The Hollywood Liberal

NEWSWEEK: GOP in Meltdown, Bush Approval Rating of the Moment…

Brad Blog
Democrats Now Beating Republicans on ‘Every Single Issue’…

Democrats now outdistance Republicans on every single issue that could decide voters’ choices come Nov. 7. In addition to winning—for the first time in the NEWSWEEK poll—on the question of which party is more trusted to fight the war on terror (44 to 37 percent) and moral values (42 percent to 36 percent), the Democrats now inspire more trust than the GOP on handling Iraq (47 to 34); the economy (53 to 31); health care (57 to 24); federal spending and the deficit (53 to 29); gas and oil prices (56 to 23); and immigration (43 to 34).

H.L.s Take:
I went to a little get together Saturday night with a group of L.A. Liberal Bloggers. It was hosted by MJS of Corrente Wire, and I got to meet a great bunch of people including Johnny Wendell, who does a show on KTLK which is the Air America Radios L.A. affiliate, also people from Martini Republic, The Huffington Post, Cenk Uygur from Young Turks, which is on Air America from 6-9AM Eastern. and the great Brad Frieman from Bradblog
We discussed many topics including Brads story about how Voting Machines can be fixed in 60 seconds by implanting a virus that can flip the vote, spread the virus to other voting machines, and then completly extract itself at the end of the voting. This coming on the heels of the Busby/Bilbrae election down in San Diego in which election officials were Allowed to take the machines home with them overnight. Brad is predicting a fiasco this election day with more contested elections then ever before, especially when Republicans lose, which they are going too. Thanks to Frank for putting on the shindig. Great time.

Heres another one from the great Bradblog.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs: ‘The country has done very well with paper ballots for a very long time.’

Brad Blog
Excerpt:
In Friday’s Democracy at Risk segment Lou and Kitty look into the story from New York state where counties are beginning to question whether their voters should be forced to vote on electronic voting machines. Why should they not be able to keep the machines that have served them well for decades?
The text-transcript of Friday’s segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full…

DOBBS: Tonight, election official the all across the country, most of them alarmed about the threat that electronic voting poses to our democracy, many are deciding to simply reject e-voting technology altogether. These officials say it’s safer to use decades-old voting machines than to risk a free and fair election in which you can’t count votes

H.Ls. Take:
Watch out on election night when after Republicans lose big they start crying voter fraud, becuase of the same diebold machines that were put in in the first place.

This flashback is from that bastion of left wing anarchy, Fortune Magazine. and came from What Really Happened.com

Rummy’s North Korea Connection What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB’s deal to build nuclear reactors there? And why won’t he talk about it?

Excerpt:
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it’s surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What’s even more surprising about Rumsfeld’s silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.

The company is Zurich-based engineering giant ABB, which signed the contract in early 2000, well before Rumsfeld gave up his board seat and joined the Bush administration.

Bush and his buddies prove many times over how much worse they were then Richard Nixon, to bad they didn’t listen to what Nixon had to say about Rummy back in the 70’s

RUMSFELD WATCH: It’s Time for Him to Go

Washington Post
Excerpt:
Before he appointed Donald H. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, President Bush would have done well to listen to the tape of an old telephone conversation between Rumsfeld and President Richard M. Nixon. It was March 1971, and Nixon was offering career advice to Rumsfeld, then head of Nixon’s Office of Economic Opportunity:

“You should be thinking of what you should do in the future,” he told the 39-year-old Rumsfeld….
Perhaps Nixon understood something about Rumsfeld that eludes Bush.

H.L.s Take:
It was Time for Rummy to go 35 years ago

Seems like old Macaca might be involved in a little war profiteering.

Allen failed to report stock options

AP
Excerpt:
RICHMOND, Va. – For the past five years, Sen. George Allen has failed to tell Congress about stock options he got for his work as a director of a high-tech company. The Virginia Republican also asked the Army to help another business that gave him similar options.

Congressional rules require senators to disclose to the Senate all deferred compensation, such as stock options. The rules also urge senators to avoid taking any official action that could benefit them financially or appear to do so.

Those requirements exist so the public can police lawmakers for possible conflicts of interest, especially involving companies with government business that lawmakers can influence.

H.Ls. Take:
Have you ever heard the call of the Macaca bird, its a rare species from French Tunisia, it has a high pitched sqeal that goes Macacacacacacacaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. Next time you are out there in the French Tunisian Jungle listen for it.

OK lets start off with more lies,lies, lies, about who knew what about what and when.

Report: GOP lawmaker warned Foley in 2000

AP
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – A Republican member of Congress confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) about his Internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000, according to a newspaper report.
The report in the Washington Post pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress acknowledges learning of the Florida Republican’s questionable behavior toward pages.

H.Ls. Take: So they knew about it for at least 6 years and did nothing, preaching family values, hatred of Homosexuality, and Death to child molestors all the way. This must be the reason why.

