The House and Senate have passed a historic tobacco control bill that will give the FDA power to regulate the marketing, advertising and manufacturing of tobacco products.  President Obama – himself a former smoker – welcomed the bill, noting that it’s “a long time coming.”  Until this point, the tobacco industry has been less regulated than the pet food and cosmetics industries, with strong tobacco lobbies and a likely Bush administration veto having thwarted FDA regulatory attempts previously.

The bill passed overwhelmingly in both the House and Senate, with Virginia breaking ranks with other tobacco-producing Southern states to support it.

One main intention of the bill is to prevent tobacco companies from targeting youth smokers.  To that end, the FDA will have the power to:

• Prohibit flavored cigarettes (candy, fruit, etc)
• Outlaw cigarette advertising within 1000 feet of schools
• Prohibit the use of terms like “mild” or “light,” which imply a lesser health risk
• Regulate the amount of nicotine in products
• Approve new products before they hit the market
• Mandate better highlighting/graphics of the health warnings on packages

Although the bill bans most candy flavors and cloves, mint is the exception.  Menthol got a free pass due primarily to friction from large tobacco companies like Phillip Morris, who backed this bill (with the menthol exemption) and happen to sell a lot of menthol products.  Menthol cigarettes make up 25% of American tobacco consumption, and 75% of African American smokers prefer menthol.  Some see the menthol exemption as racist; but of course, this opinion hinges primarily upon which side of the issue you support.

Banning clove cigarettes has faced major opposition from Indonesia, where 4 million clove farmers don’t want to lose market share to domestic companies producing menthol.  However, in the end imported Indonesian spice lost out to the minty-freshness of domestic menthol.  Some critics of the bill point out that it gives an unfair advantage to Philip Morris specifically, by making it harder for smaller brands to enter the market and by eliminating cloves as a competitor to menthol.

One main complainer about the bill is RJ Reynolds, the #2 cigarette producer in the U.S., leading this blogger to hope that some cable channel somewhere decides to re-run “Barbarians at the Gate” sometime soon.  Because history lessons are always better with James Garner.

In any case, as “Schoolhouse Rock” taught us, the bill now goes to the President for his signature before it becomes a law.

Hey may not be able to bend it like Beckham, but Cristiano Ronaldo‘s glam lifestyle and tendency to appease his female fans with frequent bouts of gawk-inducing shirtlessness aren’t the only thing that has people comparing the two footballers.

Ronaldo’s been sold traded by Manchester United, where he led them to a Premier League victory last season, to rival European legacy Madrid – Beckham’s previous path.  The trade went for the record sum of £80M pounds (that’s $131M for us Americans), making him the most expensive footballer in history.  His new salary is £180K a week ($295K), which jumps him much farther up the list of the most highly-compensated soccer players in the world.

The Portuguese player’s desire to leave was cited as one main reason for the transfer, though Manchester’s debt may have factored into the decision.   United fans, for their part, are looking at the bright side of the very large coin – which is $131M for Manchester to spend on new players, and the loss of a player not known recently for his chipper attitude or teamwork.  His skills on the field, however, will undoubtedly be missed.

And so – despite his tendency to remove his shirts – we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award to Cristiano Ronaldo today.  May he enjoy the appropriately fitted, American Apparel “Supermoney” fashion T-shirt, at right.

In a culture where strident political statements are the norm on bumper stickers & T-shirts, and reality TV is the new sitcom, and news is available 24-7 through traditional media and citizen journalists, and the paparazzi rush around trailing everyone from A-list celebs to the Gosselin family, it’s hard to imagine living somewhere with a government-controlled press.  It’s harder to imagine a government that would consider two foreign journalists crossing a border and working on a refugee story to be a “grave crime” against the country.

Unfortunately that concept is the reality for reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are now serving as the poster children of North Korea’s iron grip over anyone crossing its borders.  The journalists were working on a story for Al Gore’s CurrentTV, and apparently crossed a bridge from the Chinese border into North Korea.  Whatever really happened will stay with them for now, as both women were arrested for “hostile acts” and crossing the border, were put to a private trial, and were then sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp for the “grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing.”

