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Clinton was co-hosting a gala Wednesday evening with Prince Albert of Monaco to benefit the Prince Albert II of Monaco and the William J. Clinton Foundations.

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The event drew folks from all walks of life, including  A-listers Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson.

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Clinton, who wore a smile as big as…well…his pockets, was flanked by porn stars Brooklyn Lee, 22 (right) and Tasha Rain, 23 (left).

Lee is quite the accomplished thespian. She is the proud recipient of the highly coveted 2012 AVN Award for best new starlet and she also won an award for “Best Sex Scene” in the highly acclaimed film “Mission Asspossible.” Lee tweeted about her attendance at the gala and of her er…brush with Clinton. Rain’s illustrious film credits include ”Baby Got Boobs 8″ and “Farm Girls Gone Bad.”

Even though ‘Slick Willie’ is photographed with these busty babes, let’s not assume that he had improper relations with any of them.  I repeat, “He did not have sexual relations with these woman!”

Nuff said….

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Clinton tells ABC’s “Good Morning America” he believes likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney will have a difficult time reconciling positions he’s taken during the primary season with what he’ll say against Obama in the fall.

Clinton was asked if Obama can argue that Americans are better off than they were four years ago, as he argued in winning re-election in 1996.

He replies that if Obama can’t make that case, “it is only because of the financial collapse that occurred in September 2008″ before Obama took office.

Clinton says Obama can assert that “we put a floor under the recession and kept it from becoming a depression.”

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Clinton made the remarks Wednesday as he toured a new hospital in Haiti in his role as U.N. special envoy to the impoverished Caribbean country. He said the soldier may not have known he was carrying the bacteria.

Studies have showed that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal likely introduced the disease to Haiti.

An international panel appointed by the United Nations blamed the outbreak on bad sanitation.

Haiti has the world’s highest cholera rate. The disease has sickened more than 526,000 others.

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A radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram claimed Monday it killed 12 soldiers and beheaded three government informants in its bloody wave of sectarian violence against Nigeria’s weak central government. While Clinton never named the sect in a speech Monday night in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos, he admitted he remained “really worried” about the security challenges in Africa’s most populous nation.

“You can’t just have this level of inequality persist. That’s what’s fueling all this stuff,” said Clinton, who appeared along with Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at the ThisDay Awards, an annual ceremony hosted by Nigerian newspaper magnate Nduka Obaigbena.

Poverty is endemic in Nigeria, and corruption has siphoned away billions in oil earnings since the country began exporting crude more than 50 years ago. New government statistics released Monday showed that in Nigeria’s northwest and northeast, regions besieged by Islamic insurgents, about 75 percent of the people live in poverty.

Analysts say that poverty, despite decades of military rule by leaders from the north, coupled with a lack of formal education has driven the region’s exploding youth population toward extremism.

In the last year, Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, has carried out increasingly sophisticated attacks in its campaign to implement strict Islamic law and avenge Muslim killings in Nigeria.

Boko Haram is blamed for killing at least 286 people so far this year, according to an Associated Press count. At least 185 people died in the sect’s coordinated assault in January on Kano, the largest city of Nigeria’s north.

Those attacks have strained relations between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. Clinton called for Nigerians to embrace their similarities, while also asking the government to speed public works projects such as providing electricity to a nation whose people are long accustomed to running their own generators for power.

“It is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with” violence, Clinton said. “You also have to give people something to look forward to when they get up in the morning.”

However, Clinton acknowledged Nigeria cannot rule out using military or police force when dealing with the instability. The unease in the country, as well as the threat of possible Boko Haram violence even in Lagos, could be felt as heavily armed soldiers and officers stood guard outside the luxury hotel as he spoke Monday night.

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Remembering Whitney Houston

Here are our top five most notable sexual harassment cases.

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5. Bill O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly was charged with sexual harassment and sued for $60 million in 2004 by former producer for The O’Reilly Factor Andrea Mackris. Mackris would claim that O’Reilly would sexually harass her and make crude comments about masturbation, threesomes, and Caribbean shower fantasies.

She would later settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

4. Bill Clinton

While Bill Clinton was running for president in 1991, Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee claimed that Clinton pulled down his pants and asked her for oral sex in a hotel room.

Clinton would wind up paying Jones just under one million dollars, despite never admitting guilt just to keep her quiet.

3. Mark Foley

Mark Foley was a Republican congressman from Florida who was also the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Foley became infamous as the first politician caught up in the Internet era of sexual harassment scandals. He was caught sending emails to male congressional pages asking for fellatio and pictures of their penises. He would also send sexually explicit instant messages to young males.

Foley would later enter rehab and claim that he was molested himself.

2. Britney Spears

Britney Spears was sued by former bodyguard Fernando Flores for sexual harassment. Flores would claim that Spears made unwanted sexual advances to him, exposed her private parts to him on numerous occasions, and said that she would abuse her children numerous times.

Spears’ attorney accused the bodyguard of “trying to cash in on Ms. Spears’ celebrity by making salacious claims of misconduct.”

1. Clarence Thomas

When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by former president George H.W. Bush, old allegations of sexual harassment were levied upon him from an attorney who worked for him at the Department Of Education. The woman’s name was Anita Hill.

Hill was called to Senate to testify and said that Thomas made comments about group sex, rape, bestiality, and bragged about his anatomy and sexual prowess to her. She also said he once asked, “Who put a pubic hair on my Coke?”

Thomas was later confirmed despite Hill’s testimony.

Despite the fact that Clinton’s law helped prevent Davis from being given a chance for his case to be reviewed by federal authorities, Clinton recently said in regards to the Davis case that if any DNA evidence or physical evidence is questionable, a review must come.

“In any case where there’s any chance that any DNA evidence could change the outcome of the trial — I think that — this is just me now — I think that the appeals process has to be slowed down and organized so that any evidence of innocence can always be presented and then acted upon,” said Clinton.

Read more at Huffington Post

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In the year 2010, Clinton earned $10.7 million dollars for 52 speaking engagements, and reportedly earned an additional $15 million advancement for his memoir “My Life” and has more than doubled that amount in actual sales.

In the decade since he departed the Oval Office, Clinton has delivered 417 paid speeches with an average of $181, 000 per speech.

Read More At Politico.com

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“I can’t help thinking since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Clinton said at Campus Progress’s annual conference in Washington.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” he added.

Read More At Politico.com

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The Clinton Global Initiative America Jobs Summit’s goal is to share the best ideas and brainstorm new ones, so that individuals, cities, states, and companies can help grow the economy, despite strains in Washington.

The summit was streamed live on the CGI’s website.

Read More At TheDailyBeast.com

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Bill Clinton officiated Weiner’s wedding last year, according to NYPost.com.

Weiner, who admitted Monday that he had sent explicit images and messages to a number of women online, called the former president in the past 48 hours to explain his conduct.

Abedin, who is Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has known the Clinton’s for a long time and was said to be extremely close to the family.

Read more at NYpost.com

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NEW YORK, New York — After a ten year stay, former President Bill Clinton is moving the headquarters of his William J. Clinton Foundation out of “The Black Capital Of America.”

Though Clinton will reportedly be keeping a small office on Harlem’s West 125^th street, most of his nonprofit foundation will be moved downtown to the financial district. Citing the need for space and cost-cutting, the move is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks.

“Price was probably the most paramount factor,” said Roshan Shah, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis, the real estate firm charged with negotiating the foundation’s move.

NY Observer reports:

The move will also allow the foundation to expand from 18,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet, while occupying a single floor instead of potentially being spread out over five. “With every crisis that occurs in the world, when something happens in Haiti,” for example, they need more staff, Mr. Shah noted. “They’ve grown tremendously in terms of size.”

A beloved tenant, Mr. Clinton was welcomed by thousands of Harlem residents in 2001. His foundation has led a number of charitable efforts, including the Harlem Small Business Initiative, child survival programs in Africa, and relief funds for victims of natural disasters around the world.

The presence of the former President also had some unintended consequences, angering longtime Harlem residents who were upset about the subsequent rise in the neighborhood’s property values.

Next week NewsOne will be hitting the streets of Harlem to see if people are sad to see “Bubba” go or if it’s good riddance!

Be sure to check it out on the next edition of On The Corner.

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“Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation” to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a department statement attributed to the office of the spokesman. In a separate statement released simultaneously, Clinton said she had accepted the resignation “with regret.”

Crowley’s comments about the conditions for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., reverberated quickly, from the small audience in Massachusetts where Crowley spoke, to a White House news conference Friday where Obama was asked to weigh in on the treatment of the 23-year-old believed responsible for the largest leak of classified American documents ever.

Manning is being held in solitary confinement for all but an hour every day, and is stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed. His lawyer calls the treatment degrading. Amnesty International says the treatment may violate Manning’s human rights.

