Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack

Jimmy Fallon may be a pretty dubious talent as an actor (he co-starred in Taxi, one of the worst buddy cop films ever made, and was decidedly less manly than Queen Latifah in it) and a lot of people dismissed him as a talk show host after replacing Conan O'Brien, but he is good at one thing: being the inspiration to an ice cream flavor. Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack is a tribute to his show, and after tasting this tasty combination of vanilla bean ice cream, salty caramel swirl and fudge covered potato chips, it's probably even better than Stephen Colbert's American Dream. (Although Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler is probably the best Ben & Jerry's celebrity flavor.) Just as impressive, Fallon's ice cream contains Fair Trade vanilla and cocoa, and Fallon's proceeds for the ice cream will go to Fair Trade Universities to promote the use of Fair Trade products on US campuses. So maybe Fallon deserves another look as a late night host. Or maybe not...

Jimmy Fallon Starts Ice Cream Rivalry With Colbert
Amber James
Mar 3rd 2011
http://www.popeater.com/2011/03/03/jimmy-fallon-ice-cream-ben-and-jerrys

Willie Nelson Wants A National Pot Party

http://www.celebstoner.com/201011285311/news/celebstoner-news/willie-nelson-wants-national-pot-party.html

Willie Nelson Wants A National Pot Party
Sunday, 28 November 2010

In an exclusive to CelebStoner, Willie Nelson responded to his latest marijuana arrest in Texas by calling for a new political party: "There's the Tea Party. How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left."

When Nelson's tour bus was stopped at a border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca Friday morning, authorities smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle with K-9 dogs and found six ounces of marijuana. Nelson posted a $2,500 bond and was released four hours later.

"Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," Nelson continued in his email to CelebStoner. "And stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved."

Nelson has been arrested three times for marijuana - once before in Texas in 2005 and in Louisiana in 2006. The total number of Americans arrested for marijuana in 2009 was 858,408.

Texas gov race gets Kinky

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26702.html

Texas gov race gets Kinky
By ANDY BARR 9/3/09

Richard “Kinky” Friedman is making his second run for governor of Texas, this time as a Democrat.

Beginning with an Associated Press interview earlier this week, Friedman has been slowly rolling out his announcement in a series of sitdowns with state media outlets. The popular satirist, musician and Texas Monthly columnist told the AP on Monday that it is “really time for Texas to secede from [GOP Gov.] Rick Perry.”

Friedman won 12 percent of the vote — nearly 550,000 votes — when he ran in 2006 as an Independent, enough to win fourth place in a crowded general election field. He raised $4.8 million for the race and attracted a considerable amount of national media attention, but many Democrats were left with a bitter taste as his candidacy was perceived to have drained votes from Democratic nominee Chris Bell.

Friedman told the AP that he decided to run because he believes he gives Democrats their best chance to win a contest that is so far being dominated by the contentious Republican primary fight between Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

“I look around and I think, I’m the only true man of the people in the race,” Friedman said, insisting that his candidacy would enable the party to “run on ideas, not on demographics.”

Friedman already has a Sept. 16 fundraiser planned with country singer Willie Nelson and expects to raise much of his money online. He claims that 70,000 individuals contributed online to his 2006 campaign.

Four other Democrats are seeking the gubernatorial nomination, including former U.S. Ambassador Tom Schieffer; Mark Thompson, a therapist for the blind; school teacher Felix Alvarado; and rancher Hank Gilbert.

How About A Bailout For America’s Family Farms?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/nelson-how-about-a-bailout-for-americas-family-farms.html

Nelson: How About A Bailout For America’s Family Farms?
Country music icon says just $1 billion out of $700 billion could get real economy back on track
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, October 23, 2008

Country music icon Willie Nelson has a message for Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke in the wake of the recent $700 billion dollar plus Wall Street bailout - how about a bailout for the desperate and struggling family farmers of America that are nearing extinction?

