'Best of TBH Politoons'
Reader Comment
Bees
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Anders Wright: Frank Rich on the Culture of Politics (sdcitybeat.com)
The New York Times columnist discusses the nature of his commentary.
T. Ballard Lesemann: Jello Biafra Spouts Off and Stirs Up Trouble (music.charlestoncitypaper.com)
Jello Biafra has raised hell since the Carter years -- his recently-released spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, takes a swipe at the Bush crowd, the Iraq war, and the shaky state of affairs in Washington and on TV news.
Jim Hightower: GREEN FORD? (jimhightower.com)
Ford Motor Company executives say they are going to make environmentally-sustainable, fuel-efficient, green cars! Again. Not "again" in the sense that they've actually been making green cars, but that they're saying yet again that they intend to do it.
Randolph T Holhut: Greg Palast: The Last Muckraker? (smirkingchimp.com)
Bill Moyers' documentary, "Buying the War," shown last month on PBS, painstakingly showed how most of the press willingly bought into the lies of the Bush administration and supported the worst foreign policy blunder this nation has ever committed - the invasion of Iraq.
Terry Jones: Saved by the Bomb: Senator McCain has Hit Upon a Solution to All the Republican Party's Woes: A Nuclear War with Iran (guardian.co.uk; Posted on commondreams.org)
or
Terry Jones: Saved by the Bomb: Senator McCain has Hit Upon a Solution to All the Republican Party's Woes: A Nuclear War with Iran (guardian.co.uk; Posted on commondreams.org)
Campaigning in Oklahoma the other day, the Republican senator John McCain was asked what should be done about Iran. He responded by singing, "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran", to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann. (Join the hilarity and see for yourself on YouTube.) How can any thinking person disagree? I mean, any country with a president who doesn't shave properly and never wears a tie deserves what's coming to it - a lot of American bombs, with a few British ones thrown in to ensure we don't miss out on the ensuing upsurge in terrorism.
Alan S. Chartock: Fire Still Burns in Seeger (troyrecord.com; Posted on commondreams.org)
or
Alan S. Chartock: Fire Still Burns in Seeger (troyrecord.com; Posted on commondreams.org)
The legendary folk singing icon Pete Seeger once said that at the point when you have more than a few people talking about just about anything, you were "doing politics." Boy, was he ever right. As this giant of a man who has made such an impression upon all of us reaches his 88th year, this nation owes him quite a debt. Before Al Gore's current environmental push was a gleam in the former VP's eye, Pete and a group of friends christened the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater as a symbol of hope for the nation's dirty rivers and the environment. Pete and the Clearwater have done such an amazing job spearheading the river cleanup that these days people are actually swimming in the Hudson River.
My love affair with P (guardian.co.uk)
Prince is coming to London. Liz Jones - who once saw him play on 17 consecutive nights - explains why she'll be first in line for a ticket.
The immaculate punk (guardian.co.uk)
When his old friend Joe Strummer died, Julien Temple lit a few campfires, rounded up some big names - and began filming as the stories flowed. Alexis Petridis meets him.
Theodore Dalrymple: A Drinker of Infinity (city-journal.org)
Arthur Koestler's life and work embodied the existential dilemmas of our age.
Reader Comment
Bear & Moose
Marty,
I HAD to respond to skyfrequency's ignorant remark about the bear and the moose. It's NATURE, idiot!!! It's what bears do! It's Spring and the momma bear is looking for food and the salmon don't run until June and July. I'm not a hunter but I understand that bears have to live, as do mooses, but it's NOT a human's responsibility to get in-between them when they are looking for food. Skyfrequency's "delicate nature" just shows their human hubris to think the human family should have tried to do ANYTHING but stay away from both Moose and Bear in a situation like that.
I, for one, wouldn't have filmed it. But they did the right thing when they DIDN'T GET INVOLVED. They could have been hurt themselves, by the way.
If you want to know more about Alaskan grizzly bears, there is a lot of information at the National Geographic Magazine forum about grizzlies.
Which reminds me…. It's only a few months until the live Bear Cam will be up again!!
As always, stay cool. I hope it rains down there soon!!! No floods, just lots of nice gentle rain.
ducks
Thanks, ducks!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny, windy and dry.
We could see Catalina from Signal Hill on our way to CostCo today. Not all of it, but the tops of the hills floating above the marine layer.
On the way home, there was a billowing column of thick whitish smoke where the hilltops had been.
