The Hollywood Liberal

Obama Fundraising Surges
“After locking up his party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama’s fundraising operation came roaring back to life in June, generating more than a million dollars on five days, including a whopping $25 million that came in on the last day of the month,” according to Politico.

“His one-day haul represents nearly half of his monthly total and more than Republican rival John McCain generated for the entire month. During the month, McCain did not have a single day in which he raised a million dollars.”

Virginia Demographic Shifts Favor Obama
The Virginian-Pilot pinpoints the reason many political analysts expect Virginia to be competitive in this year’s presidential election.

“The pool of 18- to 25-year-olds signing up to vote in this year’s presidential election is growing at twice the rate of all Virginia voters… Of those who registered to vote in Virginia during the first six months of 2008, nearly half were under the age of 25, and the majority of them were teens who had just reached voting age – 18-year-olds, along with 17-year-olds who will turn 18 before Election Day. The majority also were women.”

Though Virginia typically votes for Republicans in presidential election, nearly every poll shows that this demographic group overwhelmingly favors Sen. Barack Obama.

Because Organizing Bloggers Is Just Like Lynching Black People
So BillO thinks Al Gore shouldn’t have been at Netroots Nation. Well, I decided to call up someone who actually knows something about the Klan and what they do …

Not a Netroots Nation meeting

So BillO thinks Al Gore shouldn’t have been at Netroots Nation:

The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference.

Right. Well, I decided to call up someone who actually knows something about the Klan and what they do: Mark Potok of the SPLC. He told me:

The idea that Netroots Nation is somehow like the Klan is not only ludicrous but obscenely misleading. This is a group with a long history of murder and terrorism, and they continue to inflict it on American society. This kind of talk utterly trivializes the very real problems, the real violence and hatred, caused by the Klan and groups like them.

ACLU Sues Over Felon Disenfranchisement in Alabama

Good for the ACLU (again):

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Alabama elections officials Monday over what it says is an overly expansive policy disenfranchising felons, amid concern from voting rights groups nationwide that voting lists are being culled with too great alacrity by many states.

Alabama bars felons from voting only if they've been convicted of a crime of “moral turpitude.” According to the ACLU, the state legislature limited that fuzzy phrase to specific crimes: “murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, incest, sexual torture and nine other crimes mainly involving pornography and abuses against children.” Alabama's attorney general, Troy King, has expanded the legislature's list to include about a dozen more (mostly nonviolent) crimes, including the distribution of marijuana. The ACLU takes the sensible position that it's the responsibility of the legislature, not the attorney general, to make the law. [more …]

State election officials appear to be going beyond even the attorney general’s list. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Annette McWashington Pruitt, a 48-year-old Birmingham resident, was turned away because of her 2003 conviction for receiving stolen property, her lawyers say.

The suit asks a state court judge to stop Alabama election officials from turning away any voter with a felony conviction not on the Legislature’s moral turpitude list.

We last heard from Alabama's arrogant AG here. This post tells you more about Troy King's deficient sense of justice.

Troy King is not alone in his attempt to disenfranchise as many people as he can.

Voting rights groups are especially watchful this year because under a 2002 federal law, states are now coordinating lists to find felons and people who have died or moved, allowing easy — rights groups say too easy — purging of voters. …

Elsewhere in the South, the voting rights group Project Vote has been expressing concern over what it sees as undue purging of voters in Louisiana, without notification, before this year’s election.

States do the nation no favors by disenfranchising offenders who have paid for their mistakes and who want to live responsible lives. As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, reminds us:

“It’s in the larger interest of the general public to rehabilitate people. It’s one of the things that rehabilitates people, participating in the political process.”

No Bottom
This Wachovia analysis about the housing market sounds a lot more realistic to me.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have suggested over the past year that an end is in sight. But with each prediction, things have grown worse. For many homeowners, the deep housing slump feels like a drop off a skyscraper. Every time another 15 floors have passed, there seems to be more room to fall.

“I don’t think we get strengthening in the housing market until late 2011 or 2012,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wachovia, the nation’s fourth largest bank and one that this month hired the number-two man from the Treasury Department as its new chief executive officer to shore up its own growing exposure to mortgage debt.

Before bottoming out, prices nationwide should fall 22 percent to 29 percent on average from their peak, according to a report that Wachovia released last Monday.

Once upon of time these kinds of price reduction estimates were considered to be crazy talk, and most of the very serious people were talking as if there would be some momentary pause and then home prices would continue to appreciate at absurd rates until the end of time.

The Internet Is No Substitute for the Dying Newspaper Industry
The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and responsibility to inform the public.

“There is No Such Thing as Justice Here”: Hamdan Trial Begins
Salim Hamdan, the suicidal and delusional prisoner who was once a chauffeur for Osama bin Laden, is being tried by Military Tribunal.

Dems Plowing Huge Money Into Tough Maine Senate Race
The DSCC is making a huge investment of over $5 million in the Maine Senate race, Advertising Age reports — a sign that Senate Dems will use their massive financial advantage over the GOP to expand the map into some…

TPMtv: McCain Responds … And Responds … And Responds …
With Barack Obama in the midst of a much-hyped trip to the Middle East and with all the news that came out over the weekend regarding the Iraqi government’s positive comments toward Obama’s withdrawal timetable, we figured it was only…

Bush vows to help Kosovo gain ground
US President George W. Bush promised Kosovo’s visiting president and prime minister Monday he would try to convince more nations to embrace formal diplomatic ties with their young country…

McCain, Obama set for church forum
McCain, Obama set for church forum

Bush: ?I do know about YouTube.?
On Saturday, the Arizona Star reported that President Bush asked the audience to turn off recording devices at a Friday fundraiser, afraid that his remarks could be posted to YouTube: So sensitive were Republicans about information getting out about the goings-on at the Tucson fundraiser hosted by President Bush Friday morning, even W. himself made […]

On Saturday, the Arizona Star reported that President Bush asked the audience to turn off recording devices at a Friday fundraiser, afraid that his remarks could be posted to YouTube:

So sensitive were Republicans about information getting out about the goings-on at the Tucson fundraiser hosted by President Bush Friday morning, even W. himself made sure to ask the 400 or so people at the event to turn off any recording devices.

“I don’t know a lot about technology,” the president said, according to one insider, “but I do know about YouTube.“

President Bush’s technological incompetence is long-standing; his familiarity with YouTube seems to be a new development. After CNN held the first-ever YouTube Democratic presidential debate, former White House press secretary Tony Snow was asked, “Did [Bush] watch the debate?” Snow responded, “I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s big on YouTube debates.”

Congress Is Set to Limit Down-Payment Assistance
Mortgage programs that helped nearly 79,000 people buy homes using government-insured loans last year would be eliminated as part of a broader housing package that Congress expects to pass this week, key lawmakers said.

Paying Homage to Desegregation’s Pioneers
RICHMOND, July 21 — In 1989, Virginia became the first state to elect a black governor. Last year, the General Assembly passed a resolution apologizing for the state’s role in the slave trade.