August 15, 2008
Paula Abdul Ecstatic About Kara DioGuardi Coming To Idol
August 27, 2008
Randy Jackson, left, Paula Abdul, center, and Simon Cowell are seen at the "Idol Gives Back" fundraising special of "American Idol" in Los Angeles.
The “American Idol” judges met their newest member on Tuesday at the New York City tryouts, and Access Hollywood was on the scene as Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul got to welcome Kara DioGuardi.
Kara, a songwriter with hits including collaborations with Britney Spears, Faith Hill, the Jonas Brothers and a number of “Idol” vets, didn’t seem nervous about her famous new colleagues.
“[I’m] not intimidated,” Kara told Access. “Now that I look at Simon, I can hold my own.”
Paula was especially excited to have Kara join the show.
“This is ecstatic for me,” she said. “Honestly it’s not just another girl, it’s a friend. We’ve been friends since ‘99, ’98.”
Oh … and the new seating arrangements.
“I’m going to sit in between the two chicks,” Simon said.
Posted in Entertainment 
No Comments » Editor
A convention comeuppance for Bill Clinton
August 26, 2008
Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention will be broadcast on a five-second delay similar to that used to screen callers on talk radio programs. Convention planners, nervous that Mr. Clinton might depart from his prepared remarks, said that they were using the delay "just in case."
DENVER - The Comeback Kid is having a convention comeuppance.
Bill Clinton was supposed to beam at the side of his wife at the Democratic convention as she was crowned their party’s presidential nominee. Instead, he will have reason to wince as their upstart rival, Barack Obama, is coronated.
The 42nd president’s campaign performance this year was erratic: He helped drive voters his wife’s way, but his occasional outbursts at critics and reporters tarnished his image as a statesman.
He has complicated the task of reconciliation with comments early on that were critical of Obama, and with tepid endorsements since.
On Tuesday, his first full day here, Clinton did what comes hardest: He kept a low profile and avoided publicly wading into political waters still roiled by tensions between the Obama and Clinton camps.
“Must be killing him,” Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen told The Associated Press.
Speaking before a gathering on international affairs, Clinton gave a subdued address on democracy and global warming, referring to the convention and the campaign only in broad strokes. After about 10 minutes of remarks, he walked off stage and left the building to work on his wife’s Tuesday night convention address and his own Wednesday night speech.
Clinton, known for his surgical grasp of political minutiae, offered no campaign post-mortem and dispensed no advice to Obama.
Instead, he said simply: “This was an endlessly fascinating process already, and it’s still got some twists and turns between now and November.”
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
Kucinich electrifies convention arena
August 26, 2008
“Up with peace!” Kucinich yelled to approving roars. “Up with prosperity! Up with education! Up with Democrats!"
Alternate headline: Dr. Blowhard releases invective one liner spit balls
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, erstwhile presidential candidate and strident opponent of the Bush administration, gave the most spirited speech of the session Tuesday condemning the war, the economy and the Republicans
Short in stature, the Ohio congressman leaped up onto his tip toes time and again, thrusting his arms out and up, getting the crowd to roar so loudly he had to yell into the microphone to be heard.
With each refrain, the delegates grew more frenzied.
“We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America!
“This administration can tap our phones but they can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail but they can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move but they lost track of the economy.
He played on the terror alert level “color chart.”
“Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.
“This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems.
This is the “Wake up America” speech? Since when has stand up comedy substituted for political rhetoric? Oh, sorry … this was the Democrat’s Convention
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers
August 26, 2008
Paul Rubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, says all this political intrigue just creeps him out. "We haven't had an 'honest' politician running for President since Ross Perot," he said in a recent interview.
From the NOT LIKELY TO BE ANSWERED Department
By Michael Barone | Real Clear Politics
It doesn’t help the Obama campaign that William Ayers is back in the news. Ayers, you’ll recall, was the Weather Underground terrorist in the late 1960s and ’70s whose radical group set bombs at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. During the April 16 Democratic debate, Barack Obama explained his past association with Ayers by saying he was just a guy “in my neighborhood,” meaning the University of Chicago enclave known as Hyde Park. But is that end of it? This is, after all, Chicago we’re talking about; where political patronage and nepotism are the only ways one moves up the power ladder.
For Obama, the outsider who gained the trust of the insiders, the position is different. He was willing to use Ayers and ally with him despite his terrorist past and lack of repentance. An unrepentant terrorist, who bragged of bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, was a fit associate. Ayers evidently helped Obama gain insider status in Chicago civic life and politics–how much, we can’t be sure. But most American politicians would not have chosen to associate with a man with Ayers’s past or of Ayers’s beliefs. It’s something voters might reasonably want to take into account.
RELATED:
Ayers Unrepentant for Radical Group’s Violence in 1960s, 1970s
William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, told FOX News correspondent James Rosen in a candid 2004 interview that he still believed he was “on the side of justice” years after the group’s wave of attacks.
William Ayers, Model Citizen? The Obama campaign’s lame defense.
Amazingly, instead of disowning Ayers — which would make a lot more sense — Obama’s rebuttal document defends the man who implicated himself in terror bombings in his own 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days. The document calls it a “lie” that Ayers is an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” and that “the impression of Ayers’s good citizenship is incorrect.” It attempts, with endorsements from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and two university professors, to make the case that Ayers is really a model citizen.
Obama: The Company He Kept
Ever since the rantings of Sen. McCarthy it has been a cardinal sin to suggest what has come to be called “guilt by association.” But if we drop the word “guilt” it should be a matter of common sense that who an individual chooses to associate with gives some indication of his interests, tastes and values.
The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1 | Powerline Blog
When Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer decided to retire in 1995, she hand-picked local left-winger Barack Obama as her successor. In order to introduce Obama to influential liberals in the district, she held a function at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This was, really, the beginning of Obama’s political career, and it linked him forever with Ayers and Dohrn, with whom, as his campaign has acknowledged, he continues to have a friendly relationship.
The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2 | Powerline Blog
In the process of doing some late-night research for both my own radio show and the program I produce, I stumbled upon a number of breathtaking videos featuring unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Both are now gainfully employed at major Chicago-area universities, and both have longtime connections to presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
Clinton expected to release delegates Wednesday
August 26, 2008
Grace in defeat is apparently not a virtue taught in the Clinton household.
DENVER – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to unite the Democratic Party and cement her future in it, will gather her hard-won primary delegates Wednesday at a reception where she is expected to formally release them to Barack Obama.
The New York senator has invited her pledged delegates to a reception at the Colorado Convention Center, not far from the main Democratic National Convention arena.
The high-profile gathering of political regulars who once fought against Obama serves a dual purpose for Clinton: Show fellow Democrats that she can be a team player, and display her still-formidable political strengths for the future. Many of her supporters want her to run for president again.
A Democratic official told The Associated Press Sunday, a day before the convention begins, that she is expected to release her delegates at the Wednesday event. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details publicly.
Asked about Clinton’s plans for the event, her spokesman Philippe Reines said it will be “an opportunity for Senator Clinton to see her delegates — many for the first time since the primaries ended, thank them for their hard work and support, and most importantly to encourage them to support and work for Senator Obama as strongly as she has in order to elect him in November.”
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
NO wonder the Russians have been slow to leave Georgia
August 25, 2008
They have to come home to THIS!
View at your own risk … I’ll not clutter up the GNR with images like these. You’ve been warned.
Posted in International News No Comments » Editor
With the Olympics out of the way we can get back to REAL SPORTS
August 25, 2008
Some participants compete in their pyjamas, some in camouflage - and one man even had an ironing board and iron strapped to his back.
THIS looks like a DIRTY game.
The crazy bunch of snorkellers, – some wearing fancy dress – swam through 120 yards of foul water to take part in the Bog Snorkelling Championships.
Just to make it that bit harder, they weren’t allowed to swim using conventional strokes.
Officials insisted they doggy paddle or hold their arms out in front of them.
Despite the rain, which turned the car park into something resembling a bog, hundreds of people turned out to witness the eccentric spectacle in Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Mid Wales.
Organiser Sheelagh Tompkins said: “This is one of those wacky events you’ve got to do once in your life.
“I think people have been inspired by the Olympics. There are lots of serious competitors, and many of them come back year after year.
Posted in Sports No Comments » Editor
Wallace and Gromit upgrade to trousers 2.0
August 25, 2008
In a recent poll, The Wrong Trousers was voted as the 18th best British Film.
WHEN a designer store launches an advertising campaign it’s likely it will hire a top model - such as Kate Moss or Agyness Deyn - to display its expensive outfits.
But posh department store Harvey Nichols has broken the mould.
Instead, the shop’s bosses have decided Nick Park’s plasticine pals Wallace and Gromit are the perfect models for their ads.
Wallace and Gromit appeared in The Wrong Trousers, a 1993 animated film directed by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol, UK. It was his second half-hour short featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his quiet but intelligent dog Gromit, following 1989’s A Grand Day Out and preceding 1995’s A Close Shave.
Wallace is an absent-minded inventor, cheese enthusiast (especially for Wensleydale cheese), and companion to the dog, Gromit, who appears to be rather more intelligent than his master. He is always creating elaborate contraptions that often do not work as intended. He is a self-proclaimed genius, with a talent for all things mechanical.
