Put another blog on the fire!

Watch and Marvel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8NgN15ZIfM

You may be asking yourself, “How in the world did this woman balance on a Y-shaped rod and shoot an arrow with her toes, while bent like a pretzel?” and “Why is David Hasselhoff still on television?” Contemplating the latter question gives me the shivers, frankly, so let’s focus our attention on the Spandex-clad archer, Lilia Stepanova. There are a number of factors at work in this stunt but Lilia’s Gumby-like maneuvers basically boil down to genetics. On the extreme and improbable end, Lilia may have been born with a rare genetic defect, such as Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that prevents her body from building adequate amounts of collagen—the tough, stringy fibers that strengthen cartilage, tendons and other kinds of connective tissue, such as bone.

Collagen is essentially the glue that holds us together. While having less of it may be handy for shooting arrows with your feet, it’s undesirable for maintaining bone, muscle and joint health. Symptoms range in severity but typically include hyper-mobile joints, thin, stretchy skin, easy bruising and scoliosis. Lilia obviously exhibits extra rubbery joints and tendons, as evidenced by the leg that bend backs at 180 degrees, the foot that rests comfortably beneath her chin and the spine that bends like a microwaved Twizzler.

Aside from that, though, our 19-year-old Moldavian (she’s Eastern European but lives in L.A., in case you were wondering) appears to be in exceptional shape. According to her MySpace page, Lilia enjoys a fulltime career as a contortionist and dancer, which suggests that she is endowed with a milder, less harmful genetic quirk that gives her soft, pliable muscles (notice the lack of bulk or tone) yet spares her the nastier side effects associated with more severe forms of hypermobility, such as chronic pain.

Beyond the bendiness displayed by Ms. Stepanova, there are also two other factors at play: balance and coordination. The former requires both skill and a trick of physics called “center of mass” (discussed here, in a prior “Breakdown” post). By engaging a series of muscles in her arms, abdomen, back and thighs, she is able to stack her body weight neatly over the point of the rod she’s balancing on. From there, proprioception takes over to allow her to maintain balance and shoot a perfect bullseye.

Proprio-huh? The word “proprioception” refers to a cluster of nervous-system functions that help the body to understand spatial relationships and coordinate the movements of muscles accordingly, whether—in this case— for imperceptibly shifting to maintain her crazy handstand, or for zeroing in on an archery target. Some people are gifted with better proprioception than others (Tiger Woods’s must be fine-tuned to allow him to play golf so well), but it’s possible to sharpen your proprioceptive sense with exercises like juggling, balancing on a wobble board, or practicing yoga.

If you’re looking to impress David Hasselhoff with a stunt like Lilia’s, don’t lose hope: she wasn’t born an expert foot archer. Genetic advantages or no, developing her levels of flexibility, balance and aim no doubt required intense practice. And a fishnet half-shirt. —Nicole Dyer

What with the Crocker/Petraeus report and Maliki’s rapidly crumbling position, everyone involved in the Iraq issue is gaming the coming month, calculating the angles and trying to position themselves for whatever changes may be forthcoming.  Iyad Allawi, of course, is making his bid for power by seeking American backing.   Jalal Talabani’s emergency summit produced a political coalition based upon the Maliki 4 - a sectarian four party bloc (the two Kurdish parties, SIIC and Dawa) which prefers to call itself “moderate” (it isn’t) or “the majority” (it isn’t).    A few days ago, the Maliki 4 managed to get Tareq al-Hashimi of the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Tawafuq Bloc to sign on to an agreement which promised movement on some key issues, including Sunni prisoners and an end to deBaathification.

This agreement was likely produced for the sole purpose of giving Ryan Crocker something to bring back to Congress (and is what I expected weeks ago).  But it doesn’t actually solve anything:  Hashemi has made very clear that he has no intention of rejoining Maliki’s government, the agreements exist only on paper at this point, and nothing has been done about the deeply sectarian nature of what passes for the Iraqi state.

