The Liberal Doomsayer My blog deals primarily with national politics in the U.S. as well as, on occasion, local politics in Pennsylvania. From time to time, I may have something to say about sports and entertainment as well. I try to interpret information that shapes the news and provide context to current events. I am definitely left of center politically, but as far as I'm concerned, neither major party is perfect. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 66 0 60 4272

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

A Promise I Had To Break 2008-02-05 15:21:00 (I’ll explain the post title shortly.)A few weeks ago, Chris Satullo, formerly the editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote this piece of refuse masquerading as a newspaper column that purported to be some kind of a primer for the presidential candidates of both parties (first saw it on Eschaton). And if you’re able to read it (and I suggest not doing so on a full stomach), you will see that he was doing so with some kind of a smart-alecky attitude about most of them (and yes, I would be a bit disingenuous here if I automatically blew off someone because they were trying to be that way).Well anyway, here is what Satullo had to say about John Edwards…John Edwards (D.): Had the most costly haircut since Samson. Trust me: That notorious $400 snip job on his gleaming locks will never stop costing Edwards with the working-class Americans who he thinks are his constituency. A silly, concocted demerit, sure, but that's modern politics. If you liked how nominating a fau ...

Dubya's Final Budget 2008-02-05 13:10:00 The New York Times gives us the gory details here today…President Bush’s 2009 budget is a grim guided tour through his misplaced priorities, failed fiscal policies and the disastrous legacy that he will leave for the next president. And even that requires you to accept the White House’s optimistic accounting, which seven years of experience tells us would be foolish in the extreme.With Mr. Bush on his way out the door and the Democrats in charge of Congress, it is not clear how many of the president’s priorities, unveiled on Monday, will survive. Among its many wrongheaded ideas, the budget includes some $2 billion to ratchet up enforcement-heavy immigration policies and billions more for a defense against ballistic missiles that show no signs of working.What will definitely outlast Mr. Bush for years to come are big deficits, a military so battered by the Iraq war that it will take hundreds of billions of dollars to repair it and stunted social programs that have been squeezed ...

‘Zo Jackson’s Got His Homey’s “Back” 2008-02-05 11:29:00 It’s been awhile since I’ve had an opportunity to take a shot at one of this administra- tion’s flunkies, but, life under George W. Milhous Bush being what it is, you just knew an opportunity would present itself. And so it apparently has.It seems that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has been accused by the Philadelphia Housing Authority of ordering the city to turn over $2 million to “a politically connected developer,” and then refusing to turn over millions of dollars in additional federal aid to PHA after Jackson’s directive was refused.And as reported in this New York Times story by David Kocieniewski, that friend of Jackson’s is Philadelphia soul songwriter and producer Kenny Gamble; he and partner Leon Huff formed the Philadelphia International recording label in 1971 (noted here) and churned out a bunch of hits with The O’Jays (“Back Stabbers,” “Love Train”), Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (“If You Don’t Know Me By Now”) and Billy Paul (“Me And ...

Tuesday AM Videos 2008-02-05 08:15:00 Some videos to get us all into the spirit of Super Tuesday, I hope - here's a message from "South Park" and "Puff Daddy" (P Diddy? Can't keep it all straight - God, I'm so Caucasian)......and some timely words from the band Slaughter also (really, though, with everything at stake, can we imagine why anyone in these 20 states with a pulse wouldn't decide to sit this out?). ...

Matt Bai Scours The Repug Wreckage 2008-02-04 16:04:00 In a column in the New York Times Magazine yesterday that was sometimes tiresome for lamenting “the bitterness and polarity of (baby) boomer politics” as the reason for the sorry state we find ourselves in today (as if confrontation in politics is always baaad), Matt Bai came up with what I thought was the best description I’ve read in awhile of the current state of the Republican Party…In a way, it is precisely this lingering adherence to Reaganism that makes the Republican candidates so implausible to many of the party’s own voters. Reagan’s ideology, after all, was devised at a time when Republicans hardly governed anything; it was the basis for a movement, not a majority. Over the last two decades, as Republicans have enjoyed far greater electoral success, they have also run up against the limits of modern conservative theory, the practical barriers to enacting a rigid ideological solution. It is little wonder that Mike Huckabee finds himself assailed now for raising ta ...

This Day In Intolerance (2/4/08) 2008-02-04 15:40:00 Bloomberg tells us that Earl Butz passed away, the former agriculture secretary who surely uttered one of the most racist quotes of all time in 1976 (I’ll link to it from here and let you decide whether or not you want to read it verbatim).What a shame he wasn’t a radio talk show host about 30 or so years from that point into the future. If he were, he probably would have ended making a lot of money and achieved syndication throughout the country (h/t The Daily Kos – Butz probably would have been fired or suspended a time or two, but these people always seem to rise up out of the muck regardless). ...

More “Obama-Rama” Wonderment 2008-02-04 11:28:00 As the “fired up, ready to go” senator from Illinois makes a last push for votes along with Hillary, St. McCain and The Mittster before Super Tuesday tomorrow, it’s worth nothing that Obama recently received an endorsement that would make me question once more whether or not he is truly a candidate of change or a slightly more palatable version of much of the corporate status quo under which we currently live.(OK, now let me emphasize here that if I take shots at Obama and Hillary Clinton, it is NOT merely out of reflex because John Edwards dropped out of the race. In this case, I think Obama has received plaudits from someone who really doesn’t give a damn about the progressive political community Obama purports to represent.)I’m glad Hale “Bonddad” (?) Stewart of HuffPo is so pleased here that Paul Volcker (pictured), the former Federal Reserve chairman under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, has endorsed Obama, with Stewart praising Volcker as…… the primar ...

