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: 12 0 60 4272

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

Any Last Words? 2007-09-23 09:06:00 Sorry - had to ask... ...

Saturday Video 2007-09-22 22:40:00 Michael Scheuer/Jeanne Garofalo/Bill Maher talk about Israel last night on "Real Time"; interesting stuff...For more videos, please check the WeShow link from the home page. ...

Friday Videos 2007-09-21 23:24:00 Papa Roach ("Scars" - I hope somebody remembered to call 911 after she tipped the candle over)......a belated Happy Birthday to Joanne Catherall of The Human League ("Mirror Man"; yep, now I remember why this video put me off riding in motorboats)......we lost Jim Croce on September 20th, 1973 ("Operator," accompanied by Maury Muehleisen of course)......and finally, I missed the birthday of Kerry Livgren of Kansas on Tuesday ("Can I Tell You?" recorded live in 1974, with the great Robby Steinhardt on violin - PROG ROCK LIVES! - by the way, it's scary how timely this song still is, especially now).For more videos, please click the WeShow link from the home page. ...

In Your Face, Cornyn 2007-09-21 22:37:00 He sponsored that truly ignorant resolution (and here's the latest)...Dear MoveOn member,Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. After the Senate's shameful vote, and after President Bush called MoveOn "disgusting,"(1) our email started to fill up with messages like this one:I'm currently in Iraq. I do not agree with this war, and if I did support this war, it would not matter. You have the RIGHT to speak the truth. We KNOW that you support us. Thank you for speaking out for being our voice. We do not have a voice. We are overshooted by those who say that we soldiers do not support organizations like MoveOn. WE DO.YOU ARE OUR voice.And then came the donations. By midnight, over 12,000 people had donated $500,000—more than we've raised any day this year—for our new ad calling out the Republicans who blocked adequate rest for troops headed back to Iraq.The message from MoveOn members was loud and clear: Don't back down. Take the fight back to the issues that matter.So today we're ...

The Iraq Moratorium And Incurious George 2007-09-21 15:30:00 This is just a word about it from a Gold Star mom – whatever it takes, people.And here is a column about you-know-who (we’re stuck with him for 486 more days as of now, barring impeachment – can’t expect much at all from this congress, but we can’t give up either)…It took just eight decades but H.L. Mencken's astute prediction on the future course of American presidential politics and the electorate's taste in candidates came true:On July 26, 1920, the acerbic and cranky scribe wrote in The Baltimore Sun: " . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and ...

Today's War News 2007-09-21 14:42:00 Tell Hoover that this really sucks (see, Hoover makes a line of vacuum cleaners, though I realize we’re talking about two different entities – a long way to go for not much of a laugh, but after this week, I need it).It turns out that Don (“The Defense Secretary We Used To Have, And Boy Are We Paying For It”) Rumsfeld has been appointed a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, as rapacious a nest of self-aggrandizing freepers as anyone has ever seen (I believe this story broke on the 8th, but for some reason it’s just getting out now among some media outlets).I doubt seriously that they’ll care, but if you want to contact them and protest, you can access their information from here.Also, it looks like Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch is at it again, blaming the media for the overall failing support in this country for Dubya’s Not-So-Excellent Iraq Adventure.This is the same member of the military who stated here that “about 50 members of an elite Iranian mil ...

Where The Rubber Meets The Road (9/21/07) 2007-09-21 13:54:00 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.(The Inquirer reports that there were no major roll call votes in the House.)SenateHousing, transportation. The Senate passed, 88-7, $104.6 billion in fiscal 2008 budgets for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation, up 5 percent from the comparable 2007 budget bill.The bill includes $41 billion for highway construction and repairs, $3.8 billion for Community Development Block Grants, $3.5 billion for airport grants, $1.47 billion for Amtrak, $735 million for low-income seniors' housing, $200 million for pipeline and rail safety, $110 million to subsidize commercial air service to smaller cities, and $75 million in housing vouchers for homeless veterans.All Philadelphia-area senators voted for HR 3074, which now goes to conference with the House.Bridge repairs. Senators approved, 60-33, $1 billion that states ...

Welcome To The Party, Joe 2007-09-21 13:33:00 (I mean that figuratively, though I wouldn’t mind meaning it literally either).Somehow, I can’t imagine that Bucks County Repug Party Chairman Harry Fawkes is happy about this development.It seems that our former Repug PA State Senator Joe Conti, and now CEO of the PA Liquor Control Board (a PA Commonwealth “thing” – kind of a long story for the uninitiated), will attend a $1,000-per-person fundraiser/policy discussion at The Brick Hotel in Newtown, PA on Monday, which will be the first meeting of “The Congressional Policy Group,” individuals who will provide input to Patrick Murphy on a wide range of issues.Now I know some people in these parts (probably quite a lot) are still PO’ed at the circumstances under which Conti became CEO of the board, bypassing highly qualified individuals such as Jonathan Newman, who stepped down as LCB chairman in January. And only Ed Rendell and Conti know if it truly was a reward on Rendell’s part for Conti’s support of casino gambli ...

