'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Workouts, Not Bailouts (The New York Times)
In April, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declared that all the signs he saw indicated that the housing market was "at or near the bottom." Earlier this month he was still insisting that problems caused by the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages were "largely contained." But the time for denial is past.
Bob Herbert: War's Chilling Reality (The New York Times)
Bryan Anderson, a 25-year-old Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, was explaining, on camera - to James Gandolfini, of all people - what happened immediately after a roadside bomb blew up the Humvee that he was driving. ... "And then when I went to wipe the flies on my face with my left hand, there was nothing there. So I was like, 'Uh, that's gone.' And then I looked down and I saw that my legs were gone. And then they had kind of forced my head back down to the ground, hoping that I wouldn't see."
Jim Hightower: A DEADLY GAME OF NUMBERS (jimhightower.com)
And while they're celebrating the latest American body count, let's also note that Iraqi civilians are dying in record numbers. In fact, July recorded the second highest number of civilian deaths this year. That's hardly a sign that sectarian violence is being "contained." Indeed, on the very day that Bush operatives were hailing the "success" of his surge, car bombs ripped through Baghdad and other cities, killing another 142 civilians.
John Sweeney: 'What's Wrong with America?' (huffingtonpost.com)
Earlier this month, Steve Skvara, a disabled, retired steel worker who can't afford his wife's health care, shook the AFL-CIO's Presidential Candidates Forum by asking tearfully, "What's wrong with America?"
MIGUEL HELFT: Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable With Ads (nytimes.com)
Ever since Google bought YouTube last November, it has avoided cluttering the site and the video clips themselves with ads, for fear of alienating its audience.
Elizabeth Cho: Muse s'Amuse: Hallyu, the Korean Wave (popmatters.com)
Is this how it feels to be French or Italian? To be chic just because of your nationality? Dare I feel that just being Korean may hold some cultural currency, these days?
The maestro (guardian.co.uk)
He is seen as the finest conductor in the world - yet he doesn't tell orchestras how to play. Claudio Abbado grants Tom Service a rare interview aboard a private jet.
Contributor Suggestion
Medieval Sex Flow Chart
How did the Christian population grow? Oh yeah, they killed anyone
who didn't convert. That's a _lot_ more fun than sex...
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Not as hot, but if the humidity gets any higher I'm gonna need gills.
Senator And Filmmaker Take On
Fox 'News'
Condemning the Fox 'News' Channel as a warmonger that's agitating for a U.S. attack on Iran, documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald and independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced an "online viral video campaign" Wednesday calling on television news organizations "not to follow Fox down the road to war again."
Greenwald, the director behind "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," has compiled a new three-minute video that mashes clips from Fox's coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath with recent coverage of possible U.S. military action against Iran.
The video and an accompanying "open letter" to ABC, NBC, CBS, MSGOP and CNN - viewable at FoxAttacks.com - urge news organizations to ask tough questions about administration policy on Iran and say citizens should pressure them to do so.
Fox 'News'
Auctioning Signed Cast
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert will auction the cast that helped mend his broken left wrist to benefit the Yellow Ribbon Fund.
The cast will be auctioned on eBay after Thursday night's "The Colbert Report," Comedy Central said Wednesday. It has been signed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric, NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, Fox News "The O'Reilly Factor" host Bill O'Reilly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., NBC "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.
Bids will be accepted until Sept. 3, with the winner to be announced the week of Sept. 10 on the "Report," which airs at 11:30 p.m. EDT Monday through Thursday. Proceeds will go to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, a charity that assists injured service members and their families.
"If I had known that it would give me the opportunity to help our wounded veterans, I would have shattered my triquetrum a long time ago," Colbert said in a statement.
Stephen Colbert
Tours New Orleans Green Project
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt toured the construction site of a house in the city's Lower 9th Ward that is based on the winning design in a competition he launched to help the area recover from Hurricane Katrina.
Wearing khaki pants, T-shirt and hard hat, the 43-year-old actor walked through the house Tuesday, pointing out its many "green" features, including blue walls treated with a nontoxic repellant for mold and termites.
The three-bedroom, single-family home is the first of five slated for the Holy Cross section of the Lower 9th Ward based on the winning design in a competition launched in 2006 by Pitt and the environmental organization Global Green USA.
