The Hollywood Liberal

US Embassy opening in Baghdad delayed indefinitely

Alternet
Excerpt
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The opening of the mammoth new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has been delayed indefinitely while its Kuwaiti contractor fixes a punch list of problems, the State Department said on Tuesday.

The sprawling complex, whose cost is edging toward $750 million, was set to open last month but U.S. lawmakers say shoddy work by the contractor and poor oversight by the State Department have delayed it.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack rejected claims of inadequate oversight and said there was no indication how long it would be before the new embassy opened.

“I can’t tell you when the embassy is going to open,” said McCormack. “We don’t have an answer.”

HL’s Take
The Bush record of failure continues unblemished

Here is a story of Ghouliani from people who really know him, New Yorkers.

No matter what the question is, Rudy says 9/11

NY Daily News
Excerpt
For Rudy Giuliani, 9/11 is the answer. To almost anything, it seems.

“For me, every day is an anniversary of Sept. 11,” he said in Florida last month.
WHY DID YOU FLIP ON GUN CONTROL?

“There are some major intervening events - Sept. 11 - which cast somewhat of a different light on the Second Amendment.”

- Giuliani’s September speech to the NRA

WHY DID YOU INTERRUPT THAT SPEECH TO TAKE A CALL FROM JUDI?

“Since Sept. 11, most of the time when we get on a plane we talk to each other and just reaffirm the fact that we love each other”

- September interview with CBN News

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF BUILDING A FENCE ON THE BORDER?

“I support security at the borders. I think security is enormously important in the post-Sept. 11 period. I think we have to know who’s coming into this country.”

February interview with Fox News

HL’s Take:
There’s lots more of Rudy working 9/11 into every answer. Click through to see the one issue candidate speak ad nauseam on the greatest day of his life.

Here is another Ron Paul campaign ad. I guess Ron is spending some of the $5 Million he has received in campaign contributions.

The Democrats who enable Bush

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: “It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting.”

Obama dodged, too: “I think it would be irresponsible” to say what he would do as president.

HL’s Take:
C’mon Barack, that sounds like something Bush would say. I applaud Obama for removing his American flag lapel pin, because as he explained, “it’s a symbol of false patriotism” but Obama needs to get aboard the straight talk express as it were.

Once again Bush steps up to blatantly lie to the American people about Torture. Bush is STILL claiming we do not torture, despite what we have learned about Abu Gharib, Guantanamo, and Torture Boy himself. The AP ran the exact same story in ‘05, so I am running the exact same comic from 11/7/2005. If Bush can get away with using recycled material, so can I.

Bush says US ‘does not torture’

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON - President Bush defended his administration’s detention and interrogation policies for terrorism suspects on Friday, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, blah blah blah bla bla bla bla bla lie, lie, lie lie, torture, torture, lie bla bla blahhhhh.

HL’s Take
OK here it is. George Bush in “We Do Not Torture”

Sniper team tells of pressure from above

LA Times
ExcerptMembers of a U.S. Army unit in Iraq accused in murder trials say they felt pushed to notch more ‘kills.’

Interviews and court transcripts portray a 13-man sniper unit that felt under pressure to produce a high body count, a Vietnam-era measure that the Pentagon officially has disavowed in this war. They describe a sniper unit whose margins of right and wrong were blurred: by Hensley, if you believe Army prosecutors; by the Army, if you believe the accused.

The main line of defense for Vela and Hensley is a shocking one: In their zeal to get more “kills” out of snipers, officers of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, allegedly pushed a program of leaving weaponry as “bait,” and allowing snipers to kill anyone who came to pick the items up. That, defense attorneys say, led to loose rules of engagement that the Army now says amounted to murder.

HL’s Take It’s like Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) said in Apocalypse Now: “Charging someone with murder around here, (vietnam) is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500″ Everyone is doing it, but no one gets in trouble for it. One more reason we can’t trust anyone during a war.

Ron Paul, who we’ve been reporting on here at the HL for many months has suddenly been discovered by the mainstream. Why is that? Because he just raised $5 Million for his campaign. Now Paul is mentioned in the mainstream media. The Republican party now must figure out a way to do something about him, because they damn sure don’t want an anti-war candidate to get the nomination. Up until now Paul has been dismissed for his low numbers. But as we have shown here the lower tier candidates like Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel often not even on the list of candidates on these so called polls. but Money talks and BS walks and Ron Paul is getting money yo.

The Log Cabin Republicans, the non-hypocritical openly gay Republican group are upset with Mitt Romney who has come out being anti-abortion so that he could get the votes of the religious right. (you know, those guys that don’t matter no more) Romney was pro-choice before he was anti-choice, that makes him a flip-flopper and hyopcite. Hey he’s a Republican what did you expect. Here is the video of Romney in a debate with Ted Kennedy from 1994 where he proclaims the importance of being pro-choice.

Here is a long and excellent chapter from a book by Robert Parry, the man who broke the Iran-Contra story in the ’80s and has been there for all of it. This tells the whole story of how Bill Clinton let the Republcans off the hook for myriad scandals, and how it came back to bite him over the Lewinsky affair, and set the stage for Bush to steal the election, 9/11, and endless war. It’s a great article and should be read in full. Here are three quotes from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

The Clintons and the Bushes

Consortium News
Excerpt
The Clintons and the Bushes

By Robert Parry
October 3, 2007

Editor’s Note: Given Hillary Clinton’s emergence as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, a Consortiumnews.com reader asked that we post the entire first chapter of Robert Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

President Clinton made clear he saw historical truth as less important than his hopes for Republican cooperation on his domestic agenda. But this willingness to sweep major scandals under the rug left the White House back door ajar for a restoration of the Bush Family dynasty a half dozen years later – with disastrous consequences for the American Republic.