Crowley, who retired as colonel from the Air Force in 1999 after 26 years in the military, was quoted as telling students at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology seminar on Thursday that he didn’t understand why the military was handling Manning’s detention that way, and calling it “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” Crowley also said “Manning is in the right place” in military detention.

A day later, Obama was asked about Crowley’s remarks at a news conference. He replied that he had asked the Pentagon whether the confinement conditions were appropriate and whether they met basic standards. “They assure me that they are,” the president said. He declined to elaborate when pressed on whether he disagreed with Crowley’s assessment.

Crowley’s resignation statement said that his comments about Bradley’s pre-trial detention “were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

In her statement, Clinton said Crowley, 60, who was a spokesman for the National Security Council in President Bill Clinton’s White House, “has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian.” She said his service was “motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy.”

Although Clinton had warm words upon Crowley’s departure, he never got along with the secretary’s inner circle. He was well-liked by the press corps, but his often unusually blunt remarks from the State Department podium got him into trouble and he had not traveled with Clinton on overseas trips in more than a year.

His departure had been expected in the coming months, but officials said the fact that the president was asked about his comments on Manning led the White House to push for him to go sooner. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel decision.

Crowley will be replaced as assistant secretary of state for public affairs by Mike Hammer, a foreign service officer who recently finished a stint as the NSC spokesman at the White House and was serving as Crowley’s deputy. The department is expected to look for a new full-time spokesman to serve as the face of U.S. diplomacy, the officials said.

The WikiLeaks case has put the State Department in a difficult position with numerous allies and other countries because of the candid and often unflattering assessments of world leaders contained in the leaked diplomatic cables. Crowley and his staff had walked a fine line in trying to answer questions about the documents while not being in a position to confirm the existence or the accuracy of the classified material.

The release of the cables was denounced by U.S. officials, who said it put countless lives at risk by revealing the identities of people working secretly with the U.S. While thousands of the cables have been released, the bulk of those downloaded have not been made public.

Manning was charged in July with mishandling and leaking classified data and putting national security at risk in connection with the release of a military video of an attack on unarmed men in Iraq.

In early March, the Army filed 22 new charges, including aiding the enemy, a crime that can bring the death penalty or life in prison.

The charges involve the suspected distribution by the military analyst of more than 250,000 confidential State Department cables as well as a raft of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. Thousands of the documents have been published on the website of the anti-secrecy group.

Although aiding the enemy is a capital offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Army prosecutors have notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the two-star general who is in charge of proceeding with legal action.

Trial proceedings against Manning have been on hold since July, pending the results of a medical inquiry into Manning’s mental capacity and responsibility.

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Roland Martin joins John King on the set of JKUSA to discuss Rahm Emanuel’s run for the Chicago Mayor’s office with Andy Shaw.

Roland, Shaw and King also discuss Emanuel’s relationship with the African-American community, Bill Clinton campaigning for him and his volatile personality.

WATCH:

Washington — Former President Bill Clinton sought to use his clout with Democratic lawmakers to get President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans passed over the objections of lawmakers in his own party

“This is a good bill,” Clinton said about the compromise agreement Obama reached with congressional Republicans to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits beyond this year.

Standing alongside Obama after the two men met private in the Oval Office Dec. 10, Clinton called the deal a “significant net plus.” Still, he said he understands the resistance from congressional Democrats to keeping Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and to an estate-tax provision that would set the top rate at 35 percent after a $5 million tax-free allowance per individual.

Read more at Bloomberg

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Washington — This week’s WikiLeaks document release will cost lives and jobs, former President Bill Clinton said in his first public comments on the issue that has embroiled his wife’s State Department.

“I’ll be very surprised if some people don’t lose their lives,” Clinton said while speaking in North Carolina on Tuesday night. “And goodness knows how many will lose their careers.”

Hillary Clinton has said that WikiLeaks’ acts are illegal and the former president echoed that view, saying that the site’s founder and editor Julian Assange knows he did something criminal. “That doesn’t mean that he did succeed in evading the reach of American law,” Bill Clinton said, the Associated Press reported.

Read entire article at Politico.com

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The international community has promised to give Haiti more than $5 billion. But yet these people are living on a median.
VIDEO:

This latest disaster couldn’t have come at a worse time: Haiti was already struggling to recover from last January’s earthquake that killed 300,000 people.

