BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - George Clooney has never been up for an Oscar, but when the nominees were announced today, he heard his name mentioned not once, not twice, but three times. And he made a bit of Oscar history.For the first time ever, a nominee for best director has also been nominated in one of the acting categories for a different film.
Yep, his career is over, finished. He'll never work in Hollywood again.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- For every other Big Ten team, Wisconsin's Kohl Center isn't the place to go for a little peace and quiet.But for the second year in a row, Illinois was able to enjoy the silence.
Dee Brown and Rich McBride scored 16 points apiece and the sixth-ranked Illini beat the Badgers 66-51 Tuesday night, picking up their fourth straight victory over the Badgers and second straight in one of the nation's toughest road venues.
"That's what you want to hear on the road -- silence," Illinois coach Bruce Weber said. "You start seeing the people start walking up the stairs, and now you're starting to feel good."
“How does one report the facts,” asked Rob Corddry on “The Daily Show,” “when the facts themselves are biased?” He explained to Jon Stewart, who played straight man, that “facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda,” and therefore can’t be reported.Mr. Corddry’s parody of journalists who believe they must be “balanced” even when the truth isn’t balanced continues, alas, to ring true. The most recent example is the peculiar determination of some news organizations to cast the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as “bipartisan.”
[...]
So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There’s nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican connections.
Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post’s ombudsman to the “Today” show’s Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn’t given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff’s clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he “directed” to Democrats.
[...]
Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn’t. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory.
More important, this kind of misreporting makes the public feel helpless. Voters who are told, falsely, that both parties were drawn into Mr. Abramoff’s web are likely to become passive and shrug their shoulders instead of demanding reform.
So the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It’s not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade.
The Preznit thanks you for standing up to the evil, biased, terrorist loving facts, Katie.
Both Meloy's and opener Laura Veirs' sets will be streamed live in their entireties on NPR.org starting around 7:30 PM EST Saturday, and will be available as a free mp3 download from the website's permanent archive starting Sunday, January 29. Additionally, some selections will be featured on NPR's weekly "All Songs Considered" podcast starting February 1.Here's the info at NPR. Here are some previous shows that may be of some interest to you.
For what we are now seeing are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture--a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; and the political and economic marginalization of our culture.... The British historian Charles Freeman published an extended discussion of the transition that took place during the late Roman empire, the title of which could serve as a capsule summary of our current president: "The Closing of the Western Mind." Mr. Bush, God knows, is no Augustine; but Freeman points to the latter as the epitome of a more general process that was underway in the fourth century: namely, 'the gradual subjection of reason to faith and authority.' This is what we are seeing today, and it is a process that no society can undergo and still remain free. Yet it is a process of which administration officials, along with much of the American population, are aggressively proud." In fact, close observers of this odd presidency note that Bush, like his evangelical base, believes he is on a mission from God and that faith trumps empirical evidence. Berman quotes a senior White House adviser who disdains what he calls the "reality-based" community, to which Berman sensibly responds: "If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed."
[...]
We are assured daily by advertisers and/or politicians that we are the richest, most envied people on Earth and, apparently, that is why so many awful, ill-groomed people want to blow us up. We live in an impermeable bubble without the sort of information that people living in real countries have access to when it comes to their own reality. But we are not actually people in the eyes of the national ownership: we are simply unreliable consumers comprising an overworked, underpaid labor force not in the best of health: The World Health Organization rates our healthcare system (sic--or sick?) as 37th-best in the world, far behind even Saudi Arabia, role model for the Texans. Our infant mortality rate is satisfyingly high, precluding a First World educational system. Also, it has not gone unremarked even in our usually information-free media that despite the boost to the profits of such companies as Halliburton, Bush's wars of aggression against small countries of no danger to us have left us well and truly broke. Our annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means that we don't produce much of anything the world wants except those wan reports on how popular our Entertainment is overseas. Unfortunately the foreign gross of "King Kong," the Edsel of that assembly line, is not yet known. It is rumored that Bollywood--the Indian film business--may soon surpass us! Berman writes, "We have lost our edge in science to Europe...The US economy is being kept afloat by huge foreign loans ($4 billion a day during 2003). What do you think will happen when America's creditors decide to pull the plug, or when OPEC members begin selling oil in euros instead of dollars?...An International Monetary Fund report of 2004 concluded that the United States was 'careening toward insolvency.' " Meanwhile, China, our favorite big-time future enemy, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, with France, the bete noire of our apish neocons, in second place.Well, we still have Kraft cheese and, of course, the death penalty.