“I have written a letter as president of Farm Aid to whoever controls that money that we would like to have $1 billion dollars from that 700….$1 billion dollars is I think all we’ll need to turn the economy around if we start out taking care of our family farmers,” Nelson told The Alex Jones Show.

“We could put 10 million farmers back on the land, making a living out there raising food and fuel….and that $1 billion dollars I think would go a long way to changing our negative attitudes that we have and the confidence in ourselves and in our country right now,” said Nelson, adding that all foreclosures on farms should be halted immediately.

“I think that if we invested that $1 billion with our family farmers, we would begin to turn it around,” stressed the country music star, later joking that $100 billion would be an even better amount.

Nelson has been a multi-decade activist and vocal proponent for Farm Aid, and recently performed alongside Neil Young at the highly successful 2008 Farm Aid concert which was held at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA, having helped organize the first Farm Aid concert in 1985.

Farm Aid is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep family farmers on their land and support locally sourced, humanely-raised and organic food in the face of a gargantuan attempt on behalf of big agribusiness to squeeze the family farmer out of existence.

The letter that Nelson and fellow Farm Aid directors John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Dave Matthews sent to Congress points out, “When farms thrive, Main Street businesses and local communities thrive. Far from Wall Street, family farmers are creating real wealth, producing real value, growing from seeds and sunlight a product that nourishes us both physically and economically. Supporting diverse decentralized family farming will do far more for the stability and vitality of our country than a handful of global agribusiness corporations could ever do.”

“The proposed $700 billion bailout asks taxpayers to foot the bill without giving them the opportunity to share in any gains. A $1 billion investment in family farm agriculture would enrich us all, because we are all shareholders of the family farm. The return on investment in the family farm includes thriving local economies, nutritious food for better health, a safer and more secure food supply, a cleaner environment and more renewable energy.”

Nelson pointed out that when 8-10 million family farmers were on the land in America at the end of the second world war the economy was strong because, “Agriculture is the bottom rung on the economic ladder,” adding that the farmers became a target because they were a political problem.

“Let’s put out the fire now, we’ll figure out who started it later and that’s pretty much what we have to do, we have to stop the fire and stop the bleeding, and I think the best way to do that is still from the ground up, go back to our family farmer, he’s the one that started taking care of us in the beginning so let’s let him do it again,” Nelson concluded.

WHAT'S THAT UP IN THE SKY?!

It's Bobby Kennedy and Greg Palast releasing the flaming hot full-color investigative comic book, STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE!
Pow! Zap! No more joking with our rights, Mr. Rove!

Get the 24-page investigative comic book by Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy: STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE.

With the full story of the investigation you'll soon see Rolling Stone magazine - illustrated by razor-sharp pencils of Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner and Lloyd Dangle.

SIX ways they're STEALING your vote - and SEVEN ways to STEAL IT BACK.

(C'mon - 'fess up - do you really know what to do if they hand you a 'provisional' ballot?)

Make a $100 tax deductible donation at StealBackYourVote.org and we'll send you 25 to pass out to troublemakers of your choice.

And, for every $100 donation, we will give away another 400 to voters to vulnerable voters in swing states. We just sent eight cases to Santiago Juarez. Santiago's working with young Hispanic voters of New Mexico.

Can you help us send him more? Or donate $75+ and get a half dozen comix plus the DVD(signed), 'The Election Files' - my BBC reports on the vote snatchers.

Pick up 10 copies of the guide for a donation of $50. We send'm right away by priority mail.

Get five hundred copies for your local school or group for a $1000 donation at http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/print-copies-of-steal-back-your-vote.

Or give us the donation, we'll send'm to a church designated by our co-sponsor Jesse Jackson's Operation Rainbow/PUSH.

Thanks to your prior generosity, we're offering the printing plates FREE of any fee to us to any magazine or weekly that wants to insert comic. (You want to reproduce the guide on a mass scale - you got it. Contact zach (at) gregpalast.com)

Or you can download the comic for a donation of a penny or more (more, PLEASE), at StealBackYourVote.org.

