John Edwards Love Child Scandal

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to us str8 guys - thats hot !

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Isn't that a flattering picture?



not really


I'd say he looks better and happier here

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i wouldn't say his political career is fucked up, because think of how many "Scandals" there are in amongst the polititions and congressmen and senators and all of them.
I also don't think his having an affair makes a jot of difference on how he would run the country, or have his career. I think being a realist, and knowing how many people stray, its not a shocking moment. Why do we hold polititions up to such a high moral standard?
 
Hey Edwards could make a comeback if decided to in the future, but he's definitely radiocative now. He was whispered as a possible VP candidate for Obama's campaign. Was he a favorite? Probably not, but he totally fucked up his chances with the affair out in the open. It's one thing to be caught like Bill Clinton with Lewinsky during prosperous times and another thing to be caught cheating on a cancer stricken wife. Edwards comes off more douchey as a result, especially since his wife is more sympathetic than Hillary.

People want to believe they can trust their elected officials. It's the voters money and way of life that are involved. Some people want to vote for someone they can believe in and trust. Adultery is a personal matter but you can't help think in the back of your mind that if a leader can that easily lie and cheat on his wife (who happens to be the mother of his children, closest to him in terms of personal relationships, and suffering from cancer) then one could think that a guy like Edwards could easily cheat and lie to his constituency, with little hesitation.

Adulterty amongst the rich and powerful isn't surprising but it is a distasteful character defect to some voters. Cheating on your sick wife and lying about it to the media? Such actions aren't endearing to the voter and make Edwards come off as slime. Who wants to vote for a slimey douche? Not many people, that I know of would. It's bad enough that he's a politician AND trial lawyer. An affair just ups his hate-ability factor.
 
I think this is an excellent opportunity for an Obama / Edwards ticket.

"Obama / Edwards 2008: HITTIN THAT SHIT RITE!!!" <--- That's a catchy goddamn slogan. You'd have to be a crazy right wing lunatic to not vote for that. And they can make little .gifs of the US flag waving and then slappin that ass. Sicy / Lila - please make said .gif. THANKS!
 
That's another sad thing in all of this — the National Enquirer broke a real news story. :|

That's what I said.....I knew that the Inquirer wouldn't risk a lawsuit by printing a false story if it could be proven false....which it wasn't.

I feel sorry for Mrs. Edwards.....to deal with a life-threatening illness AND her husband's infidelity.

My hat is off to her......
 
That's what I said.....I knew that the Inquirer wouldn't risk a lawsuit by printing a false story if it could be proven false....

Right, luckily for the Enquirer John Edwards isn't one of those big $$ trial lawyers who lives in the largest house in North Carolina because of his success in winning lawsuits against deep-pocketed corporations?
 
That's what I said.....I knew that the Inquirer wouldn't risk a lawsuit by printing a false story if it could be proven false....which it wasn't.

Then I guess you also believe that Bush has been drinking and Laura is about to leave him?
 
The man is human. He had an affair.

What makes me scratch my head and pisses me off is that I believe the child is his and I believe he is lying about it.

1) He visited the woman after telling his wife about the affair at 2:30 AM? What? To meet the baby, not his, but fathered by her new boyfriend? What?

2) I belive he had discussed with her the paternity issue. It seems awful convenient that he offered to take the test, and she 24 hours later comes out and says no....something smells.

3) Finally, I would say that any person that has an affair, and is truly on the road to recovery, does not seek out contact with the other person.

I can deal with the affair. I do not believe his actions after the affair, and waiting until the opening night of the olympics to come clean, are the actions of a man who has regret.
 
The man is human. He had an affair.

What makes me scratch my head and pisses me off is that I believe the child is his and I believe he is lying about it.

1) He visited the woman after telling his wife about the affair at 2:30 AM? What? To meet the baby, not his, but fathered by her new boyfriend? What?

The NYT today suggests that he went to meet her and her spiritual advisor (who contacted Edwards). It doesn't seem like he thought the baby would be there.

I have to admit that I assumed the same thing as you - the kid is his. But I wouldn't really bet my life on it either.
 
Then I guess you also believe that Bush has been drinking and Laura is about to leave him?


:applaud: That would be awesome!

