'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Karen DeYoung: Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases (Washington Post; Posted on makethemaccountable.com)
Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
Matt Taibbi: Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever (Rolling Stone; Posted on truthout.org)
The worst Congress ever: How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts - in five easy steps.
Ruth Conniff: Voters are Ready to Reject Republicans--But Can Democrats Get in Front? (progressive.org)
Things are looking bleaker for the Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The news of the week is how many Senate races the Rs are abandoning--pulling national funding in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Montana, and Ohio, where the Republican candidates no longer look viable, so they can focus their efforts on the places where they still have a chance to win.
Rick Rogers: Helping the hungry on base (signonsandiego.com)
Many military families rely on donated goods.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Incentives for the Dead (The New York Times)
I don't know about you, but I need a break from political scandals. So let's talk about private-sector scandals instead - specifically, the growing scandal involving backdated stock options, which this week led to the resignation of William McGuire, the chief executive of UnitedHealth Group.
Mark Crispin Miller: The GOP Playbook: How to Steal the Vote (washingtonspectator.com)
If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic "voter fraud" through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.
Shiite Militia Seizes Control of Iraqi City (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by one of the country's powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.
Rachel Kramer Bussel: Like a Virgin: The case against having sex (villagevoice.com)
Recently, two friends of mine opened up to me about their virginity. "Roger," a writer, confessed that at 31 he's still waiting for the perfect girl to give it up to, while Lianne Stokes, a comedian, divulged that she only just popped her cherry at the ripe age of 30.
Reader Comment
Re: Bee-Sting
Hi Marty,
I've enjoyed reading your page for many years now.
I have a deadly allergy to nuts so I was alarmed to hear that your son's hand swelled after a bee-sting. I don't know how much you know about these kinds of things, but you need to know that these kinds of allergies get worse with every exposure. You should talk to his doctor about getting a bee-sting kit and have him carry it with him at all times. The kind they make these days are air injected so there aren't any scary needles. And if he ever gets stung again, get him to a hospital!
Sorry if I'm sticking my nose in, but your son sounds like a great kid and I'd hate for anything to happen to him.
Steve P
Thanks, Steve!
The swelling didn't occur til the 2nd day - rather took us by surprise when he woke up with the catcher's mitt-like hand.
Thankfully, we have medical insurance and live less than 4 blocks from 2 major hospitals.
Our adventures in medicine serves as a reminder of what that lying sack of shit Ahnold, his Rovian handlers, Fristian-for-profits hospitals, and Big Pharma
have done to an already failing system.
The nurses are stretched too thin, and Ahnold's special election wanted to stretch them even thinner.
Gotta wonder why a guy with cadaver parts in his chest wants to piss off the people who made it possible for him to live this long.
Oh, and if I put it on the page, it's open to comment. : )
Purple Gene Revies
'Hard to Kill'
Purple Gene's review of the action movie "Hard to Kill" (1990) [view trailer]
Directed by Bruce Malmuth:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still warm and dry.
Updated the American Film Institute's 100 Best Movies page.
Leads Northwestern Parade
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert exchanged his pompous television persona for a fun-loving one Friday night as he handed out candy, not insults, to a crowd at Northwestern University's homecoming parade.
Sporting a purple Northwestern hooded sweat shirt, the host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" rode as grand marshal in a Volkswagen convertible surrounded by cheering fans, some carrying signs touting "Colbert for Commencement."
"I love you, Mr. Noblet!" 18-year-old theater major Tim McGovern yelled to Colbert, who played Chuck Noblet in the TV series and movie "Strangers With Candy."
"Right back at you," said Colbert, who also studied theater before graduating from Northwestern in 1986.
Stephen Colbert
Benefit Show For Springfield Girl
Rick Springfield
Rick Springfield will perform a free concert in southeast Missouri to help raise money for a 12-year-old girl's fight against brain-stem cancer.
The pop singer, whose string of hits in the 1980s included "Jessie's Girl," will perform Dec. 8 at the Show Me Center, center officials and Springfield's management firm, Doyle-Kos Entertainment, said Thursday.
Proceeds will benefit Sahara Aldridge of Cape Girardeau, who was diagnosed with the disease this summer. Springfield is a longtime friend of Sahara's family.
Rick Springfield
Makes The Rounds At RomeFilmFest
Borat
Borat, the wacky fictional reporter from Kazakhstan, touched down in Rome, getting yet another film festival to unspool his peculiar American road show.
"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," has been making the rounds of the world's film festivals, taking on the RomeFilmFest simultaneously with the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, where a film by an actual Kazakhstani director was in competition.
In "Borat," British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, who rose to fame as the spoof rapper Ali G, incarnates a blundering Kazakh television reporter with dubious views about women and ethnic minorities.
Offensive and hilarious at the same time, the film's moustachioed, mysogynist star accuses his compatriots of drinking horse urine, beating their wives and hating Jews as he barrels across America in an ice cream truck in pursuit of Baywatch star Pamela Anderson.
Borat
AFI Lifetime Honor
Al Pacino
66-year-old actor Al Pacino will receive the American Film Institute's highest honor, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, it was announced Friday.
The 35th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Pacino at a tribute dinner in Los Angeles on June 7, 2007.
He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 by the Independent Feature Project. The Hollywood Foreign Press presented Pacino with its Cecil B. De Mille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony in 2001.
Al Pacino
LA's Patch
Boy Scouts
A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc. He is also respectful of copyrights. Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music.
The patch shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a "C" enclosed in a circle.
The movie industry has developed the curriculum.
"Working with the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles, we have a real opportunity to educate a new generation about how movies are made, why they are valuable, and hopefully change attitudes about intellectual property theft," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement Friday.
Boy Scouts
TV Bounty Hunter Gets Break
Duane 'Dog' Chapman
The Dog remains unleashed - for now. Attorneys for TV reality star Duane "Dog" Chapman on Friday said the Mexican federal court has granted them an order that halts the criminal case against Chapman until further evidence and witness testimony are gathered.
U.S. Marshals arrested Chapman on Sept. 14 along with his son Leland and another associate after Mexico issued a warrant because of his capture of fugitive convicted rapist Andrew Luster, the Max Factor heir, on June 18, 2003, in Puerto Vallarta. Bounty hunting is considered a crime in Mexico.
At a circus-like news conference Friday, the star of the popular A&E show "Dog the Bounty Hunter" said the "tide is changing a little bit." His side of the story, he said, is finally being told to the court through his lawyer, William Boller, who spent the past month in Mexico.
Duane 'Dog' Chapman
Built Out Of Balloons
Haunted House
Instead of clay or wood, sculptor Larry Moss prefers a highly malleable but far less durable material: balloons. Moss typically creates air-filled models of humans, animals and monsters, but his latest piece of performance art is even spookier: a 10-room, 10,000-square-foot, walk-through haunted house made out of 130,000 latex balloons covering everything but the floors and ceilings.
The Balloon Manor and its inhabitants - quirky, hilarious and somewhat creepy Halloween creatures - fill a wing of the Medley Centre mall in this Rochester suburb.
Its "boo-loon" show opened Friday and runs through next weekend. That's about as long as the artwork can last - with periodic infusions of air.
The entrance is a dragon's mouth, complete with a giant uvula that tickles visitors' heads. There's a motorized carousel of galloping insects, dragons and vultures, all ridden by undersized skeletons, and a Model T Ford that looks like it has long ghostly white arms.
Haunted House
Found In Crater of Diamonds State Park
5.47-Carat Diamond
Bob Wehle of Ripon, Wis. found a 5.47-carat canary diamond at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro Oct. 14. The park is the world's only publicly operated diamond site where visitors are allowed to search and keep any gems they find.
Wehle's 5.47-carat diamond is bright yellow and has no visible flaws, said Tom Stolarz, park superintendent. It is the second-largest gem unearthed this year at the park.
Bill Henderson, assistant park superintendent, said park officials don't estimate values of the stones found by visitors. But he said Wehle's gem was identical in quality to - but larger than - a 4.21-carat flawless canary diamond found in the park in March that was valued by a New York diamond expert at $15,000 to $60,000.
5.47-Carat Diamond
In Memory
Phyllis Kirk
Actress Phyllis Kirk, famous for her role as the damsel in distress in the 1953 3-D horror classic "House of Wax," has died at age 79, her former publicist said on Saturday.
Kirk died on Friday from a post-cerebral aneurysm at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, publicist Dale Olson said.
After moving to Hollywood, she took on numerous television and film roles through the 1950s, including "House of Wax," where she was stalked by Vincent Price.
She is also well-known for her role as Nora Charles in the late 1950s television series "The Thin Man," with Peter Lawford playing her husband.
Phyllis Kirk
In Memory
Spoony Singh
Spoony Singh, who once said he founded the world famous Hollywood Wax Museum to give tourists who couldn't find any real celebrities in Hollywood the next best thing, has died. He was 83.
Singh also helped develop the Hollywood Guinness World Records Museum, which opened in 1991, and another Hollywood Wax Museum, which opened in Branson, Mo., in 1996.
Singh was born in Punjab, India, in 1922, and moved to Canada with his family at age 3. He operated saw mills and an amusement park in Victoria, British Columbia, when he paid his fateful 1964 visit to Hollywood.
Singh, whose given name was Spoony Singh Sundher, is survived by his wife of 63 years, Chanchil, six children and 11 grandchildren.
Spoony Singh
CURRENT MOON lunar phases |