only a few years to live - Hunter told Darman she was dating a mystery man she couldn't name.

Freelance writer Sarah Miller, describing meeting Hunter at a party in Los Angeles some years ago, said Hunter was scatter-brained but ambitious.

"I am going to be famous," she declared, according to Miller's account in the Los Angeles Times. "Rich and famous. I am going to meet a rich, powerful man."

Miller said Hunter, who talked of energies in the air, said she would accomplish this feat by "manifesting it."

In a bizarre case of six degrees of scandal separation, Hunter was married in the 1990s to Kip Hunter, son of the Colorado district attorney who famously led the failed JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation. They divorced in 1999.

In confessing his affair Friday, Edwards told ABC he doesn't think his political career is over, but his chances of being asked to reprise his 2004 veep run, serve in the cabinet or even address the Democratic convention are now less than zero.

Edwards, who scored more than 60 delegates and came in third behind Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in his bid for the White House, confirmed he won't even attend the Democratic convention in two weeks.

Mimi Hockman, Hunter's business partner, told reporters gathered outside her South Orange, N.J., house: "Don't waste your time. I'm contractually prohibited from talking to you."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/08/10/2008-08-10_rielle_trashes_elizabeth_edwards_she_doe-2.html?ref=nl&nltr_ct=1&nltr_id=Touchy-feely%20Rielle%20trashes%20Elizabeth

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dithers

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:44 am

Need2Know wrote:

Instead of changing the world, let's start by getting this country back together again and solving the many problems we face. These sound bytes and grand election productions are nauseating to me.

Yes, it's as if we're living within a Hollywood production anymore. And people are falling for it hook, line and sinker.

No one person can come upon the scene and perform miracles. As usual, people are looking for the easy answers that don't involve work on all our parts. Everyone wants to be a bystander. Remember how all those blue-collar workers took it upon themselves after 9/11 and descended upon NY to help clean up that mess? If left up to the govt. they'd still be deciding if it was safe to clean up that first shovel of dirt. They'd still be tied up in knots over regulations and permits.

Just like those guys who cleaned up the World Trade Center, we need to take responsibility for ourselves back from the govt. Some are wanting to go just the opposite direction and surrender themselves fully to govt. control.

Demand real tough answers from these clowns and not glitzy sound bites and political dance-around gibberish like they spout on the Sunday morning news shows.

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

resigned

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:27 am

What Rielle Hunter Told Me
A seeker and a New Age spiritualist, John Edwards's other woman believed she could help him make history.

Jonathan Darman
NEWSWEEK

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.

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.

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.

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

_____________________

Click your heels together...

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Eliza

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:53 am

Could this be what the Enquirer is talking about?

Bigfish wrote:

Who is Larry Sinclair? Shocked

Can the Enquirer be on the money twice?

Are the wheels coming off the wagon? Wabi would love this! Her Enquirer should win a Pulitzer Prize. Shocked

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Posts: 1397
Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.

resigned

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:15 am

---------------

Book Based On Edwards’s Mistress Gains Popularity
11-Aug-2008
Written by: Meghan Moynihan

Jay McInerney’s novel gains popularity after Edwards’s admission of his affair.

An old novel written by author Jay McInerney, featuring a promiscuous young girl who loves to party, is being reprinted by its publisher, as the author has admitted that the novel is based on John Edwards’s future mistress, Rielle Hunter, Forbes reports.

Vintage Books, a paperback imprint of printing giant Random House, Inc. has ordered an additional 2,500 copies of McInerney’s Story of My Life. Released in 1988 and narrated by an aspiring actress, McInerney has said that the story was inspired by Rielle Hunter—then named Lisa Druck—and a group of friends that the author got to know while living in New York.

By Monday afternoon, Story of My Life had reached number 470 on Amazon.com’s list of best-selling books and was out of stock.

John Edwards, a former Democratic presidential candidate who was once a United States senator, admitted last week that he had had an affair with the woman upon whom the book is based. They met on the campaign trail, as Hunter was hired to produce videos for the former senator as he began his run for presidency.

Best known for his novel, Bright Lights, Big City, the 53-year-old author’s other works include Ransom, Brightness Falls, and The Good Life.

http://www.thecelebritycafe.com/features/18836.html

Click your heels together...

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Phantom

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 7:51 am

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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Location: My only friend, the end

Eliza

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:53 pm

EDWARDS and OBAMA

LMAO- Corrupt mass media should be linking Edwards to Obama, not McCain or Clinton.

After all, Edwards endorsed OBAMA not McCain. Wink

Joined: 21 Feb 2008
Posts: 1397
Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.

resigned

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:29 am

Edwards' Ex-Mistress' Sister Pans Both

CBS) The family of John Edwards' "other woman" is "very upset" with both Edwards and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, Hunter's sister says.

