'TBH Politoons'
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Sick Of This Crap!
Out with the old and in with the sycophantic! No more pussy-footing around with dissenting opinions. Onward to the edge of the flat earth!!!!!
This week's issue includes:
* Condoleezza! Condoleezza! Condo Leaser!
* Iraqn - WMD for real this time. Honest. No Foolin.
* Fallujah - Mission Accomplished!! Honest. No Foolin.
* China and Japan - America's Loan Sharks
Join us won't you join us? We're just a click away....
Reader Recommended Reading
Interviews with Soldiers
Reader Comment
Re: Mysterious 'Booms'
Mysterious 'Booms'
Sonic booms. They're testing some sort of new aircraft, missile, or something.
A couple of nights ago, out for my midnight stroll, I suddenly noticed a con-trail that had not been visible a moment earlier. It stretched across the sky as a thin tube without my noticing it being 'drawn,' so it must have been travelling at VERY high speeds. No boom though. No sound at all (which itself is weird). It must have been supersonic before it crossed Los Angeles.
And, the awful thing, the contrail held itself together in a fairly high wind (based on its rate of movement across the sky perpendicularly). That suggested to me that it was high-altitude. It moved across most of the sky for all the world like a piece of spagetti, and only started getting fuzzy after a weirdly long time.
It also appeared somewhat greasy (normal contrails are just ice), so I thought maybe it was some kind of solid-fuel rocket.
A while back this fellow kept telling me about 'chem-trails,' and I have been an official sceptic. But, now I find that I'm an observer of a chem-trail myself.
Paul
Los Angeles
Thanks, Paul!
In part of the story I cut, it mentioned that the sound wasn't a sonic boom and was coming from the ground.
I just figured they were expanding 'Go-Fuck-Yourself's' undisclosed location.
As to the local contrails, I remember when I lived in the Valley we'd see lots of interesting trails from stuff launched at Vandy.
Reader Recommended Reading
The Worst Campaign Journalist of 2004
Fun Link
from Bruce
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still mostly overcast & cold.
Launching New Anti-AIDS Drive In South Africa
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela will Tuesday launch a campaign using the world's most famous prison number -- his own -- to try to raise an army of volunteers to fight HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation is spearheading the drive with television and radio campaigns featuring messages from the elder statesman and Hollywood hearthrob Brad Pitt and a toll-free number where volunteers can phone in to offer their services.
The number -- 0800046664 -- draws on the number of Mandela's prison cell 46664 which was used last year to stage a mega concert in Cape Town to raise funds for AIDS and drew rock and pop royalty like U2 frontman Bono, Peter Gabriel and Beyonce Knowles.
The hotline, which becomes operational on Tuesday will run till the end of December, and volunteers will be seconded to suitable AIDS organisations until April, an official from the Nelson Mandela Foundation said.
Nelson Mandela
Signs TV Deal
Robin Quivers
Robin Quivers, shock jock Howard Stern's longtime sidekick, is making a solo move into television.
Quivers has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Television to develop a syndicated talk show for daytime TV, the company announced Monday.
The potential series could debut by fall 2005. Quivers will continue her work on Stern's radio show while developing the TV show, Sony said.
Quivers, a former nurse in the U.S. Air Force who achieved the rank of captain, began her radio career in Washington in 1980 and teamed with Stern the next year.
Robin Quivers
Take on TV Roles From Youth
Orson Bean & Charles Durning
Veteran actors Orson Bean and Charles Durning have taken on TV roles that touch on very different periods in their youths.
Bean, 76, who was blacklisted for a year during the anti-communist fervor of the 1950s, guest stared on "Cold Case" as a former communist sympathizer now suspected in an unsolved 1953 murder case.
Durning, 81, a decorated World War II veteran, appears in "NCIS" as a man who claims to have murdered a fellow Marine while fighting at Iwo Jima in 1945.
The "Cold Case" episode with Bean, titled "Red Glare," aired Sunday. Durning is in Tuesday's episode of "NCIS."
