The Hollywood Liberal

Four Senators With Balls

Bob Geiger.com
Excerpt
If I asked you to quickly name what four United States Senators are sticking to their guns and will vote against the ludicrous “compromise” Iraq supplemental bill — you know, the one where George W. Bush gets everything he wants — what would be your first few guesses?

If you said Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chris Dodd (D-CT) and John Kerry (D-MA) you would, of course, be right. And if you think about who was one of the fastest to sign on with the Feingold-Reid legislation to withdraw our troops from Iraq in less than a year, you probably would have also guessed Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont….

Chris Dodd, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, continues to display the guts and leadership he’s been showing on the war throughout the new Congress.

“I cannot and will not simply give this President another blank check,” said Dodd in a statement Wednesday. “Half-measures and equivocations are not going to change our course in Iraq. If we are serious about ending the war, Congress must stand up to this President’s failed policy now – with clarity and conviction.”

Here’s video of Dodd explaining how he will vote:

Meanwhile, John Edwards joins Dodd as only the second of the presidential candidates willing to go toe-to-toe with Bush on ending the war and responsibly redeploying U.S. forces out of the Iraqi civil war.

Here’s Edwards:

“The so-called compromise under discussion in Congress that would give the president another blank check to continue his failed war is a serious mistake. Full funding is full funding, no matter what you call it…..

How much are they being paid? How much money is enough for these god damn whores?

Hersh: Bush administration arranged support for militants attacking Lebanon

Raw Story
Excerpt
n an interview on CNN International’s Your World Today, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explains that the current violence in Lebanon is the result of an attempt by the Lebanese government to crack down on a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, that it formerly supported.

Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.

A key element of this policy shift was an agreement among Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, whereby the Saudis would covertly fund the Sunni Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon as a counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah.

Hersh points out that the current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980’s – which gave rise to al Qaeda – with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the “same pattern” of the US using jihadists that the Saudis assure us they can control.

When asked why the administration would be acting in a way that appears to run counter to US interests, Hersh says that, since the Israelis lost to them last summer, “the fear of Hezbollah in Washington, particularly in the White House, is acute.”

Former Rove aide pleads the Fifth on White House contacts with convicted lobbyist Abramoff

Raw Story
Excerpt
Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to top White House adviser Karl Rove, invoked her rights against self-incrimination while she was being asked to answer questions by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Committee’s Chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, announced in a memo Tuesday. The deposition for which she sat concerned contacts between convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rove, as well as the White House more broadly.

“The subjects this morning that she will be unable to testify to…are the subjects of the relationship between Jack Abramoff and his associates and White House officials, including Ms. Ralston, and the subject of the use by White House officials of political e-mail accounts at the RNC,” Ralston’s lawyer, Bradford Berenson said, during the May 10 deposition. “She has material, useful information about both of those subjects.”

According to Waxman’s memo, which was sent to Oversight Committee members, Ralston is seeking immunity from prosecution.

“She is more than willing to provide it to the committee. However, she will, as we have previously discussed, require a grant of immunity before she is comfortable going forward,” Berenson also said in the deposition.

The Game is Rigged

Progressive Daily Beacon
Excerpt
The sad truth of the matter is, whether people are willing to admit it or not, the game is rigged. Actually, the entire system has become every bit perverted as former Republican Congressman, Mark Foley’s needful desire for all things boy.

James Comey, deputy to former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, testified before Congress that then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Mister Bush’s onetime Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, likely at the behest of the President, were dispatched to the hospital bed of a very ill and barely coherent Ashcroft. Gonzales and Card’s mission, according to Mister Comey, was to try and convince the nation’s barely conscious top law enforcement officer to approve of Mister Bush’s domestic spy program. A task made necessary because the justice department had concluded the program to be unlawful.

When Mister Comey caught wind of the Gonzales-Card scheme for seeking to bypass the justice department’s findings, he and his security detail made a Tom Clancy-like high-speed dash through America’s capital and were able to beat Mister Bush’s men to the convalescing Attorney General’s bedside. As if the spectacle of a president dispatching his boys to the hospital bed of a barely coherent Attorney General in an effort to undermine the rule of law weren’t surreal enough, James Comey’s testimony caught Gonzales in a blatant lie. And Gonzales’s lie wasn’t a little trifling lie – it was a felonious lie to Congress and told while the current attorney general was under oath.

HLs Take
And the networks wonder why they are losing there asses in the news ratings to the blogs. Keep whoring for the administration guys. The more you do, the more viewers we get, the more money we make, and the more money you lose. Everyone know nows that network news is a bunch of Bush ass licking crap. Soon you will have no viewers at all, none if the important demographics you are looking for anyway

Bush gives secret order for covert war with Iran

The Blue State
Excerpt
Intelligence officials leaked to the Blotter that President Bush has given a classified order to the CIA allowing them to wage covert war in Iran:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

This is analogous to the 2002 order that Bush gave the CIA prior to the official start of war in Iraq.