The Hollywood Liberal

Yet another “family values” Bushie, reveals the endless hypocricy.

‘DC Madam’ threatens to bring down Washington

Brisbane Times
Excerpt
The US State Department announced yesterday Randall Tobias, the embattled head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was resigning for unspecified personal reasons.

However ABC News, which said Palfrey has provided it with a record of the numbers of calls to her private mobile phone, reported Tobias stepped down after they spoke to him about his allegedly contacting her number.

Since 2003 Tobias also was President George W Bush’s first global AIDS coordinator, a job which drew criticism for his emphasis on faithfulness to partners and abstinence over condom use in trying to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus.

Before entering government he was chairman, president and chief executive of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, and also, from 1997-2000, chairman of the board of trustees at Duke University.

His now-reported links to a firm accused of prostitution have raised more than a few eyebrows.

Beach Impeach sends powerful message to congress

Indybay.org
Excerpt
The kaleidoscopic colors fit in well to the festive, yet serious, Beach Impeach event organized by San Francisco activist Brad Newsham.

This gathering was just one of many impeachment events held around the nation and world by individuals and organizations demanding that President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney be impeached for a variety of crimes ranging from 9/11, lying to start a war, war profiteering, illegal wiretapping and torture.

This was Newsham’s second Beach Impeach event with the first one held on January 6 of this year. This time around there was enough people signed up to add the empathic “NOW!” to the message.

Asked why he felt it was necessary to do another event, Newsham said, “After January’s Beach Impeach, I felt like I had my finger stuck in a live electrical socket. There was such a flood of great energy unleashed by that event and pouring right through me — and literally hundreds of charged-up people asking me, ‘What are we going to do next?'”

“I’d merely been aiming to create at least just ONE compelling visual to go along with all the words and chatter and impeachment bluster — but once all those great visuals came from the January event, I suddenly felt responsible. And now people seemed to think I knew what I was doing — I don’t, by the way — but I was almost FORCED to move forward. And yesterday’s event is what came out of my moving forward.

“This will all have been worth all the time and effort and money, if this gets a message to our leaders, if we get an impeachment hearing, and if we get our country back from the people who have steered us off in these crazy directions we’ve gone since Bush became president,” continued Newsham.

Various activists groups filled individual letters in the words with colors, including Code Pink made the letter “C” a lovely shade a pink, and World Can’t Wait who made the exclamation point a brilliant, shimmering orange.

“We filled the exclamation point with 50 people in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to represent the people who are being held and tortured in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, said Don Spark, a local World Can’t Wait organizer who was politely reminding people on the bullhorn to get into the outlined letters, “Please, no wandering pixels on the beach!” he jokingly admonished.

There were also many people in black with t-shirts and signs showing support for the 9/11 Truth Movement.

U.S. April death toll in Iraq passes 100

AP
Excerpt
BAGHDAD – Five U.S. military personnel were killed over the weekend in
Iraq, including three by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the military said Monday, pushing the American death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year.

Four Army soldiers died in eastern Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite Muslim area where U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations in the security crackdown that began Feb. 14. A Marine was killed in Anbar province, a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold west of the capital.

The killings of the Americans came as U.S. troops have been increasingly deployed on the streets of Baghdad and housed with Iraqi troops in joint security stations away from their heavily fortified bases, raising their vulnerability to attacks.

A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter on a combat patrol Sunday in eastern Baghdad, the military said. A U.S. soldier was slain Saturday by small arms fire during a patrol in the same part of the city. A Marine was killed Sunday during combat operations in Anbar.

HLs Take
The death toll of our soldiers just keeps escalating. Meanwhile Bush continues to insist that we are making progress, which of course he has been saying ever since “Mission Accomplished” meanwhile the administration refuses to take their heads out of the sand and admit that the war is lost. Why would they, the oil money just keeps on pouring in. Bush wants to keep the war going until his term is up because he wants to maximize the blood profits for him, daddy, Cheney, and the gang.

Rice: Bush would oppose Iraq benchmarks

AP
Excerpt
WASHINGTON –
President Bush will not sign any war spending bill that penalizes
Iraq’s government for failing to make progress, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said Sunday, a fresh warning to Congress about challenging him.

Bush is expected to veto a bill this week that would order U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1. Lacking the votes to override a veto, the Democratic-led Congress is considering a revised plan to pay for the way while requiring Iraq to meet benchmarks for progress.

Democratic lawmakers, eager to wind the war down, showed little appetite for establishing goals without consequences. Iraq has struggled to keep its own promises for distributing oil wealth, refining its constitution and expanding democratic participation.

“The benchmarks — the Iraqis agreed to it, the president agreed it,” said Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., who heads a House subcommittee that controls defense spending. “We’re saying to them, `Well, let’s put some teeth into the benchmarks.'”

Even if they agree to scrap a troop withdrawal timetable, Democratic lawmakers say they want to link U.S. support to Iraq’s performance in some way. But they must find an approach that win Republican support to pass a new bill that Bush is willing to sign.

HLs Take
Bush will veto the troop withdrawl, then the Democrats will push a bill that will set benchmarks, Bush will veto that, the wrangling will go back and forth until January 2009, when Bush slinks off to Paraguay with the Billions he stole, and everyone in Congress will be happy except Dennis Kucinich. Don’t forget the Democrats have the power to stop the war right now. They just refuse to, it’s not because they are afraid of Bush, so why then? Because they all want to help the military industrial complex make as much money as possible. Meanwhile they hide behind the “We can’t take money away from the troops because we are afraid the Republicans will accuse of us of losing the war” BS, you know the war that Bush lost the day he invaded Iraq.

I saw an interview with John Stewart on PBS Saturday. Stewart correctly pointed out that The Bush administration would rather have us think that they are a bumbling, lying, idiotic bunch of morons then give any clue about what they are up to and what they are doing. He mentions the Alberto “Torture Boy Gonzalez” testimony, where everyone knew he was lying through his teeth. We know he’s lying, and is a laughingstock but that is OK. Stewart compared it to the scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill takes his first “pinch” Deniro’s Jimmy Conway tells him: “Everyone gets pinched, but you did it the right away, you kept your mouth shut and didn’t tell them anything. That’s life in the Bush Mafia. Check out this clip they ran of Stewart showing Bush’s monthly statments of Progress in Iraq, each month he seems a little less certain of the “progress” Stewart surmizes Bush is viewing time in reverse, check out the clip.