Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963) is an American pianist and
singer-songwriter. She is married to English sound engineer Mark Hawley.
Together they have one daughter, Natashya “Tash” Lórien Hawley, born on
September 5, 2000.
Jenna Bush is not getting married because she’s pregnant, a rep for First Lady
Laura Bush tells us. Wonkette, the mischievous D.C. blog, has been doing photo
analysis of the First Daughter’s tummy ever since last week’s announcement that
she’ll marry boyfriend Henry Hager. An unamused White House calls the shotgun
wedding rumors “absurd.”
Nicole Richie was spotted yesterday afternoon in Westwood, and let us be the
first to tell you that the anorexic waste has finally put on a couple of pounds!
Paris Hilton has settled a lawsuit with socialite Zeta Graff, avoiding any
further court time this summer. Jury selection for the multi-million dollar
libel suit, which alleges that Hilton planted defamatory stories about Graff in
gossip columns, was due to begin Monday, according the AP. Hilton, however,
opted to settle out of court, thus avoiding any repeats of June's legal
spectacle. And we were so looking forward to some more car-sobbing time!
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are apparently moving to a bigger house and want to
keep the same sleeping arrangements, separate bedrooms. Star Magazine reports
the two currently live in different wings of their Beverly Hills mansion and
this situation works best for them.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden: "Caddyshack" star Bill Murray was pulled over in downtown Stockholm after admittedly driving drunk in a golf cart, but he refused a breath test saying he was protected by U.S. law.
Leave it up to Iceland’s very own Bjork to take performing to the next level as
she takes the stage during a music festival in Rimes, Frances on Tuesday.
Apparently Kate has been secretly staying over with Pete at Claridge's in a
£1,500-a-night suite at the Mayfair hotel for the past five days. Pete has been
pretty lucky these days with getting all the charges against him dropped due to
a legal technicality and now winning Kate back.
CBS' Power of 10, carrying on the proud and recent tradition of primetime game
shows that involve absolutely no skill whatsoever, will air Tuesdays at 8:00
p.m. in addition to its usual timeslot of Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. The
two-nights-a-week format will continue for the remainder of the summer, bumping
NCIS to 10:00 p.m.
Okay maybe the five exclamation points weren't necessary, but I thought that
they would drive the point across. Yes it is true, the insulter supreme, Simon
Cowell, will be leaving America's favorite singing show (no not The Singing Bee)
... in three years.
O'Reilly: There isn't going to be any accountability for Bush, except in historical realm
Bill O'Reilly started his segment with Bill Maher yesterday 8/21/07 by sticking
his foot firmly in his own mouth. Asking Maher if he was going to stack his
"Real Time" panels with "left-wing loons" again this season, he said about last
year's line-up "how many times can Arianna Huffington come on the program?"
Maher replied that Huffington wasn't on the show last year. Oops. O'Reilly's
prejudice continued to be evident through the segment.
O'Reilly should really watch Maher's show sometime, yes he has some left-wing loons on there, but would you call Ron Paul a left-wing loon, or Thommy Thompson, both of which have been on Maher's show. Maher is very opinionated and that is ok, so is O'Reilly - that's what I enjoy about each of them.
Former White House aides are joining Republican fundraisers in bankrolling a $15
million, five-week advertising campaign putting pressure on lawmakers whose
backing of President Bush's Iraq war strategy may be wavering.
The group, Freedom's Watch, launched the ads Wednesday, even as Bush delivered a renewed call for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq. The money will pay for ad placements on national cable and local television stations as well as on radio and the
Internet.The ads will run in 20 states and will urge viewers to ask their
member of Congress to stand by Bush's plan. Organizers of the effort would not
identify the targeted lawmakers, but a review of the initial TV ad placements
done by a group opposed to the war shows most of them are in Republican
congressional districts.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has joined the chorus of right-wing activists
holding up a crime in Newark, New Jersey as cause for an anti-immigrant
crackdown. Romney campaign is running radio ads in Iowa and New Hampshire
attacking “sanctuary cities” that “become magnets that encourage illegal
immigration and undermine secure borders.” The ads also mention New York City,
in an indirect attack on fellow candidate and former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, who responded with his own attack accusing Romney of being soft on
immigrants.
