'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marie Cocco: While Europeans Vacation, Americans Toil (Truthdig; Posted on AlterNet.org)
Shorter vacations, longer work weeks and skimpy sick leave for Americans add up -- not to greater upward mobility, but to a burned-out workforce earning less than preceding generations.
Hendrik Hertzberg: The Darksider (newyorker.com)
Cheney, Gellman and Becker report, drew up and vetted a list of five appellate judges from which Bush drew his Supreme Court appointments. After naming John Roberts to the Court and then to the Chief Justice's chair, the President, for once, rebelled: without getting permission from down the hall, he nominated his old retainer Harriet Miers for the second opening. ("Didn't have the nerve to tell me himself," Cheney muttered to an associate, according to the Post.) But when Cheney's right-wing allies upended Miers, Bush obediently went back to Cheney's list and picked Samuel Alito. The result is a Court majority that, last Thursday, ruled that conscious racial integration is the moral equivalent of conscious racial segregation.
Jim Hightower: LITIGIOUS CORPRATIONS (jimhightower.com)
Corporate executives are always whining to congress, the courts, the media, and anyone else who'll listen that they are besieged with lawsuits, and they constantly demand laws to prevent people from suing them. But guess what group does more suing than anyone else? Corporations!
William Deresiewicz: Love on Campus (theamericanscholar.org)
The absent-minded professor was once a kindly if unworldly figure. Now we're shown the prof as failed writer and sexual predator. Has eros no place in the relation between student and teacher?...
Rise and fall of a comic genius (guardian.co.uk)
As The Simpsons prepare to hit the big screen, TV critic and former fan Ian Jones explains why he fell out of love with Homer and co.
James Christopher: What makes a modern movie classic? (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
Our chief film critic makes his choice of the eight greatest films of our time
Ryan Fleck on Robert Altman's 'McCabe & Mrs Miller' (1971) (telegraph.co.uk)
Although Robert Altman died earlier this year, his legacy lives on in a new generation of filmmakers. "His influence is huge today," says Ryan Fleck, whose own mightily impressive debut feature, Half Nelson (released in April), bears the unmistakable Altman imprint. "Everyone I know loves his work."
Cheating at Canasta (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
By William Trevor, reviewed by Neel Mukherjee. A master storyteller in top form.
Reader Comment
Quote
"They make love like they make war. They lie to get in and once they're there they don't know what to do"
~ California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez explaining to KTLK's Stephanie Miller why she doesn't date Republican men -- January 12, 2007
RF Darryl
Thanks, Darryl!
A long time ago, my pal Erin, of all people, set me up on a blind date with a republican - a former Reagan speechwriter, no less.
His car, an old Nissan, died on the freeway, and he didn't have an AAA card - I did.
It was after dark, and he insisted on staying with the car - I was supposed to walk a mile along the Hollywood Freeway (170), stumble through the ivy on the Magnolia off-ramp to the 7-11 & call a tow truck on my card.
Called another pal instead who took me home.
Killed a couple of hours, then got in my car & drove down the Hollywood Freeway, where he was still sitting and fuming.
Between my scouting background & having been indoctrinated by nuns, I couldn't leave the little shit sitting there, so I stopped and offered to take him home where he could make his own towing arrangements.
And that's when he lost it - a cursing, crying meltdown.
Dated a couple other republicans, but Mr. Hollywood Freeway's tale reflects the most kindly on them.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Typical sunny summer day.
Nephew Preserving Home
August Wilson
The nephew of late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson has begun renovating Wilson's boyhood home and wants the city to designate it a historic structure.
Paul Ellis Jr. made his request to the city's Historic Review Commission on Wednesday. The commission will vote on it Aug. 1 and, if approved, the measure would then have to be approved by the city planning commission and City Council.
Ellis, 37, lives about a block away from where his famous uncle grew up in the city's Hill District, once a nationally known center of black culture and cuisine that is now wracked by poverty and crime.
Wilson died Oct. 2, 2005, at the age of 60 of liver cancer. His landmark dramas, such as "Fences" and "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," were part of an astounding 10-play cycle, nine of them set in Pittsburgh, that chronicled the black experience in America. He won two Pulitzers - for "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson" - a best play Tony award for "Fences" and best play Tony nominations for six of his other plays.
August Wilson
Promotes Tax Breaks For Hybrids
Rob Lowe
Rob Lowe, who portrays a member of Congress on television, appeared before lawmakers Thursday and promoted tax credits for people who add a plug-in feature to hybrid cars and trucks.
Lowe plays a junior senator from California on ABC's "Brothers & Sisters." He testified before a special House panel looking at energy and global warming issues. Later, he appeared at a demonstration about three blocks from the Capitol featuring a Toyota Prius that had been converted to a plug-in hybrid.
"The first money I ever made and was able to invest, I invested in an alternative energy company going back 25 years," he said. "Like a lot of Americans, I've been watching as the climate changes and as we are in a war on terror where our oil addiction helps fund people that want to kill us. It's gotten my attention."