Gromit doesn’t express himself with spoken words, in fact he has no (visible) mouth, but his facial expressions and body language speak volumes. Gromit enjoys eating “KornFlakes” and reading many books, including The Republic, by Pluto (a nod to the Disney character of the same name and a pun on Plato); Crime and Punishment, by Fido Dogstoyevsky (a pun on Fyodor Dostoevsky); and a “how-to” guide entitled, Electronics for Dogs. He also listens to Bach, and solves puzzles with ease.
Posted in Entertainment No Comments » Editor
How will the 2008 Olympic Games be remembered?
August 25, 2008
Fireworks during the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Some final thoughts
China: Can Olympic gold last?
The Beijing Games have established a new Olympic order. To win these games, China made a massive investment in its sports system. If it continues, the dominance could continue for years to come.
China missed rights opportunity at Olympics - U.S.
China missed an opportunity to show progress on human rights and religious freedom during the Olympic Games, the White House said on Monday, after eight Americans were deported for protesting.
After the Games, China stays on world’s stage
The combination of a technically eye-popping opening ceremony and impressive execution of the Olympic Games demonstrates the lengths to which China went to ensure the world saw the best it had to offer and paid China its due respect.
Games bring China’s rulers political gold
As China ends the Olympics proudly on top of the gold medal table, the Party emerges surer that its hold on patriotism and top-down political power can stay unthreatened.
Beijing full of reminders that old ways still pock mark China’s new face
To put on the Olympics, China used brute strength and appealed to nationalist sentiment in order to cast a spell that would change itself from beast into beauty. It couldn’t, however, cover up all the ugly pock marks left by a communist regime that is so offensive to the West, but which the Chinese people incredibly just don’t seem to mind.
Posted in Olympics No Comments » Editor
Tensions boil between Obama and Clinton camps
August 25, 2008
Clinton points to the key ingredient that can save the Democrat party ... aside from an amendment allowing more than two terms as president.
Oh to be the proverbial “fly on the wall”
DENVER — As Democrats arrived here Sunday for a convention intended to promote party unity, mistrust and resentments continued to boil among top associates of presumptive nominee Barack Obama and his defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One flashpoint is the assigned speech topic for former president Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday night, when the convention theme is “Securing America’s Future.” The night’s speakers will argue that Obama would be a more effective commander in chief than his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The former president is disappointed, associates said, because he is eager to speak about the economy and more broadly about Democratic ideas — emphasizing the contrast between the Bush years and his own record in the 1990s.
This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms.
You can be sure much of Bill Clinton’s speech will be about Bill Clinton. What better opportunity to rewrite some history about his own legacy than the National Convention.
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
The Democrat love fest begins
August 25, 2008
Holy liplock, Batman … what is going on here??!!
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
Biden recommended McCain for ticket four years ago
August 25, 2008
Senator Biden is quoted: “I think John McCain would be a great candidate for vice president. I mean it. I know John doesn’t like me saying it, but the truth of the matter is, it is,” Biden told Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Posted in Politicians, Politics No Comments » Editor
Deported Mexicans face shattered lives
August 24, 2008
Over the past five years, deportations from U.S. to Mexico jump 60 percent
TIJUANA, Mexico - The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: “The End.”
For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.
Every time the gate slams shut, it wipes out a dream, divides a family, ends a life lived in the shadows of the law.
This certainly begs the question about keeping them from entering the country in the first place!
Posted in Immigration Issues, Invasion USA 1 Comment » Editor
What happens when you give a little thought to blowing yourself up
August 24, 2008
Iraqi woman with bomb vest turns herself in
BAGHDAD: U.S. military officials say a woman wearing a bomb-laden vest has turned herself in to Iraqi police rather than blow herself up.
The would-be suicide bomber surrendered Sunday in the city of Baqouba. U.S. officials say she led police to a second suicide vest, and that a 13-year-old girl was arrested at that time.
Posted in War on Terror No Comments » Editor
Madrid air crash stewardess survived by switching seats
August 24, 2008
Antonia Martinez Jimenez, 27, has told relatives that she normally sat at the back of the plane during take-off and landing, but on the ill-fated flight to Gran Canaria last Wednesday she was rostered to sit up front in seat 1E.
All the other 17 survivors of the crash were sitting in the rows around her, and when the plane broke apart on impact, most were propelled out of the wreckage and away from the subsequent explosion that engulfed it. In a further stroke of good fortune, they landed in a stream where the water shielded them from the blistering heat as a massive fuel fire scorched the area.
Posted in International News No Comments » Editor
From the I BUMPED MY HEAD ON THE WAY TO THE ALTER Department
August 24, 2008
Asked for his feminine ideal, Padre Rungi replied "Well, I would say Sophia Loren".
Italian priest organizes beauty contest for nuns
ROME - An Italian priest and theologian said Sunday he is organizing an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour.
The “Miss Sister 2008″ contest will start in September on a blog run by the Rev. Antonio Rungi and will give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and their image.
