'Best of TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Reader Link
The Leader
Reader Links
2 from Bruce
from Mark
Another Bumpersticker
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cooled off a bit & I'm grateful.
The kittens pushed the screen from the bottom of the back door and nearly escaped. Spent a good part of the afternoon repairing the door.
Talked to dear old Dad tonight. The family reunion was last week end (back in PA), and there were a lot of stories to catch up on.
While Dad's the oldest living male in the family (that means he has to supply the fried chicken), there are 3 great aunts who are nearly 20 years older - and the older the aunts get, the less guarded they are about what they say. Heh.
Actors Halle Berry, left, and Lee Merriweather pose during the premiere of 'Catwoman,' Monday, July 19, 2004, in Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Photo by Eric Charbonneau
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Beats O'Really in NY Radio Matchup
Al Franken
Despite the rocky start of his liberal Air America radio network, political humorist Al Franken surged past conservative nemesis Bill O'Reilly in the first quarterly ratings matchup between the two in New York City.
"The Al Franken Show," airing weekdays on WLIB-AM, more than doubled O'Reilly's "The Radio Factor" on WOR-AM among listeners aged 25 to 54 -- the group advertisers prize most -- during the only hour when the two go head to head in New York, Arbitron Inc. reported on Tuesday.
According to its April-to-June survey, the first since Air America's debut, Franken posted a 2.6 share from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., compared with a 1.1 share for O'Reilly in the 25-54 demographic.
Al Franken
Celebrity Fund-Raisers
Nick Clooney
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Warren Beatty are among the celebrities who opened their checkbooks in recent months for Kentucky Democrat Nick Clooney.
Clooney, a former television anchor and newspaper columnist, is the father of movie star George Clooney and the brother of the late singer-actress Rosemary Clooney.
In addition to Zeta-Jones and Beatty, Clooney received contributions between April 29 and June 30 from entertainers Red Buttons and Nancy Sinatra, according to the candidate's latest fund-raising report filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Nick Clooney
Clooney campaign
Former President Bill Clinton talks to an unidentified man with a little girl on his shoulders as the pair have Clinton autograph a copy of his book during an appearance at a downtown Denver bookstore Tuesday, July 20, 2004. Clinton was in Denver for the autograph signing appearance as well as to attend a fundraising event for a memorial to the victims of the massacre at Columbine High School.
Photo by David Zalubowski
Joins Fans at Tour
Robin Williams
Frenzied supporters line the 16th stage of the Tour de France, a 9.6-mile ascent up the L'Alpe d'Huez mountain. "Oh, God! It's Bikestock," said actor-comedian Robin Williams, comparing it to the Woodstock Festival of the late 1960s, which attracted hundreds of thousands of music fans.
Williams joined rocker Sheryl Crow and Prince Albert of Monaco as the latest celebrity guest invited by Lance Armstrong during the three-week race.
Robin Williams
'War Pigs'
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne is an unlikey critic of the Bush administration. Osbourne is using Ozzfest as his podium to promote the dangers of Bush and Co.
On the current tour with Black Sabbath, Bush is portrayed on a screen in a wanted poster next to a young Adolf Hitler. Black Sabbath use the imagery as they play the appropriate 'War Pigs'.
During the song, another image has another image of Bush with a big red clown nose and the words 'White House Circus' below him.
Ozzy Osbourne
Evil Mother In 'Manchurian Candidate'
Meryl Streep
For weeks, the rumor mills have been working overtime to claim that Oscar winner Meryl Streep based her portrayal of the Machiavellian mom in the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" on Hillary Clinton.
The rumors are not even remotely true, Streep told reporters over the weekend. But the actress added that she was imitating a person that no one has yet guessed.
Streep plays a U.S. senator intent on seeing her son become president, assuming the villainous role played by Angela Lansbury in the original 1962 political thriller. The remake from Paramount Pictures is slated to open on July 30.
Streep, an Oscar winner for her roles in "The Deer Hunter" and "Sophie's Choice," said she viewed one Internet story about her "Manchurian" performance as part of an insidious attack on Clinton.
"These are high-stakes games these people are playing, high-stakes games, and it gave me the chills when I looked it up," she said.
"And I thought, 'Oh my god. So this is how they get Hillary," she said, insisting, "this is so far from Hillary Clinton.
"This isn't paranoia, this is called misinformation. Disinformation, I guess you call it. It's manipulating public opinion with a fake buzz."
Meryl Streep
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Auction For Charity
Memorabilia
Memorabilia belonging to late music legend Ray Charles, including a pair of his signature sunglasses, will be auctioned off to raise cash for homeless families, organisers said.
The items, that also include Ray Charles albums and photographs, will be held in Los Angeles August 13 to raise 100,000 dollars for Joy Community Outreach To End Homelessness.
The group was founded in 1986 by Mable John, who was one of the Raelettes, Charles's original back-up singers, to help feed and clothe homeless families.
Other celebrities, including Whoopi Goldberg, Gladys Knight, Bonnie Raitt and the late actor John Ritter, also have personal items that will go on the block in the charity auction.
Memorabilia
Jenna Bush, daughter of the resident Bush, sticks her tongue out at the media Tuesday, July 20, 2004, as she departs Lambert International Airport in St. Louis for an appearance with her father in St. Charles, MO. The woman standing along sode of the limosine is a Secret Service agent.
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle
To Countersue Stern, Infinity
Clear Channel
Clear Channel Communications Inc. on Wednesday plans to file suit against Howard Stern and his distributor, Infinity Broadcasting, claiming the shock jock breached his contract by airing indecent programs, a source close to the company said.
The source said Clear Channel will file a $3 million countersuit to a $10 million lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan by Stern's One Twelve company and Infinity.
Stern and Infinity claimed Clear Channel had broken its contract with them when it dumped Stern's show from six stations it owns following fines against Stern by the Federal Communications Commission.
The ribald radio host has repeatedly accused Clear Channel of strong ties to the Bush administration, saying the company previously defended him against past indecency allegations until he became critical of resident Bush.
Clear Channel
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Beats Four Aces
Two Guns
Two armed men staged a daring heist at a world poker tournament on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, making off with 76,000 euros (94,000 dollars) in cash after forcing players to lie on the ground, police said.
The pair, both wearing ski-masks, escaped by stealing a truck and then a car, officers added.
The robbery occurred early Tuesday as players were sitting through the final day of a World Poker Tour tournament taking place in a chic private club on the Champs-Elysees avenue.
Two Guns
View-Master models that span 65 years of production are seen in this undated display. The earliest model is at the left, and the current model is in the middle. The View-Master has given generations a 3-D look at everything from man's first moonwalk to the adventures of Spongebob. On its 65th anniversary, toy maker Fisher-Price has no plans to ease it into retirement.
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Tin Foil Helmet Time
World Destruction Sept. 29
Mark September 29 on your calendar because it will mark the beginning of the end of the world.
That's the chilling news from E.T. expert Dr. Terry Johnson, who claims various conglomerations of alien races are conspiring to destroy planet Earth on that day -- with the help of a few volcanoes and earthquakes.
Johnson says an earthquake is scheduled to take place in Guadalajara, Mexico, and when the "crest" of the quake happens, a giant spacecraft will slam into the fault line like a "kamikaze" fighter and start a global chain reaction that will result in the ultimate destruction of the planet.
World Destruction
Fathered Quadruplets
Michael Jackson
Citing unnamed sources close to the self-proclaimed "King of Pop," the magazine said Jackson recently spent time with the pregnant mother-to-be in Florida, where he stayed in a $4,000-a-night luxury hotel suite in Miami Beach.
Jackson, 45, already has three children -- Prince Michael I and daughter Paris Michael by his former wife, Debbie Rowe, and Prince Michael II, the child he notoriously dangled from the balcony of a Berlin hotel in November 2002.
Jackson later revealed in a television documentary that Prince Michael II had been born to a woman who was essentially a stranger to him. "I used a surrogate mother and my own sperm cells," he told British interviewer Martin Bashir. "She doesn't know me."
Michael Jackson
Denies Surrogate Mother Report
Michael Jackson
Beleaguered pop star Michael Jackson on Tuesday flatly denied a magazine report that he is about to become a father to quadruplets by way of a surrogate mother.
"This is not true, and we are not going to further comment on stories of this nature," publicist Raymone Bain told Reuters when asked about the report in Us Weekly magazine.
Bain also denied that Jackson, who is facing a trial later this year on child molestation charges, was to be the father of any children born through a surrogate-mother arrangement. "This is not true. None of this is true," she said.
Michael Jackson Denies
Disappearing in U.S.
Protestant Majority
Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
At the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion rose from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent, and many are former Protestants, the survey's authors said.
The Roman Catholic population has remained relatively stable over the period, making up about 25 percent of the U.S. population.
People who said they belonged to other religions - including Islam, Orthodox Christianity or Eastern faiths - increased from 3 percent to 7 percent between 1993 and 2002, while the share of people who said they were Jewish remained stable at just under 2 percent.
Protestant Majority
Sailors onboard the Mexican tall ship Cuauhtemoc salute as they leave Boston Harbor following a visit, Tuesday, July 20, 2004.
Photo by Charles Krupa
Britney's 'Fiance' Is a Father - Again
Kevin Federline
Britney Spears' fiance is a father for a second time. Kevin Federline's former girlfriend, actress Shar Jackson, delivered their baby Tuesday at an Orange County hospital, Jackson's manager told People magazine.
The baby's sex was not reported and a call by The Associated Press to Spears' spokeswoman was not returned late Tuesday.
It was the second child for Federline, a 26-year-old dancer, and Jackson, 27, who appeared on the UPN series "Moesha." They dated for several years and already have a 2-year-old daughter.
Kevin Federline
Now He's 'The Peace President'
Flip Flop
With polls showing public support for the war in Iraq in decline, the Republican president cast himself as a reluctant warrior as he campaigned in the battleground state of Iowa against Democrat John Kerry and his running mate, former trial lawyer John Edwards. Bush lost the state in 2000 by only a few thousand votes.
"The enemy declared war on us," he told a re-election rally. "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."
Bush has called himself a "war president" in leading the United States in a battle against terrorism brought about by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
"I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind," he said in February.
Flip Flop
Scribe Who Immortalized 'Canterbury Tales'
Adam Pinkhurst
Six centuries after immortalizing British medieval author Geoffrey Chaucer's seminal work "The Canterbury Tales," an anonymous scribe has been unveiled as the long-haired son of an English landowner.
Adam Pinkhurst -- whose name was found by a U.S. handwriting expert -- wrote the 14th century manuscripts of Chaucer's pilgrims' stories, the most celebrated work of medieval English literature.
"I was amazed he had not been found before," Pinkhurst's discoverer Professor Linne Mooney, an American academic at Cambridge University, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Mooney came across his signature in a London library during a study of medieval scribes, known as "scriveners."
Cambridge University has endorsed the find as authentic.
For the rest, Adam Pinkhurst
A peacock wanders at the Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanical Garden, Tuesday, July 20, 2004, in Arcadia, Calif. Health officials doused the Arboretum and garden, located about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, on Tuesday, in an effort to prevent a human outbreak of the West Nile virus.
Photo by Nict Ut
'The Osbournes'
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