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(AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)
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My Mom would often say, "Have they no shame?"
This is the way I feel about a couple of things I've read recently about Presidential candidates from both political parties.
One article was on John Edwards, the son of a textile worker, who loves to call himself the poor man's bud.
This candidate is going to eliminate poverty in America. What a great guy, right?
For a speech on poverty at the University of California at Davis, Edwards charged fifty-five thousand. How does he live with himself? I mean, the guy gets $400 haircuts and lives in a 10,400 square foot house, the biggest house in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Edwards also has a recreational building on his property that includes a basketball court, a squash court, and something known as "John's Lounge," Let's don't even mention the fact that he got $500,000 from a hedge fund, which is typically open to only a limited range of investors, mainly the wealthy. Mr. Edwards "I just want to help the poor" is a little hypocritical, wouldn't you say?
(Edwards is also quoted in a new memoir by Don Shrum, political consultant as saying "I'm not comfortable around those people," when talking about gays.
So along with convincing us he cares for the impoverished, he is also winning over the gay community.)
Edwards, of course, is not alone. This whole speech fee thing is especially irritating to me. Saint Ronald Reagan was given a million by the Japanese for a speech, Bill Clinton regularly gets a hundred thousand, and then there's Rudy Giuliani, who was about to be run out of town before 9-11, recently was given a hundred thousand for a speech at Oklahoma State University plus forty-seven thousand for a private jet.
I must say too that Institutions of Lower Learning who are parties to paying this sort of money for speeches must start their days with stupid pills. I don't get it. KT
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THIS IS WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR???
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(CNN)
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Excerpt from San Francisco Chronicle Article :
Faith-based taboos, ethnic intolerance nag Iraqis by Tina Susman
A slender, black-haired girl, is
dragged in a headlock through a braying mob of men. Within seconds, she is on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head with her arms in a futile attempt to defend off a shower of stones.
Someone slams a concrete block into the back of her head.
A river of blood oozes from beneath her long, tangled hair. The girl stops moving, but the rocks keep coming as well as the victorious shouts of the men delivering them.
Her crime? The 17 year old Iraqi female's crime was to love a boy from another religion. For her uncle and cousins, that was reason enough to stone her to death. ...
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