It’s important for Hashemi, though, because he and the other national Sunni politicians are desperate for something, anything to show for their decision to work with Maliki and the American (and Iranian) backed political process.   Hashemi and the Tawafuq Bloc are struggling to maintain their own influence within the Sunni community on two fronts - against the tribal shaykhs of the various Awakenings, who at last count are not planning to offer up replacements for the Tawafuq Bloc in Maliki’s government (but the story changes twice a day), and against the insurgency groups who are trying to form their own political front.   Their rather forlorn hope is that they can get the Americans to deliver enough to maintain their standing, since they know perfectly well that left to their own devices the Shia-Kurd Maliki 4 bloc would offer nothing.
What about the insurgency?  For months now, insurgency groups have been trying to formulate some kind of public political front, but seem to be consistently frustrated by internal struggles and the fragmented nature of the insurgency itself (among the latest developments, we’ve got the 1920 Revolution Brigade denouncing anyone using its name while cooperating with the Americans while accusing Hamas Iraq of being the real collaborators, and the Islamic Army of Iraq indicating that it’s striking a truce with al-Qaeda in Iraq).    It’s in that context that I wanted to draw attention to an essay published today under the title “September and a political project for the mujahideen” on the al-Haq Agency, one of the major internet outlets for the Sunni insurgency, by Abd al-Rahman al-Ruwashdi.

Ruwashdi complains about politicians stepping forward to claim the fruits of the insurgency’s victory without having made its sacrifices or paid its costs.  It is therefore time, he argues, for the real insurgency groups to come together and form a viable political front.  While there have already been some efforts to form a political front, he notes, the expected changes in September mean that there’s no time to lose.  He quotes Hareth al-Dhari, who argued that the principled rejection of participating in the political process under occupation does not mean that groups can not organize to prepare to fill the political vaccuum.   He warns the Sunnis that not preparing for the period after the American withdrawal would mean making the same mistake as the Americans, who failed in Iraq because they did not plan for the period after the war.

He therefore calls for a political front of all active jihadist factions in the Iraqi arena, a single unified front which can work for common objectives and coordinate to act effectively.  This front should issue a political program rooted in sharia but sensitive to the diverse fabric of Iraqi society.  More controversially, he calls for coordination with all movements and actors resisting the occupation - which could be read either as a call to cooperate with al-Qaeda or as a call to cooperate with the Mahdi Army.   He calls for more active efforts to secure Arab and Islamic support.  Finally, he calls on the politically influential leaders of the insurgency to step forward and reveal themselves, to prevent others from exploiting their victory and claiming to speak for the Sunni community.   We are confident, he writes, that those who defeated the American project can also build a viable political alternative.
This isn’t completely new, of course, but it’s another significant example of how insurgency strategists and leaders are trying to plan for a post-American political future.     At the same time, the essay is revealing of the complete lack of a concrete political agenda:  there are calls to unify, coordinate, step forward… but nothing on what exactly it is that this new political front should demand.  We can make some guesses. They begin from a deep belief that they are the ones who defeated the United States (and they do believe that they are winning), and that they are a majority in Iraq (a few weeks ago I think I wrote about a statement by the head of the Islamic Army of Iraq which claimed that Sunnis made up 60% of Iraq’s population).   They also believe that the current Iraqi state and government are thoroughly controlled by Iran, and that the Shia are determined to ethnically cleanse them from (at least) Baghdad.   I would guess that a serious insurgency political program would demand not just an end to ethnic cleansing but the return to the status quo ante - i.e. all the Sunni refugees and internally displaced persons returning to their homes (just try to imagine the security implications of such a restoration, under conditions of deep mutual distrust, recent history of reciprocal mass killing, and a heavily armed population) .  It would probably also demand more than just a seat at a Shia-dominated table - the idea popular with surge-enthusiasts that getting more Sunnis jobs with the police will give them a stake in what they see as a Shia-dominated system badly misreads their worldview.    Do you see why the benchmarks so popular in American discussions of Iraq - even if they were being met -  are so irrelevant to the real issues in play?

The modern “conservative” fallacy is that free markets means lack of government regulation. That isn’t even close to what it means…

From The Agonist, August 29, 2007
By Ian Welsh

I often say, to the point where regular readers are probably banging their heads against the keyboard — right now — that the US doesn’t have a lot of complicated problems. We know how to fix most of them and people who keep saying, “well, that’s complicated” are either stupid (unlikely); are benefitting from the status quo or are imagining the migraine of trying to fight entrenched interests.

Broadband access is exactly the same. The US is getting its lunch eaten. As SaveTheInternet points out, they get access that is often 30x faster than the US. As a result they are experiencing innovation — and enjoying applications, that Americans simply don’t get. As this WPost story says:

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Oh, and all that speed — costs less too.