But then who really cares what goes on in these politicians or in any celebrity's life? We all have our skeletons in the closet, we all have our ups and downs and our own baggage so what makes one of us any different from the other? In the end we're only human and sh*t happens, you know? :shrug:
 
The NYT today suggests that he went to meet her and her spiritual advisor (who contacted Edwards). It doesn't seem like he thought the baby would be there.

I have to admit that I assumed the same thing as you - the kid is his. But I wouldn't really bet my life on it either.

I have abandonment issues that may be clouding my judgement.
 
If he had been the nominee, well it probably would have been game over. For that reason if for no other, it matters. Some of what he is saying just does not pass the smell test-and the way he kept mentioning that the Enquirer is a tabloid during the Nightline interview, well that tabloid was right about his affair. Now he is allegedly angry at ABC for leaking and promoting the interview early Friday, because he wanted it just on Nightline for the start of the weekend/the Olympics so that people would be busy with other things.

At least he admitted that his egotism and narcissism led him to believe he could do whatever he wanted, I give him points for at least being honest about that.



Edwards on Bill Clinton on Feb. 12, 1999:

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."

Later, Edwards debated whether Clinton intended to obstruct justice when he talked with a White House employee:

"We have a man who has just been confronted with this problem, who is political by nature. And do we really believe that the first thing he thought about is, "I'm going to go protect myself legally'"? I suspect the first thing he thought about is "I'm going to protect myself politically.'' He was worried about his family finding out. He was worried about the rest of the staff finding out. He was worried about the press finding out."
 
or maybe not...

I hadn't heard that Jay McInerney was her former boyfriend

NY Times

August 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Keeping It Rielle
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

John Edwards’s confession was a little bit breathtaking.

Not the sex stuff. That happens here all the time.

And certainly not covering up the sex stuff. That happens here all the time, too. First people uncover; then they cover up. Nobody’s ever had sex with that woman until, suddenly, they have.

The stunning admission Edwards made to ABC’s Bob Woodruff, and in a written statement from Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon, was that he’s a narcissist.

He admitted that wallowing in “self-focus” out on the trail and thinking you’re “special” can result in a solipsism that “leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you’re invincible and there’ll be no consequences.”

Auto-psychoanalysis by the perp. That’s really rich. When Bill Clinton acknowledged an affair, after equally adamant denials, he simply went into an old-fashioned spiral of penitence, his allegedly long, dark night of his alleged soul.

Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

So narcissist walks into a New York bar and meets a legendarily wacky former Gotham party girl — whose ’80s exploits were chronicled in a novel by her former boyfriend Jay McInerney because the behavior of her and her friends “intrigued and appalled me.” When you appall Jay McInerney, you know you’re in trouble.

The president manqué gives Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, more than $114,000 to shoot vain little videos for his Web site (even though she’s a neophyte), one of which is scored with the song “True Reflections” about the Narcissus pool, which goes: “When you look into a mirror, do you like what’s looking at you? Now that you’ve seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?”

He has an affair with Hunter, while he’s honing his speech on the imperative to “live in a moral, honest, just America.” A married former aide says he’s the father when she gets pregnant, even though she’s telling people Edwards is the dad. And one of his campaign donors pays off Hunter to get her resettled with the baby out of North Carolina.

But the Breck Girl wants a gold star for the fact that he sent his marriage into remission when his wife was in remission. That’s special.

In his statement, he bleats: “You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare.” Isn’t stripping bare how he got into this mess?

It isn’t like we didn’t know that the son of a millworker was a little enraptured by himself, radiating self-love from his smile and his man-in-a-hurry airs and the notorious $800 bill for a pair of haircuts and his two-minute YouTube hair primping to the tune of “I Feel Pretty.”

Certain men assume that power confers sexual privilege. And in American politics, there is an eternal disjunction between character and achievement. Sinners do good things, saints do bad things.

Still, it’s bizarre the way these pols spend millions getting their faces plastered everywhere and then think they can do something in secret. “Yeah, I didn’t think anyone would ever know about it, I didn’t,” Edwards said.

In one of the Web films Hunter directed, he actually flirts with the blonde, laughingly telling her that his address on morality is “a great speech” and complaining, “Why don’t you hear me give it live?”

