Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Did a double take last night while walking down Vermont and caught an Onion display box in the corner of my p.o.v. Oddly, was in convo with a Chicago friend and was hardly phased by the sight of the tab of ridic hilarity until I was reminded by Metroblogging.LA this morning, that YES, The Onion has finally arrived in Los Angeles. Thought I was hallucinating for a second as I had just walked by a bizarre gathering of folks outside of Skylight Books where Les Claypool — superstar of satirical music himself — was demonstrating that rock stars can read aloud. Then I remembered reading a column about the Onion debut in the LA Times last week.

Now if only Skylight can get the likes of T. Herman Zweibel to read…

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Got some links to video shot this weekend at Lollapalooza. Wish I coulda been there but at least there’s the flickr photostream, Blueroom video and youtube:

VIDEO - click to watch:
– Sonic Youth plays “Schizophrenia”
– Flaming Lips - “Yoshimi”
– Wacky Interview with the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne
– Sleater-Kinney
– Gnarls Barkley are the ‘Champions’

more video here.

Check for more archival video in the AT&T Blueroom HERE.

Lolla ‘06 photostream via Flickr (tagged lollapalooza2006):

Best shots I’ve seen are from 5500 (Matt Peck — amazing Sleater-Kinney shots!) and chromewaves (Frank Yang).

So how was Lolla weekend?

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Earlier this week, Joshua Wolf, a 24-year-old freelance journalist and blogger, became the first journalist to be jailed for refusing to disclose information in a court of law since Judith Miller. These are hardly the “Scooter” Libby “Flame” top secrets revealed over a snazzy Georgetown meal, however, as Wolf would be the first to proclaim that he is no friend of the administration.Wolf had been blogging his experience here, until the 1st of August, when, as his mother wrote: “Although the July 20th hearing seemed promising, today the judge, Judge Alsop ruled against all motions including 5th amendment rights, rights coming under freedom of the press, against bail or a stay. Josh is in Dublin federal prison, in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay.”

It makes no difference that the video he withheld was of self-proclaimed anarchists at an anti-G8 summit — the “crime” it supposedly captured was a “riot” that grew out of the protest. Surely, one would think there were other camerapeople documenting the event.

This is a direct attack on freedom of speech and the expression of dissent that one often hears about in countries with extensively repressive governments such as China. Surely an appeal will be filed and the case will go to the 9th Circuit, but it may not be until next summer.

The SF Chronicle attests to these journalistic freedoms in an editorial titled “Free Josh Wolf.”

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Jason Calcanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. and now heading up the “new” Netscape.com announced the first 10 Netscape “Navigators”:

We’ve hired three of the top 12 DIGG users, the #1 user from Newsvine, the #1 user from Reddit, and a bunch of Weblogs, Inc. folks…

If nothing else, this is a smart PR move in that it calls out the growing masses of Digg / Newsvine / Reddit users early in the game, before there is a hands-down go to socially-bookmarked news portal. Digg, arguably the industry leader in this field has only been around since December 2004 after all.

Perhaps this is the safest and smartest way to go — we shall see — but many people who felt they caught the early wave on the revamped Netscape portal will surely be bummed to know that these selections were based on these numbers: 60% of Digg’s front page content is from the top 0.03% users.

Richard MacManus is not surprised by the imbalance of digg-posting wealth. But I must wonder if Digg will be at all affected negatively and whether or not Netscape will truly benefit from bringing the formerly faceless top Diggers on board.

It’s probably a good idea for portals driven by social bookmarking to hire talented aggregators, but why must Netscape be so non-organic in doing so? In going head-to-head with Digg (and its publisher, John Battelle’s Federated Media), the era of Netscape vs. the World (1994-~2003) is clearly dead.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Following intense pressure from legislators after claiming to be “too busy”, Rummy reversed course and has decided that he will testify Thursday morning in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (watch online).

Will he remember that he lost the Hamdan case? Will he be under oath? Will he tell the unfunniest jokes ever?

It’s a big day for the DoD as the “virtual pandemic” of corruption in Iraq will be discussed in a review of the SIGIR’s new report.

Any bets that Rumsfeld comes up with a better lie than yesterday’s?:

A civil war? I guess you can decide for yourself. And we can all go to the dictionary and decide what you want to call something. But it seems to me that it is not a classic civil war at this stage. It certainly isn’t like our Civil War.

For the record, HuffPo dilligently checked M-W and found “civil war” defined as: “a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country.”

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Apparently, the decider-in-Chief is “really excited” about collecting not-yet-demolished remnants from his 8-year disaster, also known as a “nightmare of a vacation,” to publish as a memoir. I can’t wait to see the Amazon pitch to “buy this title along with Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef’s: Memoir of a Taliban diplomat held at Guantanamo and SAVE $$!

