On the 29th of July an extremely important think tank report, paid for by the government, came forth from the Rand Corporation, a favorite of the Pentagon on National Security matters.

I heard the report early that morning on a news blip on NPR and went over to the Rand Site and found the report. I than posted about it on a number of sites as well as sent it out, all with back links.
There was also a link for a Congressional Briefing to be held on that day on the report.

The title above comes from a new Rand Corporation Report

After 7 years of conflict and occupations, with 893 coalition deaths -- 556 Americans, in Afghanistan and increasing, and 4,438 coalition deaths -- 4,124 Americans in Iraq and increasing, with tens of thousands of injured and maimed, physically and mentally, and millions of innocents in both countries killed, maimed, living as refugee's, fighting each other in sectarian civil wars, living in ethnically cleansed neighborhoods and area's in Iraq behind huge concrete blast walls, this "Think Tank?" comes out and says:

U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida

Current U.S. strategy against terrorist organization al Qaida has not been successful at limiting the group's capabilities. Since Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks than ever before and over an increasingly broader range of targets.

I'm sure you all have read that Obama has released an aggressive Fight the Smears website that does a great job dispelling many of the incendiary myths perpetuated by many different sources, from Rush Limbaugh, to lying bloggers, to just plain stupid people (Rush actually fits this category but I digress).

The website fails in one major respect, while addressing the lies perpetrated to undercut Obama as a candidate, it fails to address what the meat of the smear is really about.

More after the break:

What's more important?

air for all of us to breathe?

stopping abortion and gay marriage?

I do, I think the guy is hilarious.  I watched his speeches yesterday and I thought he was incredibly funny and entertaining, nothing controversial at all.

I don't know why everyone is freaking out about these speeches, but I suspect a number of these diaries are concern trolls trying to divide us or disillusion us.  Maybe it's even the Clinton strikers coming back as trolls.

But, I totally don't understand why anybody is offended by him or his very recent speeches.  I'm not offended at all by him.  In my opinion, with these speeches, Rev. Wright did exactly what he had Every right to do a month ago but didn't out of respect for Senator Obama.

More conspiracy theories below and detailed analysis of what makes Rev. Wright a total asset.

This is rich... I usually save my righteous scorn for "Western Christianity" but the Eastern folks have opened themselves up to some pretty righteous ridicule: nothing more "Christian" than resorting to brute violence at the site Christians consider the site of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Better still, how about beating the police called in to quell the violence with the palm fronds you're holding for Palm Sunday!?!

Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday (they use a different liturgical calendar). Events at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem turned violent between Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians yesterday:Fight erupts in Jerusalem church

Yeah... this is the LOVE Jesus was talking about, folks!

More about how ridiculous this is below...

The Bickersons, a poor elderly couple living on Social Security who, despite being very devout, had more than their share of marital woes through the years, had saved every penny to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Holy Land.

In spite of their surroundings on the tour, they stayed true to form and quibbled and fought all day and night on their trip.  Unfortunately, while in Jerusalem during one of their spats Mr. Bickerson suffered a massive and fatal heart attack.

Despite his sudden passing, Mrs. Bickerson seemed to take it very well.

I am not a religious person. But this is a story that is worth telling.

On a frigid night, Feb. 3, 1943, the Allied ship Dorchester plowed through the waters near Greenland.

At 1 am, a Nazi submarine fired a torpedo into its flank, killing hundreds in the explosion and trapping others below deck.

In the ensuing chaos, four chaplains: a Priest, a Rabbi and two Protestant Ministers; distributed life jackets.

A response to my comment regarding Bill Maher's anti religious views while supporting Israel was the basis for this diary. As Maher has expressed secular views, I felt that Maher's support of Israel was hypocritical. The response posted to my comment said Israel was a secular nation.

My contention is that Israel is a religious nation. Judaism is at the heart of Israel. That religion influences its government and policies. I reference as examples articles relating stories how religion influences the Israeli Government and society.

If Judaism is good for the Israelis, then Christianity must be just as good for the United States as the religious conservatives of the Republican Party want for America.

The House is expected to take up Head Start Reauthorization (H.R. 1429) this week.
Republicans will once again try to add language to the Head Start bill allowing faith based or church affiliated Head Start programs to discriminate in their hiring practices based on an employee’s religion.

