THE GUARDIAN: Newt Gingrich has just launched his campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 – only for Gingrich’s train to be derailed as soon as it left the station. So far Gingrich has been revealed to have owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to upmarket jeweler Tiffany, rashly attacked the Republican party’s signature policy before making an abject apology, been humbled by a conservative icon and humiliated by an ordinary voter in the crucial state of Iowa. Oh, Gingrich also had a box of glitter tipped over his head at a book signing. And it’s only Wednesday. […]
SHOCKING: Book Claims Roswell UFO Crash Was Actually Saucer Sent By Stalin, Piloted By Nazi Mutants
BLOOMBERG: Citing interviews with a single unnamed former engineer from government contractor EG&G — now part of URS Corp. (URS) — Jacobsen purports to lift the veil on what really crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and what happened to the wreckage when it got to Nevada. The craft, she writes, wasn’t an alien spaceship, as many have since theorized, nor was it a weather balloon, as the U.S. military alleged in its clumsy cover story. It was, according to Jacobsen, a Nazi-inspired Soviet spy plane with Cyrillic letters embossed on the hull, crewed by malformed adolescents, two of […]
EARLY WORD: The New Stone Age
RELATED: PhillyNORML’s volunteers have been instrumental in recent efforts to reform local marijuana laws. Pennsylvanians for Medical Marijuana (PA4MMJ) is supporting the Governor Raymond P. Shafer Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. State Representative Mark B. Cohen introduced the bill in the Pennsylvania General Assembly during 2009. State Senator Daylin Leach re-introduced it as SB 1003 for the 2011 session. This bill would create legal protections for citizens with serious medical conditions to safely access or grow cannabis for therapeutic use. It also creates a statewide system if Compassion Centers for patient access. April 2010 saw the news break about PhillyNORML’s efforts working with city officials to […]
SAD BUT TRUE: 30,000-Plus Voted For Milton Street
INQUIRER: In unofficial returns with 96 percent of the precincts reporting, Nutter captured 76 percent of the vote to Street’s 24 percent. MORE RELATED: Former state legislator T. Milton Street lost his primary-election challenge to Mayor Nutter, shifting the focus to former Mayor John Street, who switched his voter registration from Democrat to independent just in time to make a run in the fall. Street has said that he is “keeping a variety of options available as a matter of good politics.” That could mean another run for mayor or for one of the two City Council at-large seats set […]
BLOTTO #14: Tommy, Can You Hear Me?
BY LANCE DOILY To be honest, after Tommy drove his Town Car into the Passaic River to get the rolling shitshow he called a life over with, it was hard to find something nice to say about the guy. His greatest achievement in life was working himself up the drug dealer ladder to the point where he was next in line to be the main coke supplier to the ‘81 Phillies, but a falling out with Greg Luzinski over a batch heavily cut with talcum powder queered the deal. It was pretty much all down hill after that. By the […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Seventy-five miles north of Las Vegas sits a land parcel in the middle of the desert. Called Area 51, the parcel is just outside of the abandoned Nevada Test and Training Range, where more than 100 atmospheric bomb tests were conducted in the 1950s. Officially, the U.S. government has never acknowledged the existence of Area 51. Unofficially, it has become a place associated with conspiracy theories, alien landings and tiny spaceships. Journalist Annie Jacobsen tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that the site has remained classified for many years — not because of aliens or spaceships, but because the […]
THANK GOD FOR ATHEISTS: Otherwise Your Dog Or Cat Would Starve To Death After The Rapture
DAILY NEWS: The Second Coming of Jesus Christ – if and when it happens – raises all types of questions for believers who expect to “meet the Lord in the air” during the Rapture, as the Bible states. Such as: Who’s going to feed the dog? Bart Centre has you covered. For only $135. Centre, a retired retail executive for a major national chain, has found a way to profit from what he sees as the misguided beliefs of God-fearing Bible thumpers. “I’m not looking to make a statement here,” said Centre, 62, an atheist author and founder of Eternal […]
SIDEWALKING: The Hooters
Father, Mother and Baby Owls, Jeff Fusco’s Back Yard, 2:15 PM Sunday by JEFF FUSCO
GIVE UNTIL IT HELPS: Gardening At Night
[Detail from “Garden Of Earthly Delights” by HIERONYMOUS BOSCH] The Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger recently teamed up with Groupon to raise funds for a community garden in the Francisville area of Philadelphia. The goal of the garden is to provide a bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables to local food pantries and soup kitchens, supporting their efforts to feed local children and protect families at risk for hunger. With funding for raised garden beds, seeds, equipment, and planting and distribution expenses, the Coalition Against Hunger can establish this community garden and help hunger-relief programs improve the nutritional quality of […]
INCOMING: David Comes Alive
Exceptionally well-made mini-doc about David Comes To Life, the new album by this clean-cut Canadian guitar army with the gentle giant lead singer and a naughty name. Comes out June 7th on Matador. They play First Unitarian on June 26th.
GASLAND: Chesapeake Energy Fined $1 Million For Contaminating The Drinking Water Of 16 Families
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Pennsylvania state regulators have fined natural gas drilling company Chesapeake Energy Corp. more than $1 million, which officials said Tuesday is the single largest fine for an oil or gas operator in the state. The state Department of Environmental Protection said the fine stems from Chesapeake’s contamination of private water supplies in northern Pennsylvania’s Bradford County and a February tank fire at a drilling site in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Washington County. In Bradford County, the department said that improper well casing and cementing allowed natural gas to seep into groundwater and contaminate 16 families’ drinking water wells. The department began investigating […]
THE SPERMINATOR: Schwarzeneggers Split After Arnold Admits To Fathering Love Child With The Maid
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, have separated, with Shriver moving out of their Brentwood mansion while the two determine the next step in their 25-year marriage. Shriver has been residing apart from the actor-turned-politician for the last few weeks. The former first couple confirmed the separation in a joint statement released Monday after questions from The Times. “This has been a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us,” the statement read. “After a great deal of thought, reflection, discussion and prayer, we came to this decision together. At this […]
TONITE: Me Likey Likke
SPIN: Li’s new album, Wounded Rhymes, is equal parts seething ice princess and lonely snowwoman, vacillating almost track by track between fury and despondence over a scotched relationship. “Unrequited Love,” a sort of Spector-ish torch song, with its lightly strummed guitar and girl-group shoowop-shoowas, is one of the year’s saddest, prettiest moments. And then on follow-up “Get Some,” for which Yttling imports heaving tribal drums, Li is back on the prowl, tenaciously conflating herself with a prostitute as she writhes all over the track. The dual objectives — weep for me, fear me — collide throughout, creating a dicey, but […]