DALLAS — Nearly 10 months after leaving office, former President George W. Bush plans to emerge from self-imposed political hibernation on Thursday as he starts a new public policy institute to promote some of the domestic and international priorities of his presidency.The “results” never achieved by his nightmare of a presidency, of course, on “education, global health (last I checked, the U.S. was “global”), human freedom and economic growth.”
In a speech at Southern Methodist University, home of his future library and museum, the former president will kick off the new George W. Bush Institute as a forum for study and advocacy in four main areas: education, global health, human freedom and economic growth. Advisers said he hoped his institute would be more focused on producing results than many research organizations are.
And we also learn the following…
“The president has been working with these ideas for a long time now,” said James K. Glassman, a former top State Department official now serving as the institute’s founding executive director. “He wanted to do something very different from other former presidents, and that is to create a research institute that’s independent, nonpartisan and scholarly and that will have an impact on the real world.”Oh, I’m sure it will be “very different from other former presidents” all right (and by the way, to get an idea of how brainless Glassman is, click here and read the hilarious comments to his book predicting that the Dow would hit 36,000).
The story tells us, though, that the Bushes still want to keep a “low profile.”
If this is “low,” then personally, I’d prefer “microscopic” (I can dream, can’t I?).
A few blocks from where the Wall stood is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, which commemorates the more than 1,000 people who died trying to cross the deadly East German border. A group of important Berliners gathered over the weekend to inaugurate a new exhibit on the Gipper and his famous efforts to end the division of Berlin.And as we know, when Ronnie said something “had to go,” like reasonable tax rates for his rich pals at our expense, any notion of sane environmental stewardship under the odious James Watt, economic fairness due to the “trickle down” madness of Budget Director David Stockman, and compliance with Congressional laws in the Iran-Contra fiasco…well, gosh darn it, it “went,” didn’t it?
The collection tells a fascinating story of just how focused Ronald Reagan was on tearing down the Wall. He first visited Berlin in November 1978, and spent many minutes surveying the wall's "death strip" from the penthouse offices of the conservative Axel Springer publishing house that stood right on the border between the two cities. "You could tell from the set of his jaw and his look," recalls former aide Peter Hannaford, "that he was very, very determined that this was something that had to go."
However, I’d like to interject the following (here)…
…the growing consensus among historians is that Reagan’s contributions, while positive, weren’t the definitive factor that America-centric commentators make them out to be. Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state under Bill Clinton, has insisted that attributing the end of the Cold War to Ronald Reagan is like attributing the sunrise to the rooster’s cackle.Ooooh – snap!
As far as I’m concerned, Reagan deserved credit for legitimate efforts at arms control near the end of his presidency, attempting to manage this country’s finances like a reasonably sane adult by combining tax increases with cuts (which still ballooned the deficit, however, but at least he was open to the idea of “revenue enhancement” of this type, unlike his “son,” the third president after him), and refurbishing the Statue of Liberty (and putting on a nice fireworks show to go with it).
And that’s about it.
Time after time, public murder sprees occur in "gun-free zones" - public places where citizens are not legally able to carry guns. The list is long, including massacres at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School along with many less deadly attacks. Last week's slaughter at Fort Hood Army base in Texas was no different - except that one man bears responsibility for the ugly reality that the men and women charged with defending America were deliberately left defenseless when a terrorist opened fire.Um, let’s see, war zones – as I recall when Clinton was president, we had limited conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, (cue the reflex right-wing umbrage over the “Black Hawk Down” incident – not a great moment, I’ll admit, but at least the episode was resolved under Clinton, albeit unsatisfactorily, unlike what would happen under Number 43 where conflicts still blazed when he left office) and Bosnia (still a tense stalemate there also). So there was no “high demand for MPs in war zones,” as I recall. And this of course meant that there were no shortages of MPs for our bases.
Among President Clinton's first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases. In March 1993, the Army imposed regulations forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection. For the most part, only military police regularly carry firearms on base, and their presence is stretched thin by high demand for MPs in war zones.
But somehow, the shortage is the fault of Bill Clinton anyway…??
