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).

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:

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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.

Yesterday’s news about the Interior Department’s finally listing polar bears as a threatened species seemed to cause hardly a ripple on the pond of public concern. And why should it at a time many are suffering from “concern fatigue.” Some are expending so much mental energy on the Democratic presidential primaries that they have heart for little else. Even wars, the economy, and a global food crisis have taken a temporary backseat to concern about the cataclysmic natural disasters in Myanmar and China.

Although I have done versions of this before, this was inspired by a Daily Kos Diary:

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

What is this Country waiting for?

This is Our Government, those in Washington work for Us!

Little georgie likes to say "His Government", it ain't his, He Works For Us, as do everyone appointed and hired to federal jobs!

The Government we have isn't just Incompetent, It's Totally Corrupt!

until Hillary Clinton is out of the Democratic Primary Process.

What do I mean? Read the following:

We must have our eyes WIDE OPEN, wit in check, and counter punches ready for November.

While many are worried, or not worried (I am not) about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the GOP should be deathly worried about the MSNBC/Wall Street Journal Poll.

Bush is the albatross, the elephant in the room, the oxygen sucker for the GOP and John McCain.

As long as McCain continues to promote, pimp, pump Bush's agenda, we are looking at a third term of George W. Bush. In November, this election will be about CHANGE, because the public will demand it.

The Republican Party must stand by their record of the past eight years.

::

Here is the laundry list, quite lengthy and not even complete:

The war in Iraq refuses to be dismissed. Its ongoing cost in blood and treasure will be at or near the top of our concerns for as long as it lasts. It stays there no matter how much political elites want us to look elsewhere or media elites want to keep from highlighting the painful, ongoing slog. I believe the vast majority of us grieves a little each time we hear the day's price.