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: 27 0 62 5011

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

Tuesday Videos 2007-11-13 22:36:00 The Electric Six ("Gay Bar," an ode to a now-jilted international alliance, as far as we know - smirk)......and Elvis performs "Little Sister" here, written by the legendary songwriting team of Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus; Shuman would have been 71 yesterday. ...

Cut His "Card" In Half 2007-11-13 22:09:00 Even by Dubya's microscopically low standards, this performance today was pitiful (mettle at Take It Personally posts about it here).In response, here is a statement from Nancy Pelosi; the Dems have caved on the war and FISA and have generally acquiesced to President George W. Milhous Bush, but they have done their best to adhere to sound fiscal management - I reposted it here because the link is flaky...WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today in response to a speech in Indiana this afternoon by President Bush in which he compared Congress to "a teenager with a new credit card." Below the Speaker's statement is a fact sheet comparing the President and Congress' fiscal records."If President Bush applied for a credit card, any bank in America would turn him down as a bad credit risk. He has put more foreign debt on the nation's credit card than all previous Presidents combined - saddling our children and grandchildren ...

Benny Blows Off Beantown 2007-11-13 17:34:00 If I were a Catholic in the Boston archdiocese right about now, I’d be pretty damn furious over the fact that Pope Benedict XVI is going to visit Washington and New York, but isn’t going to stop over at the town which is the home of Red Sox Nation (and also, unfortunately, the epicenter of this country’s Catholic priest abuse scandal, as noted here).(And by the way, we all know that the scandal occurred because of Boston’s “culture of liberalism,” which must be true because one of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s new Op-Ed columnists said it was so here, from the confines of PA of course as opposed to acting like a man and going to that city to say it personally.)This Wikipedia article tells us about one of the many infuriating aspects of the scandal…In May 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later elected Pope Benedict XVI on the death of his predecessor, sent a letter[10] to all Catholic Bishops declaring that the ...

Mitt’s “Grass Is Always Greener” On Illegals 2007-11-13 16:30:00 Coming fresh off his rousing endorsement from conservative nutball Paul Weyrich, Willard Mitt Romney appeared in the news here decrying both parties for “a sanctuary state of mind” regarding illegal aliens, including tuition breaks and driver’s licenses for them and their children.I already weighed in on the issue of licenses for the illegals (I’m for it; they should thus qualify for insurance, and the licenses would be the beginning of trying to track these people), but on the matter of the kids of the illegals (undocumented…whatever), I think Mike Huckabee actually fired off a synapse or two here…"Why would you penalize the children for the crime of the parents?" Huckabee asked.God, I wish more politicians thought like that from time to time (and by the way, on the matter of the Weyrich endorsement, how funny is it that Pat Robertson supports Rudy!, Weyrich supports Romney of course, and Frederick Of Hollywood just picked up the nod from the Right To Life Committee today? ...

The Point Of The Surge? Anybody? 2007-11-13 15:07:00 Wow, there are actually fewer roadside bombs killing our troops based on the August and September fatality totals according to this USA Today story!So, does that mean that “the splurge” is working?It must, right? I mean, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch tells us that……he believed the decrease in rocket and mortar attacks would hold because of what he called a "groundswell" of support from regular Iraqis. "If we didn't have so many people coming forward to help, I'd think this is a flash in the pan. But that's just not the case," Lynch said.And as we know, Lynch is completely trustworthy (I don’t enjoy calling out someone in our military like this, but if it looks like garbage and smells like garbage…).But again, I thought the point of the surge was for the Iraqi “government” to get its act together, though David Corn tells us here that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not about to do that…If the Maliki government is too corrupt to bring freedom and dem ...

Consolidating The Corporate Voice 2007-11-13 13:11:00 (More sporadic posting today, by the way…)FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin wrote this editorial that appeared in the New York Times today (with a truly curious headline that makes no sense to me, though I could have missed something) in which he advocated even more relaxed media ownership rules, specifically the following…A company that owns a newspaper in one of the 20 largest cities in the country should be permitted to purchase a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market. But a newspaper should be prohibited from buying one of the top four TV stations in its community.I should add that Martin comes up with this after he spends the first four paragraphs of his column describing the dire financial straits faced by newspapers; I don’t understand how allowing a media company to expand its sphere of influence to even more broadcast media if it already owns a newspaper specifically helps the latter entity.But to get an illustration of what Martin has in mind here, I would ask tha ...

Monday Videos 2007-11-12 22:56:00 Maximo Park ("Apply Some Pressure," a tidy little bit of musical angst, but dude, the nose bleed thing is waay uncool - bleaugh)......and Happy Birthday to Neil Young ("Cinnamon Girl" from "Rust Never Sleeps"; have to admit that I never saw the movie, so I don't know what's going on with the "Star-Wars-sand-people" thing). ...

Today's Iraq War Commentary 2007-11-12 22:35:00 Cause......EffectUpdate: 11/14/07: And by the way, here is the latest from the Freedom's Watch cretins. ...

