Issue #136
Disinfotainment Today
By Michael Dare
 |
 |
'Best of TBH Politoons'
Jazz From Hills
Trimmed Bush and Hedges
But Untrue
Strangely Believable
Before entering upon a career in punditry, Armstrong Williams made a brief splash on the Billboard charts with his funkadelic cover of the Robert Johnson classic, "Crossroads."
~Jeff Crook
Jeff Crook is the Ceci Connolly of the Left. - J. Howard Tuft
Strangely Believable but Untrue is now available online at the Untrue Fact of the Day web calendar. Help spread disinformation and misunderstanding by sharing this with your friends and enemies.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Josh Marshall on Social Security and Our Lying President
Do reporters respond when the president tells flagrant lies?
(No, it's not a trick question - Scroll down; this is a Jan. 11 post)
David Podvin: Waterloo
The American conquest of Iraq has become an ever-worsening nightmare for the occupying force. Soon, even the corporate media's master fabulists will be unable to misrepresent the failure as being a success. Although there is much drama yet to occur, the final chapter of this immorality play was written well before it began. In the end, our empire will have suffered a humiliating defeat, and viewed from the patriotic perspective that will be a very good thing.
Paul Krugman: 'The iceberg cometh'
Last week someone leaked a memo written by Peter Wehner, an aide to Karl Rove, about how to sell Social Security privatization. The public, says Mr. Wehner, must be convinced that "the current system is heading for an iceberg." It's the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want. "For the first time in six decades," the memo says, "the Social Security battle is one we can win." One thing I haven't seen pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White House expects the public and the media to believe two contradictory things.
Molly Ivins: Leading by misleading: From Iraq to Social Security to jobs, Bush administration hallmark is deception
Excuse me, but is that smoke in your ear?I wouldn't go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They've been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces.
Amy Sullivan: Fire the Consultants
Why do Democrats continue to hire campaign advisors who lose races?
Spencer S. Hsu: U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses
D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.
ROGER EBERT: Ebert's 10 Best: 1967-2004
Monkey Fun
Kirktoons
Purple Gene Reviews
'House of Flying Daggers'
Purple Genes' review of the movie ""House of Flying Daggers - ["Shi Mian Mai Fu"] (2004) Directed by Yimou Zhang
:
Maybe I went into viewing this movie with overly high expectations! Maybe I wanted less generic fighting scenes! Maybe, just maybe, I got really tired of digitally enhanced bamboo, birch and maple forests - I mean there were so many shots taken in geometrically generated trees with over colorized leaves that I got really dizzy. And finally, maybe this movie should have been a cartoon - because everytime a dagger was thrown, it took on an animated mind of its own, and like Mighty Mouse, could perform aerobatic feats beyond belief.
This is a Next Gneration "Kung Fu Flick"!!!!! Thin on story line - "Tragic Love Triangle" and very thick on effects - Computer generated action packed overly colorized combatant actors on strings - and those flying daggers !!!!!!!
It is nearing the end of the Tang Dynasty and the police are trying to infiltrate a revolutionary faction known as the House of Flying Daggers. There is a beautiful blind dancer in a brothel named Mei (Ziyi Zhang - Jen Yu in "Crouching Tiger - Hidden Dragon") and the police think that she might lead them to the House of Flying Daggers. Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) are assigned to track Mei back to the hidden revolutionary encampment and to expose their leader. Mei is arrested but escapes with Jin as part of the police plot. What follows is a journey of Epic (in Chinese terms) proportions! We get the now generic flying feet fighting high up in the bamboo "KUNG FU", one hundred arrows at a time (or bamboo stalks) landing exactly around the target like a cage, a beautiful blind babe battling battalions all alone - and winning (most of the time) a "twist" in the plot and a "turn" in the characters…. and finally (I won't reveal the ending this time) the dramatic music blaring, blood drenched tragic finale to this trite love triangle………
I don't think there is anywhere to take this type of movie. As we say on the streets…"It's been way played" and when there is such an overwhelming emphasis on style over substance, it's easy for me to become exhausted with the Genre……. Purple Gene gives "House of Flying Daggers" 6 sharpened bamboo shoots out of 10 for falling on itself with so much color and action.
Purple Gene
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, clear & cool.
Anybody else notice 'Lost' (on ABC/Disney) ran over by 3 minutes? If I'd been relying on the VCR/DVR I'd be pissed.
Had to run out to the Valley tonight - between road construction, standing water and accidents ended up on the 710, 5, 101, 170, 134, 10, 610 & 405 freeways (normally it takes 4 freeways).
Performs for Haitian Youths
Wyclef Jean
Dozens of Haitian youths mobbed hip-hop star Wyclef Jean as he visited a slum to inaugurate a program to support education in his impoverished native country.
Jean was visiting the L'Athletique d'Haiti Sports Academy, an after-school program in Cite Soleil that provides tutoring and sports training for 650 youths. He inaugurated an initiative to provide scholarships to help new participants stay in school, a requirement for the after-school program.
"What Sammy Sosa has done for the Dominican Republic, that's what I think I can do for Haiti," Jean said, referring to the Dominican-born baseball star who founded a charity for health in education in his country.
Wyclef Jean
Group Raises Stakes
George Soros
A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.
George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marian Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.
At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.
The intention is to provide the left with organisations in Washington that can match the heft of the rightwing think-tanks such as Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. At a state level, the aim is to build what one person called a "deeper progressive bench".
