Cheating Scandals Show Flaws In “No Child Left Behind”

The law, a Bush-era education initiative passed with bipartisan support, has grown increasingly unpopular as more schools risk being labeled a failure.
Under the plan Obama was to outline Friday, states would be allowed to ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law’s requirements if they meet certain conditions. That includes enacting standards to prepare students for college and careers and setting evaluation standards for teachers and principals.

“To help states, districts and schools that are ready to move forward with education reform, our administration will provide flexibility from the law in exchange for a real commitment to undertake change,” Obama said in a statement Thursday. “The purpose is not to give states and districts a reprieve from accountability, but rather to unleash energy to improve our schools at the local level.”

The administration says it is acting because Congress has been slow to address the issues by rewriting the law.

But Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who chairs the House Education Committee, has questioned whether the Education Department has the authority to offer waivers in exchange for changes it supports. He’s said the president has allowed “an arbitrary timeline” to dictate when Congress should get the law rewritten and that the committee needs more time to develop its proposals.

Kline on Thursday called the administration’s plan a political move and said he could not support a process that sets a precedent by granting the education secretary “sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers.”

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking member on the Senate committee that oversees education, said the president’s plan would undermine the policymaking authority of Congress.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said the plan would not undermine efforts in Congress because the waivers could serve as a bridge until Congress acts.

Duncan said the emphasis would be more on growth than on test scores.

“We can’t have a law on the books that’s slowing down progress, that’s slowing down innovation,” he said Thursday in Joplin, Mo., where schools were left in ruins after a tornado in May.

The No Child Left Behind law passed in 2001 with widespread bipartisan support and much fanfare. It sought to hold schools more accountable for student performance and get better qualified teachers into the classrooms. It also offered school choice and extra tutoring to students attending schools deemed failing.

In Obama’s plan, states granted waivers would have more control over how troubled schools are handled, although to qualify for a waiver they would have to show they had a plan to help low-performing schools. A majority of states are expected to apply for waivers, which will be given to qualified states early next year.

Critics say the law placed too much emphasis on standardized tests, raising the stakes so high for school districts that it may have driven some school officials to cheat. In particular, the requirement that all students be on grade level in math and reading by 2014 has been hugely unpopular.

Duncan has warned that 82 percent of schools next year could fail to reach proficiency requirements and thus be labeled “failures,” although some experts questioned the figure.

He has said it is “dishonest” for schools to be labeled as failing if they are showing real improvements and that the law is creating a “slow-motion educational train wreck.” Duncan also has said that many states under the law have lowered standards instead of making them more rigorous.

The law has been due for a rewrite since 2007. Obama and Duncan had asked Congress to overhaul it by the start of this school year but a growing ideological divide in Congress has complicated efforts to do so.

The GOP-led House Education Committee has forwarded three bills that would revamp aspects of the law but has yet to fully tackle some of the more contentious issues such as teacher effectiveness and accountability.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a former U.S. education secretary, said waivers should be limited.

Yahoo reports:

According to a new Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of those surveyed say Bush is responsible for the “current condition” of the economy, compared to just 27 percent who blame Obama. Among self-described independent voters, a key 2012 voting bloc, the number shifts slightly: 49 percent point the finger at the former GOP president, while 24 percent blame Obama.

Read The Whole Story At Yahoo

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TEXAS – Former President George W. Bush, who spent years searching for Osama bin Laden, had two words for President Barack Obama when Obama told him of the al Qaeda leader’s death: “Good call.”

Bush, who has shied away from the public eye since leaving office in January 2009, spoke about the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in remarks to a conference of hedge fund managers. An ABC News contributor attended the event and reported on them.

Bush said he was eating souffles at a Dallas restaurant with his wife, Laura, and two friends when he got word that Obama, his successor as president, was trying to reach him.

“I excused myself and went home to take the call,” Bush said. “Obama simply said, ‘Osama bin Laden is dead.’”

After Obama described in detail the secret U.S. raid on Osama’s compound in Pakistan and the decision he made to go ahead with the mission, Bush said he told Obama: “Good call.”

ABC News said Bush told the group that bin Laden’s death was a victory for the American people and “a great victory in the war on terror.”

He said U.S. intelligence services deserve a lot of credit for tracking down bin Laden and spoke of meeting in Afghanistan with Navy SEAL Team Six, the highly skilled strike team that reportedly conducted the raid.

“They are awesome, skilled, talented and brave,” he added. “I said, ‘I hope you have everything you need. One guy said, ‘We need your permission to go into Pakistan and kick ass.’”

Bush escalated a U.S. hunt for bin Laden after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, but the al Qaeda leader escaped from the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan and ended up living in a large house in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, apparently for years.

Bush’s predecessor, President Bill Clinton, launched missile strikes against bin Laden’s compound in Afghanistan in 1998 in an unsuccessful effort to kill bin Laden following al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa.

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We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Read The Whole Story

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Click here for NewsOne’s latest updates on death of Osama Bin Laden

On my blog in 2008, just weeks before Obama’s election, I wrote about the Bush /Republican war strategy:

Instead of using covert operations and espionage that might create real intelligence about terrorists, they launch hamhanded, full-scale invasions of countries, which is kind of like trying to swat a fly with a construction crane.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were questionable by any moral, ethical standard, or religious or otherwise. But  a few of us Americans in the hip-hop generation saw in those campaigns the violation of another code of conduct, lesser known but no less true:

Number Two: Never let em know your next move/
Don’t you know bad boys move in silence or violence?

– “Ten Crack Commandments,” The Notorious B.I.G.

The Republicans of Bush and Cheney’s ilk fancied themselves tough guys, and caricatured liberals and Democrats as pie-in-the-sky peaceniks and wimpy warriors. But these conservative chicken hawks were terrible at war. Their “smoke-em-out yeee-hah” cowboy foreign policy ultimately cost the world exponentially more lives than were lost on 9/11 and didn’t focus on the people who truly threatened our homeland. The neo-cons, armchair warriors all, didn’t know the first thing about true grit.

Link: The 11 Most Compelling 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Even Biggie could have told them: The conflicts of the 21st century require the patience, forethought, caution, and most importantly, the reticence that Obama promised to bring to bear. Last night, those philosophies triumphed over Bush’s brutal bombast and imprudence.

Like many liberals, I’ve found Obama’s tragic flaw to be his addiction to moderation and his compulsive need to be seen as a conciliator. But the War on Terror has proved to be one area where his restraint has proven potent, and deadly to his enemies. I only wish he’d move in for the kill with his domestic political enemies to push the policies that the weakened middle class and poor so desperately need.

He might. Obama has proven, once and for all, that he understands the value of stealth, and — in a life or death situation — is surprisingly good with the knife.

Dan Charnas is the Editorial Director of NewsOne.com, and the author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (New American Library/Penguin, 2010).

Click here for NewsOne’s latest updates on death of Osama Bin Laden

Link: The 11 Most Compelling 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

But Republicans are still saying that Obama did not deserve the education he worked hard for, that affirmative action caused his success, not his intelligence and hard work. Still they are correct the President did not deserve an Ivy League education, but that President is not Obama but former President George W. Bush.

Would George Bush be able to attend the prestigious Andover private school, Yale and Harvard business school if not for his famous, wealthy father and family? Bush was a mediocre student at Andover who never made the honor roll in his three years at Andover, despite the fact that 110 of his classmates did. Bush’s SAT scores were 200 points less than the Yale median of accepted students.

At Yale Bush was known more as a hard partier than an intelligent hard working student. He bragged to Yale students in 2001:

“To the C students, I say, ‘You too can be president of the United States,”

Despite the fact that he was a draft dodger, with a poor academic record and no success at business, Bush was accepted to the prestigious Harvard Business School. Unlike Obama, at Harvard, Bush did not graduate with any distinctions.

Like the attacks on Obama’s birth origin, the attacks on his education are based on racism. If Obama was not qualified to attend Harvard how did he graduate Magna Cum Laude and become President of the Harvard Law Review?

Obama transferred from Occidental to Columbia after two years. Columbia has a rigid core curriculum that normally takes students four years to accomplish and normally discourages students from transferring to Columbia, yet he still managed to graduate on time.

The fact that Bush, who was regarded by most people in the world as unintelligent did not face any questions from the right wing about his “legacy” education, and Obama’s education is being attacked as affirmative action shows the hypocrisy of the right wing media and Republicans.

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One of the main reasons that most of us that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, did so was because we were so sure that never again, under his watch at least, would an American president anoint himself “God” like George W. Bush had so clearly done and decide that he should dictate policy for the rest of the world.

Hell, we were already hemorrhaging American lives in two foreign wars—Iraq and Afghanistan—and we believed, well, I did at least, that this new guy would be shrewd enough to let the premieres and the people of other countries decide upon their own leadership.

Yet, here we go again.

Now, under the premise that Libyan strong man Muammar Qadaffi-Qaddhafi-Gaddafi-Kaddafi-Khadafy-Qadhafi-Qadaffi-Gadaffi or whatever, has violated a newly instituted UN sponsored “no-fly zone”, the United States, in conjunction with France, Canada, Great Britain and Italy has bombed the crap out of the Libyan coast, all while a civil war continues to rage on the country’s North African home front.

Not good.

Now, while I’m not gonna side with an obvious dictator, I will make these two points:

1)      If my brother and I were fighting and you jumped in on either side, don’t be surprised when we team up to kick your ass.

2)      If a gang of my neighbors decided that I should no longer be allowed into my living room because I could hatch some nefarious plot from there and then threw a Molotov cocktail through my window as I sat down to watch the Knicks, expect me to be pissed!

Unlike that “thing” with Iraq where a rip-off to profit the oil-rich cronies of our last president was clearly the reason that we went to war, I’m still struggling to find any kind of logic whatsoever for attacking Libya.

One commenter in the newspaper that I read online jokingly suggested that the tomahawk missiles we now have in stock must be growing old and that we’re probably only using them to make room for newer inventory.

This would actually make more sense than anything else I can think of.

Still, when our own Barack Obama says something as ridiculous as, “We cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy,” I wonder if he realizes who he sounds exactly like.

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In his journal, the college student from Saudi Arabia who studied chemical engineering in Texas described a plan to travel to New York City, place bombs in several rental cars for remote detonation and leave the vehicles in different places during rush hour, according to court documents released Thursday.

“After mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for jihad,” or holy war, Aldawsari wrote in the journal, according to the documents filed by prosecutors.

Aldawsari was expected to appear in federal court Friday, two days after his arrest on a charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

The 20-year-old bought explosive chemicals online as part of a plan to hide bomb materials inside dolls and baby carriages to blow up dams, nuclear plants or the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush, the Justice Department said Thursday.

“As we lay out in this affidavit, there were a range of targets being contemplated,” Robert Casey, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said. “I can’t speak to his state of mind or the priority in his mind of any of the range of targets we think we discovered.”

Aldawsari, who was legally in the U.S. on a student visa, studied chemical engineering at Texas Tech University until January before transferring to a nearby college to study business.

The White House said President Barack Obama was notified about the alleged plot before Aldawsari’s arrest.

It was not immediately clear whether Aldawsari had hired a lawyer. Telephone numbers that Aldawsari had provided to others were not working Thursday. No one answered the buzzer or a knock on the door at the address listed as Aldawsari’s apartment near the Texas Tech campus.

A federal public defender in Lubbock, David Sloan, said he would be at Friday’s court appearance in case U.S. Magistrate Nancy Koenig needed to appoint him to represent Aldawsari.

The case outlined in court documents was significant because it suggests that radicalized foreigners can live quietly in the U.S. without raising suspicions from neighbors, classmates, teachers or others. But it also showed how quickly U.S. law enforcement can move when tipped that a terrorist plot may be unfolding.

“We think we have neutralized any other threats or imminent harm surrounding the actions that he’s charged with, but the investigation is continuing,” Casey said.

Aldawsari wrote that he was planning an attack even before coming to the U.S. on a scholarship, the court documents say. He said he was influenced by bin Laden’s speeches and he bemoaned the plight of Muslims.

Federal authorities said they learned of the plot after a chemical company, Carolina Biological Supply of Burlington, N.C., reported $435 in suspicious order by Aldawsari to the FBI on Feb. 1.

Separately, Con-way Freight, the shipping company, notified Lubbock police and the FBI the same day with similar suspicions because it appeared the order wasn’t intended for commercial use. Within weeks, federal agents had traced Aldawsari’s other online purchases, discovered extremist posts he made on the Internet and secretly searched his apartment, computer and e-mail accounts and read his diary, according to court records.

Neighbors in Lubbock said they didn’t remember seeing Aldawsari but noticed an unusual number of people in the hallway the day of his arrest.

“That’s so scary,” said Sally Dierschke, a 21-year-old senior at Texas Tech. “That’s my neighbor. … Of course, I’m scared.”

Ahmid Obaidan, a senior at Tennessee State University who also is from Saudi Arabia, met Aldawsari in Nashville, Tenn., when Aldawsari was studying at an English language center at Vanderbilt University.

“He was quiet. I thought he was a good guy,” Obaidan said.

The FBI said the North Carolina company reported the attempts to purchase 1.3 gallons of phenol, a chemical that can be used to make the explosive trinitrophenol, also known as TNP, or picric acid. Aldawsari falsely told the supplier he was associated with a university and wanted the phenol for “off-campus, personal research,” according to court records. Frustrated by questions, Aldawsari canceled his order and later e-mailed himself instructions for producing phenol, the documents say.

TNP, the chemical explosive that Aldawsari was suspected of trying to make, has approximately the same destructive power as TNT. FBI bomb experts said the amounts in the Aldawsari case would have yielded almost 15 pounds of explosive. That’s about the same amount used per bomb in the London subway attacks that killed scores of people in July 2005.

Prosecutors said that in December, he bought 30 liters of concentrated nitric acid for about $450 from QualiChem Technologies in Georgia, and three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid that are combined to make TNP. The FBI later found the chemicals in Aldawsari’s apartment as well as beakers, flasks, wiring, a Hazmat suit and clocks.

A Saudi industrial company, which was not identified in court documents, was paying Aldawsari’s tuition and living expenses in the U.S.

Casey declined to go into why the arrest occurred when it did.

“We just felt it was the right time,” he said.

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Washington — The tax bill that extends the Bush tax cuts and slashes the estate tax while extending unemployment benefits has passed the House House by a vote of 277-148 and is heading for the President to sign, according to The Huffington Post

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Washington — This one’s gotta hurt. President Obama’s approval rating has dipped below, gulp, George W. Bush.

The ex-President’s approval rating rose to 47% in recent weeks according to a Gallup poll released Monday, which is one point higher than Obama’s rating in a survey also taken this week.

The poll results represent a surprising rebound for the once fiercely unpopular Bush, whose approval rating was just 25% just a little over a year ago.

Politico speculates the unexpected boomerang could be a result of the positive reviews Bush’s recently released memoir, “Decision Points,” has received in addition to the former commander-in-chief’s opening of a presidential library in Texas.

That coupled with criticism over Obama’s handling of the economy and stinging Democratic losses in the midterm elections, may have affected Americans’ views of the President.

Before the release of his memoir, Bush had a 44% approval rating. The most recent survey numbers mark the highest for him since 2005 – before Hurricane Katrina – CBS News reported. Bush’s highest rating was 87%, immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Read entire article at NYdailynews.com

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Washington — Cornel West has continued his harsh post election criticism of President Barack Obama. According to Firedog Lake, West told the show “Democracy Now”

Gonzalez had asked Prof. West to comment on Kanye West’s assertion that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people;” but the professor diverted into criticism of the current Administration. He said he thinks neither Bush nor Obama acts out of “racist motivation and intention,” but that both Administrations inflict(ed) “racist effect and consequence” on people of color, and that their policies have “generated levels of misery among Black people, Brown people, Red people, but especially among the working class poor.”

Cornel West echoed Kanye West in rebuking Obama: “… He doesn’t care about the Black poor: The evidence is overwhelming! … His policies [a]re racist in effect and consequence and especially classist in terms of generating misery among poor people, disproportionately Black and Brown. … The Obama Administration seems to have very little concern about poor people and their social misery: Look at the policies vis-a-vis Wall Street – downplaying Main Street; look at the policies of Black Farmers – a settlement already in place but they don’t want to execute it because they don’t want to be associated with Black folk too explicitly; look at the policies of dilapidated housing; we can go right across the board – look at the policies of the new Jim Crow – the Prison-Industrial Complex.”

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Billed as a bipartisan move, the news of the award should shock progressives already reeling from the defeats of the mid-term elections.

Read about the awards here, and the reaction here.

“It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways,” he said about the impact on his business of West’s decision to protest Swift’s win over Beyoncé at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. “If we look back, everyone would agree that he was right. It was bad timing. It was not her fault. It’s not Taylor Swift’s fault. She didn’t nominate … she didn’t elect herself. She just sat there and she had a dream and she’s seeing that dream being realized, and he had the same dream, so he realizes that now. He was fighting for the integrity of the award, and he knows how hard he works on his videos. It was bad timing, but we agreed.”

And Jigga said ‘Ye had the right intentions when he made his famous remark about President Bush during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina relief telethon. “It was bad timing, but it was absolutely an honest emotion,” he said. “We all felt like that. We didn’t feel like Katrina was a natural disaster. We felt like it as an attack on black people. All you saw was black people on the roof with help signs. … White people felt like that.”

Read entire article at MTV.com

Washington (FinancialTimes)– According to the Financial Times, George W. Bush told a group of British dignitaries who asked him about his preference of candidates in the 2008 presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain, that he would’ve endorsed Obama if Obama asked him to. When asked about McCain they claim he said:

Not a chance. “I probably won’t even vote for the guy,” Bush told the group, according to two people present. “I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”

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Appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to promote his new memoir “Decision Points,” Bush said he hopes to stay out of the public eye in the future and discussed everything from his struggles with alcohol to coping with the name-calling and criticism that dominated much of his eight years as president.

VIDEO:

“I’m sure it hurt my daughters and wife,” Bush said of the various names he was called during his eight years in the White House, including “Nazi” and “Satan.” “But it didn’t hurt me.”

Read entire article at ABCnews.com

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Chicago (AP)-– George W. Bush recounted the mistakes of his presidency on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show as he launched a book tour to promote his just-released memoir “Decision Points.”

The former president said he still feels “sick about” the fact no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. His response to Hurricane Katrina could have been quicker, he said, and he should have landed Air Force One two days after the storm instead of viewing the destruction through the plane’s window. And he said he didn’t see the financial meltdown coming.

The former president appeared Tuesday in a taped episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Writing the memoir, he said, “was an easy process” that has kept him busy.

“A lot of people don’t think I can read, much less write,” Bush joked on the program.

The world is better off without Saddam Hussein, Bush said, even though the invasion that toppled the Iraqi leader was based on faulty intelligence about the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

“When we didn’t find weapons I felt terrible about it, sick about it and still do, because a lot of the case in removing Saddam Hussein was based upon weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said. He added that Hussein was “equally dangerous” without WMDs.

On Katrina, Bush said he didn’t land Air Force One to view the submerged New Orleans up close because he was worried about taking resources away from rescue efforts.

“I shouldn’t have flown over and looked. I made a mistake. I should have landed,” Bush said. “I didn’t realize a picture of me looking out would look like I didn’t give a darn.”

Continuing to discuss Katrina, Bush said he should have sent federal troops to help with security in New Orleans sooner, but was waiting for authority from Louisiana state government.

Bush flared against critics who called his Katrina response racist. Winfrey reminded him that rapper Kanye West said during a 2005 telethon for hurricane survivors that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

“That really hurt,” Bush said. “You can disagree with my politics, but don’t ever accuse me of being a racist. … I can see how the perception would be Bush didn’t care, but to accuse me of being a racist is disgusting.”

Bush said he wasn’t alone in his failure to foresee the financial meltdown and defended his administration’s decision to invest in failing banks in late 2008 to stabilize the financial system.

“I believe it helped save the country,” Bush said.

Bush had nothing negative to say about President Barack Obama, whom Winfrey famously supported in 2008.

“I didn’t like it when people criticized me,” Bush said. “And so you’re not going to see me out there chirping away (at Obama). And I want our president to succeed. I love our country.”

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And no, it wasn’t any of the death or heartache that occurred during it and THANK GOD, because that would have been a downer…

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In an interview with The Box Houston, Kanye West gave his response to George Bush’s criticism and compared what George Bush went through to what we went through after he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

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Bush: “Yeah. I still feel that way, As you read those words,” I felt ‘em when I heard ‘em, felt ‘em when I wrote ‘em and I felt ‘em when I’m listening to ‘em.”

Lauer: “I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you’ve written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this –”

Bush: “Don’t care,”

Lauer: “Well, here’s the reason, You’re not saying that the worst moment in your presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You’re saying it was when someone insulted you because of that.”

Bush: “I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.”

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LINCOLN, Del. – Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is making light of comments she made more than a decade ago about having dabbled in witchcraft when she was in high school.

“How many of you didn’t hang out with questionable folks in high school?” she asked fellow Republicans at a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday.

“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly assured the crowd.

Rove, the former GOP strategist and adviser to President George W. Bush, has suggested that O’Donnell’s win in last week’s GOP primary cost Republicans a chance to retake the Senate seat long held by Democrat Joe Biden before he was elected vice president.

O’Donnell, a conservative Christian activist, rode a surging tide of tea party activism to an upset victory over GOP moderate Michael Castle, Delaware’s longtime congressman and former two-term governor. She faces Democratic county executive Chris Coons in November.

O’Donnell’s comments about witchcraft were made during a 1999 taping of comedian Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” show.

“I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven,” she said on the show, a clip of which hit the Internet as O’Donnell canceled Sunday appearances on two national news shows, citing commitments to attend church and the GOP picnic in Delaware.

“I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do,” O’Donnell told Maher.

“One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that,” she said. “We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

Russ Murphy, executive director of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, a group that joined in the tea party effort to propel O’Donnell to Tuesday’s primary victory, said the focus on her comments about witchcraft was just another attempt by pundits and political opponents to discredit her.

“They’re going to be pulling for straws from the sky to do anything to stop this momentum, and they don’t realize it’s not going to work,” he said.

O’Donnell’s victory in the primary came after a bruising campaign in which her supporters and Castle’s, led by state GOP chairman Tom Ross, traded attack ads, with Ross saying O’Donnell was a liar and a fraud who couldn’t be elected dogcatcher.

Ross did not attend Sunday’s Sussex County Republican Committee picnic. Sussex County GOP chairman Ron Sams said Ross was in Washington trying to drum up support from the national GOP campaign committees.

Despite her improbable primary victory, O’Donnell sounded upbeat about her chances in November.

“We’re going to win this by uniting the party,” she told supporters. “I’m very confident that we’re going to win this election.”

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President George W. Bush ambled into a steamy, fragrant mango warehouse in Haiti on Tuesday and surveyed several long tables neatly packed with the luscious fruit.

He clapped Ralph Perry, the warehouse owner, on the shoulder. He shook hands with farmers, dressed in button-down shirts and ties for the occasion. Then Bush – who is co-leading a fund to help Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake, along with former President Bill Clinton – talked of rebuilding.

He confidently said that mangoes will help the country “grow into prosperity” and spoke of a half-million dollar grant to help 25,000 mango farmers.

In Haiti, the mango is a symbol of both the country’s potential, and its dysfunction.

There are 10 million mango trees in Haiti, and tens of thousands of mango farmers scattered about the country. Mangoes are the Caribbean nation’s second-biggest export, behind coffee, and are a $10 million a year industry. Fruit industry leaders think they have the potential to blossom into a tasty, $90 million a year export business.

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Most of Perry’s mangoes are exported to New York and Miami, home to large Caribbean populations that grew up with the fruit. But Perry and others say there are vast untapped markets of future mango lovers elsewhere in the United States and that the fruit is also growing more popular in Europe.

“Twenty years ago, mainstream America didn’t know what a mango was,” Perry said.

Yet bruising and a lack of irrigation thwart many crops. Bad roads and the unavailability of seemingly simple tools such as plastic crates have also threatened the success of the country’s mango export in recent years. In 2009, only about 10 percent of the crop was shipped abroad.

And that was before the quake.

Click here to view photos:

Now a number of groups, businesses and people – from Bush to the Coca-Cola Co. – are trying to rebuild Haiti with the mighty mango.

Haiti grows a specific variety that is indigenous to the country. Called the “Madame Francis,” it is juicy and sweet, and a bit fibrous.

“It is most appreciated by the mango connoisseur,” said Jean Buteau, a mango exporter in Port-au-Prince.

Perry, who also has an export business that ships to stores such as Whole Foods in the United States, said there are many obstacles from getting the fruit from “tree to truck.”

Sometimes farmers sell too early, allowing it to be picked when unripe. In other cases, they lack proper pruning tools. And the fruit is often so damaged that 20 percent to 40 percent of the harvest is lost somewhere between picking and exporting. And Perry knows that customers at Whole Foods, who pay $2 a mango, don’t want bruised fruit.

Another knotty problem is transportation. Even before the earthquake, most roads were a disaster; today, piles of rubble, demolished cars and construction trucks clog traffic.

“We need to fix the roads and have better transportation conditions to the warehouses,” acknowledged Haitian Agriculture Minister Joanas Gue.

RELATED: OPINION: I Still Love George W. Bush

In spite of the setbacks, Haiti actually produced a decent mango crop this year, which gives exporters hope.

“If you had asked me in January, February, after the earthquake, if we were going to have some kind of a season, I would not really think so,” Perry said. “We’re lucky and maybe next year we will get a better one.”

Perry will work closely with TechnoServe, the nonprofit group receiving the $500,000 grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

The money will go to help Haitian farmers with everything from improving their crop yields to building regional drop-off centers where they can sell the fruit to exporters.

“Right now, at every step, there are challenges,” said Bruce McNamer, president and CEO of TechnoServe. “And the crop has languished. But the beauty of this program is that there is a serious market for mangoes, and that ultimately, (the program) aspires to improve the income of 25,000 farmers.”

In March, Coca-Cola announced a similar, $7.5 million, five-year project to help mango farmers. The Atlanta-based beverage giant said it will invest $3.5 million in the project, with the Inter-American Development Bank also contributing an undisclosed amount.

Proceeds from the sale of Haiti Hope Mango Lime-Aid made by Odwalla Inc., will go toward the project.

Karen Christensen, global produce coordinator for Whole Foods Market, said the upscale grocery chain has increased sales of organic and conventionally grown Haitian mangoes by 40 percent this year, compared to last.

Christensen said they would buy more from Haiti – if more were available.

“There’s a lack of infrastructure in Haiti that makes purchasing there quite challenging,” Christensen said in an e-mail. “Bringing the fruit to market is a complex endeavor – it may involve several layers of middlemen who provide financing, transportation and resale functions.”

Still, Christensen said, Whole Foods wants to push Haiti to export more mangoes. Because so much of the countryside in Haiti has been deforested over the years, Christensen and others believe that giving farmers incentives to plant and cultivate mango trees will help reduce the impacts of deforestation and erosion – and provide much-needed cash for the Haitian people.

Mango farmer Paul Joseph Merize – who eagerly shook Bush’s hand Tuesday at the Port-au-Prince warehouse – is convinced that mangoes can lift the Haitian economy. The 33-year-old lives and works in a region that was devastated by hurricanes in 2007 and hit hard by the earthquake.

Merize, whose home was destroyed in January, isn’t surprised to hear that people pay so much for a single mango in the United States, while folks here pay about 50 cents for three.

“They are delicious mangoes,” he said.

DALLAS — Sam and Charles Wyly, Dallas billionaire investors known for their support of conservative candidates and causes, made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.

In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and “defrauded the investing public” by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks.

“The apparatus of the fraud was an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies located in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands … created by and at the direction of the Wylys,” the SEC complaint stated.

Using this offshore system, the Wylys were able to sell stock worth more than $750 million in four public companies where they served as corporate directors. They also committed an insider trading violation at one of the companies that resulted in an unlawful gain of over $31.7 million, according to the complaint.

In March, Forbes magazine estimated Sam Wyly’s net worth at $1 billion. He has given generously to Republican causes and candidates, including the Swift Boat campaign that helped re-elect President George W. Bush in 2004 by tarring his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry.