In an exclusive interview with "ET," Roxanne Druck Marshall told ET's Thea Andrews her heart goes out to Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, who has advanced breast cancer.

Marshall says, if she could, she would tell Elizabeth, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what my sister did and what her husband did, too. I mean, they both did it together. You don't make a baby with one person, and it's horrible. I mean, what she must be thinking, and feeling. I just... my heart goes out to her."

It should be noted that Edwards denies fathering Hunter's baby.

Andrews says Marshall described her family as hurt and embarrassed by what happened.

And, during a preview of the ET story, Andrews remarked to Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith, "Roxanne tells me she believes John Edwards has her sister hidden away somewhere, so the press won't be able to find her."

Andrews added, "Roxanne says John Edwards has been untruthful in many of his statements to the media about the affair. She says that, contrary to what John Edwards says, the affair with her sister started long before she started working on the campaign, and that it never really ended; that they are still in contact today, that they've spoken recently, and that her sister is still very much in love with John Edwards."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/13/earlyshow/main4347468.shtml

Click your heels together...

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Location: "Onboard" pathenry's desk

Phantom

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:33 pm

Is Rielle Hunter the National Enquirer's Source?

Another issue of the National Enquirer, another round of sordid allegations about the extent to which John Edwards is lying about his affair with Rielle Hunter.

The four new pieces:

• Edwards didn't confess until after a campaign staffer walked in on him and Hunter having an "intimate moment" in hotel room. Word eventually got to Elizabeth Edwards, who then confronted John, who then admitted the whole thing. But this all happened after he'd already declared his candidacy for the presidency.

• The whole public tango over the DNA test, with Edwards saying he wants one and Hunter saying she doesn't: choreographed!

• Texas lawyer Fred Baron is still sending $15,000 a month to Rielle and $20,000 a month to alleged baby fall guy Andrew Young. (The New York Post has a reporter in Raleigh who interviewed a bunch of Young's neighbors; all pretty much expressed doubt that Young fathered the baby, but say he's loyal enough to Edwards to shoulder responsibility.

• Edwards last week called Hunter to tell her, "Of course I love you. Don't worry, we'll get through this."

As for how the Enquirer keeps getting access to information such as the intimate details of a private phone call while other major media outlets who have now devoted significant time and resources to the story still can't prove anything, Sharon Waxman ventures the obvious: they pay for stuff! We mentioned back on Wednesday that Hunter herself very well might be squeezing cash out of both Edwards and the Enquirer, and that the whole thing with her weird mystic friend Robert McGovern setting up the Beverly Hilton meeting had the faint whiff of blackmail gone awry. Writes Waxman:

"Imagine if Hunter was blackmailing Edwards for money—or, for more money, since she was already being paid a monthly stipend. And if she were pressuring him by leaking information to the National Enquirer. And if she tipped off the Enquirer to the July meeting, including such details as the number of rooms rented, and who was in them."

Imagine if it was Hunter who sold the Enquirer the blurry photo of John Edwards holding the baby of indeterminate paternity that David Perel declined to offer any details about, including who took it, or where, when, or how it was taken! (He told CNN last week that we can "presume" he paid for it.)

Edwards is probably wishing Hunter weren't so ambitious right around now.

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/08/is-rielle-hunter-the-national-enquirers-source.php

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olympic

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:03 am

Edwards' ally explains $14,000 payment to mistress

WASHINGTON - John Edwards' political action committee paid his mistress $14,000 after she stopped working for it to obtain 100 hours of unused videotape she had shot for his unsuccessful presidential campaign, an associate told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The woman, Rielle Hunter, already had been paid $100,000 for the programs.

The explanation — which Edwards' advisers declined to discuss on the record — is the first effort to justify the payment in April 2007 to Hunter. That payment came months before Edwards' chief fundraiser quietly began sending money himself to the pregnant woman.

Edwards last week acknowledged he had an affair with Hunter in 2006. The former Democratic presidential contender and senator from North Carolina has denied any knowledge of those payments to Hunter from Fred Baron, Edwards' national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney. Baron also has described his payments to Hunter as a private transaction.

But the $14,000 payment to Hunter is significant because its source was Edwards' OneAmerica political action committee, whose expenditures are governed by U.S. election laws. Willfully converting money from a political action committee for personal use would have been a federal criminal violation.

An associate of Edwards, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the $14,000 was paid to Hunter only after she relinquished about 100 hours of cutting-room floor videotape excerpts that were not part of four short Web videos she had produced for Midline Groove Ltd. in 2006.

Legal experts said it was important for Edwards to demonstrate the political action committee wasn't paying Hunter merely to keep quiet about the affair.

