Speak Out for the Future

The ClubHouse: General Archives: June - July Archives: Speak Out for the Future
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Sbw

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 03:12 pm Click here to edit this post
I think the girls are spending the weekend with mom and dad this weekend at Camp David. Bet there will be a few alcohol conversations going on. Since the alcoholism trait is often considered to be hereditary, I hope the girls/girl don't have this problem.

The media seems to be stating that GB signed the legislation under which the girls will be judged as if that is something terrible. If he truly believed it would aid in deterring teenagers from repeated drinking, he will be very happy he signed the legislation and glad it is in place. I am sure he is more concerned about his daughters than any other teenager, especially considering he knows what alcohol can do.

(I will stay away from the rest of this discussion. I have no desire to be called names again.)

Bijoux

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 03:38 pm Click here to edit this post
Don't stay away! That was a good post offering another way of looking at the situation.

Highlander

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 04:11 pm Click here to edit this post
I did wonder whether it was attention seeking device from Jenna especially since she was cited only a month previously. She is aware of her situation why would she go again in public and purchase alcohol. Seems pretty odd to me. I don't think you can make a statement that they are alcoholics, stupid yes.

Moondance

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 04:58 pm Click here to edit this post
QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Any reasonable definition of presidential leadership would include concern for the health, safety and economic vitality of the nation's largest state. Mr. Bush was content to list the inadequate steps his administration has already taken, while flatly rejecting Governor Davis's pleas for short- term price relief. He was rather testy about it, too." - New York Times editorial, 6/1/01

For a week's worth of quotes, visit:
http://www.democrats.org/news/quotes/recent.html

******************************
LATEST NEWS

TIMES: BUSH'S ACTION, INACTION IN FIRST MONTHS SHOW "TROUBLING SIGNS"

After just four months in office, the New York Times says in an editorial today that it is appropriate to "raise questions about Mr. Bush's vision of the office, his ideas about the exercise of executive power and his definition of the scope of presidential leadership and responsibility."

Those questions raise some serious concerns. "The actions and inactions of these first months contain some troubling signs," the Times writes. "He sometimes projects an air of detachment bordering on indifference even on issues of major concern."

To read more, visit:

http://www.democrats.org/news/briefings/br060101.html

DEMOCRAT CABALLERO WINS EL PASO MAYOR RACE


DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe congratulated new El Paso Mayor Ray Caballero on his victory over former Mayor Larry Francis. This is the fourth big-city contested mayor's race Democrats have won since George W. Bush assumed office.

"By voting strongly for Ray Caballero, El Paso joins other great cities like Los Angeles, San Antonio and Omaha in electing a new generation of leadership this year," McAuliffe said. "This is the second city in George W. Bush's backyard to go to the Democrats since Bush assumed office. Democratic wins in big cities across the country are showing everyone how strong and vibrant the Democratic Party is in every region of the nation, when we campaign for working families' issues like education and community investment," McAuliffe said.

To read more, visit:

http://www.democrats.org/news/releases/rel052901.html

Sbw

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 05:04 pm Click here to edit this post
Bijoux: I was referring to the rest of the future thread. I think commenting on this part of it is safe. (At least I hope so.)

Highlander: I agree with you, I wouldn't call them alcoholics at this time. I would think if she just wanted attention, however, there are plenty of ways she could have gotten attention (since she is the president's daughter) without getting in quite that much trouble. I think she is simply a teenager and like many teenagers wanted to drink before she was legally old enough.

I can't say I waited until after I was 21 to have a drink. Drinking for someone who has a parent/grandparent who has had an alcohol problem, however, is extremely dangerous long term.

Highlander

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 05:17 pm Click here to edit this post
True Sbw, however, In Jenna's case you have to wonder why she would go out and do it within a month of pleading no contest to the same misdemeanor, especially given her high profile. In this case it wasn't like she was out with a bunch of friends it was the two sisters going out to get drinks. They knew the risks and I just wonder about it.

The problem regarding a parent who had an alcohol problem, the girls were unaware of Bush senior's problems until it was brought out at the campaign. The Bush's by their own admission did not want the girls to know about his problem. Also Bush has never admitted to being an alcoholic. Who knows

Sbw

Friday, June 01, 2001 - 05:33 pm Click here to edit this post
By my definition of an alcoholic, he is an alcoholic. Of course I have a very broad definition. I know some people do not consider alcoholism a disease and inheritable, I do.

