The Hollywood Liberal

Late, Late Night FDL: If I Had a Million Dollars
The Barenaked Ladies – If I Had A Million Dollars

The Barenaked Ladies – If I Had A Million Dollars

What’s on your mind tonite…?

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Early Morning Swim

• Here comes the tank.
• It’s not over until we say it’s over, Pizza Guy.
• Krugman, on solar power.
• Five arrested at ATL OWS crackdown.
• 12K surround White House.

• Here comes the tank.
• It’s not over until we say it’s over, Pizza Guy.
• Krugman, on solar power.
• Five arrested at ATL OWS crackdown.
• 12K surround White House.

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All Hail the Kleptocracy!
The media bullhorn given to the plutocrats and Villagers-for-life continues its free profitable and responsibility-free call for our destruction. They get to make ALL the money, they get to be the ONLY voice that matters, and they get to pick the targets when we need to bomb yet another country so we don’t get rusty. And who better than Evan Bayh to emit the dreck?

pic via TitaniumDreads at flickr.com

The media bullhorn given to the plutocrats and Villagers-for-life continues its profitable and responsibility-free call for our destruction. They get to make ALL the money, they get to be the ONLY voice that matters, and they get to pick the targets when we need to bomb yet another country so we don’t get rusty.

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And who better than Evan Bayh to emit the dreck?

The Israelis may be able to launch a one off strike on Iran but they don’t have the ability for the kind of sustained bombing campaign that it would really take to degrade their nuclear arsenal. … You’d have to bomb them for several weeks in a row. There’s only one country that has that kind of capability and that’s the United States…We have to ask ourselves, is a nuclear Iran acceptable? If the answer is no, there’s really only one way to keep that from coming about and that’s the use of force.

It really is Evan Bayh’s wondrous legacy that he managed to betray his father’s good works so he could get rich and mainstream John Bolton’s screeds.

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Bloomberg vs. Occupy Wall Street
If the New York mayor only read the fine news service that carries his name he could not claim that “It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis.”

By Joe Conason

If the New York mayor only read the fine news service that carries his name he could not claim that “It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis.”

Related Entries

• November 7, 2011 Obama the Underdog
• November 6, 2011 Bloomberg vs. Occupy Wall Street

Cain On Sexual Harassment Allegations: My Wife ‘Took It Harder Than I Did’
One week after sexual harassment allegations from more than a decade ago resurfaced, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain addressed the controversy in an interview that…

Thousands Gather In Lafayette Park In Culmination Of Tar Sands Protests
WASHINGTON — The fight over the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL reached a pivotal moment on Sunday when an estimated 10,000 demonstrators gathered outside of…

James Moore: American Gothic: Ma and Pa Perry’s Boy
Perry’s mother and father agreed to be interviewed by the Dallas Morning News. Unsurprisingly, they spoke with love for their son, who they said doesn’t lie and is exactly what this country needs. Parents are often wrong about their children.

Maude Barlow: I Occupied the White House
Yesterday, I stood in the warm Washington sunshine and joined thousands of peaceful demonstrators as we surrounded the White House in a shout out for climate justice. We were there — 12,000 of us from all over North America — to urge President Barack Obama to say no to the highly controversial Keystone XL, a proposed pipeline that would carry bitumen — the dirtiest oil on earth — from the tar sands of Northern Alberta over an ancient aquifer and prime farmland to the Texas Gulf Coast for refining.

Al Checchi: Cut the Comedy
It’s true that our politicians are providing a lot of great material for Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, and our stable of late-night talk show hosts, but isn’t it time we cut the comedy and usher these clowns off the national stage?

Judicial Watch Founder In Trouble With The FL Bar
Conservative, birther and serial lawsuit filer Larry Klayman is in financial trouble….

Alleged Con Artist Drops Out Of AR House Race
Drew Pritt has dropped out of the campaign for House in Arkansas after what he calls “malicious gossip” on the internet regarding an investigation into whether he stole money from a fundraiser for a wounded veterans.

Sovereign Citizen ‘Governor’ And ‘Christian Princess’ Convicted Of Tax Fraud
An Alabama couple who considered themselves sovereign citizens — who required their tenants to pay rent in silver coins and buried $350,000 worth of gold coins in their backyard — were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and three counts of tax evasion on Friday.