To read entire article at CBSNews.com

I tell you what I think about that. I know this is kind of a funny question for you to ask me. But I think—you know, my daughter introduced me to rap and hip hop music after I said some things she thought were not very smart. She said, “Dad, you need to listen, all these people are smart.” This guy’s smart. And he’s got abilities. And he’s got a new chance now. And what I hope is that this is not just something to brand him as a cool guy, but that it’ll never happen again to him.

You know, I think a lot of these people, they don’t get successful in that—just like in any other area of life—by being really dumb. They’re really smart. But a lot of them had tough lives and they almost think it’s cool to get in trouble every now and then, or they don’t know how to stay out. But what I hope will happen is that he has a good life now.

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Rep. Kendrick Meek said it was “absolutely not true” that he ever agreed to any kind of deal with former President Bill Clinton to drop out of the Florida Senate race, in an interview shortly before 9 p.m. ET Thursday with CNN contributor Roland S. Martin.

“The president came down to do an event for me in Orlando and St. Petersburg. We talk politics all the time. He said I heard this thing about you getting out. I said, ‘I’m not getting out.’ I said Charlie Crist needs to get out of the race. And that was that,” Meek said.

“The whole thing about a chartered plane is untrue. The whole thing about a rally planned is untrue. This whole thing, I don’t know where it came from. I know the discussions I had with the president wasn’t about some sort of wrapped deal with me getting out of the race. I’m not getting out the race,” Crist said.

When asked whether it was true that he confirmed twice to Clinton that he would get out, Meek said: “Not true. Absolutely not true. That’s just where it is. That’s not the case.”

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.

The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin.

With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful.

Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food.

“There are truly lives at stake, and the idea that folks are spending more time finger-pointing than getting this solved is almost unbelievable,” said John Simon, a former U.S. ambassador to the African Union who is now with the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank.

Nor is Haiti getting much from other donors. Some 50 other nations and organizations pledged a total of $8.75 billion for reconstruction, but just $686 million of that has reached Haiti so far — less than 15 percent of the total promised for 2010-11.

The lack of funds has all but halted reconstruction work by CHF International, the primary U.S.-funded group assigned to remove rubble and build temporary shelters. Just 2 percent of rubble has been cleared and 13,000 temporary shelters have been built — less than 10 percent of the number planned.

The Maryland-based agency is asking the U.S. government for $16.5 million to remove more than 21 million cubic feet of additional rubble and build 4,000 more temporary houses out of wood and metal.

“It’s just a matter of one phone call and the trucks are out again. We have contractors ready to continue removing rubble. … We have local suppliers and international suppliers ready to ship the amount of wood and construction materials we need,” said CHF country director Alberto Wilde. “It’s just a matter of money.”

Last week the inaction bore tragic results. On Friday an isolated storm destroyed an estimated 8,000 tarps, tents and shacks in the capital and killed at least six people, including two children. And the threat of violence looms as landowners threaten entire camps with forced eviction.

In Washington there is confusion about the money. At a July hearing, Ravij Shah, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, thanked members of Congress for approving the funds, saying, “The resources are flowing and are being spent in country.”

It wasn’t true then, and still hasn’t happened.

When the earthquake hit, U.S. agencies sent troops, rescuers, aid workers and supplies to the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince. On March 24, President Barack Obama asked Congress for $2.8 billion in emergency aid to Haiti — about half to pay back money already spent by USAID, the Defense Department and others. An additional $212 million was to write off debt.

The heart of the request was $1.15 billion in new reconstruction funds.

A week later, Clinton touted that figure in front of representatives of 50 nations at the U.N. secretariat, the president of Haiti at her side.

“If the effort to rebuild is slow or insufficient, if it is marked by conflict, lack of coordination or lack of transparency, then the challenges that have plagued Haiti for years could erupt with regional and global consequences,” Clinton said.

That was nearly six months ago. It took until May for the Senate to pass a supplemental request for the Haiti funds and until July for the House to do the same. The votes made $917 million available but did not dictate how or when to spend it. Without that final step, the money remains in the U.S. Treasury.

Then came summer recess, emergencies in Pakistan and elsewhere, and the distractions of election politics.

Now the authorization bill that would direct how the aid is delivered remains sidelined by a senator who anonymously pulled it for further study. Through calls to dozens of senators’ offices, the AP learned it was Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma.

“He is holding the bill because it includes an unnecessary senior Haiti coordinator when we already have one” in U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, Coburn spokeswoman Becky Bernhardt said.

