Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Calculate Your Obama Tax Cut (alchemytoday.com)
Obama would tax Bruce a lot less than McCain would.
Paul Krugman: Blizzard of Lies (nytimes.com)
Anyone with an Internet connection can disprove many assertions of the McCain campaign.
Andrew Tobias: APOLOGY (andrewtobias.com)
They've cut the value of the dollar nearly in half. They've borrowed $4 trillion from our kids to give tax cuts to billionaires. They've sent thousands of our kids to die invading the wrong country. They've diminished our standing in the world. They've done nothing on health care. They've held back stem cell research. They've fought against worker protections and against benefits for returning veterans. They've installed corporate lobbyists as regulators. (Their Interior Department, we learned [in recent] news, was literally in bed with the oil industry.)
Ray Fisman: Spend It While You Can (slate.com)
Turns out money can buy you happiness. But it buys more happiness when you're young.
Tanya Gold: What's with this Jane Austen fixation? Her women were spirited, yes, but their lives were miserable (guardian.co.uk)
Girls, it's time we grew up. Darcy ain't coming, and if he did, you'd want to slap him in the face and stamp on his head till he bleeds
'If that goes off again I'll kill you' (guardian.co.uk)
Stage rage: Top performers relive the nights they lost their tempers.
Scott Von Doviak: Indie film 'Surfer, Dude' is close to Matthew McConaughey's heart (McClatchy Newspapers)
Let the record show that Matthew McConaughey was wearing a shirt.
Roger Moore: Neal LaBute takes on the issue of race in 'Lakeview Terrace' (The Orlando Sentinel)
Some people might say filmmaker Neal LaBute, of "In the Company of Men," "Nurse Betty" and "The Wicker Man," has a problem with women, or black people, judging by his work. But he insists he's not really the misogynist or misanthrope that many assume.
Glenn Jeffers: What you need to know about 'Watchmen' (Chicago Tribune)
Who watches the Watchmen? Soon, we will. At least, that's what Warner Bros. and DC Comics are counting on when their next comic book adaptation, "Watchmen," hits theaters in March.
Steve Paul: Laurie Anderson's new tour presents a spare and brooding look at our changed lives (McClatchy Newspapers)
Seven years ago this month Laurie Anderson stepped onto the stage at New York's Town Hall and sang to a city still much in shock.
Reader Comment
WPSU
Marty
I clicked on your link WPSU and found that I could watch the video! Saw the interview of your Dear old Dad and his bit about fishing in the area! How very, very neat! Nice looking man.
Not sure which of the phone-men(women) was the Babe, but took an educated guess.
In watching the video, I know why I have elected to stay in a small town in PA. Good people, good fishing, good schools, etc. Hated PA when I first come here 50 years ago, but have grown to love it!
MAM
Thanks, Marianne!
The Weekly Poll
The current question:
Who should have McCain have picked for VP instead of the 'Hockey Mom'?
The Devil's Advocate Edition...
Ok, Pollfans, it's time to think contrary wise... It's time to pretend yer back in high school debate class. Remember when ya had to argue a position ya didn't agree with?
Huh? do ya? Remember how that irritated the bejabbers out of ya? Well, guess what?
It's that time again... Because the question is...
Ya got the cojones to answer this, eh? Do ya? Bring it on, I'm sayin'!
Send your response to BadtotheBoneBob ( BCEpoll 'at' aol.com )
Results Tuesday.
Reader Recommendation
Dirty Tricks
Dirty Tricks Starting Already in Ohio
The Cincinnati Enquirer has a story about dirty tricks in Ohio intended to influence the election there.
The McCain campaign printed a form on which a voter can request an absentee ballot and sent out about 1 million of them. The form included an unnecessary box asking if the voter was eligible to vote. If the voter didn't notice the box and didn't check it, he or she is in fact admitting that he or she is not eligible and the application has to be rejected by law. Secretary of state Jennifer Brunner is hopping mad about this stunt but she is required by law to reject invalid applications.
Willow
Thanks, Willow!
Reader Recommendation
More Dirty Tricks
Apparently in States such as Michigan, just to name one presently; people whose houses are in foreclosure WILL not have the right to vote!
A spoke person for the McCain campaign said they have a list of all the foreclosed homes which by the way happen to belong to a majority of African Americans in that area....another low blow. Foreclosure doesn't mean that you are necessarily out of the house, these people could be in negotiations to save their homes and STILL live there!
Desperation, how much lower will it get ?
Barbara
Thanks, Barb!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast and cool.
'Saturday Night Live' Tonight
Barack Obama
Oh how things have changed for Barack Obama since he last appeared on "Saturday Night Live."
The Democratic presidential nominee's campaign revealed Thursday that he would be making his second appearance on the program, for the season premiere this weekend. Also scheduled to appear is Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Michael Phelps.
Obama last appeared on the program in November 2007, making a cameo during an opening skit about a Halloween party at Hillary Rodham Clinton's house, where she was portrayed as the presumptive president.
