The Hollywood Liberal

This is from Pixwit.com Check out their great pics.

Lebanon Under Siege: Dahr Jamail Reports from Beirut on How Israel Air Strikes Have Caused a Humanitarian Crisis for Hundreds of Thousands of Refugees
Democracy Now

The death toll from Israel’s attack on Lebanon is approaching four hundred – almost all civilians. More than one thousand have been wounded and an estimated 900,000 have been displaced from their homes. This weekend, ground troops seized the Lebanese town of Marun al-Ras. Israeli officials believe they have approval from the United States to keep attacking Lebanon for at least another week. We go to Lebanon to speak with independent journalist Dahr Jamail

Congress Fuels South Asian Nuclear Arms Race

Think Progress
Excerpt: Congress Fuels South Asian Nuclear Arms Race
As Congress is marching in lock step to approve the administration’s sweetheart deal that would allow India to rapidly ramp up its nuclear bomb production to about 50 new weapons each year, news comes that Pakistan is racing to match the Indian capability.
The Washington Post reports on new satellite photos that reveal construction of a plutonium production reactor that should enable Pakistan to punch out 12; surprise 50 bombs a year.
It is not too late for Congress to stop this developing nuclear arms race in South Asia. All they have to do is approve an amendment that conditions the U.S.-India deal on an Indian agreement not to make any more material for weapons. This was part of the deal originally sought by Bush administration officials, but they caved in to India demands and dropped the idea.
Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) says, The Bush Administration conceded on almost every major point in negotiating this agreement with India. Even worse, the Administration essentially ignored the concerns of its own nonproliferation experts, and kept Congress in the dark until after the agreement was concluded.
He and other legislators are trying to get amendments to the deal that would enable the U.S. to expand cooperation with India without allowing India to go on a nuclear weapons binge. One amendment would require India to halt production of fissile material, the main component needed to make nuclear weapons, in exchange for greater nuclear cooperation with the United States. A second important amendment would prevent India from transferring nuclear enrichment technology to other countries.
The Arms Control Association has more.
Joseph Cirincione

U.S. soldier among 34 killed in Iraq

AP
Excerpt:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged “death squad” in Baghdad on Tuesday, hoping to quell the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead — including an American soldier. In Washington, President Bush met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the White House to discuss the deteriorating security situation. He believes and I believe that there needs to be more forces inside Baghdad who are willing to hold people to account,” Bush said during a joint news conference.
Later in the day, gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and ambushed a sport utility vehicle belonging to a private security company in north Baghdad, killing eight people.

Sen. Inhofe Compares People Who Believe In Global Warming To ‘The Third Reich’

AP
Excerpt:Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is the nation’s most prominent global warming denier. He famously declared that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Now, he’s taken the argument a step further. In an interview with Tulsa World, Inhofe compared people who believed global warming was a problem to Nazis:

In an interview, he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical comparison.

“It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,” Inhofe said.

H.L.s Take:Any time anyone doesn’t agree with them, we are something bad, this time its Nazi’s.
Nazis for believing Scientists and not them. GOP rule number 1. always blame the other guy for being what you are, even if he is not. Commandant Inhofe understands that very well

50 percent of U.S. says Iraq had WMDs

Washington Times
Excerpt:Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both “substantial” and “surprising” in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.
The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion,

H.L.s Take: They survey did not speculate? Anyone who reads the comments section of this site knows. The right wing spin machine is pumping out the bogus story that WMDs were found. Never mind that they were just a bunch of old shells. The Kool aid drinkers were waiting for any lie they can latch onto. Now they know its bulls**t, but they would rather lie then admit they were wrong. More on this later. I could do a whole story on this subject.

CT-Sen: Bill Clinton’s visit

Daily Kos
Excerpt:
The cynic might say that Bill Clinton is going to Connecticut, despite being trashed by Lieberman during the impeachment saga, to protect a fellow member of the elitist establishment’s insider’s club. They may say that the DLC called in the biggest favor it can offer Lieberman (its patron saint) — a visit by a former popular president. They may try to find a tortured explanation of why this helps Hillary.

B. Clinton’s visit may have been arranged by the DLC (didn’t they have some sort of “annual conference” this past weekend? Did anyone care?), but what it tells me is that Bill is a far bigger man than Lieberman ever was or can be.

Despite being on the withering receiving end of Lieberman’s sanctimonious public screeds during the impeachment saga, on the floor of the Senate AND in television studios all over the place, Clinton is willing to come to the senator’s aid. He could’ve held a grudge and none would think less of him.

Instead, he repays Lieberman’s backstabbing with kindness.

So I actually respect Bill for doing this one event for Lieberman. In a funny way it makes Lieberman look even smaller, pettier, and pathetic than he already does.

H.L.s Take:
My sentiments exactly. Lieberman should have felt ashamed of himself for doing what he did to Bill. He is such a morally bankrupt bastard that he stabs his own party in the back and praises the republicans every chance he can get. However the cynic could also say that The Bush’s and the Clinton’s are all in bed. Togther they rule the world. This is why I think that Hilary will win the democratic nomination, and will run against Jeb Bush. If either one of them wins, then gets re-elected in 2012, that would be 36 straight years with either a Bush, or a Clinton in the White House. Of course if Jeb wins, then Bill Clinton was just an 8 year aberration. Its going to be a fun filled next 2 years.

