One Utah

The New York Times reports on March 19 that whereas the Bush administration sold the Iraq war to the congress as a $50 billion investment, the actual costs are more like–
1.) ultra-conservative Pentagon estimate: $600 billion and counting
(note: this Honest Abe estimate categorically excludes “extras” such as operations in the war zone, [...]

Come one, come all pundits on this blog, to a penetrating quantitative analysis of Presidential greatness versus experience at–
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/Mar10.html
(scroll down to “Is an Experienced President a Good President?”)
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Conclusion: no correlation whatsoever!
My meditation:
According to this data, LBJ, with 27 years in the Congress, is the number two most experienced president and for my [...]

Remember when Americans were outraged that the military was buying toilet seats and hammers for six hundred dollars and passing the bill onto the taxpayers. Ah, the good old days!
I set my alarm clock to the Diane Rehm show on NPR at 9:00 a.m. every morning. If you live in Utah, it is one of [...]

Randi Rhodes of Air America, speech to the 50th Anniversary party of “PEACE ACTION of Michigan” on November 11, 2007.
DO not miss this. It is the most honest REAL discussion of what is really happened over the past seven long years.

Congratulations to Matt LaPlante for writing Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day, and to the Salt Lake Tribune, for publishing an article worthy of the New York Times, on the privatization of war. Indeed, as Matt says, these hundreds of thousands of cases violate all sorts of international laws. [...]

If you watch enough TV, ingest too many newspapers, and read a lot of blogs, my own and this one included, you get the impression the world is driving a flaming red Hummer in the fast lane to Hell. That may be true- but it depends on what Hell you’re talking about: the actual ones [...]

Can you believe this freak show?
Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington (a Republican - figures) has finally lost all his marbles and signed on with the UFO freaks.
I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning [...]

The controversial V-22 Osprey has arrived in a combat zone for the first time, McClatchey News Service reports. Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, nicknamed “The Thunder Chickens,” will be based at the Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq for at least seven months of combat operations.
Some may recall that this is the $110 [...]

The Washington Post has a comprehensive four-part excellent series by Rick Atkinson that covers the history of US military efforts to counter improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the most effective enemy weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will add a link to each part below as it comes online. Highly recommended reading.
The series is [...]

As the government in Myanmar is finding out, it’s hard to keep oppression, corruption and institutional violence a secret in the age of blogging, satellite surveillance and global economics. So when Dick Cheney and others convened in Salt Lake for a meeting of the “secret” Council for National Policy, I was skeptical. After all, this [...]

What day is it?
I rolled over in bed this morning and tuned on the radio. NPR’s “Radio West” program wasn’t on. Instead, there was a congresswoman railing against the audacity of  MoveOn.org to call General David Petraeus “General betray us.” It was immediately obvious that the congresswoman wasn’t on a radio talk show because her [...]

A new study shows that Americans are about the laziest workers in the world. Seems odd given that generations of us have grown up believing America is THE land of opportunity and the way you get ahead, especially in Utah, is by hard work, creativity and, above all, money. But in the decades following World [...]