The Hollywood Liberal

McCain flipflops on Iraq Yet Again. Last week he said Baghdad was safe, but he was lying, as we showed in the comic. Strolling Through Baghdad with John McCain
Now he is showing the real story as we reported it.

McCain says he misspoke in upbeat Baghdad comments

AP
Excerpt:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday he misspoke in his recent upbeat comments about security in Baghdad, where he traveled under heavy military protection.

McCain said he regrets comments he made after a tour of Baghdad last Sunday, when he said he could see progress and the American people were not being told the “good news” about the war, according to excerpts of his comments and a press release provided by “60 Minutes.”

“Of course I am going to misspeak and I’ve done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future,” said McCain, according to “60 Minutes.”

HL’s Take
McCain is a joke. He is trying to pull a Bush and say “hey don’t listen to what I say” I make a lot of mistakes when I talk becuase I am not that bright. So if I lie, it was all just another stupid mistake from the ultimate flip-flopper.

Rachel Maddow’s Open Letter To Orrin Hatch

Crooks & Liars
Excerpt:

Dear Senator Hatch –

You don't call, you don't write…

I've just about exhausted myself trying to get someone in your office to call me back this week.  Please apologize to your adorable receptionist on my behalf – the poor man now gets audibly exasperated as soon as I say "hello".

What I'd like to talk with you about is very simple:  on NBC's Meet the Press this past Sunday, you said this about Carol Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego who was fired by the Justice Department in December:

"She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton"

I checked the transcript against the video (or click here for the specific clip) and it's clear to me that you weren't misquoted.  

Here's my question for you or your staff:  what in the Lord's name are you talking about? 

Here at Air America, we called John Emerson, who managed Clinton's California campaign in '92 and again in '96 to ask if Carol Lam had been the "campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton" – you might have thought we'd asked him if the sky was green. 

First of all, uh, NO, she wasn't. 

And second, Carol Lam was an Assistant US Attorney at the time of Clinton's campaigns, and she therefore couldn't have also been a campaign manager for any presidential candidate without violating the (ironically-named) Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by federal government employees.

Then we called a source close to Carol Lam in California, who expressed utter bewilderment at what old Orrin said on Meet the Press. 

The source confirmed for us publicly-available documents about Lam's career which indicate that she is not a law professor, she's "been a federal prosecutor for nearly 18 years and [has] never been a fundraiser for any president". 

Senator Hatch, what's going on here? 

Seems like Geraldo Rivera is still Liberal about one issue. Immigration. Geraldo wouldn’t play along when O’Rielly suggested that a Drunk driving accident (involving an illegal alien) was about Illegal immigration, and not about drunk driving. They go at it pretty good, check out the video below.

Daily Kos
Bill O’Reilly’s “interviews” follow a simple pattern: invite a guest on, introduce them, and then spend the next five minutes cutting them off and challenging their love of country. As we know, O’Reilly never debates the person he has on the show, never engages their points or responds directly to their arguments. No, O’Reilly doesn’t do that type of debate because he simply can’t win that type of debate. Rather, O’Reilly’s m.o. is to debate a false caricature of the opposition. He pummels his guests with non sequiturs, shoving absurd statement after absurd statement down their throats until…well, until he decides to cut off their mike
But what happens when the guest refuses to take it? What happens when the guest refuses to shut up and thows his insanity back at him?

A complete and utter meltdown. That’s what happens: Geraldo Rivera pretty much sums up O’Reilly’s entire career in one sentence:
Don’t obscure tragedy to make a cheap political point.

John Kerry Discusses “This Moment on Earth”
John and Teresa Kerry appeared in L.A. last night to talk about their new book “This Moment on Earth” It is a book about our environment and what we can do individually to help stop greenhouses gasses and global warming. It is also about the products that we use that may be harmful to us. They pointed out the Canada’s version of the food and drug administration has banned hundreds of products in the same time that we in the U.S. have only banned about a half a dozen. These are things we use around the house that could potentially be carcinogenic.
At one point Kerry was taking questions and some republican yahoo plant who showed up in overalls so he could rant about immigration and union workers, he complained about how he is going backward, working more making less with less benefits and blaming it all on immigrants. Kerry shut him up by saying that regardless of your view on immigration the laws must be followed and Its the employers that are breaking the law but are seldom charged. He also took the guy to task by saying that a lot of union workers voted for Reagan, Bush and Bush, when it is the Democrats that are the ones that are looking out for the working man. He said that they vote against their own self interest because they get caught up in the whole “God, Guns, and Gays” Issues that republicans use as wedge issues (for the not so intelligent… Kerry didn’t say that part I did)
After the talk John and Teresa signed some books and got to meet some of the people who have shown up. I will be doing a full review of the book soon. Stay tuned.

John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry sign copies of their new book in L.A.

Whats happening. I am getting ready to leave for a meeting with with my good friend John Kerry, and his wife Teresa. They are going to talk about their new book “This Moment on Earth” which is all about environmental issues. I got the book but haven’t had a chance to read it. I’ll be back tomorow with a full report, and a book report soon. Later. HL

Pat Dawson a reporter for NBC who reported the second explosion on 9/11, and who said on that day that there seemed to be explosives in the building curses out 9/11 Truth Protesters, one of who’s fathers was a NYC Fireman who died at the World Trade Center. Check out the video.

Police Log Confirms FBI Role In Arrests

Washington Postr
Group Detained, Questioned During D.C. War Protest
Excerpt:
A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.

For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.

But a civil lawsuit, filed by the protesters, recently unearthed D.C. police logs that confirm the FBI’s role in the incident. Lawyers for the demonstrators said the logs, which police say they just found, bolster their allegations of civil rights violations.

The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black — a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.

FBI agents dressed in street clothes separated members to question them one by one about protests they attended, whom they had spent time with recently, what political views they espoused and the significance of their tattoos and slogans, according to interviews and court records.

HLs Take
The Constitution guarantees us a right to free assembely, and the right to protest what we think is wrong with this country, that means that the FBI, and whoever put them up to this. (Rove? Cheney? Bush?) and all the people who think that we should not be allowed to protest the war are a bunch of America Hating Communists. Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers put that in the constitution to protect us from dangerous subversives like you.

News Items:

AP
6 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq bombings (As Mccain Tours)

This is a 15 Part Comic

See The Rest Of The Comic Here

Here is our weekly video blog for NBC News Raw. Every Monday we do the news and they run it on their site. Here is the latest Video News Headlines and stories from The HL. Have a look.

6 U.S. troops die; McCain tours Baghdad

AP
Tally arrives during week in which more than 500 died in sectarian violence
Excerpt:
BAGHDAD – After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a “full picture” of the progress. The U.S. military later reported six soldiers were killed in roadside bombings southwest of Baghdad.

Four soldiers were killed responding to the blast that killed the first two, the military said. Britain, meanwhile, announced that one of its soldiers had been shot to death in southern Iraq — its 104th combat casualty since the war started four years ago.

McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, acknowledged a difficult task lies ahead in Iraq, but criticized the media for not giving Americans enough information about the recent drop in execution-style sectarian killings, the establishment of security posts throughout the city and Sunni tribal efforts against al-Qaida in the western Anbar province.

“These and other indicators are reason for cautious, very cautious optimism about the effects of the new strategy,” said McCain, who was leading a Republican congressional delegation to Iraq that included Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record).

HLs Take:
You Believe This Guy!!!