'Best of TBH Politoons'
Reader Suggestion
Americans Who Tell The Truth
hi marty
you might enjoy this
lewis lapham has been in australia
and checking him out led me to this:
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
John Feffer: The Soul of New Fast Food (AlterNet.org)
No matter how many salads you find on the menus of McDonald's and Burger King, the oversized hamburger will always be what fast-food customers reach for first.
Steve Satterwhite: Meet the Fundies (Texas Observer. Posted on Alternet)
For Christian Fundamentalist leaders in Texas, a discussion about the 'homosexual agenda' becomes an argument about heaven and hell.
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): The Virtues of Work (/irascibleprofessor.com)
Work's been out of style for almost forty years. The change took place at about the same time that I checked into my freshman dorm. That's when we decided that the "work ethic" was passé.
New Revelations by American Soldiers of Abuse in Iraq (biz.yahoo.com)
"It's all over Iraq," [Tony] Lagouranis told FRONTLINE. "The infantry units are torturing people in their homes. They would smash people's feet with the back of an axhead. They would break bones, ribs. That was serious stuff."
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Why can't the left face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008? (freepress.org)
If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.
Annalee Newitz: Strike Blog (AlterNet.org)
I've been reading the first blog ever written from a strikers' picket line.
Hubert's Poetry Corner
DESTINATION DOVER
Reader Suggestion
fourth dimensional sculpture
OK, see if this makes sense:
No good rendering of any 4-dimensional object existed anywhere in the world before the Octacube, either in solid or virtual form, according to Adrian Ocneanu, the Penn State professor of mathematicians who designed the sculpture.
Kirsten Dunst To Star
Marla Ruzicka
Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst is to play real-life US aid worker Marla Ruzicka, who was killed in a suicide-bomb attack in Baghdad in April, in a new Hollywood movie about the war in Iraq.
The movie, to be made for Paramount Pictures, will tell the remarkable story of Ruzicka, 28, who ran a nongovernmental organization that lobbied for financial compensation for civilian casualties of war, {italic} Daily Variety {/italic} said.
The studio last year sealed a deal to acquire the rights to the life story of Ruzicka as well as to a book being written by Jennifer Abrahamson, who had planned to work on the book with the late aid worker.
Ruzicka, through her organization Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, worked extensively in Iraq and in Afghanistan to document the exact number of civilians killed or injured by US forces.
Marla Ruzicka
Thanks, Purple Gene!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Back to sunny & breezy.
If you thought TV Guide was useless before, the latest incarnation is even worse - now it's more like a Denny's menu.
Except Denny's has better writing, nicer pictures and covers 24 hours.
Halloween Anthem Reworded
Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
For 44 years his deep voice has been doing the Monster Mash with ghoulish gusto every October.
Now the co-creator and singer of what's perhaps the biggest Halloween anthem to date has turned the corny song on its side to make an appeal to stop global warming.
"We were hiking past the White House late one night/When our eyes beheld an eerie sight/The president appeared, with folks very strange/The zombies and vampires of global climate change," sings Bobby Pickett in the Climate Mash.
The Flash animation accompanying the track, sponsored by the advocacy group Clean The Air, features images of U.S. president George W. Bush showering with oil and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice riding a broom stick.
www.climatemash.org
Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
Pentagon Pulled Plug
Ed Schultz
Radio talk show host Ed Schultz says the Pentagon reneged after telling him his show would be aired for troops around the world. A Pentagon spokesman says no decision has been made.
Schultz said he had an agreement with the American Forces Radio and Television Service network to air his show starting this week. He hosts a nationally syndicated show from Fargo that supporters have billed as a liberal alternative to Rush Limbaugh.
Schultz said his producer got a call from Allison Barber, a deputy assistant secretary for defense, on Monday morning saying the show was "off for now," and she was not sure it would be rescheduled.
A group of Democratic senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday, asking for a "definitive timeline" for correcting what it said is a lack of political balance in talk radio programming on the American Forces network.
Ed Schultz
Pens First Lyrics Of Career
Burt Bacharach
77-year-old composer Burt Bacharach has found his voice in a politically charged album "At This Time" that features his first lyrics ever in a nearly 50-year career creating some of pop music's best-known love songs.
Bacharach, who projected an image of the Hollywood good life in the 1960s and '70s during his marriage to glamorous actress Angie Dickinson, told of a political turning point that sparked his anger.
"I heard (then U.S. Secretary of State) Colin Powell tell the United Nations there are weapons of mass destruction. I totally believed him. I love this guy. He's like a hero. This was such a bad, bad blemish mark on his life, that he was so wronged.
"Then we go into Iraq. It looked like the heroic, right thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do. There was fabricated information. There are no weapons of mass destruction."
"I never was a political person in my life. I wrote songs during Vietnam, not about Vietnam. I was just writing love songs. Leading my own life in my own insulated world."
Burt Bacharach
Narrating TV Special on Gorillas
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver, who played Dian Fossey in "Gorillas in the Mist," will narrate an Animal Planet special next year about the gorilla population in Rwanda.
The one-hour special, "Gorillas Revisited With Sigourney Weaver," to debut June 25, 2006, travels to the mountains of central Africa where "cameras join Weaver on a personal and emotional journey to update the gorillas' tale," Animal Planet said in a statement Wednesday.
