words that rhyme or ALMOST rhyme with the word "DAVE"

A senior Obama administration official said Thursday that the United States recognized that the blind dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng wanted to leave China, an apparent reversal of Mr. Chen’s earlier stance that injected new uncertainty into a tense diplomatic situation that had briefly appeared resolved ahead of high-level economic talks here. As the State Department tried to reassess options for Mr. Chen, who according to American officials had eagerly embraced a plan to remain in China, American diplomats were barred from seeing Mr. Chen at the hospital in central Beijing where he is receiving treatment for an injured foot. Speaking from the hospital, Mr. Chen has told reporters in a series of telephone interviews since being admitted on Wednesday afternoon that he and his family feel insecure in the hands of Chinese authorities, and would like to go to the United States.“It is clear now in the last 12 to 15 hours they as a family have had a change of heart about whether they want to stay in China,” said the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland. What had for a short time looked like a deft achievement by American diplomats on Wednesday appeared to rapidly unravel only hours after Mr. Chen’s release and thrust the dissident’s fate into the center of a diplomatic crisis between China and the United States that the Obama administration had sought to avoid during two days of high-level economic and strategic conference meetings attended here by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. The two cabinet members spoke Thursday, along with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. During her speech, Mrs. Clinton urged China to protect human rights, saying “all governments have to answer our citizens’ aspirations for dignity and the rule of law.” Mr. Chen’s dramatic reversal from wanting to stay in China after his escape nearly two weeks ago from harsh house arrest in eastern China and his six-day stay at the American Embassy left the administration struggling to come up with a new solution that would satisfy Mr. Chen, and be amenable to the Chinese government.A key question facing the Obama administration will be the reaction of the Chinese government if Mr. Chen insists on leaving China. If Mr. Chen requested asylum in the United States, he would have to get a passport, and apply for a visa. Another possibility would be Mr. Chen leaving China and going to a third country. For his part, Mr. Chen suggested leaving the country with Mrs. Clinton. “My fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane,” he said in an interview with the Daily Beast. The Chinese government, which issued a harsh statement Wednesday criticizing the United States for its handling of Mr. Chen, skirted the issue on Thursday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, said at a regular briefing at the ministry that Mr. Chen was a free person and, as far as he knew, was living in his town in Shandong Province. The circumstances of Mr. Chen’s departure from the American Embassy on Wednesday were also still in dispute. The American ambassador, Gary Locke, reiterated Thursday that Mr. Chen had not been coerced into leaving the embassy on Wednesday and insisted that the dissident lawyer had left of his free will after a plan had been worked out with the Chinese government that he and his family could relocate to a city close to Beijing where he would pursue his law studies. On Wednesday evening, American officials said they would do all they could to see Mr. Chen starting early Thursday morning. By not being able to talk to Mr. Chen in person, the administration was unable to determine a precise path forward for him, a senior official said. Whether the Chinese government was actively preventing American officials from visiting Mr. Chen in the hospital, even during visiting hours that start at 3 p.m. local time on Thursday, was not immediately clear. But the longer the American officials were cut off from personal contact with Mr. Chen the more difficult it could become for the United States to reach a solution that satisfied the Chinese authorities. American officials spoke to Mr. Chen by telephone Thursday, and met with his wife, Yuan Weijing, at a location near the hospital, the official said. As if to reinforce Mr. Chen’s fears, Chinese authorities on Thursday stepped up their already onerous security restrictions on a number of friends and supporters who had encouraged or helped carry out his flight from Shandong. In a post on Twitter, Zeng Jinyan, a rights activist and wife of Mr. Chen’s ally Hu Jia, said she was visited Wednesday evening by state security agents and ordered confined to her home. “This morning they followed me in a black car when I was sending my child to kindergarten,” she wrote. “They told me they would accommodate my and my child’s needs to go to kindergarten, but I won’t be able to leave my house for a few days. This is the beginning of my house arrest.” Ms. Zeng and some other activists have begun to ask journalists to stop calling them, saying the conversations are endangering their safety. Blind since the age of 1, Mr. Chen is one of the most high-profile human rights dissidents in China. Mrs. Clinton has mentioned his case in public, and the Chinese authorities are aware that he has managed to attract a wide range of Chinese followers who admire his efforts to stop forced abortions. Mr. Chen, 40, served four years in prison on what supporters said were trumped up charges of disrupting traffic and damaging property. After his release in 2010, Mr. Chen was placed under house arrest with his wife and daughter. His eldest son went to school elsewhere and was reunited with Mr. Chen at the hospital on Wednesday. One explanation for Mr. Chen’s reversal was his meeting with his wife at the hospital Wednesday for the first time since his escape from their home. In the telephone interviews with reporters, Mr. Chen, said his wife had vividly described threats against her and their two children by security forces surrounding their house in Shandong. After a harrowing 300-mile journey from his hometown to Beijing, six days sequestered in the American Embassy, and a sudden release into a large Chinese public hospital where he did not have the protection of the American officials he seemed to expect, Mr. Chen was likely traumatized, his steely demeanor in tough times finally punctured. Mr. Chen had plotted his escape over several months but suffered an immediate setback when he injured his foot after jumping over a fence at night while fleeing his home. By the time he reached Beijing, where he was kept for days in a series of safe houses, his foot was causing severe pain and he hobbled as he walked. Since his arrival at the hospital, he appears to have been bombarded with advice by telephone from supporters and advisers, many of them apparently angered by the plan for him to remain in China. His lawyer, Teng Biao, who confirmed Mr. Chen’s change of mind, sent a message via Twitter asking reporters to stop calling Mr. Chen because the family needed rest and “need to make more important calls.” The American officials who negotiated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry to allow Mr. Chen to stay in China, said they consulted frequently with him about the plan to for him to stay in China, but they did not speak at length to his wife, an American official knowledgeable about the process said. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake, the official said. In a telephone interview on Thursday, Ms. Yuan said that her husband had left the Embassy voluntarily, but circumstances had changed after his departure. Under the original plan, China promised to “guarantee his freedom and rights, and the U.S. made some efforts,” she said. “But after he’s out, the situation has not been optimistic and has not been improved.” She said communications with their family had been cut.

buzzsaw

May 3, 2012 at 6:59am Edited

As an Italian-American nothing offends me more than the commercials on tv for the Olive Garden. You ever eat there? What a bunch of dogs***. The food sucks and a real Italian wouldn't be caught dead ordering "the never ending spaghetti bowl" even if it were free. The food is devoid of any real flavor whatsoever and only the whitest mother******r could possibly be tricked into believing that they're experiencing anything "authentic". The commercials usually show you some typical looking Italian family with Brooklyn accents bonding over the free breadsticks at the Olive Garden but that's just not where it's at.