Brad Pitt
Democrat Headed to Congress
Laura Richardson
California voters are sending an outspoken critic of resident Bush to Congress to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Democratic Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald.
Assemblywoman Laura Richardson took 67 percent of the vote in Tuesday's special election in the heavily Democratic 37th Congressional District, which includes Long Beach, Carson and Compton.
Richardson has pledged to get more government funding for work programs, such as Long Beach's Center for Working Families, and called for higher wages for teachers and remedies for disparities in the health care system.
She also has been openly critical of Bush, with letters on her campaign Web site slamming his education, health care and Iraq policies.
Laura Richardson
Swedish Golf Cart Escapade
Bill Murray
Bill Murray could face a drunken driving charge after cruising through downtown Stockholm in a golf cart and refusing to take a breath test, citing U.S. law.
Police officers spotted the "Caddyshack" star early Monday in the slow-moving vehicle and noticed he smelled of alcohol when they pulled him over, said Detective-Inspector Christer Holmlund of the Stockholm police.
Murray, who had been at a golf tournament in Sweden, signed a document admitting that he was driving under the influence, and agreed to let a police officer plead guilty for him if the case goes to court, Holmlund said.
Murray apparently drove the golf cart to the trendy Cafe Opera nightclub, less than a mile away, and was pulled over on his way back to the hotel.
Bill Murray
Addition To Toronto Skyline
New Lego Tower
Toronto's skyline has a blockbuster new addition.
A Lego tower at the Canadian National Exhibition is the tallest structure ever to be built with the colourful toy bricks, Lego officials said Wednesday. The new Lego building is 29.03 metres.
An official from Lego Denmark got the official measurement after he was lifted to the top of the tower in a crane. He then dangled a measuring tape down the side of the structure which was read by another Lego representative at the base.
The new record is a narrow improvement over the previous best of 28.58 metres reached by a tower in California earlier this year.
New Lego Tower
Porn Site Abusing Barbie's Name
Mattel
Toy maker Mattel Inc. went to court Tuesday to declare that the name of its clean-cut, lead-laden Barbie dolls doesn't belong on a model's pornographic Web site.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Mattel said the Web site for an adult entertainer named China Barbie has tried to benefit from Mattel's success with the 48-year-old line of dolls, which includes Barbie's sister, Skipper, her best friend, Midge, and Skipper's boyfriend, Kevin.
China Barbie's site says she's a "cordial young lady" who sat behind the desks of some of the world's leading investment banking firms and advertising agencies in New York before getting into porn. It says her filmography includes "Me Luv You Long Time," "Ethnic Cheerleaders 8" and "Passport to Paradise."
Mattel
Pulls Live Bullfights Off State TV
Spain
State-run Spanish television has quietly yanked live coverage of bullfighting from its programming, ending a decades-old tradition of showcasing the national pastime out of concern that the deadly duel between matador and beast is too violent for children.
Television Espanola's first broadcast in 1948 was a bullfight in Madrid. But for the first time in the network's history, none of its channels have shown live fights this season, only taped highlights on a late-night program for aficionados.
In practical terms, the unpublicized decision by the Socialist government is largely symbolic. Of the hundreds of bullfights during the March-October season, state-run TV only tended to broadcast about a dozen. Pay TV channels and stations owned by regional governments are full of live bullfights.
Still, many in the bullfighting world - and in the conservative opposition - are livid over what they see as a slight to a cherished piece of Spanish culture.
Spain
Studio Sues
'Dirty Dancing'
Nobody puts Lionsgate in a corner. That's the message of a trademark infringement lawsuit the studio behind "Dirty Dancing" has filed against several companies selling merchandise featuring the phrase "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" from the hit film.
The suit, filed August 15 in Los Angeles District Court, claims 15 companies including Uncommongoods.com in New York, Lucky Lou Boutique in Fishers, Ind., and Duck Duck Goose in Troy, Ohio, have used Lionsgate's registered trademark without permission.
"The American Film Institute voted 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner' as one of the top 100 most popular quotes from a motion picture," the lawsuit states. "Plaintiff markets and sells merchandise with the movie trademarks through approved licensees as part of the 'Dirty Dancing' line of approved merchandise."
