Bush also continued to fear-monger last week by again blurring the lines between the terrorists who are fomenting civil war in Iraq, and the al-Qaeda that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist network known, confusingly, as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” is a product of the U.S. invasion, not a justification for it. The president seems unable to acknowledge that military power alone cannot impose democracy on a violent land unready for it. Miracles can happen. But the turmoil in Iraq today leaves one conclusion: Bush has botched Iraq. He cannot endlessly leave American soldiers to die fighting for impossible […]
KILLADELPHIA: 14-Year-Old Shot Dead By 18-Year-Old
A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed Saturday in broad daylight in South Philadelphia. Police have charged 18-year-old Charles Meyers of South Philadelphia with his murder. Police say at about 4pm, 10 kids — including 14-year-old Tykeem Law — were on five bikes on the 900 block of Federal Street, near the Italian Market. A car coming down the street honked the horn and yelled at the kids to move out the street. Four of the five bikes got out of the way. One didn’t move fast enough ridden by 14-year-old Tykeem Law. Police say words may have been exchanged, […]
HOT DOC: Fla. Co-Chair Of McCain Campaign Arrested
Republican Florida state senator Bob Allen was arrested for offering to perform oral sex on an undercover police officer in a public park restroom. He would pay the man $20, he reportedly said. Ironically, according to Mother Jones, “Allen recently introduced HB 1475 into the Florida state legislature, a bill called Lewd or Lascivious Exhibition that lays a mightier smackdown on offenders of Allen’s stripe.” Wonder if the “gay sweaters” had something to do with this? Page 2 of the arrest report after the jump…
MEDIA: Inky’s Gail Shister Going Metro
Reports indicate that the Inky’s Gail Shister will be leaving her long term perch in the features section and moving over to the Metro desk. Developing… From an April 2007 PW piece on the Shister by Steve Volk: Shister lives to be first with the news, having tried to do just that with TV Talk, the Inquirer column that made its last appearance earlier this month. For a quarter-century she covered mostly network news divisions, a highly specialized niche, which she occupied so thoroughly that Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz referred to her as the Inquirer‘s “most famous columnist” […]
JUNK SCIENCE: Hey Swinger
ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR It’s pitch dark out. I’m so far away from anything. There are absolutely no lights, except for the sparkles of a billion tiny pinpoints of light that I create each time I move. I’m floating in phosphorescent, bathwater-warm water, alone, off shore of a tiny island in the Caribbean Ocean far, far from the mainland somewhere between the border of Columbia and Panama. The island is postage-stamp size. It’s owned by a semi-autonomous tribe of Central American Indians called the Kuna. There are only a dozen people on the island. When I float to shore there […]
SIZE MATTERS: 20 Towers Slated For Riverfront
BY MATT BLANCHARD With all the hoopla over casinos, you might have missed everything else that’s planned for the riverfront. Developers have drawn up designs for a veritable condominium kingdom on the Delaware, pushing proposals for more than 20 new towers containing 5,000 condo units. “It’s massive. It’s absolutely massive,” says architect Scott Page of Interface Studios. Page got a shock while putting together Interface’s recent plan for Northern Liberties. By his calculations, projects proposed for the river end of the neighborhood (east of I-95) would more than double the number of housing units in the neighborhood, from 2,300 to […]
CINEMA: Rescue Dawn
(RESCUE DAWN, Directed By Werner Herzog, 126 Min., 2006) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC First it was the series of dreamlike fictional films, then a steady stream of surreal documentaries and now, with his first large-budget, English-language film, the force of nature known as Werner Herzog is ready for the third act of his career. With Rescue Dawn, starring Batman himself Christian Bale, Herzog appears to be capitalizing on the fluke success of his documentary Grizzly Man by swinging for the fences for a last shot at a Hollywood homer. A triumphant story of a downed pilot’s survival in the […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Actor and writer Ricky Gervais is best known as creator and star of the British TV comedy The Office, which was adapted into a U.S. hit starring Steve Carrell. He also stars in Extras, which airs in the U.S. on HBO; it’s about an out-of-work actor scrambling for bit parts ? until he lands a leading role in a crass but popular sitcom. Gervais also writes the Flanimals children’s books. PLUS, editorial cartoonist and Kudzu comic-strip creator Doug Marlette died July 10 in a Mississippi car accident. He was 57. His skewering of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker […]
KILLADELPHIA: 2 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
BY PETER MUCHA OF THE INQUIRER Two men and a 15-year-old boy are dead and two other men were in critical condition after three double shootings in Philadelphia, police said. The slayings, along with yesterday’s death of 19-year-old shot June 17, raise the murder total for the year to 217. Timothy Clark, 15, was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m., just minutes after being found shot in the head in the 6900 block of Vandike Street in the Tacony section of the Northeast, according to Homicide Sgt. Charles Coan. Clark lived down the street, in the 6800 block. A second victim […]
MAN DOWN: Philly Sales Exec Gored In Pamplona
MADRID, Spain — Two American brothers were recovering on Friday from their serious injuries after they were gored during the bloodiest day yet at the San Fermin festival in the northeastern city of Pamplona.Lawrence Lenahan, 26, of Hermosa Beach, Calif. and his brother, Michael Lenahan, 23, of Philadelphia, Pa. were gored Thursday by a bull who strayed from the pack, turned around half way and charged the wrong way during the daily morning bull run. Thirteen people in total were injured and seven were gored, including the Lenahan brothers and other two men very seriously. Michael Lenahan, a sales executive […]
WAR IS OVER: House Votes To Withdraw Troops
WASHINGTON — The Iraqi government is achieving only spotty military and political progress, the Bush administration conceded Thursday in an assessment that war critics quickly seized on as confirmation of their dire warnings. Within hours, the House voted to withdraw U.S. troops by spring. As many as 80 suicide bombers per month cross into the country from Syria, said the interim assessment, which is to be followed by a fuller accounting in September from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the region. “I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must,” Bush said at […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
Miss NJ Keeps Crown, Vows No More Fuzzy Navels With Touchy-Feely Fat Guys According to KYW, “Members of the board of the Miss New Jersey Pageant decided Thursday afternoon in Ocean City, NJ, that Amy Polumbo will be allowed to keep her crown amid a controversy over some anonymously mailed photos. ‘Why these pictures came out I have no idea,’ said Terry McLean, Polumbo’s grandmother. ‘I’m sure there are pictures of these people, too — only worse. And her pictures are nothing.’” Radar Magazine begs to differ: “Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo‘s blackmail photos reveal a moderately tame pageant queen […]