“Nuns are a bit excluded, they are a bit marginalized in ecclesiastical life,” Rungi told The Associated Press after Italian media carried reports of the idea. “This will be an occasion to make their contribution more visible.”
Rungi, a theologian and schoolteacher from the Naples area, said that visitors to his site will have a month to “vote for the nun they consider a model.”
Sophia Loren as Sister Germana in White Sister (1973, Rated "R"). Hmmm, maybe the good Padre has a point.
He said he realised he risked being seen as a publicity-seeker. “But you need a bit of courage to do something like this. Nuns deserve much more attention they they get”. He said nuns had both “physical and spiritual beauty”, and often did social, caring or hospital work in which an “attractive presence” was an advantage.
He said the “Sister Italia 2008″ contest was a way of showing that female beauty was “not just the plasticised beauty you see on television”.
“There is also such a thing as a chaste ideal, which comes from the heart and the soul, and has a beneficial effect on those who come into contact with it. After all, did not the Russian writer Dostoyevsky say that beauty would save the world?”.
He admitted that not all Catholics were in favour of the idea. “I have had some e-mails from Christians who perhaps have not grasped the evangelising spirit of the initiative, or the potential of the internet, which is a marvellous tool for spreading the Christian message. Unfortunately some people still have a closed mentality”.
There is no equivalent contest in Italy for priests - at least, not yet. However for the past four years a calendar featuring handsome young priests and seminarians posing against Rome landmarks has been a best seller at newspaper kiosks, selling 40,000 copies a year.
It should be pointed out that Rungi says, “You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? This isn’t the case any more, thanks to the arrival in our country of young and vital nuns.” WHAT? “YOUNG AND VITAL?” Just so you’ll know, I Googled “young and vital” and wouldn’t you know … that phrase ONLY appears in 5 links relating to this story!! I’m thinking maybe the “Italian to English” translator for Yahoo just missed the word, “energetic” in the synonym search. We’ll definitely want to keep you updated on this story!
UPDATE:
Church hierarchy not pleased with Sweet Sister idea
ROME (Reuters) - An Italian priest who had planned an online “pageant” for nuns has suspended the project, saying he was misinterpreted and had no intention of putting sisters on a beauty catwalk.
“My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either,” Father Antonio Rungi told Reuters by telephone from his convent in southern Italy Tuesday.
“It was not at all my intention to put nuns on the catwalk,” said Rungi, a priest of the Passionists religious order, speaking from his convent in the town of Mondragone.
Wow … that didn’t take long!
Posted in Weird News No Comments » Editor
Law enforcement chief proves just how out of touch he really is
August 24, 2008
Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran looks through the glass of his cell at Lake County Jail. Curran is inmate L0000000. Thursday was Curran's first day at the jail.
Sheriff goes to jail for an education
CHICAGO (Reuters) - There’s a new sheriff in jail.
Sheriff Mark Curran of Lake County, Illinois, walked into his own jail on Wednesday to spend a week as a prisoner, saying he was divinely inspired to learn what it was like to be confined and to sample jail programs designed to reduce recidivism.
“The biblical adage that we reap what we sow is very true in criminal justice,” said Curran, 45, before exchanging his business suit for a prison jumpsuit at the Waukegan, Illinois, facility near Chicago.
Illinois “has historically had one of the worst-run prison systems in the nation … treating inmates like caged animals only to see them released back into their communities angrier and more bitter than they originally were,” he said.
Curran will spend time in the general population of some 600 inmates who are awaiting trial on charges of murder, rape and lesser crimes, though at times he will have his own cell.
He will sit in on high school equivalency classes, and spend a night in the high-security unit and in the medical unit.
Sheriff Curran must really be hurting for some “positive” public relations. Anyone who’s had the slightest experience with corrections will see this as nothing short of a feeble grab for headlines … in a probable attempt to improve the community’s perception of the Lake County penal system. Curran said his goal is “to talk to inmates so he can see the jail from their perspective.” Holy incarceration Batman … IT’S JAIL for heaven’s sake! When election time rolls around, this type of “politics” should be voted out in favor of someone with experience and a REAL vision for law enforcement. By the way, Curran is a Democrat, not a surprise to anyone I’m sure. He is also an attorney who was elected to the position WITHOUT previous law enforcement experience … what a surprise!
Gwinnett County’s own Sheriff, Butch Conway, a law enforcement veteran with over 30 years experience, could probably provide some sound advice to the Illinois “newbie.” A professional in every sense of the word, Conway presides over a department that has nearly as many employees as the Lake County jail has inmates. The Gwinnett County Detention Center has a population of over 2,400 inmates … and spending time with them “up close and personal” is not what I would call an enjoyable experience — kudos to all the Deputies who do!!
Posted in Law Enforcement No Comments » Editor
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