According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the in the nine years since he kicked-off his Senate bid in 2004, Obama has raised $1,017,892,305. In comparison, over two consecutive terms, President George W. Bush raised approximately $430 million.

For his second run at the presidency, the Commander in Chief is expected to bring in roughly $300 million by November.  His funders include companies and organizations like Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Harvard University. Since publicly supporting same-sex marriage, Obama is also expected to see a huge financial bump from wealthy gay and lesbian supporters.

Elsewhere on the fundraising front, his opponent Mitt Romney's slanderous efforts, have helped him bring in $40 million, for the month of April.

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Photo: Business Insider

The Republicans that invited Barack Obama impersonator Reggie Brown to the GOP Leadership Conference didn't expect the jokes to target some of their own.

The comedian got a bunch of laughs when he poked fun at The president claiming that he only celebrated half of Black History month but the laughter wasn't as loud when he made fun of Barbara Bush and George W. Bush.

Brown's mic was cut off when he apparently took some shots at Republican Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

However, the funny man from Chicago claims that he was rushed off because of time constraints, not content. His set was supposed to be between 10 and 15 minutes, but with an introductory video they played for him, he was clocked at 17 minutes.

“Not every joke hits,” Brown said. “All-in-all I think it was a great performance, and I got a lot of great feedback.”

Take a look at some of the hilarious political jokes.

Former President George W. Bush recently declined an offer from President Obama to appear at a 9/11 memorial scheduled for tomorrow (May 5).

President Obama is scheduled to visit New York's ground zero Thursday, in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, recently killed in a raid in Pakistan by Navy Seals.

However Bush Jr, the man who initiated the 10-year hide and seek with the al Qaida leader refuses to show.

Bush's spokesperson David Sherzer cited that former Commander In Chief would rather remain distanced from the spotlight in his post presidency years.

However  George W stated that bin Laden's death was an “important victory for the war on terror."

Bush was a fledgling president in 2001 when the coordinated al-Qaida plane attack on the World Trade Center happened killing 3,000 people.

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“I was rather shocked to see the downtick in prosecutions of hate crimes,” remarked the Justice Department's head of the civil rights division, Tom Perez.

Though seemingly one of the few good trends to emerge from what many, including myself, see as a failure of a presidency lead by a leader in George W. Bush that was nothing more than a lame duck president, the fact that there were less hate crimes then than there are now only serves to highlight the beliefs of several key democratic figures.

During the Bush years, Democrats were vocal about several inefficiencies in the investigation of hate crime, police misconduct, and housing discriminatory cases as well as employment issues that involve bias.

An investigation launched after President Obama took office showed that the Justice Department under President Bush was mired by improper hiring and personnel choices by those in power.

25 crimes, classified as hate crimes, were filed during what was the majority of President Obama's first year in office. 31 were filed in 2001.

One such figure, Michael Steele, is feeling the heat after members from within the Grand Ol' Party (GOP) have called for him to take what has been deemed as the defining tool to determine who is and is not a true conservative; a “purity” test.

Unwilling to bow to the wishes of his constituents, a close ally for the Republican National Committee Chairman is coming to the aid of his friend, saying that the test is nothing more than a well coordinated publicity stunt that was created by enemies of the party.

"You've got a few backbenchers who are unhappy," remarked Shawn Steel of California's RNC chapter to media. "They don't have the power they once had under the previous chairman, and that's what motivating this. This is an attempt to stick it to Chairman Steele by the losers."

The purity test is to be administered to all members of the RNC in an effort to make sure that all proposed candidates and party leaders meet ten core principles that define the party.

A revelation that says otherwise will mean political death for that person due to the party withdrawing its financial strength and aid of any type from the equation.

Ironically, distinguished Republican demi-gods such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would have failed the purity test with flying colors.

In a monumental ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval declared that the government, via negligence on the part of the Army Corp of Engineers, is directly responsible for many of the issues that people encountered after the winds settled.

In his 156-page decision, Judge Duval proceeded to rip the Army and U.S. Government a new one, using words such as “myopia, insouciance, and shortsightedness,” to describe the corps quality of work ethics.

“For more than 40 years the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by deterioration of the channel. The corps had a myriad of ways to address the problem but failed to do so.”

On the same day, Judge Duvall awarded $719,000 to a group of flood victims that sued the government in April of 2006.

The ruling creates a clear path for anyone effected by Katrina who would like to take legal action against the government in the storm's aftermath.

With the inefficiency that was FEMA, I am sure that there will be more lawsuits in the near future.

In a monumental ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval declared that the government, via negligence on the part of the Army Corp of Engineers, is directly responsible for many of the issues that people encountered after the winds settled.

In his 156-page decision, Judge Duval proceeded to rip the Army and U.S. Government a new one, using words such as “myopia, insouciance, and shortsightedness,” to describe the corps quality of work ethics.

“For more than 40 years the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by deterioration of the channel. The corps had a myriad of ways to address the problem but failed to do so.”

On the same day, Judge Duvall awarded $719,000 to a group of flood victims that sued the government in April of 2006.

The ruling creates a clear path for anyone effected by Katrina who would like to take legal action against the government in the storm's aftermath.

With the inefficiency that was FEMA, I am sure that there will be more lawsuits in the near future.

Speaking through a translator Chavez called the people from Fox News stupid, but not the reporter talking to him specifically. Although he did say the reporter's mind had "many confusions."

At a previous speech at the U.N. during the Bush administration, Chavez made comments about the United Nations chamber smelling like sulfur. In 2006 after Bush addressed the world body during its annual meeting Chavez said :

"The devil came here yesterday. And it smells of sulfur still today." (2006)

This year now that George W. Bush is no longer president of the United States Chavez says:

"It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope." (2009)

Chavez also offered these comments on President Barack Obama:

"He is still an enigma to me. There are two Obamas so far. One Obama promotes peace. The other Obama promotes new military bases in Colombia. Let's see which one wins. I hope it will be the Obama who says the U.S. cannot impose anything on any country. Meanwhile, the Pentagon supports coup leaders in Honduras."

In his confrontation with the Fox News reporter Chavez had this to say:

"How the Americans are killing people in Iraq? Have you seen those? Have you seen this? [Inaudible] … Your network hides everything and your president, Bush, [you] supported Bush and you're criticizing Obama because he's Black. So, that's why your mind is filled with poison."

You can watch the video below.

Hugo Chavez has a very close relationship with former Cuban head of state Fidel Castro. Chavez and several other heads of state in Latin America are urging the United States to lift the long standing embargo on Cuba. In New York Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva went as far as to call the embargo an "obsolete measure."

The U.S. embargo of Cuba has been going on for 48 and was an inportant part of the agenda during the 64th session of the General Assembly that ends Monday. This embargo is the longest embargo in modern history.

Eight years after the most tragic crime to occur on the continental coast of the U.S. since the displacement and slaughter of the indigenous people who were previously living here a few hundred years ago, and no one has ever been arrested for those murders.  Close to 4,000 everyday working-class citizens lost their lives in lower Manhattan on September 11^th 2001 when two of the world's most brash symbols of white supremacy came crashing down in an incinerated heap of molten debris that day.

With all the recent attention being paid to the U.S.' first Americanized African Head-Of-State and his campaign pledge of bringing about a ‘change', many people seemingly forgot about the previous administration's promise to bring justice to culprits they alleged to be responsible for the brazen attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. on that tragic morning.

As the United Snakes of Amerikkka's daily activities grounded to a screeching halt that morning and remained so for the next few days, news channels blamed what some reports later revealed to be a former colleague of the Bush clan – Osama Bin Laden as being the master-mind.

The U.S.A.'s sense of entitlement and cloak of invincibility had now been stripped away.  The swagger that many people often displayed as they strutted around with their chests puffed out was no longer.  They could now instead be seen scurrying for cover as bodies lay splattered upon the asphalt and concrete jungle in the shadows of the very same buildings which once told the world that – “We [the U.S.] are boss!”  Never before did it seem so vulnerable.

Initially some people applied a very critical eye and analyzed it as merely being a case of ‘the chickens coming home to roost!' That the U.S. itself was founded on bloodshed and chaos and has consistently spread terror throughout its global colonizing conquests of other continents and it was only a matter of time before it also happened on its own home turf.  But what was later revealed by eyewitnesses was that the Twin Towers themselves had been internally rigged with explosives and the Pentagon was hit by a fired projectile, not a plane as initially reported.

“When you see in the manner that the two buildings collapsed it will tell you that the planes and its fuel wasn't the cause.  They imploded, not exploded!,” revealed conspiracy theorist Sahgani Voodoun.

“Plus, when you look at the damage done to the Pentagon you'll see that if a plane was able to fly that low it would've taken out all the nearby trees and light poles.  They remained because it was actually a missile instead!”

Then president, George W. Bush and his colleagues claimed it was a vicious act of terrorism by some anti-American Arabs from the so-called Middle East named Al-Qaeda.  He then shifted the nation's attention elsewhere, saying that he was going to bring democracy to another country that supposedly was run by a tyrant dictator.  With Americans then focusing on a ‘war against terrorism', Bush professed to the world that Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was harboring large amounts of nuclear artillery – ie. weapons of mass destruction - and of illegally murdering hundreds of people, warranting charges of war crimes against humanity.  Although U.N. inspectors previously hadn't found any of the alleged nuclear artillery and withdrew from Iraq in 1998, Bush Jr. decided to go ahead and invade Iraq a few years later anyway.

The United Nations presented Resolution 1441 on November 8^th 2002; which offered Iraq, under Hussein's reign, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations and the U.S. still could not establish legal grounds to invade Iraq.  By March 2003, U.N. inspectors had not found any such weapons of mass destruction, yet the U.S. forces continued pursuing Saddam Hussein until he was finally found hiding in a farmhouse on December 14^th of the same year.  After a trial at the hands of the Iraqi/U.S. puppet government, Hussein was eventually executed on December 30^th 2006.