'Oceans' Campaign At Cannes
Darfur
While the gathering of the film community in Cannes later this month will produce its fair share of fabulous parties, one of the shindigs will have a serious purpose. Along with his Ocean's Thirteen co-stars, among them Brad Pitt, George Clooney plans to hold a gala evening to launch a charity aimed at helping refugees in the Sudan.
The founding of the organisation Not On Our Watch will be the latest development in a campaign by the heart-throb actor to raise awareness of the humanitarian drama unfolding in the country's Darfur region. Last year the Hollywood heavyweight travelled to the African nation with his journalist father Nick to highlight the crisis.
"Pop, why don't we go over there?" the 47-year-old star apparently asked his dad during a family discussion one morning over the newspapers. The result was the documentary A Journey To Darfur, and another film Sand And Sorrow, narrated and produced by the Good Night And Good Luck director, which will premiere on May 15.
Darfur
Adding Hispanic Veterans To Series
Ken Burns
Documentary maker Ken Burns said Thursday he will edit his upcoming PBS series about World War II to add stories about Hispanic soldiers after protests that they had been excluded.
A day after meeting with Hispanic advocacy groups, Burns said he had collected interviews with Hispanic veterans that he considered powerful and would incorporate them, along with the veterans' personal documents.
Burns initially resisted changes to the completed documentary. Last month, after protests by Hispanic groups, Burns brought aboard a Hispanic documentarian, Hector Galan, and said he would fold in stories of Hispanic veterans during breaks in the series or after the end of an installment.
Ken Burns
Online Charity Auction
Teapots
Eugene Levy says art has never been his strong suit, but the actor is clearly proud of a teapot he designed that bears his likeness.
Levy is among 14 Canadian celebrities who created teapots that are being auctioned off online, with the proceeds going to benefit the Hospital for Sick Children and SickKids Foundation.
Catherine O'Hara, Karen Kain, Debbie Travis, Howie Mandel and Chantal Kreviazuk are among the other teapot artists.
The auction runs from May 11 to 21. For details, sickkidsauctions.com/teafourtwo.
Teapots
Ashes Go Missing
James Doohan
A search team continues to look for a rocket carrying ashes of the actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on "Star Trek," almost two weeks after it hurtled to the edge of space from New Mexico, the company behind the launch said on Thursday.
Remains of the Canadian-born actor, who died two years ago at the age of 85, blasted off from a remote launch site on April 29 carrying a payload that included the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and several experiments.
A spokeswoman for Houston-based Space Services Inc., which organized the "memorial spaceflight," said the telephone-pole sized rocket descended by parachute into a rugged area that a search team has repeatedly failed to reach.
James Doohan
Removing Clips Of Thai King
YouTube
YouTube is likely to remove all video clips deemed insulting to Thailand's king, a government official said Thursday, paving the way to the ban on the website being lifted.
The popular video-sharing site, owned by Internet giant Google, has been blocked to Thai users since early April, when clips showing digitally-altered images of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej began appearing.
Asked whether Google would remove the clips, Vissanu Meeyo, a spokesman for the information ministry, said: "It is likely."
YouTube
Film-Rating Factor
Smoking
Smoking will be a bigger factor in determining film ratings, the Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday, but critics said the move does not go far enough to discourage teens from taking up the habit.
MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said his group's ratings board, which previously had considered underage smoking in assigning film ratings, now will take into account smoking by adults, as well.
That adds smoking to a list of such factors as sex, violence and language in determining the MPAA's G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 ratings.
Film raters will consider the pervasiveness of tobacco use, whether it glamorizes smoking and the context in which smoking appears, as in movies set in the past when smoking was more common.
Smoking
Payback Probe
Michael Moore
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned.
"Sicko" promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America's passion for guns in "Bowling for Columbine" and skewered Bush over his handling of Sept. 11 in "Fahrenheit 9/11."
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.
The timing of the investigation is reminiscent of the firestorm that preceded the Cannes debut of "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the festival's top prize in 2004. The Walt Disney Co. refused to let subsidiary Miramax release the film because of its political content, prompting Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein to release "Fahrenheit 9/11" on their own.
Michael Moore
Wrongly Fired Chef
Sting & Trudie
An employment tribunal ruled Thursday that Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, discriminated against their chef by firing her after she became pregnant.
The couple, who face having to make a substantial compensation payment, said they were "devastated" by the ruling. The level of compensation will be decided at a June 8 hearing.
Jane Martin, 41, said she had worked for the 55-year-old pop star and Styler for eight years, cooking meals for them and guests including Madonna and Elton John. She said Styler grew unhappy after Martin became pregnant in 2005, making her work long hours and growing angry when she took time off work because of illness.
In its ruling, the panel at an employment tribunal in Southampton, southern England, said Martin had been unlawfully dismissed by Lake House Estate, Sting and Styler's management company, and was a victim of sexual discrimination.
Sting & Trudie
May Not Serve Full Sentence
Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton may spend far less than 45 days in county jail for violating probation because of state policies and jail overcrowding, authorities said Thursday.
Hilton, sentenced last week to do the time, could spend three weeks or less behind bars because of a state requirement that grants inmates time off for good behavior and because of overcrowding in the system, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
"It's possible that it could be 21 days, 23 days. It's a complicated formula that the state sets down. It's possible that she could do less time," Whitmore said.
As for overcrowding, "our jail is bursting at the seams" and some women inmates have been released after serving only 10 percent of their sentence, Whitmore said.
Paris Hilton
Japan Uncovers Oldest Translation
'Peta Rabbit'
Japanese researchers have discovered a translation of Beatrix Potter's much-loved children's classic "Peter Rabbit" dating back to 1906, making it the oldest known foreign-language version of the book.
The Japanese version of the story was published in the Nihon Nogyo magazine just four years after the original English version, but without mentioning Potter's name or using her distinctive illustrations, a spokesman for the national library said Thursday.
"A Fairy Tale of Mischievous Little Rabbits," tells the story of "Peta" and his clashes with the farmer, Mr McGregor, who is given the Japanese name Old Mokubei in the story, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said Wednesday.
A 1912 Dutch translation of the book had previously been thought to be the world's oldest, the paper said, while the oldest Japanese version was thought to have been one published in 1918.
'Peta Rabbit'
Boogus Buyer
General Lee
A nearly $10 million eBay bid for a car made famous by "The Dukes of Hazzard" seems to have vanished faster than the Duke boys escaping from the sheriff.
The General Lee's owner - actor John Schneider, who played the blond heartthrob Bo Duke in the 1980s television series - is upset that the $9,900,500 winning bid appears to be a hoax. The bid set an eBay record last week.
Schneider plans to list his 1969 Dodge Charger with a bricks-and-mortar auction firm that strictly screens buyers, and may file a lawsuit against the bidder, said Allen Stockman, who runs the star's Agoura Hills estate and has sold scripts, memorabilia and other items on eBay for three years.
General Lee
Fire Chars a Fifth
Griffith Park
One-fifth of the city's sprawling Griffith Park was a fire-charred landscape Thursday as firefighters extinguished that last remaining hotspots from a wildfire that had threatened its landmark observatory and zoo.
Griffith Park is iconic L.A.: It's the Hollywood sign and the backdrop for movie after movie after TV show, with panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean miles away that even the rich can't buy.
It's an undulating expanse of dry wilderness, crisscrossed by hiking trails and roamed by coyotes. Its valleys muffle the round-the-clock drone of traffic on nearby freeways, and some nights feature starlit horseback rides - real stars, not the ones in the tabloids.
Aside from the booming white letters that mark Hollywood, its most famous landmark is the Griffith Observatory, where James Dean's character in "Rebel Without a Cause" learned about the solar system.
Griffith Park
May Protest Bush
Benedictine Nuns
"Finding fine speaking venues at graduation is never easy for late-second-termers, as resident Bush is learning. Whereas he once spoke at Ohio State or the University of Texas, now he's left with Florida community colleges or small schools in rural areas that are run by former aides."
But it looks as if it won't be smooth sailing Friday, even when Bush speaks at Saint Vincent College, a small Benedictine school in Latrobe, Pa., run by Jim Towey, former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
Thirty current and former faculty members, in an open letter to Bush last week, said "in the spirit of Benedictine hospitality" they would "welcome" him to the campus "as we would any visitor" as 1,600 students graduate. And they said they will "welcome those who protest your visit" and hope the college doesn't "turn them away" on Friday.
Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports that Benedictine nuns from Erie may be going down to Latrobe to take part in some sort of protest.
Benedictine Nuns
Northwestern PA Factoid:
The first Benedictine convent in America was estabished in
St. Marys, Pennsylvania, which is also home to
Straub Beer, one of the
5 Best Places in America to Drink American Beer
says Fodor's
("For the itinerant beer lover, a trip to St Mary's, Pennsylvania has the childlike appeal on par with winning the "Golden Ticket" to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory").
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