'TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Murray Waas: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel (nationaljournal.com)
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.
Sarah Ferguson: An Army of None (Village Voice. Posted on Alternet.org)
If the anti-recruitment activists win, we could be facing a draft soon -- and that's fine with them.
WITH REAL ESTATE, THIS TIME IT REAL (freemarketnews.com)
The housing mania, like all manias that have preceded it, is finally coming to a long overdue end. Time tested principles of prudent mortgage lending will inevitability return, and houses will once again be regarded merely as places to live. However, the country will be a lot poorer as a result of the unprecedented dissipation of wealth and accumulation of consumer and mortgage debt which occurred during the bubble years. Before real estate prices can return to normal levels, they will first have to get dirt cheep. It has been a wild party, but in the end all that will remain is a giant hang-over.
Dr. Mark H. Shapiro: Another Shot Fired in the War Against Science (irascibleprofessor.com)
By mounting a variety of legal challenges to the teaching of evolution, opponents hope to intimidate teachers so that we return to the days when evolution was hardly mentioned in high school biology textbooks and was barely mentioned in the classroom. The opponents, in the IP's view, are not motivated so much by a certainty in their own religious views as they are by the fear that evolution might actually be correct.
Elana Berkowitz and John Burton: Burying College Grads in Debt (Campus Progress. Posted on Alternet.org)
The average student now graduates with three and a half times more debt than ten years ago, but still Washington wants to cut even more student aid.
RICHARD ROEPER: Holiday shopping madness puts us in dubious company (suntimes.com)
People. What are you doing? Seriously. You're camping out for hours in the middle of the night so you can be part of a pre-dawn stampede to buy toys and games and other Christmas crap for your loved ones. Why? In what universe do you live where it matters if you get this stuff on Black Friday or, for example, THE FOLLOWING DAY?
RICHARD ROEPER: Did they hit the jackpot, or a moral dilemma? (suntimes.com)
Last week, Harrah's Joliet Casino sent out 11,000 coupons worth $525 apiece. The casino meant to send out coupons for $15 or $20, but the direct marketing vendor mistakenly printed tickets for the much larger amount. You can't blame patrons for showing up and expecting the amount on the coupon, even if the offer did seem too good to be true. After several coupon-holders who were turned away complained to the Illinois Gaming Board, Harrah's was ordered to make good on the coupons, which could cost the casino some $5.8 million. Something tells me they'll be looking for a new direct-marketing vendor in the very near future.
Hubert's Poetry Corner
GOODFELLOW AND THE OLD SARGE'S LAST FIRE DRILL
Reader Comment
Re: Tolkien Illustrations
Reader Question
An Omen?
I don't know if I believe in omens or not but just maybe that marble chunk
falling off the Supreme Court facade is a sign of things to come?
Pete
Thanks, Pete!
Wonder if there was a little boy named Damien rolling by on a tricycle...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Clear & crisp.
Keep finding stuff my niece left behind.
Damn shame we're no where near the same size.
Rock Hall of Fame
2006 Inductees
Black Sabbath, Miles Davis and the Sex Pistols are among five musical legends to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation will hold its induction ceremony March 13 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, the organization announced Monday.
Also to be inducted into the class of 2006: 1980s New Wave band Blondie and Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who founded A&M records in 1962, will receive a lifetime achievement award in the non-performer category.
2006 Inductees
Author Incurs U.S. Backlash
Anatol Lieven
British journalist and think-tank fellow Anatol Lieven wrote his book "America Right or Wrong" as a wake-up call for the United States to curb its nationalism or face the consequences.
"While America keeps a splendid and welcoming house, it also keeps a family of demons in the cellar," he writes in the book, published in 2004 and just re-issued in paperback.
"Usually kept under certain restraints, these demons were released by 9/11," he adds, seeing the attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001, as the trigger that unleashed the nationalist, messianic "dark side" of America.
The neo-conservatives in the Bush administration embraced the concept of preventive war to promote America's influence in the world, Lieven says. All it needed was the trigger al Qaeda provided.
Anatol Lieven
Boycotts China Over Dog, Cat Brutality
McCartneys
Rock star Paul McCartney said he will never perform in China after watching a disturbing secret video of dogs and cats in a market being slaughtered for fur.
The video, from the German branch of the animal rights group PETA, shows caged dogs in wire cages being hurled from the top deck of a converted double-decker bus onto a concrete pavement at a market in southern Chinese.
The animals, including some PETA said appeared to have been stolen from their owners, were also seen being skinned for their fur to be used in garments for export aboard.
McCartneys
Finds Niche
Craig Ferguson
"There's something I believe wholeheartedly: Cynicism is the true refuge of the pseudo-intellectual," Craig Ferguson says with conviction, leaning back in a chair with work boot-shod feet propped up on the desk in his office at CBS Television City. "Cynicism is easy. Joy is an extremely advanced spiritual and intellectual tenet."
As he nears his first anniversary on the job at CBS' "The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson," the host has been spending a lot of time thinking about such weighty concerns. Ferguson says he has been in a pretty advanced place for most of the year after finding his footing in a job that has thoroughly changed his life.
