'Best of TBH Politoons'
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GOP STARs
GOP UPSIDE DOWN STAR "Ritual of the Pentagram"
NOW I KNOW WHY I KNOW!!!
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KEVKEV IN ARIZONA
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ian Welsh:Schumer, Rahm and Dean -- The 50 state strategy and the lump of money fallacy (bopnews.com)
Dean has raised more money than his predecessor. He has raised it primarily from small donors. The reason he has done so is that they like the idea of the 50 state strategy. They also personally trust him more than they trust Schumer and Rahm. If they wanted to fund ads (and Rahm and Schumer interfering in primaries) they would have given to the DCCC or the DSCC. Which is to say -- if all of the money was going to be used the DSCC and DCCC, primarily for use in ads -- there'd be a lot less money. Fundraising is not a zero sum game -- there is not a fixed lump of money. Dean gets more money, because he does things that the DSCC and DCCC don't do, that people want to fund. If he was a Schumer or Rahm clone, odds are he wouldn't be raising this much money.
Beware of card tricks (guardian.co.uk)
The government claims that national identity cards will help to counter terrorism, illegal immigration and ID fraud. That's rubbish, says Henry Porter, and in fact there is something much more sinister about them - they will fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state, and make slaves of us all.
The ideas interview: Richard Masters (guardian.co.uk)
John Sutherland talks to a senior British Library archive manager about how technology is making it harder, not easier, to secure data for the future.
Ellen Goodman: A bad time for boys?
Battle of sexes distracts from real needs in education.
Brian Hickey: Unusual Suspects (citypaper.net)
Inside the anti-war grannies' siege of the Broad Street recruiting office.
Paul Loeb: An inconvenient video game
Game designers could use their skills to teach kids to save the world.
REVIEWED BY JOHN CAREY: THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS by Sue Roe (timesonline.co.uk)
To judge from their paintings, the impressionists led idyllic private lives - afternoons on the river, seaside holidays, sun-dappled fields and gardens, bars, cafes, ballerinas. They painted happiness, and must surely have been happy. Sue Roe's businesslike if sometimes gushy group biography reminds us that the contrary was true.
James Thurber: The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
Moral: Run, don't walk, to the nearest desert island.
James Thurber: "The Birds and the Foxes"
Moral: Government of the orioles, by the foxes, and for the foxes, must perish from the earth.
James Thurber: The Peacelike Mongoose
Moral: Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn't get you your own folks may.
James Thurber: The Very Proper Gander (Scroll down)
Moral: Anybody who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Education (athensnews.com)
Arthur Jerome Wright, the father of Marian Wright Edelman, believed passionately in education. When he died, the soles of his shoes had holes, but two of his children had graduated from college, another child was in college, and yet another child was in divinity school. His dying words to his daughter, Marian Wright Edelman, were, "Don't let anything get in the way of your education." In 1963, she received her law degree from Yale University, and in 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund, which lobbies politicians to pass legislation to help children.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still hotter than seasonal, but not like last week.
Added a new flag - Bhutan 
Donates Green
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam has promised to donate $100,000 to several groups that focus on climate change, renewable energy and other environmental causes as part of an effort to offset carbon emissions the band churns out on tour.
Cascade Land Conservancy and EarthCorps, which work to protect and replenish Puget Sound-area forests, are among nine organizations Pearl Jam picked to receive donations.
The band's donations to IslandWood, an environmental education center on Bainbridge Island, will provide scholarships for children who can't afford tuition, spokeswoman Marla Saperstein said.
The other organizations are: American Solar Energy Society, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Conservation International, Green Empowerment, Honor the Earth, and Clean Energy Initiative, a ballot measure that would require larger electric utilities in Washington state to derive 15 percent of their energy from "new renewable" sources, such as wind or solar, by 2020.
Pearl Jam
Baseball's New Deal
Cable TV
First-round playoff games will be shown only on cable starting next season as part of baseball's new seven-year television deal with Fox and TBS, a total package worth almost $3 billion.
Turner Broadcasting System also will televise 26 regular-season Sunday games in 2008 while eventually cutting back on its nationwide Atlanta Braves coverage.
The World Series, All-Star games and Saturday afternoon telecasts remain on Fox through 2013, as does one of the league championship series. The other LCS - alternating between AL and NL each year - is still up for bidding.
Cable TV
Lowest-Water Mark
Broadcast TV
TV viewers must have taken to the beach: It was the least-watched week in recorded history for the four biggest broadcast networks.
CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. That sunk below the previous record of 21.5 million, set during the last week of July in 2005.
It wasn't entirely unexpected. By tradition, the week that includes Independence Day has the fewest viewers of the year, or close to it, because rerun season is in full swing and the public is consumed with outdoor activities.
There also aren't any new summer hits to entice people. Only one program, NBC's "America's Got Talent," recorded more than 10 million viewers, Nielsen said.
Broadcast TV
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Jim Guigli
A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.
Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.
"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.
"The judges were impressed by his appalling powers of invention," said Scott Rice, a professor in SJSU's Department of English and Comparative Literature. He has organized the bad writing contest since its inception in 1982.
Jim Guigli
Trust Issue
Kathy Griffin
Kathy Griffin says her 4 1/2-year marriage ended in divorce after she discovered her now ex-husband was taking money from her bank accounts.
