from “The Nation”
with supplemental commentary by Jim Swanson

Once again, President Bush has shown his true colors of disrespect for the middle class and, basically anyone who isn’t white, wealthy and Republican.

New Orleans resident and jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and his band were invited to play at the White House Barbecue this year. For starters, the theme was “The Big Easy”. How nice to recognize a city that you totally ignored after the horrendous aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

Now for the rest of the article from “The Nation” magazine. Be sure to take a nice long look at the dialog from the President that is in bold type.

Yesterday, George W. and Laura Bush hosted Ruffins and his band, the Barbeque Swingers, at the annual Congressional Picnic. Bush’s remark to Ruffins is the ultimate symbol of his disdainful attitude towards the culture of New Orleans that he allowed to drown under the floodwaters of the Mississippi.

THE PRESIDENT: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers, right out of New Orleans, Louisiana. (Applause.)

MR. RUFFINS: Thank you. Thanks for having us. We’re glad to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Proud you’re here. Thanks for coming. You all enjoy yourself. Make sure you pick up all the trash after it’s over. (Laughter.)

God bless you, and may God bless America. Thanks for coming. (Applause.)

What a jackass! - JS

read the entire article at Yahoo!

Little Feat
“Fat Man in the Bathtub”

“Spanish Moon”

A twofer……cause I couldn’t pick just one of their songs!!

from the BBC Online

Nato has said it needs to do better in its operations in Afghanistan, after coming under criticism from Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Mr Karzai accused Nato and US-led troops of failing to co-ordinate with their Afghan allies, thereby causing civilian deaths.

A Nato spokesman said Mr Karzai had a right to be “disappointed and angry” over the scale of civilian casualties.

It came after a week in which up to 90 Afghan civilians were killed.

More civilians have been killed this year as a result of foreign military action than have been killed by insurgents, correspondents say.

Separately, rockets fired by coalition forces in Afghanistan killed at least nine Pakistani civilians, the Pakistan military said on Saturday.

Coalition forces were fighting militants in Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border when a few rockets came across the frontier, hitting a house.
[tag]
Pakistan[/tag] is demanding an explanation, a spokesman said.

Nato said about 60 militants in Afghanistan had been killed in the offensive.

Co-ordination call

Mr Karzai said innocent people were becoming “victims of reckless operations” because foreign troops had ignored Afghan advice for years.

read more at the BBC Online

This book should be required reading for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all the rest of the architects of this war. Problem is, it probably wouldn’t phase them.

From the Sacremento Bee, an excerpt from Elliott Michael Gold’s book, A Mother’s Tears, Mothers Remember Their Sons Lost in Iraq:

It begins with the nine months of waiting, the screams of labor, the breathing, the Lamaze. But nothing is as long as the pause, waiting to finally hear a new baby crying … and to hear the doctor say, “It’s a baby boy.”

Fathers soon find that he’s not a father’s son, but a mama’s boy, a bond that is unbroken as mother and son navigate their way around dirty laundry left everywhere, often covering half-eaten hamburgers with a sports magazine nearby or the greasy videogame controller. Boys are soft and warm, and quickly agree to hugs, but become “men” too soon, get uncomfortable at the thought that their mothers want to hug them in public.

Too many of these young men are destined to go to battle and too many never to return. When the phone call or the chaplain’s visit comes, all that flows are the memories, and a mother’s tears.
We document this bond between mothers and their sons who have been lost in combat. Some are rightfully angry about the war: “I hate President Bush … he lied to us, and I want these boys home now.” Some accept the war: “My son wanted to go to make the world free … but in hindsight….”

Why do I focus on males under age 25? Because the men dying in this war in Iraq are boys. One-third are 18 to 22 years old; half are under 25.

