The Hollywood Liberal

Obama’s Memoir a Tissue of Lies

Reviving the Obama Race Canard
Jonathan Tobin, Commentary
Race is the original sin of American history. To deny its influence on our society is as futile as it is illogical. Nevertheless, the attempt to cast President Obama’s re-election campaign as the focus of a racial backlash seems to be more about obfuscating the issues that are animating the vast majority of voters than providing any insight into public opinion.

Joy of French Socialists Will Be Short-Lived
Ben Brogan, Daily Telegraph
Fear of the mob drives French politics, and has done since 1789. Tomorrow night the French Left will gather in their thousands at the Bastille to celebrate what they are certain will be another revolution. They will wave banners and red roses, sing the Internationale, and tear around the streets, horns blaring, to celebrate a socialist capturing the presidency for the first time in nearly 25 years.

The Health-Care Mandate Is About Liberty
Cohn & Strauss, Bloomberg
As they await the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, legal critics of the law say their case is about liberty. If the government can instruct people to obtain health insurance, they keep asking, what's to stop it from requiring them to buy broccoli?

Obama Targets a Party as Romney Aims at a President
Erin McPike, RCP
President Obama and Mitt Romney are talking around each other these days, and it's easy to see why: The former's message is rooted in party ideology while the latter's is based on his opponent's leadership style.The difference demonstrates how crystallized opinions have become as the election season begins in earnest. What's more, it shows how badly the Romney campaign wants the election to be a referendum on the president, thus making the incumbent's management style a focal point of the race. Team Obama, however, wants the sharpest contrast before voters to be…

Plutocracy, Paralysis, and Perplexity
Paul Krugman, New York Times
Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Things That Really Matter
Charles Blow, New York Times
Another week of presidential politics, another outbreak of faux outrage and media manipulation.President Obama’s campaign released an ad trumpeting Obama’s decision to conduct the military raid that ended in the killing of Osama bin Laden. Republicans — and some liberals with too much time and too-short memories — hit the roof. How dare he? How tacky. Below the office and out of bounds.

Bailing Out Bad Choices Isn’t Academic
Charles Hurt, Washington Times
Once again, this town has ground to a halt in another one of its interminable squabbles about how to spend even more of our money that we do not have.The only thing everyone can agree upon is that they do want to spend $6 billion on yet another indefensible bailout.That’s right, years after this town turned the word “bailout” into a dirty word by bailing out banks, car companies, Wall Street, credit card companies — all while we were struggling to pay the light bill and buy groceries — they’re right back at it. 

Obama Reveals New Details of Bin Laden Raid
George Condon, Natl Jnrl
President Obama returns a salute as he steps off the Marine One helicopter upon his arrival on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday. Obama was returning from an unannounced trip to Afghanistan.

Environmental Illusions
John Stossel, FOX Business
The human brain is torn between simple intuition and the more complex hard work of figuring out the unintended consequences of any policy. Who doesn't like thinking about trees and greenery and happy animals? Who doesn't want to see steps taken to protect those things, all else being equal? But all else is not equal. Civilization doesn't work when central planners treat each tree as if its value is infinite.Politicians specialize in convincing you that, with their help, you can have your cake and eat it, too. The idea of a new “green economy” that is both clean and…

Can Richard Mourdock Topple Lugar?
Michael Warren, Weekly Standard
The May 8 election could also turn out to be the final fight of 80-year-old incumbent Dick Lugar's long career. A six-term senator and former Indianapolis mayor, Lugar is an institution, but conservative forces within the Republican party have long grumbled that he is too moderate and too ensconced in the Washington bubble, where he's been since entering the Senate nearly 36 years ago. Now, Lugar is in danger of losing the GOP nomination to Mourdock, who is giving Lugar the toughest electoral battle he's ever faced.

What America Needs Is a Return to Normalcy
John Feehery, The Hill
In the aftermath of World “War I, the Palmer Raids, a failed effort to ratify the League of Nations, economic stagnation and the failing Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding ran for president on a promise to return the nation to a better sense of normalcy.

The Man Who Started the Hacker Wars
David Kushner, The New Yorker
In the summer of 2007, Apple released the iPhone, in an exclusive partnership with A.T. & T. George Hotz, a seventeen-year-old from Glen Rock, New Jersey, was a T-Mobile subscriber. He wanted an iPhone, but he also wanted to make calls using his existing network, so he decided to hack the phone.Every hack poses the same basic challenge: how to make something function in a way for which it wasn’t designed. In one respect, hacking is an act of hypnosis. As Hotz describes it, the secret is to figure out how to speak to the device, then persuade it to obey your wishes.

