The Hollywood Liberal

Guantánamo Detainees To Be Heard Before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

read more

Presidential Debate Liveblog Part 3
What we’ve learned so far: all we need to do is cut earmarks and spending and everything will be awesome. The Surge is awesome. Wind power is awesome. Tax cuts are awesome. Petraeus is awesome. I did like Obama’s series of “you were wrongs” about Iraq. But generally I think he’s letting McSame getting away with way too much bullshit.

What we’ve learned so far: all we need to do is cut earmarks and spending and everything will be awesome. The Surge is awesome. Wind power is awesome. Tax cuts are awesome. Petraeus is awesome.

I did like Obama’s series of “you were wrongs” about Iraq. But generally I think he’s letting McSame getting away with way too much bullshit.

Stylistically speaking, Obama seems to be speaking a bit too quickly, and McSame generally appears to be having a better time. I don’t know how that’s translating out there in TV land, but it’s worrisome.

We’ll see how they close.

How to Talk to Teens About Sex
There are many ways of helping young people navigate these years of sexual exploration. Just don’t forget you were once a teen yourself.

Franken Ad: “I’m Not Proud Of Every Joke I’ve Ever Told”
Check out this new ad from Al Franken, responding to an attack ad from Republican Sen. Norm Coleman that hit him for telling “tasteless, sexist jokes” and writing “juicy porn” as a comedian: “Look, I’m not proud of every joke…

Don’t Hide the Fudge!
Okay, this one’s just for fun. You know, John McCain’s been having a rough few days on the image and message front. Had to cancel the visit to New Orleans and the Gulf Oil rig because of the recent oil…

Leadership! Experience! Change!

Good thing McCain dropped everything to go to Washington:

Mr. Boehner pressed an alternative that involved a smaller role for the government, and Mr. McCain, whose support of the deal is critical if fellow Republicans are to sign on, declined to take a stand.

Grueling Prep Work Precedes Critical Clash
At 9 p.m. tonight, John McCain and Barack Obama will stride across the stage of the University of Mississippi’s performing arts center in Oxford, shake hands and take up positions behind lecterns whose height was negotiated by the two candidates’ lawyers. Jim Lehrer of PBS will ask Obama, stage l…

Two Bills Aim for the Skies
As it prepares to adjourn, Congress is close to passing and sending to President Bush two bills aimed at keeping American astronauts flying to the international space station during a five-year gap when NASA will have no manned spacecraft of its own capable of reaching the $100 billion orbiting…

Mahmoud’s in a New York State of Mind
Iranian “President” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejects American ideas — all of our ideas, that is, but nuclear fusion. When Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Columbia University in 2007 that the United States must investigate “who was truly involved” in 9/11, students may have confused the speech with ethnic studies class. There should be no confusion.

The Secret War on Dollar
WASHINGTON — On Wednesday night, President Bush addressed the nation in an effort to persuade Congress to pass a bill to reduce the risk to major financial institutions and to safeguard American families and businesses. On Thursday, he met with Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and other congressional leaders to build a consensus plan for bailing out our financial system. The potentates on the Potomac now are pondering the price tag for saving Wall Street. Unfortunately, corrupt officials in other nations’ capitals are also hard at work — undermining what’s left of the U.S. dollar by printing and distributing their own versions of American currency. Counterfeiting another nation’s legal tender is not only a crime but also an act of aggression. During World War II, Adolf Hitler produced British bank notes to destabilize the U.K. Mao Zedong used phony money to undermine Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government through inflation. The Soviets created passable replicas of African and European monetary instruments to damage local economies. But no one ever has engaged in the kind of economic warfare against the United States as effectively or on such a scale as is being waged now by the regimes in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Tehran, Iran.