Although he fell in love with the job, it took a few months of not quite hitting the mark before Ferguson found his comfort zone. He decided to lose the tie that comes as standard-issue equipment with the job, and he jettisoned virtually all of the show's prepared skits and bits.
Craig Ferguson
Baby News
Lancaster - Stewart
At age 60, Rod Stewart is a father again.
His fiancee, Penny Lancaster, gave birth to a baby boy early Sunday morning at a London hospital, the couple announced Monday. The baby, who is their first child, weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces.
Lancaster - Stewart
Picked Up By E!
'The Simple Life'
Feuding ex-friends Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie will take "The Simple Life" to E! Entertainment Television in a new format that allows them to have nothing to do with each other.
Fox had declined to air a fourth season of the one-time reality hit, but E! said Monday it would show 10 new episodes starting next spring.
The fourth season will have Hilton and Richie taking turns playing a "wife" and running households, with the family involved each week deciding which of the two did a better job.
E! has also acquired the rights to rerun the first three seasons of "The Simple Life"
'The Simple Life'
Myanmar Extends Arrest
Aung San Suu Kyi
Myanmar's military government has extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has spent much of the last 16 years in detention, her political party said Monday.
The National League for Democracy said it was unable to confirm the length of the extension, although under the anti-subversion law being applied, it would be one year. It did not say how the party's Central Executive Committee, which met Monday, confirmed the extension. The military government has not commented on the reported action.
The Nobel peace laureate was last taken into custody on May 30, 2003, after her motorcade was attacked by a pro-junta mob as she was making a political tour of northern Myanmar.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Film Festival To Bridge Gap
Dubai
Dubai's international film festival opens next month, featuring films meant to bridge East-West differences in the presence of stars led by Morgan Freeman and Greek-French cult director Costa-Gavras.
The December 11-17 festival will feature 98 films from 46 countries and showcase Arab contemporary films, said festival director and CEO Neil Stephenson.
Along with Freeman and legendary Indian producer Yash Chopra, the event will honor Egyptian superstar actor Adel Imam by screening two of his films, including this year's "The embassy is in the building" which tackles the sensitive issue of Egyptian-Israeli ties.
Besides Costa-Gavras, due to attend the Middle East premiere of his black comic fantasy "Le Couperet" (The Ax), other celebrities include US actors Albert Brooks and Dylon McDermott.
Dubai
Exhibit Showcases Idealism
Currier & Ives
The steamboat is engulfed in flames, and the choppy waters of Long Island Sound are filled with people clinging to bobbing life boats.
By the time the Lexington sank on Jan. 13, 1840, 100 people had died.
It's not exactly the image that comes to mind when you think of Currier & Ives, the 19th-century printmakers most commonly associated with tranquil scenes of snow-covered New England villages and trotting horses.
But in one of the country's largest collections of Currier & Ives lithographs, the company's journalistic beginnings blend into its long-term mission of bringing fine art and American idealism to the country's middle-class.
For the rest, Currier & Ives
India Turns Page Murder
Mahatma Gandhi
The death of the last man convicted in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of India's freedom movement, has closed a chapter in the bitter history of the country's independence, an analyst said.
One of five men convicted in the 1948 assassination, Gopal Godse, 85, died in the western state of Maharashtra Sunday after a prolonged illness, his son Nana Godse said. Godse served 18 years in prison for his role in the crime.
Gopal testified against his brother, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Gandhi and was hanged to death with another accused in 1949. Gopal Godse and two others were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mahatma Gandhi
In Porn Flick
Daleks
Dr Who's most deadly enemies, the Daleks, have taken time off from taking over the universe to star in a porn film. Despite only being equipped with plungers, the croaky-voiced evildoers have been cast in an 18-rated film alongside three naked "disco babes". Normally only seen making the Doctor's life a misery, the metallic monsters are shown chasing the girls round a spaceship and getting involved in various X-rated activities.
However, the people who dreamed up the Daleks are not amused.
BBC chiefs are said to have had copies of the DVD - called Abducted By The Daleks - withdrawn from Internet auction site eBay.
Daleks
In Memory
Constance Cummings
American-born actress Constance Cummings, a Hollywood star of the early 1930s who then became one of the leading figures on the British stage, has died. She was 95.
Born in Seattle, Cummings was only in her early 20s when she became a leading actress in Hollywood, where her intelligence, charming manner and tumbling golden curls made her a favorite.
In just two years, she made more than a dozen films, working for such top directors as Howard Hawks in the 1931 prison drama "The Criminal Code," and Frank Capra in his 1932 Depression drama, "American Madness."
She also was the 1932 Harold Lloyd comedy "Movie Crazy," and "Broadway Through a Keyhole," a 1933 nightclub drama that was cowritten by columnist Walter Winchell and featured singers Russ Columbo and Blossom Seeley.
While in Hollywood, she met her future husband, the British playwright Benn Levy.
They married in 1933, and it was under his guidance that she developed into a fine stage actress, initially in comic roles in her husband's plays and adaptations, then increasingly in more serious portrayals, including "Long Day's Journey Into Night" opposite Laurence Olivier.
Cummings was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, in 1974.
Her husband died in 1973 and she is survived by a son and a daughter.
Constance Cummings
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