'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Jim Hightower: PITY TEXAS (jimhightower.com)
Oh, woe is me! Sometimes it's hard to be a Texan, and now is one of those times, for we are about to be inundated with political devils of our own making.
Paul Krugman: What I Hate About Political Coverage (The New York Times)
One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business - namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying - and whether it's true or false, sensible or silly - they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race.
Joe Conason: The Illusion of Iraqi Progress (creators.com)
Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither General David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
Froma Harrop: American Dream Goes Nuts (creators.com)
I had an adjustable-rate mortgage, once. I fully understood that after two years, my low come-on interest rate would be reset at a more realistic level. But when the two years passed - Powee! It was still something of a shock.
Mark Morford: The fall of the Godmongers (sfgate.com)
Praise Jesus, it's the collapse of evangelical Christian rule in America. Rejoice!
Michael Abernethy: "Queer, Isn't It?: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are - Whether You Want to or Not" (popmatters.com)
The decision to come out is a personal one, except when your words and actions forfeit your right to a closeted life.
Adam Bresnick: Unforgetting with Clive James (timesonline.co.uk)
James's volume is an exercise in what the psychoanalysts call "anamnesia", or unforgetting, his attempt to present and preserve what he has found most vital in the culture and history that he and the rest of us have, to a greater or lesser extent, lived through over the past decades. That Clive James remembers it all so well and rescues so much that has often been forgotten is a testament to what an excellent, passionate reader he continues to be.
Siouxsie Sioux strikes out alone (telegraph.co.uk)
At 50, punk's princess is singing solo for the first time. She talks make-up and deep-sea diving with Helen Brown.
Reader Comment
Adrian Cronauer
Hey, Marty...
Robin Williams' role as the irreverent army DJ is one of my favorites of all his work. That is mainly because I was an army medic during 3 years of that debacle and I fancied myself a Hawkeye Pierce...
The real Adrian Cronauer, today, works quietly to find POWs from WWII to the present.
'Good Morning, Vietnam' author still looking for nation's missing soldiers | Battle Creek Enquirer
Thanks, Adrian...
BadtotheboneBob
Thanks, B2TBBob!
Here's a little more background on Good Morning Vietnam! The story behind Armed Forces Vietnam Network
From an officer's perspective - AFVN Lt Cdr James Wentz USN Chief of Radio
Here are some audio clips - AFVN - American Forces Vietnam Network
Some more sounds - Sounds of Vietnam - Real Audio
And, if you get Turner Classics,
the last movie on today's schedule is Good Morning, Vietnam (1987).
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Rained most of the night and on til noon. Quite nice.
Excellence Award
Smokey Robinson
Legendary Motown singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson is being honored for his contributions to the miracle of education.
Robinson, who helped put the fledgling Motown record label on the map in the early 1960s with his group the Miracles, is receiving the United Negro College Fund's award of excellence.
"The award honors Smokey not only for his five-decade career as a creative artist, but also for the contribution he has made to helping students get the college education they need and deserve," said Michael L. Lomax, the group's president and CEO.
Robinson, 67, was to receive the award Saturday night at the taping of the group's 29th annual "Evening of Stars" concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The show is to be broadcast sometime in January.
Smokey Robinson
Rodney's Widow Sues Over Film
Joan Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield's widow Joan filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop the airing of a videotape of Dangerfield in his later years that his widow says was never intended for the public.
The suit claimed that producer David Permut, a former friend, has more than 200 hours of video footage of Dangerfield taken at his home during the last few years of his life. The material is "highly private, extremely sensitive and very personal," according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims that Permut has shown some of the material to a writer and a newspaper reporter and is editing the material into a documentary called "Respect" that he hopes to air at the Sundance Film Festival next year.
The action also claims Permut violated an agreement he had with Joan Dangerfield giving her joint control of the material. It seeks court orders barring Permut from showing the footage until the dispute can be settled through arbitration.
Joan Dangerfield
Mark Ethiopian Millennium
Rastafarians
Tens of thousands of Rastafarians converged on Addis Ababa for a massive concert as part of the celebrations marking Ethiopia's new millennium.
The Horn of Africa country, which is the cradle of the Rastafari movement, follows a unique version of the Julian calendar and entered its third millennium on September 12, seven years after the rest of the world.
Some 50,000 people were expected to come to listen to rasta artists such a King Kong and Luciano and added that 10 percent of the proceeds would be donated to a millennium-sponsored fund for orphans.
The Rastafari movement accepts Ethiopia's former emperor Haile Selassie I as a living God. The emperor -- who died in 1975 -- had invited Rastafarians to settle in Sheshemane, some 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of the capital.
Rastafarians
Baby News
Charlotte Church
Welsh singer Charlotte Church has given birth to a baby girl.