For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards’s decency and concern for the weak in society — except for his own wife. Bill Clinton’s intellect and love of community — except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger’s jocular, I’m-in-charge self-confidence — except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer’s crusade for truth, justice and the American way — except at home.

In the Hunter video titled “Plane Truths,” Edwards is relaxing on his plane, telling the out-of-frame director: “I’ve come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I am, who I really am, but I don’t know what the result of that will be. But for me personally, I’d rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences.” Ken couldn’t have said it better.

Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column.

In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.
 
The ENQUIRER has uncovered bombshell new details about the John Edwards sex scandal after the former presidential candidate finally admitted he'd cheated on his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth!

Edwards' headline-making admission confirmed The ENQUIRER's blockbuster world exclusive reports detailing his affair, in articles Edwards brazenly called "completely untrue" and "tabloid trash" while running for president and afterward.

And now The ENQUIRER has uncovered that Edwards' political operatives are still paying his mistress Rielle Hunter - and she was whisked away on a private jet two days before he confessed their extramarital affair on national TV!

The ENQUIRER has also confirmed that Edwards secretly visited Rielle and their love child three separate times at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles this year - a fact that proves he is still lying to America and his wife.

ENQUIRER reporters caught Edwards, 55, making a late-night visit to 44-year-old Rielle and their daughter at the hotel on July 21 - which prompted us to release the first-ever photograph of him with his love child last week.

NOW, The ENQUIRER has uncovered more blockbuster information, including:

After Edwards confessed the affair to his wife, he restarted it, and was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant.

Despite his denials, Edwards WAS aware that his former finance committee chairman, Fred Baron, was funneling money to Rielle.

Experts are now calling for a federal investigation into Edwards' use of campaign funds.

In an interview with ABC's Nightline correspondent Bob Woodruff on Aug. 8, the former North Carolina senator admitted for the first time that he engaged in what he called a "short" extramarital affair with campaign worker Rielle Hunter.

Edwards told ABC the affair was limited to 2006, before he confessed "the mistake" to wife Elizabeth, 59, who is battling a recurrence of breast cancer.

But Edwards denied he's the father of Rielle's daughter, who was born on Feb. 27, 2008. The ENQUIRER reported last December that Hunter had told close confidantes that he was the father.

In denying he fathered Rielle's baby, Edwards told ABC that he would "be happy" to take a paternity test to prove he's telling the truth. (He has refused numerous previous requests by The ENQUIRER to take a paternity test.)

Edwards claimed he ended the affair in 2006, but sources say he restarted the illicit romance after confessing to his wife.

Rielle soon became pregnant after the affair was rekindled, say sources.

The ongoing ENQUIRER investigation has also confirmed that he has been with Rielle and the baby three times this year in California.

"John Edwards is still lying!" a close source told The ENQUIRER.

"He lied to his wife Elizabeth, he's lying to Rielle and he lied all the way through his TV interview!"
 
Edwards' "other woman" revives memories of a gruesome scandal
By Lester Munson, with William Nack
ESPN.com


Updated: August 14, 2008

On Sunday, as I was sitting in my summer cabin in Vermont, completely absorbed in a New York Times story about John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter, I began reading a paragraph whose message shot through me like a sudden bolt of electrical current. The story centered on Ms. Hunter's refusal to take a DNA test to determine the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, but that was not what startled me. It was this: "Ms. Hunter was born in Fort Lauderdale. Fla., in 1964 as Lisa Druck and moved to New York City in her 20s, becoming part of a Manhattan social scene that included the writer Jay McInerney …"

Here, I jumped up and blurted loudly to my wife, Judy: "Good God! John Edwards was having sex with the daughter of the guy who taught Tommy Burns how to kill horses by electrocuting them!"

That single line in the newspaper brought back vivid memories of one of the most fascinating stories I ever worked on, a tale that led me to trooping through show-horse barns, talking sotto voce to lawyers and FBI agents, going out of my way to meet sources, including Burns, in various hidden caves, coves and coffee booths.

Rielle Hunter, once known as Lisa Druck, came into John Edwards' world with an interesting past. Here, she's filming Edwards after a December 2006 rally in New Hampshire.

