'Best of TBH Politoons'
Reader Comment
Re: State Flags
Well, I bet you have readers in all 50 US states. If the counter doesn't break that down for you, why don't we self report and you can note the flags. After one person from each state checks in, no need for anyone else from that state to report in--you're just looking to verify which states your readers are from--not how many from each state.
So I'll start! I'm in Virginia!
Linda >^..^<
Thanks, Linda!
The stats do break down by state, and there have been visits from all 50 states, including D.C.
But, if anyone wants to note their location, here's a link to My Guest Map (there's also a link near the bottom of the page).
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
MAUREEN DOWD: Smoking Dutch Cleanser ( The New York Times)
Vice President Dick Cheney bitterly complains that national security leaks are endangering America. Unless, of course, he's doing the leaking, tapping Scooter Libby to reveal national security information to punish a political critic.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Debt and Denial (The New York Times)
So it seems all too likely that America's borrowing binge will end with a bang, not a whimper, that spending will suddenly drop off as both the bond market and the housing market experience rude awakenings. If that happens, the economic consequences will be ugly.
PAUL KRUGMAN: The Vanishing Future ( The New York Times)
... the administration has proposed spending cuts that are both cruel and implausible. For example, administration computer printouts obtained by the center show that the budget calls for a 13 percent cut in spending on veterans' health care, adjusted for inflation, over the next five years.
Editorial: The Trust Gap (The New York Times)
We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers - and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.
Ismene Brown: Time to recapture that flying feeling (arts.telegraph.co.uk)
Skating is blooming: rinks are full and Dancing on Ice is drawing 10 million viewers. But as the Winter Olympics approach, Ismene Brown wonders whether an obsession with technique has crushed the individuality that once turned sport into art.
ROGER EBERT: The River (Le Fleuve) (1951; A Great Movie)
Films have grown so aggressive and jittery that it takes patience to calm down into one like "The River." Its most dramatic moment takes place offscreen. Renoir is not interested in emotional manipulation but in regarding lives as they are lived. Not everyone we like need be successful, and not everyone we dislike need fail. All will be sorted out in the end -- or perhaps not, which is also the way time passes and lives resolve themselves.
Russian Climbing: Video
Nevada Thunder: The Revolution Will Be Blogged
Hubert's Poetry Corner
DEADEYE DICK$TER
Reader Suggestion
The Interracial Cringe List
Top Five Things That Will Make Your Black Friends Cringe, Roll Their Eyes,
and Bite Their Tongues
(or chew you out, depending on the friend)
The Interracial Cringe List
by Jumper Bailey
Jumper Bailey's Bully Pulpit
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and pleasant.
The kid had the day off for Lincoln's birthday. Has next Monday off, too.
Added a new flag - Micronesia 
Ribs 5-Deferment Dick
George Clooney
George Clooney, tongue firmly in cheek, said he wanted Vice President Dick Cheney to be his date at the Oscars. And Felicity Huffman said she was happy just to be going as a nominee and not a seat filler or part of the catering team.
The occasion was the 25th annual luncheon for Oscar contenders -- the one day on the Hollywood calendar when an actor who commands $20 million a picture is equal to a sound mixer who earns nowhere near that amount.
"This is fun. ... This is the golden time," said Clooney, who is nominated in three categories: best supporting actor in "Syriana," best director for "Good Night, and Good Luck" and best original screenplay for co-writing the drama about newsman Edward R. Murrow's 1950s confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Known as one of Hollywood's most stalwart liberals, Clooney drew a laugh at a pre-lunch press conference when he said, "I am bringing Dick Cheney as my date. He was so nice. He called me and invited me to go hunting."
George Clooney
Robot Is Missing
Philip K Dick
Philip K Dick is missing.
Not the American science fiction writer whose novels spawned hit films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall - he died more than 20 years ago - but a state-of-the-art robot named after the author.
The quirky android, which made a major splash at Wired Magazine's NextFest in Chicago in June, was lost in early January while en route to California by commercial airliner.
"We can't find Phil," said Steve Prilliman of Dallas-based Hanson Robotics, which created the futuristic robot with the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, the Automation and Robotics Research Institute at the University of Texas at Arlington and Dick's friend Paul Williams.
Along with an eerie likeness to the author, the robot features award-winning artificial intelligence that mimics the writer's mannerisms and lifelike skin material to affect realistic expressions.
Philip K Dick
Film Wasn't Political on Purpose
Robert Altman
Director Robert Altman says his big screen adaptation of "A Prairie Home Companion" wasn't intentionally political, but "reflects the truth of what's going on in ourselves."
The film was in keeping with Garrison Keillor's tradition of weaving politics into his radio show, but not overtly so, Altman said.
The film, a fictionalized account of the last broadcast of the 30-year-old radio show, tells the story of what happens when Keillor finds out he's been taken over by a big conglomerate.
Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Kevin Kline, star alongside Keillor in the film, which was shot on location at Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the radio show is based.
Robert Altman
'An Inconvenient Truth'
Al Gore
Paramount's new specialty division has acquired worldwide rights to Participant Prods.' global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," featuring Al Gore.
Helmed by Davis Guggenheim ("Deadwood," "The First Year"), the film, which had its world premiere at last month's Sundance Film Festival, weaves the science behind the issue of global warming with the former vice president's personal history and longtime commitment to communicating the pressing need to reverse the effects of global climate change.
To coincide with the release of the film -- scheduled for May 26 -- Rodale Books will publish "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore's follow-up to his best-seller "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit," which was published by Plume Books in 1992.
Al Gore
Bangkok Film Fest
Catherine Deneuve
French screen idol Catherine Deneuve will come to a Bangkok film festival where she'll be honored for her contributions to cinema, organizers said Friday.
The fourth Bangkok International Film Festival will award Deneuve the 2006 Golden Kinnaree Career Achievement Award at a gala event on Feb. 24, said a statement from festival organizers.
Also scheduled appear at the Feb. 17-27 festival are Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Lee, Willem Dafoe, Diane Ladd, Helen Mirren, Hayden Christensen and Japan's Tadanobu Asano.
Catherine Deneuve
The Price Of Propaganda
$1.6 Billion
Resident George W. Bush's administration spent 1.62 billion dollars on advertising and public relations contracts over two and a half years, an independent agency said.
The Department of Defense spent more than any other government agency on media-related contracts, paying 1.1 billion dollars for recruitment campaigns and other public relations efforts, according to a report by the Government Accountablity Office (GAO), an investigative, non-partisan arm of Congress.
The administration came under criticism over contracts for favorable videos that were made to look like independent television reports and were distributed to US television networks as bona fide news stories.
The Department of Education also paid a newspaper columnist to promote its legislative initiatives.
$1.6 Billion
Arrested for Allegedly Being Drunk
Scott Stapp
One day after reportedly getting married, former Creed lead singer Scott Stapp was arrested for investigation of being drunk at Los Angeles International Airport.
Stapp was taken into custody by airport police at 6 p.m. Saturday on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol, airport spokesman Tom Winfrey said Monday.
He was booked and released on $250 bail from an area jail the same day, Winfrey said.
Scott Stapp
Died Accidentally
Chris Penn
Actor Chris Penn died accidentally from an enlarged heart and the effects of a mix of multiple medications, the county coroner's office said Monday.
"There is absolutely no indication that this is anything but an accident," chief coroner investigator Craig Harvey said.
The primary cause of death was "nonspecific cardiomyopathy," an oversized heart, with the "effects of multiple medication intake," according to a statement issued by the coroner's office.
Chris Penn
Augsburg, Germany
'Boheme'
A German restaurant has drawn protests and plaudits for refusing to give a dinner reservation to a mother who wanted to bring her two small children.
Dogs would be welcome, it said, but "here, children are not allowed in the evening."
Jana Schmid, 32, wanted to celebrate a christening with five adults and two small children at the "Boheme" restaurant at Augsburg in southern Germany, the only non-smoking eatery in the area.
"During the day children are welcome but in the evening businessmen have priority and we wanted to spare them crying children," Peter Degle, the owner of the "Boheme" said.
'Boheme'
In Memory
Phil Brown
Phil Brown, who played Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen in the 1977 hit film "Star Wars," has died.
Brown died of pneumonia Thursday at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his wife, Ginny. He was 89.
Though Brown worked in stage and film for more than 30 years, many remember him best for his brief role as the loving uncle who tries to give Skywalker a normal childhood and keep him from knowing he has Jedi roots. Uncle Owen and his wife Beru meet an early end at the hands of imperial storm troopers.
Brown moved his family to London in the 1950s after being blacklisted during the communist scare in the United States. A longtime progressive, Brown always denied being a Communist.
In the mid-1970s, George Lucas was filming interior scenes for "Star Wars" at a London sound stage and needed an actor with a strong American accent.
The son of a doctor, Brown was born in Cambridge, Mass. and graduated from Stanford University.
He was accepted in the Group Theatre in New York in 1938, and first job on Broadway was as a dancer in the play "Everywhere I Roam."
Along with other former Group Theatre members, he formed the Actor's Laboratory, which produced critically acclaimed works in Hollywood.
He directed plays by Arthur Miller, Nikolai Gogol and Arthur Laurent. In 1948, he moved to London and played opposite Helen Hayes in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie."
Returning to Hollywood in 1949, Brown found work as a director. Two years later finished his first feature film, "The Harlem Globetrotters," starring Dorothy Dandridge and members of the famous basketball team.
But that promising start ended with the "Red Scare" and the government focus on some members of the Actor's Lab. Brown and his wife left for London and stayed for 40 years.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years; a son, Kevin, of Hawaii; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Phil Brown
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