Links for 21 May 2009

Politics:
The Colbert Report Word - I Know You Are But What Am I? (If the Republicans really want people to go against the Democrats, they'll need a name that instantly turns people off. "Chrysler?")

Why is Cable TV airing Cheney's speech opposite of President Obama's? ("They want this to be Frazier and Ali, but it's about a liar and a sadist getting free airtime to attack a president who is trying to restore the country's footing after eight years of "compassionate conservatism." Wars, death, torture, wiretapping, loyalty oaths and moles planted in every department of the government which includes the OLC (the arm of the government that the Bushies used to try and give them legal cover for the crimes they committed) are part of Cheney's legacy. Isn't this just what the country needs? To hear a man trying to repair a record of death and destruction with blood dripping from his hands.")

O’Reilly: ‘I Consider Myself A Middle Class Guy’ Even Though I Make $10 Million A Year


Economics:
Performance of the Singapore Economy in 1st Quarter 2009 and Outlook for 2009 ("The economy contracted by 14.6% on a quarter-on-quarter, seasonally adjusted annualised basis in 1Q2009, less than the 19.7% decline previously estimated.")

Asia Needs to Change Its Model (This won't happen anytime soon.)


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Restoring American Islamic Relations: Obama's Cairo Speech

Studying Muslim integration in Europe ("Our data indicates that Muslims are eager to contribute and play a more recognised role in advancing the best interests of their nation.")

Why don’t they ever quote this? (Heh.)


Miscellaneous:
Above Earth Fixing Hubble (This pic is almost like the NASA equivalent of "Where's Waldo?" ;) )

New 'broadband' cloaking technology simple to manufacture (This was a very interesting article: ""Instead of being reflected as normally would happen, the light flows around the object and shows up on the other side, like water flowing around a stone," Shalaev said. The research falls within a new field called transformation optics, which may usher in a host of radical advances, including cloaking; powerful "hyperlenses" resulting in microscopes 10 times more powerful than today's and able to see objects as small as DNA; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; advanced sensors; and more efficient solar collectors. ... Recent cloaking findings reported by researchers at other institutions have concentrated on a technique that camouflages features against a background. This work, which uses metamaterials, is akin to rendering bumps on a carpet invisible by allowing them to blend in with the carpet, whereas the Purdue-based work concentrates on enabling light to flow around an object.")

Bill Moyers Pwns Porter Barry of Faux News

This was classic; I love how Bill Moyers was able to both suggest to Porter Barry that he turn away from the Dark Side and set up conditions for appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show that will be next to impossible for Faux News to fulfill. The sound is rather poor, being in a crowded hall; you'll have to concentrate to hear everything. From Crooks & Liars:

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Bill O’Reilly producer Porter Barry ambushes journalist Bill Moyers and asks him why he won’t appear on The O’Reilly Factor. Moyers, a class act to the last, makes Barry look like the small and petty man he is. But the joke is on Barry, because other journalists, including Uptake correspondent Noah Kunin, who got this raw footage, turned tables on ol’ Porter and gave him a little taste of the FOX News-style ambush journalism. I don’t think he liked it much.

The Bill O'Reilly Meltdown

Hysterical. If you hate Bill O'Reilly, this is your video. :) And be sure to check out the remix (warning: lots o' profanity on the latter).



HT: WTF Is It Now?!?

Lapdogs of the Corporate Press

Hysterically funny. Would it be possible to deport all of these people onto some deserted island in the Pacific?

Drop the Falafel, and Put Your Hands Up!

A strange story out of CQ Politics the other day; apparently, the FBI had been trying to data mine Bay area grocery stores in an effort to find Iranian terrorists:

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.

A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.

...

As ridiculous as it sounds, the groceries counting scheme is a measure of how desperate the FBI is to disrupt domestic terrorism plots.

Of course, if the FBI really believes tracking falafel sales will lead them to terrorists and their sympathizers, they might just start with this man:

Can You Say "Propaganda?"

I got a real big kick out of the Fox News Commercial that blowhard Bill O'Reilly promoted during his interview with Arianna Huffington. The "Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan Thank America" is such pompous propaganda that I couldn't help but laugh at it. It also makes me wonder about the intelligence of those Americans who willingly, blindly suck up such drivel (i.e., those people who watch Fox News). Speaking of which, I looked around the Fox News website, trying to find a copy of the video by itself, but it's not there. Could it be that Fox is too embarrassed (or cynical) to put their nonsense on their own website?

Huffington had a great response for O'Reilly: When asked what she thought of the commercial, she said, "I want to know who is paying for it." O'Reilly, of course, said that the "Iraqi Kurdistan government" paid for the ad, with a little help (I'm sure) from their American neo-con friends.

Click on the title link to go to the Quicktime copy of the interview; also, Crooks and Liars has a WMV copy plus additional comments.