'TBH Politoons'
Jazz From Hills
Trimmed Bush
Wow, Bunnypants is making headlines these days trying to scare the fuck out of his homeland by diverting attention away from his hideous pick for the Supreme Court ( Samuel Alito) as well as trying to take the heat off of Dickface Cheney and his little Scooter.
Reader Comment
Groper on the Run
Hey Marty:
I was precinct walking last night 'til 8 pm and stayed up late looking at the live updates from the CA Sect. of State's office. I was sure we won a clean sweep by about 12:30. That was an election I worked on for several months, phone banking, making speeches, and organizing, and it is the first one in almost ten years I feel good about.
My favorite story so far is about Barbara Kerr, the head of the Calif. Fed. of Teachers (my state union.) When asked if her TV commercials were too unkind to the Governor, she replied, "I really don't care." That's the kind of fighting spirit we need and that's why Groper left town with his tail between his legs. That's why the national Democratic Party has been so unsuccessful-they are a bunch of wimps afraid to offend anybody and they get mowed down like lazy sheep. Except Howard Dean at the moment.
The good results are that Groper is mortally wounded, and we have a strong organization in place to fight him next year. The Alliance for a Better CA (ABC), with whom I was working last week, is all the unions together, plus some Democrats and others. We have offices, phone banks, volunteers, and sign printers, all in place, and we have the practice and experience that we didn't have last year. And four wins to our credit.
The bad news is that Groper's strategy has pretty much drained our treasury and we're broke. In this game, even when you win, you lose.
He'd be crazy to try another special election after this one (but he might), and we will stick it to him next year.
Now if Fitz would just indict Rove, I'd really be able to celebrate!
Teacher Ed
Proud Union Member
Thanks, Ed!
Reader Comment
Re: CA Election
Can't believe you didn't mention the election today in California. Looks like all of my phone banking over these few weeks have paid off. Now it is time for a day off...since I won't lose my tenure teaching if I do.
Arnold cost CTA a fortune with "his" special election and now he will blame teachers when he raises taxes. Guess he will never pay us back the money he borrowed last year and promised to return this year and didn't. POLITICS hurts students and Unions.
I guess "politics" means never having to say you're sorry.
Marian, the teacher
Thanks, Marian!
I'm so grateful the citizens of this fine state stepped up & slapped down Ahnold and his $pecial Interest$.
Saying nurses, teachers, cops & firefighters are the enemy was reprehensible.
Especially from a man whose survival is dependent on spare parts from a cadaver.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Clive Crook: Our Faith-Based Future: The White House remains unperturbed by the growing prospect of economic calamity (theatlantic.com)
Once upon a time Democrats were big spenders and Republicans were fiscal conservatives. That was a while ago. Ronald Reagan's defense buildup and tax cuts caused deficits to soar in the 1980s, and it was Bill Clinton who brought the budget back into surplus in the 1990s, partly by curbing spending. But those fiscal role reversals were timid by today's standards. Since 2000 the Democratic Party has been left in the dust when it comes to spending. The Republican Party is the new, undisputed champion of big government.
Paul Krugman: Pride, Prejudice, Insurance (The New York Times)
General Motors is reducing retirees' medical benefits. Delphi has declared bankruptcy, and will probably reduce workers' benefits as well as their wages. An internal Wal-Mart memo describes plans to cut health costs by hiring temporary workers, who aren't entitled to health insurance, and screening out employees likely to have high medical bills.
Robert Skidelsky: The Chinese Shadow (nybooks.com)
The "rise" of China has suddenly become the all-absorbing topic for those professionally concerned with the future of the planet. Will the twenty-first century be the Chinese century, and, if so, in what sense? Will China's rise be peaceful or violent? And how will this affect the United States, the current "hyperpower"? In fact, China has been "rising" for some time (after several hundred years of "fall"), but for many years its claim to notice was obscured by more exciting events.
Todd Spivak: The A Student (houstonpress.com)
A non-drinking student punished by her high school -- after being convicted of nothing -- fights back
Molly Ivins: 'The Brownie memos' (smirkingchimp.com)
As those silver-tongued poets at the Pentagon put it, we are in a target-rich environment. One cannot -- honestly, one simply cannot -- pass up the Brownie memos.
RICHARD ROEPER: Real men and women of genius are worthy of salute (suntimes.com)
Today we salute you, Mr. Rush Hour Horn Honker. We were all sitting in traffic, wondering what to do. Then you blasted your horn repeatedly, and that immediately got traffic going. You truly are a Real Man of Genius, Mr. Rush Hour Horn Honker.
Hubert's Poetry Corner
YOUR WOMAN. MY WOMAN! YOUR WIFE?
W BARELY REMEMBERS HIS SPECIAL LONG AGO VETERAN'S DAY IN ALABAMA DURING HIS STILL UNEXPLAINED MYSTERY YEAR?