The two sisters were not alone, there was a friend with them, she was charged with the same charges as Barbara. Why did she do it? I have no clue. My guess is, she is "kinda" stupid when it comes to underage drinking like the majority of all teens and probably the majority have had a drink within the last 30 days... of course they normally do not get caught. It is only when your father is president/other high profile person, that everyone recognizes you and knows you are not 21 and notifies the authorities. (Maybe that is the part of the concept that she has not figured out yet.)

Grod

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 06:20 am Click here to edit this post
At any rate, I wonder if they realize it is their own reputation that puts them at risk more than their parents. If they are rebelling against mom and dad -- doing it with media around isn't a good thing. I don't think they are alcoholics but I do think the potential is there.
Highlander, I disagree because I think the girls were aware of their father's past drinking problem because its hard not to be aware of something like that.

Highlander

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 06:35 am Click here to edit this post
They may have had a sense of it but it was not something that was admitted in the family. Bush said he didnt want his daughters to know about it when it all came out in the campaign.

Highlander

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 06:40 am Click here to edit this post
The first family's alcohol troubles
President Bush downplayed his own drinking problem and hid a DUI. Now his daughters are making news for underage drinking. Is there a connection?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joan Walsh
May 31, 2001 | I don't envy Jenna and Barbara Bush, going off to college under the watchful eye of the Secret Service and the international media. But the sudden flurry of headlines about the first twins' alcohol-related mishaps raises new questions about the way their father handled his own "young and irresponsible" past.
I always thought it was a bad decision for Bush, as a politician, to refuse to acknowledge his wild youth -- which, by his own account, lasted until he was 40. But now it seems it was a bad choice for Bush as a father. After his 1976 drunken-driving arrest was revealed last year, Bush said he didn't admit it when he decided to run for president because he didn't want his daughters to know about it. That was a mistake, and the twins' recent run of bad behavior seems designed to let him know that.


There's no evidence either twin has a drinking problem, but the string of news items involving their partying and scrapes with the law in the last few months can't be ignored. First came the tale of Secret Service agents ferrying home Jenna's boyfriend after he was arrested for public drunkenness. Then there were randy National Enquirer photos of Jenna, a University of Texas freshman, and a beer-drinking pal, and a story about her alleged marijuana use. Yale freshman Barbara, supposedly the studious twin, had a false I.D. confiscated at a New Haven, Conn., bar. In April, the Enquirer featured a lurid tale of Barbara's drunken spring-break binge in Mexico, and by the end of the month all major newspapers were carrying a story about Jenna being cited by police at an Austin bar for underage drinking, while Secret Service agents waited outside.
Now, barely a week after a court appearance to deal with that alcohol citation, Jenna has been caught again using a false I.D. to buy alcohol at an Austin restaurant, with sister Barbara at her side.
Of course, many of us would have provided lively tabloid fodder in college if we'd been subjected to the scrutiny Barbara and Jenna Bush must endure. And their college drinking doesn't mean they'll turn into alcoholics as adults. Most teenage party girls become responsible citizens, eventually. Still, their recklessness in the first months of their father's presidency suggests their parents screwed up by downplaying and even denying President Bush's own drinking problem.
Bush's he-man decision to quit drinking cold turkey is the stuff of legend. The morning after a boozy 40th birthday party in 1986, he woke up at Colorado's tony Broadmoor Resort and decided, on his own, to get sober. Alcohol had begun to "compete for my affections," Bush said later. Certainly he didn't need Alcoholics Anonymous, he told the Washington Post: "I don't think I was clinically an alcoholic; I didn't have the genuine addiction. I don't know why I drank. I liked to drink, I guess."
But his close friends tell a slightly different story: "Once he got started, he couldn't, didn't shut it off," Bush's buddy Don Evans, now commerce secretary, told the Washington Post last year. "He didn't have the discipline." That sounds a lot like an addiction, though only Bush himself knows for sure.
He refused to discuss details of his drinking or rumored drug use throughout his political campaigns, relying on the stock excuse, "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." His parents have also repeatedly denied he had a drinking problem, even after several family crises involving his drinking came to light: an ugly Christmas confrontation with his father in 1972, after Bush drove drunk with his brother Marvin, crashed into a neighbor's garbage cans and offered to fight "mano a mano" with his father; and the 1976 DUI incident near the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, with his then-teenage sister Dorothy in the car.
We know Bush's problem drinking, including the DUI, was a family secret. The night a reporter broke the DUI story, Laura Bush called both daughters, in Austin and New Haven, to break the news to them. "I made the decision that as a dad I didn't want my girls doing the kinds of things I did, and I told them not to drink and drive," Bush told reporters. But he didn't tell them about his own arrest.
The secrecy, of course, was a mistake. Anyone who works with alcoholics and their families knows honesty is crucial: The drinking parent needs to come clean about his or her problems, and kids need to understand the family dynamics that were established around the drinking. And as teenagers, they need to know that alcoholism is a disease -- whether because of psychology or physiology or some combination of the two -- that is remarkably hereditary, and think about their own drinking in that context.
"We know for a fact that [Jenna's] father had a long history of alcohol use and abuse," Lynn Ponton, a psychiatrist who studies teenage risk-taking, told Salon. "And this is an opportunity for the Bushes ... to talk honestly with their children about risk-taking and really provide guidance and increase communication. And I would wonder what type of communication is actually taking place."
I wonder, too. I'd bet there hasn't been enough communication in the WASP-y Texas Bush family, and it looks as if the first twins are acting out as a result. Even with a Secret Service detail, there are ways for young women to party, if they're discreet. Clearly, the first twins aren't. Their blatant risk-taking and public partying (the Secret Service waits outside the bars where they drink illegally?) seem designed to force a family reckoning that their father's drinking never triggered.
I'm reluctant to play family therapist for a family I've never met, but I'd say that Bush may have gotten past voters with evasiveness about his drinking problem, but he hasn't satisfied his daughters. And if he sticks to the sanitized, up-from-Broadmoor version of the story, he may someday find he won the White House at the cost of an honest relationship with his daughters