Now, ten years ago Japan had slower internet than the US. So they looked to the US to see how to do it — and they saw that the US had open access laws (where in the old days, comanies could buy access to the lines at wholesale rates — which is why there was an ISP on every corner in the 90’s) and decided they were key.

So they opened up broadband access — mandated that phone and cable lines had to be available to whoever wanted access. As SaveTheInternet points out:

If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

Now here’s the thing. What we’re talking about is the Republican administration reducing competition. In a competitive market this wouldn’t have happened. When you’re dealing with a natural monopoly (and phone and cable lines are natural monopolies because driving more than one each to each home doesn’t make sense) you have to legislate the market in such a way as to make sure competition exists. The free market can’t do its thing if there isn’t a market — and in most of the US there isn’t a market. You have at best two possible suppliers. Often one. And in many areas — if you want “high” speed — none.

The modern “conservative” fallacy is that free markets means lack of government regulation. That isn’t even close to what it means — what it means is a market with many actors, relatively transparent information, and no one actor or group with pricing power, whether through collusion or monopoly.

The laws that made the US resistant to this sort of bullshit have either been taken away (open access) or have been weakend by the courts (for example the recent ruling that prices all being the same wasn’t prima facie evidence of price fixing, which it has been for the last, oh, over 100 years.)

When you don’t have competition, with few exceptions, you don’t get progress or better products. And so the US has worse broadband. It has worse wireless. It has worse (and deliberately crippled) phones. It’s falling behind in the very industry it invented. All because a few gatekeeper corporations don’t want to have to compete and because the Bush administration and conservative justices believe in concentration of wealth rather than progress and competition.

The US will keep falling behind as long as this remains the case. Americans like to think that they are the most technically advanced nation in the world, but except in military affairs, and perhaps biotech, that’s generally not the case. The best and most advanced cars aren’t made in the US. The US’s trains are a joke compared to ultra-fast trains in Japan, China and Europe. The US’s consumer electronics are not as good with very few exceptions. And the US is falling behind on all types of telecommunications that don’t involve spying on someone.

If the US doesn’t make the next technological revolution, foreigners don’t need to hang onto US dollars to be ready to buy up the future. And since the US needs foreigners to subsidize American overconsumption and the overvalued dollar, that’s a bad place to be. If the future isn’t in America, then buying America suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good deal…

This article is from The Agonist. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.

By Michael Kingsley

The last time we had this feeling of financial vertigo was when the Internet bubble popped seven years ago. But this is much worse: the value of our homes is collapsing. For generations, rising home prices have been central to our general sense of well-being.

So why is the real estate collapse a good thing? First, because the collapse of any financial bubble can be interpreted as a morality play: greed gets its comeuppance. Subprime mortgages play the role that used to be played by junk bonds. They represent easy money–too easy, in retrospect. Borrowed money, if it gets out of hand, puts economic history on speed: everything rises faster, then collapses harder. Foolish lenders become the enablers of foolish borrowers. In the 1990s, people came to believe that stock prices would rise forever. They learned differently. And now we are learning differently about real estate as well. Whenever the price people will pay today depends on the belief that other people will pay even more tomorrow, you’ve got a bubble. It takes only a slight letdown in those expectations to send the whole delightful, self-feeding process into reverse.

The end of the housing bubble is good for practical reasons as well. Real estate–land and buildings–is fundamentally different from most other things people invest in. Unlike a factory (or a company full of factories), a house does not produce anything. Sure, it’s a place to live, and that has value. But that value–as measured by what the property would rent for–hasn’t been going up anything like the 20% or 30% or 40% a year that some houses have appreciated recently. If the price of, say, onions goes up 40%, more onions will soon flood the market. The extra money people pay will go to the production of onions. This happens in the housing market only to a tiny extent. Most houses that change hands each year were built long ago. When they are sold for a higher price, the money goes into the pockets of the previous owners.

We all count this money when we tot up our net worth. If you don’t want to sell your house, you can borrow against its rising value. Nowhere is the real estate insanity of recent years more vividly on display than in the market for second mortgages. Lenders hawk them like patent medicines in the 19th century, as a cure for all your ills.

And even if you don’t take out a second mortgage, you can still fantasize about what the house is worth. Fantasies of real estate prices have long been a staple of middle-class conversation. These days you can go to the Web and get a specific number.

