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

Wednesday Videos 2007-09-12 22:28:00 Posting is another question mark for tomorrow - I just dunno at this point, so in the meantime...Nada Surf ("Popular"; I love it when videos deal objectively and maturely with contemporary coming-of-age issues, and in a totally non-exploitative way).....and Happy Birthday to Ben Folds of The Ben Folds Five ("Brick," a neat little homemade vid from YouTuber Koolaid19).For more videos, please check the WeShow link from the home page. ...

Bucks County's "Prodigal Son" Returns 2007-09-12 20:15:00 Why, look who showed up in Bucks County recently (to campaign for Repugs Jim Cawley and Charles Martin running for re-election as county commissioners, of course). It’s our own former U.S. House Rep Jim Greenwood!(I mean, it had to be so he could shill for Repugs, right? The only other reason for his appearance would be if he’d gotten lost wandering from “K” street.)The Courier Times story notes the following…At Penn-Vermont Farm on Rolling Hills Road, Greenwood announced that he is now the honorary chairman of the campaign to re-elect incumbents Charley Martin and Jim Cawley. He and his wife, Tina, will host a fundraiser for the pair at their home in Upper Makefield in October.And how’s this for a subtle dig at Dems, in this case Steve Santarsiero and Diane Marseglia, the two commissioner candidates running against Cawley and Martin…The choice of Penn-Vermont Farm to make the announcement was no accident. Martin and Cawley are running primarily on the issue of open space ...

Staining The Memory Of Our People 2007-09-12 16:41:00 This tells us that U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner said that the deaths of 3774 (to date, from here) of our service people in Iraq is “a small price.”And by the way, as Slate notes here, two of those casualties were contributors to the New York Times Op-Ed on Iraq that I posted about here.And this post from last July states how Boehner called U.S. senators who want to change course in Iraq “wimps.”Here’s a way to contact Boehner and tell him that you think he is utter scum. And that’s the kind version of what I think of him at this moment.Update 9/13: Good comeback by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn here...here and here are good also (and good for Van Hollen to emphasize "minority" leader).Update 9/14: The good John Kerry stands up against Boehner here, but the bad one dimed out Moveon.org for the Petraeus ad here (in a polite, gentlemanly way, but the net effect was the same as the hysterical Repug response). ...

Tuesday Videos 2007-09-11 21:54:00 For the occasion: "Lonesome Day," by Bruce Springsteen......and if you take nothing else away from this sixth anniversary, please take away this.For more videos, please check the WeShow link from the home page. ...

Ever Watch A General Tap Dance? 2007-09-11 21:37:00 h/t The Daily Kos...And this can only mean that it's time to forward another petition (naturally).Does anyone think the Moveon ad was wrong now (in the reality-based community, I mean)? ...

A New Recruit For James Dobson? 2007-09-11 16:57:00 I posted on the subject of declining birth rates in this country awhile back here based on a column in USA Today by Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation run (at the time) by Ted Halstead and James Fallows. Their argument seemed to be that, if you had kids, you were conservative, but if you didn’t, you were some kind of liberal scum not contributing to the betterment of society (or something).I recalled this because of this story from Der Spiegel about a talk show host named Eva Herman who uttered the following about Nazi Germany and the role of women during those dark days…"It was a gruesome time with a totally crazy and highly dangerous leader who led the Germans into ruin as we all know. But there was at the time also something good, and that is the values, that is the children, that is the families, that is a togetherness -- it was all abolished, there was nothing left," Herman said.Wow-wee, uncle Adolf, I think somebody just goose-stepped herself into a big puddle of W ...

One Man’s Obsession 2007-09-11 15:51:00 If David Broder has a “thing” for Hillary Clinton, I really wish he would just be honest and admit it (and give everyone a good laugh in the process).As a birthday present of sorts to The Dean Of Beltway Journalism (yes, Broder was born on September 11th, which is oddly appropriate since this exercise of navel gazing masquerading as a column is an utter disaster), I thought I’d note Broder’s latest invasion of the marriage of the one-time first couple here.His latest is actually a review of the book about Hillary Clinton by Carl Bernstein, which I’m sure is very interesting. Border summarizes key points in his column, and ends with this observation…But one thing is absolutely clear. Her marriage is the central fact in her life, and this partnership of Bill and Hillary Clinton is indissoluble. She cannot function without him, and he would not have been president without her. If she becomes president, he will play as central a role in her presidency as she did in his. And tha ...

Getting Played (And Playing Ourselves) 2007-09-11 14:17:00 (By the way, no posting tomorrow, in case I forget to mention it.)I apologize to every living thing in the universe for plastering this woman’s face on a post on this most solemn of days, but alas, it is necessary.For the uninitiated, this is U.S. House Repug Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida’s 18th congressional district. She is one of the most odious Repugs in the House, and I know that is saying an awful lot. Though John Boehner’s name calling and relentless negativity aimed at anything whatsoever having to do with the Democratic Party is seemingly boundless, Ros-Lehtinen exceeds that through her childish braying and drop-of-the-hat pontificating about how she came to this country from Cuba (and has freely spoken out about murdering Fidel Castro, by the way), and how her family members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and her husband was wounded in Vietnam.Anyone who serves has my thanks and my respect, but there’s a word called, “humility.” She should check it out. ...

