The Hollywood Liberal

Late Late Night FDL: Pluto’s Christmas Tree
Pluto’s Christmas Tree. This Walt Disney cartoon was released on November 21, 1952. Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and aim your spitballs at the ushers please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

Pluto’s Christmas Tree.  This Walt Disney cartoon was released on November 21, 1952.

Directed by Jack Hannah.  Produced by Walt Disney.  Story by Bill Berg and Milt Schaffer.  Animation by Volus Jones, Bill Justice, George Kreisl, and Fred Moore.  Layouts by Yale Gracey.  Backgrounds by Thelma Witmer.  Visual Effects animation by George Rowley.  Voices (in alphabetical order) by Ruth Clifford (Minnie Mouse), Pinto Colvig (Pluto, Goofy), Dessie Flynn (Dale), James MacDonald (Mickey Mouse, Chip), and Clarence Nash (Donald Duck).  Original music by Joseph Dubin.

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and aim your spitballs at the ushers please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

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Sunday Talking Heads: December 12, 2010
Baby, it’s cold outside. Watertiger and Athenae will be Virtually Speaking this evening, tune in for some progressive talk. David Axelrod fills in for Timothy Geithner, who is recovering from a kidney stone “incident.” and there’s more…

Baby, it’s cold outside. Watertiger and Athenae will be Virtually Speaking this evening, tune in for some progressive talk.  David Axelrod fills in for Timothy Geithner, who is recovering from a kidney stone “incident.”  And there’s more…

Washington Journal: TBA

ABC’s This Week: Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod. The Middle East with the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, and Israeli opposition leader and former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Roundtable: George Will, Cokie Roberts, Matthew Dowd, Paul Krugman.

CBS’ Face The Nation: Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod.  Howard Dean and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

Chris Matthews: Andrea Mitchell, Michael Duffy, Helene Cooper, Andrew Sullivan.  Topics: Did Barack Obama Get Back on the Right Track This Week? Top Ten Political Gaffes of the Year.

CNN’s State of the Union: Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod. Then Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), two against the president’s compromise. Followed by Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) who will vote for it.  Foreign Affairs with Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence.

Fareed Zakaria – GPS: The Bush tax cut bill.  Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.  Christie Todd Whitman, and more.

Fox News Sunday: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Incoming Chair, Budget Committee and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) Incoming Ranking Member, Budget Committee.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on his new book and the current state of the Supreme Court.  Roundtable: Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, FNC Digital Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt, Juan Williams.  Power Player:  Ann Hand, patriotic jewelry designer.

NBC’s Meet The Press: Chair of the WH Council of Economic Advisers, Austan Goolsbee.  NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg.  Roundtable: Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Harold Ford Jr., Paul Gigot, Savannah Guthrie.

Newsmakers: Senate Armed Services Cmte. Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) speaks out against Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and 41 other GOP senators for their decision to block debate on any legislation other than tax cuts. The stand has caused a delay in taking up the Defense Authorization bill; if it continues then it will be the first time in four decades the Senate has failed to pass the legislation, according to Sen. Levin.

Q & A: Matthew Parris, columnist for The Times of London. He has also written for The Spectator magazine. While in his 20’s, he was parliamentary secretary for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Religions & Ethics: Haiti Unrest. Islamic School. Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin. An Unconventional History of Human Rights.

60 Minutes: The Next Speaker – Rep. John Boehner will become the speaker of the House next month, but few know this Ohio Republican beyond his life in Washington. Lesley Stahl profiles the man whose new role will place him at the top of the Republican Party and third in line for the presidency.  Brazil – As the U.S. and most of the world’s countries limp along after the crippling recession, Brazil is off and running with jobs, industry, and resources. The economic juggernaut is poised to become the fifth largest economy in the world.  Jerry Jones – A disappointed Cowboys owner, GM Jerry Jones says even his friend, the late George Steinbrenner, would fire him for the poor performance of his Dallas football team that many predicted would go to the Super Bowl.

To The Contrary: Topics: Executive Producer of “Precious,” Lisa Cortes discusses the challenges facing women in the film industry.  Panelists: Former EEOC Chair Cari Dominguez; Former Clinton Advisor Patricia Sosa; Writer/Blogger Danielle Belton; and 1 more TBA.  Web extra: Unhealthy Women –  Overall American women aren’t in the habit of taking good care of their bodies.

Univision’s Al Punto: Gaby Pacheco and  Lucina Martinez, Activists in Favor of the “Dream Act”; Otto Reich, Former United States Ambassador to Venezuela and Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Itzel Ortiz, National Coordinator of the “Paisano Program” in Mexico; and Julio Ligorría, Political Consultant.

Virtually Speaking: Watertiger and Athenae discuss the events of the week.

C-SPAN’s Book TV.

FDL Book Salon: Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement.  “In Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs, Wimsatt weaves a first-person tour of America’s cultural and political movements from 1985–2010. It’s a story about love, growing up, a generation coming of age, and a vision for the movement young people will create in the new decade.” Chat with Billy Wimsatt about his new book. Hosted by Josh Bolotsky, 5pm ET.

FDL Movie Night Monday: “We’re talkin’ POT, Humboldt style, with the doc-in-production ONE GOOD YEAR and director Mikal Jakubal.”

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Pakistan Papers Publish Faux WikiLeaks
An already fraught relationship between India and Pakistan got a bit more taut after a lapse of journalistic responsibility led several leading Pakistani papers to publish fabricated WikiLeaks cables that more resembled anti-Indian propaganda than diplomatic correspondence. The papers that published the fake cables have since acknowledged that they were hoaxed.—JCL Al-Jazeera English: Several leading Pakistani newspapers have acknowledged that they were hoaxed, after publishing reports based on fake WikiLeaks cables that contained crude anti-India propaganda. The reports, which featured prominently in several papers on Thursday, cited alleged US diplomatic cables as confirming many right-wing Pakistani views and conspiracy theories about the country’s arch enemy India and the disputed Kashmir region. Much of Pakistan’s media toes a pro-military, anti-Indian line, which was reflected by the papers’ extensive coverage of the fake memos. Read more

An already fraught relationship between India and Pakistan got a bit more taut after a lapse of journalistic responsibility led several leading Pakistani papers to publish fabricated WikiLeaks cables that more resembled anti-Indian propaganda than diplomatic correspondence.

The papers that published the fake cables have since acknowledged that they were hoaxed.—JCL

Al-Jazeera English:

Several leading Pakistani newspapers have acknowledged that they were hoaxed, after publishing reports based on fake WikiLeaks cables that contained crude anti-India propaganda.

The reports, which featured prominently in several papers on Thursday, cited alleged US diplomatic cables as confirming many right-wing Pakistani views and conspiracy theories about the country’s arch enemy India and the disputed Kashmir region.

Much of Pakistan’s media toes a pro-military, anti-Indian line, which was reflected by the papers’ extensive coverage of the fake memos.

Read more

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It’s A Wonderful Life 2010

In The Cold Climate of Politics, We?ll Miss Elizabeth Edwards? Warmth

Today Elizabeth Edwards was laid to rest. It’s a sad day for her family, her friends and her country. If there were ever a time in America when compassionate voices are needed, now is that time. Elizabeth had compassion for children, health care, equal rights, the poor, and ending war. In today’s America, where corporate […]

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Pakistani Ambassador Hosted Fundraiser For Neocon Think Tank
At Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel, Ali Gharib reports, “The Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. hosted a fundraiser at his residence for a neoconservative D.C. think-tank, which solicited donations of $5,000 for invitations to the event”: But the think-tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), didn’t bother to tell the Pakistani embassy that the […]

At Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel, Ali Gharib reports, “The Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. hosted a fundraiser at his residence for a neoconservative D.C. think-tank, which solicited donations of $5,000 for invitations to the event”:

But the think-tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), didn’t bother to tell the Pakistani embassy that the event was a fundraiser or that it was sandwiched in the middle of a two-and-a-half day conference on “Countering the Iranian Threat” put on by the group.

“We didn’t know at all that they have done this fundraising,” Imran Gardezi, a spokesperson for the Pakistani embassy, told the Middle East Channel. “And neither did they share with us that they would be doing this conference. Very frankly, we didn’t know about this conference.”

FDD’s president Cliff May — who, like his FDD colleague Reuel Marc Gerecht, is a strident advocate of aggressive action against Iran — denied that the event was a fundraiser, telling Gharib that “friends and supporters” were invited, and that there was no “quid-pro-quo” between the $5,000 donation and invitation to the dinner.

“I invited FDD donors at or above the $5,000 level to the event,” May wrote in a follow-up interview by e-mail. “Others friends of FDD were invited — at my discretion. Several FDD staff members were invited as well.”

The conference’s schedule reads:

7:00 pm
Dinner at the residence of one
of Washington’s noteworthy Ambassadors
(Closed to Media)
(Minimum $5,000 gift required. Contribute here, or for more information on becoming a donor, please contact [e-mail of FDD staffer removed])

Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani delivered brief remarks at his residence, but embassy spokesperson Imran Gardezi told Gharib that Iran was not an issue either during the dinner or Haqqani’s informal greeting:

“He made no remarks about Iran and there was no mention of Iran,” Gardezi said. “Anything prompting against Iran is, for Pakistan, unthinkable.”

300 Show Up In The Rain To Counterprotest 5 Westboro Protesters At Elizabeth Edwards? Funeral
Today, friends and families gathered in Raleigh, NC to mourn Elizabeth Edwards, who died this week after battling cancer. Outside, a small group of protesters from the extremist anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church picketed the event because they said Edwards “spent her life in defiance and disobedience to God.” The church regularly harasses the families of […]

Today, friends and families gathered in Raleigh, NC to mourn Elizabeth Edwards, who died this week after battling cancer. Outside, a small group of protesters from the extremist anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church picketed the event because they said Edwards “spent her life in defiance and disobedience to God.” The church regularly harasses the families of dead American soldiers by picketing homosexuality at their funerals with signs like “pray for more dead soldiers,” and “your sons are in hell.”

But at Edwards’ funeral today, the tiny group of hate mongers was confronted by more than300 counterprotesters, who turned out to stand against hate, despite the rain:

Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church picketed the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards in Raleigh, N.C. Saturday. But they were vastly outnumbered by a “human buffer” of people who quietly stood in the rain singing Christmas carols and carrying signs reading “God loves Elizabeth Edwards” or simply “Grace” and “Hope.” […]

In a 2007 interview, Mrs. Edwards described herself as “completely comfortable with gay marriage,” hence the Westboro protesters at the funeral. But on Saturday just five church members (two of them children) showed up to picket, waving hateful signs about Mrs. Edwards and the United Methodist Church where the service was held.

Watch a report from the local ABC affiliate:

For more on Edwards’ legacy, see ThinkProgress’ remembrance of her.

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