Jim Wallis and Jon Stewart

Ninehundredthirtyfive false statements

The Center for Public Integrity reports on its investigation into the information disseminated by the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq War.
The web page is here.
They count 935 false statements, 232 made by GW himself.
According to this report many of these statements were made in spite of what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis.
From the web page:

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

It will be very interesting to see what the Republican candidate for President does with GW during the campaign this coming fall. And the role Iraq will play.
It's already clear that all the candidates, including Republicans, are calling for honesty en bipartisanship in Washington, and using hard language to describe the mess there. The same language GW used in 2000.

I still maintain that on a moral scale of nature of wrongdoing and effects on people's lives these false statements are far worse than lying about a blow job in the Oval Office.
Pardon my French.

P.S. If you look on the website of The Center for Public Integrity, and read about mission and staff of the Center (click here to do that), and decide that this is all propaganda of the liberal media, you are welcome to do that.
I would then sure like to see some proof from you that this data is not accurate (other than your screams of: "Liberal, biased media!").

Beggar

Imagine the President of the United States of America, with hat in hand, begging the leader of a third world country for anything.
Today George HW Bush did just that.
Click here for the rest of the story/commentary.

I don't know what you think of Maureen Dowd.
Sometimes you hate her, sometimes you love her.
This, from yesterday. Click here for the whole thing.

It took Mr. Bush almost his entire presidency to embrace diplomacy, but now that he’s in the thick of it, or perhaps the thin of it — given his speed-dating approach to statesmanship — he is kissing and holding hands with kings, princes, emirs, sheiks and presidents all over the Arab world and is trying to persuade them that he is not in a monogamous relationship with the Jews.
His message boiled down to: Iran bad, Israel good, Iraq doing better.
Blessed is the peacemaker who comes bearing a $30 billion package of military aid for Israel and a $20 billion package of Humvees and guided bombs for the Arabs.

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Desmond Tutu

Archbisshop Desmond Tutu was interviewed last night on Dutch television.
If you want to watch the interview, you can. It lasts about 80 minutes, and you'll have to be patient through the first 2 or 3 minutes, as that is in Dutch. The rest is English.
Click here.
Well worth seeing.
Great interview, great person.
I'm sure he's not perfect, but he glows with a supernatural (I'd say it was divine) strength, love, grace, peace and joy.
Amazing, when you consider the difficulties under which he has had to live and work.
We all were able to follow the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commision in the 90s.
The work of this Commission was, during those years, very impressive.
Still is.
I am struck again by the combination of grace (amnesty) and truth.
The goal of the Commission was to be graceful, but they knew that could only be accomplished by having the truth be exposed.
Liberating for victim and perpetrator.
If this isn't gospel-driven, I don't know what is.
Great inspiration for 2008.