The Hollywood Liberal

Insurgent TV channel taunts U.S. troops 24 hours a day and becomes a sensation

L.A. Times
Excerpt:
BAGHDAD — The men with laptops sat around an unadorned conference table, chatting amicably about their plans and operations.
The scene on the newly launched Al Zawraa satellite television channel could have been footage from the boardroom of any company, if it weren’t for the ski masks the men wore and the subject of the meeting: future mortar attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.
The renegade, pro-insurgent Al Zawraa channel, with a 24-hour diet of propaganda against U.S. forces and the Iraqi government, has become something of a sensation throughout the country. It has drawn condemnation from U.S. officials, Iraqi politicians and Friday prayer leaders.
Most hours of the day it plays footage of U.S. soldiers in Iraq being shot and blown up in insurgent attacks…

H.L.s Take:
Bush must have been watching this channel because apparently he just figured out the following

Bush: Iraq insurgents hurt U.S. efforts

AP
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – Summing up a year of setbacks, President Bush conceded Wednesday that insurgents in Iraq thwarted U.S. efforts at “establishing security and stability throughout the country.”
Bush didn’t wait for the first question before assessing the past 12 months. “2006 was a difficult year for our troops and the Iraqi people.”
He also said he supports a moderate coalition in Iraq, a new effort by the government to “marginalize the radical and extremists” in Iraq.
Most of the questions dealt with the war in Iraq, but the president was also asked about the pregnancy of Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Speaking of Mary Cheney, Here is the latest from Pixwit

Push, Mary, push! Ohmigod, he’s the spitting image of his grandad!

Whats happening? If you are a regular reader of the site, you may have noticed that the postings have become fewer and further in between, there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that I have become a full time member of the work force again. I finally got a good job offer, and took it. I’m still working in the Hollywood movie and TV industry, still not making as much as I was 5 years ago, but its the best offer I have had since, and the job has other benefits that offset not making as much money.
Another reason is that in the ever changing world of internet web commerce it is getting harder and harder to make money on the site. I made a decent living for a couple of months there, but now it has slowed down drastically. The problem began when my old web hosting server threw me off for having too much traffic, and using too much bandwidth. The new server caused problems that severly cut down on traffic to the site, I still have to switch to another new server/host but there have been obstacles to my doing so that have yet to be overcome. At some point I will switch over again which will cause the site to be down for a day or so. My job offer came at just the right time in terms of income from the site. The postings will continue at the slowed down rate, and will not be coming every day. I will still try to do all the other stuff that I loved doing on the site such as comics and movie reviews, when feasible.

On another note that will concern commenters to the postings. I have been trying for months now to stay ahead of the spam comments that are posted to the site on a daily basis but just keep getting buried deeper and deeper in spam. I am talking about automated comments for BS websites. (usally sex oriented) It’s gotten to the point where I have to go on and remove the spam comments 3 times a day. I have to plow through all the spam to find the legit comments, and delete the rest. I went out of town over the weekend and when I came back last night had over 1500 spam comment waiting for me. So the new policy is from now on all comments must be approved first. I am going to see if that slows down the spammers. The other option is to make each commenter register before commenting. The spammers leave bogus names and email addresses on the comments anyway so I don’t know if that will work. Ok time for me to get back to work, talk to you soon.
H.L.

News Items:
Bush reviews options on Iraq policy
Bush Iraq update may be after Christmas

See The Rest Of The Comic Here

Here it is, all 84 pages of it. Maybe Bush can get Condi to read it to him as a bedtime story

IRAQ STUDY GROUP REPORT

AP
Excerpt:
There is no guarantee for success in Iraq . . . There is great suffering, and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement. Pessimism is pervasive . . . the ability of the United States to influence events . . . is diminishing.” (p.1)

“There is no action the American military can take that, by itself, can bring about success in Iraq.” (page 70)

“U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end.” (p.12)

“The United States must not make an open ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.” (p.xvi)

“U.S. economic assistance should be increased to a level of $5 bilion per year rather than being permitted to decline.” (page 87)

H.L.s Take:
Read that last line again. So thats what this report is all about, It’s not about trying to end the war, it’s about making it OK to dump even more of our tax dollars into Bush’s mass murdering dash for cash. “Hey I got an idea lets spend 5 Billion a year, then we can steal even more of the money. Come on guys, the nation is not entirely bankrupt yet, there is still more loot to grab.

