Karl Rove | September 3

WSJ - August was the worst month of Barack Obama's presidency. And he seems to know it—he is now planning to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress 232 days into his administration in a desperate attempt to save his biggest domestic priority, overhauling health care.

He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, an earmark-laden appropriations bill that boosted domestic spending nearly 8%, and a cap-and-trade energy tax that limped through the House with dozens of Democratic defections (and which has stalled in the Senate). These achievements are unpopular, so they are boomeranging on him.

ROFL (film clip on YouTube)

Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died.

with April 24 updates in comments

Revere | April 23

Effect Measure - [On April 23] the CDC held a "media availability" on the evolving swine flu cases. Evolving is an understatement. There are now more recognized cases, although not all cases are "new," with some cases retrospectively recognized now that more intense investigation is occurring. The total is now seven [US] cases. Two occurred in San Antonio, Texas, two sixteen year old boys in the same school. Three more were found in California (in addition to the initial two cases), including a father - daughter pair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c

When Lhasa rioted a year ago, Tibetans in exile logged on to the only site they trust.

Jane Macartney | February 11

Times Online - Catching up with Tibet's most popular blogger isn't simple. Tsering Woeser is under constant surveillance, so we agree to meet on a street corner in Beijing. The subterfuge seems pointless: Woeser is easy to spot. Her slightly hippy style sets her apart - for our meeting she has chosen dangling earrings and a glass pendant in Buddhist colours, bought on her last visit to the Tibetan plateau.

By Caren Bohan - Analysis
February 7
Washington (Reuters) - President Barack Obama won praise on Wall Street for enlisting the towering figure of Paul Volcker to help shape economic policy, but analysts wonder if he might clash with other high-profile Obama advisers. [...]

Obama, who says he wants to avoid insular thinking, has put Volcker at the helm of a 15-member panel of outside experts from labor, business and academia who will advise his effort to fix the worst economic crisis in decades.

A Long-Lived Privilege?

Bush lawyer directs Rove not to talk to Congress—once again
Michael Isikoff | January 29

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Fielding Letter to Rove

Commentary from MyDD

And is this why he didn't bother issuing pardons to Libby, etc?

Rush Limbaugh Was Once Named the Leader of the Republican Party

Emily Friedman | January 29

ABC News - As members of the Republican National Committee try to regroup from the disastrous election cycle and prepare to choose the party's next chairman, some Republicans are left wondering whether conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has emerged as a leader – albeit an unofficial one – of the GOP.

alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Washington Post's Mensa Invitational -- Winners

For example:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

Obama for America is becoming Organizing for America. That’s what the president-elect announced today during his weekly YouTube address. The move means his huge electronic apparatus will become part of the Democratic National Committee, resolving a long-standing debate about how best to leverage Obama’s stunning campaign organization.

The new group will work within the Democratic National Committee -- led by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine -- to advance the Obama agenda. "President-elect Obama has laid the foundation to meet the great challenges facing our nation, but we can succeed only if we build grassroots support for the administration's agenda," said Kaine in a release announcing the formation of Organizing for America.

The Agonist is planning to upgrade its software from Drupal version 4 to Drupal version 5, on Christmas Day.

The upgrade is to improve site stability and security, and version 5 has a few new features as well.

Our team has been beta testing the new version, and it performs well.

The site may be down for a short while during the upgrade; we will keep you updated on its progress.

As suggested in this thread, the new forum on "getting through the tough times" is now here: Strategies for Coping With Recession, and we can tweak it depending on how it develops and what new forum tools there may be after the site upgrade.

Here is the list of Agonist Forums (you can also get to this list using the "latest: forums" link on your left sidebar menu.

Make sure to read the discussion in the comments!

Independent - The discovery of the earliest known ancestor of turtles has finally explained the riddle of how it developed its armour.

Also:
How the frog got its legs
How the elephant got his trunk
How birds got feathers

LAT blogs - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is traveling back down to Georgia next Monday to do four last-minute campaign rallies in one day to help incumbent GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

Chambliss is in an apparently close-fought runoff race there with Democrat Jim Martin and the balloting is the next day, Dec. 2. Big-name Democrats have jumped in to help the party reach for its 60-Senate-seat, filibuster-proof majority by knocking off yet another Republican incumbent.

Best Pizza in Italy :)

William Greider | August 1

The Nation

In their haste to do anything Wall Street wants, Congress and the lame-duck President are sowing far more profound troubles for the country.

The bailouts are rewarding the very people and institutions whose reckless behavior caused this financial mess. Yet government demands nothing from them in return -- like new rules for prudent behavior and explicit obligations to serve the national interest. Washington ought to compel the financial players to rein in their appetite for profit in order to help save the country from a far worse fate: a depressed economy that cannot regain its normal energies.

Truthdig

Jul 22, 2008

By Robert Scheer

Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.

Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush’s “war on terror,” which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.

http://tibetansituation.blogspot.com/

Maureen has finally been explained—by Maureen Dowd. The explanation came in response to a column by the Times' public editor Clark Hoyt in which he said that Dowd's writing about Hillary Clinton was "loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace," and compared her coverage with that of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson and William Kristol (what a fun dinner that would be).

Subject: FreeTibet2008.org: SFT Launches New Olympics Website /Video

With the start of the Beijing Olympics only 49 days away, SFT HQ is stepping up our Olympic campaign efforts. To ensure that you are kept up to date with news, analysis, and ways to participate in creative, strategic and effective actions for Tibet leading up to and during the Games, we are excited to launch SFT's Olympics website: http://www.FreeTibet2008.org.

Visit http://www.FreeTibet2008.org now and watch our new SFT Olympics Campaign video, a moving account of what is at stake inside Tibet and the power we have – as Tibetans, supporters, and people of conscience – to make history for Tibet at this crucial time.

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008. Presented by FreePress.net. For more speakers, press coverage, and info, visit: http://www.freepress.net/conference

YaleGlobal
Sunday, June 01, 2008 15:47

China’s hard-line policy towards Tibet creates more problems than it solves. Beijing’s recent crackdown on Tibetan protesters has attracted condemnation from around the world, but did nothing to address the underlying problems in Tibet itself. If Beijing is serious about securing Tibet’s long-term future as part of China, it needs to put aside its past enmity towards the Dalai Lama – and Michael Davis, law professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, offers a strategy for China to pursue. Only by acknowledging that the human-rights issue cannot be separated from the country’s unity and negotiating with the Dalai Lama will Beijing achieve the goal that both Beijing and the Dalai Lama claim to share: an autonomous Tibet that remains part of China while retaining its own Tibetan identity. - YaleGlobal

Amazing video!

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

Dalai Lama | October 21, 2007

This 2007 op-ed once again rings true ~qb

WaPo - Brute force can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom. The thousands of people who marched in the cities of Eastern Europe in recent decades, the unwavering determination of the people in my homeland of Tibet and the recent demonstrations in Burma are powerful reminders of this truth. Freedom is the very source of creativity and human development. It is not enough, as communist systems assumed, to provide people with food, shelter and clothing. If we have these things but lack the precious air of liberty to sustain our deeper nature, we remain only half human.