Sacha Baron Cohen, famous for his satirical style of comedy, is releasing a movie, Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The basic premise: Cohen is Borat, a Kazakhi journalist sent to America to study its people and cultures.

No Americans were harmed in the filming of this movie--but many were embarrassed. An article on contactmusic.com states:

Tony Snow proves what most already know--that Republicans are running scared following Ned Lamont's victory. Snow called Lamont's win 'a defining moment for the Democratic party'...but not in a good way.

The always controversial George Galloway was on Sky News and unloaded on the "Rupert Murdoch owned station" for its bias towards Israel. He started out by attacking their short-term memory regarding the conflict and tried to give the crisis more historical context:

The Republicans attempted to offset an increase in the minimum wage by tying it to a further reduction in the estate tax -- at tax paid by less than one half of one percent of Americans. This, while keeping its own salary in line with cost of living increases with a $3300 raise last month...

The video to the right shows just how much crap Republicans like Sam Brownback (R-KS) think they can sling to the American public. When Fox smacks Republican double-speak down, it's game over. Rough transcript:

Noam Chomsky proves why AlterNet readers voted him their most valuable progressive by visiting Lebanon and meeting with Hezbollah leader Nabil Qauq.

In May, Chomsky met with Qauq and visited the Al-Khiyam prison. Al-Khiyam is where Israeli forces kept Lebanese prisoners before the area was liberated in 2000.

Chomsky calls the liberation 'a victory for all the peoples that fight injustice and oppression.' Check out coverage of the trip from New TV, Lebanon.

For more in-depth coverage of Chomsky's visit, check out Znet.

At least 60 people in the Lebanese village of Qana were killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike, at least 37 of the victims were children.

on Meet the Press Tim Russert spoke with Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. about the Lebanese Prime Minister calling for an immediate cease fire in the wake of this airstrike. Gillerman states:

In this short clip, Lou Dobbs takes a minute to 'keep things in some perspective' and reminds viewers that its actually not the 13th day of crisis in the Middle East...it's the 1,223rd day (1,224th, since this aired yesterday.)

Dobbs details the amount of American soldiers killed and injured as a result of the Iraq War, and states that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has said that right now, 100 Iraqis are dying per day. Says Dobbs, "That means 2,400 Iraqis have been killed this month."

But don't panic yet--Al-Maliki will be meeting with President Bush today to discuss "security measures...to prevent violence escalating, even more."

Yesterday, the Senate validated the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would increase funding for stem cell research...and President Bush plans to veto it as early as today.

The Act lifts restrictions placed on stem cell research from 2001. Democrats and Republicans alike supported the act, which received a 63-37 vote--only four votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary to overthrow a veto.

Tony Snow had this to say to support why Bush will be using the first veto of his presidency:

The United Nations is warning of a looming humanitarian disaster. The World Health Organization expects the number of Lebanese residents displaced from their homes to reach 900,000 by the end of Tuesday. Over one hundred thousand people have already fled to Syria. Public parks in Beirut now resemble refugee camps filled with displaced residents. The UN peacekeeping force in South Lebanon has said it has been unable to deliver humanitarian aid to stranded civilians because Israel would not guarantee the safe passage of the aid workers. Last week Israeli fire hit an ambulance run by the Lebanese Red Crescent. Aid organizations report many injured people are also unable to reach hospitals because so many roads and bridges have been bombed. Food and medical supplies are also running out in areas.

The following campaign video from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has Republicans in quite the tizzy. Titled, 'A New Direction for America' the ad promotes DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel, Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer

Republicans have taken major offense to images of soldiers' coffins being contrasted with messages like "Washington Republicans have sold America out... American families are paying the price."

MSNBC must have been feeling particularly venomous toward war protestor Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan appeared on Hardball to talk about the two-month hunger strike she has just started to protest the war.

Norah O'Donnell, substituting for Chris Matthews, relentlessly attacks Sheehan for 'trashing' President Bush, and bullies her with leading questions like 'Isn't this really just more of a publicity stunt?'

Although Sheehan says that her hunger strike is a 'moral reaction to an immoral war' the teaser at the bottom of the screen continues to read 'Starving for Attention.'

Earlier in the interview, O'Donnell mentions that Sheehan may not be speaking for America--just the fringe. However, Sheehan points out that polls indicate that two-thirds of American citizens oppose the Iraq War, which clearly makes for a rather large fringe.

Sheehan's open-ended hunger strike, 'Troops Home Fast' began on July 4 outside the White House. In a statement on her Web site, Sheehan wrote, "We hope the fast will galvanize public attention, invigorate the peace movement, build pressure on elected officials, and get our troops back home!"

Celebrity activists who have already signed on to join Sheehan include Willie Nelson, Danny Glover, Dick Gregory and Dolores Huerta. In mid-August, Sheehan and her fellow protestors will leave the White House and return to 'Camp Casey,' the base Sheehan set up outside Bush's Texas ranch.

Okay, so here’s the deal. North Korea has fired seven test missiles, Iran is still trying to start its own nuclear program, Israel and Palestine are at each others throats…and President Bush is hanging out in a Dunkin’ Donuts in Alexandria, Virginia. Why? Because of the American Dream, that’s why.

The two owners of this very special Dunkin’ Donuts are Iranian-American brothers, their district manager is a Guatemalan-American woman and the store manager is Salvadorian-American.

That’s right�we’re talking immigration. Bush makes an example of the foursome mentioned above because they are living the American Dream. Apparently the ‘American Dream’ has morphed from an abstract vision of a white picket fence into something more realistic--$5.15 an hour at a chain breakfast joint.

