The Hollywood Liberal

Wings of Justice

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt

Because of the complicated political strategy unfolding
on Capitol Hill, many states have decided to come to the aid of
our troops
being used as bait by the Bush Administration. Some State Houses
are starting to consider their own resolutions to end U.S. involvement
in the Iraq civil war.

This past week, Vermont became the first state in the Union where
both legislative houses passed resolutions calling for the forthcoming
and orderly withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq. It
shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Vermont "has lost
more soldiers per capita than any other state in the nation."

H.L.s Take
The states are against it, the towns are against it, the congress is against it, the rest of the world is against it, but the only two people who matter are for it, Bush and Cheney, no wonder they stole the election and then were involved in 9/11. How else could they keep the gravy train flowing.

How Do You Know You’ve Lost a War

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt
Is it after you’ve spent more than a quarter-trillion dollars on the war and it only gets worse? Have you lost the war when a large majority of the occupied country wants you to leave? How about when the people being occupied, more than 60 percent, think it is acceptable to kill American soldiers? Maybe the war jig is up when a plurality of your own soldiers lose faith in the mission and their commander-in-chief?
For most reality-based and cognitively viable individuals, any of the above would be a pretty solid indicator that you’ve lost the war. George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans, however; see it all as signs of impending victory.

H.L.s Take
Answers: Yes, yes, yes & yes

Military amputee uninvited from Bush event because the press would see him with no legs

Americablog
Excerpt
May these people fry in hell. (This a portion of a much larger, second part of the expose in the Washington Post on Monday.)
Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed’s image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee….” ‘Are you telling me that I can’t go to the ceremony ’cause I’m an amputee?’ ” David recalled asking. “She said, ‘No, I’m saying you need to wear pants.’ ”

David told the case worker, “I’m not ashamed of what I did, and y’all shouldn’t be neither.” When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Novak: House GOP fired Veterans-friendly committee chair in order to “save money”

Americablog
Excerpt
We now know how the Bush administration got away with years of providing such paltry support to our injured and maimed veterans from the Iraq war and Afghanistan. The Republican congressional leadership forcibly removed the GOP House committee chair in charge of overseeing veterans. Why? He was too vet-friendly, too interested in meeting the growing needs of our war veterans, and the Republicans wanted to save money at the expense of our injured and maimed veterans.

And I quote Robert Novak, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in existence:
[T]he House Republican leadership had removed [GOP] Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

The party’s House leaders purportedly removed Smith, a tireless promoter of spending for veterans, to save money….

Bush looks to historic parallels for final legacy

AP
Excerpt
As Bush marks the Presidents Day holiday and George Washington’s 275th birthday on Monday, he faces a drumbeat a criticism for the event that will likely be a big part of his legacy — the Iraq war.

The president believes it will take some time to determine his place in the pantheon of presidents, despite the negative assessments some historians have already made.

Many in the current crop of historians are already prepared to declare Bush’s presidency a failure.

In a December opinion article in The Washington Post, Columbia University history professor Eric Foner wrote that Bush was likely to join mediocre presidents like Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

Foner’s article was headlined, “He’s the worst ever.”

H.L.s Take
Thats absof**kinglutley 100% Correct. Bush is not not a mediocre President, he is no Pierce, Buchanan, or Andrew Johnson. He is not a bad President like Nixon, Harding or Reagan. He is THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY. Make no mistake the historian will agree, he is the stupidest, most arrogant, most murderous empty suit to ever occupy the oval office, and we can thank his daddy his brother jeb, and The Supreme Court, and the state of Ohio for him. Happy President’s Day everyone.

The House had voted the resolution against Bush, and Iraq, and the in the Senate 34, Hardcore Republicans like John Mc Cain, and Joe Lieberman, are holding up the vote, so we can go ahead and call this Bush’s War. (and I don’t want to hear about who voted what way 4 years ago.)