The Elephant in the Room How Big a Problem Is President Bush for the GOP?

Washington Post
Excerpt:
No modern political party has weathered a midterm election with a president as low in the polls as George W. Bush.

It is a reality of midterm elections that the party holding the White House often suffers big losses even if the president is popular. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s approval rating was at 57 percent in 1958, but Republicans still lost 48 seats in the House.

The best any party has done when its president has dipped below 50 percent was in 1978. That fall, President Jimmy Carter’s approval rating was 49 percent and the Democrats lost 15 House seats — exactly the number Democrats need this year to win back the chamber.

Peace prize winner ‘could kill’ Bush

The Austrailian
Excerpt:
NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.
“I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’, because I don’t believe that I am non-violent,” said Ms Williams, 64.

“Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

“I don’t know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief. It’s our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life.”

See The Rest Of The Comic Here

Video: John Stewart Discusses Net Neutrality

John Stewart talks about Sen. Ted Stevens R-Alaska, views on the Internet, and has a guest on to explain Net Neutrality, Interesting and funny, check it out.

See it Here

Iraq carnage continues as PM heads to U.S.

AP
Excerpt:BAGHDAD, Iraq – Bombs killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 200 Sunday in Baghdad and the northern oil center of Kirkuk — a dramatic escalation of violence as U.S. and Iraqi forces crack down on Iraq’s most feared Shiite militia.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki left Sunday for talks in Washington this week with President Bush to discuss sectarian violence, which has risen sharply since Iraq’s national unity government took office two months ago.
A suicide driver detonated a minivan at the entrance to a bustling market in Sadr City, the capital’s biggest Shiite district and stronghold of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

Israel, Hezbollah Trade Missles

Times U.K.
Excerpt:
An officer with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon said that the Israelis had told them they would not hinder cars travelling north on the main roads.
But the evidence yesterday suggested that cars were being attacked regardless of their occupants and direction of travel.
Hezbollah rockets claimed the lives of two people and wounded 20 others in the Israeli city of Haifa. Another 50 people were injured in rocket attacks in at least 10 other towns across northern Israel.
The attacks came as Israeli troops battled to clear a mile-wide strip along the northern border, encountering resistance from Hezbollah forces in bunkers.
The Israeli Army went to the assistance of an Italian UN observer, Captain Roberto Punzo, who was hit by Hezbollah fire during the clashes. He was taken to hospital in Israel with serious injuries.
A Lebanese photographer, Layal Najib, was killed during another clash in the southern village of Qana.

The Rise Of The Fourth Reich

What Really Happened
Excerpt:
It’s easy to look back and realize what a jerk Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty good to the German people, with the help of the media. He was TIME Magazine’s Man Of The Year in 1938. The German people assumed they were safe from a tyrant. They lived in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government could and more importantly could not do. Their leader was a devoutly religious man, and had even sung with the boy’s choir of a monastery in his youth.

The reality was that the German people, as individuals, had lost their courage. The German government preferred it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But the German people didn’t wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding individual courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the German people simply pretended that the situation did not exist. And in that simple self-deception lay the ruin of an entire nation and the coming of the second World War.

When the Reichstag burned down, most Germans simply refused to believe suggestions that the fire had been staged by Hitler himself. They were afraid to. But so trapped were the Germans by their belief in their own bravery that they willed themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they could nod in agreement with Der Fuhrer while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoided the one situation which most required real courage; to stand up to Hitler’s lies and deceptions.

Democrats Increase Lead over Republicans in Race for Congress

AP
Excerpt:Mood of the nation still favors challenger campaigns

With mid-term elections now less than four months away, a new Harris Poll finds that Democrats have widened their lead over the Republicans in the race for control of Congress. Results show that if the election for Congress were held today, more than two in five (44%) adults would vote for the Democratic candidate, while about one-third (31%) would vote for the Republican candidate, 17 percent would vote for someone else, and just seven percent are undecided.
These are results from the latest Harris Poll of 1,002 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone between July 7 and 10, 2006 by Harris Interactive

H.L.s Take:The Democrats are going to have to work hard to overcome these ever increasing leads, if they want to fulfill their aspirations of losing once again, but I feel confident they will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On ‘Watch List’ To Meet Quota

ABC-7 Denver
DENVER — You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft … and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal.

When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.

M.Kane Jeeves
Excerpt:
Don’t you love global leadership? Don’t you wish we had some? You know when Dubya is the leader of the free world, we’re dead meat. Actually, fried meat.

According to the U.S. Climatic Data Center’s Jay Lawrimore, the first six months of 2006 were the warmest, on average, since the United States started keeping records in 1895, and global warming is a contributing factor. Go, USA!

July, August and September are forecast to continue the hot trend over most of the United States, including the vast area of the country west of the Mississippi River, as well as New England, Florida and southern Alaska.