The bill proposes a new coordinator in Washington who would not oversee U.S. aid but would work with the USAID administrator in Washington to develop a rebuilding strategy. The position would cost $1 million a year for five years, including salaries and expenses for a staff of up to seven people.

With the bill on hold, the State Department is trying to move the money along by avoiding Congress as much as possible. It sent lawmakers a “spending plan” on Sept. 20 and gave legislators 15 days to review it. If they fail to act on the plan, the money could be released as soon as specific projects get the OK.

“We need to make sure that the needs of the Haitian people are not sacrificed to procedural and bureaucratic impediments,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry told the AP by e-mail. “As we approach nine months since the earthquake, further delays on any side are unacceptable.”

Asked when the money will actually come, State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet said the department expects to start spending in the coming weeks and months. He added that $275 million in “bridge” funds were released in March and have gone toward agriculture, work, health and shelter programs — not long-term reconstruction.

Haitian advocates say that is not enough.

Jean-Claude Bajeuax of the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights in Port-au-Prince said this phase was supposed to be about building semi-permanent houses.

“Where are they? We haven’t seen them,” he said. “There is not much money that is being used. There is not much work that has actually been done.”

Of course there is no guarantee that the money would lead to the successful rebuilding of Haiti. Many past U.S. aid efforts have fallen short.

“I don’t think (the money) will make any difference,” said Haitian human rights advocate Pierre Esperance. “Haitian people are not really involved in this process.”

But officials agree the funds could pay for new approaches to make Haiti more sustainable, and rebuilding projects could improve millions of lives.

The AP found that $874 million of the funds pledged by other countries at the donors conference was money already promised to Haiti for work or aid before the quake. An additional $1.13 million wasn’t ever going to be sent; it was debt relief. And $184 million was in loans to Haiti’s government, not aid.

The Office of the Special Envoy has been tracking the money delivered so far but does not know who got it. The envoy himself, former President Bill Clinton, told the AP in July and again in August that he was putting pressure on donors to meet their pledges.

On the streets of Haiti, many simply feel abandoned. Mishna Gregoire, 22, said she was happy when she heard about the donors conference. But six months later she is still in a tarp city with 5,000 other people, on a foul-smelling plaza in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville.

“I thought it was something serious they were really going to do,” Gregoire said, standing amid tarps torn apart by the sudden storm. “But nothing has been done. And I don’t think anything will be done.”

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Barack Obama introduced his wife, Michelle at the Clinton Global Initiative, and praised her “moral voice” according to Politico.

“While I get plenty of good advice from a lot of people during the course of the day, at the end of each day, it is Michelle — her moral voice, her moral center — that cuts through all the noise in Washington and reminds me of why I’m there in the first place,” he added, praising her work as “a partner to me, and the best mother that I know.”

Read The Whole Story

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A former soldier arrested after a hostage incident at a military base in Georgia faces multiple charges that include threatening to kill President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to federal court documents filed Tuesday.

Robert Anthony Quinones, 29, of Hinesville, Georgia, was arrested Monday after the two-hour hostage situation at Winn Community Hospital on Fort Stewart, about 45 miles from Savannah, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Officials and a family member said he had demanded mental health care at the hospital.

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Behind The Scenes At The White House

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Quinones is charged with assault of a federal officer and kidnapping in the incident, which ended with the gunman’s surrender and no injuries.

After he was taken into custody and during interviews, Quinones “expressed his plans, preparation and intentions to kill President Obama and former President Clinton,” according to an affidavit filed in federal cour. “Quinones detailed his studies of Secret Service protocols, sniper techniques and means of disguise and weapons concealment to implement his assassination plans.”

A search of his residence resulted in the discovery of 11 long guns, four pistols, multiple rounds of ammunition and dozens of bayonets and knives, according to the affidavit.

Authorities also found books and manuals about FBI hostage rescue teams, Osama bin Laden, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the Russian Mafia and other topics, according to the affidavit signed by FBI and Secret Service agents.

Read entire article at CNN.com

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I’m in love with Michelle Obama and out of respect I wish Barack a long and prosperous life because if anything should happen to the brother, I’m changing my last name, becoming RK Onassis, and stepping up like, “Michelle… what’s good?”

And it’s not just because she’s a “big, fine woman” in the Juvenile sense of the expression, it’s also that she embodies all the possibilities that we’ve come to expect when we decided that Black females were Superwomen except that she’s actually made all those grandiose positive stereotypes come to life.

