Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
Loading

Featured Posts        



categories        



Links        



archives        



meta        




Author Archive

Nov 15th, 2009

Summary: Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president, Tareq al-Hashimi, is threatening to veto the country’s election law unless changes are made giving Iraqis living abroad more guaranteed seats in parliament, throwing the January vote into question. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 15, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Adm. Chris Barrie, former chief of the Australian Defense Force, had said there was no evidence to justify going to war in Iraq in 2003; that two U.S. soldiers had been killed in helicopter crash Iraq; and that a car bomb had killed 10 people and wounded 30 in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.


Nov 14th, 2009

Summary: A Rasmussen Reports poll of 1,000 likely Minnesota voters, conducted November 10, 2009, found U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s statewide job approval rating to be 51 percent, with 45 percent disapproving and 4 percent not sure. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 14, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported an Associated Press tally documenting at least 26 deadly bombings in Baghdad in the first half of November 2008, compared with 28 for all of October and 22 in September, with at least 102 people killed in the Iraqi capital in the first half of November 2008, compared with 95 in October and 96 in September.


Nov 13th, 2009

Summary: Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence. … There were 133 reported active-duty Army suicides from January 2009 through October 2009, compared with 115 for the same period in 2008. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 13, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that an Iraqi soldier fired automatic weapons at U.S. soldiers at a military base in Mosul, killing two and wounding six before dying in a hail of bullets; bombers struck Baghdad for a third straight day, killing 23 people and wounding scores in a string of attacks in mostly Shiite areas; a suicide bomber driving an oil tanker detonated his explosives outside an Afghan government office in Kandahar, Afghanistan during a provincial council meeting, killing at least six people and wounding 42; Iran test-fired a solid-fuel, high-speed Sajjil long-range surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 1,200 miles; and North Korea announced it would shut the country’s border with the South on Dec. 1, 2008.


Nov 12th, 2009

Summary: U.S. Rep. Steve Israel has called on U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to apologize for Holocaust imagery displayed at a rally organized by Bachmann at the U.S. Capitol on November 5, 2009 to protest health care reform. … Photos and video from Bachmann’s “House Call on Congress” protest rally. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 12, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the pendulum in Mosul, Iraq, had swung several times between stark violence and fragile security and that the future of Mosul hung in the balance. Immelman also reported that Taliban fighters had hijacked trucks carrying Humvees and other supplies for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.


Nov 11th, 2009

Summary: Video from the 2009 St. Cloud-area Veterans Day Parade. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 11, 2008, Aubrey Immelman featured NBC Today’s “American Story with Bob Dotson” from Arlington National Cemetery, where mothers remembered their veteran sons who lost their lives in combat.


Nov 10th, 2009

Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 10, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported the deadliest attack in Iraq in months, when a suicide bomber struck a crowd that gathered where an explosion moments earlier had damaged a bus full of schoolgirls, killing at least 31 people and wounding 71.



Summary: News and information about the disappearance and search for Joshua Guimond, missing November 10, 2002 from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. … Seventh anniversary of the disappearance of St. John’s University student Joshua Guimond. … On Saturday, November 7, 2009, Josh’s family and supporters convened near the site of Josh’s disappearance for a “Justice for Josh” march to raise public awareness of their son’s plight, after which they delivered a petition for renewed efforts in the search to the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department. On Saturday evening, the family held a prayer service and candlelight vigil at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Maple Lake, Minn. … Video reports of the day’s events. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 9, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Shiite clerics were warning the Iraqi government not to sign a security pact that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until 2012. … Referring to President-elect Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year,” calling Obama’s victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”


Nov 8th, 2009

Summary: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a market in northwest Pakistan, killing 12 people, including a mayor who had turned against the Taliban; two U.S. pilots have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq; Iraq’s parliament has passed a long-delayed law, setting the stage for nationwide elections in January 2010. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 8, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraqi officials, who saw President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appeared to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions in negotiations to reach a status-of-forces agreement with the United States; that Iraqi and U.S. officials were concerned about a surge in “sticky bombs”; and that Afghan president Hamid Karzai urged U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to stop the killing of civilians in coalition operations, which he said undermines popular support for the Afghan government and the international mission.


Nov 7th, 2009

Summary: News and information about the disappearance and search for Joshua Guimond, missing November 10, 2002 from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 7, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican senator from Rhode Island who endorsed Barack Obama for president, predicted a bloody struggle for the soul of the GOP. The election results demonstrated that the party had hit rock bottom, Chafee said, but he feared that socially conservative party activists — “the Rush Limbaughs, the Bill O’Reillys, the Sean Hannitys” — were incapable of changing course.


Nov 6th, 2009

Summary: Two U.S. soldiers transporting supplies in Afghanistan were swept away by a river in Badghis province while trying to save two boxes that had fallen into the water while being airdropped during a resupply mission and the Taliban said they were holding their bodies. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on Nov. 6, 2008, Aubrey Immelman noted that U.S. president-elect Barack Obama faced major foreign policy challenges and summarized intertwined issues Barack Obama inherited from George W. Bush.