The Hollywood Liberal

OK its time for a new feature on The H.L. The Saturday Late Night Concert. Thanks to You Tube we can show videos without having to upload them. I’ve seen other sites do this late night music thing, but usually only one song. Since we all steal from each other anyway, I am expanding the idea into a concert. Here is one of my all time favorite bands, Saw them 3 times back in the day, and they are from my hometown. Here they are The Ramones Warning: Turn the volume up to 10 for full effect.

Blair Delays Vacation To Seek Resolution Of Mideast Crisis, Bush Heads To Crawford

Think Progress.org

Tony Blair top priority: Ending a war.
Tony Blair today decided to delay his summer holiday for a few days to help secure a United Nations resolution that would call for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Israel-Lebanon conflict. No 10 said the prime minister, who had been expected to leave today, believed the next few days were crucialin the efforts to agree a United Nations security council resolution on a ceasefire.

George W. Bush’s priority: Clearing brush.

President Bush arrived here Thursday evening to begin a 10-day stretch at his Prairie Chapel ranch, his longest planned period away from Washington during this summer vacation season.
[Bush] plans to spend most of the coming month out of town. He has planned long weekends at Camp David and the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, for August, before returning to Texas before the Labor Day weekend.

Rising “Voluntary” Unemployment Among Men

Mother Jones
Excerpt

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an interesting story about how men between the ages of 30 and 54 are voluntarily dropping out of work, unable to find a job that interests them, and preferring instead to live at home, doing things that they find more fulfilling. The numbers are hardly insignificant: about 10 percent of men in this age group—roughly 3 million workers—are out of work and not looking for jobs.

The article mostly delves into the causes of this trend—in particular, there’s the decline of stable, unionized jobs, especially in manufacturing and technology, and the unwillingness of those who are laid off to seek work that’s beneath them, preferring instead to pursue other interests. In that case, the fault resides with an economy that’s chiefly creating low-paying, unfulfilling, and overly stressful jobs.

H.L.s Take
I posted a comment to this story, not yet published because it was my first time, and they have to check the comment (whenever conveinient for them meaning never) for spam.
Here is what I wrote:

I am the poster child for this story. I am 44 years old and have not had a steady full time job in 2 1/2 years. Not because I don’t want to work, but because there is no longer the fulltime decent paying, job with medical benefits available anymore. I work in the film and television industry in Hollywood. For 15 years I held steady decent paying jobs. I got laid off a few times when companies were merging, but was always able to find another job relatively soon. After my last job I was laid off at In January 2004, (Once again the company was being bought out, and I was let go after 2 years of service, the same day another guy was let go after 8 years.) I once again began looking for another job. I soon began to see that the offers I was getting were for jobs that paid up to 9 dollars an hour less then I was making before. I wasn’t about to take a job that paid more then one third less then I was previoulsy making. The only decent job offer I got was for a freelance part time job with no health plan, no vacations, no benefits at all. The pay was still OK so I took the job. I am still working for them. I get 5 to 15 hours a week, most weeks, sometimes a little more depending on the time of year. I continued to look for jobs, and continued to get offers paying what I was making 10 years ago. I continued to refuse. In the meantime I had starting blogging, and after almost 2 years began to make a little money doing that. Now I spend 8-10 hours most days working on my websites, and I do my 5-10 hours a week part time job. I barely make enough to pay the bills month after month, and have learned to live on almost nothing. This was never what I wanted. I am just doing what I can to survive the Bush Economy. By the way my liberal website is called
The Hollywood Liberal

We have lots of funny Bush Comics. Come on over and check them out.

H.L.s Comics

Video: McKinney challenger says ‘Arab surnames’ of donors mean ‘I could say she’s under the control of terrorists’

Raw Story
During a debate with Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), primary challenger Hank Johnson alluded to the “Arab surnames” of some McKinney supporters before saying, “I could accuse her of being under the control of terrorists,” RAW STORY has learned.
McKinney had criticised Johnson for receiving money from Republican contributors, indicating that his participation in the primary was benefitting the party.

H.L.s Take:
The Democratic challenger is being funded by The Republicans. How nice of them. Let’s not forget that this runoff was made possible by massive voter fraud, just like all elections republicans win. And all because Cynthia has the balls to tell the truth about 9/11, and also has the balls to punch out an idiot cop who tried to manhandle her, because she didn’t show her congress ID to a guy who had seen her come and go many times during her 14 year career in congress. You go Cynthia, we need more congress people like you.

THE LOW POST: The Mansion Family:

In the first installment of his weekly Web-only column, Matt Taibbi writes that yuppie paranoia (and David Brooks) guarantees the Democrats are still — and forever — doomed.

Rolling Stone
Excerpt
Brooks is the perfect priest of American conservatism, and by conservatism I don’t mean the bloodthirsty, gun-toting, go-back-to-Africa, welfare-bashing right-winger conservatism of the NRA and Sean Hannity and the Bible Belt. I mean the dickless, power-worshipping, good-consumer pragmatic conservatism of Times readers and those other Bobos in Paradise who have exquisitely developed taste in furniture, coffee and television programming but would rather leave the uglier questions of politics to more decisive people, so long as they aren’t dangerous radicals like Michael Moore or Markos Zuniga.

That’s why the marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It’s repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense.

Specter’s NSA Plan Hits Snag

Washington Post
Excerpt

A White House-endorsed plan to formally legalize the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program ran into more political problems yesterday in the Senate, as Democrats successfully maneuvered to block a committee vote on the proposal.

In addition, three of the committee’s leading Democrats announced that they would block the confirmation of a senior Justice Department official in protest of a recent move by President Bush. The president effectively stopped a probe into the NSA program by denying security clearances to Justice Department investigators.

The developments spell further difficulties for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), whose surveillance proposal has earned the endorsement of Bush and Vice President Cheney but has run into fierce opposition from Senate Democrats and a competing proposal from House Republicans

Bechtel Takes a Hit for War Profiteering

Alternet
Excerpt
A comprehensive U.S. government audit of a Bechtel project in Iraq has exposed gross mismanagement by the company. As a result, the $50 million contract has been canceled.

As the auditors plan to expand their investigations to all of Bechtel’s $2.85 billion in Iraq contracts, they are sure to discover a pattern of failure. Not only should Bechtel be dropped from all of its failing contracts, but the company should be required to refund all misspent U.S. taxpayer and Iraqi funds so that Iraqi contractors can get to work and real reconstruction can finally begin.

But time is running out.