Barack Obama needs to ask George W Bush for help with Obama’s foreign policy.

Barack Obama’s making a very stupid mistake, here.

[Former President George W.] Bush, who said that he calls former president Bill Clinton several times a year, including last week when his granddaughter was born, noted that President Obama hasn’t called him since Osama bin Laden was killed.

“He has not [called] on a regular basis, which is okay. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. It’s a decision he has made. Presidents tend to rely on the people they’re close to…and I understand that,” Bush said.

It’s always arrogance that gets the powerful, in the end. Arrogance and pride.  Because here’s the situation – and I write this with an enormous grin of schadenfreude on my face from thinking about how progressive activists will react to what I’m about to write – it’s clear by now that George W Bush knows how to beat a terrorist insurgency, and Barack Obama does not.  Barack Obama’s previous Iraq policy was a miserable failure.  Barack Obama’s foreign policy staff was incompetent. The President himself demonstrated that, when it came to terrorists and figuring out why they hate us, Obama was fundamentally intellectually incurious and far too prone to episodes of epistemic closure.  Do I need to keep using all those progressive antiwar sneers as handy flails, or has everybody gotten the point by now? Continue reading Barack Obama needs to ask George W Bush for help with Obama’s foreign policy.

Barack Obama ready to lean on George W Bush’s 2002 Iraq AUMF. …DOES IT *BURN*, #p2 & #tlot?

I hope it burns them like hygiene*:

The White House believes that Congress’s 2002 authorization of the Iraq war — and not just the 2001 authorization to fight Al Qaeda — provides a legal justification for President Obama’s air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Obama administration said Friday.

Via Instapundit, who is probably likewise feeling invigorated right now. Who needs stimulants, when you have schadenfreude?

Moe Lane

*Classical reference.

Liberal Beltway Elitist Bruce Ackerman… apparently misses him some George W Bush right now.

Background: Bruce Ackerman is one of those people.  You know: Harvard, Yale Law, a long and fruitful career writing articles in the right upper-crust policy journals and books that invariably get published via university presses.  A fellow at that intersection of academia and Beltway culture, in other words: and my, but did he not enjoy the Bush administration!  All the wrong sort were around that decade, apparently.

Seriously, take a look:

Succumbing to the crudest partisan temptations, the Republicans managed to get their man into the White House, but at grave cost to the nation’s ideals and institutions. It will take a decade or more to measure the long-term damage of this electoral crisis to the Presidency and the Supreme Court – but especially in the case of the Court, Bush v. Gore will cast a very long shadow[*].

  • Bruce Ackerman, December 11, 2008. After saying that the Bush administration’s “cavalier treatment of the rule of law has embarrassed America,” he ended with:

Continue reading Liberal Beltway Elitist Bruce Ackerman… apparently misses him some George W Bush right now.

Hillary Clinton shows the anti-Bush Left the Hawaiian Good-Luck Symbol.

I do not believe that Hillary Clinton actually believes this, but I do believe that she believes that she needs to act like she believes this. Continue reading Hillary Clinton shows the anti-Bush Left the Hawaiian Good-Luck Symbol.

Quote of the Day, HAHAHAHAHA Obama Doesn’t Have The Guts To Do That edition.

Carl Cannon (H/T: Hot Air), noting that Barack Obama’s response to the border refugee crisis is pretty much contemptible (well, I think that it’s contemptible), especially considering both a) how his predecessor acted during Hurricane Katrina and b) how then-Senator Obama commented about George Bush at the time (spoiler warning: rudely):

Although Obama probably doesn’t have to go to the border personally to be an effective leader, he may owe George W. Bush an apology.

…Barack Obama would sooner remove one of his own testicles with a rusty spoon than do that.

Moe Lane

PS: I wonder how it feels, knowing that the face of your party is the moral inferior of the man who preceded him.  I wouldn’t know: I’m a Republican.

No, an Obama Presidential Library/outhouse float is not racist. …*Duh*.

Sometimes, the Left’s soft bigotry of lowered expectations isn’t actually all that soft.

I’m going to change it up a little and show you this comparison picture first

presidential-libraries

…because I want people to understand precisely how STUPID – and unfortunately revealing – this latest nonsense on stilts is: Continue reading No, an Obama Presidential Library/outhouse float is not racist. …*Duh*.

GWB Rehabilitation Watch, Look At Those Gallup Numbers! edition.

He’s already beating Jimmy Carter, although God knows that isn’t hard.

Gallup-Bush

There’s no real reason to bring this up, except of course that doing this incredibly torques off all of those folks on the Left who based their own sense of self on their loathing of George W Bush. That’s bad mojo, my friends: bad, bad mojo. And it’s something that my own ideological compatriots will need to watch out for, once the current guy is out of office: Barack Obama’s image will be rehabilitated in the public eye. It almost always happens.

So, those guys on the Left? Don’t be like those guys.

Why Barack Obama should be relieved that George W Bush is more popular than he is.

What’s that? Oh, yeah, funny how that happened:

No less a source than FIVE THIRTY EIGHT DOT COM reports that Greatest Living President George W. Bush is on the rebound: “Since April, Bush’s favorable rating has averaged 49.3 percent. His unfavorable rating has averaged 46.3 percent.”

As the Washington Free Beacon perhaps somewhat gleefully went on to note, that’s rather better than Obama’s current 45.8/49.8.  But it’s good news for President Obama, really. Do you know why?  Because it means that even though Barack Obama’s numbers are going to almost certainly plummet further in the next few years, the American people will almost certainly eventually forgive him, too.  Just as soon as Barack Obama leaves office.  Because that’s what the American people do.   Continue reading Why Barack Obama should be relieved that George W Bush is more popular than he is.

George W Bush, income equality champion! (:rolling eyes:)

Man, having the Volokh Conspiracy over at WaPo is gonna be fun:

The president under whom the poorest quintile enjoyed the largest increase in after-tax household income was George W. Bush. And the two administrations under whom the richest quintile and richest 1 percent fared the worst were the two Presidents Bush. Among Barack Obama’s four immediate predecessors, the two biggest income equalizers were George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Just to be clear, I am not pining for the good old days of the economy of George W. Bush.

But George W. Bush was the most successful of our recent past presidents in achieving very substantial increases in incomes for the poorest quintile (+18.4%), while keeping gains for the richest quintile and richest 1 percent at modest levels.

Continue reading George W Bush, income equality champion! (:rolling eyes:)