The Hollywood Liberal

MSNBC
GM to shed quarter of workforce this year

Excerpt General Motors will on Monday disclose details of one of most dramatic corporate downsizings in US history, exceeding a key target of its turnround plan and accelerating the demise of the privileged American car worker. Rick Wagoner, chief executive, is expected to announce that about 30,000 workers more than a quarter of GM’s blue-collar US workforce have taken up its offer of early retirement and severance packages.

Local News Leader
GOP-run Senate kills minimum wage increase .

Excerpt: WASHINGTON – The Republican-controlled Senate smothered a proposed election-year increase in the minimum wage Wednesday, rejecting Democratic claims that it was past time to boost the $5.15 hourly pay floor that has been in effect for nearly a decade. The Senate vote marked the ninth time since 1997 that Democrats there have proposed and Republicans have blocked a stand-alone increase in the minimum wage. The debate fell along predictable lines. Kennedy also said lawmakers‘ annual pay has risen by roughly $30,000 since the last increase in the minimum wage.

News Hounds
Fox News Cuts off Cheney Appearance After Tough Question

Excerpt: Fox News cuts in and out of its “Dayside” program with reckless abandon, standing up scheduled guests in favor of whatever “breaking news” it decides is more important, but Monday (June 19, 2006), it dumped an appearance by Dick Cheney. Cheney was speaking at the National Press Club, taking written questions from reporters. Fox News stuck with Cheney for a couple questions, but then came one asking whether he had underestimated the insurgency’s strength in Iraq. Fox News immediately cut away back to its scintillating programming on “Dayside” about whether wine and beer are good for you.

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H.L.

You Tube
Bruce Springsteen Rips Coulter/Republicans in Interview

Crooks and Liars
Geraldo Smokes a Fatty, In Fox News Clip

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Feingold has no regrets after Iraqi pullout vote

Excerpt: Washington – Russ Feingold, speaking after his plan to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq fell in a lopsided vote in the Senate, is sticking to his guns. The Democratic senator from Wisconsin, speaking Friday from Middleton, called the 3-year-old Iraq war a “tragic situation getting worse.” He said that to get stuck in Iraq, ignoring threats from al-Qaida in as many as 80 countries, “is a life-or-death matter for our troops and their families and all of us.”

Think Progress
Fox Gets ‘Fair And Balanced’ Access to Guantanamo

Excerpt Last week, the Pentagon shut down access entirely to the Guantanamo Bay prison after the suicide deaths of three detainees. Journalists covering the suicides had their clearances revoked and were immediately flown back to the United States, and regular visits between detainees and their lawyers were cancelled. Human rights groups protested: This press crackdown is the administration latest betrayal of fundamental American values. The Bush Administration is afraid of American reporters, afraid of American attorneys and afraid of American laws. Afraid of American journalists, that is, as long as they;re not from Fox. This morning, Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano described how the Defense Department had personally invited him on a trip to Guantanamo on Wednesday:NAPOLITANO: I was doing my radio show with Brian Kilmeade the other day and I get an email from the Defense Department saying, We have an extra seat on a flight down to Guantanamo, would you like to come? So, of course, I cleared it all I cleared it here with our superiors.

Forward
Pro-Israel Donors Rally For Joe, as Left Takes Aim

Excerpt: With Senator Joseph Lieberman facing an increasingly tight primary fight, pro-Israel interest groups are stepping up their support for the former vice presidential candidate. Lieberman will face Ned Lamont — a Greenwich, Conn., multimillionaire backed by party liberals unhappy with Lieberman’s support for the Iraq War and perceived coziness with Republicans — in Connecticut’s August 8 Democratic primary. While polls still predict that the three-term senator will win the contest handily, Lamont’s steadily rising poll numbers, as well as the low turnout projected for a midsummer election, has Lieberman supporters rallying to his defense. “Given the recent turn of events, we have decided to become further engaged in this race,” Dr. Ben Chouake said. Chouake is president of Norpac, a nonpartisan, New Jersey-based political action committee that supports pro-Israel candidates. “We’re going to contact our membership in the area, see if they can organize some voting drives on the ground, as well as do additional fund raising for his campaign.”

