'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
PAUL KRUGMAN: One-Letter Politics (The New York Times)
In a recent interview with The Hartford Courant, Senator Joseph Lieberman said something that wasn't credible. When the newspaper asked him whether America would be better off if the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives next month, he replied, "Uh, I haven't thought about that enough to give an answer."
Tom Engelhardt: A War of the Words Against George Bush (Tomdispatch.com. Posted on Alternet.org)
Apt quotes from some of the most eloquent Bush critics in our era -- from Howard Zinn to Barbara Ehrenreich.
Jim Phillips: [Ted] Strickland's journey: From Bible college to [Ohio] governor's run (athensnews.com)
In his days as a prison psychologist, Ted Strickland used to work with a disturbed inmate who had the habit of chucking vials of his HIV-infected blood at staffers.
FRANK RICH: The Gay Old Party Comes Out (The New York Times)
PAGING Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council: Here's a gay Republican story you probably did not hear last week.
Maxim Kniazkov: For first time, unmarried households reign in U.S. (usatoday.com)
It is by no means dead, but for the first time, a survey has shown that traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the majority of U.S. households. ... The findings, which were released in August but largely escaped public attention until now because of the large volume of data, indicated that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2 percent.
Are you giving enough to charity? (guardian.co.uk)
The answer, sadly, is probably not. But don't beat yourself up - all the research suggests that you actually want to give more. All you have to do is put your mind to it.
How to scam a scammer (guardian.co.uk)
Dominic Utton: Mike is an unlikely vigilante. A 43-year-old self-employed computer engineer and self-confessed "comedy nerd". But to countless west African criminal gang members, Mike is public enemy No 1.
A life stripped bare (guardian.co.uk)
In life and in death, Alison Bechdel's father was a mystery even to his family. She tells Oliver Burkeman of her 'crazy and compulsive' attempt to make sense of his story in a graphic novel.
Andrew Tobias: Saving Money on Overseas Telepone Calls (andrewtobias.com; column for MON/Oct. 16)
Tom: "Future Phone is offering free international phone calls until 2010 from any phone - even from your cell phone. You are allowed unlimited calls at any time and no registration is required. Just call their Gateway Access Number listed on the site, dial the international prefix 011, the country code and then the phone number. For Canada, it is even simpler; after calling their Gateway Access Number, just dial 1 and the area code and the number. The Gateway Access Number listed when I looked was in Council Bluffs Iowa so you may incur a domestic long distance charge unless you live in Council Bluffs."
Free International Telephone Calls to Over 50 Countries (futurephone.com)
Is it really FREE?
For callers that have unlimited long distance or nationwide long distance plan's with their cell or local service provider, yes it will be FREE. If you do not have one of those plans the international long distance portion of the call is free, and you would just pay your normal rate for a domestic long distance call.
Bruce says check it out -- FCC FU: Political and Satirical Music Video (fccfu.com)
My country used to be
Sweet land of liberty
Book Suggestion
'Coloring Conservatives'
Fifty-six renowned artists were asked to pick a page from The Pat
Robertson and Friends Coloring Book and have their artistic way with
it. These are the results.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still gray and overcast, with no rain.
The kid was stung by a bee over the weekend, and he had a bit of an allergic reaction. His right hand looked like a catcher's mitt, but all is well now. Whew.
Mark Twain Prize
Neil Simon
Playwright Neil Simon, who drew on his New York upbringing to create such Broadway hits as "The Odd Couple," "Barefoot in the Park" and "Brighton Beach Memoirs," was honored on Sunday night with the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize as a uniquely American humorist.
Simon, who has written more than 40 Broadway plays and dozens of film scripts, came to Washington for praise and needling from a slew of actors who read his lines over more than four decades, including Jason Alexander, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane Kaczmarek, Paul Reiser and Christina Applegate.
The ceremony will air on November 20 on PBS television.