Since the U.S.' most recent occupation of Iraq, following the attacks on 9/11, approximately 5,000 of its troops and according to some reports over 250,000 Iraqis – both civilian and military personnel – have been killed.  Also to mention the billions of dollars that have been spent, and the U.S. forces have not yet found any weapons of mass destruction nor Bin Laden for that matter.

Sahgani theorized,

“Bush and them created the 9/11 facade with two purposes in mind:  One was to go into Iraq to murder Saddam for having the gall to try and kill his old boss -Bush Sr., and at the same time get the oil.  And two, was to plant fear in people while creating a fascist, police-state atmosphere with Homeland Security, here in the U.S.  Also, America is currently operating under the Patriot Act right now, meaning the U.S. Constitution is not operable, which means we have no Constitutional rights!”

He continued,

“Bush's family are German descendants who anglicized their name's from B-u-s-c-h to B-u-s-h.  The grandfather, Prescott Busch, helped to finance Adolph Hitler during World War II.  Bush and them are an oil family from Texas, so it makes sense from their point of view.  They used the media as a weapon of mass distraction to propagandize the public with all that talk about Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, then the weapons of mass destruction.  It's all Bush's bullShyte!”

After eight years of the Bush regime, the Iraqi war has been draining much of the U.S. economy, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer:  Many of the companies who received the multi-billion dollar contracts for the reconstruction efforts in Iraq & Kuwait are in one way or another connected to Bush's inner circle.  While thousands of Americans have lost their jobs and/or homes to foreclosures, many long standing banks have tanked, employment opportunities are virtually none, over two hundred thousand people have lost their lives overseas due to what many observers label as a greedy, capitalistic and unjust war that has also torn apart the families of thousands of soldiers while they were away ‘protecting their country'.

"Who is going to bring up Bush on similar war crimes against humanity charges like the ones Saddam was hit with?  Hussein supposedly is responsible for the deaths of a couple hundred people yet Bush is responsible for the deaths of over two hundred thousand.  So who really deserves to hang?  You sell your soul to the devil, then you reap what you sow,” reflected Sahgani.

A fact that is often overlooked by the mainstream media is that since the U.S. began deploying over 100,000 of its troops to Iraq and Kuwait almost 7 years ago there has been a substantial increase in poppy cultivation in that region, including Afghanistan.  Even presidential hopeful John Kerry noted, during his 2004 campaign run, the increase in opium exportation from that region.  Rumors have been running rampant recently that some of the U.S. troops are also shipping the opium back to the U.S. in the bodies of the deceased just as had been done during the Vietnam war. Given the American government's infatuation with narcotics and the immense amounts of money created by its distribution, it doesn't sound so far-fetched after all.

So, whatever happened to the weapons of mass destruction Bush?  Like the great comedian Richard Pryor once asked:  “Are you going to believe me or your lying-a$$ eyes?”

She went on to blast the parties for the rift between them that seems to widen as times passes. She candidly answered questions on a range of issues including her thoughts on Michelle Obama, former Vice President package Cheny and the eight years her husband spent in the White House.

According to CNN, during the interview in Paris, France, during a United Nations meeting, where she was advocating global literacy, the normally stern first lady defended Obama's speech to school children. An argument that cold possibly put her at odds with conservatives who believe Obama is using the speech to push his political agenda on children.

"I think he is [doing a good job]," Bush said when asked to assess Obama's job performance. "I think he has got a lot on his plate, and he has tackled a lot to start with, and that has probably made it more difficult."
She also said Michelle Obama is "doing great" by turning the White House into a home for her children and family.

In reference to the recent backlash the president has encountered behind his speech to schoolchildren, Mrs. Bush said it's "really important for everyone to respect the president of the United States."

"I think there is a place for the president ... to talk to schoolchildren and encourage" them, she said. Parents should follow his example and "encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the dream that they have."

Bush said she thinks it unfair that Obama is being labeled a "socialist" and said she was disappointed with the polarization of Obama's political agenda.

Bush conceded that after her husband was elected president, he was unable to replicate his success as governor of Texas in bipartisanship with the Democratic party.

"He was disappointed that that was not the way it worked out in Washington," she said. "I'm sure President Obama didn't expect it to be that way [either]. ... All of us need to do what we can to come together on issues."
Despite her husband's disappointment, he is "doing very well," she said.

In reference to former Vice President package Cheny speaking out and crassly defending Bush era politics, she is grateful for his defending her husband's legacy.

"I think that Vice President Cheney has every right to speak out, and I appreciate that he is defending" the administration, Bush said. "I think that is important. I think there is a place for that."

She also said it doesn't bother Mr. Bush that Cheny's "out there being critical."

When asked about the negative connotation that is often associated with Bush's eight years in the White House and the critics who call his time as president globally destructive, she said: "I would say that that's absolutely not right. I don't think they have either the right view of him or what his responsibilities are and were as president of the United States."