'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Rove's Third Term (nytimes.com)
The Wesley Clark affair revealed something important about John McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.
Annalee Newitz: My Last Column (alternet.org)
After 9 long years, it's time to move on. One final thought: don't ever stop ruthlessly criticizing everything that exists.
Penn Jillette: Climate change? Once more, 'I don't know' (latimes.com)
Being honest about not knowing enough of the science to make a judgment isn't the same as an outright denial.
Andrew Tobias: Clay (andrewtobias.com)
I sent my piece to 12 magazines simultaneously (I was 23; I didn't know you weren't supposed to do that) and got rejected by them all.
Heather Cabot: Sister Act (huffingtonpost.com)
It seems like yesterday we were bickering about which one of us deserved the privilege of sitting in the front seat of the station wagon. Who "borrowed" whose brand new sweater? (lip gloss? curling iron? shampoo?) Who had a crush on which boy first? Sibling rivalry can get nasty. But among sisters, it can be downright vicious.
GRETCHEN RUBIN: 5 Tips For Giving Good Praise (huffingtonpost.com)
I'm a praise junkie. I really, really need those gold stars. I know I've got to get over it. One of my most important happiness-project resolutions is "Don't expect praise or appreciation." I think about that resolution every day. But boy, it's hard to keep.
Erin Podolsky: Phish bassist Mike Gordon tries new fest for size (Detroit Free Press)
Mike Gordon is certainly no stranger to festivals - the former Phish bassist practically pioneered the modern concept with Phish festivals in the '90s - but it's been a while since he's ventured out on his own. Now with "The Green Sparrow," his first solo album in five years, set for an August release, he has a brand new band and a brand new outlook on performing live.
Will Harris: A Chat with Dee Snyder, Twisted Sister Lead Singer (bullz-eye.com)
"I keep kidding myself and thinking that people get what I'm about, and then I'll still get somebody who'll go, 'We're doing a show about a drinkin', partyin', hard-lovin' rocker who trashes dressing rooms and spreads his semen all over the country!' And, um, I never did that."
FRAZIER MOORE: "'Family Guy': So Wrong, But So Very, Very Right" (huffingtonpost.com)
All 13-year-old boys are on board with "Family Guy." They love this show and no wonder. It's silly, subversive and caters to a 13-year-old boy's endless craving for humor about bodily emissions.
Steven Rea: Art-house filmmaker is just a Guy from Winnipeg (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
A self-confessed "part-time surrealist," Guy Maddin has made weird little art-house gems that include "Careful" (1992), about townsfolk creeping around on tiptoe, speaking in hushed tones for fear of an impending avalanche, and "The Saddest Music in the World" (2003), a Depression-era tale of a brewery heiress (Isabella Rossellini) and her melancholy song contest.
Steven Rea: Unheroic superhero appealed to director 'Hancock' director Peter Berg (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"I loved the idea of an alcoholic, nihilistic, subversive superhero, fighting crime drunk," says Peter Berg about "Hancock" - a screenplay that's been kicking around Hollywood for a dozen years or so, and that had, at various points, Michael Mann and Tony Scott among the folks attached to direct.
A legend lightens up (film.guardian.co.uk)
After playing concentration camp survivor and working-class whistleblower, Meryl Streep sings and dances in Mamma Mia! Interview by Stuart Jeffries.
Steve from 'Dick Eats Bush
New Vid, Happy 4th
New video in reference to a song by Puddle of Mudd.
Reader Comment
Re: Billy Bob Neck
Reader Suggestion
Vegan Diet?
Marty -
Check out this one -
Click here: Improper vegan diet results in father's child abuse conviction
Michelle in AZ
Thanks, Michelle!
That story is wrong on so many levels.
Hardly seems fair to blame the vegan diet when the parents are religiously insane.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunnier, hotter and way too much humidity. Ack.
The Bush Residency
10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments
In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration's 10 greatest moments -- disastrous failures, all -- is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush's memory before we go to bed every night.
Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.
But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby's sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face
neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist "intelligent design"; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed ; waterboarding ban vetoed; "Last throes"; "Old Europe"; "It's hard work"; "Bring it on"; "Yo, Blair!"; "I'm the decider"; "I'm the commander guy"; "I'm a war president"; "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"; "So?"; "Let the Eagle Soar"; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let's waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let's hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.