Sigourney Weaver
Returning To 'Weekend Update'
Tina Fey
Maternity leave is over for Tina Fey of "Saturday Night Live." She'll be back behind the "Weekend Update" anchor desk for this week's episode, her first show since giving birth to her daughter Alice on Sept. 10.
"I had to get back to work," Fey said. "NBC has me under contract; the baby and I have only a verbal agreement."
Tina Fey
Full Season Ordered
'Commander in Chief'
ABC has elected a full season for the new drama "Commander in Chief," ordering nine more episodes.
"Chief" is the most-watched new series of the fall season, averaging 16.5 million total viewers to lead its 9 p.m. Tuesday slot. While second in the hour in 18-49, "Chief" is still up 10 percent in that demo from last year's 9-10 p.m. combination of "According to Jim" and "Rodney."
'Commander in Chief'
Most Translated Danish Author
Hans Christian Andersen
Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen, whose writings have been translated into 91 languages, is Denmark's most translated author, the Royal Library said Thursday.
Second is Karen Blixen, also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen, the "Out of Africa" author whose books can be read in 28 languages.
Third is 19th-century philosopher-theologian Soeren Kierkegaard, who has been translated into 14 foreign tongues.
Hans Christian Andersen
Snubbing Chimp Amid Cash Clash
Miffed $chwarzenegger
Miffed Governor Arnold $chwarzenegger will snub George W. Bush when the
US resident begins a visit to California amid a clash over fundraising
for their Republican Party.
The movie-star state governor, a moderate in Bush's conservative party,
late Wednesday expressed irritation that the president apparently
ignored his plea to delay the fundraising trip and said he would not
take the time to meet Bush.
"We would have appreciated if he would have done his fundraising after
the November 8 election, because you know we need now all the money in
the world," $chwarzenegger told supporters at his campaign event.
"$chwarzenegger is clearly annoyed as he asked that the president not
come until after the election because he did not want to compete for
cash," University of California political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe
said.
Miffed $chwarzenegger
Long Comeback Still in Progress
Shelley Berman
In 1963, long before television became a stage for celebrities eager to expose their every flaw and foible, Shelley Berman threw a reality TV tantrum.
Even as the 79-year-old Berman has enjoyed a renaissance, playing Larry David's father on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and with roles in other television and film projects ("Grey's Anatomy" on Nov. 6, "Meet the Fockers") this odd chapter remains open.
Berman, who won the first Grammy for a comedy record for "Inside Shelley Berman" in 1959, still can provoke rapturous praise. When he appeared last year on MSNBC's "Countdown," Keith Olbermann called him "one of the greatest humorists of the last half-century."
But he can't shake the misstep. Ask Berman the year he first got his name above the title for a Broadway play or when he made his first comedy album and he's vague on dates. Query him on when the "DuPont Show" documentary called "Comedian Backstage" aired and he's precise.
For a good read - Shelley Berman
Sold for $2.7M
Stamps
A block of four rare stamps - misprinted in 1918 with an upside-down airplane - sold Wednesday for $2.7 million, the highest price ever paid for U.S. stamps, an auctioneer said.
The stamps depict a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny," a World War I trainer that became an airmail plane. About 700 of the stamps were misprinted but inspectors caught all but 100 of the mistakes before they were sold.
The block sold Wednesday to an anonymous buyer is the only one in existence that features the printing plate's number upside down and in the stamps' margin, said Scott Trepel, president of Siegel Auction Galleries.
Stamps
Pageant Has Date but No Place
Miss America
Miss America's got a when - but no where. The famous beauty pageant, which is taking its show on the road after 84 years in Atlantic City, will air Jan. 21 on cable channel Country Music Television, pageant CEO Art McMaster said Thursday.
But no final decision has been made on the site, with three cities still in the running. McMaster wouldn't identify them.
The pageant, a ratings loser in recent years, was dropped by ABC last year, leaving Miss America without a network TV contract for the first time since 1954.
Miss America
UTB Smokinghouse Sentencing
Jed Kobles
A man who ran an Internet file-sharing hub where computer users could swap movie, music and software files was sentenced Thursday to three years probation and ordered to use the computer only for personal use.
Jed Frederick Kobles, 34, pleaded guilty in August to a single felony count of conspiracy to commit grand theft. He is the first person in California to be convicted on state charges for illegal file sharing, prosecutors said.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Horowitz knocked down Kobles' crime from a felony to a misdemeanor and suspended a 180-day jail sentence. Kobles also will appear in an anti-piracy ad for the film industry to be shown in theaters, Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey McGrath said.
At the time of his arrest in February, Kobles operated an online file-sharing hub in Los Angeles known as UTB Smokinghouse under the name Raging8. He now works at a 7-Eleven store in Las Vegas.
Jed Kobles
Urges Parents to Set Goals
Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby, who created a stir in the black community when he criticized young people for the way they speak, challenged parents in this crime-plagued, largely minority city to set goals for their children.
"Somebody said 'I'm either flippin' burgers or sellin' some drugs,'" said Cosby, echoing a common complaint of young people in poor communities. "But people flippin' burgers never seem to say 'I want to be the manager of the burger place.'"
Cosby's visit to Compton High School Wednesday, where he spoke to several gatherings of students, parents and teachers, is part of a 15-city tour he hopes will bring a message of hope and self-improvement to the black community.
Bill Cosby
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