"One thing that's possible is that she was still owed money from what she'd done before for the political action committee, but obviously there are less charitable explanations," said Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in campaign finance law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Edwards insisted during an interview Aug. 8 that he broke off the affair and confessed his infidelity to wife Elizabeth in 2006. But Hunter appeared at campaign events in the final days of December. One such event was his formal campaign announcement in New Orleans, which Elizabeth did not attend.

Edwards said several times in his interview with ABC News the affair was short-lived.

But there is evidence that Edwards and Hunter spent months together in 2006, traveling the world and the country as he prepared for his second run for the White House.

One of Hunter's friends, Pigeon O'Brien, told the AP that Hunter told her the affair with "John from North Carolina," who was married to a woman who had been seriously ill, began in March 2006. That conflicts with Edwards' statement the affair started only after he hired Hunter to produce several videos for his Web site, the first payment for which came in July 2006.

Hunter and a business partner founded Midline Groove in June 2006.

Edwards said last week he did not plan to speak again about the affair, and a former campaign official who has been acting as a spokeswoman reiterated this week he will not discuss the subject. It's not clear where Hunter is currently living, and a woman who answered at her attorney's office this week refused to take a message.

Hunter's sister, reached at her home in Nevada, also refused to comment.

"I talked to John (Tuesday) and he's not doing well," said David "Mudcat" Saunders, who served as Edwards' chief adviser on rural affairs. "He's just — to be very frank with you — he's just not doing well. He needs to be concentrating on himself and his family at this point in his life. He's a good boy. He just made a hell of a mistake."

Edwards has denied Hunter was paid to cover up the affair, and said he had no knowledge that Baron was sending money to both her and a married Edwards staffer who later claimed to be the father of Hunter's daughter. She was born in February 2008.

In a brief interview this week, Baron reiterated that Edwards and his wife were not involved with his actions. He said no campaign funds were used and that Hunter was not working for the campaign when he started giving her money.

"The bottom line to it is John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards had no knowledge of anything I did," Baron said. "I did it as a friend."

Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Posts: 2140

olympic

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:31 am

SavannahStar wrote:

agreed!......the voters should demand more from their leaders in how they are fulfilling their promises they made to be elected....leave the bedroom obsession to the wife.

how ironic, for hillary though.

Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Posts: 2140

olympic

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:22 pm

Is John Edwards' former aide covering for him?

RALEIGH, N.C. - For nearly a decade, Andrew Young was John Edwards' loyal foot soldier as Edwards rocketed from millionaire trial lawyer to U.S. senator to two-time White House hopeful

When Edwards needed someone to scout locations for a Senate campaign office, he sent Young. When TV trucks converged on Edwards' house in 2003 and damaged the neighbors' lawns, Young was told to take care of it. When it came time to raise money for Edwards' second run at the White House, Young was there to work the phones.

And when Edwards was confronted with the biggest crisis of his political career, Young was there again: After the National Enquirer reported that Edwards had an affair with a video producer, Young issued a statement in December saying that he — and not the candidate — was the father of the woman's baby.

But given Young's unswerving devotion to Edwards — and given Edwards' lies in initially denying he cheated on his wife — some campaign watchers wonder whether Young, a 42-year-old married man, is taking the fall for his boss.

"Given the pattern of the thing, it's not unreasonable for people to ask" whether the child belongs to Edwards, said Gary Pearce, a longtime Democratic operative in North Carolina and a consultant to Edwards' 1998 Senate bid. "The media and a large chunk of the public, including some of John's supporters, still question whether he's told the whole truth."

Around the same time that Young put out a terse statement through his lawyer in which he claimed to be the baby's father, Edwards' former mistress, Rielle Hunter, issued her own statement saying the same thing.

Then, only weeks before the first vote of the 2008 presidential election season took place in Iowa, Young abruptly left the Edwards campaign and his $90,000-a-year job as a fundraiser, and dropped out of sight. He packed up and left North Carolina for California in a move bankrolled by Edwards' national fundraiser.

In his confessional interview Aug. 8 with ABC, Edwards insisted he could not have fathered Hunter's daughter, born at the end of February, because the affair ended in 2006, though he added he would be "happy to take a paternity test and would love to see it happen." But Hunter ruled out such a test the next day.

Young, like Hunter, has gone into seclusion, and he has not returned messages in months. Calls this week to attorneys who represented him in the past were not returned.

In the meantime, editorial writers and others have raised the possibility that Young is covering for his boss and that Edwards has not come clean.

On a radio talk show on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said of Edwards: "I feel sorry for his family, because how horrible. But also, don't you think he is the father of the child?"

Young has had brushes with the law that most recently included a driving-while-impaired arrest in 2006. But Democrats in Raleigh remember him as a loyal and resolute member of the Edwards team as early as Edwards' upset victory for the Senate in 1998.

They described Young as a personal assistant who was involved in close family details, such as ensuring that Edwards' parents' hotel arrangements were taken care of at the 2004 Democratic convention.