And with that, let's go onto our 10 worst moments.
The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency
Ante Up for Africa
Celebrity Poker
Celebrities turned out Wednesday to donate to Darfur charities - and to show their fellow stars just who the real card sharks were.
"I'm looking forward to whipping a lot of celebrity rear end," talk show host Montel Williams said before beginning play in a charity Texas Hold 'em tournament at the World Series of Poker. "I tweaked my game, and my game is really solid."
Williams and 87 others, including such Hollywood heavy hitters as Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Alexander, George Lopez, Adam Sandler and Ray Romano, played in the no-limit tournament to raise money and have a good time.
Players donated prize money from the second annual "Ante Up for Africa" event to charities working in the Darfur region of Sudan. Cheadle and poker pro Annie Duke began the event last year to raise money and awareness for the region, where more than 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since ethnic warfare began in 2003, according to the U.S. presidential envoy to Sudan.
Celebrity Poker
Beautify Los Angeles
Guerrilla Gardeners
More than a dozen people, some wearing orange protective gear, pulled rakes and shovels from a dingy shopping cart and started working on a parched patch of land along a busy off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway.
It was a Saturday night and drivers whooshed past on their way to the Sunset Strip club scene.
But the crew was undeterred, and by the wee hours, they had transformed the blight into bloom with green bushes and an array of colorful flowers.
City workers on overtime? Nope, no budget for that. These were "guerrilla gardeners," a global movement of the grass-roots variety where people seek to beautify empty or overgrown public space, usually under the cover of darkness and without the permission of municipal officials.
Guerrilla Gardeners
Auction House To Sell Collection
Rosa Parks
Arlan Ettinger will never forget the response he got when he took one of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks' hats to a meeting at the Apollo Theater in New York.
"It was a fairly plain-looking black hat. And then I said it was Rosa Parks'. And their mouths just opened up without saying a word and tears" flowed, Ettinger said. "It was a very, very powerful moment. You could see the impact this woman has had on everyone."
A Wayne County probate court judge in Detroit has asked Ettinger's auction house, Guernsey's, to find a buyer - preferably a museum, university or other institution - for thousands of Parks' personal items.
Among them are her presidential and congressional medals, a post card from Martin Luther King Jr. and the hat Parks is believed to have been wearing on Dec. 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, cementing her spot in civil rights history.
Rosa Parks
Wins Hot Dog Contest
Joey Chestnut
Joey Chestnut reclaimed the top spot at the annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island on Friday after first tying with archrival Takeru Kobayashi in a 10-minute chow-down and then beating him in a five-dog eat-off.
The men tied at 59 frankfurters in 10 minutes, before being made to gobble another five dogs in a last-minute tiebreaker. They consumed 64 hot dogs total and were looking quite peaked after the competition.
Chestnut said he was mentally prepared to eat 70, but his body was pushing back during the competition; it didn't want to swallow fast enough.
Joey Chestnut
Court Orders Viacom Gets Video Logs
YouTube
Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.
The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user's real name or e-mail address.
The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer's computer.
YouTube
Tax Troubles
Paul Hogan
"Crocodile Dundee" star Paul Hogan challenged Australian tax authorities Friday to track him down in the United States after a newspaper report that he was under investigation for tax evasion.
The Australian national newspaper reported that Australian tax authorities had asked for help from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in obtaining Hogan's banking records. Four companies related to Hogan have been ordered to hand over documents, it said, citing court documents.
"Come and get me," Hogan said with a grin, He spoke to Australia's Ten Network television outside his Santa Barbara, Calif. mansion, delivering an obscenity-laced statement addressed to the Australian Taxation Office
Hogan is fighting the IRS involvement, arguing that it is being used to obtain documents that Australian officials could not lawfully obtain, his Australian lawyer David Rydon told the newspaper.
Paul Hogan
Prado Says Not A Goya
'Colossus'
For years Spain's famed Prado museum had its suspicions about one of its most prized Goyas. Now the museum says it is certain the painting is not by the 18th-century master.
The Prado's announcement last week about the Colossus, a large oil painting depicting the torso of a giant bursting through the clouds as he marches above a terrified village, is causing a furor among experts, some of whom still believe the painting is genuine.
