'Best of TBH Politoons'
But Untrue
Strangely Believable
President Bush is expected to use his inaugural address to call for a War on Plate Tectonics.
~Jeff Crook
Jeff Crook is the Ceci Connolly of the Left - J. Howard Tuft
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Robert Lenzner Daniel Kruger: A Word From A Dollar Bear
Warren Buffett's vote of no confidence in U.S. fiscal policies is up to $20 billion. Š Buffett has for a long time been lecturing fellow Americans about their bad habit of borrowing from abroad to live well today. He made a big stink about his currency trades in his March 2004 letter to shareholders. FORBES phoned him recently for an update, hoping for the news that the Scold of Omaha had softened his views on the decline of the dollar. What we got was more doom and gloom, more than we have ever heard from the man.
TOP TEN MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS OF 2004
Here are the Top Ten most outrageous statements we have heard this year from members of the media. From anti-Semitic comments and attacks on women, gays, and lesbians to reprehensible acceptance of the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture, these statements are acutely representative of the conservative hate speech we found in the news media:
* Rush Limbaugh on the Abu Ghraib photos: "I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?"
DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Needing Cash, Veterans Sign Consumer lawyers are getting calls from people facing lawsuits and bankruptcy after signing over future pension payments to these companies. No one is certain how many veterans have been affected, but the potential market is substantial. In the last year, roughly 1.7 million military retirees received about $33 billion in pension payments from the Pentagon.
Jim Hightower: THE COSTCO MODEL
Costco is different... and that really POs Wall Street. The nationwide retailer treats its 100,000 clerks, forklift operators, and other workers as valued assets to be invested in and nurtured - unlike the Wal-Mart model of paying the least you can to rank & file employees, squeezing the last ounce of toil out of each of them, busting any whisper of unionization, and causing a workforce turnover like employees are nothing but disposable coffee cups.
Cynthia Tucker: Resolving not to resolve
I'm making only one New Year's resolution this year: I will make no New Year's resolutions. I have finally resolved that New Year's resolutions only frustrate me since I never keep them.
Robert Scheer : A Devil's Island for our times
It is time to invade Cuba and put an end to what has become another Devil's Island in the annals of government-sanctioned torture. The barbaric treatment of political prisoners on the island is made no more palatable by being conducted in the name of an ideology that claims to be liberating the world from its shackles.
Matt Miller: 'I DON'T KNOW' - A POET'S LESSON FOR POLITICIANS
In a world filled with pretense, where leaders of all stripes parade before us so sure of their "solutions," it's a rare voice that reminds us that progress flows instead from uncertainty and doubt. That's why around this time each year I reread the 1996 Nobel Prize lecture of Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska.
The Rapture Index
Talk Radio Daily News
Clark Howard: Tips on Miscellaneous Scams
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Lots more rain.
Wedding News
Chen - Moonves
CCBS honcho Leslie Moonves and his bride, "The Early Show" anchor Julie Chen, are enjoying a Mexican honeymoon after getting married last week.
They were married at sunset Dec. 23 at a private home in Mexico, and honeymooned at the posh Las Ventanas resort in Cabo San Lucas.
Moonves, 55, was divorced earlier this month from his first wife, Nancy, after 24 years of marriage.
Chen, 34, has moonlighted as host of the CBS reality show "Big Brother." She wore an ivory gown designed by Reem Acra.
Chen - Moonves
Receiving Honorary Oscar
Takuo Miyagishima
Noted movie camera engineer Takuo Miyagishima will receive a Gordon E. Sawyer honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Miyagishima, a longtime employee of the Panavision camera company specializing in lens design, is the 18th recipient of the Sawyer award, which is presented to an individual "whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry."
He will receive his Oscar at the academy's Scientific and Technical Awards Dinner on Feb. 12, with portions of the ceremony to be included during the live 77th Academy Awards telecast on Feb. 27.