Rob Lowe
Apologizes To Queen Elizabeth II
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corp. apologized to Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday for saying she had walked out of portrait sitting with photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The BBC said a promotional trailer released Wednesday from the upcoming documentary, "A Year With the Queen," showed the monarch arriving, not departing.
"In this trailer, there is a sequence that implies that the queen left a sitting prematurely," the BBC said.
"This was not the case, and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. The BBC would like to apologize to both the queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused."
BBC
Free Pass To 'SICKo'
Canadian Nurses
Nurses across Canada will be able to see Michael Moore's new documentary "Sicko" for free for a limited time beginning next week.
The move by distributor Alliance Atlantis all started with a group of nurses in Alberta. The United Nurses of Alberta decided to purchase 150 tickets to the movie to distribute to the public.
When filmmaker Michael Moore heard about it, he announced that he'd reimburse the cost of the movie tickets to the organization.
Alliance Atlantis jumped on board with the free ticket offer for all Canadian nurses. Between Monday, July 16, and Thursday, July 19, nurses showing proper ID can see "Sicko" at not cost at any Cineplex Entertainment, Empire or Landmark Theatre.
Canadian Nurses
Blast Ghouliani
NYPD Firefighters
Relatives of firefighters killed at the World Trade Center reproached GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani in a video Wednesday, pairing footage of the falling twin towers with charges the city's former mayor was woefully unprepared for Sept. 11.
The parents and siblings of some of the 343 firefighters killed in the terrorist attacks released the video with the International Association of Fire Fighters, which opposes Giuliani's candidacy.
Fire union officials and family members, repeating claims they had made for months, charged Giuliani pushed for a faster cleanup of ground zero at the expense of finding remains, put an emergency center in a building that collapsed on Sept. 11 and failed to provide working radios for firefighters, making it impossible for them to learn the towers were on the verge of collapse.
"This image of Rudy Giuliani as America's mayor, it's a myth," said Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which represents about 9,000 firefighters.
NYPD Firefighters
Ballet's Royal Touch
Queen Margrethe
Denmark's Queen Margrethe has added a royal touch to a ballet based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen that opens Saturday at a theater in Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens.
Margrethe has designed the costumes and sets for "The Tinder Box," a half-hour performance being staged at the Chinese-inspired Pantomime Theater. It's the third time the monarch has designed costumes for stage adaptations of Andersen's work.
Like many of Andersen's stories, it contains violence and includes a passage where the soldier beheads a witch. Margrethe, a graphic artist and scenographer, said she and others involved in the production never considered cutting the most gruesome parts.
"Can you imagine to censor works by Hans Christian Andersen?" the 67-year-old monarch said, laughing. "I have always accepted it when the soldier beheaded the witch. That's the way he is."
Queen Margrethe
Hospital News
Jerry Hadley
Celebrated tenor Jerry Hadley remained hospitalized Thursday for a gunshot wound police said was self-inflicted.
Hadley created the title role in composer John Harbison's "The Great Gatsby" at the Metropolitan Opera, as well as the lead in Paul McCartney's "Liverpool Oratorio." Leonard Bernstein chose him to sing the main part in a 1989 production of Bernstein's musical "Candide."
A hospital employee declined to provide an update on his condition Thursday, citing confidentiality laws. Hadley was on life support Wednesday.
On Tuesday just after 7 a.m., the 55-year-old singer shot himself with an air rifle at his Clinton Corners home, several miles outside Poughkeepsie, said Robert Rochler, a senior investigator with the New York State Police.
Jerry Hadley
Sanctimonious Intolerance
US Senate
Three protesters disrupted a prayer by a Hindu chaplain on Thursday at the opening of a U.S. Senate hearing, calling it an abomination and shouting slogans about Jesus Christ.
Capitol police said two women and one man were arrested and charged with causing a disruption in the public gallery of the Senate. The three started shouting when guest Chaplain Rajan Zed, a Hindu from Nevada, began his prayer.
Barry Lynn, executive director of religious watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the protest showed the intolerance of the "religious right."
"I don't think the Senate should open with prayers, but if it's going to happen, the invocations ought to reflect the diversity of the American people," Lynn said in a statement.
US Senate
New Search Begins
Amelia Earhart
Hoping modern technology can help them solve a 70-year-old mystery, a group of investigators will search a South Pacific island to try to determine if famed aviator Amelia Earhart crash-landed and died there.
The expedition of 15 members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, or TIGHAR, was set to depart Thursday. The trip would mark the group's ninth to Nikumaroro, an uninhabited atoll about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.
Once at the 2 1/2-mile-long island, the group was to spend 17 days searching for human bones, aircraft parts and any other evidence to try to show that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, reached the island on July 2, 1937, crashed on a reef at low tide and made it to shore, where they possibly lived for months as castaways, written off by the world as lost at sea.
Amelia Earhart
Breaking Taboos
Japanese Comics
Hikari Ota is doing what he does best on his weekly "news" show: taking aim at Japan's aging lawmakers.
