The Hollywood Liberal

Remember how when The US first attacked Iraq, Fox News was running endless non-stop cheer leading coverage of the whole thing? Fox was the one that reported that the Iraqi’s would greet us in the street with flowers. They are the ones who ran endless coverage of the people pulling down the statue of Saddam, and acting as if it was the entire city of Baghdad was out there. I remember it because back then I worked at a company that had a few Bushist Yahoos who watched Fox News in the break room constantly. Well the Saddam statue story was eventually debunked when the pictures from a camera that was not showing closeups revealed that there were only a small handful of people pulling down the statue, and they were all there as a phony news op for people like Fox News. Nowadays everyone knows what a total disaster the war, Bush, and everything Fox was rah rah rahing turned out to be, and Fox doesn’t like to acknowledge that the war even exists anymore. Now they talk about Paris Hilton, and Bear attacks. Here is a video by Keith Olbermann documenting some of the things that Fox News finds more important then the war which they cheer leaded, and which has affected us all for over 4 years now.

Here is a story about how a group Bolivian soldiers that are paid for by U.S. Taxpayers for trying to eradicate Bolivia’s Coca crop, are now being fed by an Alaskan company way up in the arctic circle, rather then being fed by people right there in Bolivia. OK first off, why is the US paying Bolivian soldiers to stop coca growing in their country? It’s part of the never ending war on drugs of course. There is more cocaine, and other drugs in this country then at anytime in the past. So you might think to yourself, “why bother paying Bolivians to stop the coca plantations when there could not possibly be more drugs available here then if we did nothing at all. Of course the reason is that The US Government does not want to stop the war on drugs, any more then they want to stop the war in Iraq, it’s all about money, and kickbacks. Now add this to the story. The price that the US pays to feed these Bolivian soldiers went up from just over $3 dollars a man to over 5 dollars a man. Why? Because of super corrupt Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, who is already being investigated by the FBI, along with his son. Stevens somehow wrangled some crooked deal that now allows the Bolivians to be fed by a native Alaskan company called Olgoonik Management Services. Stevens also got a law passed that says that Alaskan firms are can get small business preference even if they are owned by multinational corporations. So now a company that could not be further away from Bolivia is taking care of these troops rather then a local company that can do the job much cheaper. No surprise that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton also had a hand in this deal, and of course the whole thing was a no bid contract. Shocking.

US: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common; Or, how the Alaskan Inupiat Eskimos got a no-bid contract in South America from the U.S. government.

Corp Watch
Excerpt:
Deep in the jungles of the upper Amazon, in a land rife with coca plantations and drug runners, roughly 1,500 Bolivian soldiers and police camp out each night at U.S. taxpayer expense. They are offered three meals and a snack each day as part of a $31 million State Department effort to stop the cocaine trade at its source.

Until this spring, the troops were fed by a local Bolivian company, contracted to the United States through a competitive process for $3.34 per soldier per day. But in March, the same contract was awarded — without competition — to an Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm, Olgoonik Management Services, which is headquartered 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The new cost is $5.16 per soldier per day, an increase of 54 percent, or about $1 million more each year.

Bush’s whitehouse budget director Rob Portman quit yesterday only 14 months after stepping into the job after Bush fired the guy before him, in one of his cabinet shakeups he was pulling back then to try to make it look like he was doing something about his plunging popularity. Of course we all knew that just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic would not help. Portman was asked if quitting now was good for his political career, he remarked that quitting now would be good for his mental health. I guess it gets kind of stressful working for the biggest criminal enterprise in human history. Portman also stated, that “There’s a real sense of fatigue and very little sense of purpose,” Perhaps he has completed the real reason Bush brought him in. To hide all the stolen money.

Here is a comic we did on the day Portman was brought in, its called “Follow The Money: The Real Reason Bush Hired Portman, here is an excerpt.

Get the story before it happens, read H.L.s Comics

Here is one more reason to never join the military. First they make promises to get you in that they never deliver on. Like they are going to give you job training. Yeah you can train to drop bombs or something, lots of call for that when you get back home. While you are in they expose you to all kinds of dangerous chemicals, and use you as a guinea pig for the all the latest drugs that they want to try out. They keep sending you back even after you are supposed to be done, once you are finally ready to go home they tell you you have to stay for 3 more months. They cut your pay and benefits, while you are there. Then you finally get home, and the medical care for getting your arm blown off is shoddy, or non-existent. The military left this widow to die rather then help her out with death benefits from her husband who was in the Air Force.

Desperate widow’s D-M calls unanswered

Arizona Star
Excerpt:
When the end came for Air Force widow LaRaine Gallaway, it was not the graceful exit her late husband would have wanted.
She died in low-income housing after months of waiting for military benefit checks that never arrived.
The 85-year-old Tucsonan spent the last of her life scrimping and stressing, unable to get help because no one was answering the aid line she kept calling at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
D-M’s commander said he regrets what happened to Gallaway, who died June 5, six months after the death of her husband, retired Maj. Thomas Gallaway, 90, made her eligible for the survivor benefits she did not receive….
D-M’s troubleshooter was out of the office for much of March and April, then retired May 1 and has yet to be replaced, officials said. But the staffer’s voice-mail wasn’t taking messages and didn’t explain her absence.
Instead, callers got a recording that said: “No one is available to take your call. Please call back later.”

Democrats go light on lawyer who pushed Bush’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ policies

Raw Story
Excerpt:
In Tuesday’s public hearing, Democrats avoided asking Rizzo specific questions about the CIA’s secret detention program and treatment policies — promising to ask harder questions behind closed doors. Because the administration’s intelligence activities are laregly classified, members of the Senate intelligence committee were barred from disclosing specifics of programs in public.

In Tuesday’s public hearing, Democrats avoided asking Rizzo specific questions about the CIA’s secret detention program and treatment policies — promising to ask harder questions behind closed doors. Because the administration’s intelligence activities are laregly classified, members of the Senate intelligence committee were barred from disclosing specifics of programs in public.

White House Budget Director Resigns

Huffington Post
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — White House budget director Rob Portman announced his resignation Tuesday, joining a lengthening list of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of President Bush’s administration.

Portman, in a telephone interview, made it clear he might seek a return to elective office, either by running for governor of Ohio or for the Senate.

He said he was leaving for personal reasons. His family has remained in Cincinnati and he has been commuting home on weekends for 14 years.

“I need to be home more. I’ve got three kids ages 12 to 17. It’s just been very hard to spend as much time with them and Jane as I need to at this time of my life,” he said.

Ron Paul Excluded in Iowa

CCNWO
Excerpt:
Iowans for Tax Relief and Iowa Christian Alliance will host a presidential candidates forum on Saturday, June 30th in Des Moines. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Tommy Thompson, and Tom Tancredo will participate.

Ron Paul, however, will not participate. Why? Because he wasn’t invited.

We heard about this forum from numerous supporters in Iowa who asked why Dr. Paul was not going to participate. Those supporters assumed that Dr. Paul was invited.

The campaign office had not received an invitation so we called this morning; thinking we might have misplaced the invitation or simply overlooked it. Lew Moore, our campaign manager, called Mr. Edward Failor, an officer of Iowans for Tax Relief, to ask about it. To our shock, Mr. Failor told us Dr. Paul was not invited; he was not going to be invited; and he would not be allowed to participate. And when asked why, Mr. Failor refused to explain.

Giuliani campaign chairman indicted

CCNWO
Excerpt:
State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to possess with the intent distribute cocaine, federal and state authorities said at a news conference at SLED headquarters this afternoon.

According to the indictment, beginning in 2005 — before he was elected state treasurer — Ravenel conspired with Michael L. Miller to possess with intent to distribute cocaine.

Ravenel also was a state director for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 the GOP presidential bid. The Giuliani campaign said Tuesday Ravenel had left the campaign.

This video clip shows a meeting of big business people and Human Resources People who are discussing ways they can legally not hire a qualified American for a job, and bring in someone from India to do it instead. There must have been a whistleblower filming it because I doubt any one in the video would want their names attached to it. Have a look

Investigation Uncovers ‘Extensive Destruction’ Of RNC Emails, Violations Of Records Act

Think Progress
Excerpt:
House investigators have learned that the Bush administration’s use of Republican National Committee email accounts is far greater than previously disclosed — 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove alone — and that the RNC has overseen “extensive destruction” of many of the emails, including all email records for 51 White House officials.

For the last several months, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been “investigating whether White House officials violated the Presidential Records Act” by using email accounts maintained by the RNC and the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign for official White House communications. Today’s findings confirm that the accounts were used “for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies