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President Barack Obama is welcoming his favorite foil, former President George W. Bush, back to the White House on Thursday for the official unveiling of Bush’s portrait. Given the history, the scene ought to be quite a picture.

Obama is still bad-mouthing Bush’s time in office, and it’s not just because of the debt and the unfinished wars Obama inherited. Obama sees Bush’s economic ideas as the same as his current rival, Mitt Romney, so he lumps them together.

Which makes it a little awkward that Obama is about to preside as Bush’s image and legacy are enshrined forever.

Never mind all that, say the Obama and Bush camps. This is a timeout for tradition.

The political reunion is expected to put aside any campaign rhetoric, as other gatherings among past and current presidents have, to honor nostalgia and the service of the former president and his wife, Laura.

In the heart of a re-election year, Obama will to get to rise above the fray for a day and play statesman.

He and his wife, Michelle, will host generations of Bushes for a private lunch, including former President George H.W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush. Family members will join them.

Then, in the ornate East Room, Obama and George W. Bush will speak as the portraits of the former president and Laura Bush are unveiled. The audience will be filled with friends and officials from Bush’s two terms in office.

No one close to the current or former president expects the least sign of animus Thursday, particularly given that their transition in 2009 was handled with grace and that they have since shared moments of help and healing.

“President Bush has been around politics a long time. He’s been around how presidents deal with each other for a long time,” said Tony Fratto, one of his former spokesmen at the White House. “He has an understanding for separating the necessities of political rhetoric from the job itself.”

Still, Bush has been holding his tongue for a long time. Obama has never run against Bush, although it was easy to forget that during the 2008 race between Obama and Sen. John McCain, when Bush’s tenure was so often Obama’s target.

In his inaugural address in 2009, Obama declared that “we are ready to lead once more,” seen by some as a dig at Bush, who was seated over his shoulder. Even now, hardly a day goes by when Obama’s team does not blame Bush for a mess.

It was just one week ago that Obama, revving up campaign donors, turned Bush into a punch line. Obama depicted presumptive Republican presidential nominee Romney as a peddler of bad economic ideas, helping the rich at the expense of the middle class. He then added: “That was tried, remember? The last guy did all this.”

Now the last guy is coming back.

Only 43 men in history, and five men alive, have held the job.

It will be a rare limelight moment for Bush, who has not been back in more than two years.

Obama and Bush have a cordial and respectful relationship, but they are not close.

Both are political veterans who are able to separate political tactics from what they see as an overarching community among people who have served in the Oval Office, according to people close to them.

History has marked this moment before, with grudges put aside.

When Bill Clinton came back for his portrait unveiling, Bush lauded him for “the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president.” This after he ran for the presidency to “restore honor and dignity” after Clinton’s sex scandal.

And when Clinton welcomed back George H.W. Bush, whom he had defeated, he said to him and his wife: “Welcome home. We’re glad to have you here.”

“I would be surprised if there’s very much tension” this time around, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University who has long followed Bush’s career.

Obama has enlisted Bush’s help on earthquake relief for Haiti, and the two stood together in New York City last year in marking the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on America. They have also spoken at least three times at signature moments over the last three years, including the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Still, Obama’s bashing of Bush’s record sets a backdrop.

“This president is looking for someone to blame,” Romney said while campaigning in Colorado this week. “Of course, he started off by blaming George Bush, and that worked for a while but, you know, after three and a half years that wears kind of thin.”

The White House points out that Obama praises Bush sometimes, too, such as for taking on illegal immigration.

The visit is layered with political story lines.

Bush’s brother Jeb is a potential vice presidential candidate to Romney. Bush’s father has developed a kinship of sorts with Obama. And then there is Bush himself, who has endorsed Romney but is still viewed by many in his party as politically toxic.

More than any president in recent memory, Bush has not just intentionally faded from the public spotlight but all but disappeared from it.

Bush was last at the White House in January 2010 to help out with Haiti humanitarian relief.

Bush spokesman Freddy Ford said the former president and first lady are grateful to the Obamas and looking forward to catching up with faces from their past, including staff at the Executive Mansion.

Jenna Bush Hager, one of the George W. Bush’s daughters, told “Fox & Friends” the day will be a chance to “celebrate his work, `cause he worked pretty hard, so I think he deserves at least a painting.”

As to where it will go, she said: “Probably in the very back somewhere. I’m just kidding.”

Actually, the painting will hang prominently in the formal entrance hall to the White House, the Grand Foyer.

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Politico reports:

“I wish they weren’t called the Bush tax cuts,” the former president said as he kicked off the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City. “If they’re called some other body’s tax cuts, they’re probably less likely to be raised.”

When President Barack Obama agreed to a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts in December 2010, it outraged many congressional Democrats. But on Tuesday, White House campaign strategist David Axelrod said that Obama was “absolutely” committed to blocking any continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

Meanwhile, the former president also said that he doesn’t miss his old job.

“I’m often asked ‘Do you miss the presidency?’ I really don’t.” Bush said.

“I have decided to stay out of the limelight. I had plenty of the limelight,” he said. “I enjoyed it. It was unbelievably interesting experience.”

“It’s inconvenient to have to stop at some stop lights coming over here — I guess I miss that,” he said jokingly.

Well, I’m sure the feeling is mutual among many, Mr. President.

On another note, Bush commented that when it comes to the notion of undercutting our current president by way of public criticism, he’s dead set against it. On President Obama, Bush said, “I don’t think it’s good, frankly, for our country to undermine our president, and I don’t intend to do so.”

Read more at Politico.

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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.

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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.

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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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Kanye West surprises Delta passengers with an impromptu performance [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Kat Stacks has a 90% chance of being deported [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Ray J falls on stage! [from HelloBeautiful.com]

5th Annual Black Girls Rock Awards in NYC [from HelloBeautiful.com]

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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Kanye West surprises Delta passengers with an impromptu
performance [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Kat Stacks has a
90% chance of being deported [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

Ray J falls on stage! [from
HelloBeautiful.com]

5th Annual Black
Girls Rock Awards in NYC [from HelloBeautiful.com]

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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Kanye West surprises Delta passengers with an impromptu performance [from TheUrbanDaily.com]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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