Pretty grim, eh? I mean, some experts are saying that polar bears may turn to cannibalism because there’s no food, anymore. Plus, the entire world is forecasted to become hotsie-totsie. So how did the G8 Summit react? Uh, just before diving into their private jets and heading home, the head honchos chose to “stay the course” and ignore what’s going on. You go, guys!

As Bill Clinton Gets Set to Campaign for Lieberman. Dems. Try to Diffuse Fact Lieberman Stabbed Him In The Back

Daily Kos
Excerpt:
With President Clinton’s visit to Connecticut to campaign for Lieberman tomorrow, Joe’s supporters are trying to defuse his September 1998 speech attacking Clinton on the Lewinsky matter. In so doing, they are rewriting history. The LieberDem blog writes:
The Lieberhater crowd has repeatedly said that Lieberman “stabbed Clinton in the back” by daring to make that speech, and have used the speech to argue that Lieberman was a disloyal Democrat who helped push the GOP drive towards impeachment.

Stakes are high in `big box’ clash. Wal-Mart and allies take stand against `living wage’ law

Chicago Tribune
Excerpt:Toni Foulkes tells customers there’s a reason the cakes she sells at a South Side Jewel store cost more than cakes at Sam’s Club.

“They don’t put love in ’em like I do,” she says. “And their employees don’t make what I make.”

She’s on the front lines of a fight to make Chicago the first major city to require retailers like Sam’s Club owner Wal-Mart to pay a “living wage” of at least $10 per hour with $3 in benefits by 2010. For her, the struggle comes down to a simple equation: All workers are threatened unless communities hold big corporations accountable for paying better-than-poverty-level wages.

On the other side is Lisa Cox, a Wal-Mart worker who sees big stores as beacons of opportunity for communities like her West Side neighborhood. “They’re going to run them out of the city instead of bringing in business here” if they single out big stores, she said.

Georgia newspaper drops Ann Coulter’s column

Raw Story
Excerpt:
A newspaper in Georgia has joined the tide of public sentiment against Ann Coulter and dropped her column, RAW STORY has learned.

The Augusta Chronicle of Georgia dropped Coulter’s column from its editorial page last week. A Friday article from its editorial staff claimed that its editorial page “stand[s] for civility,” and noted two reasons to part ways with Coulter. First, it saw “stridency” in her declaration that 9/11 widows were “witches.” Second, it worried that “Coulter herself had become the issue, rather than the topics she was writing about, which is an unhealthy circumstance for a journalist, even a columnist.”

H.L.s Take:
I cannot believe the publicity this b*tch has been getting lately, she is all over the TV, and internet. The MSM Media is desperate to do ANYTHING at this point to try to make it look like Bush isn’t taking this country down the S*it hole in a hurry. Coulter is willing to go on, and they put her on despite her insane kill everyone who doesn’t agree with me wailings. Making the all look more patethic then ever.

Frequent-flier data used to track movements of CIA operatives

Raw Story
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – The man and woman were pretending to be American business executives on international assignments, so they did what globe-trotting executives do. While traveling abroad they used their frequent-flier cards as often as possible to gain credits toward free flights.

In fact, the two were covert operatives working for the CIA. Thanks to their diligent use of frequent-flier programs, Italian prosecutors have been able to reconstruct much of their itinerary during 2003, including trips to Brussels, Venice, London, Copenhagen, Vienna and Oslo.
The Norway visit has assumed particular importance because it represents the first independent confirmation that CIA operatives were in that country at the same time an Oslo resident named Mullah Krekar was being warned that he was the target of a planned CIA abduction.

Cenk Ungyur

To my dying day, one of the things I will always be most proud of is that I did not stay with my party, right or wrong. I put the interests of my country above those of my political party. I had enough sense to see the country was headed the wrong way and I tried to make a difference.

I am not alone. And to all of us who were right, we ought to be proud.

We shouldn’t be proud because things went poorly, as we feared and suspected. We should be proud that we tried to get people to change direction even when it was most unpopular. We tried to make a difference in even the darkest hour. And for our efforts we received nothing but disdain for so long. But now we’re receiving something else – apologies.

Here’s an apology from a conservative talk show host that was a long time coming:

By Doug McIntyre
Host, McIntyre in the Morning
Talk Radio 790 KABC

I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s where al-Qaida trained the killers, that’s where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Read the rest of the story here.

I was sitting here this morning, checkout out some sites, and I put on my 2 CD set of The Freedom Toast, that Marc Emory sent to me. Freedom Toast is an H.L. Advertiser, and I got to hear some of the funny political songs that they do. Titles like “Blame-o”(Listen) sung to the tune of BINGO. Whatever goes wrong Bill Clinton is the blame-o. Clinton himself called the song priceless. With other great titles like “I’ve Been Working on Vacation” sung by George W. Bush himself, “Stoop Low You Media” and “Bring Back Bill Clinton” you can see that The Freedom Toast is right on the money. You can listen to clips of some of the songs over at their website.
Its good for some laughs. H.L.s sponsors keep us going so check out the songs, and pick up a CD for your friends. Thanks.