The Hollywood Liberal

At least 62 killed in Iraqi violence

AP
Excerpt

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives Thursday among shoppers in a crowded outdoor market in a Shiite city south of Baghdad, killing at least 45 people and wounding 150, police said. Bombs and a mortar attack killed at least 17 others in both Shiite and Sunni areas of Baghdad.
Overall, more than 100 people were killed or found dead across the country

One-Day Iraq Toll Is Highest for U.S. In Many Months

Washington Post
Excerpt
BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 — A roadside bombing and other attacks killed 10 American troops across Iraq on Tuesday, the U.S. military reported Wednesday, making it the deadliest day of combat for U.S. forces in 10 months.

The one-day toll, part of what the U.S. military has said is a 43 percent increase in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital since midsummer, occurred as casualties among Iraqi troops and civilians are soaring far higher than at any previous time in the war, according to U.S. and Iraqi tallies.

H.L.s Take
No matter how bad it gets, no matter what percentage of the American people are against him, no matter how many members of
congress try to stop the drunken frat boy mass murderer, no matter how much of our tax money he steals and wastes, he will not be stopped unless we stop him. Of course the delusional serial killer wants to more more more….

Bush administration seeks $245B for wars

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in
Iraq and
Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.
The requests Monday, to accompany
President Bush’s budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, would bring the total appropriations for 2007 to about $170 billion, with a slight decline the following year.

H.L.s Take
OK Democrats, its up to you now, are you going to let this little dips**t, murder profiteer have that much more of our money, or are you going to stop cowering in fear and F**KING DO SOMEHTING ALREADY. How much more are you going to let the retarded dictator make us all look like a bunch of idiots and drag this country into the dirt as he had been doing for the past 6 years.

Texas Grandmother Sweeps Streets of Washington as Punishment for Protest

Common Dreams
Excerpt
Four months ago, Diane Baker was one of 71 people arrested during a protest in Washington for crossing a police line to sit on the steps of a Senate office building.

As punishment, the 60-year-old was sentenced to sweep the streets of the nation’s capital for eight cold, blustery hours Tuesday.

“I’m a rather fragile, small woman,” said Baker, a hospice chaplain at United Church of Christ in Dallas. “Being a minister, I offered to do counseling, but this is what they gave me.”

Baker, a mother of four and grandmother of two, suffers from myoclonic epilepsy, a degenerative muscle condition that causes her voice to quiver and hands to shake. As she signed in to begin her community service, she struggled to write her name.

She has shared a jail cell with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and received a phone call on New Year’s Eve from anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. Baker once walked 120 miles from Irving, near Dallas, to meet Sheehan for a war protest outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford.

Her community service came three days after tens of thousands protesters, including Baker, gathered in Washington to demand a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. No arrests were made, according to police.

But as growing skepticism in Congress energizes the anti-war movement, Baker served as a stark reminder Tuesday of the limitations to freedom of speech.

H.L.s Take
Why does our government always want to take away our constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, and to protest what we don’t believe in. Maybe it’s because they are afraid of the people who they know are against them. They also don’t want people digging into what they are doing over there because they don’t want anyone to get information like in this next story….

Check out this video taken of a guard at Abu Gharib Prison, in which he discusses torture and gang rape, an investigation has been opened up. Maybe now that the Democrats are in control of congress we will finally get to the bottom of this, and a lot of other atrocities committed under the watchful eyes of the Bush administration and his torturer-in-chief Alberto Gonzalez.

IraqSlogger has confirmed that the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division has opened an investigation into this video, which was first posted on our site last week.

The clip, originally linked via a now defunct account on YouTube, purports to show a former guard from Abu Ghraib talking about torture techniques employed at the American-run prison. The man also recounts the gang rape of a female teenage detainee, in which one guard “pimped” the girl to others for $50 each. As he recalls, “I think at the end of the day he’d made like 500 bucks before she hung herself.”

According to chief of public affairs Christopher Grey, “CID Special Agents are looking into the matter and take this issue very seriously. I am not able to provide you with any further details of our activity at this time due to investigative reasons.”

H.L.s Take
Watch the video and click through and read the whole story. This video has been removed from You tube so there is no guarantee that it will stay up here very long either. If it is taken down on the other end I lose it too.

Global warming man-made, will continue

AP
Excerpt
Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame for fewer cold days, hotter nights, heat waves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and stronger storms, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, the 21-page report said.
It highlighted “increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.”
Authors of the report called it conservative: It used only peer-reviewed published science and was edited by representatives of 113 governments who had to agree to every word. It was a snapshot of where the world is with global warming and where it is heading, but does not tell governments what to do.

H.L.s Take:
Of course the Bush administration already knows about global warming and has been trying to keep it quiet for years.

Welch: Interference in science “stunning”

Boston.com
Excerpt
BURLINGTON, Vt. –U.S. Rep. Peter Welch says it was a “stunning personal experience” to hear federal scientists say they had been stymied from talking about climate change…The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on which Welch serves, is holding hearings on the administration’s handling of the global warming issue. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the administration appeared to want “to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming.”

The comments came as two advocacy groups — the Government Accountability Project and the Union of Concerned Scientists — shared findings with the committee from a survey of about 300 government scientists.

The survey found nearly half the scientists had seen or experienced pressure to delete words like “global warming” from written material. About 40 percent said thad had seen changes to materials that changed their scientific meanings.

H.L.s Take:
Of course republicans and big buisness right wingers don’t want to admit that it is real because then they would have to do something that might stop Exxon/Mobil from having another all time world record for profits in the next quarter just like they have had in the last two while we go broke paying for their product and Bush and his oil cronies get even richer.

US think tank offering cash to dispute UN climate panel: report

AP
Excerpt
LONDON (AFP) – A right-wing American think tank is offering 10,000 dollars (7,700 euros) to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN’s top scientific panel, media reported.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN’s report

H.L.s Take
Just to prove that Bush’s loyalties lie with Exxon/Mobil and not the USA he proved to us all once again today.

White House rejects mandatory CO2 caps

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON – Despite a strongly worded global warming report from the world’s top climate scientists, the Bush administration expressed continued opposition Friday to mandatory reductions in heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.