The Wyly brothers, with their wives, have donated almost $2.5 million to more than 200 Republican candidates and committees at the federal level over the past two decades, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Both Presidents Bush received donations from the Wylys. Other recipients included current and former Republican senators: Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Phil Gramm of Texas; Sam Brownback and Bob Dole of Kansas; Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina; Mel Martinez of Florida; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire; John Thune of South Dakota; and Kit Bond of Missouri.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Wylys’ investment attorney, Michael C. French of Dallas, who was accused of covering the operation “with a false cloak of legality that was essential both to its concealment and its execution. Another defendant was the Wylys’ stockbroker, Louis J. Schaufele III of Dallas, who was accused of using his position to conceal and misrepresent the Wylys’ control over the securities and making insider trades himself.

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

During his daily press briefing on July 13, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was peppered with questions about why the president’s popularity numbers are in decline and his policy positions are so difficult to sell.

ABC News’s Jake Tapper sought reaction to the network’s newest poll showing that 51 percent of respondents would rather have Republicans running Congress. CNN’s Ed Henry wanted to know why, in that same poll, “six in 10 Americans have little or no faith in the President to make the right decisions.” CBS’s Chip Reid then pointed to his own network’s poll showing that only 13 percent of respondents thought the president’s economic programs had affected them personally.

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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 Mother Jones

In the course of trying to prove that its “enhanced” interrogation program was legal, the Bush administration may have broken the law, according to a new report (PDF) by Physicians for Human Rights. The watchdog group claims that in an attempt to establish that brutal interrogation tactics did not constitute torture, the administration ended up effectively experimenting on terrorism detainees. This research, PHR alleges, violated an array of regulations and treaties, including international guidelines on human testing put in place after the Holocaust.

According to the report, which draws on numerous declassified government documents, “medical professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA” frequently monitored detainee interrogations, gathering data on the effectiveness of various interrogation techniques and the pain threshholds of detainees. This information was then used to “enhance” future interrogations, PHR contends.

Click Here For More

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From TheGrio.com:

Right before our eyes, Barack Obama appears to be morphing into his fellow Harvard alum, George W. Bush. The dramatic oil spill that is threatening to destroy the Gulf of Mexico has surely become Obama’s Katrina. There’s still time for the president to handle his Katrina better than Bush handled his own, but this disaster could be a more devastating and complex challenge.

Now that Obama is stuck with this mess and trying to find his way out of it, perhaps some simple advice might help him navigate a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. The goal of the Obama administration should not be to emerge from this situation looking good, that’s simply not possible. It’s really a matter of minimizing the massive political damage that the administration is going to endure. Without pride or prejudice, I’ll lay out four ways that President Obama can handle this crisis. I must forewarn you – Some of these solutions are tacky and controversial, but necessary:

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1) Find a fall guy (as many as possible): Right now, the American people have two organizations they can choose to blame for this crisis – BP or the Obama administration. Obama must weed out the bad apples to give the perception of a competent administration going forward. Obama made the right decision to fire the head of the Minerals Management Service, but that’s not going to be enough. He also needs to fire someone else and make systemic changes to the entire Department of the Interior. Ken Salazar anyone?

2) Become a certified tree-hugger: Obama needs to show those on his left that he is truly committed to protecting the environment. By tap dancing with those who are determined to destroy our shores, Obama is disappointing the people who got him into office. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed that 55 percent of Americans favor protecting the environment, even if it means that we have less access to energy. A sickly, oil-soaked pelican on Anderson Cooper 360 doesn’t look good to anyone, no matter how much they love going to the gas station. Obama would do well to heed the results of this poll.

Click here to read full list.

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From NationalJournal.com:

If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

That comparison comes with many footnotes and asterisks. But it shows how the economic debate between the parties could look very different over time — perhaps by November, more likely by 2012. More important, the comparison underscores the urgency of repairing an American job-creation machine that was sputtering long before the 2008 financial meltdown.

First, the numbers: From February 2001, Bush’s first full month in office, through January 2009, his last, total U.S. nonfarm employment grew from 132.5 million to 133.5 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase, obviously, of just 1 million. From January through April of this year, the economy created 573,000 jobs. Over a full year, that projects to 1.72 million jobs. Job-creation numbers are notoriously volatile, so the actual result could run above or below that estimate. But Obama administration economists are increasingly optimistic that job growth this year will exceed expectations. Few of them will be surprised if more jobs are created in 2010 than over Bush’s two terms.

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Now the principal footnote: To compare job growth in 2010 with Bush’s record ignores the nearly 4 million jobs lost in Obama’s first year, during the freefall that began in Bush’s final months. That’s like ignoring a meteor strike. Over time, voters are likely to judge Obama by his degree of success in eliminating that deficit and reducing unemployment. Still, if the economy this year produces more than 1 million jobs — or, conceivably, more than 2 million — that will give Democrats more ammunition to argue that their agenda has started to turn the tide.

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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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From SeattleTimes.com:

Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner was thwarted by passengers and revealed gaping holes in airline security only months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made no public remarks for six days about the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the media or Democrats that Bush’s response was sluggish or inadequate.

That stands in sharp contrast to the Republicans’ withering criticism of President Obama — and some in the media — for his reaction to the Christmas Day incident on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

Obama commented publicly on Monday and ordered a full investigation of the incident.

Democrats are making the disparity a centerpiece of their efforts to counter GOP attacks on the White House. “This hypocrisy demonstrates Republicans are playing politics with issues of national security and terrorism,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokesman Hari Sevugan said. “That they would use this incident as an opportunity to fan partisan flames … tells you all you need to know about how far the Republican Party has fallen and how out of step with the American people they have become.”

Click here to read more.

