'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: AL QAEDA BANKS ON BUSH (jimhightower.com)
Battling Bush has turned Iraq into a cash cow for al Qaeda's whole terrorist network, energizing donors from all across the Middle East. Add in ransoms from their kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis, and al Qaeda is generating so much money in Iraq that it can not only keep fighting our troops there, but also export funds to other al Qaeda pockets. The CIA has learned that even Osama bin Laden's core command is being financed by payments coming from its Iraq franchise. As one American counter-terrorism official concedes, "Iraq has been a moneymaker for them."
Stephanie Miller, The Stand Up Comic of Progressive Talk Radio (A Buzzflash Interview)
I do remember Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 convention being kind of a turning point -- of going, God, what happened to my dad's party? That's really mean-spirited and exclusionary -- and I think they've just gotten more and more like that. Barry Goldwater, you know, in the Eighties, was pro-choice and pro-gay rights.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Noam Chomsky As the Rest of the World Knows Him (Uprising Radio; Posted on Alternet.org)
Noam Chomsky speaks about the status of democracy in Iraq, U.S. imperialism over Latin America, and the media's shallow coverage of foreign affairs -- all topics explored in his latest book, Interventions.
Penelope H. Bevan: Let children be children: Is your 5-year-old stressed out because so much is expected? (sfgate.com)
I was watching one of my second-grade girls try unsuccessfully to tie her shoes the other day, and I thought, "This is a person who is supposed to be learning plural possessives?" I think not. We've just finished test...
Mythbuster: How the Government Creates Jobs (dailyreckoning.com)
Our government "prints up jobs out of thin air" the same way the Federal Reserve prints up money. Š Without the government's computer to estimate and create jobs, the payroll data for April would actually have shown a loss of 229,000 jobs, not a gain of 88,000.
Steve Boggan: Slowing down is harder than it looks (guardian.co.uk)
The Bishop of Reading has written a book in which he says we should all slow down. Find time simply to sit and think. To make tea with leaves instead of bags. To brew coffee with beans we have ground ourselves. Life, he says, will be better that way.
Ed Pilkingon: The day the wall came down (guardian.co.uk)
As he prepares to play his landmark album Berlin live on stages across Europe, Lou Reed does the unthinkable: he opens up to an interviewer.
Ken Kurson: What I learned from 'The Price Is Right' (latimes.com)
Thirty-five years of lessons on economics and class from retiring host Bob Barker.
RICHARD ROEPER: What did Paris think would happen? (suntimes.com)
On the night before Paris Hilton went to jail, she looked like she was about to cry when Sarah Silverman cracked wise about her on the MTV Movie Awards.
RICHARD ROEPER: Doesn't a wife ever make a husband poor? (suntimes.com)
It's always interesting to me when the ex-wife gets half the fortune in a divorce settlement because she provided advice and counsel and support to the hubby while giving up her own potentially lucrative career for all those years.
Randi Rhodes calls into the Stephanie Miller Show (youtube.com)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Bit more sun, but still cool.
Celebrates 50 Years
Stax Records
The sound was never exactly polished, but it had plenty of soul, and the Memphis sound created at Stax Records has found its own special place in the history of American music.
Some of pop's most cherished recordings came out of the Stax studio, including Sam & Dave's "Soul Man," Otis Redding's "(Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay," and Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning "Theme from Shaft."
Now, 50 years after a white country-fiddle player started down the road that led him to open a recording studio in a predominantly black, inner-city neighborhood, the Stax label is trying to make a comeback.
Blossoming in the 1960s and '70s, Stax owed its success as much to serendipity as to design, with artists like Redding, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas, the Staple Singers and dozens of others creating music on the fly.
Stax Records
Declines 'Indy-4'
Sean Connery
The next "Indiana Jones" flick will not be another father-son affair. Sean Connery says he will not return to play dad to Harrison Ford's globe-trotting adventurer Indy.
"I get asked the question so often, I thought it best to make an announcement," Connery, 76, said in a statement posted Thursday on Lucasfilm's "Indiana Jones" Web site. "I thought long and hard about it, and if anything could have pulled me out of retirement it would have been an `Indiana Jones' film."
"I love working with Steven and George, and it goes without saying that it is an honor to have Harrison as my son," he said. "But in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun."
Sean Connery
Arab Pop Stars Raise Funds
Darfur
Arab pop stars descended on Khartoum this week to perform concerts to aid war-torn Darfur, in a rare show of solidarity with the millions of Muslims caught in the conflict in western Sudan.
Most of the billions of dollars in aid to fund the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur has come from the West. And Arab leaders have been politically more sympathetic with Khartoum, sparking criticism from U.N. officials.
Sudan, under a strict version of Islamic sharia law, rarely enjoys visits from pop artists, and some Islamic scholars protested the week-long set of concerts by stars like Sherine, Hani Shakir, Mounira Hamdi and Mohammad Mounir.
The concerts, organized by the Moroccan-based National Council for Arab Culture (NCAC), hope to raise enough funds to build 10 schools, 10 hospitals and 50 wells in Darfur.
Darfur
Explains Diaz Dedication
Criss Angel
Criss Angel, who can be seen performing stunts on A&E's "Criss Angel: Mindfreak," is being mysterious about whether his relationship with Cameron Diaz is real - or an illusion.
"Cameron Diaz is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful actresses - A-list actresses - in Hollywood," he told AP Radio News. "She's "talented, smart. Look at me - do you really think she would have any interest in a guy like me?"
Angel dedicated his latest stunt to Diaz this week.
