Somehow I think Hollywood actor Fred Thompson’s friendship with convicted felon Scooter Libby is gonna be under some scrutiny now that he’s more or less in the field.
Archive for May, 2007
The day after he unveiled his “Plan for a Healthy America,” Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois said substantial health care reform would only come if “we build a movement around the country for change.”
Um, senator, you are that movement. Now is the time. You don’t start out small and go big as you get more legit. In fact, the historical pattern is exactly the opposite. One most start out from an audacious position. (via)
George Bush goes crazy and starts raving like Dick Nixon.
It is delicious.
The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.
Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.
John McCain agrees with Bill O’Reilly that we need to preserve the “white, male power structure”.
I am still scratching my head over why more blacks and other minorities don’t vote Republican.
The chances of a Republican winning there are like Democratic chances in Alaska.
A show nobody watches loses a crazy person.
We hear that Fox News’s Red Eye eye-candy neo-con Canadian trouble-girl Rachel Marsden—you remember her from her days of ALLEGED stalking in Canada—was just taken by security guards out of the Fox News studios and out of the News Corp. building.
The worlds of politics and sexy celebrity women continue to collide, now with Christina Aguilera on Senator Clinton’s team.
Elsewhere in Beverly Hills, pop star Christina Aguilera and actor Mike Meyers attended Clinton’s late-evening fundraiser at the mansion of director Brett Ratner and supermarket mogul Ron Burkle. Aguilera and Meyers were two of at least two dozen celebrities expected to make an early commitment to Clinton. .
Barack Obama: Halle Berry, Jessica Biel
Hillary Clinton: Christina Aguilera
Democrats: Jessica Alba
These ads may have kept Mitt Romney out of the senate, but eight years later Shannon O’Brien ran virtually identical ads and got beaten by Romney for the governorship in the same state. Partially because O’Brien was a weak candidate, but also because Romney had the "Olympic turnaround" (something of an embellishment) to tout and negate largely the effect of these ads about Ampad. It’s an arrow in a campaign vs. Romney, but not the dagger in his political heart.
George Bush is never going to back down on this issue, it’s too much for his ego ever to admit a mistake or misstep. If Americans have to stay in Iraq forever, so be it.
President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.
There’s also the attempt to play off our occupation of Iraq as the same as continued U.S. presence at the South Korean border, Europe, etc. But in none of those situations is there the clear and present daily danger of getting blown up. Sure, there’s always the chance Kim Jong-Il will try something, but there aren’t 150,000 troops as sitting ducks to get picked off by insurgents, Sunni militants, Shia militants, or plugged in the back by a member of the Iraqi army or police.
Who do you trust? The answer does not rhyme with "Joe Lieberman" (And never mind that he promised the voters he would "help end the war in Iraq", that’s one of those inconvenient truths Al Gore is always talking about).
It’s always kind of funny when conservatives try to claim that because Chris Matthews worked for a Democrat two decades ago that that somehow makes him a liberal. Never mind that Matthews, a creature of the DC cocktail circuit if there ever was one, is in the tank for people like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. And you have to totally ignore the fact that Matthews has a chip on his shoulder against the Clintons and Al Gore.
So when he claims on his tv show - with no evidence, no real reasoning besides blind dislike, that Al Gore had plastic surgery - it just floats out there.
Hollywood actor Fred Thompson is making the transition from theoretical candidate to actual one, and while I could be wrong I don’t think it’s going to work out.
I don’t think he’ll appreciate it, but hey.
(And while I think his politics are stupid and pedantic, I don’t think he’s a bad artist - I frankly think too many people like to say someone is a bad writer or artist when they disagree with them. Someone can be a good artist/writer/whatever and be a total moron.)
We are a nation of 300 million plus people. This is who NBC’s Chris Matthews chose to have on as an expert to discuss the homeland security implications of the quarantined TB patient:
Yes, Michael Brown, Bush-administration Arabian horse show expert who was put in charge of FEMA and prceeded to do such a “heck of a job” that New Orleans drowned, and people died unnecessarily. In other words there are probably a few hundred million people more qualified and knowledgeable for Matthews to have on discussing important issues but he chose the failure.
If the religious far-right wrote Star Trek, it would probably work out like this. (via)
Conservatives look to a statement by actor Robert Mitchum advising that we couldn’t pull out of Vietnam and should nuke the place as some kind of sage advice relating to Iraq.
Or something.
The government is fighting against having to test beef for mad cow. Amazing.
In the cover story of InStyle magazine’s June issue, actress Jessica Alba, who is widely considered to have one of the best bodies in Hollywood, reveals that she has a crush on Democratic leader Harold Ford Jr.
"He is so cute, he’s adorable and he’s single," the 26-year-old says. "I went to one of his fundraisers."
No word yet if Alba has joined Halle Berry or Jessica Biel on Team Obama.
Can somebody tell me again why Democrats and progressives continue to speak about the Supreme Court only within the framework of Roe vs. Wade?
The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue
their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4
decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. The dissenters said
the ruling ignored workplace realities.The decision came in a case involving a supervisor at a Goodyear
Tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., the only woman among 16 men at the same
management level, who was paid less than any of her colleagues,
including those with less seniority. She learned that fact late in a
career of nearly 20 years — too late, according to the Supreme Court’s
majority.The court held on Tuesday that employees may not bring suit under
the principal federal anti-discrimination law unless they have filed a
formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 days after their pay
was set. The timeline applies, according to the decision, even if the
effects of the initial discriminatory act were not immediately apparent
to the worker and even if they continue to the present day.From 2001 to 2006, workers brought nearly 40,000 pay discrimination
cases. Many such cases are likely to be barred by the court’s
interpretation of the requirement in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 that employees make their charge within 180 days “after the
alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.”Workplace experts said the ruling would have broad ramifications and would narrow the legal options of many employees.
There’s a good chance the next president will be nominating at least two judges to the court, or possibly more that could end up altering the entire balance of the court. The Dems on the trail might think to mention that to folks. It’s important.
We’ve seen the perils of relying on the outside groups (Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way) and senators to do a competent job on this: one, two.
By far the best tv show of my childhood.
When the government wanted to cut Public Television funds in 1969, the relatively unknown Mister Rogers went to Washington. Almost straight out of a Capra film, his 5-6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed. While the budget should have been cut, the funding instead jumped from $9 to $22 million. Rogers also spoke to Congress, and swayed senators into voting to allow VCR’s to record television shows from the home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family.
(via)
UPDATE: I love Youtube. Mister Rogers (and Mr. McPheely) visits the set of The Incredible Hulk Movie.
