John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.
In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.
Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.
A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, has said he was the father of the child.
Writing at Open Left, Mike Lux, co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, has been reading my mind:
It’s no accident that the only two Democrats to win the Presidency since 1968 were governors who were from small states, far away from DC, unaffected by the Culture of Caution that tends to grip Democrats on Capitol Hill…
My hope was that Obama would be more like JFK in that although he was a Senator, he was enough of an outsider and confident enough in himself that he was not infected by the Culture of Caution. Much of the time in the campaign he has shown that kind of confidence and strength. But I fear that, at least for the moment, the Capitol Hill Culture of Caution has taken hold of the campaign…
Instead of having the confidence to win the bigger argument on investing in alternative energy production and conservation, they make the shift on drilling. Instead of pushing back firmly and assertively on the race card accusation, they have the campaign’s reply be “No, we’re not playing the race card.” Instead of having the confidence to really negotiate with McCain on debate formats, they fell into the we’ll-just-do-what-candidates-have-always-done formats. Instead of having the confidence to lay out some of his good new ideas on foreign policy that are clearly different from the Bush doctrine in his widely watched Berlin speech, he stuck to cautious generalities. Instead of having the confidence to back up his strong and effective primary rhetoric on FISA and NAFTA, he cautiously moved towards the conventional wisdom.
John McCain has often joked that he is so popular with the corporate-owned media that he considers Beltway reporters to be his “base.” This decades-long courtship is paying off big time this year, as reporters persistently look the other way as McCain suffers one self-inflicted wound after another. Imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
A prime example of this is McCain’s performance at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last weekend. As you can see in the video above, especially starting at about 03:15, this was hands-down the most embarassing performance by a presidential candidate since Howard Dean’s purported “scream” at a rally in 2004.
What really happened to Dean, of course, was that his supporters in the room were cheering so loudly that he was yelling into a “hot” mike to be heard over the din. It was clear to most television viewers watching that night, however, that the “scream” would kill Dean’s campaign because cablenewsers would be unable to resist playing it rotation as often as possible for weeks to come. In fact, they still run it when the opportunity arises.
By contrast, other than on MSNBC shows hosted by Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams, the video of McCain’s humiliating performance at Sturgis has barely made a blip in cable news rotations.
McCain’s campaign made an equally egregious mistake at Sturgis, as shown in the video — a little earlier than McCain’s rant, at around 02:35 — when his operatives set him up to offer his wife Cindy as a contestant in the bikers’ annual “Miss Bufffalo Chip” beauty pageant. As we reported earlier this week, the “pageant” is more like a live show produced by Hustler magazine than, certainly, Miss America.
What is important to notice in the clip is that this was not an ad lib gone wrong — McCain was reading from prepared remarks as he pimped his wife out to strip for the bikers.
Imagine how the media would have reacted if any Democratic candidate had turned in a performance as awful as McCain’s in Sturgis. And worse, imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
Writing at Open Left, Mike Lux, co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, has been 
