The Hollywood Liberal

The One year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is right around the corner. Sounding just like he does on Iraq
Bush has this to say:
Bush: Katrina recovery will take time

I mean what the hell its only been 1 Year, I mean it has taken him 5 years to try to find one man, and he still
hasn’t done that. So I’m sure in 5 years from now, if Bush were still president he would make a speech and say
Bush: Katrina recovery will take time

The administration has managed to find one guy who is happy about the way things are going down there. his name is
Rockey Vacarella. He “Wishes Bush would have another 4 years” to take care of business.

Meanwhile a new report detailing the administrations failures post 9/11 has come out. Here is an
Excerpt
“It’s a pretty bleak picture,” said Minor Sinclair, who heads the U.S. regional office of Oxfam America, a charitable organization…
Many of the reports focus on the failure of federal dollars to reach their intended targets. Oxfam’s report points out that although $17 billion has been approved by Congress to rebuild homes in Louisiana and Mississippi, not one house has been rebuilt with that money in either state.
A report from the Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee found that 80 percent of small businesses on the Gulf Coast have not yet received loans promised by the federal government. The Small Business Administration has approved loans in excess of $10 billion, but only $2 billion has found its way to business owners.
Compounding the problem is the degradation of such services as public transit, which are typically used by low-income residents. A policy paper by the Washington-based Leadership Conference on Civil Rights found that only 49 percent of the New Orleans area bus routes have resumed. Only 17 percent of the buses are operational.
“Many of the poor in New Orleans do not own cars … so they are dependent on public transportation in order to work,” the paper said.

But don’t tell that to Rockey…

Think Progress.org

For the last several days, Katrina victim Rockey Vaccarella has been on television repeatedly requesting a meeting with President Bush so he could “thank him for what he has done.” This morning, Bush met with him. Standing with Bush, Vaccarella said, “I just wish the President could have another term in office.” Watch and learn what it takes to score a meeting with President Bush:

Click Pic. to view Video

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan — whose son died in Iraq — camped outside Bush’s ranch last summer, seeking to arrange a meeting with the President. But Bush disagreed with Sheehan’s message of bringing the troops home from Iraq and declined to meet with her.

Transcript of the video segments:  read more »

News Item: Bush: Leaving Iraq now would be disaster

See The Rest Of The Comic Here.

See The Rest Of The Comic Here

Ok everyone its Dick Cheney’s favorite band, get ready to Rock with Kiss.

Say it loud, say it often, “Republicans are bad on national security.” Every Democrat running for national office — and local offices too, why not? — should say, “I’m running because Republicans are bad on national security.”

Then they should go on to say, here’s why I’m saying it:

1. 9/11 happened on their watch. Of course, we can’t say, absolutely, that it would not have happened if they had not been asleep at the wheel. But we can say that they did not do all they could have done to prevent it. We can say that Bush literally pushed away the warnings.

2. George Bush and the Republicans failed to get Osama bin Laden. We got both Hitler and Hirohito in less time than we’ve been chasing bin Laden. Every day that bin Laden’s out there, he’s proof that you can attack the United States and get away with it. That’s a bad message to send, and believe me, people in the terrorist world have heard it loud and clear. That’s very bad for national security.

3. George Bush and the Republicans gave Osama bin Laden what he wanted. Bin Laden wanted the US to get into a quagmire. He wanted our troops tied down in an Islamic country so that an insurgency could do to them what the Afghanis did to the Russians and to the British before them.

A modern, hi-tech army is very good at invasions. It’s also good for fighting back against other armies. But a modern hi-tech army is not good at occupying a country against the will of the population. Even if the army is as violent and ruthless as the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan were.

4. George Bush and the Republicans squandered America’s power and prestige. Before 9/11 most people in the world probably thought that America’s intelligence services were able and astute, agencies to be feared. The Bush administration has made them appear bumbling and inept. They did this, first, by ignoring their warnings and then, second, by making them the fall guys for 9/11.

After 9/11 most of the world feared America’s wrath and America’s might. By failing to get bin Laden and his gang, then by attacking the wrong country, unleashing chaos, and getting our armed forces into a situation that they can’t win, the administration showed the world they have less to fear than they imagined.

5. The Bush administration empowered Hezbollah. The ‘insurgency’ in Iraq was Hezbollah’s textbook and their inspiration. If Iraqis could do that to Americans, surely they could do the same to the Israelis. And they have. It’s not yet on the record, but it’s clear from everyone’s conduct, that the administration encouraged the Israelis to ‘unleash’ their forces against Hezbollah. They probably thought Israel’s modern hi-tech armies would quickly smash their enemy.

6. The Bush administration radicalized Hamas. Hamas was elected. Sworn to the destruction of Israel or not, they should have been encouraged to become responsible players with carrots as well as sticks. Instead the administration put them up against the wall, hoping to starve the Palestinian people into voting for a different group. Would that work if someone tried to do it to us?

