The Hollywood Liberal

Late Late Nite FDL: Salt Of The Earth
The Rolling Stones and Guns N Roses – Salt of the Earth. What’s on your mind tonight?

The Rolling Stones and Guns N Roses – Salt of the Earth.

What’s on your mind tonight?

How 6,000 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho
Questions remain about how depleted uranium waste from the first Gulf War was transfered, and whether health risks were posed.

McCain Campaign On Obama Speech: “Premature Victory Lap”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the McCain camp took a whack at Obama’s Berlin speech by suggesting it’s presumptuous for him to be speaking abroad in presidential tones while still a candidate. From McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds: “While Barack Obama took a…

Special Counsel Says He Has No Plans To Resign From Office
Yesterday we learned that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote a letter to Special Counsel Scott Bloch urging the embattled chief of the independent investigative office to step down. Bloch’s had a lot of problems lately. He’s under investigation by the…

Our economy isn’t fundamentally sound

For the last 2 1/2 weeks, John McCain and the Republicans have been riding the Governor Sarah Palin wave. They have said nothing of substance. They have put out a series of ads that can only be summarized as a pack of lies. Now, the Dow Jones industrial average falls 500 points on Monday. Republican candidate John McCain states that the fundamentals of our economy remains strong. Later on, yesterday afternoon, he decides to tweak his analysis and states that the fundamentals that he is referring to is the innovation of the American worker. Therefore, the American worker remained strong. Barack Obama and Joe Biden tied John McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration.

This is an excellent opportunity for the Democrats to focus the attention of the American people on the economy. There is a reason that Lehman Brothers is filing for bankruptcy today. There is a reason that Merrill Lynch was bought out by Bank of America. The fundamentals of our economy are not strong. The economy over the last eight years has been built on the housing market. The economy required Americans to build and sell houses. We needed cheap labor to build houses. This is one of the reasons why politicians have talked about immigration reform but have done nothing. (John McCain originally proposed a reasonable immigration policy that he now opposes.) Then, we needed to sell everyone on the vision of a new home. We needed easy money and cheap mortgages. Say hello to subprime mortgages. This whole industry is relatively crazy where your loan money to people who would not normally qualify for loans. The only way the loans don’t default before the ink is dry is to have ever increasing home valuations. Your home value must increase in order for the loan not to implode. Mortgage companies and sell these subprime mortgages to other financial companies. These companies then bundle these bad loans and sell them in packages to other financial companies like Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers.

This is where government regulation must step in and control the financial markets. As Americans, we’ve been sold a truckload of garbage that capitalism cures everything. It doesn’t. Controlled capitalism is great. Unfettered capitalism equals the robber barons of the 1920s, the Savings and Loan collapse of the 1980s and the subprime mortgage collapse. There’s only one candidate that is offered to rein in this unfettered capitalism. There’s only one candidate who has offered to stand up for the average American and that’s Barack Obama.

Fiorina: I Received Only A $21 Million Severance Package ? Not $42 Million
Making an attempt to address the current financial crisis in Florida yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered what he called “straight talk,” saying he will “put an end to the greed that has driven our markets into chaos” and “stop multi-million dollar payouts to CEOs who have broken the public trust.” During an interview […]

Making an attempt to address the current financial crisis in Florida yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered what he called “straight talk,” saying he will “put an end to the greed that has driven our markets into chaos” and “stop multi-million dollar payouts to CEOs who have broken the public trust.”

During an interview with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) today on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell said that McCain “sounds like a Democrat.” “He sounds like a hypocrite,” Wasserman-Schultz replied, citing Carly Fiorina as McCain’s top adviser:

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Well he sounds like a hypocrite because he has got a group of lobbyist and corporate interests running his campaign including Carly Fiorina, who walked away when she left Hewlett-Packard with $45 million including a $21.5 million severance package.

Later on MSNBC, Fiorina wryly dismissed Wasserman-Schultz’s criticism, saying it’s “not true” that she received a $40 million plus “severance package” from HP. Watch it:

Fiorina is technically right. She didn’t get a $40 million plus “severance.” She left HP with only a $21 million severance. But she also walked away with an additional $21 million in stock options and pension benefits, as the New York Times reported in 2005:

Carleton S. Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, will receive a severance package worth about $21.4 million, and stands to gain at least $21.1 million more.

The additional amount reflects the estimated value of her pension, stock options and Hewlett stock holdings, which the company did not include in her severance package.

But Wasserman-Schultz is also right in that McCain “sounds like a hypocrite” saying he’ll “stop multi-million dollar payouts to CEOs” when his top adviser can see the difference between her $42 million and $21 million severance in the midst of a financial crisis.

The High Cost of Racial Hype
Sometimes you don’t know when you are lucky. Certainly I did not consider myself lucky when I left home at seventeen and discovered the hard way that there was no great demand for a black teenage dropout with no experience and no skill. In retrospect, however, those days of struggling to earn money to pay the room rent and buy food left little time or energy for navel-gazing over things like “identity.”

The Gibson Doctrine
Sarah Palin’s reputation survived her interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson. The same cannot be said for Charlie Gibson. On my radio show last week, I twice defended Barack Obama. Once, against those conservatives who took a comment made by Obama in an interview with George Stephanopoulos out of context and suggested that Obama had inadvertently admitted he was a Muslim. And again, when I contended that Obama did not imply that Palin was a pig in his now famous “lipstick on a pig” reference.