Faulking Truth
The Keystone Cops meet the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Excerpt In the most stunning development yet in the scandal that is threatening to rock the very foundation of the US stock market, a former SEC attorney who was fired on September 1, 2005, has released two scathing letters accusing SEC officials of apparent wrongdoing in dealing with an investigation into one of the nations most prominent hedge funds, Pequot Capital Management. First, on the same day that a federal court struck down a rule requiring hedge funds to register with the SEC, the New York Times reported today that Aguirre had been fired by the SEC last August eleven days after he was praised for his work on the Pequot investigation and awarded a merit pay increase. His supervisor, Robert Hanson, wrote in Aguirre’s performance evaluation just before the firing, that “His efforts have uncovered evidence of potential insider trading and possible manipulative trading by the fund. He has consistently gone the extra mile, and then some.” Apparently, going the “extra mile” wasn’t what his superiors at the SEC had in mind, because Aguirre was fired without notice just eleven days later while he was on vacation.

The Nation
Say Goodbye to Bolton

Excerpt: It is almost a year since the Bush Administration sent John Bolton to the United Nations. In some ways, it is a foreign policy achievement of a high order to appoint someone who has so successfully poked his thumb up the nostrils of almost 190 other countries simultaneously. However, it is a dubious achievement

Greeley (Co.) Tribune
Film Crew Given Disorderly Conduct Tickets Despite Having Legal Permits to Shoot. Excerpt: Members of a film crew got the shock of their lives Saturday when a Larimer County SWAT team surrounded the crew and ordered everyone on their knees, hands behind their heads. The crew had a park permit and had been shooting the movie for several hours when the SWAT team moved in. The entire crew was ordered to drop to their knees with M-16 rifles pointed at their backs and then were forced to lay on the ground for 15 to 20 minutes. Several crew members tried to explain that they were just filming a movie, but were ordered by the SWAT team to shut up. “They told me they were going to send rounds my way,” said Borden who was incredulous about the whole incident.

See the Rest of The Strip Here

AP
5 More U.S. Troops Killed In Iraq.

Excerpt: Five U.S. troops — including four Marines — were killed in operations south and west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, and an explosion of sectarian and revenge killings in Iraq’s third-largest city in the past three days claimed 24 lives.

AP
Senate rejects calls on Iraq troop pullout

Excerpt Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in turn, portrayed Republican leaders as blindly following President Bush’s “failed” stay-the-course strategy. “It is long past time to change course in Iraq and start to end the president’s open-ended commitment,” he said. In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a proposal from some Democrats that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year. No Republicans voted in favor of the plan. Minutes later, the Senate rejected by 60-39 the proposal more popular with Democrats, a nonbinding resolution that would call for the administration to begin withdrawing troops, but with no timetable for the war’s end.

H.L.s Take: Here is a list of the brave 13 Democratic Senators who voted to get the troops out of Bush’s Bloodbath. To them I say Thank You. Of course both my boys are on this list. H.L. With John Kerry                                 H.L. with Russ Feingold Akaka (HI) Boxer (CA) Durbin (IL) Feingold (WI) Harkin (IA) Inouye (HI) Jeffords (I-VT) Kennedy (MA) Kerry (MA) Lautenberg (NJ) Leahy (VT) Menendez (NJ) Wyden (OR)

Now here is a list of The Cowardly 6 that would not even vote yes on the second vote which said that at some point, at some time in the near or distant future, that we would eventually begin to pull the troops out. (I guess these 6 want to leave the troops in Iraq forever.) Of course the usual suspects are on this list. These people need to be voted out now.

Dayton (D-MN) Landrieu (D-LA) Lieberman (D-CT Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR)

NY Times On Iraq, Kerry Again Leaves Democrats Fuming

Excerpt: Democrats who wished Senator John Kerry would take a firm stand in 2004 now oppose his call for a fixed date for the withdrawal of troops. Mr. Kerry now describes the war in Iraq as a mistake, even though he once supported it. His critics say they believe the new stand reflects more politics than principle, and ignores other Democrats’ concern that setting a fixed date will leave those in tough re-election fights open to Republican taunts that they are “cutting and running” in Iraq. 

The Democrats’ exasperation has increased in the last week, as they postponed a vote on Mr. Kerry’s amendment to try to fashion a broader consensus among themselves. Democrats up for re-election asked him not to propose a fixed date. But Mr. Kerry, several Democrats said, was unwilling to budge from that idea, even though his co-sponsor, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, seemed willing to compromise for the sake of consensus. In the end, Mr. Kerry agreed only to extend his deadline, from Dec. 31 of this year to July 2007.

H.L.s Take: All right John and Russ, way to make a stand. Make the rest of the Democrats realize that either they stop licking Bush’s sack and vote to end the war, or else. Its time the Democrats started bowing to the will of the people (who want this bulls**t stopped) or else.

Fox News Analyst: Administration Hid Evidence of WMD To Protect China, Russia and France

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed. The Defense Department has already knocked the story down. But on Fox this is big news, proving that Saddam Hussein had WMD, just as the administration claimed. The question is, if this information is so significant, why would the administration keep it under wraps? Alan Colmes asked Fox News Military Analyst Thomas McInerery that question last night. McInerery explained that the administration was complicit in a multinational cover-up intended to protect Russia, China and France. Watch it:

 

Brad Blog

Lou Dobbs Continues His Series on Electronic Voting. Lou Dobbs continues his series on Diebold, Electronic Voting, and how it is enabling Republicans to steal elections.

 

 

 

 

Crooks and Liars.
Santorum debunked over WMD’s by FOX NEWS Rick Santorum went on Fox News, and even they didn’t believe what he had to say. The Debunked him right on the air. Check it out. Copy and paste this link.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/H-C-Santorum-Classified-WMD.wmv

 

 

People.Virginia.Edu.
Hitler Vs. Coulter Quiz. Who Said it Adolf, or Ann?

Excerpt: “Hence it is that at the present time the liberal is the great agitator for the complete destruction of America. Whenever we read of attacks against America taking place in any part of the world the liberal is always the instigator.” Who said it?? Hitler or Coulter?

AP
China pleased after watching U.S. wargames .

Excerpt: SHANGHAI, China – Chinese military observers said Thursday that observing U.S. military exercises in the Pacific this week gave them a better understanding of U.S. weapons and tactics. Delegation leader Rear Adm. Zhang Leiyu called the visit to the war games near Guam “a positive step in China-U.S. military ties,” the official Xinhua News agency reported.

H.L.s Take: Thats great, now if they ever want to attack us. They will know our secrets.

Editor & Publisher
Polls, Pundits and Pols

Excerpt: You’d never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.

Democratic Daily
Rick Santorum’s WMD Tall Tale

Excerpt Rick Santorum told a tall tale during the debate on the Kerry-Feingold Iraq amendment and in a press conference on Wednesday. We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons,” Santorum claimed, smug and lying like a rug on the floor. He cited report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, that he had heard about a month or so ago, but “no one had seen before”. Oh, so very convenient, that Ricky pulled that one out of the air just in time for the debate on the Kerry-Feingold amendment

Brad Blog
Poll Workers Indicted in Tennessee, GOP ‘Sore Losers’ Continue Fight to Overturn Election

Excerpt: Apparently, it’s neither a case of “sour grapes” nor “sore losers” when Republicans challenge elections that they reportedly lost. That’s only the case when Democrats charge irregularities or illegalities in an election. And, of course, when it’s a Republican whose ox has been gored, the GOP uses every available means to fight the results of the election, and the courts and the legislatures usually play along. And nobody bothers to call them “tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists.” Go figure.

Thank You Lt.org
Lt. Watada Refused Deployment today

Excerpt: BREAKING NEWS (June 22, 2006) – At approx 0230 hours this morning, June 22, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada refused written orders to board a bus bound for an adjacent airstrip, and Iraq War deployment – as he has pledged to do since first speaking out against the illegal Iraq War. At this time Lt. Watada has been restricted to base, possibly confined to quarters, and has been ordered to have no contact with any non-military personnel, with the exception of his civilian lawyer. More information is coming soon.

SF Gate
AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn’t yours

Excerpt: AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers’ personal data with government officials. The new policy says that AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.”

BBC News
Enron boss wants verdict quashed

Excerpt Former Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling is asking a judge to overturn last month’s court verdict that found him guilty of fraud and conspiracy at the firm.

AP
New jobless claims up 11,000 last week

Excerpt: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers claiming an initial week of jobless aid rose 11,000 last week…