'Best of TBH Politoons'
26 - 28 December
Erin Hart
Join
Erin Hart on
Progressive Talk AM 760
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (26 - 28 December) when she fills in for Jay Marvin from 6am - 10am MST (8am - noon EST / 7am - 11am CST / 5am - 9am PST).
Tune in if you're in the area, or listen online.
We'll talk snow, travel, Iraq, Bush's heinous surging plan, and have a look
back at the best AND worst of last year.
Let's aim for a peaceful 2007 despite the craziness of W. Onward Dems to
change and hope!
Happiest of Holidays to all.
Please keepin touch via erinhartshow.com.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ben Adler, Dana Goldstein, and Graham Webster: Five Minutes With: Ned Lamont (campusprogress.org)
... I think you got to be clear on the war. We can't afford a year from now to have another six-month trial period and make up our mind next June or a year from June. Too many people are dying, and this is a war that has made America much less safe and destabilized the Middle East. So I think it's time to ask people to be clear.
Gay Civil Unions Legalized In New Jersey
State Is Fifth In Nation To Grant Same-Sex Couples Some Version Of Marriage.
Moisés Naím: YouTube journalism (latimes.com)
The website can turn any ordinary person with a camera into a journalist, a more powerful version of the "CNN effect."
Richard Roeper : Don't knock Rocky's comeback (suntimes.com)
... here's the good news for those of us who will always have a soft spot for the Italian Stallion: "Rocky Balboa" is not the embarrassment many expected it to be. It's actually the best "Rocky" movie since the original -- a fitting and triumphant final chapter for one of the most iconic characters in the history of motion pictures.
The Believer: Interview with Jack Black by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (believermag.com)
JB: Obviously everyone should be allowed to get married. I'm hearing a lot about it on the radio. In fact, on my way to the last wedding I went to I was listening on the radio about the controversy over the homosexual... priest, was it? It was more than a priest. It was like a first cardinal or something major. And they were voting on whether it should be allowed. That would improve weddings in our country. If everyone was allowed.
Ebert's Four-Star Movies of 2006
Here we are at the end of 2006, which has been a challenging year. My wife Chaz and I thank you for all of your support, prayers, and kind thoughts. Onward to a Victorious 2007! In lieu of a Best Ten List, Jim Emerson has assembled the movies to which I have given three-and-a-half and four stars. The movies appear in alphabetical order. If some of your favorite movies don't appear here, remember that I did not get a chance to see them all. Here's wishing you Peace and Joy throughout the Holiday Season. -- Roger Ebert
Rosally Saltsman: This Jew's favorite Christmas movie (jewishworldreview.com)
One Christmas movie stands out as a classic of all time and its message is in many ways - Jewish.
James Surowiecki: The Gift Right Out (newyorker.com)
The more we spend on Christmas, the more we waste.
Lakshmi Chaudhry: The Godless Fundamentalist (inthesetimes.com)
In The Root of All Evil, biologist Richard Dawkins reveals his own lust for certainty
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, fairly warm day. Clear cold night.
The kid's winter break is finally here.
Slays Decemberists In Shred Off
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert slayed the competition in a "Shred Off" with the Decemberists - or at least he claimed to have.
Wednesday night's "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central was dedicated entirely to a guitar-solo contest between the mock-news pundit and the indie-rock band, who were represented by lead guitarist Chris Funk.
The special grew out of a tongue-in-cheek feud begun by Colbert when the Decemberists asked their fans to add in the background of a music video they filmed in front of a green screen - which Colbert claimed "rode on the coattails" of his show's earlier "Green Screen Challenge."
The show was opened by Morley Safer of "60 Minutes," and included appearances by Henry Kissinger, New York Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, Peter Frampton, Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, rock critic Anthony DeCurtis, producer Jim Anderson and Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider.
Stephen Colbert
Colombian Rocker Lauded With Park
Juanes
Colombian rocker Juanes, who has led a crusade against land mines, will be honored in his hometown with a giant park designed for the thousands of victims who have lost limbs during the country's violent civil conflict.
Construction on the $4 million "Juanes Peace Park" will begin next week. It will include sporting and recreation facilities designed for wheelchair users and the disabled.
"It's place for people to gather, share experiences and learn to tolerate their differences," said Juanes as he and his family surveyed the location in a poor hillside neighborhood.
Juanes
Spurs Festivus Pole Sales
'Seinfeld'
Kevin Campanella plans to seek "serenity now" by celebrating Festivus, a wacky holiday popularized in a 1997 "Seinfeld" episode. Billed as "Festivus for the rest of us," the holiday celebrated by the Costanza clan on Dec. 23 features an airing of grievances and feats of strength in which a guest must pin the host before the party ends.
In protest of Christmas' commercialism, character Frank Costanza puts up an unadorned aluminum pole instead of a tree. The metal, he says admiringly, has a "very high strength-to-weight ratio."
"I just always loved that episode," said Campanella, 28, a landscaper from Warwick, R.I. "But it's not so much about the show - I think the idea of Festivus is a good idea."
So does The Wagner Companies. The Milwaukee-based maker of hand-railing components is bringing back its line of Festivus poles for the holiday season. The company had plenty of metal rails on hand already and launched the product last year on a whim.
'Seinfeld'
Reaches Deal With Liberty Media
News Corp
Media barons Rupert Murdoch and John Malone ended a two-year battle on Friday with Liberty Media agreeing to swap an $11 billion stake in News Corp. for control of satellite TV provider DirecTV and other assets.
The deal will secure Murdoch's grip on News Corp., the global media empire he founded from a single newspaper in Australia. It also will mark the return of Malone's Liberty Media as a major player in U.S. television programming and distribution.
The swap, which the companies expect to close in the second half of 2007, amounts to an $11 billion stock buyback for News Corp., considered one of the biggest in corporate history, UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff said.
News Corp
Hospital News
Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg severely injured his left hand and could be sidelined for a year, according to a blog posting from Jim Walsh, a Minneapolis writer and friend of the former Replacements lead singer.
"A week or so again he put a screwdriver through his left hand trying to get some wax out of a candle and cut some nerves and ripped some cartilage and hurt himself pretty bad," Walsh reported. "He's in a cast. He's seen a couple of doctors who say he won't be able to play guitar for a year."
The injury comes on the heels of a very productive 2006 for Westerberg. Aside from scoring and providing the soundtrack to the animated film "Open Season," he also reunited with his Replacements colleagues Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars for the first time in 15 years to record two new songs for the Rhino retrospective "Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? The Best of the Replacements."
Paul Westerberg
CD Case Pulled By Target
Che Guevara
Target Corp said on Friday it had pulled a CD carrying case bearing Ernesto "Che" Guevara's image after an outcry by critics who label the Marxist revolutionary a murderer and totalitarian symbol.
Target had touted a music disc carrying case for Che admirers emblazoned with the Argentine-born guerrilla's iconic 1960 portrait by Alberto Diaz, or "Korda." A set of small earphones was superimposed on the image, suggesting he was tuned in to an iPod or other music player.
Some right-wingnut business columnists had decried the product, sold under Target's brand, saying the trendy discount chain was giving in to a misguided fashion craze while ignoring Guevara's role in bringing Fidel Castro's Communist rule to Cuba.
Che Guevara
Cited For DUI
Gus Van Sant
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant, whose credits include "Finding Forrester" and "Drugstore Cowboy," has been arrested here on a drunken driving charge, police said.
Sgt. Brian Schmautz, Portland Police Bureau spokesman, said Van Sant, 54, was arrested at 1:48 a.m. Thursday. A breath test showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.19 percent, Schmautz said. That's more than twice the state limit, 0.08 percent.
An officer saw that the headlights on Van Sant's vehicle weren't on, Schmautz said. Van Sant, who lives in Portland, had bloodshot eyes and slurred speech, smelled of alcohol and failed the sobriety tests, Schmautz said.
Gus Van Sant
Japanese Scientists Capture
Giant Squid
Its mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists on Friday.
Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 3.5 metres (11 ft 6 in) long and weighing 50 kg (110 lb) -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.
The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 650 metres (2,150 ft) under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.
Giant Squid
Numbers Tumble
Rockhopper Penguins
Rockhopper penguins, a type featured in the movie "Happy Feet," have suffered a mysterious 30 percent decline in numbers over five years in their South Atlantic stronghold, conservationists said on Friday.
The number of pairs of the small yellow-crested penguins in Britain's Falkland Islands fell to 210,418 pairs in 2005-06 from 298,496 in 2000, perhaps because of climate change, a survey by Falklands Conservation said.
Figures from 1932 suggested that there were 1.5 million pairs at the time, giving an 85 percent fall in the species' main habitat, it said. Smaller colonies live in Chile, Argentina and on southern islands.
Rockhopper Penguins
Albuquerque's Antarctic Art
'Stellar Axis'
Artists see the world differently. Maybe that's why sculptor Lita Albuquerque decided to craft an environmental work near this icy outpost meant to be in full bloom for just one day.
Her "Stellar Axis," on a site about 600 feet in diameter, consists of 99 blue fiberglass spheres of varying sizes in a pattern mirroring the paths of stars at the austral summer solstice.
All the spheres will be in place only on December 22 and must be removed after that.
More information about the project is available online at www.stellaraxis.com/.
'Stellar Axis'
In Memory
Mike Evans
Actor Mike Evans, best known as Lionel Jefferson in the TV sitcoms "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons," has died. He was 57.
Evans, along with Eric Monte, also created and wrote for "Good Times," one of the first TV sitcoms that featured a primarily black cast.
Michael Jonas Evans was born Nov. 3, 1949, in Salisbury, N.C. His father, Theodore Evans Sr., was a dentist while his mother, Annie Sue Evans, was a school teacher.
Evans kept the role of Lionel when "The Jeffersons" launched in 1975. The hit show was a spinoff featuring bigoted Archie Bunker's black neighbors in Queens who "move on up to the East Side" of Manhattan.
Evans was replaced by Damon Evans (no relation) for four years, then he returned to the series from 1979 to 1981.
He also acted in the 1976 TV miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man" and made guest appearances on the TV series "Love, American Style" and "The Streets of San Francisco." His last role was in a 2000 episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger."
Mike Evans
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