The Bush administration promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting five core concerns that often govern our lives--concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Looking ahead, the continued occupation of Iraq--or an attack on Iran--will likely be sold to us in much the same way. I examine these warmongering appeals--and how to counter them--in the new video above, entitled Resisting the Drums of War.
(also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UKnb5zJbM).

Today, the delegates to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church meeting in Dallas affirmed their Mission Council’s earlier decision to lease land to the President George W. Bush Presidential Center. It also passed a petition said to protect the integrity of both SMU and the jurisdiction itself by indicating that the proposed institute “does not speak” for either.
This is the petition approved by the conference:

By now most every knows of the sad news, for the U.S. Military, of the 9 Americans Killed in the Afghan Attack, with 15 wounded as well as others at the firebase.

A more recent report can be found here, Afghanistan: 'Hundreds' attacked NATO base with their Story Highlights being:
**Afghanistan: Attack involved 400 to 500 militants. 9 American soldiers killed
**Attack was the deadliest for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since June 2005
**NATO spokesman: "This was a larger scale attack than normal"
**Bomb kills 6 Afghan guards accompanying vehicle of U.S. private security firm

And many know the deaths of Afgans and Coalition forces occupying Afganistan, especially U.S. forces, has surpassed those in Iraq for several weeks now, even before the above attack.

What does the general American public think when they hear of Afganistan, which is rare:

What Iran and Other Nations Are Learning from North Korea

I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that the fireworks around my neighborhood on July 2nd were not in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the agreement in which the United States and other nuclear powers agreed to eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear states that signed onto the treaty agreed they would not seek to develop nuclear weapons capabilities.

As treaties go, this one

As we wait for the many coming books, I'm sure more will be surfacing, as many try to cleanse their souls, of these last eight years plus, in seeking their higher kingdom, we might have the time to take this seemingly telling descriptive tale into the fold of good reading.

Catching up on some of the issues I’ve been following, several things caught my eye. I’ll be writing briefly about some of them in the next few days. One of them was Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed column in Sunday’s New York Times. If you read it, I wonder what you thought about it. If you didn’t read it I encourage you to do so and then let me know what you think.

Unfortunately, due to the complicity of the Mainstream News Media, America is at a crossroads – one that most citizens aren’t even aware of; our MSM is run by corporate interests, and even though some reporters would give anything to tell us the truth, they are stifled from reporting the real news by their corporate masters. We have one or two reporters that deserve the Medal of Freedom for their honesty and tenacity, like Keith Olbermann for instance – but his audience is too small to make a real difference, and the news I’m speaking of should dominate the media, in print , on the radio and on all of the nightly news reports, but instead, what we hear are bits and pieces of so-called news that fail to sound the alarm that America is dying, not a slow death, but our economy is close to a complete collapse, and if Bush and Cheney have their way, World War III could begin at any moment. Yes, it’s that serious, yet the MSM refuses to tell Americans the truth, traitors and cowards for refusing to honor their own beliefs in journalism and protecting the freedom and democracy that a “free press” traditionally provided to its subscribers. The framers of our constitution understood that a free press was essential to the survival of our democracy, and even on our own government’s website, these words are immortal and as true today as when our constitution was first written:

»

• Login or register to post comments
• Read more
• kerry's vlog

In London the other day President Bush remarked that he intended to write his memoirs. He promises to include all the highlights of his life to date. His mischievous youth torturing small animals and insects in Texas. His glorious cheerleading days at Andover. The fun he had going AWOL in the national guard. The heroic struggle to get through Yale and Harvard with passing grades. The heavy drinking, the failed businesses, Jesus, redemption, the highest office in the land, surviving a deadly pretzel. The self-reported highlight of his tenure in office: catching a large fish in the Crawford estate lake. This is the stuff of epic, a certain bestseller and instant classic.

Address by Mayor Ross C. "Rocky"- Anderson on October 27, 2007

By Rocky Anderson
Salt Lake City, Utah --

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”"

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


click to enlarge

Now I get it--he was always in it for the "long haul":

Citing History, Bush Suggests His Policies Will One Day Be Vindicated
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR200806...

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 9, 2008; A03

...(President Bush envisions) a distant future in which Iraq is a tranquil democracy, Palestinians live peaceably alongside Israelis and terrorism is a tactic of the past.

...White House aides say Bush, who majored in history at Yale, likes to emphasize historical comparisons because they are easy for the public to understand and illustrate in dramatic fashion how differently future generations may come to view him.

Well of course, I went right down to the chain bookstore and snapped up a copy just as soon as I could. That’s my guarantee to this administration: every time one of the Bush worms turns, I’m running straight out to buy his or her book.

I’m already a hundred pages into it; it’s poorly written but it’s certainly worth reading and studying. What’s amazed me in the past few days is how successful the media and GOP have been in selling an idea: the idea that the story here is “the character of Scott McClellan.” That’s not the story. The story here is the content and assertions in the McClellan book—not McClellan’s character or motives, which ceased to interest anyone the moment he left his position as White House press secretary.

(continued)

I spent two years in Tanzania teaching secondary school math as a Peace Corps volunteer. The only Swahili left in my head is greetings and curses (one of the latter is substantially more offensive than anything we've come up with in English) along with a few memorable phrases. One phrase is "bahati mbaya" which literally translates as "bad luck." The reason it's memorable is because it was also used to describe completely predictable bad outcomes. If you started drawing a bath, for some reason left the house for a few hours and came back to a flooded living area...bahati mbaya. It is a wonderfully diplomatic way to avoid saying, wow was that stupid. It is in that spirit that I write: This is the bahati mbaya President.