What Still Nags Ben Bradlee About Watergate
Jeff Himmelman, NY Mag
One day in early 2007, Bob Woodward poked his head into my office. He and his wife, Elsa, had been out for dinner the night before with Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn. Bradlee had written a memoir in 1995, but he had another book left on his contract, and he and Sally were looking for somebody to help them out. “I told them they should hire you,” Bob said.My office was on the third floor of Bob’s house, down the hall from the framed apology from Nixon’s press secretary that sits at the top of the staircase. I was back working as Bob’s…

Politicizing bin Laden’s Death Looks Desperate
Nile Gardiner, Telegraph
The magnificent operation by US Navy Seals to terminate Osama bin Laden in Pakistan a year ago this week united a divided nation, and brought with it a sense of closure for millions of Americans nearly a decade on from the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Thousands gathered in front of the White House as well as in Times Square to celebrate the news of bin Laden's demise in the early hours of May 2, 2011. It was one of the most memorable events of the early 21st Century.

When Will Big Tech Pay Its Fair Share?
Duhigg & Kocieniewski, NY Times
Apple, the world's most profitable technology company, doesn't design iPhones here. It doesn't run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn't manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby.Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. 

Live Not By Obama’s Lies
Matthew Continetti, Washington Free Beacon
“Live not by lies,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn enjoined his countrymen shortly before being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. This week the political press finally took his advice.

Wedge Issues May Boost Obama’s Prospects
Mark Barabak, LA Times
Is President Obama trying to wedge his way to a second term? The economy will doubtless be the overriding issue in November's presidential contest, and Obama is hardly ignoring it. But a successful candidate appeals to all sorts of voters harboring all sorts of concerns, and the president and his backers appear to be using a pair of wedge issues to target two groups, Latinos and women, with messages grounded more in emotionalism than economics.

Confronting the Poverty Epidemic
Sasha Abramsky, The Nation
To restore the American Dream for the 99 percent, we must first bring the “invisible poor” out of the shadows.

Young, Restless, and Not Voting
Clare Malone, American Prospect
This week, as the general election campaign “ramps up” for the umpteenth time, President Barack Obama has been conspicuous about talking to the young folks of America. He’s gone where they congregate—college campuses to talk about student loans and on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to slow jam the news and stand next to “The Roots,” absorbing their cool by osmosis. In the last presidential election, young Americans ate up the heaping spoonfuls of hope served to them by the Obama campaign—66 percent of 18-29 year olds…

What Would Obama’s 2nd Term Look Like?
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner arrived in the Oval Office bearing socks. President Obama had admired Wenner’s flashy pair on a previous visit, and this gift fit the bill: one pair salmon with pink squares, the other black and pink stripes.“These are nice,” the president said. Then he paused. “These may be second-term socks.”

The Death of the Austerity Fairy Tale
Paul Krugman, New York Times
This was the month the confidence fairy died.For the past two years most policy makers in Europe and many politicians and pundits in America have been in thrall to a destructive economic doctrine. According to this doctrine, governments should respond to a severely depressed economy not the way the textbooks say they should "” by spending more to offset falling private demand "” but with fiscal austerity, slashing spending in an effort to balance their budgets.

The Square Can Win
David Paul Kuhn, RealClearPolitics
In 1972, a young aide named Patrick Buchanan suggested that Richard Nixon frame the presidential campaign as “square America” vs. “radical America.” The square won 49 states.Pundits tend to describe Mitt Romney's vanilla disposition as a liability. The Washington Post recently asked, “Why does Mitt Romney seem so stiff?” But there's a more practical question: How much does it matter?Stiffs can become president, even in this television age. During the 1988 campaign, George H.W. Bush asked reporters, "What's wrong with being a boring kind of…

If Mormonism Is Fair Game, So Is Jeremiah Wright
Larry Elder, IBD
A well-regarded Republican strategist at a private gathering recently warned, “And just wait until they play that Mormon card.” By “they,” he meant the Obama campaign and its complicit media cheerleaders.Lawrence O'Donnell, only days later, gave his viewers a historical tutorial on the Mormon religion, darkly suggesting that we all should be afraid, very afraid. The Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, called Mitt Romney's grandfather a “polygamist.”This is actually good news for the Romney campaign.By making Romney's Mormonism an…

George Zimmerman: Prelude to a Shooting
Chris Francescani, Reuters
A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show.

Don’t Listen to Scott Walker If You Want Jobs
Gov. Pat Quinn, MSNBC
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn joins Ed Schultz to discuss the state of the Illinois and Wisconsin economies.”Wisconsin's dead last in job growth,” Quinn said. “Don't listen to Scott Walker if you want to get jobs in your state, and we sure haven't listened to him. We believe in our workers. We have skilled, educated workers. We believe in investing in education.”