7. Bush and the Republicans tied down our forces in Iraq while Iran and North Korea invested in nuclear technology. That made North Korea feel secure enough to test ICBMs. If they had been successful, they would have had a delivery system for their nuclear weapons. That would be incredibly bad for national security. Iran, with American forces tied down in Iraq, feels secure enough to defy the UN as well as the US. Very bad for national security.

8. By the way, every major European nation has had successful arrests and real trials of real, dangerous terrorists. People on the level of this group that the British just took down. The most ferocious terrorist arrested in the United States since 9/11 has been the shoe bomber. Ten, twenty, forty, a hundred billion dollars, a trillion dollars, and the best we have to show for it is the shoe bomber?! Republicans are bad on national security.

9. We have trashed the bill of rights. We have trashed the Geneva conventions. We have a president and a vice president willing to go the mat to fight for the right to torture people.

We have spent a fortune on illegal wiretaps.

We have spent a fortune on collecting everyone’s telephone data.

And what have we achieved by all of this?

A quagmire in Iraq. Dishonor. Debts. An empowered al Qaeda. A new war in Lebanon. The inability to stand up to Iran and North Korea. Osama bin Laden at large, an inspiration to extremists everywhere.

Republican are unimaginably bad on national security. Say it loud. Say it often, it’s the truth, Republicans are bad on national security.

Here is the entire video of the speech it is 1 hour long, and broken up into several parts. I’m still working on it but the first two segments are done.

I did part 1 wrong the file is huge, I am going to shrink it tomorrow. The other segments are a manageable file size.

The Introductions

Chertoff Speech Part 1

Chertoff Speech Part 2

Chertoff Speech Part 3 Q&A

Part 4 in the morning.

Warning the first part of the speech is shaky. I didn’t even know this camera worked, it did but I had no tripod. Later I found a solid spot to set it down on.

H.L. reporting live from The Beverly Hilton. Were waiting Chertoff to get here, and the speech to begin, we still have about an hour here, but the press must arrive early. Ok I’m getting kinda thristy here, time to go get a drink.
See you soon.

News Hounds

George Galloway, the controversial and fiery Member of the British Parliament, who once read the riot act to Sen. Norm Coleman during Senate hearings on the Oil for Food Progam, has done it again. On August 6th at the height of the war on Lebanon, Galloway tongue-lashed Sky News, the Murdoch-owned “sister station” of FOX News, accusing the network of biased unbalanced reporting. Both Sky News and FOX News are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

One more reason why it sucks to be in a war.

Mistaken coalition bombing kills up to 12 Afghan policemen

AP
Excerpt:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) – Up to 12 policemen were killed in Afghanistan when a US-led coalition plane mistakenly bombed them, officials said, while two suicide blasts wounded eight more police and a US soldier.
The coalition plane that dropped the bomb on a police patrol in eastern Paktika province may have mistaken the convoy for a band of Taliban attackers, provincial border police regiment commander Abdul Hamid said.
“They came under US bombardment and 12 policemen where killed, including the police commander,” Hamid said.
The coalition confirmed “an event did happen”. “It is under investigation. We are scrambling to get the details,” spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins said.
President Hamid Karzai said he was “shocked and angered” and had ordered an investigation. The incident was the latest in a string of coalition bombings that have killed civilians or Afghan security forces.
“I have repeatedly asked the coalition forces to take maximum caution while carrying out operations and I want that incidents like this must not be repeated,” Karzai said in a statement that put the death toll at 10.

H.L.s Take
The U.S. Military (Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush) Can’t defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan after 5 years, they can’t defeat the “insurgents” in Iraq after almost 4 years The U.S. spends half our tax dollars on the military, which amounts to more money then the budgets of most countries on this planet combined. Why can’t they finish what they started in these places. Oh, did I mention that the commander-in-chiefs name is George W. Bush. Karzai just learned what everyone learns who gets in bed with Bush, you always get screwed.

9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years

AOL
Excerpt:
TORONTO (Aug. 13) – The date was Sept. 12, 2001, but Benemar “Ben” Benatta was clueless about the death and destruction one day earlier.
About a week before, Canadian officials had stopped Benatta as he entered the country from Buffalo to seek political asylum. On that Sept. 11, he was quietly transferred to a U.S. immigration lockup where a day passed before sullen FBI agents told him what the rest of the world already knew: terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

It slowly dawned on Benatta that his pedigree – a Muslim man with a military background – made him a target in the frenzied national dragnet that soon followed. The FBI didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist, at least not outright. But agents kept asking if he could fly an airplane.

He told them he couldn’t. It made no difference.

“They gave me a feeling that I was Suspect No. 1,” he said in a recent interview.

H.L.s Take: No Charges, no explanation, nothing. Just hey sorry about the last 5 years of your life, but we had to look like we were doing something.