'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Voodoo Health Economics (nytimes.com)
It's about time someone made the case that John McCain's approach to health care is based on the foolish claim that the marketplace can produce cheap health care for all.
Ben Hoyle: Internet book piracy will drive authors to stop writing (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.
Drake Bennett: The sting of poverty (boston.com)
In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work.
BENJAMIN WALLACE-WELLS: A Case of the Blues (nytimes.com)
The Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole is 58 years old, but he has never been famous before, and after this year, he will most likely never be famous again.
Jim Hightower: COWBOY GEORGE, THE HORSE THIEF (jimhightower.com)
We've learned the hard way over the past seven years that George W lives in his own fantasy world - a place in which reality is whatever he wants it to be, and facts are not allowed to intrude.
Enrique Limon: "The Best Things in Life: My Week of No-Cost Fun" (sdcitybeat.com)
All too familiar with overdraft fees and creditor calls, I recently found myself at a crossroads and came upon one absolute truth -- being broke sucks. But I wasn't about to let my personal economic distress bring me down.
Chris Riemenschneider: Blog-rock stars of Vampire Weekend try to graduate to real-world success (Star Tribune; Posted on popmatters.com)
This time last year, the fellas in Vampire Weekend had already started to feel the buzz. They were being touted by influential music Web sites and courted by record companies. Success was just one Louis Vuitton or Benetton lyrical reference away.
Enrique Lopetegui: Mambo King Cachao Dies (sacurrent.com)
Israel Lopez, the great Cuban bassist, composer, and bandleader passed away in Miami on March 22 at age 89 from kidney complications.
Walter Tunis: Shooter Jennings wants Nashville to listen up (McClatchy Newspapers; Posted on popmatters.com)
For all the Hollywood attitude that seems to surround the image and presentation of country music these days, corporate Nashville still doesn't have a clue as to what to do when one of its own defects to Los Angeles.
Brian Mccollum: Shelby Lynne connects with a raw, intimate sound (Detroit Free Press; Posted on popmatters.com)
Shelby Lynne is so old-fashioned, she's practically brand-new.
Will Lawrence: Me, George, movies and independence (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk)
Despite the rumours that she's dating George Clooney, Renee Zellweger tells Will Lawrence she prefers to be independent.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny with a nice breeze.
Withdraws From WGA
George Clooney
George Clooney has quietly withdrawn from the Writers Guild of America after the union rejected his request for a writing credit on his new film "Leatherheads," Daily Variety reported in its Friday edition.
Clooney opted to become a "financial core status" nonmember last fall, which means that he is still covered by the basic contract, the trade paper said.
But he loses his voting rights, and cannot run for office or attend membership meetings, according to the WGA's constitution. He must continue to pay his dues, but gets a break on "non-germane" WGA activities, such as political and lobbying efforts. His decision is also irrevocable.
He said he would have resigned from the union altogether -- a revocable move -- but that would have prevented him from working on all WGA-covered productions. He kept quiet about his move, because the union was about to go on strike for the first time in almost two decades, and he did not want to provide an unwelcome distraction. Clooney was a keen supporter of the 100-day strike, which ended almost two months ago.
George Clooney
Preserving The Chestnut Tree
Anne Frank
Work to preserve the monumental chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis began Friday and is expected to take a week.
The tree, which has a lethal fungus, had been slated to be cut down last year until a judge ordered a last-minute reprieve.
Under a plan approved in January, the tree will be trimmed and encased in a large steel tripod, with rings around its base and the trunk 7.6 metres from the ground.
The owner, museum and the city thought it should be cut down. But neighbours protested, saying the museum and others failed to appreciate the tree's value as a symbol of freedom. They argued the tree, which is more than 150 years old, was worth making extraordinary efforts to preserve.
Anne Frank
'Whiter Shade of Pale' Appeal Overturned
Gary Brooker
The lead singer of the British band Procol Harum won an appeals court judgment Friday awarding him the full royalties to the iconic hit, "A Whiter Shade of Pale."
Britain's Court of Appeal ruling for rock star Gary Brooker overturned a lower court decision granting the group's former organist 40 percent of the millions of dollars in royalties from the song.
The appeals court agreed Matthew Fisher, who played the haunting organ theme, was entitled to co-authorship but said he will receive no money from past or future royalties.
Fisher, who quit the band in 1969 and is now a computer programmer in London, filed his claim to joint ownership nearly 40 years after the song was recorded and became one of the anthems of the 1967 "Summer of Love." The record has sold 10 million copies, and Rolling Stone magazine has ranked the song 57th on a list of the 500 greatest of all time.
Gary Brooker
Strad Fetches $1.2M
'The Penny'
A Stradivari owned by the first woman to play in the strings section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has sold for $1.2 million.
Christie's auction house said Friday that the 1700s violin, known as The Penny, was purchased for $1,273,000 by a buyer who did not wish to be identified. It had been estimated to sell for up to $1.5 million.
The violin's owner, Barbara Penny, died last year. She was the first woman accepted in the strings section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. She performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe.
'The Penny'
New Huff-Po
Tina Brown
Move over, Matt Drudge. A fresh site for aggregating links to the hottest news stories is coming courtesy of Barry Diller and Tina Brown.
Diller and his IAC/InterActiveCorp. business will bankroll the effort, which doesn't have a name or a launch date. The site will be run by Brown, the so-called "Queen of Buzz" famous for having once been the editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker.
Diller, IAC and Brown aren't discussing details of their venture, though published reports have former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Edward Felsenthal as the site's planned editor.
Although several published reports are comparing the concept of the Diller-Brown site to the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report is a closer analogy because the big draw to the former is its original blog content while Drudge relies mainly on links to outside news sources.
Tina Brown
Appealing Indecency Fines
Rupert-TV
Fox Broadcasting said on Friday that it would go to court to try to overturn indecency fines imposed on 13 Fox television stations after regulators declined to reconsider the fines.
The News Corp's Fox Broadcasting said it would go to court to appeal the fines after the Federal Communications Commission declined a petition for reconsideration and the Department of Justice filed suit to collect the fines.
The fines were aimed at penalizing stations for airing episodes of the reality TV show "Married by America" in 2003.
The FCC said it had returned the Fox petition without consideration because the company had exceeded the number of allowable pages in its petition without asking for permission far enough in advance to exceed the page limit.
Rupert-TV
UK Challenges Decision
Snoop Dogg
Britain is appealing a court's decision to allow Snoop Dogg into the country, the Border Agency said Friday. He was barred from Britain after he was arrested on charges of violent disorder at London's Heathrow Airport in 2006. But the hip-hop heavyweight successfully appealed the ban and received entry clearance from an asylum and immigration tribunal in January.
The Border Agency said Friday it would challenge the ruling at a hearing next week.
In April 2007, Snoop Dogg was refused entry into Australia, with then-Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews saying the rapper "doesn't seem the sort of bloke we want in this country."
Snoop Dogg
Testified At Pellicano Trial
Chris Rock
Chris Rock testified at a private eye's racketeering trial Friday that he hired the man to investigate a model who demanded money after claiming she was pregnant with his baby, and who later accused him of sexual assault.
Outlandish and animated on stage, the 43-year-old comedian looked uncomfortable and spoke in hushed tones as attorneys asked him about his connection to Anthony Pellicano.
Dressed in a black designer suit, Rock told jurors during his 15-minute appearance on the witness stand that he first hired Pellicano in 1999 through his attorney but did not know about his tactics.
Rock said he was the target of a shakedown by the woman who claimed she became pregnant during a one-night stand at the Beverly Hills Hotel while Rock was separated from his wife.
Rock testified that he hired Pellicano again two years later after the woman claimed the comedian had sexually assaulted her.
Chris Rock
Wins Apology & Damages
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage on Friday won an apology and damages from actress Kathleen Turner over claims in her autobiography that he had been arrested twice for drunk driving and had once stolen a Chihuahua.
Neither star was at London's High Court to hear the ruling, which brings to an end Cage's libel action against former co-star Turner, her publishers Headline Publishing Group and Britain's Daily Mail, which featured an extract from the book.
Cage's lawyer Simon Smith told the court that the offending passages from Turner's autobiography "Send Yourself Roses" had appeared in the Daily Mail and on its Web site under the headline "Why I detest Burt Reynolds and Nicolas Cage."
They were based on the 53-year-old's experiences on set with Cage while making the 1986 hit "Peggy Sue Got Married."
Nicolas Cage
Fisk University Appealing Display Order
Georgia O'Keeffe
Fisk University plans to appeal a judge's order to display an art collection donated to it by painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
In March, Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle permanently banned any sale of the 101-piece collection and set an October deadline for Fisk to retrieve the artwork from storage and put it on display.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in New Mexico had sued to gain the rights over the collection because of the school's attempts to sell paintings and because they weren't currently on display. The Santa Fe museum is the legal representative of the late artist's estate.
Fisk put the art into storage in 2005 because the gallery where it was exhibited was falling apart, and there were fears the works would be damaged.
Georgia O'Keeffe
In Memory
Will Spens
A man killed in a single-car freeway crash near the Santa Barbara County line on Tuesday was identified Thursday as former Los Angeles television and radio reporter Will Spens, a former colleague said.
Spens had been discharged from the cardiac care unit at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, where he was treated for a heart problem, the day before his death at age 57, according to veteran investigative producer Pete Noyes.
Spens apparently crashed his vehicle into a bridge abutment on the entura (101) Freeway near Bates Road. The Ventura County coroner's office, which did an autopsy, said his death was probably accidental and due to blunt force trauma, according to Noyes.
Spens was a television reporter on the East Coast for many years, working for both WABC and WNBC in New York City.
In the early 1990s, he worked for KNBC in Burbank, KCBS in Hollywood and KNX Newsradio.
Spens moved to Santa Barbara about 10 years ago to study contemplative relations and, at one time, was cloistered as a monk, according to Noyes. Spens was also briefly married twice.
Will Spens
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