The Hollywood Liberal

List of people convicted in Abramoff scandal so far

Mathaba.net
Excerpt:
Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles, the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the scandal, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for lying to senators. He pleaded guilty to obstructing a congressional investigation. He admitted lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles’ intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients.

-Former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, sentenced in January to 2 1/2 years in prison, acknowledged taking bribes from Abramoff. Ney was in the traveling party on an Abramoff-sponsored golfing trip to Scotland at the heart of the case against former White House official David Safavian.

-Abramoff is serving six years in prison on a criminal case out of Florida, where he pleaded guilty in January 2006 to charges of conspiracy, honest services fraud and tax evasion. He has not yet been sentenced on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion stemming from the influence-peddling scandal in Washington. Abramoff is cooperating in a bribery investigation involving lawmakers, their aides and members of the Bush administration.

CNN, The Cable News Network should change their names to CCNN, Celebrity Cable News Network. That is because they have decided to dump Michael Moore who was supposed to be on Larry King Live to talk about his new movie Sicko. Instead they are going to have a much more important story, far more important then people dying every day because they have no health insurance. They got the first Paris Hilton Interview since her release from jail this morning. CNN is the biggest whore network ever. Anyone who watches that piece of crap to get hard news, is wasting their time. Hey CNN I hear that Lindsay Lohan had decided to stay longer at rehab then originally planned. Maybe you should do a week long retrospective. Next time Britney Spears shaves her head you should cancel all commercials and do a full day devoted to Britney. Screw television, keep it here on the HL for all the important stories.

McCain could pull out of race by September, UK paper asserts

Raw Story
Excerpt:
A Sunday report by one of Britain’s best political reporters in Washington posits that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is on his last legs and may abandon his bid for the presidency as soon as September “if his fundraising dries up and his poll ratings continue to drop.”

McCain’s staff vigorously denied the allegation.

Pullen also delivered another devastating blow, saying he believed that McCain could lose his home state of Arizona.

“It looks to me like Arizona will be in play,” Pullen said.

One veteran Republican consultant told the Sunday Times he thought the odds of McCain remaining in the race beyond autumn were 3-1 against.

“He’ll be gone by September,” predicted Tom Edmonds. “The wheels are coming off his wagon and it’s hard to see how he can recover

HL’s Take
I predicted this on one of my NBC News Raw Videos that I made about 2 months ago. McCain won’t even make it to the primaries is how I put it. Crazy old John is so out of touch it is ridiculous. We also alluded to McCain’s problems in a comic back on April 23, called Republican Presidential Forum: The Candidates Speak. Here is an excerpt.

Get the Story before it happens read HL’s Comics

Michael Moore held a screening for “Sicko” for lobbyists for the healthcare industry. He also held a Q&A session with the members who attended (which were not many) Here is a video of that session.

‘Sicko’ leaves top Democrats ill at ease

LA Times
Excerpt:
Instead of greeting the film with hosannas or challenging it head-on, however, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have sidestepped direct comment on Moore’s proposals.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore’s approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.

If Moore’s fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates’ pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing — much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists…..

For most Democratic presidential candidates (Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio advocates a government single-payer program), it’s [the film} more like a headache.

HL’s Take
This movie is going to have a significant impact on the Democratic nomination. Most of the democratic candidates (excluding the only good candidate Dennis Kucinich) have health care plans that are directly to beholden to their corporate masters at the insurance companies. Hilary, Obama, and Edwards, have already signed off on allowing the Healtcare industry to continue record profit while we the people get shafted and killed off by the insurance companies
like Humana, and Kaiser. When people see this movie they will be insenced and demand answers.
The candidates will have no choice but to go on record and defend their complete acquiescence
to big Phamra, and the health care industry. Dennis Kucinich will come out of this looking better and better, just as he does on the war. Kucinich is the only candidate who has not sold his sole to the health industry, just as he is the only candidate who had not sold his sole to weapons contractors and the oil companies. More and more people will see this as the primary season, and Convention draws closer. Ahhh who am I kidding, Hilary already has the nomination sewn up, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Will she lose to yet another republican in Nov. ‘08.
It’s a distinct possibility.

The Colbert Bump. Everyone who appears on his show gets it. Including Texas Congressman, and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul. Hey Stephan, I know a left wing political website that could use a bump.

Newsweek

The Jose Padilla Case: Screenplay by Mel Brooks

Uruknet
Excerpt:
Padilla never did anything wrong. He’s just a victim of circumstance—an unwitting lab-rat in Bush’s grand strategy to repeal the constitution. In 5 years the government hasn’t come up with a shred of evidence that connects him to ANY CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. Nothing! The charges are completely bogus— even the government attorneys know it. That’s why they coerced the judge into letting them “play parts of an old television interview with Osama bin Laden” in court last week. It’s just another sign of their complete desperation.

My God, is that the best the “multi-million dollar” prosecution can come up with after 5 years— “grainy old bin Laden tapes?

Pathetic!

The judge never should have allowed such prejudicial gibberish to be entered into the record. Padilla’s connection to al Qaida is purely speculative. It’s probably just more Bush bunkum.

Last week the government’s case began to unravel when FBI Special agent James T. Kavanaugh revealed that “Padilla was never overheard using purported ‘code words’ for violent jihad in intercepted telephone conversations”.

Really? So that was a lie, too!

Newsweek has just come out with it’s latest Bush popularity poll, the number is (drumroll please)
Ta-da, 26%, which is the lowest of any President since Nixon, and we all know what happened to him. Bush is less popular then bathtub scum right now, but you know what is worse. Congress, that is what is worse. Their approval rating is even lower then Bush. If this isn’t a sign to impeach the bastard already I don’t know what is. Congress, is currently controlled by the Democrats, they were put back in power to end the Iraq War, you know the one where another 16 soldiers have been killed in the past couple of days. Democrats have the power to stop the war, but they don’t. Their BS reason is that “oooh we don’t want to be blamed by Republicans for having lost the war, oooh we don’t want to face 30 commercials where those nasty republicans blame it all on us.” As I have pointed out before, you can’t lose a war that was already lost on the day it started. The Democrats know this, but the leaders of the party lie to us and say they are afraid. (I believe they are afraid, but not of losing, they want to lose) Now that the Democratic controlled congress ratings are even lower then monkey scum, how about doing something about it. The truth is that they don’t do anything because they don’t want to hurt their “boy.” It’s all one big party folks, the Republicrats. They band together to fight us the people. It’s class warfare at it’s finest. The polls prove that people are pissed off at congress because they don’t get Bush out of office by any means necessary. We need to replace all these fake democrats with real democrats (Ones that will vote to impeach, and end the war) like Dennis Kucinich. Vote Kucinich in 2008, the only real Democrat in the field.

Newsweek

How Low Can He Go?

Excerpt:
June 21, 2007 - In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.