'Best of TBH Politoons'
Tonight
Erin Hart Show
Please join
Erin Hart 9pm - 1am on Saturday; 10p - 1am on Sunday on 710 KIRO.
Tonight, former U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain James Yee joins us to
discuss his new book "For God and Country-Faith and Patriotism Under Fire".
Talk about his ordeal with the U.S. Government and how it pertains to the
not-so patriotic Patriot Act and the Bush Administration's continued desire
to use torture and circumvent the Constitution.
All that and more, so please join in. Pedro is frolicking in the cold and
seems fully recovered--now to finish his training--whew!
Audio streams live - 710KIRO.com.
Reader Suggestion
Richard Pryor Clip
Marty -
Check out this old SNL clip of Richard Pryor on a job interview with Chevy Chase
Sharon
Thanks, Sharon!
Tonight they aired a segment of this clip on the KNBC (11pm) news - and they bleeped Chevey Chase.
How enlightened.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
James Preston Allen: When Free Speech Is Called Treason (altweeklies.com)
Our Commander-in-Chief , the great GW, who-like so many others in his administration-has never seen one day of battle himself, has already declared victory in Iraq once, all dressed up in a flight suit like a 7-year old kid on Christmas morning. But if this is what winning means, then perhaps we all should reconsider the alternative.
Will Durst: White House Report Card (AlterNet.org)
For a more informed nation and a fully rebuked President, I'm here to finish off the Bush Administration's Report Card.
Paul Krugman: The Joyless Economy (The New York Times; poated at topplebush.com)
Falling gasoline prices have led to some improvement in consumer confidence over the past few weeks. But the public remains deeply unhappy about the state of the economy. According to the latest Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans rate the economy as only fair or poor, and by 58 to 36 percent people say economic conditions are getting worse, not better.
Sandra Guy: Debt-Conscious Women Pay Cash for Holidays (womensenews.org)
While some women may be feeling pressure to shop and spend for the holidays others are trimming purchases, paying only in cash and looking forward to a new year with less debt hanging over them.
TED DROZDOWSKI: Chris Whitley, 1960-2005 (bostonphoenix.com)
Singer-songwriter Chris Whitley died in his native Texas on November 20, though more recently his homes had been New York City and Dresden - places that seem to resonate more with the brooding intensity of his art.
Critical Thinking Mini-Lessons
VIDEO - Daily Show Reports on Fox's Misleading 'War on Christmas'
Commentoon: Notification
Hubert's Poetry Corner
MARBLES FROM HEAVEN
If only the zEN mAN had been there with his camera to capture this moment of magic - and horror for a deserving few!
Purple Gene Reviews
'Crash'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit warmer.
Had some trouble with my ISP - they wouldn't allow me to send e-mail last night, and it continued today.
Tried their online tech site, where I was accused of spamming, or abusing chatroom or IM protocols.
Then I called them, where I got more grief, and less than satisfactory answers. They also said I must have abused their TOS (Terms of Service).
Hours later, I figured out the problem. Seems I was trying to send a list of links, and one of them was for a Fortune City site.
So long as the Fortune City link was in the e-mail, I was not allowed to send it.
This is the link that caused the grief - Festivus, The Best Holiday Ever!
Time for a new ISP.
Had a great time on Erin's Show last night, as usual.
Check out the freshly updated Erin Hart Links page.
Escapes FCC, Heads to Satellite
Howard Stern
The seeds of the Howard Stern satellite radio revolution are planted in a simple black spiral notebook. Across its blank pages, the Lenny Bruce of broadcasting scrawls ideas for the riskiest (and richest) move of his radio career, a collection of deranged concepts that fly unfettered from his id, without fears of censorship or staggering federal fines.
The self-proclaimed "King of All Media" is taking his show to Sirius Satellite Radio, where they're paying the shock jock $500 million over five years to make their business viable after tens of millions of dollars in losses. Stern's windfall includes salaries, overhead and other costs for his programming a pair of Sirius stations.
The move is not about the freedom to spew four-letter words, or five-letter words, or even the odd 12-letter word. "It's about ideas," Stern argues. "This is a free-speech issue. I represent everything they can't do on regular radio."
His escape from the clutches of his longtime nemesis, the Federal Communications Commission, is set for Jan. 9. His farewell to terrestrial radio after 25 years is Dec. 16.
Howard Stern
'Sopranos' Creator Gets Filmmaking Award
David Chase
A television show about wiseguys, snitches and mob hits on Friday night earned its creator accolades from "Joizy's" own don, the governor. You got a problem with that?
Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey picked "The Sopranos" creator David Chase to receive the first-ever Governor's Award for Filmmaking. Codey presented the award to Chase during a reception Friday night for 150 guests at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion.
Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Chase was raised in New Jersey, the only child in an Italian-American family. As a boy, he lived in Boonton, Clifton and Caldwell, and grew up watching gangster movies and inventing stories.
David Chase
New Ingredient in 'Vegas'
Wolfgang Puck
Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck has opened his latest restaurant at the fictional Montecito Resort & Casino on the set of NBC's drama "Las Vegas," and as part of the deal, he and his restaurant will be featured on the show beginning January 9.
"Vegas" creator and executive producer Gary Scott Thompson said Puck's company helped finance the cost of building a real-life restaurant for the show -- the latest addition to the Montecito set, which already features a casino floor, lounge, club, sports book and reception area. Luxury automaker Aston Martin is among the other advertisers that have been featured on "Vegas," in exchange for helping to finance replicas of their real-life businesses on the enormous Montecito set that occupies six soundstages at Culver Studios in Culver City.
Thompson said he did not know whether Puck or other advertisers had to pay additional product placement fees to NBC or commit to media buys with the network as part of their deals. An NBC spokeswoman was unavailable for comment.
Wolfgang Puck
File for Marriage License
Yearwood - Brooks
Months after a proposal in front of thousands of fans, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood may be setting up their wedding bells.
The couple, who live in Oklahoma, filed for a marriage license Friday in Rogers County, court records show. Under Oklahoma law, a couple must be married within 10 days of the filing of a marriage license.
Yearwood - Brooks
At UN Climate Talks
Toy Ducks
Environmentalists handed out 150 plastic ducks at an internnational climate conference on Friday in a joking stab at U.S. opposition to new U.N.-led talks on global warming.
Environmentalists emptied Montreal toy shops of ducks after chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson left a session of talks overnight, saying a Canadian call for dialogue about new ways to confront climate change had all the elements of forcing Washington to accept new commitments.
"If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck then it is a duck," delegates quoted him as saying.
They said he apparently meant the text was a thinly disguised call for hard negotiations -- not dialogue -- about caps on emissions of heat-trapping gases, opposed by Washington.
Toy Ducks
Court Rules Against Mom
Download Suit
A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting.
The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws.
Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet.
Download Suit
Subway Builders Find 200-Year-Old Wall
New York
Builders working on a new subway station at the southern tip of Manhattan have found the remains of a stone wall thought to be part of a fort that protected the city in the late 17th century.
New York City authorities said on Thursday the 40-foot (12-meter) section of wall had been found at a depth of around 10 feet in Battery Park, a green area that looks out on New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty.
Among the artifacts found in the area -- where a series of forts were built between 1625 and 1780 -- was a 1744 George II half penny in very good condition, city authorities said in a statement.
New York
Lesbian Bikers Get Trademark
'Dykes on Bikes™'
Lesbian motorcycle enthusiasts in San Francisco have won their fight to trademark the name "Dykes on Bikes," a lawyer for their group said on Thursday.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had denied applications by the San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent to trademark "Dykes on Bikes," arguing the phrase would be perceived as disparaging to lesbians.
The San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent sought the trademark after a woman in Wisconsin not affiliated with group attempted to use the phrase for a clothing line.
'Dykes on Bikes™'
In Memory
Jean Parker
Jean Parker, the lovely brunette star of "Sequoia," "Little Women," "The Ghost Goes West" and other hit films of the 1930s and '40s, has died. She was 90.
The actress, whose given name was Louise Stephanie Zelinska, made her debut in 1932 as the Duchess Maria in "Rasputin and the Empress," a film that starred three members of acting's Barrymore family, Ethel, Lionel and John.
She went on to play ingenues in such other MGM films as "The Secret of Madame Blanche" (with Irene Dunne), "Operator 13" (Marion Davies, Gary Cooper), and "Gabriel over the White House" with Walter Huston.
Her most prestigious films were made by other studios: Frank Capra's "Lady for a Day" in 1933, René Clair's "The Ghost Goes West" with Robert Donat in 1935, and notably "Little Women" as Beth in 1933, opposite Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett and Francis Dee as the other sisters in the heralded film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's literary classic.
Other notable films included "Texas Rangers," a western with Fred MacMurray; "The Flying Deuces," a Laurel and Hardy comedy; "Bluebeard" with John Carradine; and "The Gunfighter" with Gregory Peck.
During the lulls in movie work, Parker appeared on the stage. She replaced Judy Holliday on Broadway in "Born Yesterday" and played in regional theater, often with her fourth husband, actor Robert Lowery. She and Lowery also formed a nightclub act and toured the United States and Australia.
All of her marriages ended in divorce. Her husbands were New York newsman George MacDonald, radio commentator Douglas Dawson, insurance broker Curtis Grotter and Lowery, most noted as the hero in the 1949 serial "Batman." He and Parker had a son, Robert Lowery Hanks, named for his father whose real last name was Hanks.
Jean Parker
In Memory
Eugene McCarthy
Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.
The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.
McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.
He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.
On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that resident Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.
Eugene McCarthy
In Memory
Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor, the caustic yet perceptive actor-comedian who lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off, died Saturday. He was 65.
Pryor died shortly before 8 a.m. of a heart attack after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
A series of hit comedies in the '70s and '80s, as well as filmed versions of his concert performances, turned him into one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. He was also one of the first black performers to have enough leverage to cut his own Hollywood deals. In 1983, he signed a $40 million, five-year contract with Columbia Pictures.
Pryor once marveled "that I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that."
While Pryor's material sounds modest when compared with some of today's raunchier comedians, it was startling material when first introduced. He never apologized for it.
Recognition came in 1998 from an unlikely source: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington gave Pryor the first Mark Twain Prize for humor. He said in a statement that he was proud that, "like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to lessen people's hatred."
Born in 1940, to a Peoria, Ill., construction worker, Pryor grew up in a brothel his grandmother ran. His first professional performance came at age 7, when he played drums at a night club.
Following high school and two years of Army service, he launched his performing career. He played bars throughout the United States, honing his comedy skills.
Pryor was married six times, most recently to Flynn. The two had a son, Steven. His other children included son Richard and daughters Elizabeth, Rain and Renee.
Richard Pryor
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