All these rising house values added trillions to our sense of national wealth, but it is an illusion. If everybody, or even a fraction of everybody, tried to cash in on this rising value, prices would collapse, and the value would disappear. (By contrast, there aren’t millions of onion owners counting on the value of their onions to keep going up year after year.) Economists predicted for years that something like this would happen as the boomer generation aged. Nobody believed them.

Since most families own their homes, the country is happier when real estate prices are going up. But it is healthier when prices are going down. Look at it this way: in the housing market, people fall into three categories. Some, mostly young folks, are trying to buy their first home. Some, at various stages of midlife, own a home but will trade up someday, or at least think about it. And some, mostly older, are trying to sell and downsize. Who is served by soaring house prices? Not the first group: rising prices make it hard for those people to get into the game. Not the second group: what it will have to pay for a bigger house is probably increasing faster than what it can get for the current one.

The only clear beneficiaries of rising house prices are those, generally older, who want to sell their home and buy a smaller one or none at all. These people, on average, have benefited the most from the spectacular rise of real estate prices over their entire adult lives. If they have to forgo part of that windfall, it is no tragedy.

If they borrowed against a value for their house that turns out to be fictitious and spent the money on ephemeral things like vacations, as the commercials urge them to do, that was foolish–in some cases, maybe even tragically foolish. People want the government to do something, and presidential candidates are beavering away at plans. But any plan that would prevent home prices from declining would be foolishness squared. Genuine tragedy deserves sympathy and help, even if it is the result of your own foolishness. But when we do not even guarantee basic health care, it would be nuts to think about making protection against real estate losses part of the social safety net.

ALBERTO GONZALES, America’s beleaguered attorney-general, announced on Monday that he will quit the post on September 17th. His resignation is long overdue.

For months this legal lightweight battled critics who say he allowed the Justice Department, which he heads, to become politicized and used as a tool of the White House. Earlier in the summer Democrats talked of investigating him for perjury. Politicians from both parties had called for him to go.

Although the office of the attorney-general is independent of the White House, Gonzales has been a close friend of the president since George Bush was governor of Texas and Gonzales was his counsel. His departure is the latest high-profile defection from the Bush administration. Gonzales’s decision to stand down comes just two weeks after Karl Rove, the powerful White House adviser, offered his own resignation.

Gonzales’s trouble started in the spring. In 2006, the Justice Department fired eight United States attorneys. Several of these federal prosecutors came forward this year to complain that they had been fired for political reasons. One of the eight had successfully prosecuted a former Republican representative, for example. Another was booted out to make way for a friend of Rove’s.

These accusations chimed with Gonzales’s reputation for putting politics above principle.

In March Congress began an investigation in to the reasons for the firings. In his pathetic testimony, the attorney-general repeatedly contradicted his subordinates. He took refuge in ineptitude, saying that he could not recall dozens of relevant facts.

These inquiries brought to light charges that Gonzales was probably involved in yet another controversial incident. Had Gonzales, when he was White House counsel, tried to push a bedridden John Ashcroft, then the attorney-general, into approving a controversial wiretapping program? This scandal, heaped on top of the firings of the federal prosecutors, painted a sad picture of Gonzales and his Justice Department.

But Gonzales retained the support of the president, a man deeply loyal to his friends. Bush defended Gonzales by insisting that he had testified to Congress and “sent thousands of papers” to his tormentors and that there was no proof that he had done wrong. The president’s confidence in Gonzales’s services apparently outlasted that of the attorney-general himself. Gonzales had to fly out to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a face-to-face lunch this weekend before the president reluctantly accepted the resignation.

In announcing his resignation to the press, Gonzales did not mention his recent struggles. He alluded to his tough upbringing in Humble, Texas, and said that he has “lived the American dream.” He was wise to focus on the past. His rise has always been the most, if not the only, impressive aspect of his career. Before he got into trouble by firing the prosecutors, he had gained notoriety for writing a string of questionable memos on how to expand executive power and circumventing the “quaint” Geneva Conventions.

Who will replace Gonzales? Bush is, so far, not saying. Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, is thought to have a reasonable shot at the post. But in Washington, DC, the slow summer days provide much opportunity for speculation.

There are two schools of thought. One is that Bush will try to find a nice, uncontroversial nominee that Congress will approve without much fuss. Others think Mr Bush still has some fight in him and will pick another loyalist.

In either case, the next attorney-general will probably do a better job than Gonzales.

It won’t take much to improve on his record.