More Harry Reid, John Murtha, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Al Gore. Less Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman.I went to college in the 1960s and studied government. One of the things I remember discussing was a quote by Lord Acton:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."
It's been many years since I graduated college, but I finally understand what Lord Acton meant.
Republicans today control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. They have absolute power, and it has corrupted their Party and led to the culture of corruption that we see now in Washington.
We have the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, admonished three times for ethics violations and under indictment now for money laundering.
We have the White House, where an employee has been indicted for the first time in 135 years.
There's Karl Rove, who is under investigation... and David Safavian, the man appointed by President Bush to be charge in charge of hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts who was led away in handcuffs because of his dealings with Jack Abramoff and others.
And then, we have the Republican "K-Street Project, which has invited lobbyists inside our nation's Capitol....as long as they are willing to pay the right price.
The Republican abuse of power comes at great cost to our country, and we can see it in the present state of our union. Special interests and the well-connected have grown stronger, while our national security... our economy... our health care... and our government have grown weaker.
What is the state of our union in 2006?
We have a national security policy that protects Halliburton's bottom-line with no-bid contracts | but sends our troops to Iraq without body armor.
We have Vice President Cheney's energy policy that helped Big Oil make a hundred billion dollars in profit in 2005 | but this same policy has America paying 70 dollars for a barrel of oil and families paying twice as much for heat and gasoline as did in late 2001.
We have students priced out of college by skyrocketing tuition - and Republicans in Congress who want to cut student loans in order to pay for special interest tax breaks.
We have 46 million Americans without health insurance and poverty numbers on the rise - but a President whose economic policies benefit the wealthy and well-connected.
This is what happens to the state of our union when leaders put special interests ahead of the America's interest.
These are the costs of Republican corruption.
The liberal columnist thinks civil liberties are a fetish. How quaint.Klein concludes, "For too many liberals, all secret intelligence activities are 'fruit,' and bitter fruit at that. The government is presumed guilty of illegal electronic eavesdropping until proven innocent. This sort of civil-liberties fetishism is a hangover from the Vietnam era." But what Klein mocks as fetishism and a Vietnam hangover is the law of the land, according to fourteen scholars of constitutional law and former government officials who wrote to Congress that "the program appears on its face to violate existing law." The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service also reported that it is "unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations," and added that the Bush/Klein argument "does not seem to be...well-grounded."
So here, apparently, is the punditocracy argument in a nutshell: Never mind that liberals are constitutionally correct. Never mind that their view is supported by a majority of Americans. And never mind that the Bush Administration has repeatedly lied to the American people on exactly these issues. Never mind, most of all, the truth.
NEW YORK -- The Bush administration is letting Cuba play ball. The Cubans will be allowed to participate in the inaugural World Baseball Classic after the U.S. government reversed course Friday and issued the special license necessary for the communist nation to play in the 16-team tournament.And, it's nice to see that little Scottie the professional liar is still immune to irony.
Baseball's first application was denied in mid-December by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, but the commissioner's office and the players' association reapplied Dec. 22 after Cuba said it would donate any profits it receives to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"The president wanted to see it resolved in a positive way," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Our concerns were centered on making sure that no money was going to the Castro regime and that the World Baseball Classic would not be misused by the regime for spying. We believe the concerns have been addressed."The Bush administration reaction to the Cuban regime spying: Concerned.
But that’s not all. Alberto Gonzales has a speech scheduled on the issue for Tuesday and former NSA director Michael Hayden has an event at the National Press Club scheduled for Monday.The administration does a good job scheduling a PR campaign. They do a bad job of following the law.
The Gary Schepers Trust has been set up at National City Bank. Donations for Schepers, made payable to "Gary Schepers Trust," can be made at any National City branch location or mailed to: National City Bank, 1520 N. Damen Ave., Chicago IL, 60622.
Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.Yes, the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. Now I see. Abramoff, a College Republican true believer for 25 years, pal of Karl Rove and Tom DeLay, Bush "Pioneer', just handing out money to Democrats on the Hill.
How can the public know what's happening in their government when the reporters of the news seem so bent on misleading them?The public can't know. This isn't incompetence. This is misinformation with intent. This is the Ministry of Truth.
