Realist GHW Bush dealt with the shock of his sons neoconservatism by joking

Netanyahu to publicly ask Obama for Pollard's release: will this help or hurt?
This came after what the Jerusalem Post called an “emotional meeting” with Esther Pollard on Monday. Netanyahu and his predecessors have called for Pollard's release privately, but a public appeal would be something new. Which leads to the question: will this change the Pollard calculus in the inner sanctums of a battered, beleaguered Obama Administration? My unequivocal answer: it depends. On one hand, releasing Pollard might be seen by the administration as a way to make it easier ...

A Culture of Imperialism
While listening to a lecture recently, I heard an insight that resonated with me. The lecturer recalled an interview with Condoleeza Rice, who was President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State at the time. Rice was asked a fairly standard question: “How do we win the war in Iraq?” According to the lecturer, Rice’s response was, though a standard answer at the time, indicative of profound “brainwashing.” “[We need to] stop the flow of arms to foreign figh...

Bush on Bush
Michael Kinsley has a must-read review of former President George W. Bush's memoir, Decision Points. "It would be nice to say that Bush grew in office -- like Henry V, the wastrel youth and son of a famous father to whom he was often compared. But judging from this book, it didn't happen. Although Bush is admirable for stopping, he probably was more fun when he drank." ...

US Endorses Absurd Postcolonialist Resolution
[The following, by Vic Rosenthal , is crossposted from FresnoZionism.] President Obama announces US Endorsement of UN indigenous peoples declaration, at White House Tribal Nations Conference Dec. 16, 2010. In 2007, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 61/295, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This past week, the US endorsed the resolution, after initially voting against it along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand. All four nations have now endorsed it...

WikiLeaked Survey Says 1/3 Of British Muslim Students Believe Killing In The Name Of Religion Is Justified
Remember Glenn Beck’s fuzzy math, which calculated that 10% of Muslims are actually Terrorists? Well, according to one of those WikiLeaked diplomatic cables, the man may have been wildly underestimating. At least when it comes to British Muslim Students, one-third of whom “believe killing in the name of religion is justified,” according to a survey reported in the Daily Mail. The cable dates to early 2009 and refers to “a survey of 600 Muslim and 800 non-Muslim students a...

Harry Reid Goes SNL
Tue Dec. 21, 2010 7:15 AM PST Sharron Angle was just a bit too crazy for Congress. Us too, but the state of Alaska's been stalling on a freedom of information request for more than two years. The less she's liked. More bad Foreign Policy advice from the neocon hawk who got everything wrong on Iraq. Nick Baumann covers national politics for Mother Jones' DC Bureau. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on twitter. Email tips and insights to nbaumann [at] motherjones [dot...

Remember When Cap and Trade Was a GOP Idea?
— Photo courtesy the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. It might have been hard to tell during the past few years, with Republican opponents branding all attempts to cut greenhouse Gas Emissions "cap and tax," but the idea of capping emmissions and trading emission permits was originally a GOP idea introduced to deal with acid rain. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report celebrating the 15-year-old program to curb acid rain as an environmental...

Democrats on START: Nya Nya Nya Nya!
In the Senate this morning, the Senate Democratic Communications Center has put a one-page flier on every reporter's chair. On the front, pictures of George H.W. Bush, Richard Lugar, Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, and five of the former secretaries of state who've endorsed new START. These pictures are accompanied by the caption: "If you were making a major Foreign Policy decision affecting massive arsenals of Nuclear Weapons, would you tend to lean towards the position supported by" -- followed...

Barack Obama is the anti-Reagan of US global leadership: the president lacks true grit in the face of Americas enemies
As 2010 draws to a close, the United States faces a world that is ever more dangerous, with the looming spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran in the Middle East, a resurgent and increasingly aggressive Russia in Europe, a rising totalitarian power in the East in the form of China, a malevolent rogue state in North Korea, and the global threat of Islamist Terrorism. Yet Washington seems almost passive in the face of these huge challenges, with an administration whose focus is overwhelmingly upon dome...

Chris Matthews Explains Republican Strategy With A Scene From Love Actually
Chris Matthews isn’t happy with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , but that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun explaining why. He started by likening him to a character “only Charles Dickens would have fully created” (presumably because McConnell has been wearing a Wedding Dress ever since he was jilted at the altar years ago). He then said the Senator was competing with Dick Cheney for the “troll under the bridge” position. The best moment, however, came whe...

Michael Gerson - When foreign policy realism isn't realistic
Early in his service as President Nixon's National Security adviser, Henry Kissinger paid a visit to his homeland. The West German government suggested to the press that Kissinger intended to visit some relatives. "What the hell are they putting out?" Kissinger vented to his aides. "My relatives are soap." Blunt, and true. Kissinger had left Germany in August 1938 as a 15-year-old Refugee, three months before Kristallnacht. His granduncle, three aunts and other relatives w...

Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Failure?
On December 15, the Missile Defense Agency conducted an unsuccessful test of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), a long-range Ballistic Missile defense system designed to protect the U.S. homeland against a missile threat from North Korea or Iran. The initial review suggests that the failure occurred because an undetermined problem with the newest kill vehicle configuration. A more detailed review of why the GMD system failed to intercept and destroy the target has been initiated. However, i...

Palin: Dont Let Iran Go Nuclear
President Obama once said a nuclear-armed Iran would be “unacceptable.” Yet, Iran’s nuclear progress still continues unchecked. Russia continues to support Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors. It also continues to sell arms to Iran — despite the Obama Administration’s much-touted “reset” policy with Russia. The administration trumpets the United Nations sanctions passed earlier this year, but those sanctions are not the “crippling” ones we ...

What you may not know about Presidents Day - CNN.com
Washington (CNN) -- Retailers open their doors Monday and roll out big sales to entice customers. Government employees -- along with kids -- have the day off. But do you know why? If you answered "Presidents Day," you're technically wrong. The actual federal holiday is called "Washington's Birthday," after the nation's first president, George Washington. According to the Gregorian calendar, adopted by England and its colonies after Washington was born, his birth date was Feb...

HERE IS THE AFDI PRO-ISRAEL BUS AD TO RUN IN SEATTLE COUNTERING THE HATERS
Seattle BUS AD CAMPAIGN Here is the ad AFDI/SIOA will be running in Seattle to counter the blood Libel campaign against the Jewish people that is currently running in Seattle. The Seattle Mass Transit is now trafficking in blood libels. "War crime" libels against US allies. Even the murderous Muslim Hamas leader admitted that Israel killed mostly Terrorists in Gaza. Think about that. Remember, I had to sue Miami and Detroit transit to get freedom bus ads up helping Muslims under dea...

Albania Jails Radical Imam, Welcomes New Synagogue
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. The isolated and often-derided country of Albania, with a Muslim majority amounting to 70 percent of its three million citizens, has lately illustrated that small nations may often have great ideas, or, at least, may act responsibly in the face of major challenges that cause bigger powers to procrastinate. On Friday, December 17, Muhammad Abdullahi, a prominent imam in the Albanian port of Durres, was sentenced to five years’ ...

Federations To Give $2.4 Mil in Fire Aid to Israel
The Jewish Federations of North America said the federation system will distribute $2.4 million to help Israel recover from the Carmel Mountain fire. JFNA, the umbrella organization of the more than 150 Jewish federations in North America, made the announcement Monday. The fires last week killed 44 people, scorched more than 10,000 acres of forest and burned 100 homes and structures, including much of the Yemin Orde Youth Village. JFNA, said it will allocate $550,000 to the system’s partners...

Russia-US treaty clears last Senate test
A landmark nuclear Arms Control treaty between the United States and Russia easily cleared a last procedural hurdle in the US Senate on Tuesday and stayed on track for final ratification. Senators voted 67-28 to end debate on the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), one of US President Barack Obama's top Foreign Policy priorities, setting the stage for a final ballot expected on Wednesday. "We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threa...

Sarah Palin On Iran: Speak Loudly And Thats About It
Sarah Palin waded into the Foreign Policy pool today with a piece about Iran, and it was about as empty as most of the other ideas on Iran that we've heard over the last six years or so from everyone else....

Foreign Policy Review Suggests a Losing Effort
It is possible to think that the great campaign to create a new Middle East and Central Asia, defeat the Taliban, slay Islam’s violent Extremists, capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and build a radiant new world of Democracy and Capitalism, may be closer to being called off than one might think. The campaign has failed. It is not working now, but going backward, as in the case of politically chaotic and sectarian-divided Iraq, recently “liberated” by the United States at the pric...

Out of the Loop
The most prominent of the neocons who attacked me had been strong supporters of Chalabi, the man who was instrumental in helping America engage in an illegal war against Iraq - a war which took hundreds of thousand of innocent lives and bankrupted America morally and fiscally. Oddly, these same neocons were feigning compassion for a single Iranian - Mr. Khalaji senior -- the mullah. How quickly they rushed to Khalaji's defense -- John Hannah, while Dick Cheney's National Security Advisor, sho...

Send in the Strategy Clowns
by Jeff Huber Perhaps nothing signals how bogus the Obama Administration’s latest review of its own strategy in the Bananastans more than the Dec. 14 announcement by White House spokesmodel Robert Gibbs that there will be no change to the strategy. The administration bull feather merchants said the same thing when Obama transferred “Bananas” Stan McChrystal to Civilian Command for shooting off his mouth (and other body parts) in front of Journalist Mich...

What Is This Neocon Conspiracy Planning Next?
This summer I was flabbergasted by the sudden emergence of the proposed New York “Mosque” as a major national issue. It seemed to be a spontaneous uprising of sentiment, mysteriously appearing nine years after 9/11. What could explain this bizarre eruption of Islamophobia? Well, as this article explains in detail, there was nothing “spontaneous” about the eruption of this issue. It had been orchestrated by the neoconservatives for years before. I had never heard of of t...

George H. W. Bush and "Voodoo Economics"
Sam Houston State University historian, writing on the Forbes web site, has a very odd blog post this morning. He criticizes MIT Economist Simon Johnson for attributing the term "voodoo economics" to George H.W. Bush. Domitrovic calls it a "myth" that the elder Bush ever uttered those words. "You'd think there'd be a scrap of evidence dating from 1980 in support of this claim. In fact there is none," he says. Perhaps down in Texas they don't have access to the Los Angeles Times. If one goes to t...

Pardons And Priorities
by Conor Friedersdorf One of the most damning character indictments of recent presidents is the cowardly, borderline corrupt way they've misused the pardon power. Many people desserving an executive reprieve are left to rot in Prison. And the odds of being shown mercy is incalculably higher if you happen to be a personal, political or ideological ally of the president, as evidenced by the records of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. President Obama has so far been a failu...