Purple Gene Presents
Todays.......Ups n Downs
Ups n Downs
November 9th, 2005
UPS:
1 JERSEY GOVERNOR......New Democrat as New Jersey Governor
2 VERMONT GOVERNOR...New Democrat as Vermont Governor!
3 HILLDALE MAYOR..........New 18 year old beats 0ld 51 year old!
4 LOCAL TEAM IN 1ST.......Oakland's Warriors in 1st place in NBA!
5 MY DICK IS UP...............Great sex at sixty years old - Hell Yeah!
DOWNS:
1 POODLE DOWN..............Tony Blair torture shit shot down!
2 TERMINATOR DOWN.......Ahnold getS kicked in the ASS in Cal.!
3 T.O. SACKED..................Terrell "cry baby" Owens cut by Eagles!
4 OVER IN DOVER..............Creationist school board voted out!
5 50 CENT SUCKS..............Rappers new movie "Dies Tryin'" !
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cloudy & rainy.
No new flags.
International Year of Microcredit 2005
Anti-Poverty Awards
Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton and broadcaster Walter Cronkite joined forces Tuesday night to honor nine "unsung heroes of poverty eradication."
The celebrities were part of a star-studded ceremony at the United Nations honoring the winners of The Global Microentrepreneurship Awards. The nine poor and low-income winners - from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, South Africa, India, China, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Peru - used small loans to establish successful businesses.
Cronkite read a message from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is traveling in the Mideast, praising the winners and the International Year of Microcredit 2005. With access to small loans, people can move "beyond day-to-day survival," earn and save more, "and protect themselves better against life's unexpected setbacks," he said.
Anti-Poverty Awards
Hometown Keeping Libraries
John Steinbeck
Libraries in Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, California, will remain open after voters approved an increase in the local sales tax, according to election results posted on Wednesday.
The measure will increase Salinas' sales tax by a half cent, raising an estimated $11 million a year in revenue for the farming town. The measure was approved by 61 percent of voters on Tuesday and opposed by 39 percent.
The money will help the birthplace of Steinbeck, who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," keep its libraries open. Facing tight budgets, Salinas officials last year had considered shuttering them. Private funds, including a contribution by actor Bill Murray, helped keep the libraries open part-time.
John Steinbeck
Scooter's Smut To Be Reissued
'The Apprentice'
Lewis Libby's indictment has provided an unintended benefit for the former top aide to U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney: The resurrection of his once forgotten literary career.
Used copies of his 1996 novel, The Apprentice, a thriller set in Japan that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape, have been offered for as high as $2,400 US on Amazon.com. Now, publisher St. Martin's Press has decided to bring the book back into print, announcing a new run of 25,000 copies.
'The Apprentice'
Gets Serious About US Politics
Al Franken
He pioneered mock television news 30 years ago and wrote a satirical book about becoming the 44th president of the United States.
So when comedian Al Franken says he is considering a run for U.S. Senate you have to ask -- is he serious?
"The next thing I am doing is moving back home to Minnesota and getting involved in politics," Franken told Reuters in an interview at his Air America radio studio. "I'm looking at a run for Senate in 2008, but in the meantime I am focused on knitting together the progressive network in the upper Midwest."
For the rest, Al Franken
Performing For QE II
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne will skip a scheduled appearance at Spike TV's Video Game Awards to make time for Queen Elizabeth II.
"The Prince of Darkness" was invited to perform at the annual Royal Variety Performance in Cardiff, Wales, on Nov. 21, Osbourne's spokesman, Lathum Nelson, said Tuesday.
This is the second time Osbourne has been invited to take part in the Royal Variety Performance. A scheduling conflict prevented him from attending in 2004, he said in a statement.
Ozzy Osbourne
Nick Orders 20 More Episodes
SpongeBob SquarePants
Pull up for another meal at the Krusty Krab. Nickelodeon has ordered 20 more episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants."
That will make for a total of 100 adventures for the animated sea creature - or cash cow as they know him at Nickelodeon - when the new episodes finish airing in 2007.
Nickelodeon stopped making new episodes while the "SpongeBob SquarePants" feature film was in production, and there was some question at the time whether the series would start up again - then 20 episodes were ordered last year and are airing now.
SpongeBob SquarePants
Comedy Central, Court TV, E!
Renewals
Comedy Central has picked up a third season of its animated reality series "Drawn Together" with a 14-episode order.
In other cable pickup news, Court TV has ordered a second season of its reality docudrama series "Parco P.I.," while E! Entertainment Television is going ahead with a third season of the real-life medical drama series "Dr. 90210." Both are 13-episode orders.
Renewals
Files Suit Against Former Manager
k.d. lang
Singer k.d. lang is suing her former business manager, alleging that hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of dollars in excessive fees were fraudulently drawn from the musician's account.
The Grammy-winning Canadian vocalist filed suit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Annabel Lapp, her company the Annabel Lapp Group and Lapp Group employee Dina Correale. The action seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The suit claims that the total amount of allegedly misappropriated money could not be determined because Lapp has failed to turn over the vast majority of lang's financial and business records.
k.d. lang
Study Says More on TV
Sex
Television these days is loaded with sex, sex, sex - double the number of sex scenes aired seven years ago, says a study out Wednesday. And the number of shows that include "safer sex" messages has leveled off, it said.