In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" that aired Monday night, the comedian accused Matt Moline of taking $72,000 over a period of time.
"My ex-husband, without my knowledge, was sneaking into my wallet when I was asleep in the mornings and taking my ATM cards of my own private accounts and withdrawing money," Griffin alleged. "That money totaled $72,000. ... over about a year and a half."
He "admitted it and apologized," she said. They went to couples therapy, but couldn't "get beyond the trust issue."
Kathy Griffin
Anniversary of Famed Killing
'An American Tragedy'
Grace Brown headed to the Adirondack Mountains hoping for a marriage proposal. Instead, authorities said the pregnant woman was murdered by her lover in a sorrowful saga that became the basis for Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel, "An American Tragedy."
The story was later spun into an Oscar-winning movie, television programs, plays, songs, true crime books and most recently an opera on the Metropolitan Opera stage.
About 50 people gathered on the western shore of Big Moose Lake to witness the unveiling of the blue-and-yellow marker. Later Tuesday, officials planned to lay a wreath on the lake, near the spot where Brown was believed to have been killed.
On July 11, 1906, Brown and Chester Gillette took an afternoon rowboat ride on the lake. Authorities said Gillette struck Brown in the head with a tennis racket, and she fell into the lake and drowned.
'An American Tragedy'
Retracing Steps of Allies
WWII Vehicles
A convoy of World War II military vehicles has set off from Utah Beach to retrace the steps of the Allied forces who liberated France from the Nazis 62 years ago.
Some 250 Americans, Britons, Canadians, French and Belgians mounted original WWII-era trucks and other vehicles made by Jeep, Dodge and Harley Davidson for the 713-mile journey through Normandy and northern France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
The trip started Monday and wraps up July 23 at a ceremony at General George S. Patton's tomb at the American military cemetery in Hamm, Luxembourg.
The path follows the itinerary of Patton's famous Third Army, which is marked today by posts, painted with a torch emerging from water.
WWII Vehicles
Letters Shed Light
Albert Einstein
About 1,400 letters written by Albert Einstein to his wives and children have been made public, suggesting the genius was often more interested in women than his relativity theory.
The 3,500 hand-written pages include letters sent by Einstein to his second wife, Elsa, and others received from his sons and two wives, Barbara Wolff of Jerusalem's Hebrew University's Einstein Archives told AFP.
The letters, Wolff said, were willed by Einstein to his stepdaughter, Margot, and were kept sealed for 20 years after her death to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.
Albert Einstein
In Memory
Barnard Hughes
Barnard Hughes, who won a Tony for his portrayal of the curmudgeonly title character in Hugh Leonard's "Da," has died after a brief illness. He was 90.
The actor, along with wife Helen Stenborg, were veterans of the New York stage. Hughes made his Broadway debut in "Herself Mrs. Patrick Crowley" in 1935, but it was "Da," some 43 years later that made him a star and won him the best-actor Tony. He also starred in the 1988 film version of the Tony-winning play.
He received a featured-actor Tony nomination in 1973 for his performance as Dogberry in the New York Shakespeare Festival's revival of "Much Ado About Nothing." Hughes' last Broadway appearance came in the Noel Coward comedy "Waiting in the Wings" in 1999.
Among his many movies: "Midnight Cowboy," "The Hospital," "Cold Turkey," "Where's Poppa?", "Oh, God!," "Maxie," "The Lost Boys," "Doc Hollywood," "Sister Act 2" and "Cradle Will Rock."
Hughes also worked extensively in the early days of television, appearing on such shows as "Playhouse 90," "Kraft Theatre" and "Armstrong Circle Theatre." He also starred on such TV series as "Doc," "Mr. Merlin," "The Cavanaughs" and "Blossom." He won an Emmy in 1977 for a guest-starring stint on "Lou Grant."
Born July 16, 1915 in Bedford Hills, N.Y., Hughes worked as a department store salesman and a copyreader on Wall Street before he became an actor, auditioning for show on a dare from a friend.
Besides his wife, Hughes is survived by son Doug, daughter Laura and grandson Samuel Hughes Rubin.
Barnard Hughes
In Memory
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett, the troubled Pink Floyd co-founder who spent his last years in reclusive anonymity, has died, the band said Tuesday. He was 60.
Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965 with Waters, Mason and Wright, and wrote many of the band's early songs. The group's jazz-infused rock and drug-laced, multimedia "happenings" made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene. The 1967 album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" - largely written by Barrett, who also played guitar - was a commercial and critical hit.
But Barrett suffered from mental instability, exacerbated by his use of LSD. His behavior grew increasingly erratic, and he left the group in 1968 - five years before the release of Pink Floyd's most popular album, "Dark Side of the Moon" - to be replaced by Gilmour.
He reverted to his real name, Roger Barrett, and spent much of the rest of his life living quietly in his hometown of Cambridge, England. Moving into his mother's suburban house, he passed the time painting and tending the garden. His former bandmates made sure Barrett continued to receive royalties from his work with Pink Floyd.
Despite his brief career, Barrett's fragile, wistful songs influenced many musicians including David Bowie - who covered the Barrett track "See Emily Play."
The other members of Pink Floyd recorded the album "Wish You Were Here" as a tribute to their troubled bandmate.
Syd Barrett
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