http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/South/10/03/jeb.bush.missing.girl.ap/ TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told a delegation of lawmakers that he had "some juicy details" about the sexual orientation of a missing Miami girl's caretakers. During a meeting Wednesday, Bush implied that the two women, who had just been charged with fraud stemming from the investigation into Rilya Wilson's disappearance, were lesbians. "As (Pamela Graham) was being arrested, she told her co-workers, 'Tell my wife I've been arrested.' The wife is the grandmother, and the aunt is the husband," Bush explained, using his fingers to indicate quotation marks to emphasize the word "grandmother." "Bet you don't get that in Pensacola," Bush told his guests, a group of lawmakers from Florida's Panhandle. An attorney for one of the two women called the governor's comments "outrageous" and said the women are sisters, not a lesbian couple. The women, Geralyn and Pamela Graham, were charged Wednesday with stealing more than $14,000 in public assistance. They were not charged in the disappearance of Rilya, who was missing 15 months before the state Department of Children & Families realized in April she was gone. She would have turned six last Sunday. The Rilya case threw a spotlight on the DCF, leading top child welfare administrators to quit and a blue-ribbon committee to examine the agency. But six months after the agency reported Rilya missing, the $75,000 reward for finding the little girl remains unclaimed, and no criminal charges have been filed. Elizabeth Hirst, spokeswoman for Bush, said Thursday said the governor "relayed details and factual information regarding the arrests of Rilya's caretakers. He intended no offense and continues to focus on the safe return of young Rilya." But Joshua Fisher, Pamela Graham's attorney, called the governor's comments "outrageous" and "disgusting." "He's making jokes when there is still a missing baby here, or doesn't he care?" Fisher said Thursday. He said he is trying to get paperwork, including birth certificates, that will prove the women are sisters, not a couple. Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, the state's largest gay and lesbian advocacy group, called the comments "childish" and "locker room homophobia." Bush made his remarks to three Republican Panhandle legislators, two GOP state House candidates and aides during a meeting in the governor's office. He apparently did not realize a reporter with Gannett Regional Newspapers of Florida accompanied the group. His comments were first reported in Wednesday's editions of the Pensacola News-Journal. "It was a nonevent," said Dave Murzin, the GOP nominee in state House District 2, who was at the meeting. "It wasn't any big deal to us. Really, all of us were there for more important stuff." GOP state Rep. Greg Evers said Bush simply informed the group about the arrests and "he didn't make any innuendo or insinuations about anybody."
DC, You sort of beat me to a post I had been intending to post. I remember almost 30 years ago when I took abnormal psychology they said that one of the strongest correlations that is always found is that when the unemployment rate goes up so does the crime rate, alcoholism, drug abuse, spouse abuse, childs abuse, admission to mental hospitals etc. Now correlation is not 100% proof of cause and effect, as students or reasearch methods know. However, causation is probably there. I remember just a few years ago during the Clinton boom I started reading stories about the biggest (or perhaps the first )decline in crime rates in thiry years not long after stories about the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years. I betcha conservatives cannot refute this!! Unfortunately their preferred approach to crime and the above social problems is moralizing and incareration. Hey let's all follow the increase in theses social pathologies as Bush II continues.
Is anybody else picturing Jeb doing the quotation mark hand signs while making his jokes? I bet Dubya does the same thing. So what point was he trying to make to his chronies, that all gays and lesbians are bad parents who are going to steal money and not take care of adopted kids? Jackass.
Noelle's probably "gone down" on a chick to score some drugs, or at least shared a double dildo with one like the girl from <I>Requiem for a Dream</I>.
Of course, the crime rate went up from 1979 through 1992 even though unemployment went down during much of that period (it bounced up and down depending on the year). The correlation I've seen deals with non-college-educated people's wages falling (in real dollars) coinciding with a rise in crime. Unemployment is too cyclical and rarely continues in an upward fashion for any extended length of time to really be tied in a very strong way to crime rates. Wages for unskillled workers seems to have a stronger correlation. If your abnormal psych professors told you there was a strong correlation between unemployment rates and crime rates, they were relying on bad data (and you did say it was 30 years ago, so there wasn't the data of the 1980s and 1990s to study). In the bigger picture, though, education seems to play a huge role, as economic conditions tend to have no effect on the criminal activity of more highly-educated people. But that's a common debate. If we get the kids while they're young and educate them, we won't have to build prisons to house many of them later.
OK...there's this thing you may have heard of. It's called the "business cycle." There are peaks and valleys. The valleys are known as recessions. This cycle continues to operate regardless of who is President. In fact the first signs of stock market trouble in the current cycle were in March 2000 while Clinton was in charge. When the stock market rockets up...there will ALWAYS be a correction. It is inevitable. The correction will naturally be more severe when the market had rocketed as high and overinflated as it had. You simply cannot stop the business cycle from operating. Nobody has been able to stop it. To blame a recession on a President...ANY President is ludicrous. It exhibits a clear lack of understanding of basic principles of business and economics. Good job glynch...this is a new low even for you. Now don't you bruise yourself when you're patting yourself on the back.
Poor Hoover. I'm serious -- that guy got the all-time worst deal -- and I agree with this economic point entirely. But as for the here and now, I don't think Glynch exactly said that this was all Bush's fault. He did insinuate that current policies of the administration (tax cuts, deficit spending) may amplify economic woes. But I'm reading between lines here, which I shouldn't do. I bet he wishes he had long, bizarre-looking arms a la Kevin McHale.
To blame a recession on a President...ANY President is ludicrous. It exhibits a clear lack of understanding of basic principles of business and economics. Good job glynch...this is a new low even for you. Maybe so, but history says there's a correlation <I> "Democrats are much better for the stock market than Republicans, Slate says. Carol Vinzant "ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return." The Stock Trader's Almanac "which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation." And the same is true for real GDP growth. <B>"Since 1930 (the first year decent data is available), GDP growth was 5.4 percent for Democratic presidents and 1.6 percent for Republicans."</B> </I> http://www.politicalwire.com/
Well, we know the true reason for that is because GDP growth is a lagging indicator. SO the Republican Presidents set up the high growth and then thrown out of office before it pays off. And then the Democrats get in and ride the wave until they can kill it, and then the Republica takes over right as the economy is starting to go into the tank again. So see, Republicans are great. Democrats are scum. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand.
Well, we know the true reason for that is because GDP growth is a lagging indicator. SO the Republican Presidents set up the high growth and then thrown out of office before it pays off. And then the Democrats get in and ride the wave until they can kill it, and then the Republica takes over right as the economy is starting to go into the tank again. So see, Republicans are great. Democrats are scum. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand. But the stock market is a leading / current indicator and it also favors Democrats, so that blows that theory out of the water. Just admit it, Democrats are cooler than Republicans.
Of course they're cooler. For one thing, they don't have nice Republican cloth coats like Pat Nixon. The coolest Republican was probably Lee Atwater (and that's not saying much), and look where that got him. Truth be told, I'm probably more of a "New Democrat" (at least by the definitions I've heard.... not necessarily that I agree with the bulk of the policies that some politicians who have wrapped themselves in the "New Democrat" label have espoused) than a Republican these days anyway. But it's hard to abandon the label I've had for so long. Surely there's some sort of support group I could join.