NEW YORK TIMES: “HITLER is alive in Burma” reads the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the “Juno” star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week. The spot is one of 30 produced for U.S. Campaign for Burma, starring celebrities like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston. They will be distributed on Fanista.com, a social-networking and entertainment retail site, then passed along to sites like YouTube and Google Video every day for the next month. The goal of the campaign is to thrust the cause […]
JOHN MCCAIN: 100 Years
DNC Ad on John McCain and Iraq: “100”
MILESTONE: ‘Mission Accomplished’ Turns Five
HUFFINGTON POST: Has it really been five years since we were treated to that breathtaking “Mission Accomplished” scene aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln? I remember watching the president’s plane approach the carrier that day as cable news anchors gushed about the sheer genius of the setting for its public relations power. They talked about the president’s bravery, his mastery of the moment, his leadership skills, his macho. But back then, my skeptical feelings were tremendously out of step. Everyone else in the traditional media lapped up the phony photo op like hungry kitties handed a bowl of warm milk. According […]
THE SLAVES OF PENNSYLTUCKY: Rendell Vows To Re-Emancipate The Slaves If It Comes To That
JOHN BAER: Senate GOP Leader Dominic Pileggi said that if Fumo actually believes a majority of the Senate would vote to reinstate slavery, “It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t require an apology.” I wouldn’t count on it. Unless it’s one of those “if I offended anyone” things. Besides, Vince is merely extending (though by some distance) Gov. Ed’s stated view that some Pennsylvania whites won’t vote for blacks. And Gov. Ed’s spokesman assures me that if the Legislature passes a slavery bill, the governor will veto it. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Fumo Confident That A Law Re-Instating Slavery Would Pass In […]
OVERHEARD: Fumo Confident That A Law Re-Instating Slavery Would Pass In The PA State House; Claims He Was Kidding, But We Have No Reason To Believe Him
INQUIRER: In comments that stunned many who heard them, Sen. Vincent J. Fumo said yesterday that his colleagues in the General Assembly would support slavery if given the chance. The remarks came during an Appropriations Committee hearing in Harrisburg on a bill that would define marriage as between a man and a woman – a measure Fumo opposes. “What you are advocating here is that we take away the rights of a minority. And I don’t think that’s right,” Fumo told Gilbert Coleman, Jr., senior pastor of Freedom Christian Bible Fellowship in Philadelphia, during the hearing. “. . . If […]
MEOW MIX: Gay Guvs, Lesbian Islands & Wright Stuff
Will Barack Obama’s official renunciation of his former pastor neutralize GoddamnAmericaGate? In his appearance on Monday before the National Press Club, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, when asked about Obama’s distancing himself, said the candidate was just a politician doing what politicians do. Wright (who will preach in Philly on June 1st) also said he believed the U.S. government was “capable” of creating and spreading HIV to kill African-Americans and obfuscated when asked about the “chickens come home to roost” on 9/11 thing. On the surface, it seems like Wright went batshit and left Obama no choice, but certainly Wright — who’s […]
DEAR DOCTOR DEAN: This Is Getting Old, Fast
[Image via HUFFINGTON POST] Dear Doctor Dean, You and I go way back to Iowa 2002. Hell, I had a front row seat for The Scream, and then watched in slack-jawed horror as the media sliced you into a sound byte and fed you into the echo chamber and turned you into the Incredible Hulk. I am starting to get that bad feeling again, which is why I am writing to ask you a small favor: Make it stop. Who’s brilliant idea was it to park the campaign in PA for five weeks? That’s like parking Katrina over New Orleans […]
NEW DAY RISING: Exit The Flim-Flam Men
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] INQUIRER: A week after losing his state Senate race, labor leader John J. Dougherty announced plans to step down tomorrow as chairman of the city Redevelopment Authority. His term was not slated to end until early next year. “I am resigning at this point in time because I believe I have accomplished all the goals I set for myself and have served the authority with distinction for eight productive years,” Dougherty, business manager of electricians union Local 98, wrote to Mayor Nutter in a letter he hand-delivered to City Hall early yesterday. In later interviews, Dougherty […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA] FRESH AIR Love, violence, death and America have always been themes for Australian-born singer-composer Nick Cave — Murder Ballads and Abbatoir Blues are just two of his album titles — so he was perhaps a natural to compose the soundtrack for last year’s epically paranoid Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Cave also wrote the screenplay and soundtrack for the Australian epic The Proposition, which Roger Ebert described as “pitiless and uncompromising, so filled with pathos and disregarded innocence that it is a record of those things we pray to be […]
ELECTORAL TSUNAMI: One Million New Dem Voters
WASHINGTON POST: The past seven states to hold primaries registered more than 1 million new Democratic voters; Republican numbers mainly ebbed or stagnated. North Carolina and Indiana, which will hold their presidential primaries on May 6, are reporting a swell of new Democrats that triples the surge in registrations before the 2004 primary. The contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has engaged enough new voters to change the political makeup of the country, experts say. The next several months — and the general election in November — will reveal the extent of the shift. Is it a […]
RAW FOOTAGE: Our Man In Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) — Afghanistan was Monday investigating how militants could get within 500 metres of President Hamid Karzai and other top leaders to carry out a brazen attack that left three Afghans dead. The insurgent Taliban movement said it launched Sunday’s attack to show it had the power to strike even the nation’s biggest annual military parade.The event, which was supposed to showcase the Afghan army’s growing strength after getting new training and equipment, mainly from the United States, had been weeks in the making with stepped-up patrols and roadblocks around Kabul. MORE
DOUBLE STANDARD: The Wrath Of Farrakhan
HUFFINGTON POST: At last Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton drew out her objections to Sen. Barack Obama‘s relationship with his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, saying that what troubled her was not just Wright’s incendiary language, but his past praise for Louis Farrakhan, the controversial head of the Nation of Islam. “It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to,” said Clinton. “And I think that it wasn’t only the specific remarks but some of the relationships with Reverend Farrakhan, with giving […]
MEDIA CHALLENGE: The Exorcism of John McCain
“All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it would was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades. So I believe that […]