The 21-year-old chat show host opted for a home birth at the farmhouse she shares with her boyfriend and Welsh rugby international, Gavin Henson, in south Wales.
A spokeswoman for Church said: "A baby girl was born sometime on Thursday evening or possibly Friday morning. Midwives were present at the home birth."
Charlotte Church
Rare Medieval Manuscript
'Codex Gigas'
Czechs got the chance to examine the world's biggest medieval manuscript, the "Codex Gigas" or "Devil's Bible," for the first time in almost 359 years on Thursday when the precious work went on show as part of a four-month-long exhibition.
The 13th century masterpiece, considered at the time as the eighth wonder of the world, was carried off as booty by Swedish troops from Prague during the Thirty Years' War but has returned at the end of painstaking negotiations and preparations between Prague and Stockholm.
The 624-page, 75-kilogramme (165-pound) work is on display in a specially designed safe-like room in a former Jesuit college in the centre of historic Prague with visitors limited to 10 at a time and rationed to a few minutes each.
The manuscript was the work of a monk working at the Pozlazice monastery located in the centre of the current Czech Republic. The monastery was destroyed during the 15th-century wars of religion.
'Codex Gigas'
Military Cemetery Out Of Space
Fort Riley
A Kansas military cemetery has run out of space after two burials in the last week, including that of an Iraq war casualty, officials said on Thursday.
"We are full," said Alison Kohler, spokeswoman for the Fort Riley U.S. Army post, home of the 1st Infantry Division.
Since the 2003 beginning of the war in Iraq, Fort Riley has lost 133 soldiers and airmen, though not all are buried in the Fort Riley cemetery. Sgt Joel Murray, who died September 4 in Iraq, took the second-to-the last available plot, and the final plot was used on Tuesday when an 83-year-old retired veteran was buried, Kohler said.
Fort Riley can bury bodies on top of other bodies if family members want to share a plot, said Kohler.
Fort Riley
'The Fields' To Be Auctioned
Vincent van Gogh
One of Vincent van Gogh's final landscapes, "The Fields," will be auctioned in New York in November, a British newspaper reported Saturday.
The painting will go display at Sotheby's auction house in London on Oct. 7 and will be sold in New York a month later with an estimated price of $34 million, The Independent reported.
In a letter the artist wrote to his brother, Theo van Gogh, on July 10, 1890, he described having just painted what experts believe to be "The Fields," along with two other works, according to the report.
The painting was sold by Theo van Gogh's widow in 1907 and has since remained in private hands.
Vincent van Gogh
Children Visit Iran
Che Guevara
Two children of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara are visiting Iran and are due to meet with top officials, the student ISNA news agency reported on Saturday.
Aleida, 47, and her brother, Camilo, 45, are to meet with Culture Minister Mohammad Hossein Safar Harandi, as well as with a deputy minister of foreign affairs and several lawmakers, the agency said.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has moved to expand ties with the leftist governments that have won power in Latin America in recent years, finding common ground in a mutual distrust of the United States.
Che Guevara
Thousands Perish As English Marches On
Hyphens
About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.
And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).
The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.
Hyphens
Burma Protest
Aung San Suu Kyi
A Buddhist monk in Burma has described how Aung San Suu Kyi came out of her home and paid her respects to monks protesting against the ruling military junta.
In an unprecedented move, armed guards allowed about 1,000 protesting monks past the roadblocks leading to the Nobel Peace Prize winner's house. She has been detained there for 12 of the past 18 years.
Aung San Suu Kyi has become an internationally recognised figurehead of the pro-democracy movement in Burma since her National League for Democracy won 1990 elections by a landslide. The military never accepted the result and the 62-year-old now has virtually no contact with the outside world.
The monks stopped outside her home for about 15 minutes and chanted a Buddhist prayer. Witnesses said Aung San Suu Kyi did not appear to speak to the monks.
There was no interruption from about 20 uniformed security police, who had opened the roadblock. After the monks left the road was again closed.
Aung San Suu Kyi
In Memory
Alice Ghostley
Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and Bernice on "Designing Women," has died. She was 81.
Ghostley made her Broadway debut in "Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952." She received critical acclaim for singing "The Boston Beguine," which became her signature song.
In the 1960s, Ghostley received a Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy "The Beauty Part" and eventually won for best featured actress in "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."
From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's "Bewitched." She played Bernice Clifton on "Designing Women" from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992.
Ghostley's film credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Graduate," "Gator" and "Grease."
She was born on Aug. 14, 1926, in Eve, Mo., where her father worked as a telegraph operator. She grew up in Henryetta, Okla.
Ghostley, whose actor husband, Felice Orlandi, died in 2003, is survived by her sister, Gladys.
Alice Ghostley
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