Indeed, in 1992, back in the days when I was an investigative reporter for Sports Illustrated, I spent weeks digging into reports that slowly evolved into one of the biggest, most gruesome stories in sports, a scandalous tale about a large group of rich and prominent horse owners -- millionaires, many of them -- who were then being pursued by federal and state law enforcement officials for conspiring to kill high-priced show horses to collect on their life insurance premiums. The story, called "Blood Money," centered on the career of Tommy "The Sandman" Burns, an otherwise cherubic 30-year-old drifter who had spent the last 10 years of his life traveling from barns to stables to horse shows and killing one expensive show horse after another.

The story was written by William Nack, and in the third paragraph, he wrote: "Burns' preferred method of killing horses was electrocution. It had been so ever since the day in 1982 when, he says, the late James Druck, an Ocala, Florida, attorney who represented insurance companies, paid him to kill the brilliant show-jumper Henry the Hawk, on whose life Druck had taken out a $150,000 life insurance policy."

Henry the Hawk was owned and shown by Druck's daughter, Lisa Druck -- who has just now emerged as the femme fatale in the sordid John Edwards affair. She had changed her name to Rielle Hunter years ago. She had had her share of love affairs over the years, including one with best-selling author McInerney, who did a roman ?clef on Lisa's journey titled "Story of My Life," in which the character patterned after her, Alison Poole, was described by McInerney in a 2005 magazine story as "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa."

In fact, Lisa Druck was in the back of a pickup truck with her then-boyfriend, Louis Whelen, when Burns slipped into Henry the Hawk's barn with a handbag filled with his deadly equipment.

So it was her father, James, a criminally minded lawyer and conniver, who started Tommy Burns on the way to his grisly career as a horse killer. Nack and I met Burns at a hamburger joint housed on a bridge spanning I-294 in northern Illinois in the early fall of 1992, as we were winding up the reporting on the story. By then, Tommy was singing his executioner's song to a grand jury, which ultimately would indict 36 people for their role in conspiring to kill horses -- 35 of whom would be convicted of their crimes, mostly insurance fraud. It was there, by the way, that Nack and I found out that Burns had been unaware he had been given a chilling nickname, "The Sandman," in the corridors of the show-horse circuit where he did most of his work, and whispers followed him like little clouds of shed-row dust.

As one prominent West Virginia horsewoman told me, "When Tommy arrived at a show, they would say The Sandman was around. They knew a horse would be put to sleep."

"You had no idea they called you The Sandman?" Nack asked Burns at the Burger King.

John Edwards was courting trouble when he began his affair with Hunter, formerly known as Lisa Druck.

"No idea," he said.

"It suits you, Tommy," Nack said.

He nodded.

This was near the beginning of what turned out to be one of the eeriest interviews I'd ever been a part of, and Nack one day agreed that it sure beat anything he'd ever worked on with me over the years at SI, from the Mike Tyson rape trial in Indianapolis to that 2003 story about why Thoroughbred racehorses were breaking down at such an alarming rate -- a story that spotted a trend that has grown increasingly relevant in the era of Barbaro and Eight Belles.

What made the Burger King interview with Tommy so memorable was the fact that Burns looked like anything but a killer. He might have been the third-base coach on a Little League team, wearing his hat backward, with a pleasant, easygoing personality and a smile that shined with innocence. He appeared enormously contrite as he sat in front of us, so sorry that he already had killed some 50 horses in his life, so sorry that he'd ever become a serial killer of horses -- Doctor Death with an athletic satchel, The Sandman with his bag of deadly wires.

I had spoken to Tommy before, in private, but this was the first time Nack had ever heard the name James Druck, the first time he'd ever heard of Lisa Druck, the first time he'd ever talked to a guy who killed horses for a living.

"So can we go over it for Bill?" I asked. "How did it all start with the wires?"

Burns spoke quietly, dispassionately, about his work. He told us about the time he had been hired to kill another horse in Florida, a sporty-looking chestnut jumper named Streetwise, by breaking its hind leg with a crowbar, but that he then got so unnerved by the prospect of killing a horse in that way -- by causing a bone-crushing injury that would force a vet to put him down with a lethal injection -- that he got drunk on gin and tonics in a Gainesville, Fla., bar, gurgling in his cups to an associate, Harlow Arlie, "I don't want to break his leg. I'm not into that."