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This Article Was Originally Posted at Talk to Action.

In last week's piece I discussed the need to refute the myth of Liberal religious intolerance -- a bit of gasoline that the Religious Right and friendly demagogues in the media like to pour on the fires of the culture war.  It certainly makes even the most mundane of skirmishes, real or imagined -- more exciting.

But what is the Religious Right truly after? Simple: it is the shameless pursuit of factionalism. Indeed, neoconservatives and their cheering section at the Institute on Religion and Democracy have mastered this technique to great effect. By inflaming religious emotions to a level of faction, they employ a device that has the power to destroy representative democracies such as our own.

I don't believe in a god, and in all likelihood am incapable of doing so. At least, not that traditional Western-style diety that hears our petitions and has mercy on the oppressed and weak and poor and has punishment in store for those who do wrong by their fellow Earthly denizens. How can I?, I reason to myself; God has never spoken to me or explicity shown His/Herself to me, and there's too much injustice and poverty and pain that goes unheeded in this world to believe otherwise. On the other hand, if you want to suggest there might be some sort of omniscience behind the creation and miraculousness that is all that exists that just doesn't make itself explicity known to us (leaving the implicit as a judgement call), I'd be hard pressed to argue to the contrary; there's no way I am aware of I could disprove this postulation.

You, on the other hand...

Thursday I was reading an AP story in my local paper about a little town in Maine that is eagerly awaiting Daylight Savings Time so they can have sundown after they get home from work.

All in all it was an interesting article, until I got to the statement that many people journeyed to this town to be the first to greet the sunrise in America on January 1 2000. The occasion was mentioned as being th3e beginning of the new millennium.

I went through this headache back in 1999, when the company I worked for conducted a countdown to the new millennium, but refused to conduct a similar countdown a year later when the millennium actually changed. Local papers ridiculed Denver, both when Denver did not have a celebration for 1/1/00 and when it did have a celebration for 1/1/01.

When all around us were losing there's.  It's a reference to the Rudyard Kipling poem If.
The poem popped into my head the other day as I read some of the diaries and posts around the blogosphere about how the religious would like to infuse the Democratic party with values.  It got me thinking about how the religious came to the conclusion that we needed any.  Well, most of us here know how we came together in the crazy world during the years between 9/11 and Nov 2004.  Perhaps the religious have finally shaken off the trance they were in during those years. "By their fruit you shall know them", Jesus said of false prophets.  Now that Iraq and Katrina and wounded vets and Enron and $3.00/gallon gas prices and layoffs and no raises are fairly drooping off of the Republican branches, the religious are looking for a new party.  

      So 12,000 innocent people died in Iraq in 2006, that is 4 times the number of people died in 9/11 tragedy.  Why the decider keeps on sending people to hell hole?  Does he have any conscience?  Does this qualify him as mass murderer?  I am appalled those religious people does not scream at the top of their lungs and telling this lunatic in the White House to stop !!

First things first:  here is some of what Lawrence O'Donnell (West Wing producer, Huffington Post contributer and political analyst) said, in response to the charges David Kuo puts forth in his book that the Bush Administration ridicules the religious fundamentals behind their back (while smiling and accepting their votes to their faces):

A friend of mine from church recently sent me an article by Bill McKibben entitled "The Christian Paradox" that was published in Harpers last summer. After reading the article, I realized that I have read many similar articles over the past couple of years.

The gist of the article is that while most Americans claim to be Christians, they don't appear to be following Christ's commands, particularly as it relates to caring for the poor.  This premise is central to the Religious Left's critique of our culture, as often expressed by people such as Jim Wallis or Ron Sider.  

Of course many on the Religious Right counter that laissez-faire capitalism is the only way to provide for the poor.  

Both groups are wrong and I am going to take this opportunity to show why.

Inside Higher Ed reports on what “may be the next major higher education case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.”  At issue is the level of participation student religious organizations are allowed to have on campus.  Two University of Wisconsin campuses are at the center of this controversy regarding the ability of Christian groups to exclude students based on their religious affiliation, while at the same time receive university recognition and funding.