'Best of TBH Politoons'
Reader Comment
MadCat in the Morning
Marty
The only thing that keeps my anger in tow is that .....
"MadCat in the Morning"!
When he took the day off today (Friday 4/14) I ended up biting 2 peoples heads off and kicking 2 dogs.
Gene
Thanks, Gene!
Consider your sentiments conveyed.
And, JD is back today.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Government spending hit record high in March (The Associated Press)
Government spending hit an all-time high for a single month in March, pushing the budget deficit up significantly from the red-ink level of a year ago.
Froma Harrop: Why The Minimum Wage Wins
Congress is apparently too busy tending to the highest-income Americans to pay much attention to the lowest-income Americans. Washington Republicans are now hard at work extending investment tax cuts that will enrich folks making more than $10 million a year by an average $500,000. They have no time for raising the minimum wage -- in addition to having no interest in it. At $5.15 an hour since 1997, the federal minimum wage lingers at a 50-year low when adjusted for inflation.
Ted Rall: Why Bush Can't Get Traction on the Economy (news.yahoo.com)
American officialdom says the economy is humming. But ordinary citizens think it sucks. Who's right?
Henry Blodget: Taxes You Shouldn't Pay (slate.com)
How your mutual funds are raising your IRS bill.
Stephen Pizzo: Permission to Speak Freely, Sir (News for Real. Posted on Alternet.org)
Those who have never served in the military don't understand how extraordinary it is for career military officers to say the things they're saying.
Ryan Grim: Just Check No? (slate.com)
A lie college students might want to tell.
James K Galbraith: Morning in America again (guardian.co.uk)
The leaders of the Republican party have awakened an unfriendly giant with their stance on immigrants.
Dr. Mark H. Shapiro: Politically Correct but Hardly Ethical (irascibleprofessor.com)
Health care providers certainly are entitled to their own religious beliefs and preferences. However, when they work in a public facility they hardly have the right to impose their individual beliefs and preferences on their clients.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Gray & rainy day.
Used to be all the local grocery stores used hams as loss leaders at Easter. Now that there's no competition, this year's ham cost nearly 3 times more than last year's.
This year the stores are pushing over-priced, pre-sliced hams. Ick.
No new flags.
Deal Worries Groups
Smithsonian-Showtime
A television deal between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks has alarmed some leading independent filmmakers and research groups, who worry they will have less access to the Smithsonian's collections.
As part of the agreement, the newly created Smithsonian Networks will by December launch at least 40 hours of programming through an on-demand cable channel that will rely on Smithsonian materials and curators for films, including documentaries.
The agreement allows Smithsonian Networks to consider proposed commercial projects for its own use before they can be presented to other networks, such as PBS or the History Channel. If filmmakers or producers seeking Smithsonian materials don't want to do business with the new network they could find such access denied.
"History's just been made for sale to an inside deal," said Ken Burns, the Emmy-winning producer of the documentaries "Baseball" and "The Civil War."
Smithsonian-Showtime
TV Networks, Stations Challenge
FCC Ruling
Four TV broadcast networks and their affiliates have filed court challenges to a March 15 Federal Communications Commission ruling that found several programs "indecent" because of language.
ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, along with their network affiliate associations and the Hearst-Argyle Television group of stations, filed notices of appeal in various federal courts, including in Washington D.C. and New York. Some were filed late Thursday and the rest Friday morning.
The move represents a protest against the aggressive enforcement of federal indecency rules that broadcasters have complained are vague and inconsistently applied. Millions of dollars in fines have been levied based on those rules.
The appeals challenge the FCC's finding that profane language was used on the CBS program "The Early Show," in 2004, incidents involving Cher and Nicole Richie on the "Billboard Music Awards" shows broadcast by Fox in 2002 and 2003 and various episodes of the ABC show "NYPD Blue" that aired in 2003.
FCC Ruling
Studio Head Gave 2 Accounts
Brad Grey
Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey provided the FBI with two accounts about his ties to indicted Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano, his attorneys said.
Grey called Pellicano a "colorful character" during the first interview and more fully described his relationship with him in the second, Moor said. The second interview was broader in scope because Grey waived his attorney-client privilege and spoke freely about hiring Pellicano to work on litigation he was involved in, his attorneys said.
The Times, quoting summaries of FBI interviews, also reported that Michael Ovitz, the former head of the Creative Artists Agency and one-time Walt Disney Company president, paid Pellicano for information on 15 to 20 people.
Brad Grey
Offering Cookbook Deal
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton knows how to whip up a tasty banana pudding, and the singer explains how to make the dessert and more than 125 other recipes in a new cookbook to raise money for her Imagination Library.
Advance sales for "Dolly's Dixie Fixin's" began last week, and people who buy the cookbook will enter to win a backyard barbecue and bluegrass festival with Parton as a special guest, Dollywood Foundation officials said.
All proceeds from the cookbook will go to Parton's Dollywood Foundation, which supports the Imagination Library. The program, which provides a free book a month for children from birth to age 5, has been established in 42 states since it began in 1996.
Dolly Parton
Singing In Libya
Lionel Ritchie & Jose Carreras
Twenty years after U.S. forces bombed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's home, U.S. singer Lionel Ritchie and Spanish tenor Jose Carreras will sing amid the ruins on Friday to commemorate the raid which killed 40 people.
The two will put on a charity performance to promote international peace, the organisers said. Gaddafi's former home has been kept unchanged to mark the overnight attack, which also killed the Libyan leader's adopted daughter Hanna.
The concert organisers, working for an investment firm called Libya Holdings which is owned by one of Gaddafi's sons, Muatassim, said the event was an attempt to promote understanding.
Lionel Ritchie & Jose Carreras
Money Going to Schools
CMA Music Festival
Artists and celebrities at this year's CMA Music Festival will donate their share of proceeds from the June 8-11 event to support music education in Nashville's public schools.
The expected $300,000 will be donated to the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, a private group that seeks to improve education for the city's 73,000 public school students. All the money will be used for music education.
The donation is part of an initiative started by the CMA in 2001 on behalf of the artists, who appear and perform at the festival for free. The organization donates half of the net proceeds from the festival to charities selected by the artists.
CMA Music Festival
Papal Preacher Displeased
Da Vinci Code
A Vatican official on Friday railed against "The Da Vinci Code," branding the book and its upcoming film version as just more examples of Jesus being sold out by a wave of what he called "pseudo-historic" art.
The official, preaching in the presence of Pope Benedict, also condemned the so-called "Gospel of Judas," an alternative view to traditional Christian teaching which has received wide media attention recently.
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, whose official title is "Preacher of the Papal Household," made his comments in a sermon during a "Passion of the Lord" service in St Peter's Basilica commemorating Christ's death.
In his sermon, Cantalamessa made several scathing references to The Da Vinci Code, without specifically mentioning the name of the worldwide bestseller.
Da Vinci Code
Jakarta Police Want Next Issue Delayed
Playboy
Jakarta's police chief said Thursday that the Indonesia publishers of Playboy magazine should put off their next issue after attacks on their offices.
About 300 hardline Islamists vandalized the building housing Playboy's offices Wednesday in a protest against its publication in the world's most-populous Muslim nation.
The postponement would allow police time to investigate whether Playboy's first issue had violated any laws, Jakarta police chief Firman Gani said.
Playboy
DVD Players Recalled
Disney
About 102,000 Disney branded portable DVD players are being recalled because the battery packs sold with the players can overheat and possibly burst when recharging, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday.
The commission said there have been 17 reports of batteries overheating with three reports of minor skin irritations and three reports of minor property damage.
The DVD players were sold at Walt Disney Co. theme parks, through the Disney catalog, and at discount and electronics stores nationwide from April 2005 through March 2006 for between $70 and $130.
Disney
Toxic Algae Poisoning
Pelicans
Pelicans are falling ill and dying from the same toxic algae bloom that is sickening sea lions and making shellfish unsafe for human consumption, wildlife rescuers said.
More than three-dozen endangered California brown pelicans have been taken to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro during the past week. Eighteen were dead on arrival, and many more are dying in the wild, center officials said.
The pelicans and marine mammals are being sickened by a neurotoxin called domoic acid, which is produced by the algae and works its way up the food chain. Poisoned pelicans are flying farther than usual inland, dropping from the sky and suddenly flipping on their backs on the ground.
Pelicans
U.S. Building Massive Embassy
Baghdad
The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future.
The embassy complex - 21 buildings on 104 acres, according to a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report - is taking shape on riverside parkland in the fortified "Green Zone," just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein's, and across the road from the building where the ex-dictator is now on trial.
"Embassy Baghdad" will dwarf new U.S. embassies elsewhere, projects that typically cover 10 acres. The embassy's 104 acres is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the acreage of Washington's National Mall.
Original cost estimates ranged over $1 billion, but Congress appropriated only $592 million in the emergency Iraq budget adopted last year. Most has gone to a Kuwait builder, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, with the rest awarded to six contractors working on the project's "classified" portion - the actual embassy offices.
Baghdad
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