So Arlie did it for him -- for half of the $5,000 hit fee -- as The Sandman held the horse in a rain-slick, brightly lighted parking lot outside the city. Arlie came up behind him and whacked the horse hard on the back leg. After hearing Tommy tell that story, Nack says, he can still see the picture of that scene in his mind today -- the horse falling down and clambering to his feet, trying to run and limping away, the rain coming down and the horse slipping off into the dark.

No, Tommy said, he really hated destroying a horse that way.

What he much preferred, he said, was electrocution. It was Lisa's father who taught him how to do that. James Druck owned Eagle Crest Farm, in the celebrated Thoroughbred horse-breeding area of Ocala, and he was a horseman (so-called) and a lawyer who specialized in equine insurance matters.

Writer Jay McInerney used his experiences with Lisa Druck for the creation of colorful character Alison Poole in "Story of My Life."

Henry the Hawk was a terrific jumper for whom Druck had paid $150,000 two years before. Lisa Druck owned the horse, and she had competed on his back in shows all over Florida. When Jim Druck got strapped for cash, he tried to sell the horse; but the top offer was only $125,000 and the horse was insured for $150,000. You do the math; Druck did. So he talked Burns into killing the horse and showed him how to do it, revealing himself to be a man of some experience in this venal backwash of animal husbandry. Druck then bought Burns all the paraphernalia he needed, from the clips to wires.

He taught Burns how to rig the wires: how to cut a high-powered orange extension cord down the middle into two separate strands of wire; how to attach two alligator clips to the bare ends of the wires; and even how to clip the jerry-built apparatus to the unsuspecting animal -- one clip to an ear, the second to its rectum. All that was left to do, Tommy told us, was plug the wire into a standard wall socket and keep back.

"You better get out of the way," Burns told us. "They go down immediately. One horse dropped so fast in the stall, he must have broken his neck when he hit the floor. It's a sick thing, I know, but it was quick and it was painless. They didn't suffer."

Death by such a means leaves no visible trace, and insurance companies in those days attributed most of these deaths to colic.

After Burns finished his work with Henry the Hawk, he packed up his wires in the satchel and left the barn. From the pickup, Lisa and her boyfriend saw Burns stealing away and chased after him, but The Sandman managed to escape. When the two returned to the barn, they found Henry lying dead in his stall. Lisa confronted her father about the killing of Henry, and he never denied orchestrating the grisly affair for the money. McInerney related this episode from Lisa's -- err, Alison Poole's -- life, in his roman ?clef.

When Burns spilled all the bitter and refried beans about his life as a horse killer -- he squealed on his greedy clients only after he was caught and they refused to help defend him -- it simply grew and grew into the biggest scandal in the history of equestrian sports, for many of the outlaws were prominent names on the highly competitive Grand Prix show-jumping circuit and in the clubby world around it.

I knew that James Druck had died of lung cancer in 1990, eight years after he had Tommy Burns kill Henry the Hawk, and I knew that Burns had done six months of hard time in a nasty county jail. (My wife and I visited him.) I also know that Burns has since become a model citizen, has done well in the auto-parts business, owns a horse farm only a mile from the barn where he killed his first horse and spends a lot of time on his 38-foot powerboat, skimming the waterways with that unpleasant past receding behind him. I'd often wondered what happened to Lisa Druck.

I was a lawyer before I went straight and became an investigative journalist, but there was one thing my law practice did teach me. Not to sound judgmental, but where some people go, trouble seems to follow, and in wrapping his arms around Lisa Druck, John Edwards found more than his share.

Lester Munson, a Chicago lawyer and journalist who reports on investigative and legal issues in the sports industry, is a senior writer for ESPN.com. William Nack was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for nearly 25 years and covered stories in a variety of sports and on a range of subjects.
 
Writer Jay McInerney used his experiences with Lisa Druck for the creation of colorful character Alison Poole in "Story of My Life."McInerney related this episode from Lisa's -- err, Alison Poole's -- life, in his roman �clef.

