The Hollywood Liberal

Budget Deficits and Blow Up Dolls: It’s the Economy Stupid!
In the movie Lars and the Real Girl, the main character imagines that a female blow-up doll is his fiancé. To humor Lars, his brother and sister-in-law go along with the charade. Over the course of the movie, more people…

A Pro-Unity Government Palestinian Minister from Fatah Speaks Out
Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of hosting Advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestine Minister for Economic Development Mohammad Shtayyeh in my office to discuss the status of Palestinian Government unity government talks between Fatah and Hamas….

The LiberalOasis Radio Show: Media Still Lame Edition

Today at 10 AM ET, The LiberalOasis Radio Show was broadcast on WHMP-AM in Western MA. My special guest was Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America, who analyzed the sad state of the traditional media in the Obama Era.

The audio podcast for the show is here: (iTunes / XML feed / MP3).

Video of the opening monologue is below, on the status of the budget and what it means for our efforts to secure health care for all and solve the climate crisis.

Reid To Critics Of ?Moderate? Democrats: You?re ?Very Unwise And Not Helpful?
In recent weeks, a number of progressive groups and commentators have criticized Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) for his attempts to organize his fellow Conservative Democrats into a new Blue Dog-style caucus that will work to “restrain the influence of party liberals in the White House and on Capitol Hill.” Now, however, Majority Leader Harry Reid […]

In recent weeks, a number of progressive groups and commentators have criticized Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) for his attempts to organize his fellow Conservative Democrats into a new Blue Dog-style caucus that will work to “restrain the influence of party liberals in the White House and on Capitol Hill.” Now, however, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is telling the Bayh critics to back off. This morning at a breakfast briefing with reporters, Reid called the critiques “very unwise and not helpful“:

“I think it’s very unwise and not helpful,” Reid said Friday morning. “These groups should leave them alone. It’s not helpful to me. It’s not helpful to the Democratic Caucus.”

Reid, who said he hadn’t seen or heard the ads, added that “most of [the groups] run very few ads — they only to do it to get a little press on it.”

Later, Reid said he had “no qualms” with Bayh’s new Blue Dog-style coalition and told reporters that “‘any public statements’ Senate moderates have made have been helpful.” But as Rachel Maddow noted earlier this week, at the moment, the only result of Bayh forming his group has been to give Republicans “way more power” than they otherwise would have.

Reid’s comments appear to grow out of a fear that progressive criticisms of Bayh and his fellow Conservative Democrats might upset them so much that they would vote against Obama’s agenda out of anger. But some of Bayh’s allies are already indicating that they may be opposed.

Rep. Issa pushing to limit first lady?s power to ?protect? her ?historic role.?
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his conservative allies are pushing for legislation that would limit the first lady’s ability to do substantive policy work. Issa had originally proposed the bill last year, in fear of Bill Clinton moving back in to the White House. But he insists the bill is only about ensuring “transparency” for […]

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his conservative allies are pushing for legislation that would limit the first lady’s ability to do substantive policy work. Issa had originally proposed the bill last year, in fear of Bill Clinton moving back in to the White House. But he insists the bill is only about ensuring “transparency” for the work of first ladies, adding, “We are trying actually to protect the historic role of the first lady.” Or, as Gawker summed up Issa’s proposal in its headline, “Congressman Wants Michelle Obama To Shut Up And Look Pretty.”

N.Y. Special Election Is Too Close to Call
NEW YORK, March 27 — The only competitive House race in the nation entered its final weekend as a virtual dead heat, with Democratic newcomer Scott Murphy taking a slight lead in the traditionally conservative Republican district, according to a new poll released today.

Obama Announces Strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan
President Obama introduced his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan yesterday with a threat assessment familiar from the Bush administration. “The terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks,” he said, are continuing to devise plots designed to “kill as many of our people as they…

Support Growing for Major Changes to Health-Care System
The fault lines are emerging in the upcoming battle over health-care reform.

Transcript: Obama Announces New Afghanistan, Pakistan Strategies
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Good morning. Please be seated.

Baghdad in Fragments
Michael Totten, MichaelJTotten.com

Obama Right to Persevere on Health Care Reform

The Teleprompter is Not a Crutch
Michael Gerson, Washington Post

Rare Red Meat

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• March 27, 2009 Jonathan Shapiro on ‘The Tyranny of Dead Ideas’
• March 26, 2009 Art Imitates Life
• March 26, 2009 Going Postal
• March 26, 2009 Daring to Utter the T Word
• March 26, 2009 Inside Bush’s War on Birth Control

What You Dig

Here are the five most-read stories from the last week, including Chris Hedges on America’s moral meltdown and Robert Scheer on the economic incompetents who find easy employment in the Obama administration. Full list after the jump.

Note: Two of these items were actually published earlier than this week, but were so popular they still made it into the top five.

1. Chris Hedges on Education’s Role in Capitalist Abuses
“America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout”—The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. Our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.

2. Robert Scheer on Obama’s Lousy Economic Team
“Obama’s Toxic Advisers”—Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who is independent in spirit as well as party label, has placed a hold on President Obama’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Sounds like a minor issue to get worked up about, but I see this appointment as further evidence that the president has entrusted his economic policy to the wrong people.

3. Robert Scheer on the AIG Swindle
“Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses”—There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York’s top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history.

4. Scott Ritter on the Climate Crisis
“Obama’s Plan to Save the World”—Forget about terrorism for a moment. The potential catastrophe that climate change could unleash on America makes every other national security crisis pale in comparison. President Obama cannot secure the homeland without addressing this global emergency.

5. The Truthdig Book Review Edited by Steve Wasserman
“Jacob Heilbrunn on Alger Hiss”—Susan Jacoby’s lucid new book reminds us that the Hiss case offered a vengeful postwar right a golden opportunity to tar the New Deal as a crypto-communist conspiracy—and why it still matters.

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

Related Entries

• March 27, 2009 Jonathan Shapiro on ‘The Tyranny of Dead Ideas’
• March 26, 2009 Newspapers’ Self-Inflicted Wounds
• March 26, 2009 Drugs, Guns and Reality
• March 26, 2009 Obama to Send Even More Troops to Afghanistan
• March 26, 2009 Daring to Utter the T Word

Obama’s Afghanistan Plan: 4,000 More Troops
WASHINGTON — Grappling with a war gone awry, President Barack Obama plans to send thousands more U.S. forces into Afghanistan, hoping to hasten the end…

Robert Schlesinger: Laura Tyson: “The Democratic Coalition Is Badly Broken”
Laura Tyson, on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, says that the “Democratic coalition is badly broken.” Do you suppose that struggle over how to…

Tom Vander Ark: In Favor of Risk
Risk capital made this country great — that and an amazing foundation of founding principles. But we’re getting ready to send risk capital overseas.

Howie Klein: Paul Ryan Throws A Poisoned T-Bone Towards The Blue Dogs
John Spratt (D-SC) has long been considered a decent moderate and a budget hawk. Unlike the Republican party-line rubber stamps, he believes the emergency…

Shannyn Moore: Palin Appoints “W.A.R.”
Governor Palin just nominated Wayne Anthony Ross as the new attorney general. He’s anti-choice advocate and NRA official, is a blatant pander to the base Sarah Palin is hoping to woo in the 2012 election.

NY Times mag sends a sports and music writer to do a science writer’s job

For an article to be published March 29, The New York Times Magazine sent Nicholas Dawidoff, whom Brad Johnson refers to as a “baseball writer” and who has not previously written about science for the Times, to profile physicist and global warming skeptic Freeman Dyson. Dawidoff, who has published four books — The Fly Swatter, a biography of his grandfather Alexander Gerschenkron; In the Country of Country, a collection of biographies of country musicians; The Catcher Was A Spy: The Mysterious Life Of Moe Berg; and The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball — and began his career covering baseball for Sports Illustrated, allowed Dyson to advance the falsehood that in the 1970s, there was a widespread belief that the earth was cooling that is tantamount to the current global warming consensus. Dawidoff also quoted Dyson accusing Al Gore of being global warming’s “chief propagandist” and “an opportunist” and scientist James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, of “consistently exaggerat[ing] all the dangers” of global warming.

New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin reported in a New York Times Dot Earth blog post that Hansen responded to Dyson’s characterization, writing: “Mr. Dyson’s own analytical work on climate and greenhouse gases is very limited, however, which is why James Hansen of NASA, whose work is strongly challenged by Mr. Dyson in the magazine story, fires back that Mr. Dyson ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ ”

According to a Nexis search, Dawidoff has written the following articles for The New York Times Magazine:

• A December 28, 2008, article about lyricist Lew Spence, headlined “A Tune for His Times.”
• An August 22, 2008, article headlined “John McEnroe Is Still Pretty Complicated.”
• A December 30, 2007, article about tennis player Gloria Connors, mother of tennis star Jimmy Connors, headlined “Mom vs. the World.”
• A December 28, 2003, article about New York Mets fan and frequent caller to New York City radio station WFAN Doris Bauer headlined “THE LIVES THEY LIVED; Doris of Rego Park.”
• An October 13, 2003, article about Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, headlined “Mr. Washington Goes to Mississippi.”
• An August 26, 2001, article about the 2001 baseball season, headlined “The Way We Live Now: 8-26-01; Hurts So Good.”
• An August 12, 2001, article about the Mets’ minor league stadium in Brooklyn, headlined “The House That Rudy Built.”
• An April 4, 1999, article about the beginning of the 1999 baseball season, headlined “The Way We Live Now: 4-4-99 — Vocal Minority; The Tyranny of the Slugger.”
• An October 19, 1997, article about newspaper columnist Sidney Zion headlined “Hopefuls, Street Toughs; Power Brokers; Networkers; Strivers; Grande Dames; Musclemen; Exiles; Reformers; Purists; Clones; Big Mouths; Outsiders; Air Kissers; Fanatics; Gossips; Nightclubbers; The Last Smoke-Filled Room.”
• A January 26, 1997, article about Bruce Springsteen entering the political arena, headlined “The Pop Populist.”
• A December 29, 1996, article about bluegrass singer Bill Monroe, headlined “GOOD SAD.”

Dawidoff has also written the following pieces printed in other sections of The New York Times:

• A June 15, 2008, op-ed about his father’s mental illness, headlined “The Man Who Wasn’t There.”
• A June 1, 2008, article for the Times‘ former quarterly sports magazine “Play” (a separate section from The New York Times Magazine) about sports fans, headlined “These Total Stangers Are My Family.”
• An October 4, 2005, op-ed about the Peck Slip boulevard in New York City, headlined “Catch of the Day.”
• An October 30, 2004, op-ed about the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series, headlined “What Boston Won, What Boston Lost.”
• A September 29, 2002, book review of former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent’s book The Last Commissioner, headlined “A Kid in a Candy Store.”
• A March 30, 2002, op-ed about baseball teams’ payrolls, headlined “Buying Up Baseball’s Possibilities.”
• An October 20, 2001, op-ed about resuming the Major League Baseball playoff series after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, headlined “It’s Still O.K. to Root Against the Yankees.”
• A March 23, 2000, op-ed about playing major league games in Japan, headlined “The International Pastime?”
• A May 30, 1999, book review of Marcos Breton and Jose Luis Villegas’ book Away Games, headlined “The Dominican National Pastime.”