Neil Simon
Bucks Conservative Country Image
Tim McGraw
Country music might seem like a pretty conservative medium, but Tim McGraw is bucking the trend. "It's innate in me to be a Democrat - a true Southern populist kind of Democrat. There's not a lot of those anymore," McGraw tells Time magazine in its Oct. 23 issue.
"The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country. The chasm is getting larger between haves and have-nots, and that's something we need to close down a little bit," says the singer and star of "Flicka."
Tim McGraw
Comics Characters Tackle Bias
Stan Lee
If comic book characters like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man seem a tad different, their creator Stan Lee says that's the point.
"The thing I had in mind was to make it a story against bigotry of all sorts, because here were people who were certainly different than everybody else, but they were good, they were trying to do the right thing," Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle in Sunday's editions.
"But as so often happens in real life, if you have a different religion, a different country, a different sexual orientation, whatever the difference is, people - not all people, but it happens - are going to dislike you, distrust you, fear you."
Stan Lee
Composer Dedicates Music
Arvo Part
Estonian classical composer Arvo Part is dedicating all performances of his music during the 2006/7 concert season to the memory of recently slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
"In my grief at such a tragic loss, I ... would like to make a memorial gesture," Part said in a statement on Monday.
"I will dedicate all performances of my works during the 2006/2007 concert season, wherever they might take place, to the radiant memory of Anna Politkovskaya.
"Anna Politkovskaya gave all her talent and energy, and eventually her life, so that people would know and be aware of the appalling crimes being committed in Russia."
Arvo Part
fuse Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
Rob Zombie
Rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie picked up a Chainsaw Award for his horror flick "The Devil's Rejects." The "Killer Movie" award, presented Sunday night to Zombie by Robert "Freddy Kruger" Englund, was part of the first televised "fuse Fangoria Chainsaw Awards" to honor the best films and actors in the horror genre.
Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon, and actor Bill Moseley won the "Relationship From Hell" award for "The Devil's Rejects."
"Saw II" also won two awards, for "Best Butcher" (best villain) and "Looks that Kill" (best makeup).
Rob Zombie
Wedding News
O'Brien - Flatley
Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley married his leading lady, Niamh O'Brien. After a whirlwind romance the couple exchanged vows in front of family and friends in Fermoy, Co Cork.
Ms O'Brien, from Co Kildare, arrived at the church with her father Thomas in a black and silver Rolls Royce Phantom, specially purchased by the bridegroom for the occasion.
The bride wore an ivory gown, reported to have cost 100,000 euros (£67,000). She was accompanied by six bridesmaids, including her two sisters Aoibheann and Derval, who wore black floor-length dresses.
O'Brien - Flatley
Last Concert
CBGB
The final chords reverberated off the black, sticker-covered walls of CBGB as the grungy, iconic club toasted the end of its 33-year residence in New York. Rock poet Patti Smith headlined the Sunday night concert, CBGB's last before eviction by its landlord - the Bowery Residents Committee, a homeless advocacy group that owns the property. The club will close Oct. 31.
She refused to wax nostalgic, instead claiming at a pre-show news conference that doubled as a sound check that "CBGB's is a state of mind" that will carry on elsewhere for a new generation. She later noted with relish that CBGB, at 33, was the same age as Jesus.
Much of the concert was filled with reminders of changed times. Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast the show live, and digital cameras populated the audience.
CBGB
TV Analyst Fired Over Comments
Lamar Thomas
Former Miami player Lamar Thomas lost his TV analyst job Monday over comments he made during a sideline-clearing brawl involving the Hurricanes and Florida International.
Comcast Sports SouthEast, a regional cable network that hired Thomas before the season, also decided to edit out his comments before the game is replayed later this week.
"Now, that's what I'm talking about," Thomas said as the brawl raged out of control. "You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don't come into the OB playing that stuff. You're across the ocean over there. You're across the city. You can't come over to our place talking noise like that. You'll get your butt beat. I was about to go down the elevator to get in that thing."
"I say, why don't they just meet outside in the tunnel after the ball game and get it on some more? You don't come into the OB, baby," Thomas said. "We've had a down couple years but you don't come in here talking smack. Not in our house."
