The Hollywood Liberal

Republicans Target Reid
National Republicans are using their first television ad buy of the 2010 election cycle to criticize Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in his own backyard, a Republican source tells CNN.

The NRSC will begin running an ad today in the Reno television market and purchase ads on Nevada web sites criticizing Reid for voting for last year’s $700 billion bailout and now supporting President Obama’s stimulus plan.

Invisible Hands
This looks like a good one: Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan by Kim Phillips-fein.

From the book jacket: “Starting in the mid-1930s, a handful of prominent American businessmen forged alliances with the aim of rescuing America — and their profit margins — from socialism and the ‘nanny state.’ Long before the ‘culture wars’ usually associated with the rise of conservative politics, these driven individuals funded think tanks, fought labor unions, and formed organizations to market their views. These nearly unknown, larger-than-life, and sometimes eccentric personalities… make for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes view of American history.”

Clinton Made Millions Speaking Abroad in 2008
Bill Clinton “pulled down $5.7 million in speaking fees last year — almost entirely from foreign sources, including nearly $2.1 million after news circulated that Hillary Clinton was in line for Secretary of State,” Politico reports.

“Neither White House aides nor Bill Clinton representatives responded to messages asking whether such similar speeches would be off-limits while Hillary Clinton is running the State Department.”

For Decades, Right-Wingers Have Pushed Paranoia and Xenophobic Politics and Called It ‘Moral Clarity’
Conservatives live in a world of seething aggression that most progressives can’t even fathom.

The Economic Crisis Isn’t All Bad; It’s a Chance for Us and Obama to Reimagine How We Live Our Lives
Capitalism is on its knees and now we have a chance to create higher ideals beyond career climbing and mindless consumerism.

What Obama Left out of His Economic Recovery Plan: Higher Wages and Debt Relief
This is not a normal recession where the mismatch between supply and demand will work itself out over time.

The Financial Crisis Is Too Dire to Be Left to Politicians
Current leaders of the world’s nations have utterly failed to develop a solution. Now it’s up to ordinary citizens.

How America Embraced Lemon Socialism
America has embraced Lemon Socialism. The federal government — that is, you and I and every other taxpayer — has taken ownership of giant home mortgagors Fannie and Freddie, which are by now basket cases. We’ve also put hundreds of…

Wait until after the revolution, honey
Today, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert asked, why listen to Republicans? Indeed. And yet this morning came the shocking and startling news that our new president has asked House Democrats to cut a provision that would expand contraceptive family…

O?Reilly: Karzai?s Concern For Civilian Causalities Is ?Insulting?
Last night on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly blasted Afghan President Hamid Karzai for appealing to U.S. forces to do more to limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan. O’Reilly chastised Karzai, calling his appeal “insulting” and suggesting that Afghans are ungrateful for the support they receive from U.S. and NATO forces: OREILLY: U.S. and NATO […]

Last night on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly blasted Afghan President Hamid Karzai for appealing to U.S. forces to do more to limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan. O’Reilly chastised Karzai, calling his appeal “insulting” and suggesting that Afghans are ungrateful for the support they receive from U.S. and NATO forces:

OREILLY: U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan are risking their lives to protect the Afghan people from the Taliban and al Qaeda. But President Karzai does not seem to get that. Once again, he has condemned American forces after a raid killed some civilians.

In that raid, a top Taliban commander and some of his cronies were also killed, but apparently, Karzai doesn’t understand that in war, collateral damage is constantly present. U.S. military is investigating the situation, but Check believes Karzai is making a political grandstand play, and it is insulting. Without us, his head is on a stick.

Watch it:

O’Reilly was referring to a recent air strike that the U.S. military claims killed 15 Taliban fighters, but that Karzai claims killed 16 civilians. While the investigation is ongoing, O’Reilly’s blanket condemnation of Karzai’s concern for civilian deaths misses the broader point: American success in Afghanistan depends on reducing civilian casualties there.

U.S. and NATO forces are increasingly reliant on air strikes to prosecute its counterinsurgency objectives in Afghanistan. As Human Rights Watch explained, “There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in Afghanistan in 2008,” resulting in higher civilian death rates. According to the latest U.N. figures, foreign forces in Afghanistan were responsible for the deaths of 577 civilians in 2008 “including 395 deaths caused by airstrikes” — a 40 percent increase over the previous year.

This increase in civilian casualties has “dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of international forces.” As Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it to the congressional testimony today, “civilian casualties are doing [U.S. interests] enormous harm in Afghanistan“:

I will tell you that I believe the civilian casualties are doing us enormous harm in Afghanistan. And we have got to do better in terms of avoiding casualties. I say that knowing full well the Taliban mingle among the people, use them as barriers, but when we go ahead and attack, we play right into their hands. … My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem rather than part of their solution and then we are lost.

Ignoring the increasing levels of “collateral damage” — as O’Reilly appears to recommend — is not only unethical, it would further empower the very forces that U.S. and NATO forces are attempting to defeat.

ThinkFast: January 27, 2009
Some of the nation’s largest and most sturdy employers “announced plans yesterday to slash more than 55,000 jobs.” The cuts “extended to companies that were once considered bright spots in the U.S. economy, such as construction equipment maker Caterpillar (20,000 jobs cut), pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (19,500), Sprint Nextel (8,000), Home Depot (7,000), Texas Instruments (3,400), […]

Some of the nation’s largest and most sturdy employers “announced plans yesterday to slash more than 55,000 jobs.” The cuts “extended to companies that were once considered bright spots in the U.S. economy, such as construction equipment maker Caterpillar (20,000 jobs cut), pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (19,500), Sprint Nextel (8,000), Home Depot (7,000), Texas Instruments (3,400), and GM (2,000).

Roughly two-thirds of the spending and tax cuts in the House stimulus plan will “flow into the economy by the end of fiscal 2010, producing a ‘noticeable impact on economic growth and employment,’” the Congressional Budget Office said yesterday in its “first cost estimate” of the plan. Citing the CBO, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the plan will help create jobs while making responsible investments for the future.

In “his first formal television interview as president,” Barack Obama told the Arabic satellite TV network Al-Arabiya yesterday that his “job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.” “And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives,” said Obama.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that employees “fired after cooperating in sexual harassment investigations may sue for retaliation.” The case involved three women who participated in a Tennessee school system’s internal investigation into the possible misconduct of an employee relations director. The three women were fired for speaking out; the perpetrator was not.

Yesterday, over 2,000 government employees involved in foreign policy issues “signed a letter delivered to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton…calling on the government to give equal benefits to same-sex partners.” While the Bush administration resisted such efforts, “Clinton, during her confirmation hearings, indicated a greater willingness to explore the issue.”

More ?? Less

Interior Dept. Ignored Science When It Limited Water Flows to Grand Canyon
Interior Department officials ignored key scientific findings when they limited water flows in the Grand Canyon to optimize generation of electric power there, risking damage to the ecology of the spectacular national landmark, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Bush Rejected Flurry of Requests for Clemency
In his last days in office, President George W. Bush formally rejected clemency requests from a host of prominent business and political figures, including junk bond king Michael Milken and former California lawmaker Randy “Duke” Cunningham, according to newly released Justice Department records.

Treasury Weighs Hard Choices To Save Banks
President Obama’s top advisers are in the final stages of debating several perilous options to right the financial system, all of which are likely to prove unpopular and in some cases carry a significant risk of failure, according to sources in contact with the officials.

Writers Pressure Obama Over Afghanistan

Truthdig columnists Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer are among the notable writers who have signed this appeal urging President Obama to rethink Afghanistan. The ad, appearing in The Nation and The New York Review of Books, warns that “a new beginning will not be possible as long as we continue to spill the blood of the men, women, and children of Afghanistan.”

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Obama Zeroes In on Auto Industry

President Barack Obama called for tougher regulations on auto emissions on Monday, promising not to let a sour economy stand in the way of progress. “I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said during a meeting with environmentalists in the White House’s East Room.

AP via Google News:

President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for “our security, our economy and our planet.”

He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Starting his second week in office, Obama took a major step toward allowing California and other states to target greenhouse gases through more stringent auto emission standards, and he ordered new federal rules directing automakers to start making more fuel-efficient cars as required by law.

The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, carmakers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.

And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, “greener” cars.

Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on carmakers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation’s auto sales.

Read more

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• January 24, 2009 Obama Lays Out Stimulus Plan

Aubrey Sarvis: When the President Orders, the Military Follows
I believe Congress will be in lockstep with the President on a repeal of DADT. At the end of this year, the law that bars gay men and women from serving openly in the military can be gone.

Steven Stamstad: Out of Many, One: A Collective Moment of Goose Bumps That Will Empower a Nation
No matter whom we met, on the National Mall, in museum or Metro lines, every one was flying above the clouds because of our new president and the new promise and possibility for our country.

Yolanda Young: What Eric Holder’s Tenure at Covington & Burling Says About Blacks and BigLaw
This week, Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder Jr., will probably be confirmed by the Senate. It is a historic moment and one that Holder has…

Ready-for-Disaster Republicans
WASHINGTON — Beneath the warm pledges of bipartisanship and the earnest calls for cooperation in the midst of a grave crisis lurks an unpleasant fact: From the moment it loses power, the opposition party turns immediately to the task of getting it back. Party politics has not been suspended. It has just become more subtle. Republicans are already busy testing lines of attack against President Barack Obama and laying down markers that will allow them to say they warned us — if Obama fails.

The Daily Muck
The Speaker of the Massachusetts state House will resign today amid allegations that a close friend used their relationship to get laws passed on behalf of ticket vendors. Democrat Salvatore DiMasi has not been formally charged with any wrongdoing, although…

Merrill Traders To Mortgage Assets: I Wish I Knew How To Quit You
Yesterday we told you about how Merrill Lynch paid out billions in bonuses to staff even as its new owner, Bank of America, was begging the government for another bailout to help it digest Merrill’s massive losses on mortgage assets….

Quote of the Day
“I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries… My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.”

— President Obama, in an interview with Al-Arabiya.