"We're good friends, and I'm honored to call her a friend because genuinely she's a wonderful human being, and she's just a great person, we have a good time," he told AP Radio News.
Criss Angel
Booting Blair
Edinburgh Fringe
Tony Blair will get a sardonic boot from behind at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival this year to help him into retirement after 10 years as prime minister.
Blair is due to retire as prime minister later this month and the Fringe will be taking a probing look at his legacy through musicals, comedy, theatre and song.
It will offer two new productions: "Tony Blair - The Musical", and "Tony! The Blair Musical", in which the audience joins Blair, his successor Gordon Brown and U.S. President George W. Bush together with a barber shop quartet for "There ain't no Party like a Labour Party".
Another musical deals with ASBOs, the government's anti-social behaviour orders to deal with unruly youth.
Edinburgh Fringe
Naked Blairs
Michael Sandle
A huge drawing showing a naked Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie leaving the Downing Street office was unveiled Wednesday as his premiership enters its last days.
The charcoal work, measuring 4.5 metres by 1.5 metres, by artist Michael Sandle is going on display at London's Royal Academy of Arts as part of its prestigious annual summer exhibition.
The work entitled "Iraq Triptych", which has won the top Hugh Casson prize for drawing, shows Blair and his wife covering their genitals and is based on medieval biblical paintings of Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden in disgrace.
With the famous black door of 10 Downing Street behind them, the figures are flanked by piles of bones, body parts and skulls.
Michael Sandle
Draws Another Lawsuit
'Borat'
The hit movie and lawsuit magnet "Borat" has drawn yet another court action, this time from a man filmed running away from the fictional Kazakh television reporter on the streets of New York City.
A man anonymously identified as John Doe sued 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp., in federal court in Manhattan last week over the scene in which he is seen "fleeing in apparent terror, screaming for Mr. Cohen to 'go away,"' court documents say.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and says the filmmakers used the plaintiff's likeness without his consent, causing emotional damage that he continues to suffer.
'Borat'
Gets Real 'Birdie'
Rob Lowe
A ball hit by Rob Lowe during a celebrity golf game hit the Iowa state bird in mid-flight Wednesday. The 43-year-old actor was hitting an approach shot on the fourth hole when his ball hit a goldfinch, dropping about 50 yards short of the green, The Des Moines Register reported.
As the rest of the players in his group broke out in laughter and applause, Lowe raised his arms in mock celebration.
"That's my birdie," he said after looking at the bird, which lay motionless on the ground.
"That's unbelievable. Who comes here and kills the state bird? Only me."
Rob Lowe
Judge Orders End To Attacks
Patricia Cornwell
A federal judge has ordered a self-published author to cease an Internet vendetta in which he has accused best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell of plagiarism, bribery, anti-Semitism and even plotting to have him murdered.
Those claims are among 45 specific lies Leslie R. Sachs has spread about Cornwell, Judge Norman K. Moon said in Tuesday's order granting Cornwell's motion for a permanent injunction.
Moon said the statements were not only false but were "calculated to expose plaintiff to public contempt or ridicule" and were published with actual malice, thus clearing the high bar the law has set for libeling a public figure.
Patricia Cornwell
Speeders Are Sinners
Alfred Pehl
Speeding may not be in the Bible. But a Church of Christ minister says traffic laws are God's laws and must be enforced. Police have received complaints about Alfred Pehl jumping in front of fast cars in his neighborhood, sticking brooms in their way and backing his own car in front of other drivers.
He denies the allegations but was ticketed this week for disorderly conduct.
Pehl said people who complain about him and deny they are speeders are sinners.
"If we don't obey the law of the land, then God will hold us accountable. The laws here in this land are His laws, not man's laws," the minister said.
Alfred Pehl
Carving Hides Stash
'Last Supper'
Customs officers have uncovered a stash of cocaine hidden in a parcel containing a carving of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, a Bible, a Crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary.
The package, sent from Brazil to an address in London, was discovered at a parcel sorting office in Coventry. The 300 grams of high-purity cocaine was estimated to be worth 15,000 pounds.
"I've seen cocaine hidden in everything from shirt buttons to candles, to a baby blanket, but never inside a consignment of religious artefacts," said a spokeswoman for the British customs authorities.
'Last Supper'
Original Document Found
Abraham Lincoln
The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War.
An archives Civil War specialist discovered the July 7, 1863, note three weeks ago in a batch of military papers stored among the billions of pages of historical documents at the mammoth building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The text of Lincoln's note has been publicly known because the general to whom Lincoln addressed it telegraphed the contents verbatim to the front lines at Gettysburg. There, the Union army's leaders failed for more than a week to aggressively pursue Lee following his defeat.
A week after Lincoln's note, the Confederate army slipped across the Potomac River into Virginia and the war continued for two more years.
Abraham Lincoln
Milwaukee Sale
Pissarro
Lelia Pissarro would love to hang on her wall a "magnificent" 1903 oil she owns of the port of Le Havre in France, painted by her great-grandfather Camille Pissarro.
She said the couple, who live in London, rarely agree on what should be sold and what should be kept. But she is willing to part with the great artist's painting because it has only recently been reacquired by the family and she sees it as an important investment in their children's future.
The work is part of an exhibition starting Friday at the DeLind Gallery of FineArt. The show features about 60 paintings, drawings and etchings - all for sale - by Lelia Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, four of his sons and a grandson.
The sale starts a day before the opening of "Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape" - the first major U.S. show devoted to Pissarro in more than a decade - in the Santiago Calatrava-designed wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which runs through Sept. 9.
Pissarro
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