Takuo Miyagishima
Reconstructed Version To Premiere At Berlin festival
Battleship Potemkin
A newly reconstructed version of the 1925 Soviet silent classic Battleship Potemkin, featuring shots cut from the original, will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
The film now includes the original's Russian graphics and the opening words of revolutionary Leon Trotsky, which were cut in "one of the most spectacular cases of censorship in the 1920s," a festival statement said Wednesday. No complete print of the original film survived, it said.
Battleship Potemkin, directed by Sergei Eisenstein, dramatizes the mutiny on the Russian ship and its role in inspiring a failed 1905 uprising against the country's czars.
It is perhaps best known for the "Odessa steps" sequence, in which a child in a stroller rolls down a staircase as fighting rages around it.
Battleship Potemkin
'Jeopardy!' to Hold 'Super Tournament'
Ken Jennings
If winning more than $2.5 million wasn't enough, "Jeopardy!" whiz Ken Jennings will have a shot at winning an additional $2 million - but the competition will be tougher this time around.
Producers of the game show announced Tuesday a "Super Tournament," which will pit Jennings in a final match against two survivors of a competition between nearly 150 past five-time winners.
The matches will begin airing in February or March, and the finals will air in May.
The third-place winner will receive $250,000 and the second-place winner, $500,000.
Ken Jennings
Honored In Reno
Mills Lane
Former judge, boxing referee and TV personality Mills Lane was honoured near the site of a justice centre that will be named for him.
Lane, 67, who suffered a stroke nearly three years ago, took part in the ceremonies, but did not speak. His son, Terry, said it was just his father's second public appearance since the stroke.
The ceremony took place in the existing court building next to the site of the future Mills B. Lane Justice Center that will house Reno's municipal courts and district attorney offices. Lane formerly served as Washoe County district attorney and district court judge.
He officiated 102 championship fights, including the 1997 heavyweight match in which Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear. Lane also was a TV judge from 1998-2001 on a reality show that bore his name.
Mills Lane
Police Probing
Nightclub Shooting
Police are probing whether a rap industry feud involving platinum-selling label The Inc. led to a fatal shooting outside a nightclub party hosted by rapper Ja Rule, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.
Federal authorities are investigating The Inc. founder Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo and notorious crack kingpin Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. Neither Gotti nor McGriff has been charged in the case, but court filings allege the label, formerly known as Murder Inc., laundered more than $1 million in drug money.
The label's top-selling artist, Ja Rule, hosted a Sunday night party at LQ, a Latin-themed club in midtown Manhattan that had been rented for the night by a team of party promoters, club manager Ruben Rodriguez said. The party featured a crowd of about 300, including minor celebrities and a bevy of rap video models, Rodriguez said.
Around 3:30 a.m., a man in a yellow jacket left the club and waited outside for Troy Moore, 37, and William Clark, 39, according to a police report. The man opened fire, hitting Moore and Clark, police said. Clark died of his injuries, and Moore was hospitalized in stable condition.
Moore is the brother of Tyran "Tah Tah" Moore, an associate of Lorenzo and McGriff. Rapper 50 Cent named Tyran Moore and McGriff as possible suspects in a shooting that left him with nine bullet wounds and helped build his credibility as a gangster rapper.
Nightclub Shooting
Weak Dollar Draws Tourists
Broadway Takings Up
Foreign tourists lured to New York by the weak U.S. dollar helped boost Broadway theater box office takings by 3 percent in 2004, an industry association said on Wednesday.
Gross takings for the year were $749 million, up from $725 million in 2003, according to the League of American Theatres and Producers. The number of tickets bought rose to 11.3 million from 11.1 million.
The dollar is close to all-time lows against the euro and other major currencies, making the United States an attractive destination for foreign tourists.
Broadway Takings Up
Subject of 'Hotel Rwanda'
Paul Rusesabagina
He saved over 1,000 people from the horror of genocide, has been dubbed "Rwanda's Schindler" and is the subject of a Hollywood movie on the 1994 bloodshed.
But Rwandan Paul Rusesabagina does not think of himself as a hero.
"I wouldn't take myself as a hero," the softly-spoken 50-year-old told Reuters in an interview.
"I rather take myself as someone who did his duties and responsibilities, someone who remained until the end when others changed completely their professions, and most of them became killers and others were killed."
Ten years after Rwanda descended into chaos, during which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in just 100 days, the genocide is back in the headlines after the release of a new film.
"Hotel Rwanda," starring Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina and Nick Nolte as a U.N. commander, centers around the Mille Collines hotel in Kigali, the country's leading hotel.
Paul Rusesabagina
Acquitted of Battery
John Wayne Bobbitt
John Wayne Bobbitt has been acquitted of charges that he battered family members after the discovery of a sex toy in his bedroom.
In finding Bobbitt innocent of domestic violence, a Las Vegas judge ruled Monday that Bobbitt's 14-year-old stepson was to blame for the August fight.
Monday's trial focused on a scuffle involving Bobbitt's stepson and the boy's mother, Joanna Ferrell, who is Bobbitt's wife of three years. Bobbitt, 37, had faced four misdemeanor battery counts.
Witnesses testified the teen became enraged after finding the sex toy. He began throwing things around the living room until Bobbitt confronted him.
When the boy shoved him, Bobbitt pushed him to the ground and restrained him, witnesses for both the prosecution and defense testified. Accounts varied whether Bobbitt ever punched the boy.
John Wayne Bobbitt
U.K. Holidays
Pantomime
Onstage, a revered classical actor with a knighthood and two Academy Award nominations to his name is strutting his stuff in a multicolored mini-dress, tossing out double entendres with a wink to the crowd. In the audience of the Old Vic Theatre, adults and children are alternately cheering, hissing and shouting at the stage. It must be panto season again.
For millions of Britons, the holidays are incomplete without a trip to see a pantomime - a raucous traditional entertainment that combines fairy tale, vaudeville, standup and drag revue in an exuberant, eccentrically British mix.
Each December, hundreds of pantomimes open around the country, in humble community halls to regional and West End theaters. Their casts can include actors, pop singers, faded TV stars and even - in the case of the Old Vic's "Aladdin" - Sir Ian McKellen, in a campy comic turn.
It's estimated that more than 10 million people in Britain attend a pantomime each year, and they're a lifeline for many theater companies. While most commercial stage shows lose money, pantos usually make a profit. Qdos Entertainment, the country's largest panto producer, has 32 shows running this season.
Pantomime
In Memory
Jerry Orbach
Jerry Orbach, acclaimed as a quintessential New York actor for his work on Broadway, in films and as the star of television's "Law & Order," has died from cancer. He was 69.
Orbach, whose best-known films included "Prince of the City," "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Dirty Dancing," announced he was being treated for prostate cancer earlier this month.
He died at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center late on Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
Orbach starred for 12 seasons in the original "Law & Order" television series as Detective Lennie Briscoe and was set to star in a new spinoff in March.
A lanky actor with a deep voice and a slicked mop of dark hair, Orbach first made his name on Broadway, winning a Tony for "Promises, Promises." He created the role of Billy Flynn in "Chicago" and was in the original cast of "42nd Street."
Born in the Bronx in 1935, he was the son of a former vaudevillian and a radio singer. He went to the University of Illinois and Northwestern University before returning to New York to study with method-acting guru Lee Strasberg.
Orbach first made his name as a song and dance man with his New York debut in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera," before creating the role of El Gallo in New York's longest-running Off-Broadway musical, "The Fantasticks."
He made his Broadway debut in "Carnival," receiving his first Tony nomination for the 1965 "Guys and Dolls" revival. A string of successful starring roles in musical revivals followed, including "Carousel" and "Annie Get Your Gun."
But it was his role as the wise-cracking, world-weary New York City Detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order" that brought Orbach a new generation of fans.
And he never completely left the musical. Orbach sang the Academy Award-nominated song "Be Our Guest" in Disney's 1991 animated film "Beauty and the Beast."
He is survived by his wife, Elaine, and two sons.
Jerry Orbach