Letterman’s got the top 10 chapter titles here.

Suspected titles of memoir here.

Not to be missed, these intensely graphic and detailed ruminations on “What I Did on My Vacation From Reality.”

And finally, as if the Letterman top 10 wasn’t enough, I’m happy to host a preview of the best-selling documentary “Bushisms.”

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, while visiting with the governor of the world’s 7th largest economy, agreed to work together to explore ways to fight the Bush Ad… err.. I mean… global warming.

Gov. Schwarzenegger, never afraid to distance himself from the Bush Administration’s hard-right GOP stance, said: “California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming.”

we shall see what comes of this “green partnership“.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Q: Is the country closer to a civil war?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different…. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I’m not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all.

Meanwhile, also in the Middle East (at least they’ve concentrated this war on terror on a smaller-than-China central theater), lots of calls for Syrian interaction. Thomas Friedman (and big high five to David Sirota for breaking down the big-talking faux-know-it-all in this must-read column yesterday) says talks with Syria are better sooner rather than later. Faisal al-Yafai notes that while Syrian foreign minister Faisal al-Meqdad said he was ready to talk to the U.S. it was only because of the U.S.’s insistence that Syria not be invited to the EU / UN / U.S. / France meeting in Rome. This, inherently makes America a big part of the problem. Jonathan Freedland takes the blame even further, stating that Bush’s blind support of Israel combined with the numerous “lethal mistakes” in his diplomatic foreign policy “efforts” is to blame.

Finally, the constipated one, who remains so stubborn and adamant about a practically non-existent foreign policy masked by completely irrational if not impossible (and invisible) diplomacy got taken down big time by the right in the conservative Insight Magazine’s “Dump Condi” article: “…[S]he is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.” Remember when they wanted her to be the next president?!?

Back in the reality-based world, PostGlobal asked a panel of experts how they’d advice Condi. Interesting array of answers have been posted here, capped by David Ignatius’s op-ed.

The multilateral panel that met in Rome is now qualified to call their respective consituents screaming “America is mad” after the U.S. (Sec. Rice & her “birth pangs“) became the primary obstacle in brokering any sort of cease-fire. As Marc Lynch noticed — with one eye on Arabic TV at all times — the Arab world is already more or less convinced that this Israeli offensive is only part of “the American project for a new Middle East.”

So, what now?

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Whelp, Mr. AOL apologized for merging with Time-Warner on Charlie Rose the other day.

But what about all those goddamn AOL 19.6 promotional CDs that won’t stop filling up the mailbox?

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

I failed to mention this week the shocking revelation made by Mr “I can make my own decisions” Alberto Gonzales, our country’s attorney general under the second half of the Bush administration’s reign.

Six weeks ago it was unclear who to point the finger at for foiling the Justice Department’s investigation into the NSA’s secret eavesdropping program, which for years was known only to members of the Bush Administration and a select few members of Congress.

But that all changed this week, when Gonzales, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales admitted to let slip that the president himself shut down the investigation. (video here). The Department of Justice had ordered its over 30-year-old Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) to investigate NSA eavesdropping program but as Gonzales explained, The White House denied the OPR access to the materials needed for their investigation — a move that OPR director H. Marshall Jarrett descibed as unprecedented.

Its amazing that Bush and his cronies can rule so ridiculously above the law. But, I guess its easilyi done for a president with a simple enough (selfish) mind to demonstrate this basic rule:

there is no law to lawlessness. another beautiful day to go and mow the law.

Bonus: CIA Blogger Fired for Discussing Geneva Conventions –

Christine Axsmith, was canned from her position at the CIA’s software-development shop where, as Dana Priest reported in the Post online today, she conducted “performance and stress testing” on computer programs. After writing a blog entry titled “somthing like ‘Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong,’ Axsmith lost her top-secret security clearance, her job, and who knows what else.

Needless to say, if the CIA really thinks it can keep anything secret that it leaves unencrypted online, one only need to recall the massive security upgrade that they ordered up years ago (or was it the FBI) and have since scrapped plans as they are so hopelessly behind. Axsmith should sue. She was employed by BAE Systems — a little background Here.

Another lesson: just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. Not to mention, the flipside of that statement.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Its true — Lebanon was growing into a jewel of the Mediterranean — apparently hundreds of tourists were airlifted out today by Italian airlines.

But Haifa and Tiberias in Israel hadn’t seen attacks of this sort in over 30 years, probably not since the Yom Kippur war of 1973 when Israel was a wee 25 years young.