Doubts about its authenticity began to surface in the early 1990s, and grew in April when the museum unexpectedly excluded the painting from its blockbuster show "Goya in Times of War."
Then, last week, Manuela Mena, a Goya expert and the Prado's chief 18th century art conservationist, told Spain's El Pais newspaper that the painting is filled with stylistic points that don't square up to Goya's talent.
'Colossus'
Site In "State Of Emergency"
Pompeii
The Italian government declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archaeological site on Friday to try to rescue one of the world's most important cultural treasures from decades of neglect.
A cabinet statement said it would appoint a special commissioner for Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in AD 79 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Archaeologists and art historians have long complained about the poor upkeep of Pompeii, dogged by lack of investment, mismanagement, litter and looting. Bogus tour guides, illegal parking attendants and stray dogs also plague visitors.
Pompeii
Only 42 Percent Potato
Pringles
Britain's High Court has ruled that Pringles are not a potato snack, and thus are not subject to value-added tax.
Friday's ruling by Justice Nicholas Warren is expected to save millions for the manufacturer, Procter & Gamble Co.
Warren overruled a VAT Tribunal decision that Pringles should be subject to the 17.5-percent tax because it met the definition of "potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch."
The judge found that Pringles were only 42 percent potato, and thus exempt.
Pringles
Turns 250 - Maybe
`Yankee Doodle'
The original lyrics to one of America's best-known songs, one associated with the American Revolution, were actually written a couple decades earlier during the French and Indian War, although an exact date has eluded historians. Some peg the year as 1755, when the war's first major battles were fought, or 1756.
The other year often cited is 1758. Now, a state archaeologist believes he has narrowed down the date to sometime in June of that year, when a large British-led army was mustering at Albany for an expedition against the French.
Dr. Richard Shuckburgh, a British army physician, is credited with penning the "Yankee Doodle" lyrics to mock the ragtag New England militia serving alongside the redcoats. As the story goes, Shuckburgh wrote "Yankee Doodle" while at Fort Crailo, across the Hudson River from Albany, after witnessing the sloppy drill and appearance of Connecticut troops.
Shuckburgh's own correspondence and other contemporary documents support the June 1758 date, according to Paul Huey of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
`Yankee Doodle'
Maintains Ceramic Tradition
Francisco & Casilda Figueiredo
Husband and wife Francisco and Casilda Figueiredo are among the last exponents of a traditional Portuguese handicraft -- making ornamental ceramic penises.
For more than three decades, the couple have carefully shaped thousands of ceramic male organs, moulding them into upright shapes and painting them in life-like colours for export to Germany, France and North America.
"The days of the ceramics trade here are numbered, I see no possibility of survival," Francisco said as he prepared moulds of the couple's top-of-the-range two-foot phallic-shaped bottles in his workshop. "It will never be like it was in the past."
The tradition is said to have started in Caldas da Rainha, when King Dom Luis, who ruled from 1861 to 1889, suggested that local potters make something more interesting.
Francisco & Casilda Figueiredo
In Memory
Jesse Helms
Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.
Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms Quotes
In Memory
Michael Turner
Michael Turner, a comic book artist who drew covers for major titles such as "Superman/Batman," "The Flash" and "Civil War,'" has died. He was 37.
Turner died June 27 at a Santa Monica hospital of complications related to cancer, said Vince Hernandez, editor in chief of Aspen MLT, the Santa Monica publishing company Turner founded in 2003. Turner had battled bone cancer for eight years.
Through his company, Turner created online comic adaptations for the NBC series "Heroes" and published his own titles, including the best-selling "Fathom," a deep-sea story about a female superhero.
He also drew covers for large projects such as DC Comics' "Justice League" and Marvel's "Civil War" and was a regular cover artist for "Superman/Batman" and "The Flash."
Turner was also known for drawing female comic book characters that evoked both innocence and sex appeal and exuded energy.
In 1994, the budding artist was hired by Century City-based Top Cow Productions after an editor saw his work at the Comic-Con convention in San Diego.
At Top Cow, Turner co-created "Witchblade," a comic about a voluptuous female detective who fights evil after discovering a mystical glove. The comic went on to make Top Cow's name and set the standard for Turner's future work.
Michael Turner
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