July 2005 Archives

Jane Fonda's back on the antiwar circuit, planning a tour this time in a veggie-oil powered bus. This comes not long after she her not-very-convincing apology for her incredibly stupid trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam war, the one that galvanized mainstream American resentment against the antiwar movement.

Newsday columnist Sheryl McCarthy is correct when she calls the Fonda bus ride an "ego trip."

"If she was so opposed to the war, why didn't she do her bus tour two years ago, when the Bushies were beating the war drums, giving false evidence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons and marching our troops off to battle? Oh, I forgot, she was too busy writing her autobiography," McCarthy writes.

The Philadelphia Daily News, in an editorial, says Karl Rove "should send a thank- you note to Jane Fonda, or to whoever dreamed up her recently announced anti-war tour - in a bus fueled by vegetable oil, no less. With the return of 'Hanoi Jane' to rant about, the prevaricators who got us into the Iraq war can point to her colossal misjudgments of 30 years ago - and away from the disastrous reality that the Bush administration has unleashed there."

Santa Fe, NM, columnist Joe Gandalmen called Fonda the gift that keeps on giving (to Republicans).

"Just when you thought we might have a Congressional election based on the actual issues facing the country, actress-and-60s-anti-war-activist Jane Fonda is handing the GOP a thoughtful gift:

"Herself.

"On a bus.

"Next March.

"Crossing the country.

"In an anti-war tour.

"That'll be a huge issue on talk radio."

Fonda should stick to what she does best: Taking off her clothes in tacky movies.

TV Guide, the longtime ultimate source for what's on TV tonight, is getting a makeover and cutting back on its listings on shows.

"It's a shame. It's the passing of a part of television history," says Stephen Hofer, 65, a professor of media at Chicago State University who owns most of the 2,731 editions ever published (this week included).

But cable and sat TV services provide up-to-date listings on the tube.

"The daily newspaper and your own cable remote provide more instantaneous and better information than a little magazine that comes in the mail," said Kent Brownridge, general manager of Wenner Media, which publishes Rolling Stone and Us Weekly. "Admittedly, when [TV Guide] was first invented, it was a far, far, far simpler proposition. There were three networks, three local channels, no such thing as cable, DirecTV, HBO or premium cable. It was simple and pretty important information that people who'd just gotten into TV viewing needed. TV Guide provided it. Today, the information they need is much more complicated."

The makeover will also turn TV Guide into a full-sized magazine, not the pocketsize version that has sat on coffee tables for the past 52 years.

Cameron Diaz may say she's proud of her body but she doesn't want it on public display, at least not topless. The actress won her case against a photographer who took nude shots of the aspiring actress and model in 1992 and the court sent 42-year-old photographer John Rutter to jail for trying to blackmail the actress over the photos.

It took a jury of seven women and five men about five hours to convict Rutter of attempted grand larceny, forgery and perjury. The judge immediately revoked the photographer's $250,000 bond and sent him to the clink.

Diaz acknowledged posing bare-breasted more than a decade ago when she was an unknown, 19-year-old model and said she wasn't ashamed of the photos adding that she was "exploring her body." But she said she never signed the release and felt betrayed when Rutter tried to sell them during a meeting in June 2003.

The court also barred Rutter from releasing the photos. But don't worry. We have one here so you can see what all the excitement was about.

The brain-dead lemmings who continue to defend the criminal actions of President George W. Bush and his gang of thugs in the White House are pathetic. They're just too fucking dumb and stupid to realize their boy is destroying a once-great county called the United States of America.

What is even more pathetic is how these morons invoke the flag and patriotism to defend the dispicable acts of the Bush Administration. You can't wrap yourself in the American flag while the despot you support dismantles the Constitution and destroys the freedoms it once endorsed.

Bush is a traitor to his country. His cowardice and treason go back to the Vietnam war when he used his daddy's connections to avoid serving his country in a war zone. When his various business dealings failed (as most of them did) he turned to his buddies in Saudi Arabia for help -- most often his old flying buddy from the Texas Air National Guard, Jim Bath, who just happened to be the North American money manager for the bin Laden family bank (the same bank that channeled money for family member Osama bin Laden).

The man, if one can call him that, is a disgusting puke who should be in jail instead of living the high life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And anyone, I repeat anyone, who continues to support this madman is no less a traitor to their country and deserve to be treated as such. This is no longer a case of one political philosophy versus another. It is sanity versus insanity and insanity in this country has been cornered by George W. Bush and the crazies who support him.

The U.S. House of Representatives had a chance to correct the wrongs of the ill-conceived U.S.A. Patriot Act but chose instead to continue the assault on freedom that leaves the Constitution in shreads.

Voting mostly along party lines, the House made permanent many of the onerous provisions of the act and gave others life for another 10 years, proving that commen sense or concern for the rights of fellow Americans have no place in the Congress of the United States.

Don't expect any relief in the Seante. It's controlled by the same gang of rights-robbing thugs.

The havoc that politics inflicts upon this nation can been found every day in the partisan political hacks who go to any length to defend the immoral, illegal and ill-conceived actions of their parties.

We see it now in the brain-dead lemmings who defend Presidential Advisor Karl Rove's illegal leaking of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media. We saw it during the eight years Bill Clinton occupied the White House with the Democratic die-hards who defended their President's lies and immorality.

When it comes to partisan political posturing, no party can claim the high ground. Both sides are shameless hypocrites, gleefully pointing out the misdeeds of the opposition while ignoring the same deeds within their own ranks.

It is a big part of the national shame that politics has brought upon America. Partisans are fools who put the interests of their political parties above what is best for the nation. They claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor to American when, in fact, it is they who betray America by pandering to a partisan political philosophy.

When he left the Presidency, George Washington warned that politics would destroy the America that he and others had fought so hard to establish.

It's take more than two centuries to prove George right but his prediction was, and is, all too real.

So, you think only young people run around naked at nudist camps? Not so says SeniorJournal.Com in its stories that Boomers, Senior Citizens Keep Nudism Alive.

"I didn't feel comfortable when I first tried it," said Pat Brown, 64, president of the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR), who became a nudist while in her 40s. "But soon after, being without clothes was not difficult. It gave me the freedom to accept the body that I lived in."

George W. Bush and his corrupt, deceptive, dangerous administration is an enemy of the state and should be treated as such.

Sorry but there's no other way to describe this freedom-robbing administration of lies and criminal activity.

The Time Magazine reporter who interviewed Rove in 2003 confirmed over the weekend that Rove was his primary source for the leak that Valerie Plame, wife of administration critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA agent. And is second source? Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff.

How much longer can we allow this country to be controlled by this gang of thieves, con-artists and riffraff?

No doubt about it. The noose is tightening around Karl Rove's neck and it couldn't happen to a better asshole. The "win at all costs" political operative who kept George W. Bush in office against all odds may have stepped into too much shit with his role in the Valerie Plame debacle.

This is a case of pure political revenge. Rove played a significant role in outing a covert CIA operative because he wanted to get back at the operative's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, because Wilson had the audacity to question Bush's actions.

Rove deserves whatever happens to him. Sadly, it won't be enough.

Yes, that's Jane Seymour, the once prim-and-proper star of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" showing off her naked charms in The Wedding Crashers, a comedy starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.

Seymour, 54, plays a society matron mother of the bride with an active sexual appetite. She seduces Owen Wilson in one part of the movie.

Seymour says she had to encourage the "Starsky & Hutch" star to touch her breasts. "His hands came out like little ferret hands. I said, 'Owen, you can open your fingers. It's all right.'"

Cameron Diaz posed topless when she was 19, hoping the sexy photos would jump start a modeling career.

They didn't and now the photos have come back to haunt her. The photographer who shot the session tried to shake her down for $3.3 million by theatening to sell the photos elsewhere.

Diaz refused to pay and took the photographer, John Rutter, to court where she testified that she was "excited" about posing topless and added that she liked the photos.

"I wasn't ashamed to be out there like that," Diaz testified. "The photos themselves were not offensive to me. I thought my boobs looked good - at least I had that going for me. I didn't think of it as pornographic. I was 19 and exploring the possibilities of my body. I wasn't ashamed of it."

Her lawyer, however, says she was upset when shown a video of the photo shoot.

Now let's see if we have the latest White House spin on Karl Rove correct. Rove didn't leak to the media. Nah. The media leaked to him. That's right. The Associated Press is reporting Rove got covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name from Robert Novak, the right-wing wacko columnist who never met a war he didn't like.

If true, Rove's bizzare claim begs an even bigger question: Who the hell told Novak who, in his column, claimed he got the name from top administration officials?

In the end, it will turn out to be Rove, who has already lied about even talking to journalist about Plame but now admits he did.

Just another daily lie from the most duplicitous Presidential administration in history.

Wanna laugh 'till you cry? Read Presidential Spokesliar Scott McClellan's lame attempts to dig the Bush administration out of the legal and ethical hole left by Karl Rove in his press briefings on Tuesday and Wednesday.

God what a sleazeball. But one cannot flack for sleazeballs without become one themselves.

Be careful where you buy a house in North Carolina because the state's association of Realtors advises its members to not tell prospective home buyers they may be moving into the neighborhood of a known sex offender.

The law says they don't have to, says John Pace, a Raleigh Realtor. Besides, such information might prevent a sale.

"You could move into a property and a sexual offender could move right beside you, so I don't know how you control it," Pace said.

Yeah, right.

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan, chief liar of the administration of liars, found himself on the hotseat today at the daily press briefing:

QUESTION: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this"?

MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.

Q: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?

Editor and Publisher has a detailed report.

Jessica Cutler, the former Mike DeWine staffer who slept around and then wrote about it on her weblog is stirring things up on Capitol Hill again, this time with ads for her new book.

Seems Roll Call, the self-proclaimed "newspaper of Capitol Hill" refused an ad for Cutler's book, due for release on July 12, because the headline about the book that brought "Washington to its knees" sounds too much like a sex act.

DeWine's office thought Cutler was too steamy for an uptight Ohio Republican Senator and fired the aspiring sexpot which -- of course -- landed her the book contract. She may have been too raunchy to work in the office but she wasn't offlimits to DeWine staff attorney Robert Steinbuch who bedded her on the side and whose sexual escapades become fodder for her weblog.

Such are the ways of Washington. Men still treat women as sex objects and even staff members for holly roller types like DeWine and hop into bed with a willing young thing. Washington loves a good sex scandal and screw and tell books are always popular with the public even though Monica Lewinsky's tawdry tale of Oval Office blowjobs on Bill Clinton came and went on the best seller list as fast as the Prez apparently did on her dress.

Cutler, however, is more explicit in her stories of bumping bellies with the powerful and near-powerful in various Washington bedrooms and Steinbuch has already slapped her with a lawsuit for outing his extra-curricular activities. He doesn't deny boffing the young staffer. He just says he did so with a reasonable expectation of privacy.

But private young Jessica wasn't. Here's an example of an encounter with Steinbuch from her weblog:

So I get into bed and by then, it's midnight.

"What time is it?" RS asks.

"Midnight," I reply.

"Do you know what that means?"

"Uh...no."

"That means it's your birthday." And he pulls out this pink and green package, and I just know it's a new Lilly dress.

And it was. Then we fucked missionary. And he came. With a condom on.

Then he was like, "Who the hell comes missionary anymore?!"

Is that the quote of the day or what?

Jessica Cutler is not the first woman to use sex as a ploy in Washington and she won't be the last. And as long as people keep buying these screw and tell books others like her will keep spreading their legs and cashing in.

Critics of violence in video games have long focused on the "Grand Theft Auto" series for their mayhem. But now those who want to rid the world of sex are crying for removal of the game from shelves.

Seems the current version of the game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, has some steamy sex scenes in it. All you need is some code that is downloadable from the Internet.

"This particular game has been known to include extremely heinous acts of violence," says a statement from California assemblyman Leland Yee, "and now it has been uncovered that the game also includes explicit sexual scenes that are inappropriate for our children."

That's right. Don't let kids see sex in video games. Let them discover it the same way we did -- out behind the barn with Mary Lou.

Yeah, we know. American Newsreel went on hiatus in April. We needed the break what with trying to get a new home situated and the pressing needs of too many web sites and too little time.

But Newsreel served a purpose...a daily running commentary on this strange place called America. So we're tanned, we're rested and we're back. We hope you enjoy the return as much as we will.

Yes, we're back and we're ready to raise hell and take names later. Give us a few days to get things sorted out here but we will be up and running shortly.