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“All the people who were to blame decided we shouldn’t play the blame game, and we decided, ‘Yes, we should, but don’t blame us,’ ” said Fowler, an Austin writer and painter.

The Blame Game board game sells for $10 plus shipping at www.zzzingers.com, with all the money going to Hurricane Katrina victims.

When you play the game, it works pretty much the same way things worked for the poor schleps stuck in New Orleans.

No matter what you roll, you are screwed.

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Click on the picture to play the video
Quicktime Video 4.82MB 4’39

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The World Press Photo foundation celebrates the 50th anniversary of its annual photographic competition this year.

In the third of five pieces by photographers talking about their award-winning work, Stanley Forman describes how he captured the 1975 photo of 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her two-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from a broken fire escape during an apartment house fire in Boston, Massachusetts.

The picture was first published in the Boston Herald and then in newspapers around the world to much hostile reader reaction. The media was charged with invading the privacy of Diana Bryant, who died as a result of the fall, and pandering to sensationalism.

But, the picture also prompted officials in Boston to rewrite its laws regarding fire escape safety. Fire safety groups around the country used the photo to promote similar efforts in other cities.

Read the rest of the story…

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Columniste Hasna El Maroudi (21) van de jongerenpagina van het NRC-Handelsblad stopt ermee. Gedwongen welteverstaan, want wat Berbertjes met lange tenen vonden dat El Maroudi te ver was gegaan. Zo schreef zij onder meer dat Berbers onontwikkeld en primitief, bijvoorbeeld omdat zij alle berggeiten naar Nederland laten overkomen. “Het zijn de Berbers die het criminele pad verkiezen en het zijn dus de Berbers die de Marokkanen een slechte naam bezorgen.” En dat is tegen het zere been van Marokkaanse gemeenschap, waarvan het merendeel in Nederland overigens uit Berbers bestaat. En dus ontving El Maroudi de afgelopen tijd wat gezellige boodschappen in de trend van: “We maken je af, hoer” en “Als ik je op straat zie trap ik je in elkaar”. Ja, zelfs een lezer van NRC Handelsblad eiste haar hoofd. Enfin, Hasna heeft het bijltje erbij neergegooid. “Ik durf niet meer te schrijven wat ik wil…” Cohen, held, grijp eens in, Theo is nog geen jaar dood…

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“Goedendag… via deze wijze via gesproken woord.. in contact…voorlopig begin ik met eens per week stil te staan bij..” Ofwel, waar blijft die nieuwe poedkast minister Piet Heijn Donnert! Sinds 20 september is er geen podcast meer verschenen. Zal toch hopelijk niet te maken hebben met onze audiof*ck? Anyway, als een minister zo’n simpele belofte al niet kan voldoen, valt uiteraard het ergste te vrezen voor zijn politieke afspraken.

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Welcome to EUROBAD ’74, an exhibition of Europe’s
worst interiors of 1974.

If you think W. is nominating an ultra-right wingnut, think again:

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this appears to be a “gay rights” questionnaire Harriet Miers filled out in 1989 when she was running for Dallas city council. (the Human Rights Campaign says they got the document from a trusted source and thus believe it to be authentic.)

There are few interesting things about this questionnaire:

1. The questionnaire is from the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas.

2. Miers seems supportive of increased AIDS funding, which isn’t a small deal in 1989, especially in a more conservative place with Texas.

3. Miers says she believes gays should have the same civil rights as straights. Again, perhaps no big shocker today, but this was 1989 in Texas.

4. At the end of the questionnaire, Miers says she is NOT seeking the endorsement of the gay rights group.

5. But then why did Miers fill out their questionnaire in the first place? Would a true conservative family-values candidate fill out a candidate questionnaire from a gay rights group TODAY, let alone in 1989 and in Texas to boot?

You can view a pdf version of the original questionnaire, with Miers’ own signature on it, here.

And there’s more:

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In case anyone thought Harriet Miers wasn’t a corporate-shill-in-White-House-clothing, take a gander at how Miers did her best Ken Lay impression while heading a major Texas corporate law firm. That’s right, according to the 5/1/00 newsletter Class Action Reporter, Miers headed Locke, Liddell & Sapp at the time the firm was forced to pay $22 million to settle a suit asserting that “it aided a client in defrauding investors.”

The details of the case are both nauseating and highly troubling, considering President Bush is considering putting Miers at the top of America’s legal system. Under Miers’ leadership, the firm represented

the head of a “foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme.” The law-firm admitted that it “knew in March 1998 that $ 8 million in [the company's] losses hadn’t been reported to investors” but didn’t tell regulators.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers’ lawfirm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers’ firm helped a now-convicted con man “defraud investors and allowed the firm’s [bank] account to be used as a ‘conduit.’” The suit said “money from investors that went into the firm’s trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his ‘expensive toys.’”

If you think Miers wasn’t involved in any of this — think again. Miers wasn’t just any old lawyer at the firm. She was the Managing Partner — the big cheese. True, she could claim she had no idea this was going on. But that would be as laughable/pathetic/transparent as the Enron executives who made the same ones after they ripped off investors.

I wrote earlier today that Democrats must focus on the fact that Miers’ defining career experience up until her nomination was being a Bush crony. These new details about her career only enhance that case, in that it shows she is just like the other corrupt corporate cronies like Enron’s Ken (“Kenny Boy”) Lay that Bush has surrounded himself with over the years. There is no room on the Supreme Court for people like Miers who are clearly entirely compromised by partisan/corporate loyalties — loyalties that might make her an attractive candidate to the a corrupt elitists who run today’s Republican Party, but a danger to the interests of ordinary Americans.

So Bush tosses the social conservatives and evangelists overboard. He doesn’t need them anymore. He doesn’t need to be reelected. And yeah, he fucks Republicans running in 2006 by demoralizing their shock troops, but what does he care? His world is that of corporate cronyism, not culture wars. And as long as his homeys are taken care of, the rest can go to hell for all he cares.

Viewed from that prism, chosing Miers makes perfect sense.

A member of the jury holds up points as participants of the World Beard and Moustaches championships look on during the competition in Berlin October 1, 2005. More than 230 men from all over the world took part in 17 different categories.

New freestyle full beard world champion Elmar Weisser

Wilfried Schimmel, Heirudin Cebo and Karl-Heinz Hille, from left to right, from Berlin.

German Juergen Reinl

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A Texas grand jury on Monday re-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on charges of conspiring to launder money and money laundering after the former majority leader attacked last week’s indictment on technical grounds.

The new indictment, handed up by a grand jury seated Monday, contained two counts. The money laundering charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison. The charge of conspiracy to launder money is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.