'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Roger Ebert: Rendition (R), Outsourcing torture (4 stars)
This is being done in our name. People who are suspected for any reason, or no good reason, of being terrorists can be snatched from their lives and transported to another country to be held without charge and tortured for information. Because the torture is conducted by professionals in those countries, our officials can blandly state that "America does not torture." This practice, known as an "extraordinary rendition," was authorized, I am sorry to say, under the Clinton administration. After 9/11, there is reason to believe the Bush administration uses it frequently.
Susan Estrich: My Hero (creators.com)
The Klan burned crosses on his lawn so often his son once told me that when his parents went out, his dad told him to just ignore them unless they got too close to the house, in which case he should call the fire department.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Death of the Machine (The New York Times)
"There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is." So declared Mark Hanna, the great Gilded Age political boss.
Viv Bernstein: Lesbian Coaches Confront Bias in Recruiting Game (womensenews.org)
Lea Robinson remembers the first time she heard the question. As a young assistant coach for a women's college basketball team, she was in the home of a high school student-athlete she was recruiting when a parent asked if there were any lesbians on her team or staff.
Froma Harrop: There's No Pleasing the Fringes (creators.com)
The only openly gay congressman, Barney Frank, has long been subject to homophobic attacks. Happily, the Massachusetts liberal is master of the precision-guided comeback, which he unleashes with devastating results.
Mark Morford: Led Zeppelin saves the world (sfgate.com)
Because your kid deserves 'Kashmir' as a ringtone. Hey, at least it's not the Beatles.
Roger Ebert: Lars and the Real Girl (PG-13) Oh, you beautiful doll (3 1/2 stars)
How do you make a film about a life-sized love doll, ordered through the Internet, into a life-affirming statement of hope? In "Lars and the Real Girl," you do it with faith in human nature, and with a performance by Ryan Gosling that says things that cannot be said. And you surround him with actors who express the instinctive kindness we show to those we love.
The Decline of Music (youtube.com)
Frank Zappa explains the decline and fall of the music business and comes to a surprising conclusion that the older generation was better for pushing new wave music that they didn't understand than the supposedly younger/hipper music executives.
Free Download: The Most Interesting People in Politics and History: 250 Anecdotes by Bruce (lulu.com)
This book contains 250 anecdotes about people in politics and history, including this one: William Jennings Bryan used to travel the country by train, stopping in towns and cities to make political speeches. In one small town, no platform was available for him to use to make his speech, so he stood on a piece of farm equipment known as a manure spreader. Standing on the manure spreader, Mr. Bryan told the crowd, "This is the first time I have ever made a speech while standing on the Republican platform."
$1.25 Download: The Funniest People in Sports, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes by Bruce (lulu.com)
This book contains 250 sports anecdotes, including this one: Don Faurot, football coach at Missouri, punished unsportsmanlike behavior. During a game, one of his players hit an opposing player. Referee Cliff Ogden saw the infraction and came running over to throw the player out of the game. However, the player told him, "You can't put me out of the game-Faurot's already beat you to it." About the Author: David Bruce is a humor columnist for "The Athens News" in Athens, Ohio. He also teaches English at Ohio University.
Bruce's 14 Collections of Anecdotes (lulu.com)
Tom Tomorrow: Inside the World of the Right-Wing Bloggers
Hubert's Poetry Corner
To Hair and To Hair Not
The Little Ricky and Rudy Show - live from Texas - where the hair is big and
the B.S. is even bigger?
Reader Comment
Re: Maricopa Co., AZ
Michelle, the Queen of Queen Creek (formerly of Gilbert) sent this link:
On Thursday, the New Times published a story by its owners, Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin, spelling out in great detail the sweeping subpoenas issued by the county attorney.
According to the New Times owners, the subpoenas demanded "all documents" - which is to say every note, e-mail, phone record and taped conversation - related to any story written about Arpaio from Jan. 1, 2004, to the present.
But that was only the beginning. In addition, the grand-jury subpoenas demanded the digitalized records of every reader who visited a New Times Web site for at least that many years. As Republic reporter Robert Anglen noted on Friday, the subpoenas demanded a list of every page on the New Times site that users had visited since Jan. 1, 2004, including the names of every person who read any story, ad or listing in the paper.
Show us all the records in 'New Times' case
And, for a little more background (from August 5, 2004) -
Dog Day Afternoon - Sheriff Joe 's goons launched an assault to make a misdemeanor arrest. The Raid left a burned house, a terrified neighborhood and a dead dog
Arpaio's Ahwatukee assault should have drawn banner headlines in the daily newspapers. But the Arizona Republic, where Arpaio's son-in-law, Phil Boas, serves as deputy editor of the editorial pages, buried the story in a community section. The East Valley Tribune ignored it entirely.
Thanks, Michelle!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Hot and windy.
None of the fires are near here, but the sky is grayish yellow with smoke and ash.