I've actually read that book. Had no idea it was based on real events. It's kind of weird, actually, finding that out.
 
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The NATIONAL ENQUIRER’s exclusive ongoing investigation uncovers shocking new revelations about The John Edwards Scandal!

The day prior to Edwards bombshell admission to an affair on ABC’s Nightline, Rielle Hunter and her 6 month old daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, were flown out of the US onboard a chartered Learjet.

The private flight cost $50,000 and was paid for by Edwards’ pals. The Hunters were the solo passengers aboard the eight-hour flight.

Destination: St. Croix in the Virgin Islands!

THE ENQUIRER tracked Rielle to St. Croix where our reporters discovered Rielle and the baby stayed in a luxurious oceanfront home owned by controversial trial lawyer Lee Rohn, another close friend of Edwards.

When visited by an ENQUIRER reporter on August 15, Rohn snapped a terse “No comment!” when questioned about Hunter.

Former Virgin Island Senator Anne Golden confirmed to THE ENQUIRER that “within 24 hours of their arrival that they were here and staying with Lee Rohn.”

After the ENQUIRER discovered Rielle’s hideaway with Rohn, she was moved to a motel on the island before returning to Santa Barbara on August 17 according to another source.

An ENQUIRER reporter then saw Rielle back in her California home, which is being paid for by Edwards’ former finance chairman Fred Baron.

And Rielle now has an off-duty police officer guarding her house.

None of this is paid for by Rielle. The money continues to come from Edwards’s network of loyal supporters, with no explanation from Edwards why he is having his friends continue to support Rielle now that the affair has been made public.

Edwards is not only aware of the hush money payoffs but orchestrated it with his team of former campaign advisors and now The ENQUIRER has discovered that a team of six more lawyers have been involved in the coverup and are funneling payments to Hunter, who has no money and no means of support.

The ENQUIRER has also learned that Hunter's own lawyer advised her to allow Edwards to take a paternity test but she refused out of misguided belief that Edwards will marry her after the death of his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth.

The ENQUIRER’s continuing blockbuster investigation also reveals the disgraced ex-senator is still in constant communication with his mistress!

ALSO revealed in The ENQUIRER’s new issue are the shocking intimate details of the Edwards- Hunter Affair from First Encounter to numerous secret rendezvous even after Edwards admitted the affair to his wife Elizabeth!

A friend of Rielle’s told The ENQUIRER that when Edwards and Rielle met, “She wanted to pick him up. According to her, the chemistry was instant.

“They ended up sleeping together that night!”

Rielle told her friend that she was hired to shoot behind-the-scenes video for the Presidential campaign because Edwards wanted them to be together.

“A friend kidded her she was actually shooting ‘between-the-sheets’ videos!”
 
I think it's sad on many many fronts.
John's vain ambition to be President.
His wife's co dependency to futher his ambition, by knowing of the affair and keeping quiet.
His continued willingness to seek polictical office when he had a sick wife to tend to.

As I stated earlier, in other threads-it's pathetic and sick on all fronts.

<>
 
I think it's sad on many many fronts.
John's vain ambition to be President.
His wife's co dependency to futher his ambition, by knowing of the affair and keeping quiet.
His continued willingness to seek polictical office when he had a sick wife to tend to.

As I stated earlier, in other threads-it's pathetic and sick on all fronts.

<>

I agree that Edwards is a jerk any way you look at it.

But bad-mouthing a woman who is already dealing with a life-threatening illness for not necessarily feeling like broadcasting to the world that her husband cheated on her is really, really low - even for you.
 
I agree that Edwards is a jerk any way you look at it.

But bad-mouthing a woman who is already dealing with a life-threatening illness for not necessarily feeling like broadcasting to the world that her husband cheated on her is really, really low - even for you.

I wasn't bad mouthing her per se, but noted a symptom of co dependency.
I feel bad for her- I really do.

Perhaps this article from CNN explains it better, and i don't necessarily agree w it:

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Two weeks after a devastating revelation sent her husband into political exile, Elizabeth Edwards isn't getting the steady sympathy usually afforded to a woman scorned.


Elizabeth Edwards, pictured with John Edwards in May, has been criticized for the way she handled his affair.

