The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. It has a 9.2 rating on IMDB.

There are three one-hour films (embedded below), consisting mostly of archive footage with Curtis’s narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

This series is as controversial as Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 or Sicko. And it will evoke strong opinions on both sides of the debate about the reality (or lack thereof) of a brewing conflict between Christianity and Islam.
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This week’s Links of the Week theme is… pictures.

• Bush’s Historical Approval Ratings
• Toys manufacture in China
• Awesome Military Photos of the Twin Towers
• Pictures of Walls
• US Poverty Map

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During a presidential debate with Al Gore in 2000 Bush said the following:

“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem.”

Now here is a quote from the incredibly one-sided Paul Sperry over at AntiWar.com:

The day after the presidential debate, in an interview with NBC’s Tim Russert, candidate Bush stressed that a “big difference” between him and Gore was “on the nation-building concept.”

“If he means using troops all around the world to serve as social workers, or policeman, or, you know, school-walk crossing guards, I’m not for that,” Bush clucked. “And I don’t think America is for that either. I think America wants judicious use of our military.”

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I was inspired by a fantastic article published by the Sietch Blog called Bending Swords Into Wind Turbines, so I decided to bring together some data to share on the opportunity costs associated with the ongoing war in Iraq.

Just to be clear, I’m not espousing any political position. I’m only interested in coming to an understanding of what alternatives we are forgoing by spending money, effort and lives in Iraq as opposed to spending them on something else. We’re talking about a whole boatload of money here, so it’s nice to know what else we could be getting for our dollar.
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I wish this article was some sort of political commentary, but unfortunatly I’m just reporting the news, not referring to President Bush as a dictator or anything like that.

In addition to the illegal wiretapping and other abuses of freedom the Bush administration has undertaken, a political watchdog group called the Center for Research on Globalization has pointed out that the White House released a directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive on May 9th, 2007 in which George W. Bush declares that in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”,

“The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. “

The language would create a Presidential dictatorship in the case of such an emergency by placing the executive branch in control of the coordination of the legislative and judicial branches - branches which constitutionally are equally empowered to the President.
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I thought that might get your attention. But it’s true. Today Bush is going to undergo a colonoscopy and before he goes under he’ll be signing over Presidential power to Cheney until after the operation.

The procedure will be supervised by Dr. Richard Tubb, the president’s doctor. It will be done by a team from the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. Because the president will be under the effects of anesthesia, Bush has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, making Cheney acting president until Bush indicates he is prepared to reassume his authority.

During Saturday’s transfer of power, the vice president will be at his home on the Chesapeake Bay in St. Michaels, Md., about 45 miles east of Washington, Snow said.

The 2002 transfer was only the second time that the Constitution’s presidential disability clause was invoked. President Reagan was the first to invoke the Constitution’s 25th Amendment since its adoption in 1967 as a means of dealing with presidential disability and succession.

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Wow. I reported that Bush commuted Libby’s sentence yesterday, but today Keith Olbermann calls for Bush and Cheney to resign and seriously rips them a new one! A few choice comments:

• “I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.”
• I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
• I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
• I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
• And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

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Three weeks ago CBS News reported that Former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison for lying to a grand jury. Katie Couric said, “…even people with friends in high places are not above the law”.

But as it turns out, they are. Yesterday President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s jail sentence using the rationale that the 30 month term handed down was “excessive”.
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Jon Stewart from the Daily Show hosts an amusing fictional debate between George W. Bush, Governor of Texas and George W. Bush, President of the United States in which he uses Bush’s own language to oppose himself.
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Will Ferrell spoofs George W. Bush on a TBS special in support of StopGlobalWarming.org. As usual Will Ferrell had me laughing out loud a couple of times.

My favorite quote: “Global warming is an issue my administration is very concerned about. Deeply. Deeply, in a deep kind of concerned way. I start my day and I think about the warming of the globe, and how we can get it warmer.”
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