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: 28 0 2 4214

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

As Low As Our Enemies 2007-09-26 15:13:00 I thought that Byron Williams at HuffPo here captured how I feel also about the recent visit of Iranian president Mahmoud AhMADinejad to Columbia University.I really don’t understand the point of university president Lee Bollinger’s insult-peppered introduction. It should be clear to anyone with an IQ greater than that of a flea who has read the words and witnessed the actions of this lunatic that AhMADinejad is a demonstrably repellent individual (evidenced by this prior post). There was no need for Bollinger to try and put an exclamation point on that (a point Williams made in his remark about trying to win “a urinating contest with a skunk”).And I honestly can’t see why we even extended the invitation to him. It just gave AhMADinejad an excuse to hide his monstrous ideological perversions behind some toilet-paper-thin cover of intellectual curiosity. And Bollinger’s boneheaded antics just fed into the Iranian figurehead’s never-ending well of anti-western agit-prop (an ...

The Pinup Doll Speaks 2007-09-26 13:09:00 Though she would have done better to keep her mouth shut…Well now, it seems that Katie Couric somehow believes that she has the right to critique Dan Rather and the “Bush National Guard” story over which Rather has sued the network…“There were things in there that were quite egregious in terms of how it was reported,” she said. “And sloppy work is sloppy work…They did not dot their I’s and cross their T’s when it came to that story…And our job is to get right.”I’ll admit that there was a time when I bought into the freeper fiction that the story utterly crashed and burned because, though I always believed the charges were true, CBS screwed up by not providing originals of the documents. Well, as former CBS News producer Mary Mapes points out here…… we had done a straightforward, well-substantiated story. We presented former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes in his first ever interview saying that he had pulled strings to get the future president into the Natio ...

Playing Taps For The Cemetery 2007-09-26 11:56:00 God, this is depressing. And infuriating.In this post, I noted that a group of Upper Makefield, PA residents had forced another delay to postpone the hearing finalizing the land transfer that would have cleared the way to build the VA cemetery in that township (Above Average Jane has a good backgrounder here that I probably should have linked to prior to now). I noted on the 19th that the whole deal looked shaky since the hearing had been rescheduled to Nov. 1, the same day the builder and the VA require preliminary and final land development approvals.Well, those same 16 idiots in Upper Makefield who forced the delay filed suit yesterday, suing Upper Makefield, adjoining Newtown Township and Newtown Township’s Zoning Hearing Board. Apparently, they have such a grudge against Toll Brothers (who would have built 170 homes on the property adjoining the cemetery, which was part of the deal all along) that they decided to scuttle the veterans’ cemetery in the process with their action ...

A "Wide Stance" On The Law? 2007-09-26 10:37:00 Sometime today, we should find out if a judge will let Repug Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho withdraw his guilty plea in connection to that untidy little business in the men’s room of the Minneapolis, MN airport earlier this year.And I also heard somewhere the concern expressed that, if Craig were allowed to withdraw his plea (an idea given to Craig by Our Man Arlen Specter, let’s not forget), it would encourage others who have entered guilty pleas as a result of an arrest to do the same thing.I haven’t found any information by any legal professionals to substantiate that, however. Besides, there have been precedents for Craig’s actions for some time (noted here and here, as well as a recent example here that may have been inspired by Craig’s attempt to weasel out of this).And though I suppose Frank Rich has a bit of a point here about gays not rallying to Craig’s defense (though I don’t understand why they should, since, as Rich points out, Craig is a card-carrying member of t ...

Monday Videos 2007-09-25 22:04:00 Rilo Kiley ("The Moneymaker"; hey, don't sic the morality police on me - I honestly like the song, OK?)......Happy belated birthday to Gerry Marsden of Gerry And The Pacemakers ("Ferry Cross The Mersey" from 1964, kind of a softer Brit anthem as opposed to all that Fab Four ruckus going on at the time; good job on the updated music track)......piano virtuoso and oddball Glenn Gould would have been 75 (here he plays J.S. Bach's Partita #2 with his own noise accompaniment, from a documentary titled "The Art Of Piano")......and comedy great Phil Hartman would have been 59 yesterday; here he is as former president Bill Clinton (the "whole bunch of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton" remark ended up being dead-on...hey, I still support the guy, don't worry...and smooth move by Rob Schneider to see Hartman in a bit of trouble and help him out with the drink and the napkin; God, what a talent he was).For more videos, please check the WeShow link from the home page. ...

The Choice 2007-09-25 21:31:00 Get rid of all the spin and the innuendo and half-to-some-to-no reporting on John Edwards by our corporate media (to say nothing of the outright lies) - this is why he's running for president.To help, click here. ...

Two Presidents 2007-09-25 17:05:00 This tells us that, 50 years ago today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower stood up to Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and resolved the case of the “Little Rock Nine” (much of this post will come from this Wikipedia article).Schools in that state had to desegregate as a result of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954. However, segregationists refused to allow nine black students into Central High, with the support of Faubus, who ordered the Arkansas national guard to support the segregationists by blocking the black students from entering the school.Eisenhower warned Faubus to allow the nine students to enter, but when he didn’t, the U.S. Justice Department requested an injunction against the governor's deployment of the National Guard from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock. Judge Ronald Davies granted the injunction and ordered the governor to withdraw the National Guard on September 20.The governor backed down and withd ...

