The Hollywood Liberal

Sunday Talking Heads: December 26, 2010
Lots of looking back and lots of looking forward.

Lots of looking back and lots of looking forward this morning, look around.

Washington Journal: No listings available.

ABC’s This Week: The unique challenges facing service members returning home from the frontlines with Bob Woodruff. Plus, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Peter Chiarelli. Also, Michelle Obama and  Jill Biden: What all Americans can do to support military families.  Then,  New York Times war reporter David Rohde, held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan and his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, and their new book, “Rope and a Prayer.”  Ending with Terry Moran with an Israeli and a Palestinian who through their deep loss are trying to bridge the gap.

CBS’ Face The Nation: Roundtable: Chip Reid, Chief W.H. Correspondent; Lara Logan, Chief Foreign Correspondent; David Martin, Nat’l Security Correspondent; Nancy Cordes, Congress Correspondent; Sharyl Attkisson, Investigative Correspondent.

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: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Then, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in an exclusive interview about the reports of terrorist threats this holiday season and the uproar over the TSA. Finally, Gen. Michael Hayden (Ret.) and Former Director of National Intelligence Vice Adm. Mike McConnell (Ret.).

Fareed Zakaria – GPS: A special edition “dedicated to restoring the dream and building the American middle class back up” with former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner, Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Fox News Sunday: Government spending, reducing the deficit, and tax reform with the Senate’s top fiscal hawk with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).  Then, the role of religion in politics with the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Roundtable: Bill Kristol, Nina Easton, Dana Perino, Juan Williams.

NBC’s Meet The Press: Valerie Jarrett. Roundtable: Tom Brokaw, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Peggy Noonan, Bob Woodward, taking stock of 2010.

Newsmakers: Gentry Collins. Recently, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele announced that he will run for reelection to his post, despite his rocky first term. Former RNC Political Director Gentry Collins announced that he will challenge Steele in his reelection bid, and joined C-SPAN’s Newsmakers to explain what qualities he would bring to the office.

Q & A: Q&A will feature comparisons and contrasts between the U.S. and the U.K. Using excerpts from our London interviews (Stephanie Flanders of the BBC, Lord John Wakeham of the House of Lords, Diane Abbot of the House of Commons, Matthew Parris of The Times of London, and Peter Knowles of the Parliamentary Channel), the program will focus on official differences in the two countries (how members are elected, impact of money in races, power of the Prime Minister) as well as specific issues (VAT taxes, housing benefits, out of wedlock children, and the costs of goods and services.)

Religion & Ethics: Look Back at 2010.

60 Minutes: Listings not available.

To The Contrary: Topics : 1- Deficit’s impact on family finances; 2- Should nurses help street addicts?  Panelists: Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Linda Chavez, Amanda Terkel, Karen Czarnecki.

Univision’s Al Punto: Rep.-Elect Francisco “Quico” Canseco, (R-TX); Rep.-Elect David Rivera, (R-FL); Rep. Loretta Sanchez, (D-CA); Rep. Raul Grijalva, (D-AZ); Gov. Jan Brewer, (R-AZ); Plácido Domingo, Opera Singer; Isabel Toledo, Clothing Designer; Armando Christian Perez, Cuban-American Rapper known as “Pitbull”; and Joaquin Cortes, Dancer.

Virtually Speaking: No show scheduled.

C-SPAN’s Book TV.

FDL Book Salon: No Book Salon this weekend.

FDL Movie Night Monday:

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Late Late Night FDL: Mice Follies
Tom and Jerry in Mice Follies. This Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon was released on September 4, 1954. Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the coffeetable, and try to keep the spitballs off the screen please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

Tom and Jerry in Mice Follies.  This Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon was released on September 4, 1954.

Directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna.  Produced by Fred Quimby.  Story by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna.  Animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Ray Patterson, and Irven Spence.  Backgrounds by Robert Gentle.  Music by Scott Bradley.