"Anybody who's been around campaigns knows that folks come and go," said Joyce Fitzpatrick, a public relations executive who worked with Young to hold a pair of Edwards fundraisers. "Andrew was a constant." Fitzpatrick described Young as a "very young, bright guy who seemed very devoted" to both Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth.

When Young was in his 20s, he was charged with passing worthless checks, possession of marijuana, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Charges of burglary and criminal mischief were thrown out in a Florida court in 1987.

Back in his native North Carolina a decade later, Young worked for the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers, where he was registered to work as a lobbyist at the Legislature in 1999.

"I would only have positive things to say about him as being a helpful, friendly and pleasant co-worker to a new employee," former fellow lobbyist Stella Boswell wrote in an e-mail.

In 1999, Young married Cheri Lynn Pfister, a 25-year-old nurse at the time.

"They appeared to be a nice happy couple," said Carolyn Grissom, who purchased their home in Raleigh in early 2007. "They seemed to be crazy about each other. They certainly are crazy about their kids and dog."

Cheri Young had a short moment in the spotlight in 2006, when she and her sister were in the audience during a taping of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and the star gave them $1,000 and instructions to make someone's life better. Young used to money to seek donations from others, eventually raising more than $35,000 for needy families in North Carolina.

"We all have our ups and we all have our downs, and when you're up, you reach out, and when you're down, you allow others to help," she said on Winfrey's Web site.

That same year, Young was back in trouble with the law. He was cited in August 2006 for having open beer containers at a park near his home and, the next month, charged with driving while impaired. A substance abuse counselor later wrote that he had "found some evidence of alcohol abuse," according to court records. Young was supposed to begin group counseling three days later. It was not clear from the records whether he completed the counseling.

Earlier this year, he was sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation and 24 hours of community service for the DWI. Court papers said he was living in California for work-related purposes. His attorney in that case did not return several calls.

Fred Baron, Edwards' national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney, has acknowledged he quietly sent money to Hunter and to Young's family to resettle in California.

Baron said he did so on his own, to "help two friends and former colleagues rebuild their lives when harassment by supermarket tabloids made it impossible for them to move forward on their own."

Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Posts: 2140

olympic

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:18 am

Aide's Mother: John Edwards Should Take a Paternity Test

Who fathered Rielle Hunter's baby girl?

The mother of a campaign aide for John Edwards is urging the former Senator to take a paternity test in order to strike down the notion that her son fathered a baby with Rielle Hunter, says the New York Post.

"I wish, very deeply, that both of them -- John Edwards and Rielle Hunter -- would have the DNA test," Jacquelyn Aldridge, 73, told the Post.

Her son, Edwards' aide Andrew Young, has taken credit for siring Hunter's baby girl, says the paper.

Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter, who documented his presidential campaign in 2006, but he's denied impregnating her. The Post says that Edwards has offered to submit to a DNA test, but Hunter won't let her six-month-old be tested.

Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Posts: 2140

Phantom

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:55 am

EDWARDS' CRUEL WIFE JAB: REPORT

John Edwards assured his mistress that they'd be together after his cancer-stricken wife died, according to a new bombshell report.

Just before the former presidential contender confessed his adultery to ABC News on Aug. 8, he secretly flew Rielle Hunter and her 6-month-old child, Frances Quinn, from California to the US Virgin Islands, according to the National Enquirer, which first exposed their affair.

And after the interview, in which he denied loving Hunter or fathering the baby, he called her to say, "We'll be together when Elizabeth is gone," the tabloid reported.

For her part, Hunter bragged that Edwards is "a real good lover," the Enquirer said.

And after she joined him in New Orleans in 2006 for the official launch of his candidacy - which Elizabeth skipped - Hunter told a pal that "it was one of the happiest nights of her life," according to the Enquirer.

"She felt like she was his first lady," the tabloid reported, quoting a source.

The Enquirer, citing sources, also reported that 55-year-old Edwards:

* Slept with Hunter the night they met in a New York City bar in 2006.

* First told Hunter, 44, he loved her during a trip to Africa. "I broke down in tears," she told a friend.

* Flew to Boston on the same plane with 59-year-old Elizabeth and Hunter, who was the campaign videographer, right before his wife learned of the affair.

* Said he "wouldn't hear of" an abortion after he impregnated Hunter in 2007

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08202008/news/nationalnews/edwards_cruel_wife_jab__report_125243.htm

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end

dithers

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:13 pm

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

Phantom

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:17 pm

I don't think that's the kid. Doesn't look ike the picture I sent you the other day.

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 3332
Location: My only friend, the end

dithers

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:48 pm

Phantom wrote:

I don't think that's the kid. Doesn't look ike the picture I sent you the other day.

Pretty in Blonde

Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468

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