Thursday Videos 2007-09-20 18:50:00 Apparently, it is necessary to remind the 22 Democratic turncoats in the Senate that the recent manufactured controversy about the Gen. David Petraeus ad, in addition to being about his veracity and the absurd manner in which the Pentagon records statistics to support Dubya's pet war, is also about something ultimately much, much bigger.So, here is Black Sabbath ("War Pigs")......Richard Thompson ("Dad's Gonna Kill Me")......Jackson Browne ("Lives In The Balance")......and John Flynn ("Dover").Anybody remember now?For more videos, please click the WeShow link from the home page. ...

Two Million Versus Twenty Two (updated) 2007-09-20 15:59:00 This is evidence that, if we are going to support Democrats (and really, at this moment, I can’t imagine why) we should no longer support national Democratic Party organizations and support candidates through Act Blue or other Netroots-based online sites (in pursuit of “more and better Democrats,” as Darcy Burner says…and even that isn’t a guarantee that this travesty won’t repeat itself, since Jim Webb – unbelievably – along with Tester and McCaskill voted in favor of the resolution).Did those who supported the resolution even bother to read the entire ad (here)?Well, it doesn’t matter at this point. But let’s try to look at this another way.Let’s do some math then, shall we?Twenty two Democrats supported this sham. And I would contrast that number with the two million members of MoveOn.org.This resolution insults two million people, and I would guess that just about all of us are either Democrats or independent voters of one stripe or another.And we, all two mil ...

Bye Already, Jim 2007-09-20 15:01:00 Don’t let the door hit you (based on this)…WASHINGTON (AP) — Outgoing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson acknowledged Tuesday that he's struggling to reduce backlogs in disability claims from Iraq war veterans, saying current efforts won't be enough to cut down waits that take months.Addressing Congress for a final time before stepping down Oct. 1, Nicholson also pointed to persistent problems between the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs in coordinating care for veterans and urged Congress to embrace proposals by a presidential commission to fix gaps."They have some very good ideas in there," he said.But of course they do, with Bushco being so “government-friendly” and all that…Nicholson, who took office in early 2005, said the department has hired 1,100 new processors to reduce delays of up to 177 days in processing disability payments. But he predicted another rise in compensation and pension claims this year, citing the additional applications pouring in during "the ...

Maybe They Should Run An Ad 2007-09-20 14:21:00 (I mean, that seems to be the best way to get the attention of our U.S. Senators these days - and make it a full page in the New York Times…).This "old gray lady" editorial yesterday brought up an important point about people who have been impacted more directly than we could ever know by the Iraq war, and they the 2.35 million refugees of that accursed enterprise (according to our best estimates). In particular, the editorial focused on the importance of helping those who have assisted this country during the war.As the Times notes (and as I posted about here a little while ago)…Their admission to the United States…is being delayed by a tortuous application process and lumbering bureaucratic reviews.This latest failure was detailed in a cable sent to the State Department earlier this month by America’s ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and first published Monday in The Washington Post. (Mr. Crocker did not mention the problem in his happy-talk presentations on Capitol Hill ...

On Second Thought... 2007-09-20 13:01:00 After I pondered some more about the post from Prof. Marcus about the Senate entertaining a resolution to censure MoveOn.org for the ad that the whole world must surely know about by now, I have to admit that I’ve changed my mind.At first, I thought we should immediately call our senators and tell them to cease and desist. I had planned to contact both Casey and Specter and said they should forget about this.But you know what? Instead, I think we should let them go ahead and do it.In fact, I think we should actually call them and encourage them.Because MoveOn is at fault? Of course not.I think we should encourage them because it would send a clearer signal to this country and the world than anything we could muster that they, as a collective body, have no desire whatsoever to stand by our men and women in the military and are such clueless, self-serving pretenders to public office that they would pass a censure resolution against a group with a membership of two million people that d ...

The “Straight Talk Express” Derails Again 2007-09-20 09:03:00 So John McCain said that “the Constitution of the United States gives no authority for the Congress of the United States to set lengths of tour or lengths of duty in the military” in leading the opposition to the amendment sponsored by Jim Webb that would have required our military to have at least the same amount of time at home as the length of their prior tour overseas.Not surprisingly, Webb called him on that nonsense here (kudos to Think Progress of course for this clarification; however, I heard a report on NPR this morning that did not provide that refutation of McCain, not surprisingly).And this post by Richard Gizbert of HuffPo tells us that the otherwise hip and intelligent Jon Stewart of The Daily Show just loves his bonding time with “Senator Honor and Virtue,” even though there is no logical reason why Stewart should give McCain the time of day since the Arizona senator at this point embodies just about everything that Stewart so skillfully lampoons on his program. ...

Wednesday Videos 2007-09-19 22:52:00 Yeah Yeah Yeahs ("Down Boy")......Happy Birthday to Lol Creme of 10 C.C. ("The Wall Street Shuffle," from a 1974 appearance with the BBC)......and here is an important video from the John Edwards for President campaign (it is, indeed, up to us, with the Repugs shooting down not just the restoration of habeas corpus but the Webb amendment for deploying our troops - historians will fill volumes one day recording the epic cowardice of our life and times)......and as long as I posted about Charlie Chaplin earlier, here is "Smile" sung wonderfully by Josh Groban, for which Chaplain wrote the music (I can't remember the occasion for this performance - and gosh, could we have had more gratuitous banners for Citigroup getting in the way of the camera shots...God, Katie Couric is such a twit).For more videos, please click the WeShow link from the home page. ...