Yesterday the Daily Olympian posted photos of 46 local soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq in 2006-2007.

Barack Obama speaks out against going to war with Iraq in 2002. Prescient.

Oregon couple goes off the grid in 1970's Tudor house.

StepItUp: Five Day walk across Vermont for stopping Global Warming.

TomGram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon's 100-year War

Interview with Richard Dawkins

Monty Python - International Philosophy

HuffPo has some really great posts recently. Here are a couple more MUST-READs:

Naomi Wolf: American Tears I didn't realize it was getting this bad...

Larisa Alexandrovna lays out the stark reality behind the Moveon.org attacks eloquently in Our Cold Civil War.

Absolutely MUST-READ Dyno-mite conversation between Naomi Klein and John Cusack on Huffington Post:

Part I

Part II

Money quote:

Cusack: Right, you have a quote in the book: "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins." And the most unbelievable thing about it besides the carnage and the hubris and the insanity of it all is how blatantly they lie about their dedication to strict economic Darwinist rules. It's the mother of all con jobs -- free market rhetoric is being used as the cover story for crony capitalism... They are the biggest welfare freaks on the planet. On Democracy Now recently you recited Alan Greenspan's definition of crony capitalism to his face and asked him if the U.S. fits the bill:

"When a government's leaders or businesses routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses, and, in exchange for political support, bestow favors on them, the society is said to be in the grip of "crony capitalism". The favors generally take the form of monopoly access to certain markets, preferred access to sales of government assets, and special access to those in power."

He dodged the question, of course, but that seems to be a precise description of the Bush administration and its relationship to its favorite corporations. Not exactly the free-market propaganda they've been selling around the world, is it?

(And later in the conversation…)

We've had Poppa Wayne (Reagan) and Baby Wayne (Bush). Ronald Reagan was the old John Wayne...when kindness comes. But the key to the old Wayne is that he was once a killer; you can see it in his eyes... beneath the kindness lingers that hard truth: he was once a killer. He tames the natural world, but he does it with a veneer of benevolence.

Bush is the young John Wayne -- Ethan from The Searchers. Obsessive. Merciless. Ethan is a deranged person. He will fight the battle no one has the guts to fight...do whatever it takes...kill whoever violates the natural law of the frontier (jungle). This cowboy is the great righter of wrongs. He is wrath incarnate. Part of the mythology is that he's wrong a lot and pig headed and stubborn, it's part of the package. But he is a force of nature and you can argue about it all you want, but you must respect a force of nature.

Today's Daily Olympian

Front Page

Truthout Video: Tell the Truth, and so make Peace

David Corn: Judge Radhi Testifies on Iraqi Corruption; GOPers Attack

HuffPost: Jonathan Hafetz: Torturegate

Two weeks left for Al Gore to run

Another expert Bush won't listen to

View from my window with chipmunks

Republicans have an alternative: Ron Paul

I can't support him because he is a religious nut like the rest of them.

Paul Krugman is at his best this morning: Same Old Party

Excerpt: "People claim to be shocked that the Bush Justice Department, making a mockery of the Constitution, issued a secret opinion authorizing torture despite instructions by Congress and the courts that the practice should stop. But remember Iran-Contra? The Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, violating a legal embargo, and used the proceeds to support the Nicaraguan contras, defying an explicit Congressional ban on such support."

This is too good to be true: Haggard and Craig used the same escort?

World Mountain Running Trophy 2007 (Senior Men - Part 1)

This is what I do. Others may take up bowling...

WaPost: An Exit Toward Soul-Searching: As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound

One former senior official said nearly everyone who has left the administration is angry in some way or another -- at the president for making bad decisions, at his staff for misguiding him, at events that have spiraled out of control.

WaPost: Dan Froomkin: Torture Continued, an excellent round-up of links and blog posts from lawyers on the tortured torture policy of the Bushevics.

LA Times: I survived Blackwater

A former U.S. official received the security company's services -- and witnessed its disregard for Iraqi lives.

Barcelona on DailyKos: Wake the Hell up! "Much of the Amazon basin is burning"

"The planet is shifting gears on us. And we, collectively, aren't paying attention. Those of us in the driver's seat are asleep at the wheel, and the rest are all squabbling over their toys in the back seat. While the vessel we're driving in is careening wildly. That vessel is indestructible, by the way. It can hit a wall, drive over a cliff, sink under water, even burn, and emerge unscathed. A massive orb of rock and iron, that will continue on its stately path, rotating across the field of stars, for all eternity (or what we humans conceive as such). We're the ones committing slow-motion suicide."

Flash movie of the History of Religion

James Woolsey at Colorado College

Went to see James Woolsey speak this evening at Colorado College's Shove Chapel. Though at times when he was speaking of the"terrorist threat" I thought he looked and sounded just like Cheney on balance the talk was positive and constructive. The theme was energy. As in get off dependence on Middle East oil. Stop sending global warming gas into the atmosphere. How do we do this? The way is not easy and the answer lies in "wedges" of solutions not a single silver bullet. As a neo-con it is encouraging that he is forward thinking and recognizes the problem and is seeking solution sets. What is is troubling is that we still look to the neo-cons for anything that effects the public sphere after the disaster that is Iraq.

Boyhood friend of mine pioneers coal sequestration project in Pacific Northwest.

Andrew Sullivan: Bush War Criminal (based on today's explosive NYT article)

World Bank accused of destroying Congo forests

Five Million and Counting -- Iraqi Refugees Weigh on Our National Conscience

Iraq and Armageddon

On Dan Rather's law suit:

James Goodale



Sidney Blumenthal

Greg Palast

Went to see "In the Valley of Elah" tonight. Very powerful film with Tommy Lee Jones playing an Iraqi soldier's father. The soldier came back from Iraq and was murdered a couple days later. Tommy Lee Jones trys to solve why his son was killed. Ebert gives it 4 stars. I agree.

As I sat in the theater I thought about Bruce Springsteen's new album, Magic and a piece by David Corn I had read on line from the Nation. Things are terribly wrong in America. It won't be getting better for a long time. Bruce Springsteen is in despair. So am I.

Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA) Followers and selective memory re: Viet Nam and Iraq: They just don't get it -- never will: The Best Wars of their lives