Yes, I’m giving waay too much credence to this bunch, I know, particularly when this seems to be today’s excuse for the Foot Hood violence (with Smerky, among others, beating the “political correctness” story line to death here in an attempt to burnish his right-wing cred once more).
However, I thought Handgun Control Inc. made a good point (linking to this ABC News report)…
Sources tell ABC News that in August 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Guns Galore gun store in Killeen, Texas, and legally purchased the FN Herstal tactical pistol that authorities believe was used to massacre soldiers at Fort Hood.So basically, instead of arming everybody to the teeth, we should concentrate on better information-sharing between our intelligence services instead. And here is the first question I would ask of “Guns Galore”; how come you didn’t think it was a problem that a member of the Fort Hood base bought a weapon that was prohibited for use at that base (again, some information-sharing and reporting would have done a lot more to save lives than giving everyone assault weapons to shoot the “bad guys”).
An FBI background check under the National Instant Background Check System was done when Hasan purchased the pistol -- but that information was never shared with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington, which was aware that Hasan had repeatedly contacted a radical imam suspected of having ties to al Qaeda.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force ran down intelligence leads relating to Hasan late last year but closed the inquiry sometime in early 2009.
With an admittedly perverse fascination, I should tell you that I’m awaiting the next wingnut excuse for the massacre while the legitimate investigation proceeds (all that is missing here are conspiracies involving ACORN or Ward Churchill…or both).
Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island was to meet Thursday with Thomas J. Tobin, the Roman Catholic bishop of Providence, and perhaps start healing a bitter rift over whether health care legislation now before Congress should restrict abortion coverage.(Count to ten and breathe, Doomsy…)
Instead, they postponed the meeting, and Bishop Tobin stepped up his public rebuke of Mr. Kennedy, accusing him Wednesday of “false advertising” for describing himself as a Catholic and saying he should not receive holy communion because he supports using taxpayer money for abortions.
“If you freely choose to be a Catholic, it means you believe certain things, you do certain things,” Bishop Tobin said on WPRO, a Providence radio station. “If you cannot do all that in conscience, then you should perhaps feel free to go somewhere else.”
I don’t know about your church, Bishop Tobin, but I must tell you that there’s a whole lot of empty pew space on Sunday where people used to be in my church. And that’s really sad, because I’m glad I belong to my church and I can share in activities with other parishioners.
A lot of the empty pew space has to do with the economy, I’m sure. But I’m also sure that a lot of it has to do with the Church’s idiotic intransigence on “values” issues, most notably this one.
For example, on health care reform, a perfectly good compromise on abortion was worked out by Dem U.S. House Rep Lois Capps, whereby abortions would be paid for by subscriber premiums instead of taxpayer funds. However, that still wasn’t enough for the church and pro-life groups, who stated that, in their opinion, any premium payment delivered to a health care plan that is part of an exchange automatically became “public” funds (I should remind you that this country isn’t a wholly-Catholic theocracy).
So now, we have this horrible Stupak-Pitts amendment (cheered on by the church, of course – we received another threat from the pulpit to support it last Sunday, and I’m glad it was near the end of mass, because I would have walked out if it had come any earlier), which, for all intents and purposes, not only forbids abortion at all on any plan in an exchange, but basically makes it just about not financially worthwhile for a carrier to provide abortion services on a plan whether it’s in an exchange or not (and last I checked, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, despite Bushco’s best efforts).
And now, Bishop Tobin, you tell Rep. Kennedy (and by implication, all Catholics who disagree with you), that we “should perhaps feel free to go somewhere else”?
Let me ask you a question, Bishop Tobin. You know about the “safe environment” program, don’t you?
You know, all the “hoops” that we as Catholics now have to “jump through” metaphorically (fingerprints, classes, registration with local agencies, etc.) because the Church couldn’t properly ensure the safety of our kids for decades? And which I will make the time and pay the financial cost to participate in as soon as I am able?
Do you know why I and others do stuff like this? It’s because our faith is that important to us, that’s why (to say nothing of our kids, of course).
And now, you come along, telling a Catholic to basically leave because he doesn’t see your point of view?
You’d better watch what you say, or else those pew spaces will only get bigger (to say nothing of the church’s attendant loss of revenue).
And one day, one of those spaces might be where I used to sit.
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