The Hollywood Liberal

He also blew up the Maine
This Romney Plan, seems familiar.

pic via pt at flickr.com

You would think once the Republican elites had rationalized away any responsibility they have had for 9/11, the economic collapse, and any other ill to befall America after the Civil War, they could be satisfied just going after the Obama Administration on its limited economic accomplishments (which at this point amount to ‘well we prevented a complete collapse’).

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But if folks like Mitt Romney did that they wouldn’t really be Republicans.

The chart [used in supporting Romney’s plan], however, calls the period of time from 2007-2009 the “Obama recovery,” blaming him for the poor job numbers over that three-year period. As Romney surely knows, however, George W. bush was serving as president in 2007 and 2008, and Obama did not take office until January 2009.

Knows? Maybe. Cares? Not so much.

Besides you cannot beat the Romney plan, which is to triple the square footage of all houses owned members of his Administration (and also the houses of all nominal leaders of any occupied nation)…and to adopt all parts of the Ryan Plan, except those which are not awesome. It’s quite the stimulus package.

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Late Late Night FDL: It’s On
Lee Ritenour, George Duke, Marcus Miller, and Vinnie Colaiuta — It’s On, from the Ramsey Lewis Legends of Jazz, Contemporary Jazz episode.

Lee Ritenour, George Duke, Marcus Miller, and Vinnie Colaiuta — It’s On, from the Ramsey Lewis Legends of Jazz, Contemporary Jazz episode.

What’s on your mind?

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Early Morning Swim

• Better than nothing?
• Sign of the times.
• This should doom the Secessionist’s campaign — but it won’t.
• Willard’s job plan: tax cuts and deregulation.
• Mark Halperin, still a dick.

• Better than nothing?
• Sign of the times.
• This should doom the Secessionist’s campaign – but it won’t.
• Willard’s job plan: tax cuts and deregulation.
• Mark Halperin, still a dick.

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Bin Laden’s Unintended Legacy
Ten years on, Osama bin Laden, were he not at the bottom of the sea, could be reasonably satisfied with what he has accomplished.

By William Pfaff

Ten years on, Osama bin Laden, were he not at the bottom of the sea, could be reasonably satisfied with what he has accomplished.

Related Entries

• September 6, 2011 9/11 Victim 0001: Father Mychal’s Message
• September 6, 2011 Bin Laden’s Unintended Legacy

9/11 Victim 0001: Father Mychal’s Message
The body bag marked “Victim 0001” on Sept. 11, 2001, contained the corpse of Father Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain with the Fire Department of New York. By Amy Goodman

The body bag marked “Victim 0001” on Sept. 11, 2001, contained the corpse of Father Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain with the Fire Department of New York.

Related Entries

• September 6, 2011 9/11 Victim 0001: Father Mychal’s Message
• September 6, 2011 Bin Laden’s Unintended Legacy

Michael Oreskes: New York’s 9/11, and Not Letting Go
Not letting go permeates the city these days. In large ways and small, New Yorkers still are trying to refill the empty sky that Bruce Springsteen mourned.

Rick Perry in the spotlight in Republican debate
By Steve Holland SIMI VALLEY, California (Reuters) – Texas Governor Rick Perry will be the man in the spotlight when Republican presidential candidates gather at…

Chris Christie Still Has ‘No Plans’ To Run In 2012, Two Sources Say
LOS ANGELES â?? Two close confidantes of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slapped down the latest round of speculation that the Republican is considering a…

U.S. say no Iraq troop decision yet as rumors swirl
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta denied on Tuesday any decision was made on keeping some U.S. troops in Iraq beyond an end-year deadline…

HuffPost TV: WATCH: Howard Fineman Discusses Obama’s Low Approval Numbers On MSNBC
HuffPost’s Howard Fineman, along with MSNBC Analyst Richard Wolffe, appeared Tuesday on MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell’ to discuss President Obama’s low approval…

Fox’s Crowley Is “Complete[ly]” Wrong About Balance Of Private, Public Employment Under Obama

Fox News contributor Monica Crowley said that “under this administration, you have had a complete overturning of the balance where the private sector has been the vast majority of American workers and American economic life.” In fact, the private sector still employs “the vast majority of American workers” — about five times more than does government.

Crowley: There’s Been “A Complete Overturning Of The Balance” Between Public And Private Sectors

Crowley: “The Public Sector Has Grown To Such A Huge Extent.” From Fox Business’ America’s Nightly Scoreboard:

CROWLEY: We’ve been talking a lot on FBN and elsewhere about the class warfare and how Obama is stoking class warfare — meaning talking about millionaires and billionaires. I think that the real class warfare is something that Jimmy Hoffa just touched on, which is public sector vs. private sector. And under this administration, you have had a complete overturning of the balance where the private sector has been the vast majority of American workers and American economic life. Now, the public sector has grown to such a huge extent. That’s, I think, what he was getting at. [Fox Business, America’s Nightly Scoreboard, 9/6/11]

Reality: Private-Sector Employment Is Still About Five Times Larger Than Government Employment

BLS: In January 2009, Private Sector Employed About 111 Million People. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 110,981,000 private-sector workers in January 2009. [BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/7/11 through “Download Data in Graph” link] 

BLS: In January 2009, Government Employed About 22.6 Million People. According to the BLS, there were 22,582,000 people working at all levels of government in January 2009. [BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/7/11 through “Download Data in Graph” link]

BLS: In August 2011, Private Sector Employed About 109.2 Million People. According to the BLS, there were 109,170,000 private-sector workers in August 2011. [BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/7/11 through “Download Data in Graph” link]

BLS: In August 2011, Government Employed About 22 Million People. According to the BLS, there were 21,962,000 people working at all levels of government in August 2011. [BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/7/11 through “Download Data in Graph” link]

Graph From St. Louis Fed Shows Private-Sector Employment Is Still About Five Times Larger Than Government Employment. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

[BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/7/11] 

Reality: Government Employment Has Decreased Under Obama

BLS: Governments Have Shed More Than 500,000 Workers Since January 2009. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

[BLS via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 9/6/11]

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Post-Citizens United, SEC Should Force Political Disclosure, Report Argues
A new report by Harvard Law School and Citizens United Calls on the Security and Exchange Commission to force corporations to disclose political expenditures and donations in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision.

Brady Center Report: Manufacturers ‘Lost’ At Least 16,000 Guns Over The Past Two Years
Every day over the past two and a half years, 18 guns have gone missing from firearms manufactures without any record of being sold, according to a report from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. That adds up to…

Is 1968 really over?
File photo of August arrests in San Francisco. New protesters call attention to old issues at People’s Park in Berkeley CA. As the ninth month of the year begins, here are a few items that the columnist considers important cultural tidbits: an unpopular Democratic President is struggling to get renominated, a bumper sticker being sold on […]

Redistricting Forces Incumbents to Face Off
“With 18 states done or almost done with the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional district lines, the likelihood is strong that more sitting House members will be forced into face-offs than in the past 30 years,” according to Bloomberg.

“In the maps drawn so far, at least 13 districts in California, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan and North Carolina are being reshaped in a way that put the homes of two incumbents into the same territory. Some of those House members have decided to run for another seat and others have yet to say whether they’ll run at all. Two more such pairings are expected but not yet set in Massachusetts and New Jersey, and more are probable in the 25 states that aren’t far along in the remapping process, including Pennsylvania and Ohio.”

Edwards Seeks Case’s Dismissal
Lawyers for John Edwards filed “a barrage of court documents” asking a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against the former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

“In hundreds of pages, the attorneys contend the charges against Edwards are unconstitutionally vague, that no crime occurred and even if one had, the government did not give him a ‘fair warning’ that his conduct would violate campaign finance laws.”

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Note to Conservatives – It Isn’t Always About Us
I’m returning to my proper foreign policy subject matter after several weeks of irresistible debt ceiling / Republican presidential follies blogging. The topic today: must the United States position itself at the forefront of every important struggle in the world,…

The Mild Housing Boom
Karl Smith points out that the wild bubble in real estate prices wasn’t really matched by a crazy boom in construction: There was a boom here, but a modest-sized one consistent with the kind of modest-sized increase in joblessness we were seeing in 2007. The real crash is the crash in prices. That led not […]

Karl Smith points out that the wild bubble in real estate prices wasn’t really matched by a crazy boom in construction:

There was a boom here, but a modest-sized one consistent with the kind of modest-sized increase in joblessness we were seeing in 2007. The real crash is the crash in prices. That led not to a crash in construction activity, but to a crash in personal spending outlays driven by the “wealth effect” and debt-overhang dynamics. All signs currently point to the idea that if unemployment went down a bit and a few more people had a bit more money in their pockets, then we’d find that we don’t have enough houses to match all the growth in population we’ve experienced. In other words, we’re not building homes because we have too many unemployed people, it’s not that we have such high unemployment because people are building too many homes.

Rick Perry’s response to Texas wildfires offers glimpse of leadership

With wildfires raging across his state, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) assumed a familiar role this week: crisis commander in chief.

His abrupt decision this week to cut short his presidential campaign schedule in South Carolina to oversee his state’s response to the fires offers a glimpse of a central aspect of his leadership style — and a look at what kind of president he would be.

Since Perry took office in 2001, four hurricanes have made direct landfall in Texas. Another, Rita, came by way of Louisiana and caused more than $11 billion in damage. And then there was Katrina, which plowed into New Orleans in August 2005 and pushed hundreds of thousands of evacuees into the arms of Texas.

Read full article >>

Many in U.S. slip from middle class, study finds

Nearly one in three Americans who grew up middle-class has slipped down the income ladder as an adult, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Downward mobility is most common among middle-class people who are divorced or separated from their spouses, did not attend college, scored poorly on standardized tests, or used hard drugs, the report says.

“A middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime,” the report says.

Read full article >>

Man who lost wife on 9/11 finds way to fill the void

Sixth in a series.

Rhonda was a big woman, and Floyd liked that. She was 5 feet 9 inches tall, with bold red hair and a plus-sized personality. If there’s a photo out there somewhere in which she’s not smiling, it has never been found.

Floyd Rasmussen met Rhonda Sue Ridge at a church dance on New Year’s Eve 1973, when she was just 17. He was 31, a Vietnam vet with three kids and an ex-wife. His first marriage was a casualty of war, and he’d spent a few years carousing in Southern California before finding religion. He’d become a Mormon. As he slid across the room, angling for the pretty redhead, he didn’t realize she hadn’t yet graduated from high school. He asked her to dance.

Read full article >>

Teamsters’ Hoffa stands by Labor Day remarks about tea party

Tea party groups called on him to apologize, but Teamsters’ boss Jimmy Hoffa kept to the remarks he made at a Labor Day rally in Detroit on Monday in which he called on workers to “take out” tea party members.

“We didn’t start this war – the right wing did,” Hoffa said in a statement Tuesday. “My comments on Labor Day in Detroit echo the anger and frustration of American workers who are under attack by corporate-funded politicians who want to destroy the middle class. We’re tired of seeing good-paying jobs shipped overseas. This fight is about the economy, it’s about jobs, and it’s about rebuilding America. As I said yesterday in Detroit, we all have to vote in order to take these anti-worker politicians out of office.”

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Michele Bachmann’s rise and fall in the 2012 Republican primary

In politics, things change fast.

Less than a month ago, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann sat atop the political world fresh off her win at the Ames Straw Poll.

Today, two new polls show Bachmann’s support badly eroding — a finding that when coupled with a Labor Day staff shakeup raise serious questions about her ability to recapture the momentum that shot her into the top tier over the summer.

Read full article >>