'Best of TBH Politoons'
Freshly Updated!
Dick Eats Bush
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Harvey Silverglate: Pardons Are Forever (thephoenix.com)
Prediction: Before leaving office, Bush will issue a shockingly large number of presidential pardons to operatives who ventured far outside the law to wage the "war on terror."
Michael Schwartz: Seven Hair-Raising Realities About the Iraq War (Tomdispatch.com. Posted on AlterNet.org)
A short guide to understanding a flood of new Iraqi developments -- and the fate of both the American occupation and Iraqi society.
Martin Foreman: Short sight and self defense, Our self-defeating strategies (godwouldbeanatheist.com)
The plot by British-born Muslims to blow up transatlantic airliners is a depressing reminder of how unsafe the world has become. The more we look at the details, the more worried we should be.
BENEDICT CAREY: The Fame Motive (nytimes.com)
Money and power are handy, but millions of ambitious people are after something other than the corner office or the beach house on St. Bart's. They want to swivel necks, to light a flare in others' eyes, to walk into a crowded room and feel the conversation stop. They are busy networking, auditioning, talking up their latest project - a screenplay, a memoir, a new reality show - to satisfy a desire so obvious it is all but invisible.
Daniel Gross: The "Fuel Surcharge" Scam (slate.com)
The latest corporate trick to hide price hikes.
MARTIN FOREMAN: Religion fosters bad behavior (humaniststudies.org; from Nov. 12, 2005)
... a ground-breaking study on religious belief and social well-being was published in the Journal of Religion & Society. Comparing 18 prosperous democracies from the U.S. to New Zealand, author Gregory S Paul quietly demolished the myth that faith strengthens society.
Tim Dowling: Want better workers? Then offer better jobs (guardian.co.uk)
As the labour market offers more and more low-paid, low-skilled and insecure employment, there seems to be a corresponding tit-for-tat between employer and employee about who can offer the other the least.
The ideas interview: Tom Kelley (guardian.co.uk)
John Sutherland meets an American innovator behind many things that make life easier - from the laptop to the talking defibrillator
David Bruce: Wise Up! Education (athensnews.com)
At the end of her second day in school, a first-grade student asked her teacher, "What did I do in school today?" Surprised, the teacher asked why the student had asked that. The student replied, "Well, I'm going home now, and when I get home, my mother will ask me that."
Giamatti to make Philip K Dick biopic (guardian.co.uk)
In typically serendipitous Hollywood fashion, two separate film projects about Dick's life have been announced within weeks of each other.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
No new flags.
Nominees Announced
Quills Awards
Stephen King, Doris Kearns Goodwin and former Vice President Al Gore were among the nominees announced Tuesday for the second annual Quills Awards - people's choice prizes trying to catch on with the public.
Caroline Kennedy will receive a Platinum Quill Award honoring her "commitment to providing support for education and literacy in New York." The Quills will also acknowledge the 50th anniversary of "Profiles in Courage," for which her father, then Sen.-John F. Kennedy, received the Pulitzer Prize.
Starting Tuesday and through Sept. 30, voters can make their picks online at www.quillsvote.com and at www.quills.msnbc.com.
Quills Awards
'Shut Up and Sing'
Dixie Chicks
The politically charged documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" has been picked up for worldwide distribution by the Weinstein Co.
A release is tentatively scheduled for the fall, possibly right before the November elections.
Asked why she and co-director/producer Barbara Kopple chose to go with the Weinstein Co., Cecilia Peck said, "They made a great offer," though no figures were disclosed. Such companies as Focus Features and Picturehouse expressed interest in the documentary a few months ago.
In addition to chronicling the lives of Maines and bandmates Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, Kopple said the documentary features clips from 15 of the Dixie Chicks songs and a new one written especially for the film, though no soundtrack is planned. "You definitely feel like you're in the front row of a Dixie Chicks concert," Peck said.
Dixie Chicks
Sci Fi Cancels
'Stargate: SG-1'
Sci Fi Channel is grounding "Stargate SG-1," the longest-running science-fiction series on U.S. television to date.
The cable network has decided not to order additional episodes beyond the show's current 10th season, but it has picked up a fourth season of its more-popular spinoff, "Stargate Atlantis."
The show's ratings have softened in recent years and series star Richard Dean Anderson left last season, but it boasts a strong fan base, with as many as nine official conventions taking place worldwide every year. Producer MGM is exploring the possibility of taking the series to yet another outlet.
The final three episodes of "Stargate SG-1" are slated to air on Sci Fi Channel next year. Both "Stargate SG-1" and "Atlantis" also run in syndication.
'Stargate: SG-1'
Fights Horse Slaughter
Willie Nelson
Texan Willie Nelson is raising his voice in defense of a symbol of the West - wild horses. Country singer Nelson is the latest to join an effort to ban the slaughter of horses in the U.S. for consumption of their meat abroad. The U.S. House is scheduled to vote Sept. 7 on a bill aimed at ending horse slaughter.
"If you've ever been around horses a lot, especially wild horses, you know they are part of the American heritage. I don't think its right that we kill them and eat them," Nelson said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Nelson said he has owned several horses and has several buried on his ranches. "I do have a lot of respect for my horses, a lot. I don't ride them as much as I used to and I think they appreciate it," he joked.
Willie Nelson
Dislikes Modern Recordings
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.
"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."