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the coffeetable, and try to keep the spitballs off the screen 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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Haiti Wraps Up an Unkind 2010
It’s been quite a year for Haiti. With election turmoil, a cholera epidemic and manifest misery almost a year after one of the most destructive earthquakes of recent times, Haiti still awaits reconstruction and many of the aid dollars promised to help it recover. —JCL Reuters: Maritza Monfort is singing along to a Christmas carol in Creole on the radio, but the Haitian mother of two is struggling to lift her spirits. “I sing to ease my pain. If I think too much, I’ll die,” said Monfort, 38, one of over a million Haitians made homeless by a January earthquake that plunged the poor, French-speaking Caribbean nation into the most calamitous year of its history. With a raging cholera epidemic and election turmoil heaping more death and hardship on top of the quake devastation, Haitians are facing an exceptionally bleak Christmas and New Year marked by the prospect of more suffering and uncertainty. Read more

It’s been quite a year for Haiti. With election turmoil, a cholera epidemic and manifest misery almost a year after one of the most destructive earthquakes of recent times, Haiti still awaits reconstruction and many of the aid dollars promised to help it recover. —JCL

Reuters:

Maritza Monfort is singing along to a Christmas carol in Creole on the radio, but the Haitian mother of two is struggling to lift her spirits.

“I sing to ease my pain. If I think too much, I’ll die,” said Monfort, 38, one of over a million Haitians made homeless by a January earthquake that plunged the poor, French-speaking Caribbean nation into the most calamitous year of its history.

With a raging cholera epidemic and election turmoil heaping more death and hardship on top of the quake devastation, Haitians are facing an exceptionally bleak Christmas and New Year marked by the prospect of more suffering and uncertainty.

Read more

Related Entries

• December 23, 2010 For Biden, Mission Accomplished
• December 22, 2010 Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’

California Count Off by 1.5 Million?
State officials say that federal nose-counters overlooked 1.5 million California residents in the 2010 census, a mistake that could ultimately cost the state billions of dollars in federal money over the next 10 years and even a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. —JCL Los Angeles Times: California officials estimate that the U.S. Census Bureau failed to count 1.5 million of the state’s residents, a discrepancy that if true could cost the state billions of dollars in federal aid over the next decade and perhaps an increase in its representation in Congress. On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released national and state population figures that declared California to have 37.3 million residents, 10% more than in 2000. That growth — based on mailed-in surveys and door-to-door interviews by census takers — roughly mirrored the nation’s, but meant that for the first time since California became a state in 1850 it did not grow enough to add another member to its congressional delegation. But according to the state Department of Finance, the state’s population was 38.8 million on July 1. That figure is drawn from birth and death statistics, school-enrollment data, driver’s license address changes, tax returns and Medicare enrollment, a set of data points that provides a “more refined” picture of the population, according to H.D. Palmer, a finance department spokesman. Read more

State officials say that federal nose-counters overlooked 1.5 million California residents in the 2010 census, a mistake that could ultimately cost the state billions of dollars in federal money over the next 10 years and even a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. —JCL

Los Angeles Times:

California officials estimate that the U.S. Census Bureau failed to count 1.5 million of the state’s residents, a discrepancy that if true could cost the state billions of dollars in federal aid over the next decade and perhaps an increase in its representation in Congress.

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released national and state population figures that declared California to have 37.3 million residents, 10% more than in 2000. That growth — based on mailed-in surveys and door-to-door interviews by census takers — roughly mirrored the nation’s, but meant that for the first time since California became a state in 1850 it did not grow enough to add another member to its congressional delegation.

But according to the state Department of Finance, the state’s population was 38.8 million on July 1. That figure is drawn from birth and death statistics, school-enrollment data, driver’s license address changes, tax returns and Medicare enrollment, a set of data points that provides a “more refined” picture of the population, according to H.D. Palmer, a finance department spokesman.

Read more

Related Entries

• December 23, 2010 For Biden, Mission Accomplished
• December 22, 2010 Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’

Obama Returns To End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care…

Obama Caps Quiet Christmas By Visiting U.S. Troops
HONOLULU — President Barack Obama capped a quiet Christmas Saturday with a surprise visit to a Marine base to thank U.S. troops for the sacrifices…

Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup
This week, the supposedly lame duck Congress and shellac-shocked president came together and produced a flurry of good legislation. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is another step on our path towards a more perfect union. The START Treaty should have been a no-brainer (is there anyone outside of Tehran or Pyongyang in favor of more nukes?) but is nonetheless a solid national security success. And the passage of a diminished bill covering the health costs of 9/11 first responders is, literally, the least we could do for them. So the president has earned his vacation. But when he gets back from Hawaii, he needs to make sure that he puts job creation and the plight of the nearly 27 million Americans out of work or underemployed front and center, and doesn’t get caught up in the political and financial establishment’s focus on the deficit. Let’s not rearrange the furniture while the economic house goes up in flames.

