DAILY BEAST: The Daily Beast spent a night at this open-air market for pills and needles, talking to users and prostitutes about what’s come to pass for normalcy in Kensington: hard-core drug use without police interference. Heroin isn’t sold here much—that trade is controlled by Latin drug crews in the Badlands. But users who buy in the Badlands come to Kensington to shoot up. Addicts duck into vacant lots on the Avenue after returning from dope corners a couple of blocks away and, barely concealed by high weeds, casually cook and shoot speedballs. People are hanging out everywhere, turning tricks […]
WARREN BUFFET: Take My Money — Please!
WARREN BUFFET: Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a […]
TEXAS HOLD ‘EM: Calling Perry’s ‘Texas Miracle’ Bluff
[Illustration by WMxdesign] HUFFINGTON POST: The Bureau of Labor and Statistics found that Texas’ jobless rate has steadily crept up in recent months, not plunged to zero as Perry would have the nation believe. Unemployment was over 8 percent in June. New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Wisconsin, and a slew of other states beat Texas on the employment numbers. And New York and several other states that outshined Texas did it without gutting environmental and labor regulations, slashing taxes, and with bare boned spending on education, housing, unemployment benefits and health services, as in Texas. Even the […]
SIDEWALKING: She & Hymn
Hymn For Her, Psalm Salon, Saturday night by MEREDITH KLEIBER PREVIOUSLY: Q&A With Hymn For Her
GUIDED BY VOICES: Game Of Pricks
In The Fall from Steve Cutts on Vimeo. “I’ve gone up on your house, weep to water the trees, and when you come calling me down I put on my disease.”— Robert Pollard
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I don’t know about you, folks, but I’m flat out fed up with hearing about “what needs to be done” to turn the country around. Who DOESN’T know what it is that we have to do something about? I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the “blame game”– from BOTH sides. I’m sick and tired of being preached to by the weak-kneed and the well-heeled in Congress. There isn’t a cupful of courage or compassion between them. But most of all, I’ve about had it with my PRESIDENT! Where is he hiding? Is he on […]
THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: The Beatles At JFK
It was 45 years ago that the Beatles played South Philly. The Colonel was there and he never forgets. Look for it Tuesday on a Phawker near you. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! PREVIOUSLY: THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Pictures Of Lily Philly PREVIOUSLY: THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: The Life Of Brian PREVIOUSLY: THE COLONEL REMEMBERS: Me & Keef RELATED: It is precisely 9:36 p.m. in West Philadelphia on the second splendidly summery September night of 1964, and exactly six minutes ago everything suddenly changed. For teenage Philadelphia, the calendar just flipped, along with everyone’s wig, to a new era. It will be years before […]
SIDEWALKING: Peekaboo
Times Square after dark by JEFF FUSCO *** BONUS: Sidewalking, The Movie by JEFF FUSCO
AS IT WAS WRITTEN: Rick Perry & The False Prophets
[Illustration by MARIO ZUCCA] TEXAS OBSERVER: Is Rick Perry God’s man for president? Schlueter, Long and other prayer warriors in a little-known but increasingly influential movement at the periphery of American Christianity seem to think so. The movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation. Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and given it an adrenaline shot. The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the […]
THE WAR ON DRUGS: Baby Missiles
The War on Drugs “Baby Missiles” from Secretly Jag on Vimeo. The new album, Slave Ambient, comes out Tuesday on Secretly Canadian, they play JBs on Thursday and we’ll have our super-sexy stoner-iffic Q&A with them up on Wednesday!
S&P: Tea Party Assholism Triggered Downgrade
POLITICO: A Standard & Poor’s director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default — a position put forth by some Republicans. Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said. “That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind […]
“I am a Floridian. Born and raised in Seminole County. I have a huge crazy family. I’m 28 but act like I’m 17 most of the time. I love to farm and shoot guys and wreck cars. I’m a redneck and proud of it. I like milk and German engineering and causing mayhem with my siblings.”–Lee Grace Dougherty*
ABC: Lee Grace Dougherty, the Florida stripper who led her two brothers in a cross country manhunt, told police after she was wounded and captured, “I deserved to get shot.” Lee Dougherty, the oldest of the trio of heavily armed siblings, appeared in court today by video along with her two brothers, Ryan Dougherty, 21, and Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26. They were ordered held on $1.25 million bail each. They were captured in Colorado on Wednesday after a 20 mile car chase with speeds up to 120 mph with one of the Doughertys allegedly firing an AK-47 assault rifle at […]
JACKIE OH: The President Killed My Husband
DAILY MAIL: Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal. The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him. She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy. Texas-born Mr […]