Grod

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 06:46 am Click here to edit this post
The bottom line is Bush decision to run for president is a few years old. At some point the parents should have sat down with their children and had a discussion on all the negative things that may come out into public scrutiny. If they chose to keep things about themselves away from their children...then its no wonder the girls are "rebeling".

If Bush truly believes in family values, then he should know that its Family First, President Second.

Zeb

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 07:21 am Click here to edit this post
Jeesh...are you all still "Bush bashing"?

This reminds me of someone. Hmmmmmm.

Highlander

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 07:28 am Click here to edit this post
What Bush bashing Zeb, just backing up my statement to Grod that he didnt tel the kids.

Zeb

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 07:36 am Click here to edit this post
99% of the threads in here is Bush bashing so I assumed more popped up. It's not like I read them anyway. lol!

Highlander

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 07:39 am Click here to edit this post
lol although I have to admit I am not a bush fan.

Ocean_Islands

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 01:00 pm Click here to edit this post
I would hardly agree that an intelligent response to a threat to American values is Bush bashing. This thread has always been issue based. A bit of Bushbash gets thrown in from time to time, but whats the harm?

Lafatme

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 02:38 pm Click here to edit this post
just a couple corrections:

orange county wasn't named for the fruit, although it was a prime growing area for oranges, it was named for william of orange, whose decendants were among the first settlers.

the state legislature didn't de-regulate energy here, it was a proposition on the ballot a few years ago and we did it to ourselves. (although the energy companies sold it to us in their ads promoting lower energy prices).

energy use in Ca is down from 1999 through conservation by the public but prices are up 700% since then!!! the reason is corporate greed, period.

government DOES have a function in society and smaller government is not always better. the energy crisis is a perfect example. the governor should seize power plants under eminant domain and the state should take over energy production from now on. the corps have had their chance and failed miserably, now it's time for government to do what's best for the people of california. btw, it won't happen because gray davis wants to run for pres in 2004 and needs money from the energy companies to do it.

re: dubya

the man has always been out of touch with the real world problems of real people and there is no reason to expect any change now. i truly believe his family rigged the election and the country will now suffer while the oil companies take over the economy. we're doomed.

while all this goes on, those who are behind the scenes will be finding ways to divert attention from the persons responsible by pitting us against one another. it won't stop and be assured that none of us are aware of who the real culprits are. they are buried deep behind misinformation.

Twiggyish

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 02:46 pm Click here to edit this post
Bush ran a platform on family values.. I think it is an important issue.

Laf: Your last paragraph leaves a lot dangling.. I am just curious about your last sentence. Are you saying someone outside the administration is stirring the pot against Bush?

Grod

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 04:04 pm Click here to edit this post
Zeb, I would say a few months of "bush bashing" is no where near 8 years of Clinton bashing. We have lots and lots of folders to fill up for Bush.
(however I am still laughing either way)

Highlander

Saturday, June 02, 2001 - 04:53 pm Click here to edit this post
Great point on family values, now I would think at least the kids mother would show up with the kid in court and make sure that she was dressed appropriately and respectful. Got to wonder about it.

