SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson: a righteous dude in a wrong state

In addition to the love we're feeling for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who flayed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday night's Countdown -- for Rumsfeld's downright un-American comments in a speech Monday -- we also need to appreciate Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson's visceral take on President Bush, who is visiting Utah today.

"Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism. A patriot is a person who loves his or her country," said Anderson, during a fiery speech in Salt Lake City's Washington Square on Wednesday. "A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president."

Wow. And this guy is the Mayor of the biggest city in… Utah?

This is the state that gave George W. Bush 67 percent of its vote in 2000 and a whopping 72 percent in 2004, after Bush's many lies and acts of incompetence were public knowledge. Utah is also the state that continues to give Bush decent approval numbers -- the highest of all 50 states -- and, the Utah stats on Bush for this month have the worst president in American history at a 59 percent approval rating.

And this beacon of reality, Anderson, is the liberal Mayor of the Capital of a state that I nicknamed Utahistan, when it began banning Brokeback Mountain from movie theaters in early 2006.