'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Nat Hentoff: Architect of Torture (villagevoice.com)
In the December debate with Cassel, Yoo was asked: "If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" Yoo: "No treaty."
An Open Letter to CNN from Michael Moore (michaelmoore.com)
Dear CNN, Well, the week is over -- and still no apology, no retraction, no correction of your glaring mistakes.
Paul Krassner: Assholes of the Week (huffingtonpost.com/)
1. ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, who is perhaps the worst offender when it comes to condescending verbal postscripts to news stories, this time following a report on the threat of global warming to penguins with this comment: "They just make you smile."
Kera Bolonik: Rosie O'Donnell: A Progressive, But Flawed Hero (The Nation; Posted on AlterNet.org)
Rosie is fearless about her progressive politics and puts her money where her big mouth is. But not everyone is glad to have her as their spokesperson.
Henry Rollins: Teeing Off: No More Heroes (huffingtonpost.com)
How many heroes have lasted very long before they were caught red-handed, dismantled and cast down? Not many, and their shelf life seems to be getting shorter and shorter.
David Mixner: "In Memoriam: Lady Bird Johnson" (huffingtonpost.com)
She was in fact a vehement environmentalist. She was green when green wasn't in. From sea to shining sea, Lady Bird Johnson has left her legacy in a more beautiful America. From millions of trees and wildflowers planted, to interstates free from billboards and replaced with green.
Heather McElhatton: Kick Me (huffingtonpost.com)
Paul Feig, creator of the brilliant late-'90s TV cult classic Freaks and Geeks has taken all the miserable, humiliating scenarios of his youth and made one big messy cafeteria sloppy Joe out of them, using cruel nicknames, bungled make-out sessions, embarrassing elf costumes, dangerous dodge balls, sadistic sex-ed classes, and a less-than-perfect prom as ingredients.
The Pirates' Code (newyorker.com)
[P]irate ships developed models that in many ways anticipated those of later Western democracies. First, pirates adopted a system of divided and limited power. Captains had total authority during battle, when debate and disagreement were likely to be both inefficient and dangerous. Outside of battle, the quartermaster, not the captain, was in charge-responsible for food rations, discipline, and the allocation of plunder. On most ships, the distribution of booty was set down in writing, and it was relatively equal.
Ella Taylor: Steve Buscemi on 'Second Glances' (laweekly.com)
Looking back at the landmark gay film that launched Buscemi's career.
Rich Knight: An Interview with the Wizard of Wikipedia (SMITH Magazine; Posted on AlterNet.org)
Meet Richard Farmbrough, a 45-year-old technology project manager living in England -- and the man with the most Wiki entries since its launch in 2001.
Robert McMillan: Thieves Test Stolen Cards on Charities (IDG News Service)
Credit card thieves are becoming big-time charity donors, but it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. According to Symantec Corp. the criminals are starting to use charitable donations as a way to check whether their stolen credit card numbers are working.
Cartoon: Nicole Hollander, "Sylvia" (womensenews.org)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny, still hot.
Bill Moyers Journal broached the subject of impeachment, as
5-Deferment Dick 'Go Fuck Yourself' Cheney would phrase it, Big Time.
Here's the transcript
(print a copy),
or watch the show.
A fabulous example of what PBS once was, and is supposed to be.
E! Reality Show
Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg's home and work lives will be on display in a new reality series, E! Entertainment Television said Friday.
The series, scheduled to debut in late 2007 and described by the cable channel as "hilarious and heartwarming," will show the hip-hop heavyweight trying to balance his different worlds.
The rapper, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., has three children, is active in community causes and is involved in a youth football league he founded, E! said.
Snoop Dogg
Not Gud Spelers
NASA
NASA moved space shuttle Endeavour a step closer to liftoff without an essential part: the "u."
The spacecraft arrived at the its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, and officials welcomed it with a banner reading "Go Endeavor."
The shuttle's name, however, is spelled the British way, with a "u." It's named after the first ship commanded by 18th century British explorer James Cook.
NASA
French Legion of Honour
Tony Parker
French basketball star Tony Parker, whose marriage to "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria made headlines, was inducted into the Legion of Honour on Saturday to mark France's national holiday.
Parker, 25, is French but has made his name as a guard for NBA champions San Antonio Spurs. This year he became the first European to be the most valuable player in the NBA finals.
He exchanged vows with Longoria on July 7 in a Paris church that was followed by lavish celebrations at the Vaux-le-Vicomte chateau near Paris.
Tony Parker
Racism Really Sells
Tintin
Sales of a Tintin comic book have rocketed since the Commission for Racial Equality claimed it was racist, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Sales of "Tintin in the Congo" have shot up by 3,800 percent after the CRE watchdog claimed it contained potentially highly offensive material, said The Daily Telegraph.
The comic has reached number eight on Internet retailer Amazon's most popular books list, the broadsheet reported.