There were nearly 3,800 scenes with sexual content spotted in more than 1,100 shows researchers studied, up from about 1,900 such scenes in 1998, the first year of the Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
The study examined a sample of a week's worth of programming on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB, PBS, Lifetime, TNT, USA Network and HBO. Sexual content, as defined in the study, could be anything from discussions about sex to scenes involving everything from kissing to intercourse.
Sex
Tops In Product Placements
NBC
NBC had far more product placement on its primetime shows last season than any other broadcast network, followed by CBS and Fox, according to Nielsen Media Research.
NBC nearly doubled the number of its placements from 11,684 in the 2003-04 season to 21,286, according to the data provided by Nielsen's Place Views product placement tracking service..
CBS came in second with 12,294 placements, up from 10,148 placements in 2003-04. Fox's placements rose significantly, to 10,422 from 7,933. ABC had 8,272 placements, also a notable increase from the 2003-04 season tally of 6,557.
The total number of primetime placements on all six broadcast networks rose more than 30% to 70,371 from 53,929 in 2003-04 , according to the Nielsen data, which does not track which placements actually are paid for by advertisers.
NBC
Caught On Tape
Paris Hilton
Los Angeles police Wednesday were investigating two officers' handling of an accident and traffic stop involving Paris Hilton and her boyfriend, Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, near a trendy nightclub. Also in the car was Kimberly Stewart, Rod Stewart's daughter, and Talan Torriero, star of MTV's "Laguna Beach."
The incident, which began outside Element at 1642 Las Palmas Ave. shortly after 2:30 a.m., was videotaped by a TMZ.com photographer. TMZ.com is an entertainment news Web site.
The video shows Niarchos in the driver's seat of a Bentley, surrounded by paparazzi. He pulls a jacket over his head, then tries to drive off but hits a movie company truck, damaging the hood of the Bentley.
Later, TMZ cameras spotted the car pulled over by police on Cherokee Avenue and all the occupants standing outside the $175,000 automobile.
Torriero says, "I'm the only sober one, let's just go," and offers to drive.
When police let them go, Paris thanks the police, blows them a kiss and says, "We love the police."
Paris Hilton
Road Rage Case Ends
Mykelti Williamson
A man who allegedly threatened to kill "Forrest Gump" actor Mykelti Williamson in a road-rage incident pleaded guilty to possessing a loaded gun.
Williamson, 45, played the shrimp-loving soldier Bubba in "Forrest Gump." According to a police report, his car may have cut off Diaz's sport utility vehicle on a Gardena street on May 3.
Diaz began to "aggressively tailgate" Williamson and flash gang hand signs, the report said.
When Williamson pulled over to let him pass, Diaz instead parked in front of his car, got out, pointed a .357 magnum revolver at Williamson and threatened to kill him, police reported.
For the rest, Mykelti Williamson
Painting Breaks Record
Mark Rothko
A Christie's sale of post-war and contemporary art met its advance billing as the biggest auction of its kind on Tuesday, with a Mark Rothko oil painting setting a new world record of $22.4 million for any post-war work at auction.
New marks were also set for artists Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon and several others, as the auction house achieved the highest total for the increasingly lucrative post-war and contemporary market, selling $157.4 million. That exceeded the presale high-end estimate of $145 million.
The sale included 18 new records among the 40 artists included in the sale. Rothko sets records for both his painting and a work on paper.
Mark Rothko
Cannabis Drug Promising
Rheumatoid Arthritis
A company-sponsored trial of GW Pharma's cannabis-based medicine, Sativex, in rheumatoid arthritis patients, shows the drug works as a painkiller and may also slow disease progression, according to research published online in Rheumatology on Wednesday.
In the first ever controlled trial of a cannabis-based medicine (CBM) in rheumatoid arthritis, significant pain-relieving effects were observed and disease activity was significantly suppressed following Sativex treatment, according to researchers
Of the 56 patients in the five-week randomized study, 31 were given Sativex daily by fixed delivery oromucosal spray and 27 received placebo.
The cannabis-based drug produced statistically significant improvements in pain of movement, pain at rest, quality of sleep, and disease activity.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
In Memory
Reginald Gammon
Reginald Gammon, an educator and artist whose paintings and prints focused on social injustice and the civil rights era, died Thursday at Heart Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 84.
Gammon was a retired professor of fine arts and humanities who taught at Western Michigan University.
He was born in Philadelphia and educated at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art and the Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple University, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported Tuesday.
Gammon later moved to New York, where he became a founding member of the Spiral Group in the early 1960s. The organization of black artists promoted their works and explored how they could use their talents to aid the civil rights movement.
Spiral Group disbanded after putting together only one exhibition. In 1969, Gammon joined the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, an organization formed to protest the exclusion and disparaging treatment of black art in mainstream museums and galleries.
He came to Western Michigan as a visiting scholar in 1970 and was offered a permanent teaching job at the end of his stay. Gammon moved to Albuquerque after retiring from the university in 1991.
Reginald Gammon
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