INQUIRER: The recent heat wave was blamed for seven more deaths in the city yesterday, bringing to 15 the number of people to succumb during the four days of 90-plus temperatures. All but one — a 53-year-old man who died of heatstroke outdoors — were found in overheated houses, some sealed tight. The toll far surpassed the three heat-related deaths recorded last year. There were seven heat deaths in 2003, two in 2004, 23 in 2005, and 27 in 2006, officials said. MORE
EARLY WORD: Take The Skinhead Bowling
Details are few, as per the Secret Service’s wishes, but Senator Obama will be town Friday for a private fundraiser at an undisclosed location. On Saturday he will be holding a Townhall meeting “in the Philadelphia area,” we’re guessing the suburbs where he still has is work cut out for him. Wondering if or when Obama and Clintonista Nutter make nice and go bowling. These two are like the hot girls who went to the prom with the wrong dates (Obama/Chaka Fatah & the resulting Nutter/Clinton mismatch). Here’s to no more tears on Prom Night. More details as they come […]
DAILY DOSE: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Hmm. Are we the only one’s that find it curious the Air Force would spend its recruiting ad dollars on The Daily Show? Last night’s complete Colbert Report after the jump.
CINEMA: The Credible Hulk
VARIETY: To anyone wondering why the Marvel team would so soon embark on a makeover of the growly green giant after all the angst endured on the previous one, the answer is provided by the final scene, in which the star of the most recent Marvel B.O. smash unexpectedly turns up to ask, “What if I told you we were getting a team together?” New film thus marks the first step in the label’s plan to begin shuffling its major characters into films together, a la some of the comicbooks — a scheme that seemingly required the rehabilitation of the […]
Judge Overseeing Bestiality Obscenity Case Busted For Raunchy Barnyard Sex Images Posted To His Web Site
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Alex Kozinski is more accustomed to appearing on lists to fill U.S. Supreme Court vacancies than headlines involving pornographic scandals. But on Wednesday, the chief judge of the country’s largest federal appeals court was forced to suspend an obscenity trial he was presiding over after sexually explicit images posted to his his family’s Web site became public. The Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski had posted sexual material on his personal Web site and then blocked access after being interviewed about it Tuesday evening. Kozinski, 57, told the Times he thought the material on his site, which included […]
MEDIA COP: Fox Calls Michelle “Obama’s Baby Mama”
SALON: An alert reader wrote in just a little while ago to let us know about something he’d spotted on Fox News Wednesday afternoon. During a segment discussing conservative attacks against Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, the network described the former as “Obama’s baby mama.” I checked, and sure enough, as you can see below, our e-mailer was right. In fact, that description was displayed on-screen several times during the segment, which featured anchor Megyn Kelly and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, an FNC contributor. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Michelle Malkin Is A Cunt With Teeth PREVIOUSLY: Fox’s […]
ZOOEY STARDUST: Talking Mutter With Letterman
CARRIE RICKEY: As for The Happening, [M. Knight Shayamalan‘s] throwback horror flick that plays like The Birds meets The Blob, it’s beyond good and evil. It’s dumbfounding. At the hollow center of this unapologetic B-movie is Mark Wahlberg, typically the low-key everyman, in overwrought-robot mode. He portrays Elliot Moore, a Philadelphia science teacher (at Masterman High, for you homeboys and girls), called out of class one sunny morning and warned of a random plague — an airborne chemical toxin? — sweeping Manhattan, triggering suicides. From Massachusetts to Maryland, Central Park to Rittenhouse Square, urban greens are particularly perilous. As a […]
BREAKING: Supremes Smackdown Gitmo Tribunals
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Supreme Court [NOT pictured, above] ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, ”The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” MORE […]
WORTH REPEATING: Let’s Impeach The President
BY JONATHAN VALANIA When Stephen Colbert hosted the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner — the annual D.C. puppet show where reporters play pattycake with the Prez — he rode the Trojan Horse of Truthiness right up to the President’s table and unleashed its hidden contents: a disinfecting dose of reality-based reality, thinly-coated with irony for easier digestion, though impossible to swallow for those weaned on Fox News comfort food. Speaking truth to power at point blank-range, Colbert’s barbs essentially added up to: The emperor has no clothes, and all of you, the Fourth Estate, have become nothing more than royal […]
INSTA-REVIEW: Coldplay Viva La Vida
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we really, really like you! BY ED KING ROCK SNOB As you might imagine, I’m a huge Coldplay fan. I first heard them playing over the sound system at a Restoration Hardware, and damn if I didn’t march right up to Customer Service until I got an answer on who was playing. As soon as I got home I downloaded as much Coldplay as I could find on iTunes, and I haven’t been able to get enough of them since then. Man, I don’t recall being hooked on something this right since wine […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Ron Hansen has created worlds of sin in novels like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Desperadoes. His unsavory bandits have appeared on the silver screen and earned him critical acclaim. But priest and nuns have replaced outlaws in Hansen’s most recent endeavors: The novelist was ordained a Catholic deacon in 2007, and his writing reflects an increased devotion to the Catholic faith. His latest book, Exiles, tells the story of the sea tragedy that killed five German nuns and inspired Victorian poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins to write the poem, […]
DAILY DOSE: The Complete Colbert Report
Enjoy. Last night’s Daily Show With Jon Stewart after the jump. RELATED: TVNewser reports that E.D. Hill, who hosts “America’s Pulse” — and who raised many eyebrows this week after calling Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist-pound a “terrorist fist jab” — has lost her show.
WHY THEY HATE US: 80,000 South Koreans Protest Imported U.S. Crazy-Meat Force-Feeding
ASSOCIATED PRESS: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president said Wednesday that his government will make a fresh start, hours after an estimated 80,000 people gathered in the South Korean capital in the largest demonstration yet against the planned resumption of U.S. beef imports. The government agreed in April to lift almost all restrictions that had been imposed on imports of U.S. beef over fears of mad cow disease. Opponents of the plan worry it does not do enough to protect citizens. Lee, a pro-American conservative, agreed in April just before a summit with President Bush to reopen the country’s […]