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From WashingtonPost.com:

After nine months of being nearly invisible — a big outing has been to a Dallas hardware store for flashlights — George W. Bush made his debut Monday in his latest incarnation: motivational speaker.

Nearly 15,000 people heard the former president, known more for mangling the English language than for his eloquence, reminisce about his White House days. Bush, who is writing a book about the dozen toughest decisions he had to make, used much of his 28 minutes onstage to talk about lighter topics such as picking out a rug design for the Oval Office that reflected his “optimism.”

Perhaps in a nod to his dismal 22 percent approval ratings when he left office, Bush noted that “popularity is fleeting. . . . It’s not real.”

He beamed at the standing ovations from the friendly hometown crowd — he now lives in nearby Dallas.

Looking younger than his 63 years and relaxed, Bush did not appear to have an overarching theme, but strung anecdotes and jokes together and frequently mentioned his faith in God.

“I don’t see how you can be president without relying on the Almighty. Now when I was 21, I wouldn’t have told you that, but at age 63, I can tell you that one of the most amazing surprises of the presidency was the fact that people’s prayers affected me. I can’t prove it to you. But I can tell you some days were great, some days not so great. But every day was joyous.” That, he attributed, to the prayers of others.

His speech came after the crowd at the “GET MOTIVATED!” seminar stood up and danced to the Beach Boys’ song “Surfin’ USA” and batted around beach balls tossed into the audience.

The well-publicized event appears to mark the beginning of a higher profile for Bush.

Just last week he gave three speeches in Canada, and he has joined the Washington Speakers Bureau. He is scheduled to give another motivational speech next month in San Antonio. Former presidential adviser Karen Hughes said he has “quite a few speeches planned” during the fall.

To read more, click here.

In a recent interview with Maxim magazine, Lebron James was asked:

If there was one guy on the planet you could dunk on, who would it be? That teacher?
If it doesn’t have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim, and shatter the glass.

Read The Whole Interview

OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman’s rights activist.

The Nobel committee praised Obama’s creation of “a new climate in international politics” and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

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Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. “In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”

He added that the committee endorsed “Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”

President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a “kick in the leg” to the Bush administration‘s hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush’s adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year’s prize though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

“The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it’s given too someone … who has the power to contribute to peace,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

“We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty,” the foundation said.

WATCH LIVE: Obama Responds To Winning Nobel Prize

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Top 5 Reasons Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

Top 3 Reasons Obama Does NOT Deserve Nobel

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel’s death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel’s guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

From Pitts Indeed:

Jimmy, George, Bill, George and Barack.

The only five men walking the earth today who understand the gravity of being the President of the United States.

They understand its pressures and privileges; they are acutely aware of what it means to be the most powerful man in the free world.

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They are also the only five men in the world who understand what it means to be the world’s most coveted prey each and every day they occupy the office of the president.

The trade for being the world’s most powerful leader is also to be its most prized trophy. As an occupant of the office, death alters history.

Of the five of them, four are ex-presidents. Two are democrats. One is a humanitarian peanut farmer regarded as the ineffectual man who was soft on terror. The other a brilliant and charismatic philanderer who allowed a dalliance to define his presidency.

The other two are republicans; father and son, wealthy members of the American aristocracy whose reach and influence cannot be fathomed by most.

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Of the four, only one could hope to stem the tide of threats, both casual and otherwise, against the man who now occupies the office.

George the younger is the voice needed to quell those prone to outrageous exclaim in word and deed because he is the only among them who courted the vote of the type of people who would ask in an open forum poll if a President, the leader of the United States, should be killed.

George, W, ‘43, this is where you need to enter the fray. I know you don’t prefer to dabble in politics too much–my guess is that you never had an interest in such things–but the time has come to assert your influence.

Forget politics and ideologies a moment–people are making open threats against the president of the United States and many of them come from your constituency. As a man who held the office, how could you sit silent as people casually threaten this man’s life?

I was in high school on 9/11. When they called an assembly, I thought someone had killed you. You’re a man I neither respected or liked, but in those moments of uncertainty before the real tragedy was revealed, I felt sick. My thought? You do not murder the President of the United States. Whatever the grievance, you do not resort to violence against the president.

Click here to read more.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that he smells hope not sulfur, a small compliment for Barack Obama given that he branded then President George W. Bush “the devil” when he last addressed the world body in 2006.
“It doesn’t smell of sulfur. It’s gone. It smells of something else. It smells of hope and you have hope in your heart,” Chavez said during a rambling, 57-minute address where he mentioned close friend and former Cuban President Fidel Castro more than Obama or Bush.

Though at times he waved his arms, shook his fist and pointed for emphasis, Chavez was largely calm and jovial during the speech. He denounced capitalism as being a chief cause of global climate change and accused Obama of making lofty promises but failing to live up to them, asking “doesn’t it seem like there are two Obamas?”

During a raucous press conference after he finished speaking, Chavez said, “I hope the two Obamas join and become one, the one who gave the speech yesterday.”

“Imperialism must end!” he said.

A populist and the leader of a self-declared “socialist revolution” in Venezuela, Chavez also urged Obama to “come over to the socialist side. Come join the Axis of Evil over here.” He was only half-joking.

He also said, “I hope god protects him(Obama) from the bullets that killed Kennedy.”

Joe Wilson is an idiot. Still, you have to admire his testicular fortitude for interrupting the president during his speech to congress on health care. He was clearly offended by the fact that Obama might give health care to illegal aliens. Independent fact checking organizations have determined that Obama was in no way giving a false statement. Still, what if he was lying and Obama was secretly planning to give migrant workers health care? That would hardly be the worst thing a President had lied about.

