WASHINGTON POST: LOS ANGELES — When the street artist and guerrilla marketer Shepard Fairey got word from the Obama people that they would welcome his contribution to the campaign, he knew what he wanted to create: a phenomenon. All political art is propaganda (that is the point), but most political posters are bland, forgettable, wallpaper, like Fred Thompson on an off day. Fairey wanted something more iconic — aspirational, inspirational — and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster (with all that […]
BREAKING: Ted Kennedy Airlifted To Hospital
CBS NEWS: U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was airlifted to a Boston hospital Saturday morning after falling ill at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., the Cape Cod Times reported. He was first rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, and after being in the emergency room for two hours he was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital, according to the Times. It’s unknown what the 76-year-old senator’s medical condition is. Kennedy was first elected in 1962 to finish the final two years of the Senate term of his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy. Kennedy, who is the second most senior member of the […]
CONVICTED: Med. Marijuana Dealers Facing 20 Years
SF GATE: FRESNO — Two Modesto men are facing mandatory 20-year prison sentences after being convicted of running a medical-marijuana operation that federal prosecutors labeled a criminal enterprise, authorities said today. Luke Anthony Scarmazzo, 28, and Ricardo Ruiz Montes, 28, were convicted by a federal jury Fresno on Thursday of conducting a continuing criminal enterprise, growing marijuana and possessing marijuana with the intent to distribute. The conviction for running a criminal enterprise carries a mandatory sentence of at least 20 years. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger is to sentence both men Aug. 4. Federal officials said the case sends a […]
All Of This Happened While You Were Sleeping
Making Time, Pure, Last Night [Photos by TIFFANY YOON/CLICK TO ENLARGE] BY TIFFANY YOON There comes a time when a night life party as big as Making Time reaches its threshold and edges perilously close to the shark-tank. The shameless and pervasive display of look-at-me-I’m-a-raging-drunk assholish behavior last night does not bode well for the future of Making Time. Dave P and the other resident DJs celebrated the party’s 8th year and with an impressive lineup with Mobius Band, Black Kids and Cut Copy. We congratulate the guys for their years of rad party throwing, but fear for the future […]
HELL NO WE WON’T GO (BACK): Iraq Vets Tell Congress The War Is Immoral, Illegal & Incompetent
AFP: Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love. “I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school,” the now 24-year-old told AFP. “I was ‘filet mignon’ for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade,” or around 16 years old, he added. Chiroux joined the US army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant. He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq. On […]
BILL O’REILLY: The Other Side Of The Story
WARNING: F-bombing cats and dogs in this one. BILL O’REILLY: F*cks Ann Coulter WARNING: F-bomb Alert Defcon 5!
CINEMA: The High Lonesome
MISTER LONELY (2007, directed by Harmony Korine, 112 minutes, U.S.)SUPER HIGH ME (2007, directed by Michael Blieden, 89 minutes. U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITICThe original plan was to pop in on a late Sunday night screening of Harmony Korine’s new film Mr. Lonely and do a quick overnight review. If only Korine’s latest oddball masterpiece allowed me to keep my senses. Nearly a decade since his last film, 1999’s disappointing Julien Donkey-Boy, Korine has returned, wielding his mix of naive tone poetry, stunning-yet-bizarro visual non-sequiturs and cruel flashes of raw sadism with a more assured hand than ever. While […]
NEWS CLUES: Like A Swinging Nightstick Of Truth
THE BEATDOWN : Cops Change Their Story On Shooting Suspect Ass-Kicking AS THREE young men beaten and kicked by police in a car-stop arrest captured on videotape face a court hearing today, police officials have changed their account of the shooting they say led to the trio’s arrest. The day after Fox News showed as many as 15 officers kicking and punching the men after they were pulled from their car, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said narcotics officers on surveillance saw the three suspects and a fourth man emerge from their car and walk toward 4th and Annsbury streets, […]
JON STEWART: Why Whitey Can’t Vote 2
PREVIOUSLY: Seriously, West Virginny coal-crackers voting for a Republican is like the turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. Letting these people vote is like putting a loaded shotgun in the baby’s crib and hoping for the best. I don’t know about you, but I am against putting a loaded shotgun in the baby’s crib and hoping for the best. RELATED: A Whiter Shade Of Trash Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia – The best video clips are here PREVIOUSLY: I am saying this for the good of the country and, in fact, for the good of white people. Because I fear for […]
Homeland Security Forcibly Injects Deportees With Anti-Psychotic Drugs Before Deportation Flights
WASHINGTON POST: The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged. The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane. “Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac,” […]
THE EARLY WORD: People Have Their Uses
[Click image to activate Internets] THE CREATION: Making Time
HEAR YE: Mud Crutch
Now playing on Phawker Radio! Why? Because we love you, man! NEW YORK TIMES: Thirty-two years after the band broke up, Tom Petty has reassembled Mudcrutch, the group he started in his native Gainesville, Fla., and moved to Los Angeles, seeking stardom. Mudcrutch didn’t hit it big back in the 1970s, but out of the band’s ashes Mr. Petty created the Heartbreakers, who have generated a staggering stream of hits for three decades. Most of the album’s 14 songs (including covers of the trucker classic “Six Days on the Road” and the Byrds’ “Lover of the Bayou”) were done in […]