The Hollywood Liberal

The Tattlesnake – More Zippity-Doo-Dah From the Fading Right Edition
In the anguished ‘why we lost’ analyses in the days to come from the Fox News-Karl Rove-Bill Kristol neocons and their compadres in the Big Media, still discombobulated over Obama’s landslide victory in what they think is a ‘center-right’ conservative nation – the ‘liberal socialist’ Obama of November 3rd even magically transforming into a ‘fiscal […]

What’s Next for Palin?
The Anchorage Daily News looks at Gov. Sarah Palin’s political future.

“Does Palin really want to run for president in four years? And if she does, would it be best to find a way to the U.S. Senate, where she could acquire some of the big-time political and foreign-policy luster lacking in her first national campaign?”

“Or should she run again for governor in 2010, maintaining her ‘Washington-outsider’ status by taking what one Republican strategist calls ‘the Hillary Clinton model,’ rolling up her sleeves and re-establishing herself as a local hero?”

The Energy Challenge of Our Lifetime
Of all the challenges facing President Obama, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy.

Election Central Saturday Roundup
Palin: My Comments About The Country Of Africa Were “Taken Out Of Context” Sarah Palin is defending herself from the allegation that she thought Africa was a single country, and not a continent: “If there are allegations based on questions…

TPMtv: It’s the Surge, Stupid
If you’re desperate to be John McCain’s vice presidential nominee, you better get on TV and start talking up the Surge as the single most important issue in this year’s presidential campaign. And if you’re serious about getting picked it…

GM reports billions of lost dollars
t was worse than Wall Street expected. (GM) lost a colossal $4.2 billion. But more dire is the company’s cash burn of $6.9 billion, which has GM delaying some new models, cutting deeper into costs and?most important?putting a possible acquisition of rival Chrysler on the back burner…

Podesta: Obama Given ?Real Mandate For Change?
John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress (currently on leave to head the Obama transition), explained this morning on Fox News Sunday that President-Elect Barack Obama’s victory last week constituted a strong endorsement by the American people of a “progressive philosophy” and has given progressives a “real mandate for change.” Later in […]

John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress (currently on leave to head the Obama transition), explained this morning on Fox News Sunday that President-Elect Barack Obama’s victory last week constituted a strong endorsement by the American people of a “progressive philosophy” and has given progressives a “real mandate for change.”

Later in the program, however, Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) argued that last week’s election was not a mandate. Despite the decisive election of Obama and other progressive candidates across the country, Cantor and Pence maintained that Americans were not endorsing the progressive platform:

CANTOR: This was not some kind of realignment of the electorate, not some kind of shift toward some style of European social, big government type of philosophy. […]

PENCE: I don’t think this was a victory for a progressive, or a liberal victory, I think this was a victory for Barack Obama.

Watch a compilation:

Pence and Cantor are wrong. Last week Americans decisively elected a progressive president and gave progressives a majority in both houses of congress. Exit polls from last Tuesday show that “51 percent said government should do more to solve problems, the first time even a narrow majority said so since exit pollsters started asking the question in 1994.”

Indeed, while America remains a centrist nation, last week’s election demonstrates that the center is moving to the left. Polling shows that a majority of Americans favor progressive solutions to our nation’s problems including, instituting universal health care, expanding environmental protections, rebuilding the middle class, and ending the Iraq war.

A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks
The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.