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Much is being said about President Obama's odd initial reaction to the shooting at Fort Hood. The president gave priority to giving a shout-out before commenting on the massacre. Perhaps he should have taken a cue from President Bush. Mr. Bush's statement after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 was dignified, presidential, and centered solely around the issue of the shooting a the school. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's lack of empathy and self-centered nature ruled the day, as he felt the need to give thanks to federal employees and give an odd "shout out" before he even addressed the shooting itself....

MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with -- from the economy to the war in Afghanistan -- are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. With his approval ratings down from once-lofty levels and Tuesday's Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America's first black president. He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as...

Now that the Obama administration is attempting to take a victory lap on the U.S. economic recovery, claiming the $787-billion stimulus passed earlier this year was what did the trick, despite a cost of $160,000 per 'stimulus' job, as ABC's Jake Tapper pointed out, it has come at the cost of the U.S. dollar. Since then, the stock market has rebounded nicely. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is off a March low of 6,547 points, even topping the 10,000-mark recently. But what has caused this nearly 50-percent jump? According to CNBC's Larry Kudlow - loose monetary policy by the...

If vindication means anything its name is spelled George Bush. As former U.S. president George W. Bush spoke to a Saskatoon audience, I stood in the wings, sneaking a peek through the curtains at the spectators beyond the footlights. The crowd was friendly to be sure. But more than that, the relationship was like a musical virtuoso carrying the audience through every nuance, crescendo and dynamic of a composition. With every pause, smile, laugh and down stroke of seriousness, Bush had the crowd in his hand. Before the show, a friend who recently dined with the former Texas governor and...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The banking system today may be in a more precarious position than it was a year ago, the man charged with overseeing a $700 billion bailout program said Wednesday. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general managing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the government's decision to support bank mergers over the past year may have put the U.S. economy more at risk. "These banks that were too big to fail are now bigger," Barofsky said. "Government has sponsored and supported several mergers that made them larger and that guarantee, that implicit...

Former President Bush Honored with Pro-Life Award during Visit to SaskatoonBy Patrick B. Craine SASKATOON, SA, October 22, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Yesterday morning, before delivering an address at TCU Place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, for a crowd of about 2,000, former U.S. President George W. Bush joined the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association (SPLA) at a business breakfast where the pro-life group presented him with an award for his "very public determination to protect the unborn while he served two terms as President." The Humanity of the Unborn Child Pro-Life Award, as it is called, was given to the former President "in recognition...

Coordinated international action helped save the world from the financial crisis that erupted last year, former President George W. Bush said Wednesday. "We intervened early, we intervened aggressively and we intervened together," Bush told the World Knowledge Forum, an annual conference sponsored by a South Korean business newspaper. Bush added that it remains unknown what would have happened had action not been taken. "I believe because of close coordination and the willingness to act in the face of financial danger that the interjection of capital into the financial system helped save our economies," Bush said.

For your consideration:

Homeland Security: Provisions of the law that spared New York another 9/11 are set to expire Dec. 31. So why do Democrats want to gut this law and remove the immunity telecom companies have for helping protect America? To borrow a British expression from World War II, it was a very near thing. The capture, arrest and indictment of 24-year-old Afghan immigrant Najubullah Zazi before he could set off bombs made from store-bought chemicals prevented a tragedy of potentially devastating proportions. It wouldn't have happened if the critics of Patriot Act had their way. The capture of Zazi was made...

Another month has passed and we are already into October. I have chosen photos from October 2001 to October 2004. The quote of the day is from the Lessons of Liberty Initiative speech which President Bush gave on October 30, 2001 at the Thomas Wooten High school in Rockville, Maryland Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island ..

Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation. It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources. That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years. And it is not just terrorists they are after.  According to the documents, the National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is being used to pursue multiple types of non-terrorism domestic investigations. It is also meant to be able to sort through the data — everything from health and travel records to credit card...

Police are looking for a man convicted of an Arlington rape more than 10 years ago in connection with the recent rape an 11-year-old girl in Oklahoma City. Melvin Urbina, 33, was sentenced to two years in prison for the 1998 sexual assault of an Arlington woman. He was deported to Mexico after his release in 2001. He returned to the United States illegally and worked in Oklahoma City. Police want to question Urbina about the July 25 sexual assault of a girl who was trying to find some extra chairs for the guests at her godfather’s wedding anniversary party...