The World's Greatest Interviewer
Studs Terkel
He met everyone from Martin Luther King to Dorothy Parker, Tennessee Williams to Bob Dylan. He survived the McCarthy era to record a unique oral history of his country. Now in his nineties, the great US chronicler is still raging against George Bush, Hillary Clinton and the death of radical America
"You are God," I tell Studs Terkel. "Re-create the world." The writer says nothing for a couple of seconds, which is not like him. "As you seem to know," he replies, "that's a question I used to ask people. I think the best way I can respond is to tell you how one young kid answered it. He said: 'I don't want that job. That job is impossible.'"
"And these days, when you listen to the news, I imagine you can't help thinking that boy was right. How does it feel when you're 95 and almost every ideal you ever cherished is under threat; when your nation's government has become less peaceful and more bloodthirsty; less equitable and more shamelessly driven by greed? What's it like, towards the end of a lifetime devoted to civil-rights activism, to find your country led by a president more right-wing and nakedly acquisitive than any other in your memory?"
"It's true what you say. I can't deny it. At the same time, I once wrote a book called Hope Dies Last. I believe that. I might feel hopelessness, except for one thing: the young. I don't mean the young as they're portrayed in TV commercials: whores, bimbos and dummies. There are many who do not fall into those categories. The big problem is that there's no memory of the past. Our hero is the free market. People forget how the free market fell on its face way back in the Depression. And how the nation pleaded with its government and got help. Today, all these fat CEOs say we don't need government. And these fat boys get away with it, because of our collective Alzheimer's, and the power of Rupert Murdoch and CNN. There is despair in this country, sure. At the same time, we are waiting."
For a great read - Studs Terkel
Raises Cash For Darfur
'Muslim Live 8'
Thousands of British Muslims gathered Sunday evening for a charity peace concert dubbed "Muslim Live 8" to raise money for victims of Sudan's long-running Darfur conflict.
The concert, starring top Islamic singer Sami Yusuf, was backed by the British government which is spearheading efforts to press the Sudanese government to stop violence in the western province.
The event at London's Wembley Arena, called A Concert for Peace in Darfur, also aimed to promote efforts to unite the community amid widespread suspicion of Islam in Britain.
All profits from the event will go to Islamic Relief to help fund its work in Darfur.
'Muslim Live 8'
Give Union Strike Authority
Stagehands
Broadway stagehands voted unanimously Sunday to give their union the authority to call a strike against theater producers, increasing tension in their stalled labor negotiations.
The vote does not mean there will be a strike by Local 1, since that would need the approval of the local's parent organization.
The decision was made by about 1,000 union members, who also voted to move $1 million from the union's general fund to its $4.1 million emergency defense fund "specifically to aid other theatrical unions affected by a work stoppage," said James J. Claffey Jr., Local 1 president.
Stagehands
Swiss Energy Company
George Clooney
George Clooney will become an executive board member of a new Swiss energy company that will develop environmentally friendly techniques for car motors and other devices, the billionaire who is setting up the firm said Saturday.
The new company will have different branches doing research and development in the clean production of hydrogen, solar energy and fuel cells, said Nicolas Hayek, chairman of the Swatch Group.
"First I hesitated between Al Gore and Clooney," Hayek said in an interview with daily Berner Zeitung.
Clooney will sit on the board alongside Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier and others, Hayek said.
George Clooney
Wows Fans In Ethiopia
Beyoncé
Beyoncé Knowles joined the millennium celebrations in Ethiopia with a spirited concert in the capital of the Horn of Africa nation.
Some 5,000 adoring fans in Ethiopia - a country normally unimpressed by Western music - turned out to see Beyoncé. In this country, even teens tend to be loyal to music in the national language, Amharic. But Beyoncé got a hysterical welcome when she came onstage.
"I want to thank you," the R&B star told the screaming crowd Saturday evening in return. "You have been one of the best audiences of my lifetime."
Beyoncé's concert was part of Ethiopia's yearlong celebration of its 2,000th birthday according to its ancient calendar.
Beyoncé
World Surfing Champ Detained In Israel
Kelly Slater
Police detained eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater early Saturday after a scuffle with photographers who were trying to take pictures of him with an Israeli supermodel, police said.
Israeli photographers were waiting outside as the American surfer and model Bar Rafaeli left a hotel in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya before dawn Saturday, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Slater pushed the cameramen in an effort to prevent them from taking pictures, a photographer at the scene told Channel Two TV.
Slater, who is of Syrian descent, was visiting Israel for the first time as part of efforts by the group "Surfing for Peace" to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians through the sport.
Kelly Slater
Always A Class Act
Kid Rock
Kid Rock was arrested early Sunday after a brawl at a restaurant and spent about 12 hours in jail before being released, police said.
The musician stopped at the Waffle House restaurant shortly after 5 a.m. after his performance at The Tabernacle in Atlanta, authorities said.
"He and five members of his entourage were involved in a fight with a male customer inside the Waffle House," said Mekka Parish, a spokeswoman for the DeKalb County Police Department.
Kid Rock left in his tour bus and was stopped by police about a mile from the restaurant, Parish said. The musician and five members of his entourage were taken into custody on a misdemeanor charge of simple battery.
Kid Rock
Poor, Poor, Pitiful He
Slappy
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a 15-cent price tag stuck to his Yale law degree, blaming the school's affirmative action policies in the 1970s for his difficulty finding a job after he graduated.
Thomas' new autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son," shows how the second black justice on the Supreme Court came to oppose affirmative action after his law school experience. He was one of about 10 blacks in a class of 160 who had arrived at Yale after the unrest of the 1960s, which culminated in a Black Panther Party trial in New Haven that nearly caused a large-scale riot.
The conservative justice says he initially considered his admission to Yale a dream, but soon felt he was there because of his race. He says he loaded up on tough courses to prove he was not inferior to his white classmates but considers the effort futile. He says he was repeatedly turned down in job interviews at law firms after his 1974 graduation.
Thomas says he stores his Yale Law degree in his basement with a 15-cent sticker from a cigar package on the frame.
Slappy
First National Championship
Sudoku
Sudoku, the numbers puzzle that claims 167 million U.S. players, held its first national championship on Saturday, drawing more than 800 people from as far away as California and British Columbia.
Organizers said the event attracted a larger crowd than expected, and proved the popularity of the puzzle that has been a fixture in many U.S. newspapers since 2005, after being popularized by The Times of London the previous year.
The Philadelphia event was won by Sudoku's reigning world champion, Thomas Snyder, 27, who completed the "advanced" section in seven minutes, eight seconds -- about three minutes ahead of his nearest rival -- and took home the first prize of $10,000.
Sudoku
Look-Alike Fools Hotel
Gerard Depardieu
A look-alike pretending to be French actor Gerard Depardieu walked into a luxury hotel in Rome and walked out with a gift basket weighed down with freebies, local media reports said Friday.
Police said that the Depardieu doppelganger looked and sounded enough like the real thing that staff members at the Hotel de Russie allowed him into the gift suite, where he reportedly took a purse, a bikini, a pair of sunglasses, a cashmere sweater and a designer bra. The error was discovered a short time later, but by then the look-alike was long gone.
"We're on the lookout for someone who looks like Gerard Depardieu but who is not Gerard Depardieu," a spokesman for the Rome-based Carabinieri police said Friday.
Gerard Depardieu
Dutch Museum Hunts
Crab Lice
The Rotterdam Natural History Museum has appealed for somebody - anybody - to give it a single crab louse for its collection, amid fears they may be dying out.
Curator Kees Moeliker said he began hunting in earnest for the species, also known as "pubic lice," last year after reading an article published by British doctors in the June issue of the journal of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
The article, titled "Did the Brazilian Kill the Pubic Louse?" found that crabs rates had fallen first in women, and several years later in men in Leeds. The authors hypothesized that the bikini wax known as "The Brazilian" that removes all or most pubic hair, might be to blame.
"When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction. Pubic lice can't live without pubic hair," Moeliker said.
Crab Lice
A Comeback For Hashish
Lebanon
Lebanon's anti-drug squad and the handful of soldiers protecting them had an unpleasant surprise last month when they launched an annual raid on fields of ripe hashish in the northern Bekaa Valley. Rather than standing aside meekly while their hashish was ploughed up as in the past, the farmers this year were determined to protect their lucrative crops. "They shot at us with automatic weapons from nearby woods and houses," Colonel Adel Machmouchi, head of Lebanon's Drug Enforcement Bureau, told TIME. "RPGs [Rocket-Propelled Grenades] were exploding above our heads and we had to leave."
Taking advantage of a debilitating political crisis in Beirut, overstretched security forces and a lifeless economy, the Bekaa farmers this year have cultivated the largest hashish harvest since the war-torn 1980s when this fertile valley was awash with drug crops. Lebanese police estimate that some 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) of hashish and a small amount of opium poppies were planted this year on the sun-baked plain of the northern Bekaa. "Lebanese hashish is the best in the world, better than Turkey and Afghanistan," says Ali, a Bekaa farmer standing in his field of knee-high hashish plants, the spiky saw-toothed cannabis leaves swaying gently in the hot breeze. Ali and other hashish farmers interviewed by TIME requested their real names not be printed.
Ali said that he expects to produce 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of cannabis resin from his eight dunam (9,568 square yards) field, which he will sell for around $10,000 to local drug dealers. "Usually, we sell hashish for about $1,000 per kilogram, but there was so much hashish grown this year that prices will drop a little," he says. Still, with two harvests since March, Ali's income this year from hashish growing is $20,000, a big sum for this impoverished area.
Lebanon
Weekend Box Office
'30 Days of Night'
The horror tale "30 Days of Night" had three days of box-office bite. The Sony fright flick, with Josh Hartnett leading Alaskans against ravenous vampires that turn up for the prolonged winter darkness, debuted as the weekend's No. 1 movie with $16 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "30 Days of Night," $16 million.
2. "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?", $12.1 million.
3. "The Game Plan," $8.1 million.
4. "Michael Clayton," $7.1 million.
5. "Gone Baby Gone," $6 million.
6. "The Comebacks," $5.85 million.
7. "We Own the Night," $5.5 million.
8. "Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas," $5.1 million.
9. "Rendition," $4.2 million.
10. "The Heartbreak Kid," $3.9 million.
30 Days of Night
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