More AP Steno Time On Dubya vs. The Budget 2007-09-25 15:03:00 It is to laugh (from here)…WASHINGTON – President Bush is spoiling for a veto battle with Democrats over spending bills, but Congress has done such a poor job completing its budget work that the showdown could be weeks away.(And as you can see, the headline reads that Congress “dawdles” on the budget, hence the holdup…sure.)Memo to Andrew Taylor of the AP – try reading this from last month (particularly this excerpt). Maybe you’ll find a clue…This battle centers around the rather conciliatory budget the new Democratic majority put together. They would nearly meet the president's request for enormous increases in defense and homeland security spending and propose small increases in social spending.But the president has chosen confrontation. He says he will veto all spending bills that exceed his requests and an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), while opposing improvements in the federal student loan program—all in the name of restrai ...

Bucks Repug Patronage At Work 2007-09-25 13:23:00 Jenna Portnoy of the Bucks County Courier Times reports here some rather interesting revelations about the awarding of contracts under commissioners Jim Cawley and Charles Martin dating back to 2000 that came to light in their debate with Dem challengers Steve Santarsiero and Diane Marseglia last night. Portnoy also communicates some rather illuminating quotes from GOP campaign manager Mike Walsh that I’ll get to a bit later.First, though, I want to go back to this story from Portnoy last week and point out the following…In 2006, when Santarsiero and two other Democrats took control of the Lower Makefield supervisors for the first time ever, they replaced one engineering firm with three new ones. By a 3-2 vote, which fell along party lines, the township hired general engineer Schoor DePalma to replace Pickering, Corts and Summerson of Newtown.PCS had worked for the township for nearly 20 years and charged $87 per hour. Schoor DePalma, which is based in Manalapan, N.J., but has an o ...

HRC And "Return On Failure" 2007-09-25 11:50:00 This links to a whole bunch of polls conducted up until last month that show Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York as the leader of the field of Democratic nominees for the party nomination to run for president next year.However, this shows that Survey USA has found that John Edwards is the strongest Democratic nominee among the field for the contests in Iowa and Missouri and tells us that he competes favorably in southern and Midwestern states.And I know it’s no surprise to see our media beating the drum for Hillary and just about handing her the nomination, which thus allows them once more to dig into all of the dirt from the prior Clinton presidency (and also affording David Broder the opportunity to engage in more of his voyeuristic “state of the Clintons’ marriage” columns).I don’t pretend to be any kind of a political guru, but all I know is that this won’t mean a whole lot if John Edwards wins Iowa, an eminently attainable goal, and shows strongly in subsequent primaries. ...

Monday Video 2007-09-24 22:44:00 Back Talk #4; someday soon I'll put all of them together in one post - enjoy.For more videos, please click the WeShow link from the home page. ...

Budget Blues And The Bushco Beat 2007-09-24 17:05:00 The latest freeper fiction tells us that Dubya, apparently, is now going to try and recast himself as a fiscal conservative as opposed to an intolerant, hopelessly out of touch social conservative.Uh huh…This story from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times tells us that…Mr. Bush is headed into a spending battle with Congressional Democrats with the two branches of government as divided on the issue as they have been since the federal shutdown of 1995. The president has threatened to veto 10 of the 11 appropriations bills that have passed the House, as well as legislation expanding a popular children’s health care program. On Monday, he will step up the fight with a speech accusing Democrats of fiscal irresponsibility.It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic...That might not sound altogether unexpected, given that Democrats, whom Mr. Bush accuses of “working to bring back the failed tax-and-spend policies of the past,” now run Congress. But the president’s new tough ...

It's MoveOn Money That Matters (updated) 2007-09-24 13:30:00 I apologize to everything in the universe for continuing to post on that ad, but alas, it is necessary.I can’t think of a word to describe how pathetic it is that, in the ongoing effort to avoid actually analyzing and debating the contents of the “General Betray Us” MoveOn ad (though the Washington Post did try to do that here – I think their suppositions against MoveOn are ridiculous, but at least this was an attempt), we are now at a point where we are arguing about the cost of the ad!To be fair, though, I should point out that the New York Times is merely responding to a request from Freedom Crock, who complained that they didn’t get the same terms for “the response ad” that MoveOn got.A freeper front organization that placed a $15 million ad buy is complaining about a difference of a few thousand dollars. All to run their commercials for the war.Are you as repulsed by that as I am?As Times public editor Clark Hoyt notes here…Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from ...

Monday Inky Lowlights 2007-09-24 11:25:00 The Philadelphia Inquirer has provided more ammunition for yours truly, so I’d better start loading up again, beginning with this laughable Letter to the Editor…Return Hsu moneyI am perturbed that both Gov. Rendell and U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy have decided it is appropriate to donate to charity campaign money they received from a convicted felon.By donating money given to them by Norman Hsu, who pleaded guilty to felony theft charges in 1992, both Murphy and Rendell are attempting to make themselves look like philanthropists on the earnings of a criminal.This is extremely poor judgment on their part. To try to use this money to influence public opinion by donating it to charity is unethical. I request both to return Hsu's money to him. It appears he will need it for his legal defense.Robert L. CiervoNewtown, PACiervo is a chronic offender on the pages of the Bucks County Courier Times when it comes to lamenting any single thing whatsoever that Democrats do.I really have nothing to ...

Sunday Videos 2007-09-23 22:16:00 Happy Birthday to The Boss ("Adam Raised A Cain," acoustic live at Stockholm in '93)......and Ray Charles would have been 77 today ("Georgia On My Mind").For more videos, please check the WeShow link from the home page. ...