I’d almost forgotten how breathtakingly dishonest former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer can be.

Yesterday, on Fox News, he blamed congressional Dems for “politicizing the Justice Department, unfairly so and dangerously so.”

Hey Ari – Tell us……

– Wasn’t it Alberto Gonzales, not Congress, who fired attorneys for political reasons?

– Wasn’t it Alberto Gonzales, not Congress, who gave the White House political team unprecedented power to intercede in the affairs of the Justice Department.

– Wasn’t it Alberto Gonzales, not Congress, who allowed his department to illegally hire attorneys based in part on their loyalty to the Republican Party and the Bush administration?

– Wasn’t it Alberto Gonzales, not Congress, who dissembled and misled about the administration’s spying activities?

– Wasn’t it Alberto Gonzales, not Congress, who lied in stating that all Bush appointees would be Senate-confirmed?

 It’s been years since Fleischer embarrassed himself regularly to a national audience. Welcome back to the show, Ari.

Posted: 28 Aug 2007 07:00 PM CDT

Last week, a declassified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said there has been “measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation,” in the midst of what was otherwise a gloomy and depressing report. Indeed, the NIE added that, despite some security improvements, severe violence in Iraq was likely to continue over the next six to 12 months.

As it turns out, the NIE may have intended to go further, but Gen. Petraeus gave the report a little touch-up.

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.

In other words, intelligence agencies were poised to paint an even bleaker picture of Iraqi’s security situation, but Petraeus apparently lobbied for wording such as “measurable but uneven improvements.”

Giving Petraeus a chance to review the NIE? Sure. Giving Petraeus an opportunity to submit intelligence reports for consideration in the drafting of the report? Of course. But to “soften” conclusions is to spin the consensus opinion of intelligence officials and agencies.

Once again, Rush Limbaugh has crossed the line and revealed what he really is. His words speak for themselves:

Democrats “want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur,” Limbaugh said recently on his radio program.

He continued: “There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.”

A caller responded, “The black population,” to which Limbaugh said, “Right.”

Limbaugh didn’t stop there — he continued by politicizing Democrats’ support of Nelson Mandela’s fight against South African apartheid:

 ”…So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.”

Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Mandela and his attempt to exploit race, the ongoing Darfur genocide, and past apartheid in South Africa for political gain is deeply disturbing. To bring politics into these horrible human tragedies is beyond the pale, even for Limbaugh.

Limbaugh is once again using his position as the most prominent conservative voice in America to exploit race and tragedy as a political weapon.

It’s certainly not unusual for Rush Limbaugh to use race and tragedy as political weapons, but it certainly is pleasant to imagine a day when his kind of vicious lunacy disappears from the airwaves.

Patience.

He doesn’t even write his own Dear Johns

A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

A report by the U.S. intelligence community questions Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ability to govern.

This comes as President Bush is publicly taking great pains to reiterate his support for the embattled Iraqi leader.

Al-Maliki’s government has come under sharp criticism and scrutiny from Washington lawmakers and officials, as reflected in Thursday’s National Intelligence Estimate.

A senior Bush administration official told reporters that the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is “blasting e-mails all over town” criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm’s client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to al-Maliki.

But the senior administration official insisted that White House officials have “absolutely no involvement” in the campaign to remove al-Maliki, nor have they given it their blessing.

“There’s just no connection whatsoever,” the official said. “There’s absolutely no involvement.”

When asked whether the White House will ask the prominent Republican lobbying firm to stop lashing out at al-Maliki, the official said, “I don’t rule it out.”

Pressed on why allies of the White House would be contradicting the president publicly, the senior administration official said of the lobbyists, “They’re making a lot of money.”

And National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters that the Bush administration continues to support al-Maliki and the Iraqi Presidency Council, “and we’ll continue to work with them on the best way forward in Iraq.”

“I don’t think they asked the White House before they signed their contract with Mr. Allawi,” he said.

Asked earlier why Republican lobbyists would want to undercut the administration’s public statements, Johndroe said, “Maybe it’s a really good contract.”

The lobbying firm boasts the services of two onetime foreign policy hands of President Bush: Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the former deputy national security adviser who was Bush’s envoy to Iraq and helped form Allawi’s interim government in 2004, and Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Blackwill is in charge of the lobbying account, according to documents filed with the Justice Department.

