Bush is in Utah today to promote his war to the Veterans of Far Wars (VFW), and the mayor of Salt Lake City hopes to greet him with "the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen." The mayor says he will personally attend the demonstration.

Yes, folks. Things are finally heating up. The senior vice-commander of the VFW called Mayor Rocky Anderson a "son of a bitch" and of course questioned his patriotism, which the SLC Tribune describes as "a howl of outrage."

"I voted for the son of a bitch and I'll never vote for him again," said the Vietnam War veteran.

Anderson disagrees with that measure of patriotism.

"Patriotism," the mayor said, "demands that people speak out when we see our government officials acting in such anti-democratic and deceitful ways to the people of our country."

He also said: "I don't understand people simply blindly going along with the sort of deceit and utter cruelty of this administration. It's not just we have the right to speak out, but we have the obligation to speak out when we see misconduct on the part of the government. The most patriotic thing we can do is stand up against the misuse of governmental power.

Give him hell, Rocky!

Meanwhile, according to Mike Allen in the Washington Post on Page 1 of the Style section,

Camp Casey, which started with one mom and a grievance, mushroomed over the weekend into a massive settlement with a party tent for 2,000, a shuttle-bus service and an elaborate catering operation that deposited a 26-foot-long refrigerator truck, generators, and restaurant-quality ranges and warming ovens in a field next to President Bush's ranch.

The hippie crowd that originally was drawn to Cindy Sheehan's protest is still in town -- activists from Food Not Bombs are sleeping in an old school bus that has been painted sky blue and can be started only with jumper cables.1 But now they have been joined by liberals from throughout the West who are double-parking their hybrid-fueled cars to take part in a peace protest with a budget that is $120,000 and rising.

This must be further upsetting to the Democrats, who are described on Page 1 of the News section as being "split" and in a dither.

Related post
Where's the antiwar movement? (7/6/05)