Instead, she's faced criticism from dedicated Democrats who think she was too willing to keep the affair a secret to help John Edwards' political ambitions, as well as her own.

At a time when she was expected to hold a prominent role in pushing an agenda of improved health care for Americans, she stands silent. While fellow Democrats converge in Denver, Colorado, to nominate Barack Obama for president, Edwards remains in seclusion in North Carolina.

It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.

But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband -- a former U.S. senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee -- said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.

"I think she's complicit," said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. "Obviously, she knew. While she's the victim, she clearly didn't stand in the way of the cover-up."

It wasn't until this month that John Edwards acknowledged publicly that he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a rookie filmmaker hired by his political action committee.

Don't Miss
Edwards could face political free fall from affair
People.com: The other woman, Rielle Hunter
On a liberal blog that Elizabeth Edwards frequents, she explained why she stayed silent after her husband told her of the affair: "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."

Many people have come to know Elizabeth Edwards, 59, as a more forthright, revealing woman.

She wrote a memoir in 2007 that brought readers into the most wrenching moments of her life: the death of the couple's 16-year-old son and her 2004 breast cancer diagnosis. An attorney who worked in private practice and also taught at the University of North Carolina's law school, she first found out about the cancer the day after her husband and John Kerry lost their bid for the White House four years ago.

She has always had a passion for politics. Known for routinely writing about health care policy on the Internet, she has served as a visiting fellow at Harvard, where she held discussions with students and gave a speech after her husband dropped from the presidential race earlier this year. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in June that he would be "partnering" with her on health care policy, and she was expected to serve as a campaign voice to challenge Republican candidate John McCain on the issue.

Yet during a visit to North Carolina two weeks after Edwards admitted to cheating on his wife, Obama didn't mention Elizabeth Edwards -- or her husband.

"It's a setback for both of them," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who helped President Clinton through his cheating scandal. "The question for her -- as well as for him -- is, what is their foundation? What gives them a platform to engage in public issues?
iReport.com: How has Edwards' admission affected Election 2008?

"Their big challenge is convincing people that they will continue to be active in politics and they're going to continue to have a voice."

In a post on the liberal blog Daily Kos, where Edwards has her own diary, she pleaded for privacy and later seemed to explain why she stuck by her spouse and his presidential ambitions.

"An imperfect man with a truly progressive vision who spoke to and for those whom others ignored? Yes, that is who I supported," she wrote. "An imperfect man who had come to face his own imperfections and was seeking to redeem himself to those closest to him? Yes, that is who I supported."

Some responded to the affair with words of kindness, while others angrily suggested that keeping the secret was no less a sin than the one committed by her philandering husband.

"She knew [he was running for] president with this bomb waiting to go off. She did. She kinda loses my sympathy," wrote one poster.

"I believe we are all owed a huge apology, not self-serving claims for pity by both John and Elizabeth Edwards, who both knew about the affair and both decided to go forward and seek the Democratic candidacy, regardless of the Titanic risk," wrote another.

Elizabeth Edwards is famously a denizen of the Internet. But she has not posted under her own name at Daily Kos since that day, nor has she posted anything on the Web site of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington where she writes about health care.

A spokeswoman for the center, Andrea Purse, said Elizabeth Edwards still has a job there but declined to comment further about her future role. Both Elizabeth and John Edwards have refused several requests for an interview.

Since her husband's admission, the only window into what Elizabeth Edwards has been thinking came from a People magazine interview with her brother and a close friend. They said she decided not to leave her husband in part because she is a mother of two young children fighting a cancer that has spread to her bone and cannot be cured.

"There was anguish -- excruciating anguish -- for her in dealing with this," Hargrave McElroy, a friend, told the magazine. "She was angry and furious and everything, but at one point she had to make a choice: Do I kick him out, or do we have a 30-year marriage that can be rebuilt?"

If the story was engineered to defend Edwards' decision, it has failed to create an outpouring of understanding.

"I thought it was very naive on both their parts," said Betsy Wells, who was an Edwards delegate at the Democratic convention four years ago and worked for each of his three campaigns for office....

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My mom died of Cancer, and my father was active in civic affairs and local politics, however once she was diagnosed, he never left my mom's side.

