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It happened again. Another candidate for office is struggling to reconcile misleading statements he made about his record in the military. This time, it is Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois running for the Senate, apologizing for misleading statements he made about, among other things, serving in the first Iraq war and in Kosovo.

“I simply misremembered it wrong,” he said, a remark that was blared across the front page of The Chicago Sun-Times on Friday. A few weeks ago, it was Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general and Democratic candidate for Senate, trying to explain misstatements suggesting he had served in Vietnam.

There’s so many double negatives in there it’s hard to reconstruct it, but I think “misremembering it wrong” translates as “remembering it right”.

And if indeed he remembered it right, that must mean that his statements about Vietnam were deliberate lies.

Hmm… that sounds about right to me, so “misremembering it wrong” is indeed the correct way to talk about it.

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Frustrated Gulf Coast mayors confronted a BP official during a news conference Saturday after they said requests to meet with high-ranking executives at the oil company went unanswered.

The incident occurred as BP’s senior vice president briefed reporters in Mobile, Alabama, about the ongoing efforts to contain the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Bob Fryar said an operation underway to funnel crude from the underwater gusher to a surface vessel was going "extremely well," and that he was "pleased" with the effort thus far.

Robert Kraft, the mayor of Gulf Shores, took issue with that characterization, saying, "I don’t know who represents you in our community, but I would love to have one of your guys go down and look at our beaches and tell me that what you see is effective and is working."

[..]

Mayor Tony Kennon of Orange Beach also used the news conference to get a meeting with the official, saying “if you sensed our frustration, you would have been here a lot sooner.”

“We’ve been asking for a senior BP official (since May 1) to come and sit down and visit with us,” Kennon said, visibly upset. “You show up today, we don’t even know you are coming. So what you say and what you do, Mr. Fryar, with all due respect, are two different things.”

Kennon later told CNN that he met with Fryar for about 45 minutes after the news conference, but said he still had “no confidence” in BP’s economic response to communities hard-hit financially by the disaster.

“(Fryar) made it very clear to us … that (BP’s) first obligation is their shareholders,” Kennon said.

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Compared to the attitude of the average consumer in other countries, Americans express less concern about environmental problems, and increasingly consider the seriousness of environmental issues to be exaggerated (31 percent, up from 25 percent). In particular, Americans are less worried than most about climate change or global warming (45 percent versus the 17-country average of 64 percent), water pollution (54 percent versus 66 percent on average), and loss of species and habitat (48 percent versus 59 percent on average).

Consistent with this relatively low concern, Americans are less likely to think that environmental problems are having a negative impact on their health today (26 percent versus 39 percent on average) or that global warming will worsen their way of life within their own lifetime (32 percent versus 45 percent on average). However, the majority of Americans believe that the typical lifestyle in the USA is not sustainable for future generations (70 percent), though they are more optimistic than others that individuals can improve the environment—25 percent disagree that society’s impact is so severe that there is little that individuals can do about it versus 17 percent on average.

So, don’t worry. Things won’t get worse until after we’re dead, and those plucky grandchildren will figure out how to resolve those overblown problems that don’t really exist.

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An Israeli-produced parody taking on the world’s criticism of Israel following the Gaza flotilla clashes has garnered nearly one million views on YouTube.

Sung to the tune of "We are the world," originally recorded to raise funds for Africa in the 1980s, the re-written song attacks the supposedly one-sided portrayal of events that has been broadcast across the world with their version called "We’ll con the world."

The video is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara, showing activists attacking Israeli soldiers in the clashes that would eventually claim the lives of nine activists and leave dozens, including Israeli commandos, injured.

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"Being spiritual but not religious can lead to complacency and self-centeredness," says Martin, an editor at America, a national Catholic magazine based in New York City. "If it’s just you and God in your room, and a religious community makes no demands on you, why help the poor?"

So there’s the measure of this priest: he will only help the poor if his religious community demands it from him.

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This was shot in Joao Pessoa, Brazil. a new electronics store had just opened with bargain prices. Well, i say opened…….

Press reports say that 50 people were injured and an elderly woman died in hospital.

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These jokers are taking money away from those who are trying to feed their families

Dutch article, so try Google translate.

Short version: BP is paying $1200 to $3000 a day for boats helping with the cleanup, but a remarkable number of those contracts go to doctors and lawyers who just spend a nice day on the sea away from the oil.

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Charles Bowden has been covering the story of Juarez, Mexico for well over a decade. The city is intimately linked to the drug trade, meaning violence and corruption reign, but Bowden felt the full scope of the problem wasn’t being told. In his latest project, Dreamland: The Way out of Juarez, Bowden combines reportage, poetry, police transcripts and illustrations to make sure readers know how bleak the situation really is.