Soup

"Some time ago, the media came up with the idea that Michael Jackson was going to leave his share in the Beatles songs to me in his will which was completely made up and something I didn’t believe for a second. Now the report is that I am devastated to find that he didn’t leave the songs to me. This is completely untrue. I had not thought for one minute that the original report was true and therefore, the report that I’m devastated is also totally false, so don’t believe everything you read folks! In fact, though Michael and I drifted apart over the years, we never really fell out, and I have fond memories of our time together. At times like this, the press do tend to make things up, so occasionally, I feel the need to put the record straight."

Paul McCartney denies Michael Jackson Beatles rights rumor - EW.com (via apsies)

"I would like to make a deal with Cafferty. Jack, you don’t tell people that a career in the performing arts disqualifies them from seeking elected office, and I won’t say publicly that your being convicted of leaving the scene of an accident in which you struck a cyclist and then ran two red lights while you were pursued by the police and were subsequently ordered to serve 70 hours of community service back in May of 2003 disqualifies you from posing as a “Man of the People” on a major cable news network."

-Alec Baldwin

Don’t fuck with Jack Donaghy.

(via anthonyking)

"Comscore says Russia has the world’s most engaged social audience. The average online Russian spends 6.6 hours & views 1,307 pages/ month."

sorayad

"

The world, as I see it, is down with a score of ailments that are painful and difficult to look at. Almost all are chronic and incurable. The best we can do is to remind ourselves that life is good, and humanity is stubbornly charming despite and because of its flaws.

But the realization that our problems are basically insoluable is not a call to complacency. There’s a lot to be done. First and foremost, we have the task of demonstrating the insolubility of our great problems. Knocking down the latest version of the messianic passion of the world improvers, showing that the latest sovereign balm is nothing more than snake oil, is a never-ending task because the world-improvers will always be with us. The presence of the improvers is, in fact, one of our insoluable problems. More generally, we have the task of celebrating beauty, welcoming good and honest work, and fighting against those who insist that life is a dreary affair and thus must be immediately be made even drearier.

Rise If You Must: How I Know Will Leitch Is Wrong

"Iran says to free 100 more people held in unrest"

Reuters_Iran

More at Reuters

"Ross’s passivity in the face of the Palin outrage is related to a fantasy, a dream of a Nixon party that can finally destroy all those liberal elites who allegedly look down on Palin, and all those allegedly pseudo-meritocrats who despise her. But Nixonianism with starbursts is still Nixonianism: an attitude disguised as a politics. And it is the enemy of intelligent governing conservatism - it invariably leads to bigger and bigger government to placate a class and identity-based coalition. It is the mirror image of the corrupt identity-politics liberalism of the 1970s and 1980s. Stoking resentment even further won’t work."

Andrew Sullivan. (via jgh)

"Thanks for asking. Still here and in one piece. Been wondering, though, how much of the anti-Mediaite thing (which is now a thing in and of itself worthy of dissection by unpaid self-appointed media analysts) is animated by a misguided sense of nostalgia for the days when it was still about the music, man. Because seriously, the gold we found digging in the dirt between shitty freelance gigs got stolen by the moneymen a long long time ago."

Young Manhattanite

"On what basis does the Administration demand Zelaya’s reinstatement? His removal from office was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendance to the Oval Office, or our newest colleague Al Franken’s election to the Senate."

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), demonstrating once again that Republicans can’t tell the difference between important world events and petty political bickering
(via ericmortensen)

I actually agree with Senator DeMint.

(via mikehudack)

Isn’t what Zeyala attempted similar to what Michael Bloomberg did here in New York City?

Instead of allowing the citizens of the city to decide to extend term limits, to allow him to continue as mayor, he had a small group of bureaucrats make the decision.

"

How then can a distinguished culture, which has withstood violent conquest from external enemies for centuries, now be responsible for violence towards its own? How much easier then to assert “It is not us, it’s them.”

State news this week quoted a statement by the current head of Iran’s Basij movement which blamed violence and public damage on individuals who had worn clothes associated with the organization in order to damage its reputation.

Hosein Ta’eb complained that it was “too easy for people to join the basij and carry out ugly and undeserving acts which damage the image of the children of the nation.”

A measure of genuine bad conscience can perhaps be detected behind the usual recourse to external infiltration and subterfuge. Civil unrest and state suppression is no source of national pride but projecting blame on an external other is — like the Friday prayers speech by Ayatollah Khamenei — a diversion from more troubling truths.

Tehran Bureau, Them, Not Us