Karen, one boy’s mother, sent me photographs of her son, Zach, who lived only 20 years, seven months and five days. With the photographs, she included this note:

“I realize I have sent you more pictures than you requested. I just wanted you to really know my son. Don’t just look at the pictures, but see my son, feel my son and his wonderful presence. There are no words to describe how much I love him. He was my life. Every decision I made in life was made on how it would affect Zachariah. I now welcome my own death so we may be reunited.”

from Reuters
By Martinne Geller

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nine years ago, Seth Goldman walked into a Whole Foods Market Inc. store with an empty bottle bearing a mocked-up label and five thermoses of iced tea he brewed in his kitchen.

He walked out with a purchase order for 15,000 bottles, the first step of a journey that has transformed him from the marketing manager of a social investment fund to the chief executive of Honest Tea, a beverage company he said will have sales of nearly $25 million this year.

Honest Tea is one of many independent drink makers carving out space in the increasingly fragmented U.S. nonalcoholic drinks market, worth about $105 billion a year, to the detriment of established companies.

With hits including Glaceau’s vitaminwater, which comes in rainbow hues, and Red Bull’s energy drink, agile start-ups are gaining traction as consumers seek alternatives to the traditional soft drinks sold by the industry giants.

“Unfortunately, the consumer is not cooperating with big brands the way they have in the past,” said Charles Frenette, a former chief marketing officer for Coca-Cola Co. and Miller Brewing Co..

He was referring to consumers’ recognition that they have many options and that different drinks suit different occasions. “The consequence is they become more promiscuous — people are now drinking dozens of brands.”

Goldman Sachs analyst Judy Hong said the beverage industry is shifting from a small number of hit products toward a huge number of niche products, which often come from start-ups that rely on word-of-mouth or viral marketing, mediums that resonate better with young consumers than the television spots long favored by their deep-pocketed rivals.

read more at Reuters

from United Press International

SANTA ANA, Calif.(UPI) — A California jury awarded $11.7 million to a man who sustained brain damage from a stroke after an infection was left untreated.

The Orange County Superior Court jury awarded the money Friday to Joey Crumes, 45, who suffered a stroke after the physicians failed to treat an infection in 2004.

The Los Angeles Times said Crumes presented at the Mission Hospital emergency room in Mission Viejo with an acute headache. He informed the treating physicians that the year before he had an operation for cancer in the right sinus area.

He was sent home with some pain medication and a warning to seek further treatment if his condition did not improve. Five days later, the man fell into a coma and it was discovered an infection had reached his brain.

The resulting massive stroke left him paralyzed on the left side, which forced his confinement to a wheelchair and landed him in the hospital for 11 months.

The lawsuit was filed against Mission Hospital radiologist Charles Aucreman and emergency room physician Dr. Andrew Lawson.

by Ian Wendt

Today, the Muslim world is struggling with numerous challenges: absolute monarchs, dictators, internal inequalities, confrontation with modernity and social change, the poison of oil wealth, economic stagnation, human rights abuses to name a few. But the paramount ordeal for contemporary Muslim societies is the disease of radicalism.

Radical militants terrorize, radicalize and destroy their own communities first. Only then do they attack their neighbors and the world. Even as they spread carnage and terror abroad, Muslim radicals make graveyards of their own communities. For their own sake, Muslim societies must reject radical militancy. For our sake, we need to help them.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), then the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas, and other militant groups became famous by attacking Israel, western airplanes, and western innocents. But they have done their greatest damage to the Palestinian people. The current fighting between Fatah (the PLO’s political party) and Hamas is the most recent obvious expression of decades of corruption, abuse, militant attacks and internal terror perpetrated by radicals against the Palestinian people.

In Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion, a decade long fight by various Mujahideen, followed by a decade of civil war rendered this once diverse, moderate, even cosmopolitan, land a wasteland of radicalism under the rule of the Taliban. The Taliban became international radical Muslim stars, supporting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and exporting radicalism to the world, all while destroying their own society. Their continuing war on the people of Afghanistan has wrought generational devastation.

