In a series of expletive-laced outbursts caught on tape, actor Mel Gibson reportedly told his baby mama that the way she was dressed would get her "raped by a pack of n------," according to a new report.
Anyhoo, according to public property records, the former Catholic turned Mormon and his second wifey Tania purchased their 2.87 acre property in December of 2005 for $4,250,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads on our bejeweled abacus reveals that even at a full price sale at it's current asking, Mister and Missus Beck are looking at a $250,000 loss plus the fat real estate fees that will need to be paid. But don't none of you children cry over Mister Becks financial loss because it ain't nuthin' but spilled milk. According to the folks at Forbes, Mister Beck hauled in around $23,000,000 in 2008 and will likely pocket much more in 2009. So, you know, he can well afford to take a quarter million dollar hit on his damn house without anyone feeling the least bit sorry for him because ain't none of his four children gonna go hungry or without adequate health care.
Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.
But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.
Say what you like about George W Bush – and many people have done just that – but he was no Richard Nixon. He was worse, according to America's leading presidential scholars...a survey of political experts by the Siena Research Institute in New York places Nixon far ahead of Bush in a poll of the best and worst US presidents and even in front of the harmless, by American presidential standards, if ineffectual Jimmy Carter.And let's not forget Nixon. From Hunter S. Thompson's pitiless and brilliant obituary of Tricky Dick:
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
As a premise for a free outdoor music and poetry festival, Walt Whitman is easy to like. The seminal literary figure and onetime editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, once dubbed "America's poet" by Ezra Pound, will get an all-star tribute in his own former backyard on Thursday when dozens of artists, rockers and writers convene in the new Brooklyn Bridge Park for an evening-long Walt-a-palooza called "I Do Not Doubt I am Limitless: Walt Whitman's Brooklyn."
Immigration naturally enriches culture and the human resources of any country. Just like new genes bring gusto into any genetic pool. It is a complicated and sensitive subject to consider with care and love, since it involves changes of entire destinies all at once.
