The Hollywood Liberal

Repubs Seek $4 Trillion in Cuts
A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president’s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as major changes to the Medicare and Medicaid health-care programs.

On Wisconsin!
Well the first referendum day is here.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the opposition cannot get people out in numbers to toss out Scott Walker’s sexist, pedophile enabling, Koch purchased rubber stamp David Prosser (other than that I’m sure he’s a nice guy) it is going to be real depressing.

But maybe people in Wisconsin want more of this:

Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?

It’s all in the family.

His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year’s governor’s race.

Few if any realiable polls on this one…after all who expected much of it? But there are some good signs:

Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said early absentee voting was “unusually high” for an April election and that the pace exceeds that of last fall’s governor’s race. Madison officials have ordered more absentee ballots.

?

Late, Late Night FDL: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water

What’s on your mind tonite…?

?

KSM Headed to Kangaroo Kourt
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to masterminding the 9/11 terror attacks sometime during or after his 183 waterboardings, will face a military tribunal now that the Obama administration has given up on the idea of trying to convict him in the U.S. justice system.  —PZS BBC: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and four alleged co-conspirators will be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, not a civilian court. “We simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. The Obama administration abandoned plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a US court, amid fierce opposition. Read more

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to masterminding the 9/11 terror attacks sometime during or after his 183 waterboardings, will face a military tribunal now that the Obama administration has given up on the idea of trying to convict him in the U.S. justice system.? —PZS

BBC:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and four alleged co-conspirators will be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, not a civilian court.

“We simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

The Obama administration abandoned plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a US court, amid fierce opposition.

Read more

Related Entries

• March 27, 2011 The Surprising New Class Politics
• March 14, 2011 Awake

This Is What Resistance Looks Like
The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left.

By Chris Hedges

The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left.

Related Entries

• March 27, 2011 The Surprising New Class Politics
• March 14, 2011 Awake

ARTINFO: Is The Removal Of The Maine Labor Mural Illegal?
Last weekend, Maine’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, had a 36-foot mural removed from the state’s labor department after claiming that it was “one-sided.” The mural…

Mike Huckabee’s Secrecy Problem
There’s a Mike Huckabee mystery that won’t go away. Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother…

West Virginia Mine Disaster: One Year Later, Safety Overhaul Stalled
NEW YORK — A year after the worst coal mining accident in decades took the lives of 29 workers, prompting urgent calls to revamp oversight…

Dave Johnson: Budget Cuts Kill The Middle Class
For most people the “American Dream” is to be in the middle class, or to raise yourself up to be in the middle class. And…

Tavis Smiley: Remembering Dr. Manning Marable
Dr. Manning Marable, author of the epic new biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, was scheduled to appear on my program in a few days to discuss his book. Sadly, he passed away on Friday.

Fox News Figures Demand That Countries Pay For U.S. Military Presence

Several Fox News figures have recently demanded that countries hosting an American military presence reimburse the U.S. financially.

Fox News Hosts Have Demanded Iraqi Oil As Reimbursement For Invasion

Beck On Iraq: “We Take The Oil To A Certain Point” To “Pay Us Back.” From Glenn Beck’s radio show:

GLENN BECK: Here’s the problem. We went in and we freed Iraq. Now, we may not like what it looks like, but it is certainly better than the torture chambers. You know, if you really want to go back there, it’d be great if we would have not killed Saddam Hussein. And at this point we would have just said, you know what guys, if you want him back, we got him in a prison, we’ll just give him back to you. And we got all the Ba’athists and everything else, yeah, yeah, you know what, we’re just going to put them all back. Instead what we did is we killed him, and everybody forgets how bad it was, and then we give the oil to somebody else. How did we not get at least the oil to repay us for what we did?

[…]

BECK: I’m not saying that we take the oil – and, you know, we take the oil and we get it now for all time. We take the oil to a certain point. We say, this is what this war cost, you’re paying this back. And we’re gonna take the oil – not all of it, we’re gonna let you have money, etc, etc. But we’re gonna take off the side, you pay us back for this amount of money. Period. And we never did it.

PAT GRAY: Seems fair.

BECK: Seems absolutely fair. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 4/1/11]

Hannity: “The Iraqis, With All Their Oil Resources, Need [To] Pay Us Back For Their Liberation.” From Sean Hannity’s Fox News interview with Gary Johnson:

SEAN HANNITY: I actually have had an idea. Nobody listens to little old Sean Hannity. But I’m like, I think the Iraqis, with all their oil resources, need pay us back for their liberation. Every single solitary penny.