2 Baghdad car bombs kill 56, injure 127

AP
Excerpt
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two car bombs exploded in an outdoor market in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 56 people and injuring scores in the deadliest attack since U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major security push around the capital last week.
The twin blasts — marked the first major response by militants to the sweep launched last week and a sobering reminder of the huge challenges facing any efforts against the well-armed factions.

A separate car bomb in the mostly Shiite area of Sadr City killed at least one person and injured 10, police said.

The U.S. military reported the deaths of two American soldiers, one of them in Baghdad who was killed when an insurgent hurled a grenade at his vehicle. The other soldier died when a patrol came under fire north of Baghdad, the statement said. Both died Saturday.

8 U.S. troops die in Afghan copter crash

AP
Excerpt
SHAHJOI, Afghanistan - A U.S. helicopter suffered a “sudden, unexplained loss of power” and crashed Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan, killing eight American troops, the military said. Fourteen people on board survived
The last time a U.S. military helicopter crashed was in May 2006, when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down while attempting a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop in eastern Kunar province, killing 10 U.S. soldiers.

In 2005, a U.S. helicopter crashed in Kunar after apparently being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing 16 American troops.

H.L.s Take
So lets go to the toteboard and look at the totals for one more day of Bush’s Wars. So thats 56 Dead Iraqis, 127 Wounded Iraqis,
Another iraqi dead and 10 more injured, 2 American soldiers dead plus the 8 in the Helicpoter, so thats 57 dead Iraqis, 10 dead American soldiers, and 137 wounded Iraqis, and thats just what we know about for sure. But, the quagmire drags on with no end in site. Longer then it took to beat Hitler and Japan in World War 2, but still we are there, and what’s with these Helicopters that just keep crashing over a sudden loss of power. Once again the military is being provided with shoddy epuipment built no doubt by one of the companies that Bush and Cheney are getting rich from. Meanwhile here at home….

Snow disputes claim that Iraq is blunder

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON - The White House on Sunday disagreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record)’s claim that the Iraq war was “the worst foreign policy mistake” in U.S. history.

He said President Bush should not see votes in Congress in opposition of his new Iraqi strategy as a rebuke.

“The strategy has barely had a chance to begin working,” Snow said.

The House passed a nonbinding resolution Friday that rejected the president’s 21,500-troop buildup in Iraq. The vote put Bush on the defensive going into a far more consequential confrontation over paying for the plan.

On Saturday, Senate Republicans foiled a Democratic bid to repudiate Bush’s deployment of additional combat troops. The 56-34 vote fell four short of the 60 needed, but Democrats quickly claimed victory, noting that a majority of senators voted against the escalation.On Saturday, Senate Republicans foiled a Democratic bid to repudiate Bush’s deployment of additional combat troops. The 56-34 vote fell four short of the 60 needed, but Democrats quickly claimed victory, noting that a majority of senators voted against the escalation.

“This war is a serious situation,” Reid said Saturday. “It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country. … We find ourselves in a very deep hole. We need to find a way to dig out of it.”

Snow disagreed.

“The war is tough, but the solution is not to get out. It is to provide the kinds of resources and reinforcements our forces need to get the job done, and at the same time say to the Iraqis `You guys got to step up,’” Snow responded.

H.L.s Take
So Snow is blaming the newly elected Democratic majority for not getting resources and reinforcements to the troops, when for years Bush and the republicans have been sending them out in unarmoured vehicles, wearing inferior body armour (they were forbidden by the army to buy the better body armour even with their own money.) in Helicopters that can’t stop crashing, they are sending solders out on third and fourth tours becuase no one will volunteer for this debacle, but this is all the newly elected democrats fault. Tony Snow the lying robot. You gotta love Bush’s press secretarys first it was Ari Fleisher who had to step down so he could cop an immunity deal in the Scooter Libby case., then it was Scott Mc Clellan who was so even more of a liar, he got tossed out in one of Bush’s shakeups to make it look like he was doing something. Now we have Tony Snow, the long time Fox News reporter and Bush cheerleader. You have to hand it to him though, his facial expressions never change when he tells those whoppers.