At the end of the clip, you see the introduction to the next segment�Condoleeza Rice holding a press conference with Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul to discuss the unrest in the Middle East.

Well at least someone in the Bush administration is holding down the fort.

This segment from Scarborough Country asks the question 'Is Jon Stewart a danger?' The question is based on a recent study that claims that Jon Stewart, popular in the 18-34 age group, increases cynicism, and therefore decreases voter turnout.

AlterNet must be contributing to Stewart's plan to ruin democracy, because a Daily Show clip ran during this Scarborough segment is the exact same one that ran a few days ago here on AlterNet.

The study made the following claims that viewers are more likely to...
-think leaders are incompetent
-think that the electoral college is flawed
-distrust the media

It seems like what this really comes down to is that Stewart is telling the truth...and by telling the truth, he's somehow ruining democracy for everyone. Way to go, Jon.

This is the same arguement made a few days ago by Richard Morin of The Washington Post. His commentary was covered in PEEK.

In the immediate aftermath of an explosion on the Gaza Strip, CNN and FOX both amassed information for their developing stories.

This first clip is from FOX from 11:24 a.m. This anchorwoman states that the explosion is the result of an Israeli airstrike. Actually, to be fair, their embedded reporter states that witnesses believe that the explosion was the result of an Israeli airstrike. However, FOX takes the information and runs with it--with the news anchorwoman referring to the explosion as an Israeli airstrike, and running a teaser that states 'Israeli Airstrike kills one.'

Steven Colbert proves he isn't a jerk--he just plays one on TV.

Colbert plays nice in this interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien. O'Brien asks Colbert about the scathing speech he made at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Colbert's clever Bush-bashing earned him both kudos and criticism, and got plenty of TV coverage. However, Colbert reigns in his biting wit and gushes about the Bush administration, saying Tony Snow was "very nice," and claiming that President Bush 'could not have been nicer to my mom.' He sums up his experience as a 'really great time.'

Maybe he was just being docile because he wants everyone to go see his movie?

On December 28th, U.S. forces policing the prison take three Britons and fly them to a detention center at Kandahar air base, where they are beaten and interrogated, by both U.S. soldiers and the SAS. During the flight to Kandahar, their heads are covered with burlap sacks and they were secured in a stress position while in the cargo plane. Shafiq Rasul (one of the Tipton Three) recalls the flight to Khandahar:

Representative John Murtha opened the discussion for Democrats on House Resolution 861�the Iraq War Resolution. Murtha spoke for about thirty minutes detailing why the U.S. needs to redeploy its troops.

In the first clip Murtha points out that when President Bush visited Baghdad, he said he was "glad to see democracy in action" even though he and his associates were “afraid to go out of the Green Zone.� He states that, since the U.S. has occupied Iraq, 900,000 citizens have left the country, a phenomenon he terms ‘voting with their feet.’

He also states that, shortly after the occupation began, it became clear that several projects needed to be taken care of immediately to improve situations with trash, sewage, electricity and jobs, none of which have yet been achieved. Murtha continues that the U.S. is said to be ‘making progress’ in Iraq. However, if this is so, then why has the number of daily attacks increased from 53 in 2004 to 90 in 2006? The size of the insurgency has also increased�from 15,000 members in 2004 to 20,000 in 2006. Murtha states, “That’s the way I measure whether its progress or not progress.�

Moby teams up with Politics TV to discuss how important it is to prevent big telecom companies from controlling the internet. Moby urges concerned citizens to call Congress and tell them to keep internet usage free from corporate control.

While government officials and Bill O'Reilly can claim that Guantanamo Bay is an upstanding institution, Shafiq Rasul tells a different story -- and he was a prisoner there. Rasul and his companions have filed a suit [against the US gov] requesting money in exchange for the damages, both physically and emotionally, that they incurred from being wrongfully held at Guantanamo.

Rasul and several companions were detained at Guantanamo for two years without access to legal representation before being released. When originally captured it was alleged that they were fighting illegally for Al Qaeda. Rasul, a British citizen, contends that they were really in Afghanistan to deliver an aid package from a mosque, and they were caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He says he did not sympathize with Al Qaeda or the Taliban and he believes Osama Bin Laden is a terrorist who should be tried for his crimes.

As far as what happened at Guantanamo, Rasul said, "All it amounts down to is torture." He tells stories of being shackled in uncomfortable positions for hours while being interrogated, beaten and put into solitary confinement. One U.S. military personnel even told him that he would remain in Guantanamo indefinitely. When asked about suicide, he claims it was inevitable -- and that suicide attempts are far more rampant than Guantanamo officials let on.

In this short clip David Letterman is baffled by a recent 'New York Post' cover featuring the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The editors at 'The New York Post' - not an esteemed publication on the best of days - were clearly so excited by the death of terrorist al-Zarqawi that they forgot the protocol of journalistic integrity.

The cover, which Letterman holds up to the cameras, has a huge close-up photo of Zarqawi's bruised, cut-up face, with a speech bubble proclaiming "warm up the virgins." Let's hope the Pulitzer people were paying attention.

You can't cut taxes and increase spending at the same time? WHAT?! In this clip, British Prime Minister Tony Blair gives a crash course on the logic of taxes, claiming that no "alchemy" exists between cutting and spending at the same time. He states, "There's no way we could have made huge investments in schools and hospitals...and pursued massive cuts in income taxes at the same time." Since Bush has been trying to spin fiscal gold for the past eight years, we can only hope he tuned in for the lesson in logic. Phrases Bush should pay particular attention to: expecting to cut taxes and increase spending is "completely unrealistic" because "it never quite works like that." Blair concludes: "You just can't do it." Got it, Dubya?