Hey, radio stations: download the Willie Nelson PSA for 'Steal Back Your Vote.'

Spread this link! Pow! Zap! Take that, Katherine!

Steal Back Your Vote is a project of the not-for-profit non-partisan Palast Investigative Fund.

WHAT'S THAT UP IN THE SKY?! It's our Super Sponsors! Voto Latino, Operation Rainbow Push, Air America Radio, Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! and other crusaders for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Contact us at interviews@StealBackYourVote.org.

Steal Back Your Vote

Get informed. Kennedy and I are about to publish our report and put it on the airwaves. Sign up and get the notice- via RSS, MySpace, facebook or e-mail and you’ll be the first to know when the news breaks.

BROADCASTERS: Pull down our Steal Back Your Vote! video and audio PSAs from the likes of Jim Hightower, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Willie Nelson and Mimi Kennedy and add it to your podcast or radio program.

Individuals: Want to add your name to the project and help us spread the word? Make a tax-deductible donation of at least $100 to sponsor the Steal Back Your Vote site and $500 to sponsor the guide itself. We'll add your name with gratitude.

Reverend Jackson has asked me to pass on these words: "We've marched too long, worked too hard, and died too young to let them steal our vote. For Dr. King, for Mandela, for Medgar Evers, for Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner - download it and fight back!"

Respectfully,

Greg Palast

http://www.stealbackyourvote.com/

“THEY’RE STEALING YOUR VOTE… WELL, STEAL IT BACK!”
- Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson has his copy. In just days, you’ll be able to get yours, too. Sign up for updates, and we’ll let you know the moment it’s ready!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blew the lid off the Theft of 2004 in his masterful Rolling Stone article.

Investigative reporter GREG PALAST for BBC television exposed Katherine Harris’ “felon purge” which fixed the 2000 race.

Now Kennedy and Palast have teamed up to investigate THE THEFT OF 2008. They’ve uncovered the scheme to swipe votes by the millions.

So,what are you going to do about it?

That’s easy: STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE!

How can you do that? Easy again . . .


#1. Sign up to get updates on the Steal Back Your Vote! investigation. And be the first to find out about the release of the voter Guide by Palast and Kennedy. Illustrated by graphic gonzos Ted Rall, Lukas Ketner and Troubletown’s Lloyd Dangle.

#2. Get your organization to sponsor the Steal Back Your Vote! Campaign. There’s no charge for your group to join The Progressive Magazine, Guerrilla News Network, VoterRescue, Action Point with Cynthia Black, Air America Radio’s Clout!, Progressive Democrats of America, and the Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation.

Contact StealBackYourVote@gregpalast.com. Hell, sign on yourself Donate $100 (www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org) & get your name on the guide.

#3. Get informed - sign up to get the full story on how they’re shoplifting the White House at www.StealBackYourVote.org - via RSS, myspace, facebook or e-mail.
Watch out! Coming soon - Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy in Steal Back Your Vote! - the Film - from the pueblos of New Mexico to Karl Rove’s emails (really!), the real scoop.

“Stories so relevant they threaten to alter history.” - Chicago Tribune.
“Twisted and maniacal!” - Hon. Katherine Harris

www.StealBackYourVote.org is a project of the non-partisan, non-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

http://www.stealbackyourvote.com/steal-back-your-vote/

Steal Back Your Vote!
August 29th, 2008

Palast: One out of five Colorado voters purged from voter registration
Outcome of 2008 election likely to be skewed by unethical tactics
RealVail.com
By David O. Williams
Friday, August 29th, 2008
August 27, 2008 — Robert Kennedy Jr. had a pretty good excuse for skipping his scheduled appearance with investigative journalist Greg Palast to promote their latest project, “Steal Back Your Vote” — a report on voting irregularities and fraud in the 2008 election.