The Snow Man Is In The House

McCain: No good options if surge fails

AP
Excerpt
DES MOINES, Iowa - Presidential contender John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said Saturday there aren’t any good options if the buildup of U.S. troops doesn’t stabilize Iraq.

The Arizona senator said during a campaign stop in Iowa that he’d be hard pressed to find an option that the public would support if the troop increase fails.

“I don’t know what the other options are because if we fail here I think it’s going to be very difficult to maintain the support of the American people,” he said. “And when the American people don’t support a war … then we aren’t able to maintain a foreign endeavor.”

H.L.s Take
It looks like Mc Cain is finally starting to catch on that he can’t become President if he continues his present course of action, which is to support Bush in his continued escalation of the war. It looks like he is now trying to distance himeself from Bush, the only problem was the “troop surge” was his idea. “It will be very difficult to maintain the support of the American People” he says. Hey John What planet are you living on? The support of the American people was gone long ago, along with any chance you ever had of becoming president. Did you hear about that election we had last November? You might want to check the results.

McCain: No good options if surge fails

AP
Excerpt
DES MOINES, Iowa - Presidential contender John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said Saturday there aren’t any good options if the buildup of U.S. troops doesn’t stabilize Iraq.

The Arizona senator said during a campaign stop in Iowa that he’d be hard pressed to find an option that the public would support if the troop increase fails.

“I don’t know what the other options are because if we fail here I think it’s going to be very difficult to maintain the support of the American people,” he said. “And when the American people don’t support a war … then we aren’t able to maintain a foreign endeavor.”

H.L.s Take
It looks like Mc Cain is finally starting to catch on that he can’t become President if he continues his present course of action, which is to support Bush in his continued escalation of the war. It looks like he is now trying to distance himeself from Bush, the only problem was the “troop surge” was his idea. “It will be very difficult to maintain the support of the American People” he says. Hey John What planet are you living on? The support of the American people was gone long ago, along with any chance you ever had of becoming president. Did you hear about that election we had last November? You might want to check the results.
Heres another H.L. Comics Flashback from way back on July 26, 2005 and its called

Sweaty Republican Men Embracing

Not So Happy Valentine’s Day at the White House?

Daily Kos
Excerpt
Fed up with her hubby’s refusal to deal with their shredded relationship, Laura Bush has told the president that she’s leaving him for a month—and maybe for good! … Her desperate decision comes just weeks after a furious George stormed out on her following another bitter argument. “Laura’s had it!” says the source. “It looks as if their marriage has reached the bitter end.”

[T]he first lady had divorce papers drawn up, and showed them to George, pals say, telling him that if he didn’t shape up she would file. But George has stood by Condi—and now he’s paying the price for loyalty to her.
—The Globe

The deteriorating marriage of George and Laura Bush has reached crisis level—First Lady Laura Bush has secretly hired a divorce lawyer, The Examiner can reveal. …

She remembers what happened to Sharon Bush when she was getting a divorce from George’s brother Neil. She didn’t get the settlement she deserved until she threatened to expose all the family secrets in a tell-all book. … “It’s over,” says the source. “The minute George’s term of office expires, so will their marriage.”
—The National Examiner

H.L.s Take
She’s probably pissed off becuase he is drinking heavily aned using hardcore perscription drugs, (not to mention all the killing) Laura, don’t take the money write the book. (yeah if she did that she might wind up in an accident. Like those other guys that wrote books about the Bush family

Desperate Military Filling It’s Ranks With Criminals!

Say Anything
Excerpt
WASHINGTON - The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties.
The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors, which could be petty theft, writing a bad check or some assaults, jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006.
“The data is crystal clear. Our Armed Forces are under incredible strain and the only way that they can fill their recruiting quotas is by lowering their standards,” said Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., who requested the information from the Pentagon. “By lowering standards, we are endangering the rest of our armed forces and sending the wrong message to potential recruits across the country.”