The Koch Bros. Blarney & Bailout Circus

Romney Will Play in Iowa
The Hotline: “After months of debate inside the Romney camp over whether to compete in Iowa, it seems the decision has been made: Romney will play in Iowa, and he will play to win. The most recent evidence: Romney will hold campaign events Monday in Iowa, his second trip in three weeks after visiting the state only twice in the previous 12 months; His son Josh and wife Ann have quietly canvassed the state in recent weeks, and both have campaigned vigorously there for the Republican candidate in a crucial state Senate race; and Romney just launched aggressive robocalls in Iowa attacking Perry over his immigration policies, throwing the first punch in what could be a heavyweight Hawkeye State bout.”

“The question is no longer whether Romney competes in Iowa; the question is how much time and money he’ll invest in the state that so wounded his candidacy in 2008.”

Memories of the Bush Administration
The New York Times reviews two Bush administration memoirs: Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld and In My Time by Dick Cheney.

“Both books have received mostly negative reviews — largely deserved. Rumsfeld’s book is dense and bloated, although modestly candid. Cheney’s is clearly written (with help from his daughter Liz Cheney), but with the exception of its last chapters, dry, earnest and dull. None of this seems to have had much impact on their sales. Both spent time at the top of the best-seller lists.”

Romney Seen as Most Electable
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Mitt Romney has a significant advantage over his GOP rivals in just one area — electability.

“The survey tested the candidates on six attributes or characteristics. Romney has a sizable lead in just one: One-third of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say he has the best chance of anyone in the field to defeat Obama in 2012. Running second on that question is businessman Herman Cain. About one-fifth say Cain would be the party’s strongest candidate.”

“In the other five areas tested in the new survey, Romney shows no greater strength than other GOP contenders. On empathy, 21% say Cain is the one who best understands their problems, compared with Romney’s 17%. On honesty, it’s Cain at 22%, Romney at 17%. The two also run closely on the economy and issues generally, while Newt Gingrich rivals Romney on upholding core Republican values.”

Romney’s Inevitability
David Remnick: “The knowing people who know things in Washington generally believe that, once the electoral process begins, in January, Romney will shed Cain, Perry, Bachmann, and the rest in rapid fashion. Perhaps. To look at Romney is to see plausibility. But a large portion of the Republican electorate seems determined to hop from one fantastically flawed alternative to the next rather than settle on him. A few may be loath to vote for a Mormon; others have ideological differences that make it hard to embrace him. It is Romney’s spooky elasticity, his capacity to reverse himself utterly on one issue after another– health care, climate change, abortion, gun control, immigration, the 2009 stimulus, capital-gains taxes, stem-cell research, gay rights — that seems to bother voters most. They might rightly ask if there is even one thing that Mitt Romney believes in with greater conviction than his inevitability.”

Niall Stanage: “Mitt Romney could be the Hillary Clinton of 2012.”

Anti-Choicers Still Just Want to Control Women’s Sex Lives
Opposition to abortion today is about the same thing it has always been about: not the humanity and personhood of fetuses, but the humanity and personhood of women.

U.S. Deports 46K Parents With Citizen Kids in Just Six Months
We’e seen a striking increase in the rate of removals of parents, raising serious concerns about the impact of these deportations on children, many of whom are left behind.

Why the Most Important Fish We Need to Save Is One You’ve Never Heard Of
You don’t hear about menhaden because they don’t show up in fish markets or on dinner menus, but they’re in everything.

Police State in Oakland? One Reporter’s Arrest Contradicts Official Story
Oakland has spent more than $1 million on Occupy policing, but nearly all of that overwhelming force has been used against innocent people.

Who Is Pro-Israel? Who Is Anti-Israel?
As someone who blogs about Israel and Palestine almost daily, I elicit many reactions — from left-wing supporters and hostile right-wing detractors. Naturally the two groups don’t agree on much of anything but sometimes supporters and detractors make the same…

Markets, New Media, the Occupation, and What’s Next
Long before I dabbled in new media I was a timorous dabbler in markets, my investments driven algorithmically by computers at speeds that left me ignorant of what I “owned” from day to day. By comparison, the rapid convergence of…

UNESCO: Boycott For Boycott?
The admission of the Palestinian Authority into UNESCO has occasioned a fuss about the American response, the automatic cutting of $70 million in funding to the organization, triggered by existing, AIPAC-inspired Congressional legislation. (M.J. Rosenberg’s good column on the subject…