Friday Videos 2008-02-01 22:56:00 Seether ("Rise Above This," a cool fan vid from YouTuber snake1591)......Simon LeBon of Duran Duran hit the mid-century mark on Monday ("Save A Prayer")......I missed John Legend on Monday also ("I Won't Complain" - not good to cut off Oprah like that; she's got that karma thing going, you know)......and happy ontime birthday wishes go out to Ray "Dr. Hook" Sawyer ("The Cover Of 'Rolling Stone',"; the boys are adorable, and kudos to the family for having fun with this also). ...

Friday Political Stuff 2008-02-01 22:27:00 I promise to try and resume normal posting next week - out of my hands to an extent, but we'll see (I know, this is a recording).In the meantime, as long as "St. McCain" appears to be ascendant on the Repug side, here's a brief reminder about him......and technical difficulties prevented me from embedding this earlier, but here's "The Pap Attack" on Dubya's State of the Union fantasy delusion propaganda address this week. ...

Krugman Sums It Up On Edwards 2008-02-01 16:36:00 Can’t let today’s dose of Paul Krugman go unnoticed, particularly this one…So John Edwards has dropped out of the race for the presidency. By normal political standards, his campaign fell short.But Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas. And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.To understand the extent of the Edwards effect, you have to think about what might have been.At the beginning of 2007, it seemed likely that the Democratic nominee would run a cautious campaign, without strong, distinctive policy ideas. That, after all, is what John Kerry did in 2004.If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.It’s hard, i ...

Where The Rubber Meets The Road (02/01/08) 2008-02-01 16:18:00 As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week.HouseHealth-Coverage Veto. Members failed, 260-152, to reach a two-thirds majority for overriding President Bush's veto of a bill that would renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program through 2012 at a cost of $60 billion, up $35 billion over current levels.A yes vote was to enact HR 3963.Voting yes: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.) Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).Voting no: Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.) and H. James Saxton (R., N.J.).Instead of wasting more time bemoaning Pancake Joe again (not bothering with Saxton since he’s leaving), I just want to note that Bruce Sl ...

Thursday Stuff 2008-01-31 19:49:00 I really haven't had time to expound on the departure of Rudy Giuliani from the presidential race - not soon enough - so I thought I'd bring back this ad from the early '90s instead while everything was still peachy with second wife Donna Hanover......and the Tet Offensive began 40 years ago on or about this day (and it was a huge military loss for the North Vietnamese, but it created enough of a media splash here to make many in this country question and/or actually protest the Vietnam War if they hadn't done so already). ...

Little Ricky’s A Real Gas On Alternative Energy 2008-01-31 14:24:00 I had to take a minute and note this column from PA’s happily-now-former Senator Rick Santorum that appeared in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer where he beats the drum of energy self-sufficiency, so to speak…Across Pennsylvania, farmers are also digging and planting corn and other crops that will be turned into ethanol that can replace gasoline in our cars. Most cars in America can't run on ethanol, however, so who is going to install ethanol pumps at the gas station without the cars to run on it? At this point I would say to all of my hard-core conservative friends: Hold on to your hats.What we need is a government mandate! We need to mandate that all cars sold in the United States, starting with the 2010 model year, be "flex-fuel vehicles" - that is, they should be able to run on a blend that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (the so-called E85 blend), or even a coal-derived methanol/gas mixture. This mandate would cost a fraction of the new fuel economy standard wit ...

Our Bucks County, PA Tax Dollars At Work 2008-01-30 16:57:00 This is another item that has fallen through the cracks (heavily into non-blogging mode and trying to squeeze in what I can for a few more days), but I want to get to it now.This link to a recent “Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down” segment in the Courier Times tells us that county Chief Operations Officer David Sanko recently locked new supervisor Diane Marseglia out of the county commissioners’ offices because Diane was guilty of a “security breach” by giving a reporter the combination to the office suite; Sanko had the lock changed as a result but neglected to tell her.Drat, that pesky government accountability again!And from the same link, fellow Commissioner Jim Cawley told a group of people gathered in Bristol, Pa. recently that “county money pegged for a three-hole golf course and driving range can be spent only for recreational purposes.” Diane said that that was wrong according to Guy Matthews, the county solicitor, though Matthews subsequently wrote to the Courier Times in ...

An Edwards Postscript 2008-01-30 16:09:00 Before I get started, I just want to link to this bit of insight from Atrios today.As sad as I am to see the candidacy of John Edwards for President come to an end, I can’t say that I’m surprised. I think there are a few reasons why this happened and I’ll try to elaborate, for whatever it is worth.I don’t know if it was completely by intention or by design, but Edwards ended up pigeonholing himself more than a little bit by risking everything for that one big throw of the dice, as it were, in Iowa. He absolutely needed to win the caucuses and establish himself as a player for fundraising purposes to last throughout the campaign. But of course we know what happened.And by tailoring his campaign to win in Iowa to the degree that he did, he ended up also tailoring his message primarily to an audience of people who I would call (with respect) “Dick Gephardt Democrats,” primarily (but not exclusively) older, white male unionists – heads of households, parents who had raised th ...