'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Selwa's story (guardian.co.uk)
A week ago the body of a woman clutching a baby was found in this bombed apartment block in Beirut; the image was printed across the world. But who was she? By tracking down surviving members of her family, Clancy Chassay has managed to piece together her life - and how she died with her three children and husband by her side.
Larry Beinhart: Republicans are Bad on National Security (buzzflash.com)
Say it loud, say it often, "Republicans are bad on national security." Every Democrat running for national office - and local offices too, why not? - should say, "I'm running because Republicans are bad on national security."
Will Durst: The Sissy Box
It's time to fight back against Bush and his toadies for diverting the money to screen for liquid bombs to fight a war against the wrong people.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Hoping for Fear (The New York Times)
Just two days after 9/11, I learned from Congressional staffers that Republicans on Capitol Hill were already exploiting the atrocity, trying to use it to push through tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that "politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots."
David Sirota: Lieberman Viciously Attacks Bernie Sanders; GOP Rewards Him With Cash (huffingtonpost.com)
From now on, I am going to be referring to Joe Lieberman as De Facto GOP Nominee Joe Lieberman and I urge everyone else covering this race to do so in the interest not of partisanship, but out of respect for objective accuracy.
Julian Baggini: Is intelligence taboo? (guardian.co.uk)
When obvious things can no longer be said, it's usually a sign that we are suffering from an ideology-induced blindness. Acknowledging that some children are more intelligent than others is a symptom of one such malady.
Good lives: The people who make a difference (guardian.co.uk)
I wanted to find environmentally friendly ways of controlling pests. I found the conventional methods rather inhumane, and felt they were polluting the world with insecticides or pesticides.
Jody Rosen: Johnny Cash, Cornball (slate.com)
Can pop music be both great art and shameless kitsch?
Dean Kuipers: The Spirit of Tommy Chong (LA CityBeat)
The world's funniest stoner talks about meditation, surviving prison, and his new book, 'The I Chong'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast til noon, then sunny, but cooler than seasonal. Quite nice.
No new flags.
Hot Weather Delays Concert
Al Green
A concert by the Rev. Al Green to mark the 10th anniversary of the River Market district and the 60th birthday of Bill Clinton, whose presidential library is just down the street, has been postponed because of hot weather.
Green, 60, had been scheduled to perform Saturday night at the Riverfest Amphitheatre. The concert was rescheduled for Oct. 27.
Temperatures have topped 100 degrees daily for much of the last four weeks and are predicted to be in the mid-90s on Saturday, which is Clinton's birthday.
Al Green
Send The Big Dog a birthday greeting
'When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts'
Spike Lee
Filmmaker Spike Lee usually says what he thinks and lets the chips fall where they may. But he grew shy the other day, telling reporters that his latest work must speak for itself.
That may be because his four-hour film "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," about how Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, is as much an indictment as it is a documentary. He lets a hundred voices of displaced, disoriented, rightfully bitter New Orleans residents do the talking for him.
The film, originally meant to be only two hours long, chronicles how a great American city was reduced to rubble by a Category 5 hurricane, and how its residents were scattered to the four corners not just by nature but by state, local and federal government agencies that badly managed the crisis.
Spike Lee
FCC Questions TV Stations
'Fake News'
The Federal Communications Commission has mailed letters to the owners of 77 television stations inquiring about their use of video news releases, a type of programming critics refer to as "fake news."
Video news releases are packaged news stories that usually employ actors to portray reporters who are paid by commercial or government groups.
When stations air video news releases, they are required to disclose to viewers "the nature, source and sponsorship of the material that they are viewing," according to the FCC.
The rules were prompted by payola scandals of the past, in which broadcasters accepted money from companies to hype their products without labeling the effort as advertising.
'Fake News'
Media Crucial In AIDS Fight
Richard Gere
Richard Gere has told an AIDS conference that the media - from the chief executives of TV networks to the cultural icons of Hollywood and Bollywood - must fight the disease by using their enormous reach into people's hearts and homes.
Gere, a longtime AIDS activist and founder and director of Healing the Divide and the Heroes Project in India, joined media giants from India, the Caribbean, South Africa and Russia on Monday to promote the use of AIDS awareness campaigns in TV programming.
Gere, a follower and friend of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has made many trips to India. Two years ago, he helped launch the Heroes Project with grants from his own foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Richard Gere
'Der Spiegel' Interview
Jimmy Carter
SPIEGEL: Mr. Carter, in your new book you write that only the American people can ensure that the US government returns to the country's old moral principles. Are you suggesting that the current US administration of George W. Bush of acting immorally?
Carter: There's no doubt that this administration has made a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents.
SPIEGEL: For example?
Carter: Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war. Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state, which I describe in the book. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle that I described in the book is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.
and
SPIEGEL: One main points of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?
Carter: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history. So these are the kinds of things that cause me concern. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.
SPIEGEL: So how does this proximity to Christian fundamentalism manifest itself politically?
Carter: Unfortunately, after Sept., there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous. For three years, I'd say, the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal. I think in the last six months or so some of the media have now begun to be critical. But it's a long time coming.
Read the whole piece - Jimmy Carter
Serious About Firefighters
Denis Leary
The tone of the late-night phone message from his brother was all Denis Leary needed to hear to know that his cousin was probably dead.