George Soros
Moving Bob To Ethiopia
Rita Marley
The wife of reggae legend Bob Marley said Wednesday she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his "spiritual resting place" - Ethiopia.
No date has been set for the reburial, but it will be after February when monthlong celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley's birth are planned in Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian church and government officials support the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press.
Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 155 miles south of Addis Ababa where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie.
Bob Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair uncombed into dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament. About 700,000 people practice it worldwide.
Rita Marley
Liverpool's Orphanage To Close
Strawberry Fields
Strawberry Fields is not forever, after all.
The Liverpool children's home that inspired the Beatles' hit song is to close, officials said Wednesday. The psychedelic single Strawberry Fields Forever was released in February 1967 with Penny Lane on the reverse side and quickly made it to No. 2 in the British charts, but it was kept out of the top slot by Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me.
John Lennon wrote the song's dreamy lyrics about a time in his childhood when he lived near the Strawberry Fields orphanage. It has been suggested that Lennon felt a kinship with the orphans after he was abandoned by his father and his mother, Julia, sent him to live with his Aunt Mimi, who raised him.
The Salvation Army, which now runs Strawberry Fields, said the current preference for placing children with foster families has reduced the need for orphanages. Only three youngsters remain at the home in Liverpool's Woolton district.
Lennon left money to the home in his will and in 1984 his widow, Yoko Ono, donated more than $70,000 US to keep the facility open.
Strawberry Fields
CBS Cancels After One Airing
'The Will'
CBS lost "The Will" after just one night. This reality series, which logged a minuscule 4.2 million viewers on its premiere airing Saturday, has been axed by CBS, the network confirmed Wednesday.
Despite heavy promotion, "The Will" ranked 79th place in viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, making it CBS' lowest-ranked show of the week. (The week's most-watched show, CBS' "CSI," drew almost 29 million viewers.)
A rerun of CBS' Sunday crime drama "Cold Case" will plug the hole this Saturday, the network said.
'The Will'
Back to Broadway
'A Chorus Line'
"A Chorus Line," the legendary Michael Bennett musical, will kick again on Broadway.
The story of dancers auditioning for a big Broadway show will open Sept. 21, 2006, according to John Breglio, who was the attorney for Bennett, its original director and choreographer.
Breglio will produce the revival, which will include many of the show's original creators, including Bennett's co-choreographer, Bob Avian, who will direct the new production, and original set designer Robin Wagner. Bennett died of AIDS in 1987.
When "A Chorus Line" first opened on Broadway its top ticket price was $15. Today, most musicals have a top price of $100. The show's original Broadway budget was $1.1 million. Breglio expects the revival to cost nearly $8 million. And in 1975, its potential weekly box-office gross was $142,000 at the Shubert Theatre; today, it would be $1 million.
'A Chorus Line'
Paying Search Engines To List His Web Site First
Kenny Boy
Enron founder Kenneth Lay is paying to make sure major Internet search engines list his Web site first when people search for his name.
Lay's litigation team is using "sponsored links," which appear prominently in searches for a word or name in an Internet search engine. The links are one way for search engines to make money and Web sites to make sure they're noticed.
The cost of sponsored links depends on two things: how many people actually look at his Web site and how many other sites want to be seen in connection with the same keywords.
One of the first thing people see when they put the search words "Enron" or "Ken Lay" into search engines such as Google, Yahoo and AOL is a link to kenlayinfo.com. When a person clicks on that link, Lay pays the search engine between about 5 cents and 12 cents.
Kenny Boy
Shifting To Oil-Free Economy
Iceland
Hydrogen, tested in buses from Amsterdam to Vancouver and used in the rockets of the U.S. space shuttle, is a clean power that promises to break dependence on oil and gas -- at least in Iceland.
With almost unlimited geothermal energy sizzling beneath its surface, Iceland has an official goal of making the country oil-free by shifting cars, buses, trucks and ships over to hydrogen by about 2050.
About 70 percent of Iceland's energy needs, from home heating to electricity for aluminum smelters, are already met by geothermal or hydro-electric power. Only the transport sector is still hooked on polluting oil and gas.
Iceland
Sorry for Nazi Gaffe
Prince Harry
Britain's Prince Harry apologized on Thursday after he wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party two weeks before Queen Elizabeth is due to lead the country's holocaust memorial events.
In the latest of a string of gaffes, Harry, 20, wore a red and black swastika armband and an army shirt with Nazi regalia at the party at a friend's house on Saturday.
Queen Elizabeth is due to host a reception for survivors of the holocaust on Jan. 27 before representing the nation at the Holocaust Memorial Day National Event.
Prince Harry
Ancient Astronomer's Work Found
Farnese Atlas
A Roman statue of Atlas -- the mythical titan who carried the heavens on his shoulders -- holds clues to the long-lost work of the ancient astronomer Hipparchus, an astronomical historian said on Tuesday.
The statue in question is known as the Farnese Atlas, a 7-foot tall marble work which resides in the Farnese Collection in the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy.
What makes it important to scientists is not the titan's muscular form but the globe he supports: carved constellations adorn its surface in exactly the locations Hipparchus would have seen in his day, suggesting that the sculptor based the globe on the ancient astronomer's star catalog, which no modern eyes have seen.
Farnese Atlas