Morning CheckUp: November 7, 2011
GOP Iowa caucus goers hate the health law: “Sixty-three percent of those polled believe they would be better off if the law were repealed. Just 11 percent say trashing the law — known derisively among Republicans as “Obamacare” — would make them worse off.” [Des Moines Register] Health reform to pay for prison care: “Under […]

GOP Iowa caucus goers hate the health law: “Sixty-three percent of those polled believe they would be better off if the law were repealed. Just 11 percent say trashing the law — known derisively among Republicans as “Obamacare” — would make them worse off.” [Des Moines Register]

Health reform to pay for prison care: “Under a provision of the law, virtually all state prisoners could be eligible for Medicaid coverage of their hospital stays beginning in 2014 — and the federal government would pick up the tab, officials said Friday.” [Statesman]

States expand CHIP: “At least six states have opened their Children’s Health Insurance Programs to the kids of low-income state employees, an option that was prohibited until the passage of the 2010 health law.” [Kaiser Health News]

Perry’s stem-cell surgery may be blocked by state: “The adult stem cell procedure that Texas Gov. Rick Perry underwent this summer could be blocked under new rules being considered by the state’s Medical Board.” [Fox News]

An alternative to CLASS: “The best way is probably through universal long-term care insurance. Every major developed country on the planet — except for the U.S. and the U.K. — has already gone this route. Here, insurance could be offered by the government, or by private carriers in a regulated national marketplace (much like the Medicare Part D drug benefit or Medicare Advantage managed-care plans).” [Howard Gleckman]

States worry about ACA’s shortcomings: “State officials are pushing back hard against what they view as shortcomings in the healthcare reform law for fear they’ll be barraged with complaints when people have trouble affording insurance.” [The Hill]

Health industry seeks to influence the exchanges: “From insurance companies to drug stores to doctors, just about any industry that touches the health care system has a different opinion on how the Obama administration should shape the new insurance markets at the heart of the health-care reform law. But they all agree on one thing: now is the time to weigh in.” [Sarah Kliff]

SimCain
I believe credit for this SimCity theory belongs to Amanda Terkel, even when the newspaper reporting on it is French. Still just seems like a coincidence to me.

I believe credit for this SimCity theory belongs to Amanda Terkel, even when the newspaper reporting on it is French.

Still just seems like a coincidence to me.

Capitalism captures the 99 percent on mugs, T-shirts

SAN FRANCISCO — The revolution will be trademarked and put on T-shirts if an increasing number of entrepreneurs succeed in their attempts to profit from the Occupy demonstrations.

A few T-shirts began to appear several days after the first protest began on Sept. 17 with a march through the streets of Lower Manhattan.

Read full article >>

Finding more flaws in HUD’s accounting of HOME program

The calls started in mid-May, two weeks before a looming congressional hearing.

Staff members across the vast U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were racing to check in with hundreds of local agencies to determine the status of housing construction projects for the poor.

Within days, the massive scramble came to a conclusion: HUD told Congress that its $32 billion HOME Investment Partnerships Program was doing just fine.

Read full article >>

Virginia election forecast: High stakes, low turnout

What if Virginia held an election and nobody came?

The outlook for Tuesday isn’t quite that stark. But owing to the quirks of the state’s calendar — which produces a ballot every four years featuring no federal or statewide races to drive turnout — there is a good chance that fewer than one-third of Virginia’s voters will show up at the polls.

Read full article >>

On electoral map, Obama still has routes to victory in 2012, despite low ratings

There’s no question that President Obama faces one of the most challenging political environments in modern memory as he prepares to try to win a second term next November.

But with one year to go before the 2012 election, a state-by-state examination of the battleground map suggests that the president still retains several plausible pathways to the 270 electoral votes he needs.

Read full article >>

‘SNL’ takes on Rick Perry’s viral speech

When an edited video of an unusually animated speech Texas Gov. Rick Perry gave last month in New Hampshire went viral on YouTube, the smart money said “Saturday Night Live” would have a field day with it. Well, the smart money was right.

During Perry’s Oct. 28 speech at Cornerstone Action’s Fundraising Dinner and Awards Gala in Manchester, N.H., the governor appeared much looser than in other recent campaign appearances, waving his arms and making frequent jokes. The governor’s playful demeanor caused many on the Web and in the media to speculate that he was possibly intoxicated during the speech — a charge Perry and his supporters adamantly deny.

Read full article >>