The man Leary described as a "warrior" had rushed into a burning warehouse with five other firefighters in Worcester and hadn't come out. Smoke was still pouring from the building when Leary clicked on the TV after he got the message the next morning.
The December 1999 death of Jeremiah Lucey, then the deaths of hundreds of firefighters two years later on Sept. 11, sparked a passion in the Emmy Award-nominated actor-comedian to fight for funding for a group he says is largely overlooked for all its heroics.
Leary, who plays a New York City firefighter on the FX television series "Rescue Me," met with numerous Boston firefighters Tuesday, showing none of the intense, frenetic style that characterizes his professional persona, apart from the pace with which he sucked down cigarettes.
Denis Leary
Selling Off Assets
Airwaves Auction
A partnership of the two top satellite television companies that qualified as the top potential bidders in the federal government's airwaves auction had all but dropped out of the competition by the close of bidding Tuesday.
Wireless DBS LLC, a partnership between EchoStar Communications Corp. and the DirecTV Group Inc., was the top qualifier for the auction, posting a $972.5 million deposit.
Due to inactivity, the partnership's eligibility to bid on licenses shrunk dramatically. "I think the prices just got too high for them," said Tim Farrar, president of Telecom, Media and Finance Associates Inc., who has been tracking the auction closely.
The auction, which is expected to bring in between $10 billion and $15 billion to the government, got under way Aug. 8.
Airwaves Auction
Set Crash
'The Kingdom'
An assistant propmaster was fatally injured on the set of "The Kingdom," a contemporary thriller set in the Middle East being shot in the far eastern part of metropolitan Phoenix in Mesa, part of which is now adorned with signs in Arabic.
Just after shooting ended Saturday, 25-year-old Nick Papac of Los Angeles was driving an all-terrain vehicle on the freeway, which has been closed to the public. He crashed the golf-cart-like vehicle into a sport utility vehicle carrying the director of the film, according to a press release from officials with the movie.
After paramedics with Universal Pictures/Forward Pass attended to Papac, he was airlifted to a local hospital, where he died a few hours later from severe head injuries.
'The Kingdom'
Music Videos
YouTube
YouTube Inc. said on Tuesday it is talking with record labels to post thousands of music videos online, aiming to move beyond being a site for sharing home videos to a provider of mainstream entertainment like Yahoo and others.
YouTube, which sprung out of nowhere a year ago to now claim over 100 millions views a day, is negotiating for rights to post current and archive music videos on its site, and said any commercial model it decides on will offer the videos free.
"What we really want to do is in six to 12 months, maybe 18 months, to have every music video ever created up on YouTube," co-founder Steve Chen told Reuters. "We're trying to bring in as much of this content as we can on to the site."
YouTube
50 Marathons In 50 Days
Dean Karnazes
Dean Karnazes insists he's not crazy. He just loves to run. A lot.
This fall, the 43-year-old long distance runner will tackle one marathon a day for 50 consecutive days, running a total 1,310 miles (2,108.2 km) in 50 days. And for each 26.2-mile (42.2 km) race, Karnazes and his family of four will travel to a different U.S. state.
Arguably the world's best-known ultramarathoner, Karnazes has already run 350 miles (563.3 km) in one stretch, run a marathon in the South Pole, and raced across the California desert in the middle of the summer.
To train, Karnazes said he logs anywhere from 80 to 175 miles (128.7 km to 281.6 km) of running a week around his home in San Francisco. He has also picked up the pace of his racing schedule in the last five months, averaging about two marathons a month in addition to a range of ultramarathons, or distances longer than 26.2 miles. This week, he'll tackle a 100-mile (160.9 km) race in Colorado.
Dean Karnazes
Rocks Japan Market
Gibson Guitar
The hand-aged Gibson Les Paul Special is a replica of the 1960 original, but an American master craftsman made it exactly the way the guitar would look today, complete with aging cracked paint and tiny dents from scuffs and scratches.
What's more unique, the instrument isn't sold anywhere else but in guitar-loving Japan, where the entire limited edition of the electric guitars are sold out, underlining this nation's never-ending affair with American guitars.
Never mind that Japan has its own respected guitar brands, including Yamaha and Ibanez. No Japan-made guitar has the ring of an American icon, and Gibson Guitar Corp.'s biggest competitor here may be another American company famous for electric guitars, Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
Gibson Guitar
Duesseldorf To Monitor Act
Madonna
Prosecutors plan to keep an eye on Madonna's weekend concert in Duesseldorf to see if the pop diva repeats the mock crucifixion scene that has drawn fire from religious leaders.
Johannes Mocken, a spokesman for prosecutors in Duesseldorf, said Tuesday that a repeat of that scene during Sunday's concert could be construed as insulting religious beliefs.
Mocken said authorities would rely on media reports rather than sending observers to the concert and that the show might be covered by laws protecting artistic freedoms.
Madonna
In Memory
Bruno Kirby
Bruno Kirby, a veteran character actor who costarred in "When Harry Met Sally," "City Slickers" and many other films, has died at age 57, his wife said Tuesday.
Kirby died Monday in Los Angeles from complications related to leukemia, according to a statement from his wife, Lynn Sellers. He had recently been diagnosed with the disease.
Other film credits included "Good Morning, Vietnam," "The Godfather: Part II" and "Donnie Brasco." More recently, he played Phil Rubenstein on the HBO series "Entourage."
Bruno Kirby
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