Lebanese radicalism is embodied in Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. The Lebanese civil war destroyed a once beautiful society. Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have also maintained a long term, low-level war with Israel. Moreover, they continue to strive to radicalize, divide and do violence to their own society. This week an anti-Syrian Muslim legislator and nine others were killed in a car bombing, threatening the stability of the Lebanese unity government.

read more at YAHOO!

Planning for the big take over should Castro kick.

WASHINGTON - In the first vote on Cuba legislation under a Democrat-controlled Congress, the House on Thursday easily approved a big increase in money for U.S. programs that support dissidents on the island.

The House also approved a proposal that would provide Voice of America with $10 million to bolster its broadcasts to Venezuela, where news media freedoms have been seen as under attack by leftwing President Hugo Chavez.

And the House was expected to pass late Thursday a proposal to make big cuts in military aid to Colombia - in the most significant change to the $5 billion U.S. anti-drug trafficking program known as Plan Colombia since its inception in 2000. However, Republicans critical of the proposal agreed to let the bill pass while planning to challenge it later during House-Senate negotiations.

The $34 billion State Department foreign aid bill for 2008 provided several avenues for Democrats to challenge some of President Bush’s policies on Colombia and Cuba, with the administration and its backers scoring a victory on Cuba.

President Bush requested almost $46 million for Cuba democracy programs for the 2008 fiscal year, a five-fold jump from the 2007 level, in keeping with a recommendation by an interagency commission that said the money would help bring democracy to the island.

Democrats on an appropriations panel that oversees State Department foreign aid bills - chaired by Rep. Nita Lowey of New York - had cut the aid level back to $9 million, arguing there was not enough oversight to ensure the money would be well spent.

An amendment proposed by Cuban-American Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, and Albio Sires, a New Jersey Democrat, to adopt the original Bush funding request passed by a 254-170 vote, with 66 Democrats joining 188 Republicans in support.

More at McClatchy

By M.R. KROPKO, Associated Press Writer
from Yahoo! News

CANTON, Ohio - A massive search ended in sadness Saturday when authorities announced they found a body believed to be a pregnant woman who vanished from her home a week earlier. A police officer believed to be the father of the unborn child was arrested on two counts of murder. Jessie Davis, 26, who was due to deliver a baby girl on July 3, was reported missing after her mother found Davis’ 2-year-old son home alone, bedroom furniture toppled and bleach spilled on the floor.

The boy gave investigators their first clues. “Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy’s in rug,” the boy said.

Thousands of volunteers had searched for Davis over several days, while investigators continued to question Bobby Cutts Jr., 30, who is the father of Davis’ son but is married to another woman.

Investigators were mum on many details of their work until they announced Cutts was taken into custody Saturday and was to be arraigned on charges of murder in the deaths of Davis and her unborn child.

The Stark County Sheriff’s Department also said a woman’s body was recovered in Summit County at 3:30 p.m. Authorities did not give a location but said they believed it to be Davis.

“Our hearts go out to the family of Jessie Marie Davis,” Chief Deputy Rick Perez said at a news conference announcing the developments.

Cutts has said he and his wife are separated and that she knew about the affair with Davis.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

Headlines like this really piss me off. Why are they struggling? Barack Obama is running around with a list of “earmarks” he’d want if he were President. How about congress forgets about some of those earmarks (of which so many are just pet projects and a way to make their friends rich) and take care of our wounded soldiers. Why is this such a friggin problem???? And how about you bring the rest of them HOME before they, too, are wounded or dead!!!!

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer

More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.

These are America’s war wounded, a toll that has received less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in Iraq. Depending on how you count them, they number between 35,000 and 53,000.

More of them are coming home, with injuries of a scope and magnitude the government did not predict and is now struggling to treat.

“If we left Iraq tomorrow, we would have the legacy of all these people for many years to come,” said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and an adviser to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “The military simply wasn’t prepared for its own success” at keeping severely wounded soldiers alive, he said.

Survival rates today are even higher than the record levels set early in the war, thanks to body armor and better care. For every American soldier or Marine killed in Iraq, 15 others have survived illness or injury there.