H.L.s Take “Join the Army if you fail”, that’s great, now we will have a bunch of guys that have prison records, how long until they start letting murderers over there. (I know I know) Pretty soon judges will be giving felons a choice: 20 years in the pen or 4 years in Iraq. They they will come back with battle fatigue after they were already criminals to start with. Then we will have a bunch of battle fatigued criminals running the streets. As Yakov Smirnov used to say (and probably still does) What a Country. Of course Bush can’t institute a draft, that would instantly add every young person between 16 and 35 to the anti-war movement, and the protests would make the ’60s look like a tea party.

Set a Deadline

Sign John Kerrys Petition to Set a Deadline To End The War in Iraq.
Check out this video from Senator Kerry

H.L.s Advertisers keep the site going so Go on over and check them out.

Federal grand jury indicts Foggo, Wilkes

San Diego Tribune
Excerpt
SAN DIEGO – Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes and former high-ranking CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, childhood friends from San Diego who got entangled in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham corruption scandal, were indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury.
U.S. Attorney Carol Lam announced the indictments at an afternoon press conference, calling the charges against the two men “breathtaking in scope.”
The investigation began after a June 12, 2005, report by Copley News Service reporter Marcus Stern that detailed Cunningham’s sale of his Del Mar Heights home to a defense contractor for hundred of thousand of dollars more than it was worth.
Within nine months of that first report of corruption, Cunningham was convicted and jailed.
Court documents allege that Wilkes provided more than $700,000 to Cunningham in exchange for the former congressman corruptly influencing the appropriation of funds and the execution of government contracts to benefit Wilkes’ company, Poway-based ADCS Inc.

H.L.s Take
The dominos continue to fall, Republicans going down in corruption scandal after corruption scandal. This will continue for many years eventually culminating in the fall of ‘The House of Bush” (well that may be reaching). Randy Duke Cunningham is still sorry for stealing that Golden Toiliet though Here is a flashback from November 30, 2005 called Dukies Crying

See The Rest Here

News Items:
House members joust over Iraq war policy
AP

See The Rest Of The Comic Here

Here is my weekly “Vlog” or Video Blog for NBC News Raw. Each Monday I put together a video where I discuss what we’ve been blogging about the previous week, and what we’ve got coming up this week. The Video is streamed live as part of the programming on NBC4-TV and on thier digital cable TV Channel. Heres this weeks installment, check it out.

Trial exposes White House crisis machine

AP
WASHINGTON - David Addington, chief legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, says he was taken aback when the White House started making public pronouncements about the CIA leak investigation.
In the fall of 2003, President Bush’s press secretary was categorically denying that either Karl Rove or I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was involved in exposing the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee married to a critic of the war in Iraq.
“Why are you making these statements?” Addington asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett.
“Your boss is the one who wanted” them, Bartlett replied, referring to Cheney….
With that, “I shut up,” Addington recalled recently for jurors in Libby’s CIA leak trial, which begins its fourth week on Monday with Libby’s lawyers calling their first witnesses.

At the intersection was Cheney, along with Rove and Libby, who were working in the summer of 2003 to rebut claims by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that Bush had misled the nation about prewar intelligence on Iraq.
The White House denials on behalf of Rove and Libby came just before Rove secretly began acknowledging to the FBI that he had confirmed Plame’s identity for conservative columnist Bob Novak, who first published her name and relationship to Wilson.

H.L.s Take
Libby is on trial for perjury regarding statements he made about Valerie Plame working for the CIA, It is apparent the Libby along with Rove, and Cheney were involved in leaking the information. No one has been charged in the actual leak. If Libby is found guilty that means then he was leaking the info. Where did he get that information from? His boss Cheney? or Rove who has already admitted that he gave the information to Bob Novak who wrote the story that started the whole thing? Were they both involved? Was Bush in on it? This whole thing could unravel just like Watergate did, that is if special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has an interest in justice, and not just convicting one patsy for lying about the crime that no one was ever charged with.