Tintin
Festival In Nida
Thomas Mann
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier opened the Thomas Mann Festival here Saturday calling the Nobel laureate's defiance of Nazism a shining example for today's united Europe.
Steinmeier said Mann's outspoken condemnation of the Nazis, which led to his exile in America, helped sow the seeds of the European Union by calling for a continent driven by shared principles of diversity, tolerance and liberalism.
The Thomas Mann Festival has been held each year since 1995 in Nida on the Curonian Spit, a Baltic peninsula divided between Lithuania and Russia where the novelist spent the summers of 1930 to 1932.
The next year he was forced to flee Germany, after he published an angry account of a Nazi pogrom in Koenigsberg, now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Thomas Mann
No Show
Mandy Patinkin
CBS' "Criminal Minds" could return for a third season without Mandy Patinkin.
This week the star didn't show up for the drama's table read (an initial run-through of the script), which first was reported by E!.
Sources said that the episode had been written featuring few scenes with Patinkin, an indication that the show is preparing for a possible future without him. Rumblings about friction between Patinkin and "Minds" producers first surfaced last summer.
Mandy Patinkin
Lasted Longer Than Brownie
Katrina Ice
After nearly two years, thousands of truck miles and $12.5 million in storage costs, a cold relic of the flawed Hurricane Katrina relief effort is going down the drain.
The federal government is getting rid of thousands of pounds of ice it had sent south to help Katrina victims, then north when it determined much of the ice wasn't needed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had been hanging on to the ice in case it was needed for another disaster, but decided to get rid of it because it couldn't determine whether it was still safe for human consumption.
The Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged after the August 2005 hurricane that it had ordered too much ice because of faulty estimates by local officials. Truckers received up to $900 a day to move the ice to storage sites around the country.
Katrina Ice
Loses Lawsuit Against Fox
Li Jianmin
A court ruled Friday that a Chinese science fiction writer did not have enough evidence to prove that 20th Century Fox stole his ideas when making the 2004 movie "The Day After Tomorrow."
Li Jianmin, 43, had said there were at least 308 scenes in the film that were substantially similar to the concept and plots of two plays he completed in 2001 and 2002, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Li could not prove that his plays were completed in 2001 and 2002, nor could he establish that 20th Century Fox had access to his plays, Xinhua reported, citing the decision by the Intermediate People's Court of Dongying, in eastern China's Shandong province.
Li Jianmin
VH1 Series
Perez Hilton
It looks like VH1 is getting into business with celebrity blogger Perez Hilton.
The network, whose programming tends to center on pop culture and music, is believed to be ordering six hourlong episodes of a series tentatively titled "What Perez Says," but it's understood that the show's details are still being worked out.
Hilton (aka Mario Lavandeira) let the news slip Friday morning during an appearance on ABC's "The View."
Perez Hilton
Common Sense Prevails
Canada
Air travelers in Canada who make comments about bombs and guns will from now on only be arrested if it is clear they are making a serious threat, officials said on Wednesday.
The Canadian Air Transport Safety Authority, trying to clamp down on screeners who alert police every time they hear alarming words, has issued a bulletin urging staff to show more discretion.
A person who announces "You better look through my suitcase carefully, because there's a bomb in there," "I am going to set fire to this airplane with this blowtorch" or "The man in seat 32F has a machine gun" will still be arrested.
But someone who remarks "Your hockey team is going to get bombed (badly beaten) tonight," "Hi Jack!" or "You don't need to frisk me, I'm not carrying a weapon" will first be warned about their behavior.
Canada
Viking Stick Ship
Robert McDonald
A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks set sail across the Netherlands' IJsselmeer lake on Friday and its stuntman builder hopes to cross the Atlantic later.
The 15-metre (50-foot) Thor was made from 15 million recycled ice-cream sticks glued together by U.S.-born Robert McDonald, his son and more than 5,000 children.
"Pick up your ice-cream stick, send them to me and I will put them to use," McDonald, 48, said on radio, hoping to auction the ship later and donate the proceeds to charity.
McDonald, badly injured as a child in a gas explosion that killed the rest of his family, is still looking for donations to finance his Atlantic voyage, the proceeds of which will go to children in hospitals and in disaster zones. He has worked as a stuntman in 400 films.
Robert McDonald
In Memory
Robert 'Buck' Brown
Cartoonist Robert "Buck" Brown, 71, who created Playboy magazine's infamously naughty "Granny" character, has died.
Mr. Brown died July 2 after suffering a stroke, daughter Tracy Hill said.
He became a leading black artist whose work was filled with social commentary about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. While he was most famous for his cartoons, Mr. Brown also was a noted painter of what he called "soul genre paintings" - humorous, slice-of-life images.
Mr. Brown's first cartoon appeared in Playboy in 1962, according to a 1981 biography. The character that became Granny, in his first color cartoon for the publication, came four years later.
In the decades that followed, the magazine printed more than 600 of his cartoons, including one that appears in the magazine's August issue.
Robert 'Buck' Brown
Thanks, Marian!
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