So I watched some CNN at the GYM. Unbelievable. At least Larry King was not on. I have noticed this: the "man-on-the-street" interviews in Iraq aired on US TV "news" (notice that they rarely--unlike Arabic TV channels--interview Iraqi women, maybe they do not know that Arab women can think and talk too) produce different if not divergent opinions and results from the person-on-the-street interviews on Arab TV channels. This is why: US journalists are now confined to a very small area within the "security zone" and can only move a block or two, escorted by a bevy of security guards, translators, cooks, potato slicers, physical trainers, and US troops. Now could that in any way influence the opinion of those scared Iraqis who often have to say how hopeful and wonderful they feel, something that is not matched by the public opinion surveys conducted in Iraq by Iraqi center, Gallup, or Oxford group. And then I heard "Bush" and Condy--I am not close to her but cannot spell her name--Rice asserting that the selection of the new puppet officials was an Iraqi process and that it was not influenced by the US. Now wait. All the members selected today were serving in the now defunct Iraqi puppet governing council, which the US had admitted to have formed back when it was inaugurated. Just be clever when you lie, please. And then I saw an interview with the Iraqi ambassador to the US, Rend Rahim (my former friend at whose house I once had a delicious meal, I must confess). She was talking about the representativeness of the new group of appointed officials. If the slogan of the American revolutionaries was "No Taxation without Representation" my slogan for Iraq should be: "No Representation without ELECTIONS". Elections, did you get that? I can easiy designate members of an American cabinet who would be more diverse and representative than the current one, but it would not be seen as legitimate or credible. And then I had to see John Kerry (still possessing that powerful charisma that only rotten tomatoes could possess), talking about national security, yet again. As far as Kerry is concerned, the poor, the uninsured, the oppressed, the elderly, they all do not exist. He is busy bradishing his credentials as a tough white male who hunts and who loves to act serious about national security in an attempt to appeal to the white conservative patriots who have been leaving the Democratic Party in droves (and a smaller number of patriotic females too). He now gives 57758 speeches on national security a day, and has announced that he will appoint a special coordinator for nuclear weapons, and a special coordinator for potato affairs. Right on John Kerry (on the latter idea, not the former).