DALLAS - Dallas FBI agents arrested a Jordanian citizen Thursday afternoon for attempting to bomb a skyscraper in Downtown Dallas. According to the bureau, 19-year-old Mosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested and charged for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Smadi had been under continuous FBI surveillance and was arrested after he allegedly placed and tried to detonate an inactive car bomb near Fountain Place, a 60-story glass office tower located at 1445 Ross Avenue, the FBI said.

The latest dust-up over President Barack Obama's health care-for-all mission — Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., angrily calling Obama a liar during a nationally televised speech — underscored conservatives' fears that illegal immigrants would benefit from efforts to expand coverage. Obama insisted that the legislation would not give government subsidies to the nation's millions of undocumented residents. But if immigrant-rich California is any indication, considerable numbers of undocumented immigrants participate in taxpayer-supported health plans. Although most federal benefit programs bar those who cannot prove their citizenship, California has been more generous than other states. Its taxpayers contribute more than $1 billion...

Still inspiring. Video at link.

I cannot believe we are already into September which no doubt will bring back many bad memories to a lot of Americans and others of us who love freedom and America and Americans. As I prepared this thread I felt that it needed to be posted in 2 parts and allow us to think about the first 10 days of September 2001 and try to think have our attitudes, thoughts and how we approach life changed after those 10 days. Do the photos up to 10th September 2001 mean something different to those that will posted later of 11th September,...

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Former first lady Laura Bush praised the performance of her husband's successor Monday, breaking with many Republicans in telling CNN that she thinks President Obama is doing a good job under tough circumstances.

Publisher expects its author to settle scores, take no prisoners, tell all WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney is one of the most remarkable figures in American political history. There, I said it. Objectively speaking, no matter your ideology, take a step back. One can only marvel at the former vice president’s moxie, mettle and maneuverability over a storied 40-year career. Forget that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., authored some 300 or so laws, most of which undoubtedly touched every American — Dick Cheney wrote the book on how to work the system to one’s personal advantage.

Media Bias: Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie.It's a liberal urban legend that Bush used the influence of his father and his father's friends to land a cushy position in the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. The Democrats would run John Kerry as a hero in the war, and CBS News was all too eager to help with Mary Mapes producing a "60 Minutes II" segment in September 2004 charging exactly...

SAN DIEGO — They say the older you get, the smarter your parents get. Likewise, it seems, the deeper President Barack Obama gets into his first term, the smarter President George W. Bush gets. Hard-line liberals will never accept this. They have too much invested in the narrative of Bush-as-incompetent-dolt to make room for the possibility that the Texas Republican got one or two things right in eight years. Nor do they want to believe that the supposedly more enlightened Obama is emulating his predecessor. Yet the Obama administration has — on issues both foreign and domestic — adopted as...

People used to say politics makes strange bedfellows. These days, calling any kind of bedfellows strange might qualify as a hate crime. It is probably safer to say that the political highway allows for frequent U-turns, as politicians discover that policies and programs they once decried as ruinous to the republic are now true and righteous. This is nowhere more apparent than in the announcement by the Republican National Committee of a brand new "Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors." The statement calls for legislation to protect Medicare from cuts, ensure that seniors may keep their current coverage, prohibit...

Think last year’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue package was beaucoup bucks to spend bailing out the nation’s floundering financial system? That’s chump change compared to what the overall price tag could be, a government watchdog says. The inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department’s bank-bailout program says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. That’s more than six times President Obama’s proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010. Much of the bailout’s attention has focused on the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which Congress hurriedly passed...

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the "far left" agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney's White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush. Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke...

Note: Includes a video. Special Dispatch - No. 2479 August 10, 2009 Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Qadhafi: Libya Was on the Brink of Producing a Nuclear Bomb Following are excerpts from a public address delivered by Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi, which aired on Al-Sa'a TV on July 15, 2009: To view this clip on MEMRITV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2185.htm .

..Please sit tight while I walk you through the math of Medicare. As you may know, the program comes in three parts: Medicare Part A, which covers hospital stays; Medicare B, which covers doctor visits; and Medicare D, the drug benefit that went into effect just 29 months ago. The infinite-horizon present discounted value of the unfunded liability for Medicare A is $34.4 trillion. The unfunded liability of Medicare B is an additional $34 trillion. The shortfall for Medicare D adds another $17.2 trillion. The total? If you wanted to cover the unfunded liability of all three programs today, you...

If the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who is thought to have been killed during the Aug. 5 airstrike in South Waziristan, is confirmed, his name will top of the list of senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed since the US began launching airstrikes into Pakistan's tribal areas in 2004. Baitullah would be the first tier one target (senior most al Qaeda and Taliban commanders) killed since the Jan. 1, 2009, airstrike that killed Osama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Al Kini was al Qaeda's operations chief in Pakistan, and Swedan was...

What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives? Wouldn’t the story be front-page news, especially in top, liberal newspapers? Wouldn’t it lead on CNN, MSNBC and the “CBS Evening News”? Might statues be erected to the man in the nation’s more “progressive” cities? What if the president was...

It is now going on eight month since President Bush has left office. I thank God for the time he was our President and kept us save after the horrible day on September 11, 2001For this month thread I will post the August photos from 2001 - 2004. The quote of the day will be President Bush’s announcement on the Patients’ Bill Of Rights, which I find very appropriate being what will face us if the democrat’s health care bill passes and becomes law Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island ..

As he announces an improvement in the GDP decline, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) reminds everyone that once President Obama took office, Congress "confronted the worst economy this coutnry had seen in 75 year. That was the legacy that we inherited."

July 2009 sees nearly 6 months since George W Bush entered private life and as we have done in previously monthly threads I have collated photos from the month we are in from previous years. Tonight I will post July 2001 and July 2002 photos and then over the next few days post 2003 and 2004 photos. I have also found some photos from this June which I will also post in the next few days starting with one of them as the photo of the month. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

Most Americans—54%--still blame President George W. Bush for the nation’s economic woes. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 39% say the policies of President Barack Obama are to blame. Those top-line figures are unchanged from a month ago. Two months ago, 62% blamed Bush. By a two-to-one margin, voters trust their own economic judgment more than the President’s. That, too, is little changed over the past month. However, in February, just 49% trusted their own economic judgment more than the president’s. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of women still blame Bush for the economic problems. That view is shared by...

Six months into US President Barack Obama’s tenure, his administration has indicated an interest to enter into a “comprehensive partnership” with Indonesia, forge better relations with the Muslim world and reassert America’s commitment to Southeast Asia. The policies — all relevant to Indonesia — appear worthwhile enough, but the Obama administration’s self-adulation in pursuing them is not. No one is surprised that Obama, the son of a Muslim man from Kenya, wishes to make a concerted effort to reach out to the Muslim world. In Cairo on June 4, 2009, he condemned “some” in the United States who view Islam...

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he was justified last year in suggesting that Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive could lose his job if the bank backed out on plans to buy troubled Merrill Lynch. His admission, included in written testimony for a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday, comes as Congress debates the government's role in managing financial firms that accept billions of dollars in aid. Bank of America Corp., which went through with the merger, ultimately accepted $45 billion in federal aid, including $20 billion to absorb the financial hit it took from acquiring Merrill Lynch &...

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., in defending the federal government's push for a reluctant Bank of America to complete a planned takeover of Merrill Lynch late last year, said it would have been "unthinkable" and potentially illegal for the bank to scuttle the deal. Mr. Paulson, who is set to testify Thursday morning on the merger before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a prepared statement submitted to the panel that he "intended to deliver a strong message" to Bank of American Chief Executive Ken Lewis that backing out of the deal would be a...

On Sunday, the New York Times struck another blow against the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism measures with a front-page story alleging that a CIA program was kept secret from Congress for eight years. The orders to keep Congress out of the loop — which sound flagrantly illegal — came, according to the story, straight from then Vice President Dick Cheney.

So forget politics for a moment and just watch the video below. It’s a great behind-the-scenes look at the build-up to Bush’s first pitch at the 2001 World Series, and the strike he fired with the lights shining bright.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Central Intelligence Agency had a secret plan to capture or kill Al-Qaeda operatives but it was terminated by new CIA Director Leon Panetta, The Wall Street Journal said late Sunday. Citing unnamed former intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the newspaper said the precise nature of the highly classified effort remained unclear, and the CIA would not comment on its substance. According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training of its operatives for the mission, the report said. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal...

Future attorneys are taught in law school to never ask a witness a question they don't already know the answer to. On Saturday, CNN's Don Lemon learned this lesson the hard way. Well after President Obama finished his speech in Ghana, Lemon was speaking live to correspondent Nkepile Mabuse who was reporting on location. When Lemon asked whether the warm reception Obama received upon his arrival Friday was unprecedented, Mabuse caught him quite off guard with her response. Pay particular attention to Lemon's body language when Mabuse says, "It's not unprecedented. When President Bush was here, you will remember, in...

...I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the Democrats yelling about this “secret” program have known about it for years...

On Sunday, the New York Times struck another blow against the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism measures with a front-page story alleging that a CIA program was kept secret from Congress for eight years. The orders to keep Congress out of the loop — which sound flagrantly illegal — came, according to the story, straight from then Vice President Dick Cheney.

It's the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he'd stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. "I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about," he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in jeans and a gray polo shirt, as...

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project By SCOTT SHANE The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday. The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy. Mr. Panetta, who...

The Bush administration authorized secret surveillance activities that still have not been made public, according to a new government report that questions the legal basis for the unprecedented anti-terrorism program. It's unclear how much valuable intelligence was yielded by the surveillance program started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to the unclassified summary of reports by five inspectors general. The reports mandated by Congress last year were delivered to lawmakers Friday. President George W. Bush authorized other secret intelligence activities — which have yet to become public — even as he was launching the massive warrentless wiretapping program,...

Defying their regime once more, Iranians have renewed their protests in the streets of Tehran. Last month, when the protests began, the New York Times ran a story hinting that Iran's demonstrators may have been inspired by an "Obama factor." The article suggested that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach, unlike his predecessor's approach, emboldened Iranians to rise up against their regime, demanding it repair relations with America and the world. The Times reporter drew a stark contrast between the presidency of George W. Bush and that of Mr. Obama. According to the article, "Iran's regime was able to coalesce support...

The Obama administration is developing an initiative to take money from the $700 billion program for the banking system and make it available to millions of small businesses, which officials say are essential to any economic recovery because they employ so many people, according to sources familiar with the plan. The new effort -- which would represent a striking shift from the rescue program's original mandate -- would direct billions of bailout dollars toward a program that aims more at saving jobs than righting the financial system. A proposal being floated by senior Treasury Department officials calls for using the...

July 09, 2009Why I'm Thankful for George W. BushBy Ken Russell On October 23, 1983 the Marine Corps Battalion Landing Team (BLT) building located at the Beirut International Airport was blown up.  Two hundred twenty Marines, 18 Sailors and 3 Soldiers were killed in a split second by a suicide bomber.  I wasn't there at the time.  I was participating in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada.  I was a squadron CH-46E helicopter co-pilot in Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261 (HMM-261) and also the squadron classified materials officer.  Being the one who set up the squadron classified messages, I read about...

A bipartisan task force will recommend today that the United States overhaul its immigration system in response to national security concerns, saying that the country should end strict quotas on work-based immigrant visas to maintain its scientific, technological and military edge. "The continued failure to devise and implement a sound and sustainable immigration policy threatens to weaken America's economy, to jeopardize its diplomacy, and to imperil its national security," concluded an independent Council on Foreign Relations panel, co-chaired by former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas V. "Mack" McLarty III. The report...

Seven years ago, Reuel Marc Gerecht looked into the best crystal ball in all global strategy and wrote down what he saw in the pages of the Weekly Standard: If the United States stays in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, and ushers in some type of a federal, democratic system, the repercussions throughout the region could be transformative. Popular discontent in Iran tends to heat up when U.S. soldiers get close to the Islamic Republic. An American invasion could possibly provoke riots in Iran--simultaneous uprisings in major cities that would simply be beyond the...

Return to the Article June 29, 2009Bush's Domino EffectBy George Joyce Today's liberal press has made digging for a hot story quite simple.  The secret is to take any domestic or international event or crisis, wait a few days, and then note the singular and glaring omission -- the unremarked elephant in the room in other words.  Since the mainstream press in America has bargained critical thinking for idol worship, the truth often sits quite open and exposed for the rest of us -- a case of easy pickings. Last week's dramatic demonstration for freedom in Iran provides the...

ran’s citizens, fed up with their oppressive theocratic government, are spilling into the streets and revolting at risk of death. Meanwhile the usual suspects – from the United Nations to leftists like President Barack Obama – are assuming the usual full-prone position of acute non-interventionism. Iranians have written to me this week to ask why the United Nations isn’t doing anything. I replied that it’s because George W. Bush isn’t around anymore to file the necessary paperwork. What Bush did, however, was set up the framework for a cultural revolution in the Middle East. And most people probably aren’t even...