HEAR YE: Return Of The Wichita Lineman

Now playing on Phawker Radio! 1. Sing (Travis) 2. Walls (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) 3. Angel Dream (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) 4. Times Like These (Foo Fighters) 5. These Days (Jackson Browne) 6. Sadly Beautiful (The Replacements) 7. All I Want Is You (U2) 8. Jesus (Velvet Underground) 9. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) (Green Day) 10. Grow Old With Me (John Lennon) * NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t JOHN PRINE [Highly Recommended] Join us for a two-hour visit with John Prine as he walks us through his life — from […]

GOLDFINGER: Officially The Greatest Of All Time

ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH OLYMPIC CORRESPONDENT I owe you all an apology. The one day I don’t file a dispatch, all the shit hits the Olympic fan. First, Phelps won his seventh gold of the ’08 Games. Damn. But what a race! This was the 100m fly, which as you may recall, is one of Phelps weaker events – in that he is best in mid-distance events. Coming off the 50m mark, Phelps was in seventh place, and even heading into the final wall, it looked like he would lose. Then he pulled some weird half-stroke super-lunge, and ended up winning […]

White House Wants Local Cops To Spy On Americans

WASHINGTON POST: The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes […]

FIRE IN THE HOLE: You Sunk My Swiftboat!

BOOK ‘EM, OBAMO: Obama plunges into a murky sea of lies to fight Swiftboat assholes with disinfecting sunshine and reality-based facts. [Not pictured, knife clenched between teeth and can of whup-ass in back pocket] HUFFINGTON POST: As promised, Barack Obama’s campaign is hitting back hard against smear author Jerome Corsi’s New York Times best-selling book The Obama Nation. In an exhaustive 41-page PDF document entitled Unfit for Publication — a riff on Corsi’s 2004 Unfit for Command, which targeted John Kerry — the campaign documents every false claim they have been able to find in Corsi’s current tome. MORE FIGHT […]

THIS JUST IN: Frankford Rapist Strikes Again

NBC 10: Philadelphia police said a 37-year-old woman was sexually assaulted in her bedroom Saturday morning in Frankford, the third attack in the neighborhood in a week. Police said Saturday’s attack has similarities to three prior sexual assaults in the same area of Frankford over the last two months, two of which occurred last week. Investigators said the attacker pulled a chair up to a window and cut the screen to gain entry into the woman’s Dyre Street home. The victim’s children said she told them the assault occurred at about 4 a.m. The woman’s adult children told NBC 10 […]

PENNSYLTUCKY: Hope + Heavy Metal Thunder

Philadelphia, PA – Harleys for Obama will be revving their engines across the state of Pennsylvania this weekend. Harley-Davidson enthusiasts will saddle up their bikes and head to events in Wilkes-Barre, York, Pittsburgh, and Johnstown. They will speak out about John McCain’s “philosophical” opposition to all Buy American provisions that help our manufacturers – including a requirement that the Secret Service use American-made motorcycles. Barack Obama knows that the finest motorcycles in the world are manufactured right here in America, including in York, Pennsylvania. Obama supports the men and women of Harley-Davidson, one of the flagship companies of American manufacturing. […]

GOLDFINGER: Michael Phelps Wins Seventh Gold

NEW YORK TIMES: BEIJING — Michael Phelps has caught Mark Spitz, 36 years after his record haul of seven gold medals at the Munich Games. Now it may take only a day for Spitz to be left behind. Phelps won the 100-meter butterfly Saturday morning here, coming from behind to out-touch Milorad Cavic of Serbia by one-hundredth of a second and claim his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Games. Cavic led almost the entire race, but as Cavic glided in to the wall, Phelps took another stroke to grab the victory with a time of 50.58 seconds. Phelps will […]

HOAX: This Stinks Worse Than Bigfoot’s D*ck

EDITOR & PUBLISHER: This afternoon at 3 pm, Eastern time, a police officer named Matt Whitton plans a news conference with California resident Tom Biscardi and former corrections officer Rick Dyer in Palo Alto to show photographs and the results of DNA testing. They say it all will prove the existence of the legendary man-ape found in north Georgia [pictured, above]. And for once this week, we mean the state, not the battleground over in Europe. Whitton tells the Clayton News Daily that people who call the creature a hoax are just jealous. According to the newspaper, “Whitton and Dyer […]

SHADY: Dog Clone Lady Mystery Deepens

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A woman who made headlines by having five pups cloned and was linked to an abduction case in England is also wanted in Tennessee on charges she tried to plan a burglary in 2004, a defense attorney and prosecutors there said. Joyce Bernann McKinney was charged in Carter County with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and failure to appear in court, said attorney David Crockett, who represented her in the Tennessee case. Authorities there said she instructed a 15-year-old boy to break into a house, and Crockett said she needed […]

JUNK SCIENCE: Confucius Say

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR “You peng zi yuan fang lai, bu yi yue hu?” “Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?” To the thunderous beat of 2,008 Xia Dynasty drums, 2,008 voices chanted this classic greeting from Confucius in welcoming the 100,000 spectators to the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. The games are now well underway, and it’s impossible to ignore thinking about China, especially after that dazzling opening ceremony. Are the Chinese scary task masters, or did that display show the wonders of a large group of people working together in harmony? […]

RIP: Legendary Producer Jerry Wexler Dead At 91

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Legendary record producer Jerry Wexler, who helped shape R&B music with influential recordings of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and other greats, and later made key recordings with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, has died, says his co-author, David Ritz. He was 91. Wexler earned his reputation as a music industry giant while a partner at Atlantic Records. Atlantic provided an outlet for the groundbreaking work of African-American performers in the 1950s and ’60s. Later, it was a home to rock icons like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. He later helped Dylan win his first […]

JUDGE: You Can’t Sue Saudi Arabia For 9/11, Even If…

INQUIRER: An ambitious lawsuit by the Philadelphia firm of Cozen O’Connor blaming the government of Saudi Arabia for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was dealt a sharp setback yesterday when a federal appeals court ruled that the desert kingdom could not be sued for acts of terrorism. The ruling followed years of hard-fought litigation in which lawyers for Cozen and other firms representing Sept. 11 victims traveled the globe tracking down witnesses with information about how Saudi money found its way to al Qaeda. Yet, in a stinging setback for Cozen and other plaintiffs’ lawyers, the U.S. Court of Appeals […]

HEAR YE: Monkey Journey To The West

Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why, because we love you! JOURNEY TO THE WEST, an album conceived and created by Damon Albarn (music) & Jamie Hewlett (visuals) under the guise of MONKEY, is performed by an assortment of European and Chinese musicians and singers and was produced by Albarn. Similarly, the Hewlett’s album artwork moves beyond his stunning design work on the opera MONKEY: JOURNEY TO THE WEST and exploring to the fullest its characters, storylines, themes and inspirations.