Zelikow, who advises the firm on other issues, said he has never been asked by the firm about Allawi. Zelikow added he has not spoken to the former prime minister himself while advising the firm and says he knows “nothing about their relationship or discussions” with Allawi.

Zelikow said the anti-Maliki campaign does “not involve me directly or indirectly. I don’t know about it.”

Ingrid Henick, a vice president for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, confirmed the firm has signed a contract to “provide strategic counsel for and on behalf of Dr. Allawi.”

Henick refused to comment on why such a prominent Republican firm would work to hurt al-Maliki, whom President Bush has repeatedly backed as the best hope for forging political reconciliation in Iraq.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers sent a mass message Tuesday to congressional staffers with the subject line, “A New Leader in Iraq,” promoting Allawi as a potential successor to al-Maliki.

“Please see today’s news items regarding the increased skepticism of the Maliki government in The New York Times (embedded), The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal (attached), along with a joint statement made by Sens. Carl Levin and John Warner,” the e-mail said.

A second e-mail from the lobbying firm sent congressional staffers a copy of a recent Washington Post op-ed column by Allawi that said Iraq will fall apart unless al-Maliki is forced out of power.

The outlines of the lobbying campaign were first reported by the news blog Iraqslogger.com.

The lobbying e-mails were sent Tuesday, the day after Levin called for the ouster of al-Maliki upon returning from an official trip to Iraq with Warner. Also on Tuesday, Bush appeared to be softening his support for al-Maliki at a news conference by expressing frustration with the pace of progress by the Iraqi government.

But on Wednesday, upset by media reports asserting he was backing away from the Iraqi leader, Bush clarified in a speech, “Prime Minister Maliki is a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him.”

The e-mails to congressional staffers came from the e-mail address DrAyadAllawi@Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

But the bottom of the e-mail added this note of disclosure to congressional aides: “Barbour Griffith & Rogers, LLC has filed registration statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act with regard to its representation and dissemination of information on behalf of Dr. Ayad Allawi.”

“Yes, in fact, we recently filed forms with FARA,” Henick said.

But she would not provide details of the filing, which will reveal how much money the firm is making on the account and other details.

Henick added that beyond the e-mails, the firm will also be directly lobbying members of the “U.S. government, Congress, the media and opinion leaders” on behalf of Allawi.

One Republican congressional aide who received the e-mails this week expressed surprise that a lobbying firm with such close ties to the White House would attack al-Maliki at such a pivotal time on the debate over the war, just weeks before Bush provides a progress report to the nation.

The lobbying firm was founded by conservative stalwarts Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chairman and current governor of Mississippi; Lanny Griffith, who worked for the administration of former President George H.W. Bush; and Ed Rogers, an aide to former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush.

The official from the current Bush administration dismissed the effort, saying that there’s a “lot of lobbying” on various issues and that the campaign against al-Maliki is just a “bunch of noise in Washington, D.C.”

Are you getting viruses, spyware or other problems? Could it not be that this is happening because you are visiting dodgy websites, opening files from unknown sources, downloading “freeware” of questionable origin and suchlike? If the answer is yes, then there’s no need to stop, just start being a bit more careful, that’s all!

Visiting dodgy sites, downloading “freeware”, or anything like that? If so, you might want to consider doing these riskfull things inside a sandbox, such as a VMware virtual machine.

You can download VMware server for free at

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

Surf for your pr0n inside a virtual machine instead, and then your main installation - which you trust for things such as online banking and so forth - never visits a dodgy internet site.

Install an XP virtual machine, patch it up by visiting windows update, and then start doing all that naughty stuff inside a VM instead!

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

If that XP installation gets infected, just delete it and start again! Or restore from a back easily, just by copying some files

Dear Friend:

I wanted to make you aware of the latest video in the “Fox Attacks!” series — “Fox Attacks: Iran” — and urge you to join me in signing an open letter to the major cable and network news outlets.

The letter, which I have included below, asks the networks to take their journalistic responsibilities seriously and avoid making the same mistakes that were made in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

Watch the video — Take Action!

<!–

Dear ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN,

–>”My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News.”

That is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour explaining why the major television networks failed to accurately inform the public in the lead-up to the Iraq war, choosing instead to follow FOX’s lead.

Now, FOX is beating the drums for war with Iran. Robert Greenwald’s short film, “FOX Attacks: Iran”, outlines the evidence from the station’s own broadcasts, comparing their reporting before the Iraq war with what they are saying now about Iran.