In The End, Just An Internet Curiosity 2007-11-12 17:36:00 I should warn in advance anyone who may be reading this that this post will probably aggravate at least one person, but I have to say this (spurred on in part by this Atrios post today).Let me get this out of the way, fully realizing that any flaming may begin soon afterwards:People, Ron Paul is not going to win the Republican nomination for president in 2008.I’m really sorry to point this out because I know a lot of people are working hard and have contributed a lot of time, money and effort, but if bubbles are going to be burst here, the sooner, the better. I should add, though, that it’s commendable that so many people feel so passionately about his candidacy that they have involved themselves in this effort.But no matter how much money he raises, the best he’s going to do within his party is neutralize one other candidate, probably John McCain. But despite his formidable online success, he’s not going to have more dough onhand than Willard Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani.Yes, ... Internet

Somebody Hand Harry A Crying Towel 2007-11-12 15:25:00 Awww, poor Bucks County Repug party chairman Harry Fawkes is lamenting the narrow victory of Charley Martin over Steve Santarsiero in the Bucks County Commissioners election last Tuesday, ensuring a 2-to-1 Republican majority with Martin’s play mate Jim Cawley and Democrat Diane Marseglia (less than 1,500 votes separated Martin and Steve, with no small amount of assistance provided by third-party candidate Jay Russell, who received nearly 6,000 votes).Bucks County’s Repug poobah offered his reflections to J.D. Mullane in a column that appeared in the Courier Times yesterday, with Mullane offering what I thought was a strangely passive response to Fawkes that showed a slight amount of ridicule (seems that our local pundit king is trying to play both sides of the fence, seeing the way that the prevailing wind is blowing at long last, though he did manage to sneak in that cut that Bucks would become “New Jersey West” if the Dems took over county government).Fawkes, as you may expe ...

Wisdom From The Unlikeliest Source 2007-11-12 12:48:00 Joe Strupp of Editor and Publisher tells us here that, on Veterans Day 10 years ago, sentiments were uttered that opposed a war in Iraq exactly like the one in which we are engulfed, one that drains our country in terms of the human toll exacted upon our military (both killed and injured) as well as the loss of other precious resources, to say nothing of the loss of our moral standing in the world.And the person who spoke out against this type of a war was none other than George W. Bush.(Writer Sig Christenson, who interviewed Dubya in 1997 when he was governor of Texas) pointed to Bush's defense of his father's decision during the Gulf War not to remove Saddam Hussein."There are a lot of Americans (who say), 'Why didn't you go get him?'" Bush told the Express-News back in 1997, according to Christenson. "Well, I'm confident that losing men and women as a result of sniper fire inside of Baghdad would have turned the tide of public opinion very quickly," Bush added.Strupp’s colu ...

Wisdom From A Waitress 2007-11-12 11:32:00 Let’s see now, according to our august, all-knowing corporate media, what has Hillary Clinton done wrong in the last five minutes or so (motivated to say something about this in light of the weekly “Media Matters” post from Jamison Foser last Saturday here - h/t Atrios).As noted by Foser, the “usual suspects” (Mark Halperin, Roger Simon, Tim Russert of course and too many others to mention here) have pronounced her performance during the recent Philadelphia Democratic debate as “disastrous” (including Mickey Kaus of Slate, whose track record in these matters is so bad that I can’t imagine why he would be hired by a celebrity supermarket tabloid, let alone a online magazine with Slate’s visibility and otherwise occasionally interesting content).Foser documents how the “conventional wisdom” tracked from “well, she held her own and made a misstep or two” to “God, look at how she imploded” within a matter of a few hours. And I’ll admit that I fed into that i ...

A Veterans Day Video 2007-11-11 09:41:00 Posted by Lizzie Palmer, all of 15 years old - many thanks...Update: Here is a Guest Opinion by Patrick Murphy and Dan Fraley published in today's Bucks County Courier Times in tribute to our veterans (with an update on the VA Cemetery project in Upper Makefield). ...

Edwards and Habitat For Humanity in NOLA 2007-11-10 22:23:00 The following is a clip of John Edwards working with five campaign volunteers who won the "Building With John" contest on behalf of Habitat For Humanity in New Orleans: good, important stuff. ...

Bob Herbert Explains It All 2007-11-10 18:28:00 The CPI clarification from Atrios notwithstanding, this is still perhaps the best column I've read about what is truly going on in a long time...If it looks like a recession and feels like a recession ...“Quite frankly,” said Senator Charles Schumer, peering over his glasses at the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, “I think we are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices.”He asked Mr. Bernanke, at a Congressional hearing Thursday, if we were headed toward a recession.An aide handed the chairman his dancing shoes, and Mr. Bernanke executed a flawless version of the Washington waffle. He said: “Our forecast is for moderate, but positive, growth going forward.” He said: “Economists are extremely bad at predicting turning points, and we don’t pretend to be any better.” He said: “We have not calculated the probability of recession, and I wouldn’t want to ...