One man’s propaganda is another man’s pornography. * VIDEO: There’s enough smut on FOX News to make an entire porn site! All the footage you see in the video aired on the FOX News Channel.
BLOOD & TREASURE: Nobel Economist Says The Astronomical Cost Of Iraq War Triggered The Recession
THE AUSTRALIAN: THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $3 trillion compared with the $50-$60-billion predicted in 2003. Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical […]
KID IN THE HALL: Like A $16 Million Parking Ticket
BY NICK POWELL CITY HALL CORRESPONDENT Starting next year parking will cost Philadelphians $16 million more than it did in 2008 if a new parking tax bill before City Council passes. The bill, sponsored by Council President Anna C. Verna and Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco, would call for a 33 percent hike in the current tax rate, which works out to be a whopping 20 percent of the cost of parking your car in a lot. The parking tax as it currently stands requires drivers to shoulder 15% of the tax on every parking transaction. Newly appointed Revenue Commissioner Keith […]
NYT: Panama Birth Canal Could Disqualify McCain
NEW YORK TIMES: The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming. Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the […]
REALITY TV: Ann Coulter On Chopping & Snorting
From Harry Shearer‘s channel on My Own Damn Channel. Gosh, TV would be SO much more interesting if everyone on it thought the camera was off, like, all the time.
Deregulation Without Representation Is Tyranny, YO
REMOTE CONTROL: How big are the stakes in the so-called network neutrality debate now raging before Congress and federal regulators? Consider this: One side in the debate actually went to the trouble of hiring people off the street to pack a Federal Communications Commission meeting yesterday — and effectively keep some of its opponents out of the room. Broadband giant Comcast — the subject of the F.C.C. hearing on network neutrality at the Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts — acknowledged that it did exactly that. Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said that the company paid some people to arrive early […]
QUESTION THE PARKING AUTHORITY: Inky Finds PPA Worker Comp Claims Are Astonishingly High
INQUIRER: Battling fires and fighting crime is risky work, to be sure, but those jobs have nothing on writing parking tickets. Or so it would seem, if workers’ compensation claims are any indication. Over the last four years, employees at the Philadelphia Parking Authority have reported being hurt on the job more than twice as often as city firefighters or police officers. As a result, the Parking Authority spends far more on settling workplace-injury claims: $1,558 per employee, compared with the firefighters’ average of $1,084 and the Police Department figure of $833, according to an Inquirer analysis of city and […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Director Brett Morgen joins Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross to discuss his new film, Chicago 10. Morgen uses archival footage and animation techniques to tell the story of the anti-war activists known as “the Chicago 8” — a misnomer, he says, and one he corrects in his film title. Outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, protesters rallied to show disapproval of the Vietnam War. They hadn’t been granted demonstration permits, however, and for a week, they were involved in violent conflict with Chicago police. Less than a year later, eight of the protest leaders — the so-called Chicago […]
BLANCO Y NEGRO: N*gger Please!
BY RUDY SIMPSON It may be a cliche to say that controversy sells records, but that doesn’t make it any less true. By that metric, Nas is poised to go mega-platinum with his forthcoming release, the unspeakably titled Nigger. That is, assuming a hip-hop album — or any album for that matter — can still go mega-platinum in this day and age. I am beginning to have my doubts. Nas is no stranger to provocation. He proclaimed that “Hip Hop is Dead” with his last release and even rhymed on wax that he “waves automatic guns at nuns” in a […]
KING CRIMSON: Moonchild
Tap-dancing by Christina Ricci, circa Buffalo 66. [Hat tip to EVA LIAO]
TURD BURGLARS: Cops Say Gay Porn Wonder Twins Responsible For Wave Of Daring Rooftop Robberies
DAILY NEWS: TWINS Keyontyli and Taleon Goffney have been arrested for allegedly breaking into area businesses by cutting rooftop holes to gain entry. Turns out, they were also just as skilled at breaking into their second, more respectable careers — as hardcore gay-porn stars. The 25-year-old Goffney twins, both of New Jersey, were arrested Feb. 19. They were charged with breaking into Moon’s Beauty Shop at 9th and Washington streets in South Philadelphia and the adjoining Wings and More, using only a handsaw and ax to get in through the roofs of the establishments. A Rite Aid at Front Street […]
HEAR YE: Shocking Pinks
PITCHFORK: Beyond its high standard of quality, Shocking Pinks‘ first DFA release might seem a less obvious fit for the label. And not just because Harte’s project shares its name with Neil Young’s 1980s rockabilly sidemen. A 17-track, 45-minute compilation cherrypicked from Shocking Pinks’ two 2005 albums for New Zealand’s legendary Flying Nun imprint (Mathematical Warfare and Infinity Land), Shocking Pinks veers even further from early-2000s Brooklyn for an emotionally vulnerable highlight reel of scruffy Jesus and Mary Chain dream-pop, ecstatic My Bloody Valentine haze, droning C-86 confessionals, and bedroom New Order bass lines. Oh yeah, and cowbell. Nick Harte […]