Lamar Thomas
Healthier Food At Parks
Disney
The Walt Disney Co. will begin serving more nutritionally balanced meals at its domestic theme parks and will sign movie and other endorsement deals only with restaurants that limit fat and sugar in menu items, the company said Monday.
Trans fats will be eliminated from meals at domestic parks by the end of next year, and will not be included in licensed and promotional products by 2008, Disney said.
Disney said it would implement the new guidelines over the next several years as current contracts expire.
Disney
Full-Season Pickup
'Ugly Betty'
ABC has ordered a full season of its comedy-drama "Ugly Betty," the most-watched new series this season with an average of 14.8 million viewers.
While it has slipped a bit from its stellar premiere three weeks ago, "Betty" still ranks as a solid second to CBS' "Survivor" in the 8 p.m. Thursday slot among total viewers and adults 18-49, delivering ABC's best numbers in the hour with scripted programming in 13 years.
'Ugly Betty'
Sues Over Bumper Sticker
Denise Grier
A woman who was ticketed for having an obscene anti-resident Bush bumper sticker filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday against DeKalb County and its officials.
Denise Grier, 47, of Athens, Ga., got a $100 ticket in March after a DeKalb County police officer spotted the bumper sticker, which read "I'm Tired Of All The BUSHIT."
Although a DeKalb judge threw out the ticket in April because the state's lewd decal law that formed the basis for the ticket was ruled unconstitutional in 1990, Grier is seeking damages for "emotional distress" against the county, according to the lawsuit.
Grier, a nurse who works at Emory University and other hospitals, also is seeking punitive damages against the DeKalb police officer who gave her the ticket because he "acted with reckless disregard" of her rights, the lawsuit said.
Denise Grier
Found In Kansas Field
Rare Meteorite
Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground penetrating radar technology that some day might be used on Mars.
Even before they had the meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago. Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer to 10,000 years ago.
Sophisticated metal detectors at the site initially detected what had been thought to be the largest pallasite meteorite ever discovered. But ground penetrating radar showed that object to be a steel cable.
The newest find weighs 154 lbs and measures 18 by 12 by 12, which is bigger than most such meteorites but on par for this particular field, Arnold said.
Rare Meteorite
Inaugural "Walk of Fame" Stars
Nashville
reba mcentire, Ronnie Milsap and the Fisk Jubilee Singers were among those chosen as the first inductees for a "Music City Walk of Fame" in Nashville, Tennessee, the walk's sponsors said on Monday.
Commemorative markers will be placed for them in a November 5 ceremony along with others for posthumous recipients Roy Orbison, songwriters Boudleaux & Felice Bryant and Nashville Symphony conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn.
Nashville
reba?
How about Patsy Cline? Or Dolly Parton? Or Tammy Wynette? Or Loretta Lynn? Or even Kitty Welles?
Eurochocolate Fair
Chocolate Igloo
Four Italians have constructed what they believe is the world's first full-sized chocolate igloo.
"It was a tough thing to do, much more difficult than building a normal snow igloo," Marco Fanti, 45, who used to race cars in desert rallies, told Reuters as he stood beside the 1.65-metre-high, dome-shaped traditional Inuit shelter made of some 330 dark chocolate bricks.
Fanti and fellow instructors at a survival school took 23 hours working with tricky, crumbling chocolate material to construct what they believe to be the world's first chocolate igloo for the Eurochocolate fair in Perugia.
Chocolate Igloo
Triples Rate Paid To Faux News
Cablevision
New York cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp. has agreed to triple the rate it pays News Corp. to carry Fox News on its cable network, a cable industry magazine reported on Monday.
The cable operator is expected to pay Fox News "north of 75 cents" per subscriber, up from the current 25 cents, according to a report on the Web site of Multichannel News, which cited an unidentified source.
That would represent a significant premium over the average 45 cents to 50 cents rates that rival CNN receives, the report said.
Cablevision
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