She makes marrying a nanny and subsequently having to cough up $750 million in the aftermath look patently absurd.

And remember when she was the fine young lawyer, already a partner in her firm, who refused to date Barack because he was a bum at the time?

Now see her as the First Lady. And make no mistake; she’s the reason that Barack is President. Without her, Mr. Obama becomes Harold Ford.

So you can imagine that it burns me to no end when, not only is Michelle Obama criticized, but she’s criticized ridiculously and unfairly.

This latest media escapade paints Mrs. Obama as “Marie Antoinette” (dig, the same Marie Antoinette that was justifiably guillotined during the French Revolution) simply because she vacationed with daughter Sasha in Spain– and looked fantastic while doing so.

Now c’mon! You bozos should have known better than to expect a stay at home mom as your First Lady since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt!

You’ve been electing co-presidents at the very least since Bill and Hillary Clinton and possibly even since John and Abigail Adams.

Her simple-minded critics seem to forget one thing: as the world’s most visible woman, Michelle Obama has all the top designers literally Kamikaze-ing themselves trying to get her to wear their creations.

She probably doesn’t pay for clothes at all except in those girly-girl moments that overtake all women when they feel the irrepressible urge to go on a quest for the perfect scarf, gloves or shoes—and maybe not even then.

The idea that the beautiful, cultured, poised, sophisticated and accomplished Michelle Obama should represent our country abroad in anything but the highest form and the grandest manner is an affront, not only to women everywhere, but indeed to these very United States of America.

Click here to view photos:

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While our sister site asks if a bad husband can be a good father, I’m convinced that a good man has been perhaps the worst president of all time.

George W. Bush is a good man. All evidence suggests he’s been faithful to his wife. He’s raised two beautiful daughters. He’s been true to his Christian Faith. He is honest.

But when you take over a country that has no debt, no war and turn it into a nation in extreme debt with two wars, you didn’t do a good job. Say what you want about that pig Bill Clinton, he ran an effective nation. The country was in the black when he left. Nobody wanted it with us.

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When W left, we were tussling with Iraq and Afghanistan (of all people!) and we were deep in the hole to Red China. Barack Obama must have felt like he was coming in on the losing side of a fourth quarter blowout. But the Christians wanted a Christian. A real one. Not some guy that would forever sully the definition of “intern,” making it something vile and degenerate to the point now when even males under such title are looked at strangely and regarded with suspicion.

So the people elected Bush (actually, the people didn’t—Bush had the Supreme Court tell them that they did).

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And as soon as W gets in office, New York City is looking like a war zone. The only good news is that David Dinkins wasn’t mayor at the time and David Paterson wasn’t governor.

But I give W credit.

When Misty May-Treanor, the white girl with the biggest butt in beach volley ball stuck her butt out for Bush to smack, he took a swipe at the top of her back and deliberately missed. He wasn’t gonna disrespect his wife on television. Good move, Georgie. And when that Iraqi nut Muntadhar al Zeidi tried to bean our guy with his shoes, our Prez, dipped both attempts like a dodge ball champ or a cheerleader.

Happy Trails, Mr. Bush.

It might not have even been as bad as it seemed—but it probably was.

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

On his commitment:

“I don’t want to be naive. It’s going to be a stretch. It’ll be hard, but I’m excited about it. Enough so that after a couple of heart incidents and being sixty-three years old, I am prepared to spend three years on it. They want the right things for their country.”

On cleaning up the devastation:

“You may have seen where someone said it may take us two and a half years to clean the rubble out of Port-au-Prince even if we had a thousand trucks all working round the clock, because of the volume of material… That’s premised on the assumption that the roads are bad, and we have to take the rubble out to centralized dumps and all that.” He shifts from one hip to the other, then sits forward. “So I got ‘em working on a thing now where they go into, let’s say, a two-square-block area, and let’s say there are twenty lots that are devastated. They collect all the rubble and store it right there on two or three lots, whatever you have to do. You clear the others out and let people rebuild by lottery…. We’re going to have to be clever, but if people can see the homes coming back, and if we could put many, many more people to work, I think that would make a huge difference.”

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OPINION: SLOW EARTHQUAKE DEBRIS REMOVAL HINDERS HAITI’S RECOVERY

ONE MONTH AFTER THE HAITI EARTHQUAKE, AMERICARES RELIEF STILL DESPERATELY NEEDED

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton officially inaugurated the commission overseeing Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction on Thursday, pledging to accelerate and organize a process that has raised less than 1 percent of the money promised by international donors.

