The Hollywood Liberal

Global Capitalism: The Suicide Version

The globalization of the international economy launched as an accidental policy of the Clinton administration has proved to be a destroyer of people, governments and wealth.

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Michael J. Panzner: Anti-Dollar Contagion Gains Pace
As was the case with the now hobbled U.S. banking system, the dollar’s fortunes have long depended on the confidence of others.

David Quigg: A Chance For You To Squander Your Time on Earth Like I Just Did
I just posted a comment on The Anonymous Liberal’s blog. I was responding to a blog post responding to a blog post responding to a…

Kurtz: Media Harder On Obama This Time
President Obama declined to call on any reporters from the nation’s top newspapers during last night’s news conference but still faced far more aggressive questioning…

Al Gore’s Our Choice: Inconvenient Truth Follow Up To Be Published This Fall
NEW YORK — Nobel laureate’s Al Gore’s follow-up to his best-selling “An Inconvenient Truth,” originally planned for last spring, is coming out this fall with…

Dobbs falsely claimed Pelosi said “immigration law enforcement is, quote-unquote, ‘un-American”

On the March 23 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Lou Dobbs asked Center for Immigration Studies senior research fellow Jerry Kramer for his “reaction” to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “saying last week that enforcement in the workplace, immigration law enforcement is, quote unquote, ‘un-American.’ ” In fact, Pelosi did not say that “immigration law enforcement” in general is “un-American.” Rather, during a March 7 speech Pelosi gave as part of the national Family Unity tour led by leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Pelosi criticized as “un-American” immigration raids that separate undocumented parents from their documented children.

From Pelosi’s speech (full video available here and here):

PELOSI: That optimism, that hope, that courage, that determination of immigrants, of your families, when you arrived here, made America more American. You brought with you your tradition of family values, of faith, of community, of responsibility. How then could America say it’s OK to send parents of children away? What value system is that? I think it’s un-American. I think it’s un-American. I want to join [Rep.] Luis Gutierrez [D-IL] in saluting the families for their courage, for their generosity in spirit — of spirit, to share their stories; Ivan and Guadalupe and Yvette for sharing their story about their families. Because no politician’s speeches could ever be as eloquent as their personal testimony about what their family has experienced.

Who in our country — who in our country could not be moved by their stories? Who in our country would not want to change a policy of kicking in doors in the middle of the night and sending a parent away from their families? It must be stopped. It must be stopped.

From the March 23 edition of United Stations Radio Networks’ The Lou Dobbs Show:

DOBBS: Every way in which we have more empirical evidence of what is happening and the consequences of public policy choices that we’re making — or in the case of illegal immigration, as often as not, the public policy choice is to avoid the choice and to avoid enforcement of our laws. Just very quickly — your reaction to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week saying enforcement in the workplace, immigration law enforcement is, quote-unquote, “un-American.”

KAMMER: It makes you wonder if Mrs. Pelosi thinks there will ever be an immigration policy or immigration law that’s worth enforcing. It makes me think of Barbara Jordan, someone I think is one of the great Americans of the past hundred years, who ran a special congressional commission on immigration.

Mrs. Jordan died in 1996, but two years earlier, when she submitted her report to Congress, she said that if we’re gonna have an immigration policy that’s coherent, that means something, that’s good for the country, we have to be able to set rules and establish criteria. And that those who don’t meet those rules and don’t fit those criteria will not be allowed to come. And if they insist on coming illegally, she said, they’re gonna have to go home. Barbara Jordan said we have to be able to say no to people who violate our immigration policy. She said that’s a policy in the national interest; apparently, Speaker Pelosi, you know, doesn’t agree with that at all.

DOBBS: Right. And being joined today by Archbishop George — Cardinal [Francis] George suggesting further relaxation of enforcement. I don’t know how you could relax our enforcement much more of immigration laws in this country.

A Lack of Reality About Women From Obama
Amidst troubling reports of our nation’s economic woes and pressing national security issues, one news story earlier this month received fairly little attention: President Obama’s March 11 executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. While the Council’s role is likely to be more symbolic than practical, its creation, and the accompanying rhetoric, suggests that the Obama White House is bringing a blinkered, outdated approach to gender issues – one that, far from transcending ideological divisions, takes us back to a narrow and dogmatic feminist ideology. According to the White House press release, the purpose of the Council is to “ensure that agencies across the federal government … take into account the particular needs and concerns of women and girls.” Specifically, it will focus on “improving women’s economic security,” promoting policies that help balance work and family, preventing violence against women, and furthering women’s health care.

Obama’s Just Not That Into You
Does President Obama truly believe that he can castigate and condemn Wall Street on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and then secure its cooperation on the other days of the week? Does he not understand that when he ignites a public furor over AIG bonuses and then incites Congress to pass a punitive tax, he sends shivers down the spines of every other corporate executive who makes a lot of money?

The Daily Muck
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Friday that she owes more than $500,000 in legal fees to her Anchorage-based lawyer Thomas van Flein for work defending her on ten lawsuits, which she did not name. But Palin specified that the lawsuits…

Report: Stanford May Hire DeLay Lawyer
We probably should have seen this coming. Billionaire Texas banker Allen Stanford is considering hiring Dick DeGuerin — the heavy-hitting Texas defense lawyer who has represented a string of big-name clients, including former House Speaker Tom DeLay — to defend…

Expert: Allegation That Cassano Blocked Auditor Is “Analogy To Obstructing Justice”
We’ve told you about allegations from AIGFP’s internal auditor, Joseph St. Denis, that the unit’s leader, Joseph Cassano deliberately thwarted St. Denis’ effort to do his job. And according to one expert we just spoke to, those allegations, if borne…

That’ll show him

Specter Would Lose GOP Primary
A new Quinnipiac poll shows former Rep. Pat Toomey (R) crushing Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) in a Republican primary, 41% to 27% with 28% still undecided.

Overall Pennsylvania voters have a 45% to 31% favorable opinion of Sen. Specter, but he gets a 47% to 29% unfavorable score from Republicans.

Said pollster Clay Richards: “Toomey came close last time and has strong conservative backing, but his challenge could be fractured if more Republicans crowd into the primary and split the anti-Specter vote. If Specter can get past the primary, the controversial veteran has a lot going for him in his bid for reelection, especially without a strong Democratic candidate on the horizon.”

Oakland Police Massacre: A Desperate Act to Avoid Going Back to Prison
Lovelle Mixon didn’t want to go back to jail and at the same time couldn’t find employment that would give him another chance.

Brain-Dead Economic Reporting: If Wall Street Approves of Obama’s Plan, It Must Be a Winner!
The corporate media’s coverage of the administration’s bank rescue plan comforts the comfortable.

Pass the DREAM Act for a Healthy Economy
The DREAM Act lays the groundwork for justice: it must be passed.

The Obamas Kick Off a Victory Garden Movement — Who Will Join Them?
Now that there’s a White House veggie garden, what’s next? Schoolyards, retirement homes, vacant urban lots, governors’ mansions …

Just What Is a "Green Job" Anyway?
And will these jobs be as plentiful — and as worker-friendly — as the new administration would have us believe?

How Long Before NY Times Fires Roger Cohen For Taking On Neocons
Roger Cohen is a fearless columnist. In the New York Times, of all places, he challenges every Middle East assumption of the neocon right. He believes that the President’s greeting to Iran on Friday was a master stroke: “President Obama…

If President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Can’t Find a Way to Save the Financial System That Doesn’t Make a Small Number of People Hugely Rich, Then Maybe He Needs a New Treasury Secretary
President Obama’s team was filling the airwaves today with assurances that Congress and the American people really don’t mean to crack down the multimillion dollar paychecks on Wall Street. Actually, it looks the American people, insofar as they have any…

Rotwang Ruminates (3)
Could we organize a group tour for the Senate centrists to visit the rock-throwin monkey? Can we sign up Jon Corzine as Tim Geithner’s driver? The Democrats are in the tank for Hollywood. That’s why you can be executed for…

Romney Flip-Flops On Fealty To Reagan, Complains That ?Some In Washington? Think ?Deficits Don?t Matter?
On his radio show last night, right-wing talker Hugh Hewitt asked former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to react to President Obama’s budget proposal. “Well, the budget is very, very troubling,” replied Romney. Claiming that it was “something” that conservatives like him had “been saying for years,” Romney then complained that there are “some in Washington” who […]

On his radio show last night, right-wing talker Hugh Hewitt asked former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to react to President Obama’s budget proposal. “Well, the budget is very, very troubling,” replied Romney.

Claiming that it was “something” that conservatives like him had “been saying for years,” Romney then complained that there are “some in Washington” who think “that deficits don’t matter.”

HEWITT: Now let’s take a look at the budget that has been proposed by President Obama. I was just talking with John Campbell of the House Budget Committee, and we listened to Judd Gregg, your colleague, your supporter during the presidential campaign, saying it will bankrupt America in ten years and it can’t be serious. Your reaction to the budget?

ROMNEY: Well, the budget is very, very troubling. There is a perspective on the part of some in Washington that budgets don’t matter, that deficits don’t matter, that debt doesn’t matter, but the reality is that not only at some point does someone have to pay for it, and that’s something we’ve all been saying for years.

Listen here:

Romney’s use of the phrase “deficits don’t matter” recalls former Vice President Dick Cheney’s claim that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” when he was arguing for the Bush tax cuts in 2003:

O’Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush’s economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from “the corporate crowd,” a key constituency.

O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Back during the presidential campaign, Romney appeared to agree with Cheney. In Dec. 2007, Romney attacked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by saying, “He voted against the Bush tax cuts — twice.” “That’s failing Reagan 101.”

Though the Obama administration’s budget does increase deficit spending in the near term, the goal is to “cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.” This is a sharp contrast from Reagan’s near tripling of the deficit over his presidency and George W. Bush’s conversion of a $236 billion surplus when he took office into the $1.2 trillion deficit he passed to his successor.