Lawmakers Seek Cash During Key Votes
Numerous times this year, members of Congress have held fundraisers and collected big checks while they are taking critical steps to write new laws, despite…

Jeff Sessions Rants Against Judicial Nominees With ‘ACLU DNA’ (VIDEO)
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) railed against President Barack Obama’s nominees to the federal bench on Tuesday afternoon, complaining that Obama was only nominating individuals with “ACLU DNA” and rattling off a list of potential judges who are now or have ever been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Bryan Fischer: Obama Wants ‘Indian Tribes To Be Our New Overlords’
Top social conservative Bryan Fischer is outraged that “President Obama wants to give the entire land mass of the United States of America back to the Indians. He wants Indian tribes to be our new overlords.”

Gov. McDonnell Says No Way To New DADT For Va. National Guard
A state lawmaker from Virginia is so upset about the Congress repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell that he wants to institute a mini-DADT banning gay men and lesbians from the Virginia National Guard. “It’s a distraction when I’m on the…

The Tattlesnake – I Read the News Today, Oh, Boy! Edition
A Christmas retread from the past. For once, the old curmudgeon will climb down off his sarcastic perch and scribble about a story I read in a local newspaper years ago. I don’t remember the family’s name right now, but I recall the gist: A middle-class father and his two pre-teen boys were driving around Lower Wacker […]

Another Score: Joe Biden & Ad Melkert Deliver on Iraq
Remember Iraq? Well, for the moment, it is not blowing up or engaged in a raging civil war — and thus is not at the height of the news. Which is sad. Iraq, for the time being, is stabilizing –…

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ACLU?s Holiday Message Labeled ?Suspicious Activity? By Tennessee Counter-Terrorism Officials
Tennessee’s state counter-terrorism officials at the Tennessee Fusion Center maintain an open-source internet map which identifies “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee found its way briefly onto the map earlier this month, after the civil rights group penned a letter to school superintendents encouraging “schools to be […]

Tennessee’s state counter-terrorism officials at the Tennessee Fusion Center maintain an open-source internet map which identifies “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee found its way briefly onto the map earlier this month, after the civil rights group penned a letter to school superintendents encouraging “schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.” The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports what happened next:

The Fusion Center’s Internet map is part of a national map maintained by globalincidentmap.com. Information is provided by agencies across the U.S. It includes various blinking icons. The map’s label originally was titled Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.

Near Nashville, a blinking hexagon-shaped symbol with an exclamation point read “ACLU cautions TN schools about ‘observing one religious holiday.’” The hexagon symbol, when clicked on, originally stated “suspicious activity.” But it later was changed to say “general nonincident terrorism news” after inquiries by reporters.

Mike Browning, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Homeland Security, acknowledged that listing ACLU’s letter as a terrorist incident “was a mistake.” ACLU-Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg responded, “I will take at their word that they made a mistake by posting it under terrorism activity…[but] I have not heard a good explanation for why school resource officers, who have a very important job in schools, would at all be interested or need to know about the letter we sent to local school superintendents about the need to keep holiday celebrations all inclusive.”

Rick Scott?s Economic Advisers Manipulate Research To Claim Unemployed Are Lazy And Don?t Try To Find Jobs
Rick Scott, the corrupt and fraudulent former health care executive who is soon to be Florida’s next Governor, received a report from his economic transition team this week that recommended he needs to crack down on the unemployed. Scott’s economic team, headed by the state’s most affluent business leaders, quoted research by former Obama administration […]

Rick Scott, the corrupt and fraudulent former health care executive who is soon to be Florida’s next Governor, received a report from his economic transition team this week that recommended he needs to crack down on the unemployed. Scott’s economic team, headed by the state’s most affluent business leaders, quoted research by former Obama administration official Alan Krueger to claim that the unemployed are lazy and need to be driven off unemployment benefits:

“According to [former U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan] Krueger’s research, the amount of time people on UC spent looking for a job averaged only 20 minutes a day! Within 2 weeks of UC ending, that increased but to only 70 minutes a day,” states the document, noting that the median duration of unemployment benefits receipt has increased nationally from 10 weeks to 18.7 weeks.