The relevance of this story today is that Bill Clinton’s misguided “pragmatism” seems to a characteristic of Hillary Clinton’s political persona, too, as she hedges her positions on the Iraq War and signals a willingness to support a dangerous confrontation with Iran…..

Clinton voiced his complaints about the media hostility, Stuart Sender saw his chance to ask Clinton why he hadn’t pursued leads about the Reagan-Bush secret initiatives in the Middle East.
“I had this moment to say to him, ‘What are you going to do about this? Why aren’t you going after them about Iran-Contra and Iraqgate?’” Sender said. “If the shoe were on the other foot, they’d sure be going after our side. … Why don’t you go back after them, their high crimes and misdemeanors?”
But Clinton brushed aside the suggestion…..

Lingering Questions

Today, as U.S. and Iraqi casualties from the Iraq War continue to mount, the historical questions still hang in the air:

Did the Reagan-Bush administration help Hussein get the chemical weapons that George W. Bush would later cite to justify an invasion?

Were secret Republican-Iranian negotiations in 1980 the start of entangling relationships that drew the United States deeper into the Middle East violence?

Did the subterranean financial tunnels connecting the Bush family and the Saudi royal family contribute to al-Qaeda’s determination to strike at the United States in 2001?

Would American history have taken a very different course if the investigations of the Reagan-Bush era had gone forward and the archives of secret documents been thrown open?

HL’s Take
Is the real reason that Clinton did not go after Bush Sr. That Clinton “Had to work with these people” and did not realize what a viscious attack dog media the Republicans had created? Or was there a darker, more sinister reason, like they are really both on the same side. Clinton sure seemed to Cozy up to Bush after his idiot son took over. The two ex Prez’s even went on the road together and did a comedy routine to raise money for Katrina victims. We did a comic about it on Nov. 6, 2006 Called “The Straight Man”

See More HL’s Comics Here

What are The Republicans trying to cover up now?

Police Report 4 Fires in Senate Offices

Brietbart
Excerpt
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Capitol Police reported four fires in Senate office buildings Wednesday. All were extinguished by midafternoon, but an investigation continued.
“They are suspicious in nature,” said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.

She said two fires in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and one in the Hart building next door were reported in women’s bathrooms and were extinguished between 10:45 a.m. EDT and 12:30 p.m. A fourth, also in Dirksen, was reported later and extinguished by mid-afternoon, Schneider said.

Police were still investigating.

And still the Democrats give him everything he wants. If this isn’t proof that we are living in a fascist society where both parties are acting in their own self interests and against that of the American People, I don’t know what the hell is.

Poll: 95% of Americans mistrust Bush

Press TV
Excerpt
A new poll indicates that a vast majority of the Americans are doubtful about the US administration’s ability to solve Iraq’s crisis.

According to New York Times/CBS News poll, 95 percent of US citizens mistrust the way the Bush administration handles the Iraq war.

Only 5 percent of the respondent said they could still trust Bush’s policy on the controversial war in Iraq.

The poll also reflects that 71 percent of the Americans believe officials must be flexible to reach a compromise on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The poll shows approximately two third of the Americans believe that the US must reduce the number of its troops in Iraq or completely withdraw them from the country.

Sixty-four percent said they support a plan by the Democrats to set a timetable for the troops’ pullout by 2008.

U.S. $10 trillion in the red

Miami Herald
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — As the national debt heads toward the $10-trillion mark, generous Americans are sending checks to the federal government.

Donations to the Bureau of the Public Debt have topped $2.5 million so far this year. That’s the highest amount since at least 1996.

It’s not making much of a dent, though.

For the fifth time since 2001, Congress is raising the debt limit, increasing it by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The Senate approved the plan on a 53-42 vote Thursday. That’s $9,815,000,000,000.00.

The House of Representatives has already signed off on the plan, without a direct vote.

According to the folks who follow this stuff closely, the national debt has been rising by an average of $1.36 billion per day since September of last year.

And each citizen now has a share of nearly $30,000.

Parents to have money taken away from child support payments

ABC
Excerpt
CASTLE ROCK - Linda Green couldn’t believe what she found when she opened her mail this week.

She received a letter from the Colorado Department of Human Services, telling her she would soon have money taken out of the child support payments she receives from her 13-year-old son’s father.

“I was a little astounded,” she said.

The letter stated that under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law early last year, federal spending on so-called entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs, would be restrained, in order to pay down the national deficit.

Arrested For Reading The Constitution

ABC
Excerpt
A common theme of the event was that U.S. troops in Iraq were there to “protect the freedom” of the Iraqi people, but this freedom didn’t seem to apply to the group of American citizens that decided to use their first amendment right of free speech to voice their dissent.

Five members of Code Pink were arrested, one for reading the Constitution, as police refused to say what the charges were and refused to answer any questions while demonstrators were hauled into paddy wagons.

by Michael O’McCarthy

At my local gas station
They sell their corporate fried chicken
Next to the beer cooler with Bar B Q,
Mashed potatoes and grits and groceries …

As you pump gas
And the dollars mount
And the petrol roars
Into your bottomless tank
There’s a CNN news TV screen …

In American y’all can
Chew on a drumstick
While innocently watching
The blood of the dead and dying
Soak into the Iraqi dirt…

But not to worry citizens
The bone and gristle
Are filtered out
By Halliburton’s oil refineries.

09-07
greenville, sc