Orson Bean & Charles Durning
Unveils Victims Data
Holocaust Museum
Israel's Holocaust museum on Sunday posted on the Internet for the first time biographical information about three million of the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany.
The database, at www.yadvashem.org, is partly based on more than two million "pages of testimony" submitted to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem since 1950 by survivors or family members and friends of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Information was also gleaned from historical documentation, such as correspondence of Nazi officials and lists of inmates at death camps, Yad Vashem said on the Web site.
Holocaust Museum
Struggles for 21st Century Notice
Lina Wertmuller
In the 1970s, Italian film director Lina Wertmuller became the first woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for best director and was hailed as the next Fellini for her powerful political comedies.
Since then some critics have asked if she has gone soft, and it seems her name is more often a crossword puzzle clue than the focus of a new movie review.
Although her public profile has faded, Wertmuller continues at age 78 to make movies. She recently gave the world premiere in San Francisco of her latest film "Stuffed Peppers and Fish in Face" about the marital woes of a couple played by F. Murray Abraham and Sofia Loren and their children.
In an interview, Wertmuller, with tightly cropped white hair and white glasses, said her artistic vision remained strong though she has not found a U.S. distributor for her films for a decade.
For a lot more, Lina Wertmuller
In Fight With Intruder
Ozzy Osbourne
Two burglars broke into the English country home of rocker and reality TV star Ozzy Osbourne just before dawn on Monday and stole a large amount of jewelry, police said.
A source close to the family said Osbourne, 55, grabbed one of them, but the intruder struggled free and jumped out of a first-floor window.
Neither Osbourne nor his wife, Sharon, were hurt during the incident, the source said. Their three children together were not in the house at the time. The value of the missing jewelry is still being assessed, the source added.
Ozzy Osbourne
Requires Kidney Transplant
Steven Cojocaru
Red-carpet fashion maven Steven Cojocaru said Monday that a genetic condition will require him to undergo a kidney transplant operation.
Cojocaru, a correspondent for the syndicated television shows "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider," said he suffers from polycystic kidney disease.
Kidney transplant surgery is second to corneal transplant as the most common transplant operation in the United States, with over 9,000 kidney transplants performed each year, according to Paramount.
Steven Cojocaru
To Wrap Central Park in Fabric
Christo
For two weeks in February, walkways in Central Park will be festooned with 23 miles of saffron-colored fabric gates by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in a public art project they have sought to do for 23 years.
The artists had unsuccessfully been trying for years to win city approval for the piece, titled "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979 to 2005," until Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is a patron of the arts, agreed to it.
Beginning next month, 7,500 16-foot metal frames designed to hold the fabric will be erected throughout the park at 15-foot intervals. The fabric will be installed on Feb. 12, 2005, the artists said, and will remain until Feb. 27.
The artists, who have previously wrapped the German Reichstag and the Pont Neuf in Paris in fabric and surrounded part of Australia's coast in sand-colored cloth, will pay for the costs related to the project and donate $3 million to the city.
Christo
3 Year Renewal
Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil McGraw, host of the syndicated daytime talk show "Dr. Phil" is extending his contract through the 2008-09 season, sources said.
McGraw most recently extended his contract in 2002 by two years, when he committed to doing the series, through the 2005-06 season.
Syndicator King World declined comment Friday, as did producer Paramount Domestic Television. Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Prods., which created the show, could not be reached.
Dr. Phil
Seek Bankruptcy Protection
Trump Casinos
Donald J. Trump's casino empire has filed for bankruptcy protection after months of negotiations with bondholders over restructuring a crushing debt.
Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. and numerous related operations filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code on Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J. The Trump casino business consists mainly of three Atlantic City properties and a riverboat casino in Indiana and are only a small part of Trump's overall real estate empire.
Trump Casinos
Pasadena, CA
Doo Dah Parade
With one eye on the gray, overcast sky and the other on the entries, a crowd estimated by Pasadena police at between 10,000 and 20,000 people braved chilly, damp weather Sunday to witness the 28th annual Doo Dah Parade.
The parade featured 110 official entries and parade organizers did a good job keeping them moving and evenly spaced, greatly reducing the gaps between entrants.
Regulars included Leg-Go, the One-Legged Clown, the Hard Hat Brotherhood, the Spawn of Captain James T. Kirk, the Men of Leisure Synchronized Nap Team and Don King of Candy, who threw candy into the crowd.
Some crowd favorites were Stoogie Men, cigar smokers lounging on a flatbed truck with a giant, smoking "cigar,' the energetic Humboldt State University Lumberjacks marching band, the droll Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, Caesar's Circus' toga-clad men and women, "stabbing' each other and spilling fake blood all over the street, the Claude Rains Memorial 20-Man Invisible Marching Drill Team, and the pulse- pounding Mustang drummers who ended the parade.
Doo Dah Parade
Virginia Paper Drops Columnist
Michelle Malkin
On daily newspapers' opinion pages, columnists come and go. But the dumping of an increasingly popular conservative at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., got more of a public airing than usual.
The newspaper's public editor, Marvin Lake, announced in a column responding to a reader's complaint about editorial balance at the paper that Michelle Malkin, who had been added to give "another voice to the conservatives," had been dropped as a columnist because she was "too stridently anti-liberal."
Lake explained that "readers often took issue with her seemingly mean-spirited rantings and suggested that she be dropped. Well, shes outta here, silenced for being 'too stridently anti-liberal,' the assessment of the editorial board."
Lake pointed out, however, that the paper had also dropped Molly Ivins not long ago for being stridently "anti-Bush."
Michelle Malkin
Rare Recordings Fail to Sell at Auction
Elvis Presley
A batch of Elvis Presley's earliest RCA recordings from nearly 50 years ago failed to meet the minimum asking price at auction on Monday, but lesser keepsakes from the King of Rock 'n' Roll fetched more than $6,000.
The highlight of the two-day sale of show business memorabilia by international auction house Bonhams and Butterfields was a private collection of six reel-to-reel tape recordings of Presley valued at between $30,000 and $50,000.
The "pre-master" recordings of some of Presley's first sessions at RCA included never-before-heard versions of such hits as "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock" as well as studio banter among the singer, members of his band and the engineer who recorded them, Thorne Nogar.
Elvis Presley
Picks Up Bowl Football After ABC Declines
Fox
Three days after ABC took a pass on renewal of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), Fox took the ball and signed a four-year agreement to televise the BCS and a new college football championship game.
The BCS-Fox deal, announced officially Monday, will run from 2007 through 2010, after ABC's current contract runs out in 2006. It includes the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl through 2010 and the BCS National Championship Game sometime in early January from 2007 through 2009. The Rose Bowl will remain on ABC because of a separate contract, as well as two national championship games in 2010 and 2014.
Fox
Famed Collection to Be Sold
Abraham Lincoln
For almost 70 years, Lloyd 0stendorf was a man obsessed by images of Abraham Lincoln. He would track down everything from rare photos to strands of the 16th U.S. president's hair and even a piece of the bloody coat he was killed in.
Los Angeles auction house Bonhams & Butterfields says it will auction off more than 100 photos and objects from 0stendorf's collection on Tuesday in what auctioneers describe as one of the most important sales of Lincoln memorabilia in years.
The collection includes a rare plaster mask of Lincoln made just months before his assassination on April 14, 1865, as well as the piece of coat, the locks of hair, photographs of the president, his family, his entourage and his assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth. The sale is expected to fetch more than $1 million.
Included in the sale are pictures of Lincoln with beard and without and a personally signed photograph of the president.
Abraham Lincoln
Hustler to Publish Photos
Paris Hilton
Photographs of a Paris Hilton makeout session with a woman at a nightclub have provided a new venue - Hustler magazine - for the hotel heiress and TV reality show star.
Eight pictures, which are from about 2002, show Hilton, fully clothed, "with a brunette at a nightclub, cavorting with her, dancing and cuddling with her and fondling her," Phoenix-based agent David Hans Schmidt told The Associated Press Monday.
Bruce David, Hustler's editorial director, told the AP the photos will likely be published in the May issue, which hits newsstands at the end of February.
Paris Hilton