Life in Iraq grates on soldiers’ morale

AP
Excerpt:
RAWAH, Iraq – Almost none has heard of the Iraq Study Group, and though a few know that Donald Rumsfeld is out as defense secretary, the name Robert Gates draws blank stares.
While much of America broods over the future of a bloody, expensive and increasingly unpopular war, the Marines and soldiers fighting it in the volatile cities and vast deserts of western Iraq say the big picture doesn’t concern them —
McAndrew and the other members of Company D live in a three-story police station that looks luxurious from the outside but has no running water, power that comes for a few hours than goes out for days and very little heat — even as temperatures plunge well below freezing.
The outpost takes mortar and machine gun fire and rocket attacks every few days, insurgents stash roadside bombs and the recent announcement of a death sentence against Saddam prompted a wave of attacks against American forces here.
The battalion has had three Marines killed and 80 wounded since arriving in September

H.L.s Take:
They don’t know about the Iraq study group, or even that Rumsfeld is out, and another Bush Yes man is in…but they do know that the war is a joke of a debacle, and that they should not be there. Maybe Bush should consult with some of these guys instead of the Iraq Study Group

Limiting Free Speech and the Internet: When the Oligarchy Loses Control

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt:

The realization that they are losing control and are no longer able to dominate the debate has led Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and even George W. Bush to begin discussing the need to limit free speech — usually linking it to nefarious and nonexistent “threats” — and limiting access to the internet. Corporations are threatened by this new medium because it allows common people to counter moneyed influence and too, levels the information playing field. It is no longer a game of who has more money to spend on public relations, spin, and outright lies; with the internet it is simply a matter of who has the information. These powerful interests are beginning to realize that the internet amplifies the voices — specifically Progressive voices — that they had always been able to suppress through corporate media control.

The thing that scares today’s corporations and their pocketed politicians is the fact that Progressive ideas, now that they have finally been made available to the general population, are being embraced by a majority of the people. The dissemination of Progressive ideas via the internet has begun to completely undo forty years of the Oligarchic-wing of the GOP and their cynical employment of religion in what they branded a “culture war.”

The so-called culture war has been a carefully constructed scheme in which the Oligarchy-controlled Republican Party employed religious-based political wedge issues in a manner that actually convinced working people, especially the working poor, to vote Republican. What the Oligarchs were doing, having found a way to con working people into voting Republican, was swindling the average citizen into supporting corporate policies that almost always undermined the peoples’ own best interest. By the end of the Republicans’ “culture war,” they had refined their use of pseudo-religious wedge issues to the point that they could sell wars based on trumped up intelligence. Incredibly, through the use of these pseudo-religious wedge issues, Republicans had even managed to convince their supporters to sacrifice their kids to the Gods of War; all for nothing more than securing profits for big oil and war-based business interests like Halliburton, KBR, and others.

The people, of course, were led to believe that they were sacrificing their children in the name of something akin to a new holy war.

In a very real sense the “culture war” was diabolically genius. The Republican Party was never going to alter their philosophy and do something that benefited the working class or the working poor. The Republicans were always and will forever be prostitutes for their corporate masters. Manipulating the peoples’ most cherished religious beliefs allowed Oligarchy-supporting Republicans to override everything, including a person’s hunger and the welfare of their children.

H.L.s Take:
This is a great article, make sure you click through and read the whole thing.

How you doing? I am going to attempt to move this website to another server again. This involves a huge hassle, but has to be done. The site will be offline for probably 24 hours or a little more. I’m not sure when this will start, but we will be back soon after. Meanwhile here are some new stories for you to check out. Talk to you later.

Ten Reasons To Impeach The President

Infowars
Excerpt:
“The act of writing up Articles of Impeachment is not difficult. You just write them on a piece of paper,”
-US Rep. McKinney (D-GA)

Remember what Bill Clinton was impeached for when reading the following ten reasons why George W Bush should be impeached:
The Downing Street Memo and other documents prove that Bush knew there were no WMD before the invasion of Iraq. Bush’s WMD statements, in chronological order, were:

“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.”
— United Nations Address, September 12, 2002

“Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.”

“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
— Radio Address, October 5, 2002

Wal-Mart’s data center remains mystery

News With Views
Excerpt:
Wal-Mart’s ability to crunch numbers is a favorite of conspiracy theorists, and its data centers are the corporate counterpart to Area 51 at Groom Lake in the state of Nevada. According to one consumer activist, Katherine Albrecht, even the wildest conspiracy buff might be surprised at just how much Wal-Mart knows about its customers – and how much more it would like to know…..Albrecht, the consumer activist, said that when the contractor came to her with the story about Wal-Mart wanting to biometrically identify customers through video, one of the reasons given was to help law enforcement.
“You could search for all sales of a particular kind of rope and get a photo of who bought it,” she said. “On the other end, you could research all of the purchases of a particular individual, even if they paid in cash.”
Albrecht is the co-author of “Spychips,” about the use of RFID, or radio frequency identification devices, by the government and corporations to track individuals. She lives in Nashua, N.H., and is getting ready to receive a doctorate of education in consumer education.