What's also notable is the silence of the MSM, only the Nat Enquire, a tabloid carrying the story.



Also the fraudulent way inwhich Edwards bilked supporters out of money when he *knew* that he had no chance of being elected, he still campaigned for money from his supporters, sick in a word.


I could go on, this isn't about Mrs Edwards, it's about the conduct of her husband and how his selfcenteredness has done more destructive damage to his family, and Party than most people may have realized.



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So Elizabeth Edwards is just as guilty as the husband who put her in the hellish position of having to decide whether or not to reveal what he did for the good of the party when she's not the one who created the mess and he's too arrogant to fess up himself? Bullcrap. Attitudes like that are exactly why I quit visiting Daily Kos some time ago. Some of the people who blog there make me embarrased to be a Democrat.
 
So Elizabeth Edwards is just as guilty as the husband who put her in the hellish position of having to decide whether or not to reveal what he did for the good of the party when she's not the one who created the mess and he's too arrogant to fess up himself? Bullcrap. Attitudes like that are exactly why I quit visiting Daily Kos some time ago. Some of the people who blog there make me embarrased to be a Democrat.


Agreed, I thought they were mean to her.

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(AP)

RALEIGH, N.C. — His once-prominent political career is buried and the turmoil of his marriage is playing out in public. Now, John Edwards is facing a federal inquiry.

The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds _ a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom. Edwards' political action committee paid more than $100,000 for video production to the firm of the woman with whom Edwards had an affair.

The former North Carolina senator said in a carefully worded statement that he is cooperating.

"I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly," Edwards said in the statement. "However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter."

While Edwards focused his comment on campaign funds, he also had a range of other fundraising organizations _ including two nonprofits and a poverty center at his alma mater _ that have come under scrutiny.

Chief among them was the PAC that paid Rielle Hunter's company for several months in 2006 for Web videos that documented Edwards' travels and advocacy in the months leading up to his 2008 presidential campaign. The committee also paid her firm an additional $14,086.50 on April 1, 2007.

Edwards acknowledged the affair with Hunter last year, months after dropping his presidential bid.

At the time of the 2007 payment, the PAC only had $7,932.95 in cash on hand, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. That day, according to the records, Edwards' presidential campaign paid the PAC $14,034.61 for what is listed as a "furniture purchase."

Willfully converting money from a political action committee for personal use is a federal crime.

The furniture money was one of just five contributions to the political action committee between April 1 to June 30, 2007. The other four were on June 30, the last day of the reporting period, including a $3,000 contribution from the wife of Edwards' finance chairman, Fred Baron.

Baron, Edwards' national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney, said last year that he quietly began sending money to Hunter to resettle in California. He said no campaign funds were used and that Hunter was not working for the campaign when he started giving her money.

Edwards has said he was unaware of the payments. Baron died of cancer in October.

U.S. Attorney George Holding has declined to comment and said he won't confirm or deny an investigation.

Kate Michelman, a former head of the abortion-rights group NARAL who advised the Edwards campaign, said she hopes there was no wrongdoing.

"All of us remain very saddened by what has happened to John, because he was right on the policies," Michelman said Sunday. "It remains a very sad occurrence for all of us. It's sad for John and Elizabeth, and this is just one more problem for them to deal with."

Edwards, 55, powered onto the national scene in 1998, when he won a seat for the U.S. Senate in his first political campaign. With smooth speech and good looks, the former trial lawyer ran for the White House in 2004 and was tapped as Sen. John Kerry's running mate. He returned to the campaign trail in a 2008 presidential bid but was largely overshadowed by a duel between Hillary Clinton, vying to be the first female president, and Barack Obama, who did become the first black president.

Since announcing the affair, Edwards has remained largely secluded, and he canceled all his public appearances before the November election because he said he didn't want to be a distraction for Obama.

His wife, Elizabeth, who is terminally ill with cancer, will soon be releasing a book talking about the affair. In it, she writes that news of the affair made her vomit. She also describes Hunter as "pathetic."
 
Conservatives have special abilities.


bush_putin.jpg

Bush said,
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

"I was able to get a sense of his soul."
 
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