Innocent Abroad 
So?
His response wasn’t quite that Cheneyesque, but would-be George W. Bush Library benefactor Steve Payne concedes nothing. He claims remarks are taken out of context, says his request of confidentiality was violated, and tells some more whoppers.
“I have been a victim of a confidence game sponsored by the paper. The paper and its employees, not content with merely reporting news, have instead opted to manufacture the news in this worst-case example of “Gotcha Journalismâ€.”
Payne’s statement claims that hidden donations to the Bush Library were the furthest thing from his mind, and that he expected the worthy gentlemen with whom he was dealing to be above board in thought and deed.
“I was also very clear… in this conversation and in subsequent e-mails that any donations would need to be completely transparent and open to public scrutiny.”
The transparency extends to a Payne email dump which accompanied his statement., in which he suggests the Library cash could be hidden:
“The donation will be done publicly and must be in the form of a check or wire and will be done publicly in Akayev’s name unless he wants to be anonymous for some reason?”
Aiming High 
The Times of London has a Bush Pioneer on tape offering access to administration officials, possibly including Bush, for a fee of $600,000 to $750,000, a third of which would be directed to the Bush Library.
Lobbyist Stephen Payne says it can be done.
“The exact budget I will come up with, but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush libraryâ€
The paper approached Payne pretending to represent former Kyrgyzstan strongman Askar Akayev, ousted in a 2005 popular revolt. Akayev is hanging about Moscow these days, and The Times claimed he longed to return to power. The laying on of hands in Washington was to be the anointment
Akayev, Shown Here In Happier Times 
How does Stephen Payne work his wonders for democracy?
The Times has Payne in a remarkable string of photos with such luminaries as Rice, Cheney, Putin, Musharraf and more, best in show being Payne and Bush clearing brush together in Crawford.
Freedom’s Undergrowths 
Telling Tales 
Having done his part to continue the Clinton era celebration of Harry Truman’s muscular liberalism, Peter Beinart is casting his eyes back further, to the glories of Wilsonian foreign policy.
It’s somehow to be different from George W. Bush Wilsonism. 
Beinart presents a highly selective version of Wilson, what he might call “coherent.” It’s heavy on Wilson’s doomed world vision for after that messy war he joined. Wilson without tears – no unhappy interventions in Russia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua [inherited], no teaching the Mexicans to elect good men.
It’s gonna be great.
“McCain’s singular focus may be more easily grasped; Obama’s broader catalogue could end up sounding less like a vision than a list. Collective security offers a way of linking these disparate concerns and telling a coherent story about today’s problems and how to solve them…In 1916, Woodrow Wilson talked of “a common order, a common justice and a common peace.†In the 2007 Foreign Affairs article in which he set out his foreign policy views, Barack Obama wrote about “common threats,†“common security,†and a “common humanity.†America’s fate and the world’s fate, both men were trying to say, are ultimately indivisible. We rise together or fall together. Never has the world so badly needed to hear these words from an American president, and never have the American people been so prepared to embrace them. Wilson’s dream has been too long deferred. The time to revive it is now.”
There’s Something About Joans
AstroTurf and Internet sock puppets are valued tools in the hope chest of propaganda, but one Reagan Library fan has fallen back on a steady method appropriate for America’s Sunset President
– the letter to the editor from a deeply concerned citizen.
Joan Marie Patsky is a realtor who donates to the Library, but she doesn’t let this connection cloud her vision one bit.
The Reagan Library’s new Discovery Center features students reenacting of the Grenada invasion, and even as fizzy event as that is presented in a spectacularly hoked up version.
Joan is so thrilled by the place she’s written various papers at least three letters to the editor praising the new vision quest.
She states the kool-aided uncontradictable:
“Creative education recently took a giant leap forward at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s grand opening of the Air Force One Discovery Center in Simi Valley“
She furthers the Reagan Library’s mission 
to insert Nancy Reagan into as many contexts as possible, while confusing the real plane for a fake one:
“There is also a replica of the historic Boeing 707 Air Force One aircraft that carried the president and Mrs. Reagan on important missions that shaped global history.”
But sometimes she gets that it’s a real plane in service of the make believe:
“the powerful presence of the Presidential Air Force One Boeing 707 that is a historical symbol of the Reagan policy of a strong national defense and proactive involvement in global diplomacy.”
And sometimes the vapors overcome her and she makes no sense at all:
“Let education be the destination and experience the human dignity values of American democracy!”
Boyhood Home Revealed! 
Excitement reins at Ferry Farm, scene of George Washington cannoting to tell a lie 
and other legends. An archaeological dig has revealed the foundations of what is thought to be his childhood home.
The Ferry Farm drawing bares a remarkable resemblance to the house built near Washington’s birthplace in the early 20th Century. 
That house was built on a site misidentified by Washington’s adopted son, George Washington Custis.
Telltale Ferry Farm remnants include a masonic pipe and a type of gem often traded from India to West Africa, and presumably brought to Virginia through some path coming out of the slave trade.
You can go back to near the birth of the Father of Our Country, but you can’t escape Original Sin!