It’s been said that all new Presidents face a test from a hostile nation, and North Korea seems to be the one that drew the long straw with President Obama.  First were the missile tests; now there’s the regrettable matter of two journalists that work for a former U.S. Vice President facing 12 years of hard labor for being arrested while doing their jobs.

Many think that North Korea is making a power play with the journalists in order to have a bargaining chip with the U.S. government – which is to say that this is about missile tests, not about two straying journalists.  So far, speculation names potential North Korean envoys as Bill Richardson (who has negotiated with North Korea before), Al Gore or Hillary Clinton, the latter of whom just spoke out against the North Korean military tests.

Obama, for his part, is “deeply concerned” about the journalists and, as per the missle tests, noted that “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”

With L.A. Pride around the corner, perhaps it’s only fitting that Adam Lambert confirmed to the world via Rolling Stone that his love of musical theater isn’t a coincidence.  Yep, he’s gay.

Lambert noted that he’s not trying to be a civil rights leader, but that he’s merely setting the record straight in order to take control of the dialogue.  Speculation as to his sexual orientation was rampant during the Idol season, and Lambert felt that coming out before the tour would help avoid the “bullsh*t” that Clay Aiken endured.

With the upcoming Idol summer tour and a recent record deal inked with 19 and RCA, it would seem that the newly outed Idol is looking toward his future with cheerful, rainbow-colored glasses.

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award to Adam Lambert this week.  May he enjoy the “Never Blend In” Harvey Milk T-shirt, at left.

Good news for a change on the unemployment front: U.S. job losses for May were 175,000 fewer than analysts had forecasted, with 375,000 jobs eliminated.  As a comparison, America lost 650,00 jobs in March and another 500,000 in April.

While the unemployment rate is the highest it’s been since 1983 with 9.4% Americans without employment, a glimmer of hope for recovery has shown itself given the slowing rate of job elimination.

As a comparison, the unemployment rate during the Great Depression climbed to 30%.  So while financial analysts agree that America still has a long way to go toward recovery, hey – it could be worse.

While it’s rare that one finds the answers to life’s more difficult questions at the bottom of a bottle, the above T-shirt did make us wonder. And so…

National Doughnut Day is upon us, and no matter how you spell doughnut (you spell it donut, I spell it doughnut) you now have a perfect excuse to celebrate an All-American breakfast treat by eating one.

Spelling controversies aside, when it comes to handheld sweet baked treats doughnuts rank quite well in the T-shirt race.  Between the donut t-shirts and doughnut t-shirts we can conclude that Doughnut isn’t quite as popular as Cupcake, but is more popular than Cupcake’s ugly breakfast cousin, Muffin.

Muffin needn’t fret, though, being more popular than Pancake and Waffle.  And all are considerably more popular than British immigrant Scone or Mexican friend Churro.  France however should be pleased to note that mighty Croissant is more popular than other foreign pastry.

Of course, everyone is upstaged by the insufferable Cookie.  But that’s to be expected, since Cookie sold out long ago with celebrity endorsement.

So get on out there, buck celebrity trends and eat a doughnut.  You’ll be glad you did.

President Obama’s much-awaited speech at the University of Cairo was the culmination of his trip throughout the Middle East.  The tour has been called “The Middle East Tour” by most American and World Press, with the final speech being referred to as a “reach out” to the Muslim world.

The speech focused on “new beginnings” for U.S./Muslim relations.

Not everyone is moved by the President’s overtures, however.  Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei noted that the Muslim world still holds a deep-seated hatred of America, citing the reason as “For a long time, these people have witnessed aggressive actions by America, and that’s why they hate them.”

U.S. critics of Obama saw the speech as a terrorist invite, having already dubbed Obama’s tour “The Apology Tour” (not to be confused with Marilyn Manson’s “Boo Tour,” though it would seem that the Apology Tour was more successful than the latter at disturbing some Americans).

