'Best of TBH Politoons'
Tips From Kip
Two Things
A great story about the Mad Daddy
and
Jandek is playing his second ever live show
(It's also the first Jandek show to be announced in advance.)
~ Kip
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."
-- Pastor Ray Mummert
1000000 Miles Away
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lillian B. Rubin: Why Don't They Listen to Us? (Dissent Magazine. Posted on Alternet.)
If our ideas and our politics have been in the service of those less advantaged, as we believe so passionately, why have we had such a hard time making ourselves heard in ways that count?
G. Pascal Zachary: Alternative Pulitzer (AlterNet)
The Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting is a reminder of the importance of alternative weekly newspapers and the continuing tendency for monopoly newspapers to pursue profit or behind-the-scenes influence.
Michael Kinsley: More GOP Than the GOP (LA Times)
It was the TV talker Chris Matthews, I believe, who first labeled Democrats and Republicans the "Mommy Party" and the "Daddy Party."
Richard Rodriguez: 'Actor' pope never lost control of himself -- or his audience (The Athens NEWS)
SAN FRANCISCO -- As a handsome young man, Karol Wojtyla was a playwright and an actor.
Kate Meier: Wet T-shirt contests represent the worst kind of misogyny (The Athens NEWS)
Last week, a few young men sat at College Gate with one purpose -- to get college girls to expose their breasts.
Tom Delay: The Scandal Man
Bush in 30 Years
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and very windy.
Kinda feel like TV has been hi-jacked by a giant infomercial highlighting right-wing catholicism with a state-mandated death watch for the last couple weeks. Kinda amazing they haven't tried to find some way to blame it all on the Clenis.
If you get a chance tonight, listen to Erin Hart on KIRO, 9pm to 1am (pdt). Never know who might turn up as a guest.
Appears at National Press Club
Guckert/Gannon
More than two months after he resigned as the White House correspondent for right-leaning Talon News, James Guckert (R-Midnight Cowboy) -- also known as Jeff Gannon (R-Top) -- was back in the spotlight this morning as part of a panel at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
When the panel ended at 11 a.m. after the alotted 90 minutes, heated questions were still flying from the audience and moderator Rick Dunham of the Press Club told the audience members to seek out panel members afterward.
The panel had closed with Gannon refusing to say, under repeated questioning, how long it had taken him to get his credentials to the White House, something for which others have had to fight. Another panelist, Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect, commented: "I have a hard time believing that you don't have a recollection of how long it took you to get access to the White House."
Gannon replied: "I guess they felt it was my turn."
When a questioner from the audience asked if Gannon's illegal activities -- a clear reference to his purported work as a male escort -- made him worried about prosecution, he replied: "You are speaking of things that have been alleged and I am not commenting on those things, they have nothing to do with my reporting and I did not come here to speak about those things."
For a lot more, Guckert/Gannon
Spared Jail
Patricia Tabram
A 66-year-old grandmother with a taste for marijuana casserole has been spared jail despite admitting she had shared cannabis-laced cookies with fellow pensioners.
Patricia Tabram from East Lea in Northumberland, who said she uses cannabis to alleviate pains in her neck and back, pleaded guilty to possession of the drug with intent to supply.
But Judge David Hodson said he would not make a "martyr" of her when she returned to Newcastle Crown Court for sentencing on Friday. Instead, she received a six-month suspended prison sentence.
The white-haired, bespectacled granny was unrepentant, and said she would keep cooking with pot.
"I had it this morning in my scrambled eggs and I'll have it again for lunch. I'm not giving it up," she told Channel 4 News.
Patricia Tabram
Found By French Police
Lost Picasso
French police have recovered a painting by Pablo Picasso which disappeared a year ago from a workshop belonging to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, officials said Friday.
"Nature morte a la charlotte," a small Cubist work completed in 1924, was last seen in the workshop where it was being restored in January last year, and its disappearance was reported in May.
After a tip-off police traced the painting -- valued at 2.5 million euros (3.2 million dollars) -- to a house in the Paris suburb of Antony, where it had been hidden behind a wardrobe.
Lost Picasso
Australia's Wealthiest
The Wiggles
The Wiggles have sung and danced their way to the top of a list of Australia's wealthiest entertainers, edging out Hollywood heavyweights such as Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe.
The four Australian performers topped BRW Magazine's list of Australia's 50 richest performers in 2004 with an estimated gross income of $34.5 million, up from $10.7 million in the previous year.
Kidman almost doubled her earnings and was Australia's second richest performer with $30 million, according to the magazine, which hit newsstands Thursday. She was followed by Crowe, who earned an estimated $20 million in 2004.
AC/DC were in fourth place, with an estimated income of $14 million.
The Wiggles
Hospital News
Prince Ernst August
The husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco was seriously ill in a hospital intensive care unit on Friday, just two days after the death of the tiny state's sovereign ruler Prince Rainier, the palace said.
Prince Ernst August of Hanover was taken to the Princess Grace hospital in Monaco Tuesday morning, suffering from an acute pancreatic infection, the palace said in a statement.
Earlier, hospital and palace sources said Ernst August slipped into a coma Tuesday evening, hours before Rainier died. The palace made no mention of a coma in its statement.
Ernst August's problems are likely to renew discussion of the myth that a curse has hung over the Grimaldi dynasty during its seven centuries of rule over Monaco, condemning them to never having long and successful marriages.
Prince Ernst August
Living National Treasure
Joe Thompson
In a small house just four miles from where he was born, Joe Thompson reminisces about performing at Carnegie Hall. Although it was more than 20 years ago, the 86-year-old fiddler is still proud of his performance - and even more so of the tradition he seeks to keep alive.