Lafatme

Sunday, June 03, 2001 - 01:26 am Click here to edit this post
no twiggy, i'm saying there are people behind the scenes stirring up the pot against all of us. bush is the front man, that's all.

btw, if gore had won he'd be the front man for the same people. that's the only way those two got nominated in the first place.

the people with the real power (money) don't care who the figurehead is because they pull the strings on whatever puppet it is.

am i a conspiracy theorist? you bet! i don't think the people have elected a president since kennedy, and he was shot for it.

reagan didn't know he was a puppet until he was shot too. after that he toed the line. bush thought he'd get in the easy way then.

bush sr. and his pals are behind it. he wanted 4 more years but but now has something better...8yrs of w followed by 8 yrs of jeb. all the while he runs things from the background.

george sr. is a dangerous man.

Highlander

Sunday, June 03, 2001 - 04:57 am Click here to edit this post
Only one problem with the Kennedy theory, he stole his election too. I agree that george sr and his cronies are really running things.

Bijoux

Monday, June 04, 2001 - 11:32 am Click here to edit this post
Army Corps Seeks to Relax Wetlands Rules

By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2001; Page A01

The Army Corps of Engineers is trying to relax a series of year-old rules
designed to restrict development and degradation of thousands of streams and
other wetlands, angering environmentalists and drawing sharp criticism from
other federal agencies.

Last spring, the Corps won praise from conservationists -- and provoked a
lawsuit by the nation's home builders -- by making it much harder for
developers to secure "general" permits to drain or fill wetlands, forcing
them to seek more onerous "individual" permits for all but the least
intrusive projects. But now the Corps has proposed more than a dozen
measures that would roll back some of the stricter mandates, while giving
the agency much more flexibility to decide who needs the tougher permits on
a case-by-case basis.

For example, in a May 10 draft plan obtained by The Washington Post, the
Corps proposed eliminating a rule that any project disturbing more than 300
feet of streams would require the stricter permit. Now the developer would
only have to notify the Corps of the potential impacts. The agency also
suggested loosening various requirements for subdivisions, roads across
water and certain flood control projects. And it wants to kill a rule that
developers must replace or protect at least as many acres of wetlands as
they disturb.


For the entire text:

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16798-2001Jun3.html


Re. government seizure of power plants under eminent domain. I see absolutely no reason why the government should step into the role of energy provider when the utilities were able to provide energy just fine before deregulation. I think that we should change how we deregulated the utilities. Utitlities are monopolies, they should be regulated. There are only two reasons for the government to get involved: provide public goods, prevent negative spill over effects of one party onto another. Seizure of private property doesn't meet either criteria.

Twiggyish

Tuesday, June 05, 2001 - 11:29 am Click here to edit this post
"The Army Corps of Engineers is trying to relax a series of year-old rules
designed to restrict development and degradation of thousands of streams and
other wetlands, angering environmentalists and drawing sharp criticism from
other federal agencies"

Makes me angry, too!

Ocean_Islands

Thursday, June 14, 2001 - 09:09 am Click here to edit this post
Here are some choice paragraphs from an article in the NY Times (you can see the complete article there at the NYT site):

Florida G.O.P. Sees Bush Visit as Latest Slight

By RICHARD L. BERKE

ORLANDO, Fla., June 11 — Republican lawmakers from Florida are furious at the White House, saying it bungled opportunities to cultivate a state that has a high-profile governor's race next year and is vital for President Bush's electoral fortunes in 2004.
...
"Florida is a tremendously important state not only because of the tremendous number of electoral votes that they have but also because of the closeness of the last election and the fact that the president's brother is our governor."
...
White House officials said, in fact, that Florida was such a priority that they dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to the Disney Yacht and Beach Club Resorts here last weekend to address a dinner that amassed an estimated $2.5 million for the state's Republican Party. And the Republican National Committee has hired Randy Enwright, a Florida operative, to tend to the state's political needs from Tallahassee. It is the only state where the party has assigned a full-time staff member.

"It's always good to be back in Florida," Mr. Cheney told the crowd in Orlando. "The state that made me an expert in close elections." Surveying the ballroom of more than 1,000 partisans, he said, "It looks like we have the entire margin of victory right here in this room."
...

Bijoux

Thursday, June 28, 2001 - 10:56 am Click here to edit this post
For anyone interested there is an on-line chat on the patient bill of rights at 2:30 pm EDT (11:30 am board time)

patient bill of rights chat

Ocean_Islands

Thursday, August 02, 2001 - 05:57 am Click here to edit this post
If you care at all about our environment, take proactive action regarding this attempt to rape the Alaskan wilderness:

The Bush Offensive Against Our Heritage