Within the theme of new beginnings, he addressed the Iraeli/Palestinian conflict from a different stance than previous Presidents, referring to Palestine as “Palestine” (rather than a future Palestinian state), and noting that current conditions for Palestinians are “intolerable.”  Obama also highlighted the fundamental rights of Palestinians to have a homeland by noting, “Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine.”

Not surprisingly, this shift in talking points has caused mixed reactions from both sides of the age-old conflict, though the Palestinian negotiator and many others around the world thought the speech was a good start.

One thing everyone agrees on: actions, not words, are needed to actually change things.

So what do you think?

If you were taking advantage of Chinese characters to write long, expressive Tweets and you happen to be a Chinese citizen, the jig’s up.  The Chinese government has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and multiple other Web 2.0 sites – including all WordPress and Blogger blogs.  (So if you live in China, you’re most likely not reading this.)

The general guess is that these sites are blocked in order to minimize online chatter in Mainland China about the Tianemens Square Massacre (or “June Fourth Incident,” as you will), which occurred 20 years ago on June 4th.

Interestingly, for the past couple weeks there have consistently been multiple hits on this blog’s old Beijing Olympics post, for no apparent reason.  Coincidence?  Hmm.

As far as we know, CafePress is not blocked in China. According to someone we know who is currently traveling in Mainland China, we are blocked in China.  That being said, you still probably definitely don’t want to wear your “Free Tibet” T-shirt if you’re planning a trip to China – even if you wear it with the same apathy or sheer cluelessness with which so many hipsters sport a Che T-shirt.

Because while unfettered self-expression and the “get it off your mind and onto your chest” philosophy is at the heart of CafePress, the best rule of international travel is to remember where you’re going.  And act accordingly.  (One caveat: if you ever travel to Quito, you’ll notice that locals jump off moving buses.  Having lived there and having drastically underestimated the velocity of a slowing bus during a hackneyed attempt to blend in, I advise all readers to simply ask the driver to stop rather than risking a dramatic – and very public – wipeout in the streets of Ecuador.)

And so we will award a Fantasy T-wearer Award (not to be worn in international travel) to Biz Stone and Evan Williams, co-founders of Twitter today.  May they enjoy the “Banned in China” T-shirt, above.

…[insert new slogan text here]

General Motors’ iconic if inadvertent “What’s Good for GM is Good for the Country” slogan was recently called into question by Ted Koppel during an interview with a GM exec in his “People’s Republic of Capitalism” series.  Koppel was specifically discussing GM’s rampant investment in China, but with the news of GM’s bankruptcy filing the question mark at the end of the classic GM soundbyte is looming ever-larger.

The Chapter 11 filing constitutes the largest industrial bankruptcy filing in American history, and the fourth largest overall.

GM already has $20B in taxpayer money; it wants $30B more.  President Obama says that the government has no interest in running what’s to be a leaner, scaled-down GM, calling their bankrolling participation one of “reluctant shareholders.“  He also noted that “GM and its stakeholders have achieved a viable, achievable plan that will give this iconic American company a chance to rise again.”

Part of the viable, achievable plan: ditch Hummer, focus on building hybrids and other more practical cars.  Of course, it didn’t take a fortune teller to predict the demise of consumer demand for oversized, gas-guzzling SUV’s.  If pushing the celebration of fuel consumption during a Middle East war effort seemed like a good idea at the time, perhaps a simple look at the T-shirts 4+ years ago might have been a better cultural barometer to foresee consumer trends.  A simple search for “SUV” vs. “hybrid” show very clearly that, from this end, the voices have always been loudest against the “bigger is better” trend when it comes to the automobile.

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award today.  May all senior GM executives (with the notable exception of ex-CEO Richard Wagoner, who was recently dismissed but enjoyed aggressive pay increases over the years even as GM lost money) enjoy the “Powered by Ramen” T-shirt, as seen above.  Certainly, wearing that T-shirt will probably go over a lot better than, say, showing up to meetings in a $36M private jet.