'Dirty Dancing'
200 Trees
Bette Midler
Bette Midler cut down more than 230 trees around one of her properties on the island of Kauai without a permit, and the state has recommended she be fined.
The staff of the Board of Land and Natural Resources recommended $6,500 in fines for having the trees felled and for building a graded road without permits required for the land zoned for conservation use.
The actress and movie star, who was born in Honolulu, didn't realize permits were needed to remove the trees on a vacant 58,000-square-foot parcel of land on Kauai's North Shore, her attorney Max W. J. Graham said.
Bette Midler
Lawsuit Halted
Michael Jackson
A lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died at a hospital soon after she was moved to make room for Michael Jackson cannot continue as filed, a judge has ruled.
The family of Manuela Gomez Ruiz had sued Jackson and Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, claiming she was kept from critical care after she had a heart attack on the same day Jackson was brought in with flu-like symptoms during his 2005 child-molestation trial. Jackson was acquitted in the case.
Judge Rodney Melville - also the judge in Jackson's molestation case - on Tuesday allowed challenges to the complaint filed by attorneys for Jackson and the hospital, who had argued the facts of the case didn't justify the complaint.
Melville gave the plaintiffs' attorney, James McKiernan, 30 days to redraft their complaint. McKiernan said he would refile the necessary documents.
Michael Jackson
Jailed After Probation Revoked
Foxy Brown
Foxy Brown was hauled off to jail Wednesday after a judge revoked her probation.
The 27-year-old rapper was accused of violating the terms of her release after she was arrested earlier this month on charges she smacked her neighbor with her cell phone. Authorities said Brown also skipped her anger management classes and traveled out of the city without permission.
Judge Melissa Jackson ordered Brown jailed until her next hearing on Sept. 7.
Foxy Brown
Defamation Lawsuit Settled
Paris Hilton
A settlement in a $10 million defamation lawsuit was reached Wednesday between the hotel heiress Paris Hilton and diamond heiress-actress Zeta Graff.
In the suit, Graff claimed that Hilton spread "vicious lies" about her to the media in 2005.
Both sides reached an "amicable resolution," but the details were kept confidential, according to a statement released by Graff's attorney, Bruce Broillet.
Former Hilton publicist Rob Shuter said in a deposition that Hilton asked him to help plant the story and that he gave the paper comments, dictated by Hilton, that he attributed to himself, Hilton and anonymous sources.
Paris Hilton
Nielsen Cable
Ratings
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Aug. 13-19. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses.
1. Movie: "High School Musical 2" (Friday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 9.43 million homes, 17.24 million viewers.
2. "Hannah Montana" (Friday, 10:20 p.m.), Disney, 6.40 million homes, 10.71 million viewers.
3. "The Closer" (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNT, 5.49 million homes, 7.36 million viewers.
4. "Hannah Montana" (Friday, 10:45 p.m.), Disney, 5.261 million homes, 8.05 million viewers.
5. "Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Friday, 7:30 p.m.), Disney, 5.258 million homes, 8.05 million viewers.
6. Movie: "High School Musical 2" (Saturday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 5.09 million homes, 8.44 million viewers.
7. Movie: "High School Musical 2" (Sunday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 5.00 million homes, 7.54 million viewers.
8. "Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Friday, 7 p.m.), Disney, 4.17 million homes, 5.82 million viewers.
9. Movie: "High School Musical" (Thursday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 4.11 million homes, 6.04 million viewers.
10. "Hannah Montana" (Sunday, 10:05 p.m.), Disney, 3.99 million homes, 5.48 million viewers.
11. "Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Friday, 11:10 p.m.), Disney, 3.90 million homes, 5.48 million viewers
12. "Suite Life of Zack & Cody" (Saturday, 10:05 p.m.), Disney, 3.67 million homes, 5.12 million viewers.
13. "WWE Raw" (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 3.66 million homes, 5.44 million viewers.
14. "Hannah Montana" (Sunday, 10:30 p.m.), Disney, 3.61 million homes, 4.96 million viewers.
15. "Saving Grace" (Monday, 10 p.m.), TNT, 3.59 million homes, 4.68 million viewers.
Ratings
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