Radiohead earmarked specific dates for Chicago, because they liked playing on the lakefront last time they were here. It was my favorite show of 2001.The band, which will release its seventh album later this year, hoped to perform in the new venue at the northern end of Grant Park on June 19 and 20, the tour dates it has earmarked for Chicago performances, according to sources close to the group.
But the Cultural Affairs Department, which is responsible for programming at Millennium Park, rejected the band's bid to perform there -- even though the group would have paid rental fees of $100,000 -- because the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to hold a rehearsal June 20.
Orchestra rehearsal a conflict
Radiohead and many of its fans still consider the concert the band played at Hutchinson Field in summer 2001 as one of its most memorable. Although that show was a well-organized, artistic and financial success, city officials were reluctant for the next few years to allow cutting-edge rock acts to return to Grant Park because of noise complaints from a handful of nearby residents.
Since Tim Mitchell took over as Park District superintendent in 2004, the city has had a change of heart. Last fall, inspired by the more than $2 million generated by the revitalized Lollapalooza in Hutchinson Field and concerts at the new venue on Northerly Island, Mitchell promised that summer 2006 would bring even more rock 'n' roll to Grant Park.
But the Cultural Affairs Department has different priorities. "Free public programming is part of the venue's mission," spokeswoman Karen Ryan said of Millennium Park. She added that the orchestra cannot move its rehearsal because it needs to use its own sound system.
"We have to support organizations such as the Grant Park Orchestra, but we're open to other events if there are availabilities at other times," Ryan said.
Indeed, Cultural Affairs officials eagerly embraced other private events at the $475 million venue last fall. Toyota paid about $800,000 for a private corporate event last September, closing Millennium Park to the public and drawing criticism from watchdog groups such as Friends of the Park.
At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.
A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."
An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."
Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.
The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.
A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.
The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.
Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.
Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.
Read the whole speech. It makes you wish Gore would have found this fiery political voice back in 2000. Regardless, it's nice to see him speaking the truth about this administration while other Democrats play nicey-nice.
We must not call everyone an unpatriotic supporter of terrorists who opposed the war in Iraq and wants our troops home now, and who recognizes that spying on American citizens and destroying civil liberties are not the answers to battling terrorism.I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
The sincerity and heartfelt compassion just oozes from him, doesn't it?NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."
Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.
[...]
The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.
BOSTON (Reuters) - The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion, far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded U.S. soldiers are included, a study said on Monday.And, speaking of children, American kids will be paying for this war for a long time. Kids who didn't vote for the criminally incompetent idiot administration. Twice.
Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor" and rejected an estimate by then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey of total Iraq war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion as "very, very high."What is wrong with this country? Why are people not storming the gates of Washington?
As a consequence of it being so much fun the last time, it is likely he will be taking time to record another “Colin Meloy Sings. . .” EP that will be available exclusively on the tour. Coveree TBA.I wonder who the coveree will be? I'm sure Pitchfork will get the scoop. Last time he toured it was another one of my favorite performers, the man with the best (and longest) song titles ever, Morrissey.
Watch out for your friendsYou can find Wilco's version of this song on Kicking Television. The original lyrics are by R&B/Soul singer Charles Wright.
or they may lose in the end
Sometimes a child will make you send
But what is a man without a friend
We all live within a game
The word excuse has many names
Where true friends really come
You can't afford to lose one
If all men were truly brothers
Why then do we hurt one another
With love and peace from ocean to ocean
Somebody please second my emotion
All men were born to be free yeah
What about you?
What about me?
This world is filled with hate
There's nothing left
If you enslave me
You'll never rescue yourself
Oh jealousy as I recall
Has always been man's hardest fall
To conquer fear is quite a quest
Until we do never rest
A child was born yesterday
Oh nothing but an innocent babe
Someone sowed a bitter seed
Oh how could he grow but a bitter weed
Society how can you teach? (I wanna know)
If you don't practice what you preach?
If all men were truly brothers
Why then can't we love one another
With love and peace from ocean to ocean
Somebody please second my emotion
All men were born to be free yeah
What about you?
What about me?
This world is filled with hate
There's nothing left
And you enslave me
You'll only hurt yourself
Hey you over there
I wanna know why you laugh
With all your riches and your fancy things
Can you tell me how many friends
Can you truly say you have?
An impressive lineup of Chicago musicians including Jeff Tweedy, Califone, Chris Mills and Robbie Fulks will combine forces in a benefit for longtime local concert soundboard man Gary Scheppers, who was recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
