The Hollywood Liberal

Rick Santorum: ?I Have Gay Friends And I Respect Their Decision?, They ?Have To Respect Me!?
This afternoon, Fox News’ Megan Kelly gave Rick Santorum the opportunity to explain why he doesn’t hate gay people. His bottom line? He has gay friends whose “decision” he respects. But Santorum added that gay people must also respect his point of view. “You also have to respect me for feeling very differently for trying […]

This afternoon, Fox News’ Megan Kelly gave Rick Santorum the opportunity to explain why he doesn’t hate gay people. His bottom line? He has gay friends whose “decision” he respects.

But Santorum added that gay people must also respect his point of view. “You also have to respect me for feeling very differently for trying to take that orientation and then trying to project that agenda on to the American public that is consistent with that,” he said. Watch it:

Over the last several days, Santorum has suggested that same-sex marriage is responsible for the economic downturn and compared the institution to a napkins, water, and tea.

Richard Fisher Doesn?t Know There?s A Recession In Texas
Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher recently voted against monetary stimulus and explained why in a speech delivered earlier this week. The method is to first start with a long discussion of the relative strength of job growth in Texas, then offer a brief discussion that reveals Fisher doesn’t seem to understand how monetary policy […]

Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher recently voted against monetary stimulus and explained why in a speech delivered earlier this week. The method is to first start with a long discussion of the relative strength of job growth in Texas, then offer a brief discussion that reveals Fisher doesn’t seem to understand how monetary policy works, and then conclude with a staggering analysis of the Texas labor market which appears to entirely neglect the fact that the unemployment rate in Texas is over 8 percent:

Now, how do you connect the dots between Texas’ record of economic growth and my dissenting vote?

Despite the fact that Texas has severely limited social services and an education system that faces great challenges, people and businesses have been picking up stakes and moving to Texas in significant numbers over a prolonged period. It should be noted that in the last census, Texas gained population and congressional seats, while California’s population growth and congressional representation was static and New York’s was diminished. Jobs have been created for American workers in Texas in several different sectors, not just in the oil and gas and mining sectors. People have taken those jobs of their own free will, even though the jobs may not measure up to the compensation levels everyone would like. And yet Texas, like all states, is subject to the same monetary policy as all the rest: We have the same interest rates and access to capital as the residents of any of the other 49 states, for the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy and regulates financial institutions under its purview for the nation at large. From this, I draw the conclusion that private sector capital and jobs will go to where taxes and spending and regulatory policy are most conducive to growth.

Fisher seems to be badly confused here. Based on the fact that Texas is doing better than average, he seems to have concluded that there’s no recession in Texas. And since Texas is large and has the same monetary policy as the rest of the country, he’s concluded that the whole country could get out of recession if it only had public policy as good as Texas’ public policy. But Texas is experiencing the same severe labor market recession as the rest of the country. I promise! Look at the unemployment rate:

I think it would be seriously unfair to blame Rick Perry for this state of affairs. Rather, I would blame Richard Fisher and his colleagues on the FOMC. After all, as he notes “Texas, like all states, is subject to the same monetary policy as all the rest” a monetary policy that’s landed it in a severe recession. Rather than taking false comfort from the fact that Texas’ population growth rate remains high, Fisher should consider that in good times Texas adds jobs faster than people whereas in bad times it adds people faster than jobs:

Texas population growth is a constant. It says good things about the state of Texas. But Texas still experiences labor market variables because, as Fisher says, “Texas, like all states, is subject to the same monetary policy as all the rest.” Sometimes the labor market variables are pointing in a good direction, other times they’re pointing in a bad one. This is one of the bad times. But Fisher doesn’t seem to have noticed.

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Jon Huntsman gets the Vogue treatment

Vogue magazine loves to profile political players, and Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman gets the full, glossy treatment in the September issue.

In an article dubbed “Jon Huntsman: The Outsider,” reporter Jacob Weisberg goes on the campaign trail and down memory lane with Huntsman and his family, portraying the former Utah governor and Obama’s ambassador to China as the moderate of the 2012 Republican presidential field.

The in-depth profile come complete with Annie Leibovitz photographs, one a sun-dappled photo featuring Huntsman with his wife and six of his seven children striding lithely through a grassy field, and another of Huntsman in a wood-paneled room peering into the camera with the intense, quizzical gaze that Weisberg explains thusly:

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Panetta: Iraqis want some U.S. troops to stay

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Friday that Iraq and the United States had made “progress” in discussions about whether to keep U.S. troops in that country beyond the end of the year — a rare note of optimism after months of talks going nowhere.

In a joint interview with Military Times and Stars and Stripes, Panetta was asked for an update on the Obama administration’s efforts to persuade Iraqi leaders to decide whether they want any U.S. troops to stay after Dec. 31.

“My view is that they finally did say yes,” Panetta responded, summarizing recent internal Iraqi government decisions. “It was unanimous consent among the key leaders of the country to go ahead and request that we negotiate on some kind of training, what a training presence would look like.”

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Young skater’s photo ID moves Arlington Cemetery’s reburial of urn a step closer

When Rachel Stecher’s father saw the newspaper at 7:30 Friday morning at his Ashburn home, he called out to his wife: “Wow! Rachel’s on the front page!”

Kate Stecher thought maybe it was an article about the Air Force Academy, where Rachel is in her second year. Then he showed her the photo, and she was dumbfounded.

Rachel Stecher, according to her family, is the young girl in the mysterious photograph and the answer to the puzzle Army special agents had been trying to solve for months.

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North Korea to discuss recovery of POW remains

North Korea announced an agreement Friday to discuss how the U.S. could recover remains of American troops killed in the Korean War, the most significant sign of progress since U.S. officials halted such work in 2005.

Roughly 8,000 U.S. service members remain missing, with 5,500 of them thought to be buried in North Korea, according to the Pentagon.

The North’s state media, Korean Central News Agency, quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official Friday saying that Pyongyang had accepted the U.S. proposal to talk and that preparations for discussion had begun.

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History Says Obama Is Doomed in 2012
John Podhoretz, New York Post

Liberals Try to Discredit Texas’ Economic Success

Where’s the Syria Plan?
Eugene Robinson, Indianapolis Star
WASHINGTON — It's hard to argue with President Obama's call for Bashar al-Assad, the bloodthirsty Syrian dictator, to step down. But it's also hard to discern any logic or consistency in the administration's handling of the ongoing tumult in the Arab world.It is obvious that Assad, like Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi, has no intention of surrendering power voluntarily. It is also clear that Assad's savagery is a match for Gaddafi's. Both used armored columns to put down peaceful protests. Both ordered assassinations and arrests. Both used naval vessels to…

Russia’s Cruellest Month
Julia Ioffe, The New Yorker
Every August, Russians wait for history, and they are rarely disappointed. On August 31, 1996, Russia wrapped up its disastrous first war against the breakaway Chechen Republic. The ceasefire wouldn’t last long, because exactly three years later, on August 31, 1999, a bomb ripped through a Moscow shopping mall, killing one and injuring forty. It would be the first of five bombings—and hundreds of casualties—and it would trigger the second, still somewhat unfinished war in the region. On August 17, 1998, the Russian government devalued the ruble and defaulted on…