GARY JOHNSON: I really –

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: I really thought that from the beginning.

HANNITY: Yes.

JOHNSON: I thought — I was kind of part of the deal.

HANNITY: Should have been part of the deal. Right?

JOHNSON: Should have been part of the deal.

HANNITY: I think it should be now. I think they owe us a lot for that. [Fox News, Hannity, 5/7/10, via Nexis]

Fox & Friends Nods In Agreement With Trump On Iraq: “We Should Just Stay There And Take The Oil.” From Fox News regular guest Donald Trump’s weekly segment on Fox & Friends:

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Did you get any fallout, Donald, from your comments about what America should did in Iraq, after your interview with O’Reilly? 

DONALD TRUMP: No, I tell ya, I had an amazing response from the O’Reilly show. It’s probably the biggest show he’s ever done in the sense of three fairly full nights of me–

BRIAN KILMEADE: Yeah.

CARLSON: [laughing]

TRUMP: And he was very happy, ’cause as he will tell you, his ratings were phenomenal. So he was very, very happy.

STEVE DOOCY: Sure.

TRUMP: But we had three really amazing nights. And no, I very simply said that Iran is going to take over Iraq, and if that’s going to happen, we should just –

KILMEADE: Stay.

TRUMP: Stay there and take the oil. They want the oil. And why should we — we denuded Iraq, Iran’s gonna walk in, take it over, take over the second largest oil fields in the world. That’s going to happen. That would mean that all of those soldiers that have died and been wounded and everything else would have died in vain–

DOOCY: Right.

TRUMP: And I don’t want that to happen. I want them to be — I want their parents and their families to be proud. The last thing I want to see happen is for Iran to go in and take over Iraq and the oil fields of Iraq, because we weakened that country to a point where they can just walk in. So I say, we take the oil.

CARLSON: [laughing]

TRUMP: You know, in the old days, when you won a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You kept it.

DOOCY: Sure.

TRUMP: We win a war, and we hand it over to some people we don’t know, and we leave. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/4/11]

Hannity Also Said Of Kuwait: “We Have Every Right To Go In There And Frankly, Take All Their Oil And Make Them Pay For The Liberation.” On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said:

HANNITY: All right, one other thing. I interviewed Donald Trump earlier this week and we were talking about OPEC and it infuriates me, gas is now going up to three, four, five dollars a gallon again. You know, we’re going to head up into that territory, which is another tax on the American people.

We have all this oil in this country. Every time the oil debate comes up, we get lectured, oh it’s going to take years to do it. We could literally do this immediately and here it is Kuwait, this country would not exist for us and their oil minister is out there lecturing us and basically said, no, no, you can handle that. Get used to it. We’re going to jack it up.

JANIE JOHNSON: Wondering when the liberals are going to blame the high prices on Bush and Cheney?

HANNITY: That’s going to happen, too.

ELISE JORDAN: It’s just so disgusting. I really think we need to use our leverage here against these autocrats and not be pushed around when we’re the ones securing Kuwait.

We’re the ones securing the Saudis and they’re bragging, you know, now, $100 a barrel. But what I think is interesting though, they aren’t factoring in Iraq and Iraq’s increased oil production over the next —

HANNITY: But there’s two things I said. I said, why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones and have injured soldiers, and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation?

For the Kuwait oil minister, how short his memory is? You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly, take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation as these sheiks, et cetera, et cetera, you know, were living in hotels in London and New York as Trump pointed out and now they’re gouging us and say, of course we can withstand that. [Fox News, Hannity, 1/14/11]

Fox News Figures Have Also Demanded Arab Countries Pay For Libya Intervention

Beck On Libya: “I Tell You What: We’ll Help You, You Write Us a Big, Fat Check.” From Beck’s radio show:

BECK: Let me ask you this. The Arab nations all get together, and they’re like, “oh, you got to help us with Libya.” Well why aren’t you paying for it? I tell you what: we’ll help you, you write us a big, fat check right now. Otherwise, what are we sending an aircraft carrier over there for? What are we doing? You pay for it. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 4/1/11]

Fox’s Varney, Payne, And Willis Want Arab League “Charge[d]” For Libya Intervention. From Fox’s Cavuto on Business:

STUART VARNEY: Well, talk about getting stuck with the bill. The pentagon says we’re spending $55 million a day on this war that is not a war, a number that will be on low end. And we’re still shelling out the dough, even though we’ve passed off control to our NATO allies. And get this; the Arab League, which pushed the non-war, is bashing America in this non-war. It’s not required to pay anything. Gerri, this is a bad check.

GERRI WILLIS: Well, it’s not required to pay a dime. The Arab League said, hey, let’s have a no-fly zone, but we’re not going to give you any money for it. In the meantime, they’re gonna make a trillion dollars this year from oil profits, because oil’s gone a hundred bucks a barrel. So, that’s not good news. Those 22 nations in the Arab League, they’re really benefitting from the work we’re doing over there, and our allies, because if we’re gonna bring peace to the region, it’s gonna be more stable, yet we’re footing the bill.

VARNEY: So, should we charge ’em?

WILLIS: Yes.

VARNEY: Charles Payne, should we charge ’em?

CHARLES PAYNE: Yeah, well, we should charge them, but also you know, Italy, Greece, I mean, Italy, France, let’s be honest, I mean they needed this more than anybody needed this. And I don’t know if we’re returning a favor or what exactly is going on. By the way, this is looking already like the Bay of Pigs, 2011 version. And so, this $55 million number is going to go a lot higher, because we’re going to have to expend more Tomahawks to try and turn this thing around, because these rebels have no clue what they’re doing, no leadership. But the whole thing is really very, very interesting because of this war that is not a war, and the fact that we’re once again footing the bill, and we really don’t still at this point — despite the president’s address — we still don’t know why we’re over there. [Fox News, Cavuto on Business, 4/2/11]

Ken Salazar Denies BP In Talks To Resume Drilling In The Gulf
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pushed back against reports that BP is in talks to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, almost a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout killed 11 workers and dumped 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean, calling those reports a “misconception.”

Human Rights Group Says Obama’s KSM Trial Decision Is ‘Clearly’ Political
The administration’s huge reversal on the issue, about to be announced by Attorney General Eric Holder, goes against what Obama said from the earliest days of his 2008 campaign.

The new definition of crazy: Our wars on Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq & drugs
Recently I’ve become a fan of ABC’s new television show “Off the Map,” and last week’s plot featured a schizophrenic woman who kept imagining things that didn’t really exist in the real world. Inside of her own mind, however, it was a different story — and, as far as she was concerned, the scary phantoms […]

Gridlock in the Senate
Roll Call reports that the legislative pace in the Senate, already described as a “crawl,” is about to become “glacial.”

“With the Republican-controlled House sending Senate Democrats one dead-on-arrival bill after another, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid(D-Nev.) has spent the first three months of this Congress clearing the decks of a handful of relatively noncontroversial measures. But Senate Democrats acknowledge that they could reach the end of the line this week with passage of a small-business bill that has already eaten up two weeks of floor time.”

“Senators on both sides of the aisle said the debate over how to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and the looming clash over raising the debt ceiling have poisoned the well for House-Senate negotiations on other legislative items. They suggested that after those issues have been resolved there could be a better chance for cross-Dome compromise.”

Warning Signs for the Republicans
Charlie Cook says Republican pollsters and strategists see reasons for concern “that haven’t been heard in almost two years.”

“Among the worries the party now has is that a government shutdown could get blamed on the GOP. Additionally, these party insiders believe that taking on entitlements, specifically Medicare, could jeopardize the party’s hold on the House, its strong chances of taking the Senate and the stronghold that the party has been established with older white voters — not coincidentally, Medicare recipients.”

Key issue: “Part of what is happening is that there is a giant gap between the attitudes of Republican base voters and those who are swing voters.”

Quote of the Day
“The only thing I’m running for is the county line.”

— Former Sen. Carte Goodwin (D-WV), quoted by the Charleston Daily Mail, saying he has no plans to run for public office.

Floods, Earthquakes, Landslides: Are We to Blame for So Many Disasters?
We are remaking the world, and quickly; we are stumbling into a new way of thinking about disaster, where neither God nor nature, but man is to blame.

Why Gov. LePage Can’t Erase History, And Why We Need a Fighter In The White House
Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also…

Libya Speech — Echoes of the ’90s and ’00s, Guideposts for the ’10s
For a sizable segment of the foreign policy community, the genocides and humanitarian crises of the 1990s were a formative experience. In other words, as we debate the response to Libya, many of us can’t helping thinking back to the…