Obama's campaign said details of his new sketch were still being worked out.
Barack Obama
Honor Unseen Talent
Creative Arts Emmys
Most of the people up for awards at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, to be held on Saturday at L.A.'s Nokia Theatre, have never been interviewed by a tabloid television show or harassed by the paparazzi.
The event, which comes just eight days before the main Emmy Awards telecast, primarily recognizes achievement in a slew of categories such as art direction, casting, editing, makeup and sound. Highlights will air on E! on September 20.
But the event still merits attention: For one thing, it has nearly twice as many categories as its primetime counterpart and thus contributes mightily to the overall award tallies trumpeted in the headlines.
At least one category's outcome can be predicted simply by playing the odds: NBC's "30 Rock" has seven of the 11 nominations in the categories honoring guest appearances -- which surely makes it a shoo-in to win outstanding casting in a comedy series. Place your bets now.
Creative Arts Emmys
Charity Concert
Queen
Queen sang to tens of thousands of Ukrainians in a charity concert meant to raise money and AIDS awareness in this ex-Soviet republic.
Cheering fans packed the central square Friday in Ukraine's second-largest city, to listen to the legendary British rock band, whose lead vocalist Freddie Mercury died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991.
Ukraine couldn't not need that message more. Government officials say nearly 77,000 people have been registered as HIV-positive since the first reported case in 1987. But some experts believe the epidemic here is far greater, with as many as a half-million people - 1 percent of Ukraine's population - infected.
Organizers chose Kharkiv, an industrial city in the east of the country, for its huge student population. The youth are a key risk group for contracting the virus. Volunteers distributed condoms and information leaflets in the city in the run-up to the concert.
Queen
Hamburg Square Dedicated
The Beatles
Hamburg has dedicated a city square to The Beatles to commemorate the time the band spent there in the early 1960s.
The commemorative square, which Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust officially opened, is marked by a dark granite circle 29 metres in diameter which looks like a record.
It features steel sculptures of each of the Fab Four.
To one side stands a sculpture of original Beatles' bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, who died of a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg in 1962.
The Beatles
Joins TV's Richest List
Hugh Laurie
He is the star of the biggest drama on television. Now Hugh Laurie is poised to become one of the highest-paid actors on TV with a new deal to continue on Fox's "House."
The British actor's salary is expected to rise to about $400,000 an episode, or more than $9 million a year, under a pact with producer Universal Media Studios.
Laurie, 49, who had humble beginnings on "House" with a starting salary in the mid-five figures in 2004, got his first major salary bump in summer 2006 when his per-episode fee was upped to $250,000-$300,000 an episode.
Hugh Laurie
Concert Pays Tribute
Steinbeck & Guthrie
The memories of two American legends -- novelist John Steinbeck and folk songwriter/musician Woody Guthrie -- will be honored September 20 during This Land Is Your Land, a concert at the Sleep Train Pavilion at Concord in Concord, California.
Performers include Sheryl Crow, the Black Keys, Cat Power, Henry Rollins, the Mike Ness Band, Son Volt and Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion.
The all-day event will feature displays of historical artifacts concerning Steinbeck and Guthrie, including signed novels, private letters, copies of original lyrics sheets and rare photos. Archival video footage will be shown during concert set changes.
Tickets cost $19 to $80.50; a donation of $5 from each sold ticket will be given to the Steinbeck and Guthrie family foundations. Fans are also encouraged to bring nonperishable food items to benefit the Food Bank of Contra Costa.
Steinbeck & Guthrie
Downplaying Palin
Book Banning
Shortly after taking office in 1996 as mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 7,000 people, Palin asked the city's head librarian about banning books. Later, the librarian was notified by Palin that she was being fired, although Palin backed off under pressure.
Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said Thursday that Palin asked the head librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, on three occasions how she would react to attempts at banning books. He said the questions, in the fall of 1996, were hypothetical and entirely appropriate. He said a patron had asked the library to remove a title the year before and the mayor wanted to understand how such disputes were handled.
Records on the city's Web site, however, do not show any books were challenged in Wasilla in the 10 years before Palin took office.
Palin notified Emmons she would be fired in January 1997 because the mayor didn't feel she had the librarian's "full support." Emmons was reinstated the next day after public outcry, according to newspaper reports at the time.
Book Banning
Our Enlightened Allies
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks that broadcast immoral content.
The 79-year-old Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan said Thursday that satellite channels cause the "deviance of thousands of people."
Many of the most popular Arab satellite networks - which include channels showing music videos often denounced as obscene by Muslim conservatives - are owned by Saudi princes and well-connected Saudi businessmen. Al-Lihedan did not specify any particular channels.
Al-Lihedan is chief of the kingdom's highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council. Saudi Arabia's judiciary is made up of Islamic clerics whose decrees, or fatwas, on everyday issues are widely respected. Their fatwas do not have the weight of law. In the courts, cleric-judges rule according to Islamic law, but interpretations can vary.