Palast, speaking at the Progressive Democrats of America gathering at a downtown Denver church during the DNC Tuesday, excused Kennedy’s absence to be with his uncle, Monday’s inspirational surprise speaker Sen. Ted Kennedy, and introduced a surprise replacement of his own, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.

Progressive investigative journalist Goodman asked a delegate to hold up a goody bag with sponsor logo from AT&T on one side and decried the influence of big corporate money on the modern American political process.

She talked about trying to get into a delegate gathering at Mile High Stadium Monday and being denied access by towering security guards. Goodman said delegates at a corporate party are in training for just how skewed by campaign contributions politics in America have become, and added that there can be no good reasons to keep the press out, only bad ones.

“When you’ve got money saturating politics, and even if you care deeply about the public good, you’ve got to see where the money is and that’s what this is about every four years,” Goodman said. “It’s about teaching (budding politicians) big-money politics.”


Goodman said AT&T’s sponsorship of the DNC is the Democrats’ reward for refusing to block a bill several weeks ago giving telecom companies retroactive immunity for facilitating domestic spying by the feds. She also urged support of independent media during both parties’ political conventions in order to limit and expose excesses by police against protesters in Denver and Minnesota.

Palast took back the microphone to talk up his project with Kennedy, which will be the subject of a feature in a major national magazine next month and which also will be released as a 24-page comic-book-style PDF illustrated by three top political cartoonists. The report will be available on the Web site www.stealbackyourvote.org.

Palast said former Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson has made the state the epicenter of the rampant practice of purging voter registration lists for alleged irregularities — a tactic now even more en vogue in the wake of new legislation backed by the Bush administration.

“Now under the Help America Vote Act the entire nation is Floridated, but the champ, [former Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris, ain’t got nothing on Colorado,” Palast said. “We’re sitting at purge ground zero. The reason that there’s a convention here is this is a swing state where Democrats are piling in, tens of thousands of new voters in Colorado at the top of the bucket, but at the bottom of the bucket the spread sheets are going (poof).

“What’s happening? Donetta Davidson, who had been secretary of state in the state of Colorado, removed 19.4 percent — one out of five voters in the state of Colorado, she removed their names. And what happens to Davidson as a result of this? The answer is George Bush made her head of the brand new Election Assistance Commission, where she can train all 50 secretaries of state in her purging ways. In fact, President Bush, instead of calling her chairwoman of the EAC, was going to call her the Purging General.”

http://www.gregpalast.com/night-of-the-living-vote-snatchers-from-steal-back-your-vote/

Night of the Living Vote-snatchers -
from Steal Back Your Vote!
by Greg Palast

Excerpted from the Greg Palast, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Robert F. Kennedy's comic book voter guide.
See www.StealBackYourVote.org for more.

In 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act.

When a Bush tells you he’s going to “help” you vote - look out!

The result: in the 2004 presidential election, over three million votes - 3,006,080 - were cast and not counted. Like, what the !@#!?

That’s from the official data from an agency created by George Bush called the “Elections Assistance Commission.” When a Bush tells you he’s going to “assist” our elections... (well, you get it).
Three MILLION ballots disappeared - Pfft!

And not just anyone’s ballots. U.S. government experts reported, for example, that a black voter’s ballot is 900% more likely than a white voter’s ballot to get “lost” in the machine. Bush fired the experts.

Three million voters went missing in ‘04 - but that ain’t nuthin’!

Law professor and voting law expert Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warns that it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Nasty new spores of the “Help” America Vote Act went into effect since the last election that have turned the process into a vicious game of “Chutes and Ladders,” with traps and tricks between you and your vote...

Example: the Republican Secretary of State of Colorado “helped” her state vote by eliminating 19.4% of the voters from the voter rolls. That’s one in five !@#$#@ voters!

Over three million missing ballots – and now the voters themselves are disappearing by the millions. Where the hell did they go?