You have a sacred responsibility to the American people to provide accurate and reliable information so we can best make the decisions which affect our lives. We urge you to accurately and thoroughly report all sides of this important story.

Please do not blindly follow FOX down the road to another war.

Please, take a moment to watch the video and take action. These influential cable and network news outlets need to know we are watching their next steps and will be here to make sure their reporting on Iran is accurate and thorough.
Watch the video — Take Action!

 

David Brock,
President and CEO
Media Matters for America

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The right frequently seems genuinely mystified as to why so many Americans tell pollsters how unsatisfied they are with the economy. Bush and his allies frequently say, “Look at GDP and unemployment rates! You guys should be thrilled! What kind of idiots are you people?” Maybe news like this will help conservatives better understand the widespread discontent.

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows. […]

The combined income of all Americans in 2005 was slightly larger than it was in 2000, but because more people were dividing up the national income pie, the average remained smaller. […]

Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.

Got that? Income growth not only stopped after Bush took office, but the last five years are unprecedented in the post WWII-era.

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,’” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress’ most liberal House members, was responding to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found people who consider themselves liberals are more prodigious book readers than conservatives.

She said liberals tend to be policy wonks who “can’t say anything in less than paragraphs. We really want the whole picture, want to peel the onion.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto responded, “Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I’m not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals.”

Given that the Bush White House is made up of obfuscation specialists, whose mendacitry is unrivaled in modern times, maybe the left should take that as a compliment.

White House Wants U.S. General To Testify Privately On Success Of Troop Surge Bush Moves To Push Petraeus From Spotlight Aug. 16, 2007

After months of asking Americans to suspend judgment on the troop surge until hearing a progress report from Gen. David Petraeus next month, the White House proposed keeping the general’s report behind closed doors, the Washington Post reports.

White House officials suggested to Congress that they limit Petraeus’ and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s appearance to a private congressional briefing, with the secretaries of state and defense delivering the official report to Congress.

Nice try, said Congress.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush’s plan was “unacceptable.” The legislation demanding the report requires that Petraeus and Crocker “will be made available to testify in open and closed sessions before relevant committees of the Congress” before the delivery of the report. “Several Republicans have hinted that their support will depend on a credible presentation by Petraeus,” the Post reports.

For their part, Petreaus and Crocker “appeared to be puzzled” by Bush’s proposal. They have “said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush.”

More on this BS

Face the Nation Sunday August 26 Bob Schieffer

The Conditions Of Petraeus’ Iraq Report

The president has said over and over that his strategy in Iraq will be based on General Petraeus’ long-awaited report, but now Bob Schieffer is hearing the White House put all sorts of conditions on the report.

Sixteen years on Face The Nation has taught me one thing: When I ask a question and guests start laying out conditions such as “first let me tell you,” or “the real questions is,” or “it is important to put that in context,” I know we’re headed down the old rabbit trail that will take us anywhere but to a straight answer.

When people want to answer, they do so quickly, directly and clearly. When they don’t we get all those conditions and lectures about the importance of context.

So excuse me for getting a little suspicious after hearing the White House is proposing some new conditions on the delivery of General Petraeus’ long-awaited report on progress in Iraq – conditions such as the White House wanting the general to deliver the report to Congress behind closed doors while cabinet officers do the talking in public.

And, suddenly we’re told the general won’t actually write the report but that his thoughts will be incorporated in a summary prepared by the White House.

Mind you, this is the report the president has said over and over that he will use to decide where we go from here in Iraq.

Over and over, we’ve been told not to rush to judgment until we hear from the general.

Now we’re hearing all these new conditions.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been dragged down the old rabbit trail too many times by too many people with something to hide, but this doesn’t sound like we’re headed to a straight answer.

No, this sounds like anything but. And that is a real shame.

Bill Moyers on Karl Rove: “Rove is riding out of Dodge City as the posse rides in.”

Friday night on PBS Bill Moyers tells his personal take on Karl Rove, his career and his long, destructive political journey with the worst President in American history. If you enjoy Bill Moyers work, or are just a fan of the truth, you’ll want to take a look at this clip. If you’d like to watch the entire segment you can watch it here.

Moyers: “Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco inhis back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God’s anointed in a state where preachers andtelevangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat — a batteringram, aimed at the devil’s minions, especially at gay people.

It’s so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber, and if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew that, in politics, you better bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.“