"I've played all over the world," says Thompson, who has been honored as a North Carolina folklife treasure. "I tore them up everywhere in this country and overseas. I started out playing at square dances and ended up playing Carnegie Hall."
Now Thompson, who suffered a stroke in 2002, struggles to regain his skills and preserve a tradition of Southern fiddling that dates back more than 200 years.
Born into the Jim Crow South of 1918 and raised on farms in Alamance County, in central North Carolina, Thompson helped tend his family's tobacco, cotton, corn and wheat crops. Music was a household staple.
Joe Thompson
For-Profit Schools Vie
Federal Funds
To Alice Letteney, the community college she oversees 30 miles south of Albuquerque, N.M., has little in common with the big chains of profit-making schools whose radio and TV ads blanket the airwaves over much of the country.
As Letteney sees it, her mission is providing essential skills to students in Valencia County, where per capita income is two-thirds the national average. The for-profits' mission is earning money for shareholders.
Which is why Letteney and many of the community college leaders gathering in Boston for their annual convention this weekend are incensed over a proposal in Congress to create a "single definition" - in the federal government's eyes - of higher education institutions.
The change would allow many for-profit education companies to compete for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants currently reserved for nonprofit schools.
Community colleges say they are at a competitive disadvantage. They point to the huge marketing and lobbying budgets of the for-profits .
For a lot more - Federal Funds
Family of Bossa Nova King Launches Lawsuit
Antonio Carlos Jobim
The family of the late legendary Brazilian bossa nova guitarist Antonio Carlos Jobim has filed a breach of contract and royalties lawsuit alleging that the rights to many of his famous songs have been wrongly assigned to those who translated them into English.
Lawyers for the widow and three children of Jobim, whose songs include the 60s classic "The Girl from Ipanema," called the practice a "remarkable display of hubris and overreaching."
The lawsuit alleges that worldwide copyrights to many of Jobim's compositions were fraudulently assigned after his death to the man who translated the original Portuguese lyrics into English.
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Unearthed in California
Mammoth Remains
The remarkably well-preserved remnants of an estimated half-million-year-old mammoth - including both tusks - were discovered at a new housing development in Southern California.
An onsite paleontologist found the remains, which include 50 percent to 70 percent of the Ice Age creature, as crews cleared away hillsides to prepare for building, Mayor Pro Tem Clint Harper said.
Paleontologist Mark Roeder estimated the mammoth was about 12 feet tall, Harper said. Roeder believed it was not a pygmy or imperial mammoth, but he had not yet determined its exact type, Harper said.
Moorpark in Ventura County is about 30 miles west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Mammoth Remains
Mandatory Reading
Hail to the Robber Baron?
By YOSHI TSURUMI
Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a "socialist" and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.
In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America's business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.
Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master's of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America's business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today's business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush's tax cuts, over 80 of America's most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.
Please read the rest at - Hail to the Robber Baron?
In Memory
Onna White
Choreographer Onna White, who was awarded a special Oscar for "Oliver!" and was nominated eight times for Tonys but never won, died Friday at her apartment, friends said. She was 83.
White received the honorary Oscar at the 1969 Academy Awards show, where "Oliver!" won best picture of 1968.
White made her professional debut as a dancer in the San Francisco Opera Ballet. She moved to Broadway where she danced in "Finian's Rainbow," "Guys and Dolls" and "Silk Stockings." After becoming assistant to Michael Kidd, she decided her future lay in choreography.
Her first Tony nomination came in 1958 for her work in the Meredith Willson smash hit "The Music Man," in which Robert Preston pranced about the stage as con man Harold Hill.
Her other Tony nominations were: "Whoop-Up," "Take Me Along," "Irma La Douce," "Half a Sixpence," "Mame," "Ilya Darling" and "I Love My Wife." She also choreographed the films "The Music Man" and "Mame."
Her other films included "Bye Bye Birdie," "The Great Waltz ," "1776 " and "Pete's Dragon."
Onna White
In Memory
Yoshitaro Nomura
Director Yoshitaro Nomura, whose 1974 suspense thriller "Castle of Sand" has been ranked by critics as one of Japan's best films ever, died Friday at 85.
Nomura died of pneumonia at Tokyo's Okubo Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment since March 22, his son, Yoshiki, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Nomura was one of Japan's most prolific and celebrated post-World War II directors, making an astonishing 89 films - from samurai dramas to musicals to crime stories - over more than three decades.
Nomura showed he could skillfully weave tales that were both social commentaries and suspense thrillers, and was a pioneer of Japanese film noir, collaborating with best-selling mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto. They made eight films, including "The Chase" in 1957, "Castle of Sand" in 1974 and "The Demon" in 1978.
Nomura also adapted American detective novels, turning Ellery Queen's "Calamity Town" into "Three Undelivered Letters" in 1979 and Agatha Christie's "The Hollow" into "Dangerous Women" in 1985.
Many Japanese critics consider "Castle of Sand" Nomura's most compelling work. The thriller follows two detectives as they investigate the murder of a policeman and uncover a link to the jarring, hidden past of a young star composer. It received accolades from Kinema Junpo - one of Japan's most prestigious movie contests - and picked up the special jury's prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1975.
Even after directing his last movie in 1985, Nomura continued to work as a producer and mentored directors, including Yoji Yamada of "Twilight Samurai" (2002) fame.
Besides Yoshiki, Nomura is survived by a daughter, Kaori. His funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at Gokokuji Temple in Tokyo.
Yoshitaro Nomura
