First Lady Has Plans of Her Own

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON - Looking beyond Election Day, first lady Laura Bush said Tuesday that if her husband is elected to a second term she would like to help juvenile delinquents with substance abuse problems.

Mrs. Bush, in an hourlong interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," said she has been reading about drug and alcohol problems among teenagers who run into problems with the law.

"And I just would be interested to see if there is something we could do for those young people who get in trouble. Some sort of recovery method ... that would let them have a more normal life after that," said the former teacher and librarian who has made reading one of her signature issues since George W. Bush took office in January 2001.

But she did not rule out returning to the head of the class if there isn't a second Bush term.
......
If her future doesn't hold another four years in the White House, Mrs. Bush likely won't miss what she said she detests most about being first lady: the lack of privacy.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=696&e=1&u=/ap/20041013/ap_on_el_pr/laura_bush

[WildClarySage]

1. Good news, Pickles...

you'll soon be fading into obscurity...

[jdj]

2. How freaking ironic from a buffy who used to sell dime bags.

She was probably high when she ran over her boyfriend.

Just say no, Laura.

[Erika]

12. The Bush Family Needs to Heal Its Own.

George P with an arrest record, Nicole with an arrest record, the Bush twins with an arrest record. Jusst your aaverage every day family, right?

[madmax]

3. Oh what utter BULLSHIT

This is a new fucking problem, Lady!! Asshole. Is she off her meds and is now having a lucid moment. These fuckers just plain piss me off with their political games. Hey Bitch!!! You got a drunk for a daughter and a druggie niece START THERE!

[onehandle]

4. Fine. Have a ball in Crawford, you grinning baboon. nt

[shanti]

5. oh please

she won't be going back to teaching, because "bush women don't work", according to the kitty kelly book, "the family."

[baldguy]

6. She's got her hands full with that already.

After all, she's got three of them in her own family.

[Red State Rebel]

35. That's what I was thinking....

I don't like to bash candidates families, but she left herself wide open on this one.

[Eye and Monkey]

7. Pickles sez - "Some sort of recovery method" - and Pickles means -

"Faith-Based Slush Fund"

[Child_Of_Isis]

31. No.

She means the death penalty.

[Ilsa]

8. Is she f$%king kidding?

"And I just would be interested to see if there is something we could do for those young people who get in trouble. Some sort of recovery method ... that would let them have a more normal life after that," said the former teacher..."

Isn't this required of all Bush family wives, to be able to get their drugged-out kids out of trouble with the law? Jenna, Barb, Jeb's daughter, maybe a few we haven't heard about...

[hatrack]

37. I thought Jail & Jesus were the only GOP-approved methods

Oh, almost forgot the lethal injection needle.

[ClintonTyree]

9. Substance Abuse................

now THERES a topic the Bush family understands all too well. Every last one of them is hooked on some sort of substance. She'd be very well qualified for this duty.

[Pithy Cherub]

10. Of course,

she will be focused on her own family...in Crawford doing that anyway!

[Th1onein]

11. I've never seen such dilated pupils on a non-drugged human being before...

Laura Bush's eyes were so dilated in that interview, she looked like a Stepford wife. The first couple is a couple of drug addicts. Bush is on cocaine and Laura is on some sort of barbituate.

[Sleepless In NY]

13. Who cares about Laura?

what she ought to try doing is being the mom of a soldier in Iraq. Get those 2 daughters of hers, off the bottle, and enlisting in their father's war.

[Stew225]

14. How can you talk about a Christian woman this way?

Kidding. a little sarcasm here.

[Sleepless In NY]

18. Stew225... lol!

Very easily! It's for sure that "christian woman" wont be teaching drivers ed or parenting classes, when she leaves in 2004! LOL!

[jsquared]

25. You know how good her husband is at projecting his issues onto others, well

it looks like Laura may have a bit of the same issue. ("I can't solve my chemical dependency issues, but I can do it for others.") In her case, it is far less offensive than George's focus on "thugs, murderers and evildoers."

[sandnsea]

15. Just Say No

Where the hell ya' been Laura? Nancy solved this problem 25 years ago. Sheesh.

(Do you believe this woman? "I've been reading about it... some sort of recovery method..." oh shoot me now)

[AlCzervik]

16. Hopefully she wont be giving them driving lessons

[Raster]

17. Et tu, Pickles???

"...first lady Laura Bush said Tuesday that if her husband is elected to a second term she would like to help juvenile delinquents with substance abuse problems." Like your kids, Pickles?

Techically the tequila-twosome are a bit old to be called juveniles, however "delinquents" certainly fits.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

19. "First Lady Has Plans of Her Own"

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. "help juvenile delinquents with substance abuse problems"

Charity really DOES begin at home, doesn't it?

[flordehinojos]

21. Yeah... She and Columba Bush ... they have lots of experience, I am sure,

dealing with juvenile delinquents with substance abuse. She ought to recruit Columba and the two of them ought to go out together! (though i am not saying that W ought to be seated for four more years at the white house)...

[Kimber Scott]

22. What did she just notice there were juvenile delinquents in the world?

And, now she thinks she might like to help the poor things. I wonder if she's heard of the wheel, yet. She might want to start working on that invention, as well.

Get a grip, lady. If you gave a shit about ANYBODY, you could have shown it in the FIRST four years of your husband's reign.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

23. The best thing she could do for juvenile delinquents

is just go home.

[Voltaire99]

24. Nothing that can't be fixed with Bible study and a job at Wal-Mart!

Plus a tour in the volunteer army!

[Piperay]

26. Her two delinquent daughters

are the ones she should have been helping for the last several years.