Bob Dylan
Man With An Opinion
Tony Bennett
Legendary singer Tony Bennett has slammed his home country of America for not contributing anything other than jazz music to world art and culture. The 'If I Ruled The World' crooner feels that Europe and Asia offer far more culturally than America does. Bennett says, "I have travelled around the world to Asia and Europe. They show you what they have contributed to the world. The British show you theatre, the Italians show you music and art, the French show you cooking and painting, and the Germans show you science. "The only thing that the United States, which is still a young country, has contributed culturally to the world is jazz - elongated improvisation. It's tragic." And Bennett feels that Americans don't even appreciate the impact of jazz in popular culture. He says, "Fifty years from now people will be bowing to Dizzy GillespieI and Charlie Parker, just like impressionist painters like Monet, who were starving in their day. The Americans don't even know what they have come up with."
Tony Bennett
Turns 86
Ray Bradbury
Author Ray Bradbury turned 86 on Tuesday and still has his eye on the stars - both celestial and earthbound.
The author of such science fiction and fantasy classics as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" said he believes that humans will return to the moon, then go to Mars and eventually to other worlds.
"Our future is wonderful," he told Patt Morrison in an interview on KPCC, a Pasadena-based public radio station.
Bradbury, born Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., is a longtime Los Angeles resident. Bradbury, who doesn't drive, continued his long-standing griping about local traffic and called on the mayor to push mass transit.
Ray Bradbury
![](patti-labelle_082206.jpg")
Write New Song For Oklahoma
Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb
Vince Gill and Jimmy Webb have written a song to celebrate Oklahoma and its people as the state nears its centennial.
Gill wrote the music and Webb wrote the lyrics for "Oklahoma Rising," which is intended to complement the state's official song, "Oklahoma!" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.
"Oklahoma Rising" will debut Sept. 11 at a private event at the Civic Center Music Hall, said Centennial Projects and Events Chairman Lee Allan Smith. The 100th anniversary of the state's admission to the union is Nov. 16, 2007.
Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb
Explains Nazi Service In Letter
Günter Grass
German novelist Günter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II.
"I would like to keep the right to say that I have understood this painful lesson that life taught me when I was a young man. My books and my political activity are the proof," Grass wrote.
"This silence may be judged as a mistake - that's exactly what's happening. It may also be condemned. I must also come to terms with the fact that the honorary citizenship of Gdansk is questioned by many residents."
But Grass did not say he was giving up his honorary citizenship, as he has been urged to do by Solidarity founder and Nobel Peace laureate Lech Walesa.
Walesa had threatened to give up his own honorary citizenship in Gdansk if Grass didn't give an explanation to the city. But he said he was satisfied by the letter and would not do so no.
Günter Grass
Paramount Cuts Ties
Tom Cruise
Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures unit is ending its 14-year relationship with Tom Cruise's film production company because of the actor's offscreen behavior, the company's chairman said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Sumner Redstone, Viacom chairman, said the behavior of the star of the "Mission: Impossible" series and "Top Gun" was unacceptable to the company, according to the Wall Street Journal story e-mailed to reporters.
"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Redstone was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
Tom Cruise
Files For Bankruptcy Again
Tower Records
Tower Records filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years Monday, weeks after word surfaced that the iconic music retailer had been cut off by major suppliers for failing to pay its bills.
MTS Inc., the corporate parent of the 89-store chain based in West Sacramento, Calif., said in court papers that it aimed to keep Tower up and running as a "going concern" while a new owner is sought.
Many in the industry had feared that, given the severity of Tower's situation, a Chapter 7 liquidation could be in the offing. The possibility still exists that the company's assets could be sold off piecemeal if a buyer can't be located.
Tower Records
Finally Gets One Right
Wal-Mart
A voter registration group with Republican ties has been banished from Wal-Mart stores in Tennessee for failing to meet the retailer's standards of nonpartisanship and may soon be shut out of stores in California and Nevada, the retailer's spokesman said Tuesday.
Liberty Consultants wanted to register Wal-Mart shoppers in seven traditionally Republican suburban counties around Nashville. But the request was denied after the company's owner, Gary Thompson, acknowledged to Wal-Mart that he had been hired by Tempe, Ariz.-based Sproul & Associates.
Headed by Nathan Sproul, a former Christian Coalition activist and executive director of the Arizona GOP, Sproul & Associates was paid $7.9 million by the Republican National Committee for consulting and voter registration drives in the 2004 election cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sproul's canvassers focused on signing up Republican voters in key battleground states in 2004. Former canvassers came forward in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Oregon to say they were told to register only Republicans and to walk away from people who said they intended to vote for Democrat John Kerry. Some said completed Democratic registration forms were thrown out or ripped up.
Wal-Mart
Keeps US Shows At Bay
EU
Popular American comedy and drama shows have yet to conquer Europe as most programmes broadcast in the EU are still locally made, the bloc's executive arm said on Tuesday.
Figures from the EU showed schedules on average contained 63 percent of European works in 2004, with 31.5 percent of output made by independent producers.
The latest numbers were not much changed from the previous year, when 65.2 percent of programmes were made locally and independents supplied 31.4 percent, though they reflect the market in the expanded EU which admitted 10 new members in 2004.
Under the EU's television without frontiers rules, at least half of programming in the 25-nation bloc should be made in Europe where practicable.
EU
Judge Nixes Logging
Giant Sequoia National Monument
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws.
U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer sided with environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world's largest trees.
In the lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups said the management plan for the reserve in the southern Sierra Nevada range was a scientifically suspect strategy that was intended to satisfy timber interests under the guise of wildfire prevention.
Giant Sequoia National Monument
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