GOP shuns the man, not the money

NY Daily News
Excerpt:
Mark Foley may be an embarrassment to the Republicans, but they still like his money.
The National Republican Congressional Committee intends to spend the $100,000 the former Florida legislator gave this summer – before his sordid e-mail exchanges with male teenage congressional pages turned him into a grand old pariah.

“We’re going to do with it what we do with other donations – use it to help elect Republicans,” said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti.

H.Ls. Take:
Thats right. Foley has been writing big checks to the Republican leadership council the whole time. Everyone else that Foley has been paying off is giving the money back, but the Republicans are going to use that money to help campaign for a whole new generation of child molestors and war profiteers. Isn’t that great???… Well Maybe not according to this story.

Foley Consuming GOP As Elections Draw Near

Washington Post
Excerpt:
“It’s sucking all the air out of the room,” Shaw said in an interview after his news conference at the port. “It’s a tough time; there’s just total saturation right now.”

Back in Washington, Republican strategists acknowledge privately that, even under their best-case scenario, Foley’s sexually charged messages and allegations that House leaders were too passive in responding to them will remain an all-consuming distraction for GOP campaigns for the next week.

Their strategy — equal parts hope and calculation — relies on waiting for the story to die down in local news outlets, even if it continues to dominate national news, while also accusing Democrats of exploiting a personal lapse for political gain.

H.Ls. Take:
There you have it in black and white right from the horses mouth. Their solution to the problem, same as it ever was. Try to blame Democrats. Rep. Patrick Mc Henry a little Republican twit from North Carolina went on Wolf Blitzer and tried to do just that, unfortunately he has no evidence and he sat there looking stupid as Wolf asked for the proof over and over again check out the video from Think Progress

Of course the biggest Bush ass kisser, (and face kisser) of them all Joe LIEberman is trying his best to cover up for his fellow republicans.

Here is a little set up snippet to the video from Fire Dog Lake.com
He then goes on to parrot the new GOP defense of Hastert du jour — let’s “wait until the investigation” in order to call for Hastert’s resignation. Right-o. That would be the GOP controlled Ethics Committee that GOP Joe has so much faith in to get to the bottom of the GOP coverup for sexual predators within their ranks. Hmmm. Some folks not named Lieberman are rightfully skeptical that this particular Ethics Committe, gutted and retro-fitted by Hastert himself to look away from every single GOP scandal of the past two years, is qualified to do the job:

They’ve now set up a Tip Line to call if you have been molested by one of them so they a can pay you off. They want to make sure they don’t end up with a repeat of this:

Well there’s more, but thats enough for today. Stay tuned for the next in an never ending series. Republican Hyprocricy News of The Day

Believe it or not this is a true story. Hey kid if you are missing your Daddy, or Mommy because they have been sent to Iraq for a 4th time now. Don’t worry the Army has a solution. A life size cardboard cut out of him/her, that they will send you. Now you can always have them around even when they are not there. Don’t try to get them to play catch, or help with the homework though. Hey its as good as the real thing.

America’s cardboard army of Flat Daddies boosts families

The Observer
Excerpt:
It is one of the hardest things about being a military family. How to cope when a husband and father, or wife and mother, is posted abroad, especially to combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
Now the United States army has come up with a bizarre solution: Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy.

Many military units can provide families with a life-size cardboard cutout of their overseas warrior. The family can then take that figure to parties, put it in the passenger seat of their car, take it to bed or do whatever it is that families want to with a replica of their loved one.

Heres one from a site called Soldiers for the Truth, written by soldiers for soldiers, (real soldiers not the make believe kind that sometime post on this site.) Of course real soldiers with a brain know whats really going on.

On War #186: Dear Jim

Soldiers For The Truth
Excerpt:
The Washington Post is currently serializing excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial, which reads distressingly like Count Ciano’s diaries. Yesterday’s excerpt quotes Marine Corps General James L. Jones, the current NATO commander, saying to another Marine, General Peter Pace, on the eve of his accession to the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “You’re going to face a debacle and be part of the debacle in Iraq.”

I’ve known General Jones since he was a major. He is an acute observer of the political scene, and his warning to General Pace was right on the mark. Unfortunately, General Jones is now caught up in another war, the war in Afghanistan, which is not going altogether well. Perhaps it is time to share some bad news with him, as he did with General Pace.,,,
It is not news to you that the Taliban has the initiative. What your staff may not be telling you is that NATO is helping the Taliban stage its comeback. NATO is botching the war in Afghanistan in ways remarkably similar to those the U.S. has employed in Iraq. It is conducting massive sweeps, bombing villages, and alienating locals. It may not be too late to turn it around; no one is better positioned to do so than yourself. But if you are to avoid presiding over one defeat while Pete Pace presides over another, you need to act along the following lines: