by Alex Bennett

DO YOU KNOW WHY YOUR TV IS ABOUT TO FUCK YOU?

Okay, here’s the exam. What does the date February 17, 2009, mean to you? You’ve seen it, but where exactly? How about superimposed over the lower third of your favorite TV show? Now you’ve got it. That’s the day television goes completely digital, and your old reliable analog TV disappears forever. Maybe. Have I lost you yet? Well, here’s what you should know:

In May 1941 the FCC adopted America’s television standard of 525 total scan lines. Those are electron beams that sketch the picture in small lines across the face of the television tube. We weren’t the first country with TV. Germany, for example, had it in the ’30s. Their system was developed to a standard of 625 scan lines. The more lines, the better the definition of the picture. That’s why, if you’ve ever watched TV in Europe, the picture always seems so much better. Why we adopted an inferior system is beyond me, but I’ll bet it had to do with politics and payoffs.

There was another problem with international TV broadcasting: Our system was called NTSC, while other countries could choose between PAL and SECAM. There.....

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by Robert Sheer

AMERICA’S UNREGULATED BANKING SYSTEM ROBS THE POOR TO GIVE TO THE RICH.

Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” That image from “The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd” is out of date these days, since bankers and other thieves who foreclosed on the bereaved widow’s home in Woody Guthrie’s old folk song don’t use fountain pens anymore. Instead, they rely on computerized transactions, online solicitations, international money swaps and all sorts of other secret shenanigans that leave the robbed consumers blindly unaware of who actually assaulted them.

First, a bank hustles them into deceptively low-cost introductory loans, which are then sold in a Ponzi scheme of speculation. When the homeowner’s interest rate inevitably balloons, it’s some other bank the consumer never heard of that lowers the foreclosure ax.

The other thing Guthrie’s tune missed is that only a fool of a stickup man would use a gun, because the criminal penalties are super-high and the loot paltry by comparison. Not so the money to be ripped off from home mortgage foreclosures and credit card hustles— and those robberies are not even classified as punishable crimes.

Sure, loansharking is a crime—a hoodlum loans you.....

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Hustler’s Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis Ask For Government Bailout Of The Adult Entertainment Industry

As the 2009 AVN Adult Expo opens in Las Vegas this week, Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and HUSTLER magazine publisher Larry Flynt are petitioning the newly convened 111th Congress to provide a financial bailout for the adult entertainment industry along the lines of what is being sought by the Big Three automakers, a spokesperson for Francis announced today.

Adult industry leaders Flynt and Francis sent a joint request to Congress asking for $5 billion in federal assistance, “Just to see us through hard times,” Francis said. “Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation’s most important businesses, we feel we deserve the same consideration. In difficult economic times, Americans turn to entertainment for relief. More and more, the kind of entertainment they turn to is adult entertainment.”

But according to Flynt the recession has acted like a national cold shower. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt says, “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

While not to the degree felt by banks and automakers, the Adult Entertainment.....

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Approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we stand at a dark precipice that begs the question: Revolution or slavery? Yet we hesitate to even state this out loud for fear of being whisked off to a secret detention camp built by Halliburton. And therein lies the proof of our desperate situation. Before George W. Bush destroyed habeas corpus, we would not have been reluctant to speak up. Now we cringe. The politicians—Democrats and Republicans alike—have taken away your right to speak. The big corporations have taken away your right to make a fair wage. Together they have taken away your right to privacy. Those who are depending on a new administration to save us should not forget the lessons of history: Rulers must be pushed and prodded at best, deposed at worst. If our new President and Congress do not act dramatically and soon to reverse past trends, the American people will have to force them to do so. It’s that or slavery.

Larry Flynt
Publisher

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To describe Texas Governor Rick Perry as snarky, scheming and slimy is being nice. Totally lacking in morals or even a sense of shame, this well-connected Republican will do virtually anything (no matter how repugnant) to curry favor with Big Business— and to line his own bank account.

Perry’s latest bit of insanity? Trying to force all 11- and 12-year-old girls in the Lone Star State to be inoculated with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil. Now don’t get us wrong: Preventing strains of the virus that causes genital warts and can manifest into deadly cervical cancer is commendable. But was the true motivation behind Perry’s executive order to safeguard his young constituents? Fat chance. It was to suck Merck & Co.’s big corporate dick.

Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer, always seems to be popping up somewhere, whether snuggling up to the GOP (case in point) or using public relations firms to cover up its alleged complicity in the deaths of thousands of Americans. (Merck’s arthritis drug Vioxx was recalled in 2004 after being linked to numerous fatal heart attacks.) Its big Texas push for Gardasil seems likely to precipitate yet another major pharmaceutical scandal.

How can we be so.....

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President Bush pardoned 19 more people before leaving for his holiday vacation, which brings his total pardons up to 191 according to the Associated Press.

What do you think about the people he pardoned? Who should and shouldn’t be on that list?

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What Pat Robertson says may surprise you. It’s refreshing to see independent thought, thinking about the actions of the candidates and not standing blindly with or against them just because of their party affiliation.

What do you think about what he said?

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Scores of San Diego State University students are rounded up in a sweeping drug bust. 

During finals week of the spring semester, 95 San Diego State University students— and 30 others—were arrested on assorted drug-related charges in a series of raids conducted by federal and local lawenforcement agencies. The roundup culminated a year-long undercover sting operation targeting dealers and buyers at SDSU, particularly members of several fraternities.

At the residences of students and non- SDSU-affiliated individuals, investigators confiscated up to $100,000 worth of cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy, psylocibin mushrooms, illicit prescription drugs and other substances. They also seized $60,000 in cash and various weapons, including a shotgun and three semiautomatic pistols.

According to the District Attorney’s Office of San Diego County, 54 SDSU students were arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who suspected a direct connection to the originally targeted traffickers. The remaining 41 were arrested by campus police officers for minor offenses uncovered between January and May 2008. Officials said these suspects were not necessarily connected to the drug ring, but were arrested in accordance with the university’s zero-tolerance drug policy.

The D.A.’s office also noted that one student apprehended in the raids—Omar Castaneda- Arce, 36—is a documented gang member with suspected ties to.....

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Jeanette Maier, best known as “The Canal Street Madam,” reveals a criminal pattern behind the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

On the morning of May 1, 2008, “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanged in a storage shed near her mother’s home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Local police wasted no time in ruling the death a suicide. But people familiar with the high-end escort service operator’s history and others who knew Palfrey personally suspected the authorities were guilty of a rush to judgment.

The 52-year-old Palfrey had been convicted on April 15 of racketeering and money laundering charges for running a prostitution ring that catered to the Washington, D.C., elite. Throughout her trial in U.S. District Court, Palfrey maintained that her company—Pamela Martin & Associates—provided escort services that were entirely legal.

HUSTLER Publisher Larry Flynt had steadfastly supported Palfrey in her efforts to exonerate herself and expose the hypocrites who had used her services. Based on phone records released by Palfrey, Flynt exposed Republican U.S. Senator David Vitter from Louisiana in July 2007 as a client of the D.C. Madam. Other names eventually linked to phone numbers in Palfrey’s records included former senior State Department.....

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