Saudi Arabia
Wins Interest In Defamation Case
Judy Davis
Judy Davis won more than $8,000 in interest Friday for damages she was awarded from a newspaper that ridiculed her as heartless for opposing a plan to erect floodlights in a park near her Sydney harbor-side home.
The Australian actress was awarded $113,000 in damages in July after New South Wales state Supreme Court Judge Peter McClellan said articles in The Daily Telegraph of Sydney had impugned her reputation and personal standing in the community by implying she was selfish and unreasonable.
On Friday, McClellan added an extra $8,677 to the award for interest.
Judy Davis
Granted Australian Visa
Snoop Dogg
Rapper Snoop Dogg has been granted a visa to enter Australia for a concert tour, the immigration department announced Friday after finishing a full character assessment of the entertainer.
The department had earlier expressed concern about Snoop Dogg's criminal record but took into account the fact that he had traveled to Australia three times without incident.
It said the rapper, whose birth name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., has committed to doing charity work with at-risk youth during his visit to Australia.
Snoop Dogg
Duped By Look-Alike Spears
Paparazzi
Cameras flashing and films rolling, a crowd of paparazzi surrounded a police escort, trying to get the perfect shot of Britney Spears' little sister as she left the Los Angeles International Airport.
Just one snag: The woman wasn't Jamie Lynn Spears.
In what appears to be a case of the old switcharoo, airport police on Wednesday duped paparazzi at the crowded terminal by leading an unidentified woman - wearing sunglasses and looking away from cameras - down an escalator and through a hallway while the real Jamie Lynn and her baby girl safely left the airport from another area.
Police denied any trickery and said they were not escorting the woman.
Paparazzi
Had To Change Name
Francois Mario Labbe
The head of one of the largest classical music labels in Canada has had to change his name after he couldn't get it off a U.S. customs and immigration terrorism watch list.
Mario Labbe - who now goes by Francois Mario Labbe - had major problems getting into the United States since his identity was stolen after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Six months after, at the beginning of 2002, I tried to fly to New York and I started having problems," said Labbe, the Montreal-based president of Analekta, which records such artists as violinist Angele Dubeau and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
"Since then, interrogations every time I fly to the States," he added, noting he usually missed his flights because of the delays. "As soon as they scanned my passport the screen would become red."
Francois Mario Labbe
Billboard Top 10 Original
TV Theme Songs
Billboard Top 10 Original TV Theme Songs:
1. The Heights, "How Do You Talk to An Angel," 1992 (from "The Heights")
2. MFSB, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)," 1974 (from "Soul Train")
3. Jan Hammer, "Miami Vice Theme," 1985 (from "Miami Vice")
4. John Sebastian, "Welcome Back," 1976 (from "Welcome Back, Kotter")
5. Joey Scarbury, "Theme From 'Greatest American Hero'," 1981 (from "Greatest American Hero")
6. Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man," 1966 (from "Secret Agent")
7. David Naughton, "Makin' It," 1979 (from "Makin' It")
8. Inner Circle, "Bad Boys," 1993 (from "Cops")
9. Mike Post, "The Theme From 'Hill Street Blues'," 1981 (from "Hill Street Blues")
10. Mike Post, "The Rockford Files," 1975 (from "The Rockford Files")
TV Theme Songs
In Memory
Tina Allen
A sculptor who depicted such figures as reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Fredrick Douglass in her works has died.
Tina Allen was 58. Her ex-husband, Roger Allen, says she died Tuesday at a Los Angeles hospital from complications of a heart attack.
Among her bronze sculptures are George Washington Carver in the St. Louis Botanical Garden; Douglas in the African American Museum in Birmingham, Ala.; Sojourner Truth in Battle Creek, Mich.; and King in Las Vegas.
Allen may be best known for her four-metre statue of "Roots" author Alex Haley located in Haley's hometown of Knoxville, Tenn.
Tina Allen
In Memory
George Putnam
Pugnacious newscaster and commentator George Putnam, whose conservative opinions both thrilled and outraged Los Angeles area radio and television audiences for decades, has died at age 94.
Putnam was born July 14, 1914, in Breckenridge, Minn.
His radio career began in 1934 at WDGY in Minneapolis.
He achieved his greatest success in Los Angeles, where he had been working since 1951.
In the 1950s, Putnam left radio for television and hosted newscasts at KTTV-Channel 11, KTLA-Channel 5, KCOP-Channel 13 and KHJ-Channel 9 (now KCAL).
According to CRN, actor Ted Knight patterned his character (Ted Baxter) on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" after Putnam.
For many years, Putnam participated in The Rose Parade in Pasadena, and rode in the procession from 1951 until 2000, when his horse died.
Although Putnam advocated many conservative viewpoints, he claimed to be a "lifelong Democrat."
George Putnam
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