The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission aims to oversee every rebuilding dollar that comes to Haiti through next year. The hope is that it will ensure transparency and encourage investment, helping transform a dysfunctional, cripplingly poor country crushed by the Jan. 12 earthquake into a self-sustaining nation with a prosperous middle class.

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“The prime minister and I have made a commitment to the people of Haiti and the people of the world to make this process both transparent and accountable,” Clinton told reporters before the meeting.

Outside the cracked, upscale hotel where it met in a convention room, a better future seems a long way off. More than five months after Port-au-Prince shook, collapsed buildings line the streets and families live under leaky tarps at risk from floods, hunger and disease. Rebuilding has been hampered by organizational problems, government disfunction and the scale of the disaster itself.

Long-term money has also been slow to arrive. Some $3 billion has been committed for humanitarian aid such as immediate post-disaster rescue, medical care, emergency shelter and food, according to the United Nations.

But despite international pledges of some $5.3 billion over two years at the United Nations donors’ conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered — just $40 million from Brazil. Though other pledges are expected to be delivered soon, much of that to be held in a Multi-Donor Trust Fund administered by the World Bank, Haitians are growing restless.

Enter the commission. The 26-member body was empowered under an 18-month emergency declaration by Parliament passed shortly before most members’ terms expired and the body essentially dissolved last month.

Half its voting members are Haitian officials, the rest representatives of each donor pledging at least $100 million or $200 million of debt relief: the United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, Norway, Venezuela, Japan, European Union, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. President Rene Preval has a veto.

The concept is that the commission will oversee the spending of every donation above $500,000 to Haiti. Organizations will present their projects to the fund, needing its approval to get government and other support to move forward. The process will be tracked on the commission’s website.

On Thursday, Clinton and Bellerive announced the commission’s first approved spending projects:

_ $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.

_ $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.

_ A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses, provided by Mexican communications magnate Carlos Slim and Canadian mining investor Frank Guistra.

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

Rush Limbaugh has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Liberals and the Violence Card.”

The crux of the op-ed is that conservative protests like the tea-party are not driven by hate but “by a love of what America stands for.” In making his argument, Limbaugh attacks Presidents Obama and Clinton and responds to TIME’s Joe Klein, who last week accused him of sedition.

“Like the millions of citizens who’ve peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society,” Limbaugh wrote. “I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who’ve condemned this society?”

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Limbaugh also responds directly to President Clinton, who in a speech last week tied the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to anger incited by “talk radio” hosts like Limbaugh.

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OPINION: The Tea Party Is Channeling The Confederacy

Bill Clinton Likens Tea Party Anger To Timothy McVeigh

Bill Clinton gave a speech to the Center for American Progress on the anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma city. He compared the political climate of today to the time when McVeigh committed his act of domestic terrorism. He said:

This tea party movement can be a healthy thing if they are making us justify every dollar of taxes we raise and every dollar of money we’ve spent,But when you get mad, sometimes you end up producing the exact opposite result of what you say you are for.

What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should hold less passion for the positions we hold, but that our words really do matter. There is this vast echo chamber, and the words fall on the serious and delirious alike

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From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — For years, Bill Clinton tried to negotiate an arms control treaty for the post-cold-war era. He and Boris Yeltsin even agreed on a framework for a new Start treaty in Helsinki. But it never came to be. So when President Obama flies to Prague this week to sign a New Start treaty with Russia, it will culminate Mr. Clinton’s unfulfilled aspiration.

Nine years after Mr. Clinton left office, Mr. Obama has in some ways picked up his Democratic predecessor’s mantle. While they are very different presidents and not personally close, at least some of the unfinished agenda items left from the Clinton administration have found their way to the top of the Obama priority list. And the 44th president is arguably profiting from the work, and the setbacks, of the 42nd president.

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The treaty to be signed this week and the health care overhaul signed into law last month represent the most obvious examples. But Mr. Obama also pushed through an economic stimulus package last year, which Mr. Clinton tried unsuccessfully to do in his first year. Mr. Obama has drawn bipartisan support for lifting the ban on gay men and lesbians’ serving openly in the military, an idea that backfired on Mr. Clinton. And where Mr. Clinton never submitted the Kyoto treaty to a hostile Senate, Mr. Obama is pushing forward with climate change legislation that has a shot at passing.