The team’s recommendations: tighten job-search requirements for people getting benefits, cut off assistance for those who don’t comply and assign community work for those who don’t get a job in 12 weeks. Goals: increase employment and reduce the payout of unemployment benefits, as well as the unemployment compensation tax burden on businesses.

Krueger, who is a well-regarded professor of economics at Princeton University, took issue with the characterization of his research.

First, he said, the research — which was conducted during the stronger economic period of the mid 2000s — actually shows that the average amount of time spent job-searching is double what the report says — more than 40 minutes a day, not 20.

Secondly, “the unemployed in the U.S. devote more time searching for a job than unemployed workers in other countries,” Krueger wrote in an e-mail, “yet they [Scott’s team] make it seem that the unemployed put little effort into finding a job.”

And lastly, he added that the real problem faced by the unemployed today “is lack of jobs, not overly generous benefits.” The team, he said, “misspelled my name and misused my study!”

Unemployed Floridians reacted with disgust when told of the Scott team’s assertion. “That’s stupid,” said Freddy Pacheco, an unemployed 61-year-old woman. She told Tampa Bay Online that she spends about four or five hours a day, three days a week, looking for work. Unemployed Florida resident Laura Mroczko also dismissed the report. “Look around,” she said, pointing at a line of people at the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance jobs agency searching for work. “These people are here looking for work. You can’t survive on what unemployment pays you.”

Obama’s Hawaii vacation mixes golf with such topics as arms pact and reelection
President Obama begins his 11-day vacation in Hawaii with golf, then time on the beach with his daughters. While relaxing, he is also considering three major issues: ideas to overhaul his internal White House staff; a replacement for Lawrence H. Summers, the outgoing director of the National Economi

The Christmas Spirit
Jay Ambrose, Detroit News
If you've somehow been in a Rip Van Winkle sleep and have awakened without knowing what season it is, you might catch on by seeing how niceness is suddenly directing traffic or how smiles surround us wherever we go. While making my way through a traffic jam the other day, I could not help being impressed by driver courtesies. Later, I encountered great gobs of gladness while poking around in a shopping mall. Then, on returning home and scouting out news on the Internet, I bumped into three tales of a giving spree. AdvertisementThe stories were about red kettles, the Salvation Army…

Deck the Halls with News of Jolly
Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail
Jump to main navigation Jump to main content Christmas is not my favourite time of year. It makes me want to kick the cat. To cheer myself up, I have compiled this roundup of good news. This is the news you never hear about because of all the gloomy news. I guarantee that it will lift your spirits (especially if you like your spirits).Go ahead, have another rum and eggnog.Booze is not only good for your health, it’s also better than you think. It’s long been known that moderate drinkers live longer than abstainers. But now it turns out that even heavy drinkers live longer…

Why I Won’t Move to New York
Eric Torbenson, New York Post

The Economic Year in Review
Irwin Stelzer, Weekly Standard
Hot Topics: To forward this article to a friend, please fill out the form below:* Required Fields* Required FieldsGet alerts when there is a new article that might interest you.As we look back on the year that is limping to an end, there is little"”not nothing, just little"”to cheer about. The year opened with the headline unemployment rate at 9.7 percent, and the rate including workers too discouraged to look for work or involuntarily on short-time (the U-6 rate, in the jargon of the trade) at 16.5 percent of the work force. It is closing with…

As Population Grows, So Must the U.S. House
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
LARGER FAMILIES need larger houses. A larger nation does, too.With the release of the 2010 Census data, the decennial rejiggering of the nation’s political map has begun. Eight states will be gaining seats in the US House of Representatives, while 10 states’ House delegations will shrink. Among the winners are Texas, where the number of residents has soared by 4.3 million since the 2000 Census; Utah, whose population is up more than 530,000; and Washington, which has grown 14 percent, to 6.7 million.It stands to reason that states with more people are allotted more House…