Great Moments in Presidential history

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Back at the beginning of last week, it was discovered that the Obama administration had dropped bullets touting their own accomplishments into the biographies of every President since Calvin Coolidge in the Presidential biographies section of the White House website (the additions have since apparently been removed but they were captured prior to by Capt. Ed of Hot Air).

A couple of our favorites:

President John F. Kennedy famously suggested the American people: “Ask what you can do for your country.” In 1961, the Peace Corps was created, facilitating service among citizens working toward peace in developing countries. In 2011, President Obama celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps with a Presidential Proclamation.

A Proclamation!



And this about Reagan:

In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

Who says the official White House biographies are off-limits to some campaigning and opportunistic politics?




But here is the one that caught our eye:

President Barack Obama awarded George H.W. Bush the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his commitment to service and ability to inspire volunteerism throughout the country, encouraging citizens to be “a thousand points of light.” The administration continues to promote service and civic engagement, honoring heroes of local communities as “Champions of Change” and fostering civic participation.

There was something fishy - we couldn't quite put our finger on it but we believed we had blogged about something similar when President Obama fist took office so we did a word search and sho' 'nuf...

Back in April of 2009, President Obama signed into law the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (yep, the GIVE Act). It was essentially a federal funding give-away to charitable and federally-favored volunteer oraganizations like Americorps, the Clean Energy Corps and the National Civilian Community Corps.

But do you want to know what else it did? It defunded the Points of Light foundation established by George H. W. Bush and which we blogged about here:

To many, this is the Americorps mandatory volunteerism Act as it boosts funding for this outfit and other community-related organizations. Yes, many other charitable organizations will be strengthened with your tax dollars except one.

Hazard a guess? Perhaps one established at the behest of the father of the President’s predecessor? Perhaps one whose initials don’t form pronounceable acronym that is still relevant to its intent?

Think PoLF.

Think Sec. 1831 of the bill…

(Sec. 1831) Eliminates federal funding for the Points of Light Foundation.

Yep, we’re throwing around trillions of dollars to god knows who on god knows what but this bill still takes time to stop, turn around and kick a political adversary in the nuts before merrily skipping along. Awesome.

We'll hand it to the Prez, though: snipping the federal umbelical cord after awarding President Bush the Presidential Medal of Freedom would've been completely classless, but we'll grant the President a certain measure of respect in performing the wing-clipping and then inviting the champion of that foundation to accept the award. Audacity, indeed.


We here at Beers with Demo are proud to bring you this Great Moment in Presidential History.