The Hollywood Liberal

Hi, Just a note to let you know that HL is joining the world of the full time bloggers again. I had a parting of the ways with my job yesterday. It started when they would no longer allow me to be online which meant that this blog was seriously being curtailed. Well that’s over now, and the HL will be coming back stronger then ever. With more stories (we got a whole slew of new news items below) more Comics, more HL News Video Blogs, more, more, more. Of course money will now become somewhat of a problem for me. If you would like to help out you can make a paypal donation to
mail@thehollywoodliberal.com, which would be hugely appreciated. Another way to help keep us going is to Buy an HL T-Shirt and/or by visitng all our advertisers. Like the new one below. Thanks and stay tuned for More.

Looks like the big business is looking to screw over the middle class yet again, this time it is grocery store workers they are after. Don’t let them do it to them, don’t let them do it to you. Go on over check out the site and maybe sign the petition.

Now more then ever HL’s advertisers keep this site, (and me) going so please go over and Check out their site Thanks.

Bush shelters from Putin’s rhetoric

Financial Times of London
Excerpt
President George W. Bush arrived in Prague on Monday for talks about locating part of the proposed US missile defence shield in central Europe.

But Mr Bush’s most immediate concern was seeking protection from the latest in a series of rhetorical bombs lobbed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president

Mr Putin warned on Sunday that Moscow would take “retaliatory steps”, including the possible retargeting of Russian missiles against Europe, if Washington pushed ahead with plans to place radars and interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Washington insists the system is designed to protect the US and its allies against states, such as Iran, that could one day acquire nuclear weapons.

But Moscow fears the technology could be used to neutralise Russian missile capabilities and accuses the US of upsetting the balance of power in a region that once fell firmly within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

HLs Take
Bush: Hey Putie, don’t worry about it. We know damn well that missile shield won’t work, it’s just one more way for us to use hardworking American taxpayers dollars to funnel to our friends in the military industrial complex, with plenty of kickbacks as well. What do you say I cut you in for 5%? no? how about 10?

This just in. Libby gets 30 Months in Prison

Judge: Libby could face longer sentence

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON – Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s hopes of avoiding prison in the
CIA leak case began to dim Tuesday as a federal judge ruled he could face a longer sentence because the investigation he obstructed was so serious.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President
Dick Cheney, is the highest-ranking official convicted of a crime since the
Iran Contra affair.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wants to put Libby in prison for up to three years because the investigation he was convicted of obstructing — the leak of a CIA operative’s identity — was so important.

“We need to make the statement that the truth matters ever so much,” Fitzgerald said.

HL’s Take:
Yeah right Pat, that’s why you never bothered to find out who actually is guilty of the leak, is that because you are protecting your masters Rove, and Cheney. Libby should do hard time for lying. Then they should put Patrick Fitzgerald on trial for covering up who actually did the leaking. Typical American Justice.

A sudden barrage of ideas from Bush

LA Times
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — For a lame duck, President Bush looked remarkably spry last week, announcing a series of policy initiatives that caught many in Washington off guard.

Ever since Democrats took control of Congress in January, the White House has seemed in something of a funk — acting petulant when confronted with Democratic demands, irritated with the public focus on bad news in Iraq and the controversy over Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, and lethargic in coming up with new ideas.

But that changed last week. On Tuesday, Bush announced new sanctions against Sudan and a nominee for World Bank president who was quickly embraced by both parties and allies around the world.

On Wednesday, the president announced a summit with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and an initiative that he said would double spending on AIDS prevention in Africa

HL’s Take
Sorry Georgie, way to little, way to late. Your stronghold on worst President ever cannot possiblly be broken. I guess Bush woke up one day and realized his name will live in infamy forever. In the past he said he didn’t care about that because he “would be dead.” I doubt Bush’s new nominee for head of the world bank is loved by all either. I wouldn’t put much faith in what the LA times has to say either. Back when I had my job and they wouldn’t let me go on the internet anymore I started reading the LA Times. I was shocked at how they slanted every story to the right. Still covering for the disaster monkey after all this time. You would have thought that Los Angeles was Des Moines the way they love their Republicans at the Times.

The Somalia Strike

The Nation
Excerpt
Here’s something that didn’t come up at Sunday’s Democratic debate: Under what authorization did President Bush order a military strike on Somalia this past Friday–essentially widening the “war on terror”?

That’s why I think it’s useful that John Edwards is attacking the Bush Administration for its cynical use of “the war on terror” metaphor. A bad bumper sticker, he likes to call it, that “has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do…”

Yes, let’s end the disastrous war in Iraq but let’s not lose sight of how this Administration is USING the 2002 war authorization. It must be repealed, so as to provide some check on this Administration’s ability to wage secret wars on obscure battle fronts, large and small, and inflate a real, but limited threat of terrorism into an open-ended global war. Maybe there’s a question in here for one of the next Presidential debates?

HL’s Take
Did they suddenly discover untapped oil reserves in Somalia. Or is Bush once again just trying to look like he is doing something?

Guantánamo trials in chaos after judge throws out two cases

Guardian UK
Excerpt
The Bush administration’s plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos yesterday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.
In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military’s cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction

HL’s Take
Potentially all 385 detainees at Guantanamo could be set free under this ruling because Bush does not have jurisdiction in any of those cases either. Of course we’ve been saying that for years. Bush and his administration thinks they can just round up “suspects” and throw them in Guantanamo for life because they don’t know what else to do with them, they can’t convict them of anything because they have no proof that any of them did anything wrong, so Bush figured they would just let them rot in Guantanamo for the rest of their lives. Of course they only threw these guys in the brig in the first place to make it look like they were doing something when actually they were doing nothing. Score another failure for the failure monkey, guess that’s how he got the job.

Joe Scarborough one of the many idiot Republicans on the airwaves today is now replacing Imus in his old slot. Check out this video, Apparently since Fred Thompson wife, who is young and attractive, must have been a stripper. I guess Scarborough thinks that all young attractive females are either pole dancers or Prostitutes. Of course being a doucebag like Scarborough is those are the only women he can get, the kind he pays. Or is he like many other Repubs, paying young boys instead? Anyway heres the clip.

Pentagon launches more witch hunts of Iraq war critics

Americablog
Excerpt
Marine Corporal Adam Kokesh
In this case, they’re going after an Iraq war vet for wearing camouflage fatigues during a mock patrol protesting the war that took place in DC in March. Wearing camo? Funny that the Bush administration uses active and former military, in uniform, at practically every political event they hold, but the Pentagon has no problem when it’s the Republicans using our troops for political purposes.

Remember when Colorado Republican House member Marilyn Musgrave had active-duty troops in uniform at a political event during her re-election? I didn’t hear about those service members being in trouble. Remember when Bush did it in the White House a few months back (see photo at left), he had a whole crew of folks in uniform behind him at a terribly political event mean to bash Democrats over the war.

HL’s Take
The story refers to Marine Cpl. Adam Kokesh. So a soldier that went over to Iraq, risked his life for Bush’s lies, and made it home, is now going to be discredited with an other then honorable discharge because he wants to tell the truth about what is really going on over there. It is Bush and the Republicans that dishonor the troops by treating them this way. Maybe if they listened to what the troops have to say, they might be doing a better job in Iraq, instead they blunder their way to the worst failure of all time, so they can continue to steal Iraq’s oil, while we pay over $3.00 for gasoline over here.

Ron Paul vs. the Throng The Last of the Texas Outsiders

Counterpunch
Excerpt
Put together Murdoch’s Fox News, a mid-May debate between Republican presidential candidates and the state of South Carolina and you have a hotbed of stupidity. But to the fury of the Republican organizers there was an intrusion of rational thought, in the person of Ron Paul, a US congressman from Texas, classed as a rank outsider in the nomination race.

Texas used to send true individualists to Washington DC. One of the brightest moments of my early years, visiting the nation’s capital, was watching Rep. Wright Patman, head of the House Banking Committee, tell the red-faced chairman of the federal reserve that he deserved to be locked up in the penitentiary.

Paul is the last of the breed. As a small-government tight-money Republican this gynaecologist-obstetrician (4,000 babies claimed as a career total) regularly votes No on pork barrel projects that would put money into his own district. But as a Republican in the isolationist, libertarian tradition he also votes No, sometimes alone among the 535 members of the US congress, on war funding, on laws allowing US presidents to order arbitrary imprisonment, “coercive interrogation”, suspension of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

HL’s Take:
I’ve been hearing a lot about Ron Paul, but so far have not seen him in action. That will change as I will watch the Republican debate tonight, to see what he is all about. Apparently there is one Republican who is not looking to go on a killing spree, one with some brains to him. Full report tomorrow