"It's easy to spot them nodding away during parliamentary sessions," he tells the studio audience while a large screen on stage shows a napping lawmaker. "Sometimes they're even dead!"
Ota's treatment of the country's leaders might seem tame by some nation's standards, but in Japan it represents a bold foray into the formerly forbidden territory of political satire.
Japan's traditional deference to authority has long limited comedians to nonpolitical slapstick routines. Freedom of expression has a relatively short history in Japan, and fear of violent right-wing groups also has stifled free speech.
Japanese Comics
Countdown To Exit Continues
Katie Couric
CBS News President Sean McManus dismissed talk that Katie Couric may leave as "CBS Evening News" anchor by saying Thursday that he expected her to be doing the job through her full five-year contract.
A candid Couric interview in New York magazine this week renewed questions about Couric's future, leading a prominent blogger to start speculating about who might replace her.
"She has a five-year contract with CBS to anchor the evening news," McManus told The Associated Press. "All of us, including Katie, expect her to be anchoring the evening news in her fifth year."
Katie Couric
Heckuva Job, Chimpy
Old News
Resident Bush always said he would wait to talk about the CIA leak case until after the investigation into his administration's role. On Thursday, he skipped over that step and pronounced the matter old news hardly worth discussing.
"It's run its course," he said. "Now we're going to move on."
Despite a long history of denouncing leaks, Bush declined to express any disappointment in the people who worked for him and who were involved in disclosing the name of a CIA operative treason. Asked about that during a wide-ranging news conference, the president gave a dodgy answer.
"It's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House," he said.
Old News
Racism Sells
'Tintin in the Congo'
Borders is removing "Tintin in the Congo" from the children's section of its British stores, after a customer complained the comic work was racist, the company said Thursday.
David Enright, a London-based human-rights lawyer, was shopping at Borders with his family when he came upon the book, first published in 1931, and opened it to find what he characterized as racist abuse.
"The material suggests to (children) that Africans are subhuman, that they are imbeciles, that they're half savage," Enright said in a telephone interview.
"My black wife, who actually comes from Africa originally, is sitting there with my boys and I'm about to hand this book to them.... What message am I sending to them? That my wife is a monkey, that they are monkeys?"
Borders agreed to move the book to its adult graphic novels section, but said in a statement it would continue to sell it.
'Tintin in the Congo'
Trumping Science With Politics
Health Experts
Health experts said Wednesday they agreed with former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona's claim that the Bush administration has continually silenced medical and scientific opinions in favor of politics and religious dogma.
During his testimony before a Congressional panel on Tuesday, Carmona said that "top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations," The New York Times reported.
"It doesn't surprise us to hear that the administration was ignoring science and attempting to silence scientists. That's how they have operated about stem cells for years," said Sean Tipton, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an umbrella group that represents more than 100 medical associations, colleges, scientific societies and foundations interested in promoting stem cell research.
The Bush administration has a long record of opposition to abortion and contraception. The White House has repeatedly touted abstinence as the only acceptable method of birth control and the best way to prevent sexually transmitted disease like HIV/AIDS. U.S. health agencies have denied funds to groups fighting AIDS that recommend condoms.
Health Experts
Beijing Fashion Show
Contraception Reception
Condoms of all shapes and sizes were on display at a Beijing fashion show on Wednesday featuring dresses, hats and even lollipops made of the said item.
Models fought through extravagant soap bubble special effects to show off tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms, inflated or otherwise.
The show was held at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and organized by China's largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
It also marked World Population Day, organized annually by the U.N. Population Fund.
Contraception Reception
Blues Traveler Slides
John Popper
Blues Traveler's frontman John Popper (R-Special Rules) has been granted a conditional dismissal in a marijuana case that resulted in his arrest in March.
The misdemeanor charge of possession of pot and drug paraphernalia will be dropped if Popper avoids getting caught with marijuana for at least a year, said Deputy Prosecutor Ted Sams, adding that such agreements are common in misdemeanor drug cases in Adams County.
Popper, 40, of Snohomish, and Brian Gourgeois, 34, of Austin, Texas, who was driving, were arrested and released on their own recognizance March 6 after a state trooper said Popper's Mercedes sport utility vehicle was clocked at 111 mph on Interstate 90 near Ritzville.
The car was searched after the trooper said he smelled marijuana. Besides some pot, more than a dozen firearms were found in the car but were legally owned. A weapons charge over brass knuckles and a knife that were found in the glove box was dropped when Popper agreed to surrender them, Sams said.
John Popper
Courtroom Tradition Ends
Wigs
Lawyers and judges are to break with centuries-old tradition and cease wearing horse-hair wigs of white fake curls in non-criminal cases, the head of the country's judiciary announced on Thursday.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, said new dress rules would mean the requirement for the wigs, which legal professionals have worn since the 17th century, would not be needed in civil or family court cases.
Wing collars and bands can also be dispensed with in such cases according to the reforms, while judges will need just one gown in future instead of a variety of colourful outfits currently required.
The wigs will still be worn in criminal courts.
Wigs
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