[Catfight]

32. That's my first thought, she's got two daughters who she raised wrong

how the hell does she think she'll have a positive impact on any other kid? And is this more important than helping kids eat, read, have an equal chance to get out of poverty? Of all the things she could influence, she picks the lamest. I really have no respect for that family, they are so far out of touch with normal people they can begin to understand humility.

[saracat]

27. juvenile delinquents like the one you married?

[Keirsey]

28. Dubya's record as governor

* considered prison time for first-time offenders rehabilitation.

''Incarceration is rehabilitation,'' Bush said during his first gubernatorial campaign, and some critics in the field of criminal justice believe the governor has taken his own words to an extreme.

''Governor Bush has taken a zero-tolerance approach to drugs in the state of Texas,'' said Danny Easterling, a Houston lawyer who heads the 400-member Harris County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. ''He has a `lock 'em up' mentality, as opposed to a give-them-treatment mentality, that is very unfortunate. When you apply that to cocaine possession, it has a lot of people's blood boiling.''

Bush's overall approach to criminals, and particularly to first-time drug felons, causes Texans like Easterling to question Bush's much touted ''compassionate conservatism.'' Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz accuses Bush of ''rampant hypocrisy'' for contemplating cutting welfare benefits to poor people who have abused drugs if, as a presidential candidate, he won't flatly deny that he ever used hard drugs himself.



Easterling said that ''a lot of people are going to jail instead of receiving probation and rehabilitation'' for being found guilty of possessing cocaine in amounts that suggest personal use, not drug dealing. The majority of those being jailed, he said, are minorities and the poor, who can't afford private attorneys and don't get into treatment programs before their cases come to trial. ''They are under a lot of pressure to plead guilty and move on,'' Easterling said.


Critics accuse Bush of slashing substance-abuse treatment programs in Texas prisons.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n912.a07.html

[Hekate]

29. There's a push to make people with pot busts ineligible for college grants

This approach to "rehabilitation" is of course being fomented by those self-same compassionate conservatives.

"Compassion" my Aunt Fanny.

Hekate

[booksenkatz]

30. Charity begins at home, Laura. nt

[Bridget Burke]

33. What's stopping her?

Why didn't she do this her first term as First Lady? or during her time as Governor's wife here in Texas?

And she certainly had lots of free time before that. She dropped her "career" the minute she married, although the twins didn't arrive for a few years. Then she was able to be a "stay at home" mom--although most of the working moms I know have raised their kids better.

[slappypan]

34. Word. She has done diddly squat for the last four years.

I realize that First Lady is kind of an inherently ridiculous role, but I can't recall a First Lady who has contributed less to American public life than Laura Bush. She has no opinions, nothing to offer, and now we are supposed to believe she suddenly wants to hep the poor chilruns. Oh but let's not forget her last-minute crusade against stem cell research — we'll put that on your tombstone, Laura: " I tried to stand in the way of scientific progress."

[Retrograde]

41. beat me to it

what was stopping her the last decade? There's a whole raft of children's programs that could use some help.

[CBHagman]

36. Her actions and words generally contradict the PR.

The conventional wisdom on Laura Welch Bush is that she's a pro-choice former Democrat who wasn't particularly political and was extremely reluctant to make speeches and the like. Oh, and we are also told frequently how devoted she is to education and libraries, and that she tells her husband the hard truths. And we hear how nice she is.

But she quit her career upon marrying Bush, choosing instead to campaign for her husband in his first, failed attempt at public office. So much for the devotion to her life's work and the supposed dislike of politics.

Upon Bush's becoming president, he asked for total elimination of funding for Reading Is Fundamental, as well as cuts to various literacy and library programs. So much for the devotion to reading.

As for the apolitical label, I noticed that Mrs. Bush withdrew the invitations of antiwar poets scheduled to appear at an event at the White House. I also didn't hear anything about her encouraging her husband to meet with, for example, the National Council of Churches or the Congressional Black Caucus, both of which were antiwar. Cynically, the Bush administration did receive a representative from the Vatican, probably to keep those WH-RC relations going.

And I don't recall Laura Bush receiving the most outspoken of 9/11 widows. Perhaps I'm mistaken in that, but what I've always heard is that the administration has been completely unreceptive to the Kristen Breitweisers of the company.

Contrast that with how Hillary Clinton approached her role in the White House, graciously hosting her husband's fiercest enemies in the Congress, receiving Sister Dianna Ortiz, and basically not retreating from life.

So I'm tired of the media proclaiming how fond we are of Laura Bush. This isn't going to cut it, lady.

On edit: And when asked in a Time magazine interview about whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads were unfair to Senator Kerry, Mrs. Bush said, "I don't think so" and cited the fact that there had been "millions" of attacks against her husband. Uh, MILLIONS? Maybe she's counting message boards like this one. Besides, what kind of values do they teach you in Midland, Texas, if you say smearing a decorated veteran is fair? What about supporting the troops? Oops, it doesn't count if you're Max Cleland or John Kerry or John McCain.

How can Laura Bush live with herself when her husband employs Karl Rove and carries on the slimy tradition of Nixon, McCarthy, and Atwater? So much for the "nice" label.

[Bridget Burke]

39. "how fond we are of Laura Bush"

That's an equivalent of our desire to have a beer with her hubby--or our respect for that kindly grandma, her mother-in-law.

[jackieforthedems]

38. Yeah, The Bush Rehab Center - Lol!

She can start with her own family members.

[jwirr]

40. And if he loses

maybe she'll go back to dealing?

[cyr330]

42. She's a fine one to be talking

She's a murderer, plain and simple. She killed her boyfriend in cold blood; she ran him down with her car. Now SHE wants to be helping juvenile delinquents? Gimmme a fucking break!

[Tight_rope]

43. Just 2 words for pickles....'BITCH PLEASE"!

She hasn't done shit for the youth and she expects us to believe that she'll do something if the Chimp were re-selected. Yah right!