Ex-Phillies pitcher Jim Bunning is the outgoing Senator from Kentucky who fiercely filibustered a bill to extend unemployment benefits to the jobless because it would add to the deficit. This from the man who voted fund two wars on the back of the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich. His message to the hundreds of thousands that would lose benefits? Too fuckin’ bad, freeloaders! INQUIRER: A Philadelphia man has agreed to plead guilty to sending threatening e-mail to U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, the Hall-of-Fame Phillies pitcher. Bruce Shore, 51, signed a document on Aug. 6 expressing his wish to plead […]

BIKE SHARE PHILADELPHIA: Bike Share Philadelphia is sponsoring bike-sharing demonstrations: Thursday, August 26th at 36th & Walnut Streets, 10 am to 6 pm, in front of the Penn Bookstore in University City in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania. Friday August 27th at Love Park (JFK Plaza) – 15th & JFK Blvd, 10 am to 6 pm, in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. Saturday, August 28th at Penn’s Landing on the Walnut Plaza, 10 am to 6 pm, in cooperation with the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. The bikes and solar powered kiosk station will be available […]

INQUIRER: It’s not clear yet how the recent recalls of more than half a billion eggs from two Iowa producers might influence Americans’ habits. Eggs from the two farms are believed to be linked to an estimated 1,250 illnesses, and may have caused tens of thousands more. But the story of what has happened since the 1980s to what the American Egg Board likes to call “the incredible edible egg” is also a story of turf disputes and inaction in Washington that were countered in parts of the country by frustrated state officials and farmers. In Pennsylvania , a coalition […]

SOURCEWATCH: Koch Industries, (pronounced “coke”), is the largest privately owned company in the United States with 70,000 employees and annual sales of $100 billion in the fiscal year ending December of 2008. [1] Cargill comes in second for privately owned companies. Operations include refining, chemicals, process and pollution control equipment, technologies, fibers and polymers, commodity and financial trading and consumer products. The company operates crude gathering systems and pipelines across North America. One subsidiary processes 800,000 barrels of crude oil daily in its three refineries. Koch also owns ranches with a total of 15,000 head of cattle in Kansas, Montana […]

BY MAVIS LINNNEMANN The most delicious sweet corn in the world is sold right off the two-lane road to my parents’ house in Northern Kentucky. The farmer sets up shop in the parking lot of the local Elk Lodge a few times a week, tempting passersby with the towering mound of freshly picked corn sitting in the back of his red pickup truck. This farmer’s corn is the stuff summer is made of. It’s round, plump, juicy and ridiculously sweet. Just the thought of it makes me wish I was back home with my family, shucking corn for what I […]

BY MATTHEW HENGEVELD Once upon a time hip-hop’s only requirements for beatmaking were a fresh set of drums, a hypnotic bass line and an original sample. Those days are over. Today, the hip-hop industry is diluted with chain-dangling, sunglasses-wearing, pastel-rocking cocky tight-jeaned amateurs with a bass-fetish bordering on a Napoleonic complex. Everything has become so fake— where have all the beatmakers gone? The answer: Oxnard, California. Kan Kick, the Oxnard-based beatmaker, lurks in the shadows of fellow Oxnardians Madlib and DJ Babu. Kan Kick splashed into the scene as a late addition to Madlib’s group, Lootpack. He learned beatmaking as […]

TIME: Comparing the move to an Orwellian plot, NBC reports that the city of Philadelphia is set to require bloggers to purchase something called a business privilege license. Not really making money from your blog? Doesn’t matter, says NBC, you still have to pay for the license. MORE CITY PAPER: For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her […]

PAUL KRUGMAN: The Obama administration wants to preserve those parts of the original tax cuts that mainly benefit the middle class — which is an expensive proposition in its own right — but to let those provisions benefiting only people with very high incomes expire on schedule. Republicans, with support from some conservative Democrats, want to keep the whole thing. And there’s a real chance that Republicans will get what they want. That’s a demonstration, if anyone needed one, that our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt. What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax […]

ESQUIRE: In the twelve years since he resigned in defeat and disgrace, he has been carefully plotting his return to power. As 2012 approaches, he has raised as much money as all of his potential rivals combined and sits atop the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. But just who is Newton Leroy Gingrich, really? An epic and bizarre story of American power in an unsettled age. […] Back in the 1990s, she told a reporter she could end her husband’s career with a single interview. She held her tongue all through the affair and the divorce and even through […]

THE TELEGRAPH: Hail Julian Assange, international man of mystery, brave anti-war crusader, ultimate cyber-hero and now, according to his cultish followers, victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the CIA, the Pentagon and other dark, oppressive forces. On Friday, Assange, who recently posted 90,000 unexpurgated United States military reports from Afghanistan on his Wikileaks.org website, was revealed by the Stockholm newspaper Expressen to be the subject of a Swedish arrest warrant on suspicion of rape. Less than 24 hours after the rape allegation emerged, Swedish prosecutors withdrew the warrant, citing a lack of evidence, while maintaining that Assange, an Australian, […]

BY BRENDAN SKWIRE When I tell people I’ve never been to the Philly Folk Festival and never plan to, I invariably hear “but you’re a bluegrass fan, and there’s always at least one bluegrass band at the Philly Folk Fest.” This is true… but I’m picky about my music, and generally not willing to pony up the bucks to sit through a bunch of bands I don’t care for just to hear 45 minutes of music I like. But this year, I may have to make an exception, because bluegrass legend Jesse McReynolds is making his first appearance in Schwenksville […]