Other presidents have built on the policy agendas of predecessors. George W. Bush fashioned his presidency as an extension of Ronald Reagan’s, especially in cutting taxes. And Franklin D. Roosevelt completed the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, particularly in building a lasting international organization with American participation.

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In this video it seems as if former President, George W. Bush is trying to clean his hands on Bill Clinton’s shirt after shaking hands with a Haitian man on their trip for earthquake relief.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — One restored a Haitian president to power; the other flew him back out again. Former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are visiting Haiti on Monday, reminding the country of its tumultuous recent past just as frustration over an uneven earthquake relief effort is bringing politics back to the surface.

The ex-presidents are spearheading U.S. fundraising in response to the Jan. 12 earthquake. Tapped by President Barack Obama for the role, they are making the one-day visit to assess recovery needs.

Charged memories of their policies toward the impoverished Caribbean nation are already mixing with frustration over deplorable living conditions among the 1.3 million homeless quake survivors. Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have scheduled protests for Monday – demanding the return of their exiled leader and pleading for more aid.

“We are going to bring our message to the presidents, that our situation here is no good. The way people are living in Haiti is no way for anyone to live,” said Fanfan Fenelon, a 30-year-old resident of the Bel Air slum.

Monday will be Bush’s first trip to Haiti. Clinton, who is the U.N. special envoy to the country, has made two visits since the quake and five in the past two years. He also visited as president.

The pair will arrive in a country struggling to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Hundreds of thousands still live in dangerous camps, some already flooding ahead of the April rainy season.

On Sunday, a small earthquake caused an apartment building to collapse in the northern city of Cap-Haitien, killing at least three people, according to U.N. spokesman Louicius Eugene. Three people were rescued from the rubble.

President Rene Preval’s government has criticized non-governmental organizations for not being accountable to the Haitian state. In turn, Haitian officials have been accused of ineffectiveness and corruption. On Tuesday, a group of Haitian and U.S. human-rights advocates will ask the Organization of American States for an inquiry into why $2.2 billion in aid has not helped more people.

Those exchanges will only grow more heated with the approach of the March 31 donors’ conference at the United Nations, where the Haitian government will ask for $11.5 billion.

Enter Clinton and Bush, an unlikely duo that have arguably shaped Haiti’s history as much as anyone alive today.

Clinton presided over a refugee crisis borne of the 1991 ouster of Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president. He returned Aristide to power in 1994 with a force of 20,000 U.S. troops.

Many of the country’s elite have disliked him ever since. Aristide’s luster dimmed for others as his two nonconsecutive terms gave way to accusations of rigged elections, pocketed foreign aid and attacks on opponents.

Bush is acutely remembered by many Haitians – especially the thousands in Port-au-Prince’s teeming slums – as the U.S. leader whose administration chartered the plane that flew Aristide back into exile during a 2004 rebellion, then backed an interim government that carried out reprisals against his supporters.

“We don’t have a very good ‘souvenir’ of President Bush, as you might suppose,” said Patrick Elie, who served as a defense official under both Aristide and Preval. “I hope that this crisis is not another opportunity to weaken the Haitian state even more.”

Business leaders and others in positions of power are excited for the presidents’ visit.

“The fact that two presidents of the United States are coming to visit is proof that the subject of the reconstruction of Haiti is not a partisan issue,” said Patrick Delatour, Haiti’s tourism minister and part-owner of a construction company who was tasked by Preval with leading reconstruction efforts.

The nonprofit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised $37 million from 220,000 individuals including Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 million, and Obama, who among other donations gave $200,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize. About $4 million has gone to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, the University of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish charity Concern Worldwide.

The rest has yet to be allocated. There is heated discussion, inside Haiti and out, about where future funds should go.

James Morrell, director of the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project, said he welcomes the ex-presidents’ efforts but that government corruption will block any serious effort to develop the country.

“They need to go back to Obama and say, ‘Let’s not put all our eggs in one basket,’” he said.

Others want nothing to do with the visit at all.

“Those people have a lot of money. They could do something for Haiti, but they haven’t done it,” said So An, a powerful leader of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party. “I don’t want any words from now on, I want action.”

On a street corner in the Bel Air slum this weekend the debate over the presidents’ visit was already under way.

Neighbors crowded into a narrow alley behind partially collapsed buildings to shout their opinions: Bush is bad, Preval ineffective and Clinton disappointing as U.N. envoy.

But all agreed – they’ll take any help they can get.

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