This sign was spotted amid several others protesting Hezbollah and questioning global response to this conflict. A group of men who said they were Black Hebrews bandied about Venice Beach boardwalk for about an hour this afternoon, signs raised high.

Miss the news of the past 5 days? BBC News has this comprehensive timeline of the recent conflict.

Ha’aretz has a solid breaking news ticker (Israel time is PDT +10).

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Pioneertown, created out of high desert dust as an on-location Western movie town for the likes of Gene Autry and the Cisco Kid in the 1940s, is under siege! The home of the Sunday afternoon shootout reenactment, complete with “Amazing Grace” may never be the same. The fire blazes on with minimal containment — and pray it doesn’t threaten Joshua Tree NP.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

If the murmurings in the news today are true, the Pentagon is set to end its most controversial wink-wink contracts in Iraq with gargantuan oil services corp Halliburton:

The decision on Halliburton comes as the U.S. contribution to Iraq’s reconstruction begins to wane, reducing opportunities for U.S. companies after nearly four years of massive payouts to the private sector.

After a $14.5 billiion payout, and a plethora of unfinished business — could there be less expensive contractors out there to NOT do the job?

The fact that Halliburton has overcharged the government despite winning no-bid contracts has been well-documented. Among the least impressive accomplishments of Halliburton (and let’s not forget to mention its ties to its recent CEO and current U.S. VP Dick Cheney) and its subsidiaries:

-charging $45 for a case of soda
-building only 20 of 142 contractually agreed upon health care center and then “running out of money”
-double billing for soldiers’ meals
-using contaminated water for troop bathing needs

The Democrats.org blog highlights the “maybe-ness” of these contract terminations.

Personally, I’m wondering if an internal Pentagon investigation, or otherwise is finally gonna crack down on the illegally awarded contracts to Halliburton, not to mention the highway robbery that followed.

The outcome I envision — and the reason that this is not truly ground-breaking news — is that Halliburton will be awarded revised contracts after a session of supposedly “open” building.

Adele at TAPPED broadens the scope of the DoD’s chicanery, bringing up union appeals to the Pentagon’s new National Security Personnel System, which is designed to impede upon worker protections.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Alas, its been a while since we’ve presented los block-rockin’ beets, etc — so as I’ve just been reminded of my favorite song of 2005, if not one of the greatest in recent years, I urge all to watch this exhilirating video.

The Bees - “Chicken Payback”

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Sounds like some sort of Swiss Family Robinson Revue at the Grand ol Opry, donit?

In a potential coup for human rights the world over, the Pentagon has decided to adhere to the minimum standards of the Geneva Conventions (first ratified in the mid-20th century) to detainees in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

This statement (read the memo) comes two weeks after a Supreme Court decision ordering the Bush Administration to follow the guidelines of Article 3 of the Convention.

Now, if only the Supreme Court can decide that Global Warming is a reality and demand the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (signed in 1998 by Al Gore, but never ratified), the U.S. will really be on its way to seeing eye to eye with the rest of the modern world.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

It was the lowest scoring World Cup since 1990, and the U.S. couldn’t even score by themselves. There is verifiable evidence that Americans now dislike soccer even more, and 1998 champs and ‘06 runner up France is now the headbutt of all jokes.

I enjoy watching soccer and find it at times quite exhilirating. Penalty shot overtime shootouts, however — anticlimactic denouement of the first order. Anyway, it sure didn’t take long for the Zinedane Zidane online headbutting video game to go live. Play it here.

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Prelude to a lovefest apparently at RFK Stadium tonight - and I’m not talking about the Nationals v. Padres…. AP reports:

Bush sat between first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as they and several guests settled into a VIP box during the first inning.

Perfect time for a photoessay!

Originally published at Everything Between. You can comment here or there.

Well, shame on me for not having had the 3-5 minutes to take out of my daily happenings to keep up on my once-favorite Rocketboom vlogcast. (And no, I never got any action out of my February cameo, since yr asking).

Alas, it seems I missed some serious drama late this week as host Amanda Congdon announced — or did she threaten — her departure.

Such big news this is, that as AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck points out:

On the Web site technorati.com, which monitors tens of millions of blogs, “rocketboom” was the top search — globally — both Thursday and Friday. (Kenneth Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died Wednesday, was second.)

Somebody please, say ’tain’t so!

UPDATE: while Amanda’s sob story is posted at her blog - apparently Andrew Baron, majority owner of Rocketboom, spilled his guts at CaseCamp in Toronto on Friday night. And it’s all here on YouTube. Anyway (and holy shit does HuffPo look weird)! Rachel Sklar says the new hostess is the possibly hotter but most probably less talented Joanna Colan. As the New York Times printed Friday, move over Star Jones Reynolds and Dan Rather!