Blogger behind bars 171 days and counting

LA Times
WASHINGTON — Freelance videographer Josh Wolf defied a federal grand jury’s order in July to hand over raw footage of anarchists clashing with police in San Francisco.

He said he was protected by the 1st Amendment. A federal judge said he was in contempt of court.

On Aug. 1, the 24-year-old blogger reported to the federal detention facility in Dublin, Calif. He has been there ever since — except for a period in September when he was freed while a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the legality of his incarceration. (The panel upheld it.) As of Tuesday, he had been incarcerated longer than any journalist in modern U.S. history.

Wolf’s mother, a third-grade teacher from Wrightwood, will be on Capitol Hill today to lobby members of Congress to help free her son. Liz Wolf-Spada also plans to push for a federal shield law that would protect mainstream journalists as well as independent journalists and bloggers like her son.
“I’m asking that they treat an independent journalist the same way they treat the journalists who work for the Hearst Corp.,” she said, referring to the company that owns the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers.

H.L.s Take
Being a blogger myself I have to agree with Ms. Wolf-Spada, Bloggers and independent journalists should be given the same rights as big time newspaper reporters. Bloggers have influenced mainstram media to the point that only 2 years ago they were still fawning all over Bush, however the constant stream of infromation coming out of the blogs about Bush’s administration, & The Iraq War, forced the MSM to take a look at stories that could no longer be ignored. Thanks partially to that The Republican were voted out last November and Bush’s approval ratings are at an all time low. It would have been nice if the MSM would have taken the same stance on Bush before the 2004 election as they are taking now, they might have spared us 4 More years of total failure on every front.
So why shouldn’t bloggers be afforded the same rights as jouralists that work for Fox News or The New York Times, nowadays the bloggers are much more credible, as witnessed by our next story….

‘NYT’ Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims

Editor & Publisher
Excerpt
NEW YORK Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops” in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.”

What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.”

Sound pretty convincing? Well, almost all the sources in the story are unnamed. It also may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

Gordon wrote with Miller the paper’s most widely criticized — even by the Times itself — WMD story of all, the Sept. 8, 2002, “aluminum tubes” story that proved so influential, especially since the administration trumpeted it on TV talk shows…..

Now, more than four years later, Gordon reveals: “The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.” Gordon’s unnamed sources throughout the story are variously described as “Administration officials,” “intelligence experts” and “American intelligence.”

Rumors of War

MSNBC

The Iranians have reason to feel paranoid. In recent weeks senior American officers have condemned Tehran for providing training and deadly explosives to insurgents. In a predawn raid on Dec. 21, U.S. troops barged into the compound of the most powerful political party in the country, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and grabbed two men they claimed were officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Three weeks later U.S. troops stormed an Iranian diplomatic office in Irbil, arresting five more Iranians. The Americans have hinted that as part of an escalating tit-for-tat, Iranians may have had a hand in a spectacular raid in Karbala on Jan. 20, in which four American soldiers were kidnapped and later found shot, execution style, in the head. U.S. forces promised to defend themselves.

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran.

H.L.s Take
Its like we keep saying here at The H.L. Bush, and his neocon administration want constant war without end, so that they and their friends at Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, can continue to make Billions.

US air strike kills Iraqi troops

BBC News
Excerpt
Eight Iraqi soldiers have been killed and six wounded in a US helicopter strike in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, local officials have said.
The officials described Friday’s incident as an act of “friendly fire”, which hit an Iraqi army position in the east of the city.
The US military said five men were killed, and said the intended target had been a suspected al-Qaeda cell.
It expressed its “deepest sympathies” to the families of the dead.