“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” the
senator said. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.” -- Sen.
Obama in (Whole Foods-free) Iowa, The Caucus, 7/30/07
The FBI is interested in talking with these two men, who were seen acting
suspiciously on one of the many Seattle area ferries that cross Puget Sound.
The FBI is asking for the public’s help two identify two men who have
been seen acting strangely aboard Washington State ferries recently.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has finally surpassed New York Senator Hillary Clinton in the polls. Unfortunately for Romney, it’s a poll measuring
the number of people committing to vote against him.
The Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% of Likely Voters would definitely vote against Romney if he’s on the ballot in 2008. That’s a point higher than the 43% who would definitely vote against Clinton. Only one other possible candidate surpassed Clinton in this category all year (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who is not considered a candidate at this time).
American Voters, Please Don't Throw Me In The Briar Patch
In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet
clear who Bush's opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun
to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North
Carolina... But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at
Kerry.Their thinking went like this, [Rove lieutenant Matthew] Dowd explained [after the election]: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee.
There are two things that I want to say about this, first of all it looks like this tactic worked. While we will never know who would have won if another choice had been made by republicans. The second thing, is that while many on the left are going to get upset about this, don't blame republicans, blame yourselves. If you voted on ideas, and who you thought would be the best leader for the country, this ploy would have been useless. In the future you can be sure that they will attempt other such tactics. The easiest way to get the best candidate is to vote for the person you think will do the best job.
At a news conference in Syria, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at
the growing chorus of American leaders who have questioned his ability to govern
the country or reconcile with Sunnis and Kurds in time for an American status
report on Iraq that is due before Congress next month.
"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government," he said, according to news service reports from Damascus. "It was elected by its people."
Higher civilization has always regarded the use of expletives in public (outside of, let us say, theatrical performances) as a form of assault on civilization. That is why as a broadcaster I am prohibited from saying seven selected words on the air. No one monitors my private conversations, but just about everyone, at least until the 1960s, understood that there was something very wrong in saying such words on the radio or putting them on billboards. That is why we have, as a society, crossed a line when people put expletives on bumper stickers ("S--t Happens," "Buck Fush") or usethem in public in distinguished company -- as in newspaper interviews or campaign fund raisers. Even the individual who puts a "Buck Fush" sticker on his or her car knows that the real "f-word" would constitute an assault on whatever remains of the concept of decency.
The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has decided to
join efforts by the Iraqi authorities to fight al-Qaeda, one of the party's
former top officials, Abu Wisam al-Jashaami, told pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.
"AlDouri has decided to sever ties with al-Qaeda and sign up to the
programme of the national resistance, which includes routing Islamist terrorists
and opening up dialogue with the Baghdad government and foreign forces,"
al-Jashaami said.
A Kansas court of appeals has ruled that it's illegal for an illegal alien to
enter the country, but not illegal for an illegal alien to be in the country if
the illegal alien can illegally make it past the Border Patrol without getting
caught.
According to the Environmental Impact Assessment of the proposed gold mine, the river water currently - as a result of the old, environmentally dangerous mine - contains 64 times the legal limit for iron, 110 times the legal limit for zinc, 3.5 times the legal limit for arsenic, and gets its reddish orange color from cadmium.
Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources - the company behind the mining project that the environmentalists are trying to halt - would clean up river and old mine as part of its project.
Far from the pristine village as portrayed by PBS, Rosia Montana is an environmental disaster now - that's the message of Gheorge's bottles of river water.
Two-thirds of US adults admit to being in the dark about political issues outside the United States, and only a third are well-versed in US
politics, the results of a poll published Tuesday showed.
Candidates in the US presidential primaries "may have their work cut out for them as they work to get people interested in the election," wrote the Harris Poll group,
which surveyed 2,225 adults between July 6 and 13 for the poll.
Not surprisingly, the poll by the Behavior Research Center shows Napolitano the
favorite of 78 percent of Democrats, versus 11 percent for McCain. But the
governor also would pick up 20 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of
independents who make up nearly 28 percent of Arizona’s registered voters
[...]
Voters were also asked how Napolitano is doing as governor. Only 9
percent rated her performance in office as poor or very poor, the lowest since
she was first elected in 2002. Another 59 percent rate her work as excellent or
good.
...despite Chavez's "revolution for the poor" the Gini coefficient [in Venezuela] has increased from 0.44 in 2000 to 0.48 in 2005.
I am not defending Rudy, the presidential candidate. Almost no one who has lived in New York wants Rudy anywhere near the nuclear football, nor would we like to see his strongly authoritarian instincts (however much they arguably may have done for New York's policing) unleashed on the federal justice system. Rudy is craaaaaaaaazy.
But for those trained to hear the subtleties, Mr. Romney was acknowledging something more. He implied an opposition to the birth control pill and a willingness to join in their efforts to scale back access to contraception. There are code phrases to listen for - and for those keeping score, Mr. Romney nailed each one.I think one of the fears that I have about the right and their attack on abortion is that it is just the lead to a larger effort to control peoples private lives. Once abortion is made illegal, there is serious reason to believe that other forms of birth control will be pushed into the definition. Such common tactics of birth control like the morning after or even the birth control pill be the next targets. I don't trust the religious right with that power, they have their own concepts of right and wrong, which is fine, but they are determined that the rest of us should accept them - which is not fine.One code phrase is: "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as starting at implantation, the first moment a pregnancy can be known. Anti-abortion advocates want pregnancy to start at the unknown moment sperm and egg meet: fertilization. They'd also like you to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that the birth control pill prevents that fertilized egg from implanting in the womb.
Our policy of ignoring them and hoping that they would go away hasn't worked all these years. Why is it so crazy to talk about trying something new. Look at the changes that China has made since we have opened relations. There is something strange about Americas attitude towards Cuba.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the United States to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home.Obama’s campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families.
Reagan's understanding of freedom (the "negative" freedom which leaves people free to determine their own lives) stands in contradistinction to freedom as understood by our friends on the Left (a "positive" freedom that seeks to free everyone from pain, suffering, risk, and inequality).
But Paulite libertarianism understands freedom in the sense of "I'll go my own way, and you can go to H*ll if you so desire." It shares with conservatism a deep wariness of government power, which is infinitely corruptible, even as the Left embraces government power as the answer to the infinite corruptibility of individuals.
Paulites thus felicitously cloak themselves in the Constitution, which enshrines the principle of limited government.
Read on . . .
But what Paulism does not do is envision the nature and role of the United States as a nation. And from its very first days, the US has been an aggressive, expansionist, seafaring power, dedicated to economic prosperity, and with both the desire and the justification to take a large role on the world stage.
If the suspects are found guilty, Newark and its political leadership share a degree of responsibility,” Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, said on the steps of the gold-domed City Hall, surrounded by a dozen supporters and slightly more protesters who rallied against him. “I encourage the family of the victims to pursue a lawsuit against the city.”
PARIS: After years of shunning involvement in a war it said was wrong, France now believes it may hold the key to peace in Iraq, proposing itself as an "honest broker" between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions.
The shift was one of the most concrete consequences yet of the thaw in French-American relations following the election in May of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose administration no longer feels bound by the adamant refusal to take a role in Iraq that characterized the reign of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.
Two Middle-Eastern looking guys are wanted for questioning over their suspicious behavior on Washington State ferries. According to law enforcement authorities, the ferries have been labeled a high potential terrorist target (even though the FBI also insists they are safe). So how did FOX News cover the issue on last night’s (8/21/07) Hannity & Colmes? By calling in Mark Fuhrman to argue on behalf of racial profiling. Fuhrman declared the men “an obvious threat,” and claimed that “profiling is a word attorneys have come up with to defend their guilty clients.” He was enthusiastically aided and abetted by Sean Hannity. With video.