Colbert hosting Costello, Feist for "Christmas"

http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN1638329220080917

Colbert hosting Costello, Feist for "Christmas"
Tue Sep 16, 2008
By Ann Donahue

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert is getting an early start on Christmas, enlisting musicians Elvis Costello, Feist, Toby Keith, John Legend and Willie Nelson for a one-hour holiday special that will air November 23 on the cable network.

"A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!" has something of a narrative arc: Colbert will be snowed in at his cabin in upstate New York and will pass the time with his musically inclined friends.

Original songs will be written for the special by David Javerbaum, the executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and composer Adam Schlesinger, from Fountains Of Wayne and Ivy. The duo recently collaborated on the Broadway musical "Cry Baby."

Songs and their performers include "Another Christmas Song," to be performed by Colbert; "Have I Got a Present for You" by Keith; "Little Dealer Boy" by Colbert and Nelson; "Hanukkah" by Colbert and Jon Stewart; "Nutmeg" by Colbert and Legend; "Please Be Patient" by Feist; "There Are Much Worse Things To Believe In" by Colbert and Costello and "(What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" performed by the entire ensemble.

The DVD of the show will be released November 25, with a portion of the proceeds to benefit the charity Feeding America. DVD extras will include a "book burning Yule log," a video advent calendar and alternate endings.

Kucinich files lawsuit

http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_7867042

Kucinich files lawsuit after party denies him place on ballot
The Associated Press
01/02/2008

AUSTIN—Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, along with supporter Willie Nelson, have filed a lawsuit to get Kucinich on the ballot in Texas after they say the Texas Democratic Party rejected his application.

The civil lawsuit was delivered late Wednesday afternoon to U.S. District Court for the Western District of the United States, Kucinich spokesman Andy Juniewicz said late Wednesday evening.

The lawsuit says that Kucinich was informed by the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday that his application was "defective" because he crossed out a loyalty oath in the application that said he would swear to support whoever the Democratic nominee for president might be.

The lawsuit asks that a temporary restraining order be issued to stop the Texas Democratic Party from certifying to the Texas Secretary of State a list of candidates and to restrict the secretary of state from accepting any list that doesn't include the name of a qualified candidate who refuses the loyalty oath.

Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, also wants the court to declare that the oath requirement violates the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment in the Constitution.

"He's right to challenge a blind loyalty oath to the Democratic Party because it's un-American," Willie Nelson said in a news release from the Kucinich campaign.

Calls for comment made to the Texas Democratic Party and the secretary of state's office after business hours on Wednesday were not immediately returned.

Stardust by Willie Nelson

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/593

Stardust by Willie Nelson (Remastered CD with Extra Tracks)
By Willie Nelson
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

When this album came out many moons ago, a lot of people thought it would flop.

After all, what is Willie Nelson doing recording standards like "Stardust" and "Blue Skies."

But arranged by producer Booker T. (yes, that Booker T.), this album has become a Willie Nelson classic -- a classic recording of classic American songs.

More often than not, having a recording artist stray out of hia/her genre fails, but not in this case, not at all.

Nelson seems to sing effortlessly, as if he didn't have a care in the world -- and that comfortable, relaxed feeling is transmitted directly to the listener.

For younger people, these are songs you might have never given a chance. But when Willie sings them, they have a different nuance. He makes them his own, as if they were written for him. His articulation of the lyrics is clear, heartfelt and beguiling.

Here are the songs:

1. Stardust
2. Georgia On My Mind
3. Blue Skies
4. All Of Me
5. Unchained Melody
6. September Song
7. On The Sunny Side Of The Street
8. Moonlight In Vermont
9. Don't Get Around Much Anymore
10. Someone To Watch Over Me
11. Scarlet Ribbons
12. I Can See Clearly Now

Nothing profound here, just great listening.

"Stardust" goes down as smoothly as a pina colada.

And who can resist Willie Nelson?