If Democrats had the testicular fortitude to call out Bush on his lies, maybe we could have avoided the war in Iraq. The center for public integrity determined that the Bush administration made 935 false statements (lies) to get us into the war in Iraq. If one Democrat had the courage that Wilson had and called out the Bush administration on one of their 935 lies that led to the war in Iraq, maybe we wouldn’t have wound up in this mess.

Because of the war in Iraq, 4,346 American soldiers have been killed and 31,494 have been wounded. On top of that, it is estimated that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died during the war in Iraq. Those 935 false statements led to thousands of people dieing for false reasons. Obama’s one lie (if you give Wilson the benefit of the doubt) would lead to immigrants getting health care.

So, Mr. Wilson, may the party that is without sin cast the first stone from one of John McCain’s 10 glass houses. Given the fact you strongly supported George Bush and his 935 lies that led to a war, you are hardly in the position to call our President a liar. If only you had the same desire for truth in matters of war and life and death that you have for illegal aliens getting health care, I might be able to take you serious.

Every year around this time, we hear voices from the right talking about the lessons of 9/11. To hear right wing politicians and pundits tell it, the lessons of 9/11 are: Bomb Arab countries before they bomb us, racially profile people of color, the world is separated into good and evil and either you’re with us or against us.

I’d like to think that the lessons of 9/11 would be: Be extremely cautious about domestic terrorists, don’t train militant religious fanatics to fight your enemies, because they might come back to bite us and treat all threats against our country seriously.

While people in the media talk about the lessons of 9/11 very often, it is rare to hear pundits and politicians talk about the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. While 9/11 left 2,998 people dead or missing, Hurricane Katrina left 2,536 people dead or missing and displaced over one million people.

But 9/11 changed several ways the government operates in terms of foreign and domestic polices, while Katrina changed very little. After 9/11, we invaded two countries , started the patriot act and changed airline travel as we know it.

Katrina has caused no significant changes in US policy. What the world saw after Katrina, was a natural disaster inflamed by poverty, segregation and racism. While the government may not have been able to stop the hurricane, the U.S. could have definitely prevented the racism and poverty that made Hurricane Katrina way worse than it should have been.

Hurricane Katrina was an embarrassment to the United States. Despite it’s great wealth, the U.S. could not take care of its own. After Katrina, George Bush’s approval rating was 45%, half of the 90% it reached after September 11th.

Hubert Humphrey once said, “A nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Congress should not ignore the plight of our nation’s poorest and sickest beneficiaries any longer.”

The judgment on George Bush from his reaction to Katrina both domestically and internationally is part of his legacy forever. Still, it seems as if the lessons of Katrina have been lost on the Republican party.

The Republicans have obviously not learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, as they continue to disregard poor, disenfranchised people, which is reflected in their opposition to health care.

Diseases, like hurricanes affect everybody. Yet, as in Katrina, the rich seem to be protected against them, while the poor and minority populations are vulnerable and often left with no help to protect themselves against them.

If the next Katrina comes as a virus (like Swine Flu), once again the rest of the world will see how America treats its poorest and sickest beneficiaries. That is why we need health care for every citizen. If America has learned anything from the lessons of Katrina, it is that America must protect all of its citizens, regardless of economic or racial backgrounds.

Katrina was a reminder of the poor people who are rarely on TV and not seen or heard. These people are Americans, not third world refugees. They are entitled to the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness given to us in the Declaration of Independence. Just like the government is responsible for trying to help its citizens from disaster, it should be responsible for taking care of its citizens from diseases and health risks.

Protecting our citizens and keeping our country safe is no just about bombing countries that we think our threats. Not all threats come from Islamic extremists. Hunger, poverty, crime, natural disasters and diseases also threaten the safety of our country and citizens. If we can spend billions of dollars to invade other countries to keep our country safer, we should sacrifice to make the country safer for all of our citizens from natural disasters and diseases.

It is time to heed the lessons of Katrina. We are one country and all of our citizens are important, rich and poor, black and white. When a government gives an every man for himself attitude towards disease and natural disasters, it reflects badly on our country. It is the duty of our country to, not only protect its citizens against terrorist attacks, but against natural disasters and diseases as well. That’s why we need to make sure every one of our citizens has the right to health care.

So I’m breezing at a good pace through Darwin’s The Origin of Species & The Descent of Man when I come across this:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world… The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian (aborigine) and the gorilla.

I was like “WTF???”

It would be impossible to imagine Jewish people allowing any theories from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf to be taught in schools, even the theories that kinda make sense like,

“Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.”

Or

“Honest labor, no matter of what sort, disgraces no one.”

But Black children are being taught “scientifically” a theory of evolution that was popularized by Charles Darwin, a man who believed “scientifically” that the “gap” between Caucasians and negroes (his no cap) was the same as the “gap” between negroes and gorillas and that, most shockingly, negroes would eventually have to be exterminated and replaced!

Follow me: on at least a subconscious level, our children are being taught in school that they will eventually need to be destroyed and replaced.

So let’s thank God for George W. Bush! He at least tried to get intelligent design also taught in school and when we look at that theory in context with what we’re now discovering about Darwin (who, by the way, was NOT an atheist), the idea of God making us all to love each other sounds a hell of a lot better than the “science” behind the necessary destruction and replacement of Black people.

W and his sycophants have been saying all along that history would at least partially vindicate the Bush presidency. I just never thought that it would happen so fast!

Despite claiming that he would not criticize Obama, George Bush recently took some jabs at Obama’s foreign and domestic policies.

On Torture

“I told you I’m not going to criticize my successor, I’ll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don’t believe that persuasion isn’t going to work. Therapy isn’t going to cause terrorists to change their mind.”

On Government Spending

“Government does not create wealth, The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.”

When asked if Obama’s policy were socialist, Bush responded “We’ll see”

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush’s main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and Saddam’s regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush’s quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Read the Whole McClatchy Report