The Obligatory 9/11 Post 2007-09-11 12:46:00 I’ve already weighed in on this anniversary here and here, and though I cannot imagine ever running out of words to say about it, I think I’ve exhausted a lot of points that I’ve already tried to make. And Ezra Klein today here (via Atrios) captured a lot of what I’d had in mind.The first linked post above was written in 2005, where I recounted a lot of my own remembrances from the day it all happened. The second post is a bunch of “macro” level observations about what I think about this day in general and what people choose to make of it (and I probably was colder than I should have been when I said that I didn’t care about people’s thoughts and emotions; sorry about that, but I was just particularly fed up with the usual pontificating from the usual suspects; I’m sure if Rudy Giuliani could trademark the numbers “9/11,” he would).And I would just like to reemphasize that I think it is utter crap when people who spend a good part of their time and energy trying t ...

Monday Videos 2007-09-10 22:50:00 Papa Roach ("Time Is Running Out"; a home-made video by - presumably - fans of the band that I liked)......Happy Birthday to Miles Zuniga of Fastball ("The Way").More videos are available from the WeShow home page link. ...

A Job For Mitt “Whoop-De-Do” Romney 2007-09-10 17:41:00 Boy, that Willard Mitt Romney is one frackin’ hilarious guy, you know?This article in the New York Times yesterday featured a proposal from The Mittster to end taxes on investment earnings for families that make less than $200,000 a year. This apparently was a response to a proposal by John Edwards to exempt the first $250 of investment earnings from capital gains taxes.So how did Willard Mitt respond to the Edwards proposal?“Whoop-de-do,” Mr. Romney said Wednesday at the Republican debate in New Hampshire. “That’s not going to buy you retirement, it’s not going to buy you a house, and someone yelled out it’s not going to buy him a haircut, either.”What a card. Why, I’d better stop chortling, or else I may bust a gut.Let me clue you in on something, Willard Mitt; aside from IRA monies, you know what our projected interest earnings subject to capital gains taxes are likely to be this year?Oh….roughly….approximately….maybe….just a “wild-ass guess”…..ZERO! ...

"Afghan Don" Is Talking To You And Me 2007-09-10 16:11:00 How dare Think Progress do such a great job of totally refuting Rummy on his latest blather about Afghanistan being a “success story” (I guess “the story,” then, was written by Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft - I also suppose this would be a Rummy "two-fer" after the "marginalization and ridicule" note in the earlier post).And scrolling down in the comments, I thought #12 asked an interesting question: any other president ever lose two wars simultaneously? Another commenter referred to this as a measure of success (?) for that country also. ...

This Year's "Bring It On"? 2007-09-10 13:51:00 Either White House aide Fran Townshend is one of the stupidest people on the planet, or merely one of the most disingenuous.As noted here, she said yesterday that Osama bin Laden is “virtually impotent” and “can do little more than send videotaped messages.”Does she really want to see another attack on our soil? Or is she trying to inflame passions in a world already burning out of control with rage, directing more danger towards our military?This post by The Daily Kos notes that (as much as I hate to admit it) bin Laden is still formidable as a symbol if nothing else and is capable of communicating to people he knows better than we do in phrasing and symbols that they understand. And as noted here and elsewhere, we are losing the information war because of it as well as the fact that we have not been able to provide services to the people of Iraq that would make them turn away from terrorism; the only way they do that is if they’re attacked by al Qaeda themselves, which made ...

Give Cawley And Martin The Heave-Ho 2007-09-10 12:57:00 Local political stuff coming up; this letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday…I find it incredible that Republican Commissioner Jim Cawley is accusing his opponent, Diane Marseglia, of “hypocrisy” because Middletown Township, where Marseglia serves as a supervisor, has been slow in making the minutes of several supervisors’ meetings available online.As a former journalist in Bucks County for the Courier Times sister paper, the Intelligencer, and the Allentown Morning Call, I covered every administration of Bucks County commissioners from 1979 to 2006. I found no administration more secretive and unwilling to make public information available than the current board, which is composed of Cawley and Republican Charles Martin. Before the tenure of Martin and Cawley, Bucks County government was open and accessible to the press and public. With Martin and Cawley at the helm, access to public records has been consistently denied and department heads have been disco ...

The Inky Smears Patrick Again 2007-09-10 11:45:00 Atrios found some patented absurdity in this Inky column on Patrick Murphy today (here), but I’d like to share some other nonsense that I found with you.But his national profile as an antiwar leader has not come without costs. Though he did not see furious combat in Iraq, Murphy has taken substantial incoming at home, including friendly fire.From his web site…In 1993, Congressman Murphy put on his U.S. Army uniform for the first time. He went on to become a West Point professor, airborne and air assault qualified, a JAG Corps attorney, and serve two deployments after 9/11 - the first to Bosnia in 2002 and the second to Baghdad, Iraq in 2003-2004 as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. For his service, Captain Murphy earned the Bronze Star for service and his unit earned the Presidential Unit Citation.I’ll let you, dear reader, define how “furious” that was.And…At the same time, a lucrative memoir deal has raised questions about the timing of Murphy's advance paym ...