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: 33 0 106 4211

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

A Corporate Media Request 2007-08-31 17:32:00 Yes, I know that this marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of one of the most obscene media orgies I, for one, have ever witnessed (and I don’t mean to trivialize the related human tragedy that touched the whole world by saying so).I have not forgotten that Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997.Given that, and the attention that it has generated today, I would ask in my humility and naïveté that every time an event, circumstance, or political/social/economic development of one type or another is reported affecting this country and the world, it is covered as thoroughly as Diana’s death.I’d like to see a pro and con analysis of the policies on health coverage in this country, the economy, the environment, refugee crises throughout the world (and attendant to that, the Iraq war, of course), provided with the same depth and clarity which illuminated the fact that Henri Paul had consumed the equivalent of a medicine cabinet full of drugs before he totaled the Mercedes-Benz ...

Friday End-Of-Summer Mashup 2007-08-31 17:11:00 I’m going to clean out my “in” bin a bit here; I had some stories that I’d planned to post about, but I don’t think I’m going to get to them all individually, so here they are…This Inquirer story tells us about John Dunkle, a life form who has threatened doctors performing abortions in Philadelphia, Allentown and Reading, PA on an internet site.As the story notes…U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan alleged that Dunkle, 72, "encouraged his readers to kill a specific clinic physician by shooting her in the head."Idiot…When reached by phone yesterday, Dunkle said he was not aware of the lawsuit and he would stop posting the offensive material if asked."Oh yeah, if someone tells me to stop," he said. "You are not talking to a hero."I would say that that’s the understatement of the year.Call me a “slime-snake-monkey-person” since I believe in evolution as science, I guess; this post from People For The American Way tells us that someone named Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. (the ...

Where's Condi? 2007-08-31 15:59:00 Has it occurred to anyone else besides me that, with all of the departures from Bushco, many hightailing it ahead of a real or anticipated Congressional subpoena, one person has been missing from the headlines lately?Can anyone imagine the reason for the apparent news blackout regarding Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice?I wonder if this story has anything to do with it?It seems that Our Gal Condi was subpoenaed by two defendants indicted based on the 1917 Espionage Act; Steven Roseman and Keith Weissman are accused of allegedly conspiring to receive and disclose classified US defense information over a five-year period dating back to 1999. The two state that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC, to which they belonged) helped write US foreign policy in the Middle East dated as far back as 1999 with the tacit endorsement of Rice and other US officials.Naaaw – get out!As you might expect, lawyers for our government (using the phrase loosely, I know) are arguing that Co ...

The Toll Of Ferris Stupidity 2007-08-31 14:31:00 I’m not surprised that Kevin Ferris of the Philadelphia Inquirer is as clueless regarding the issue of funding for regional mass transit and road repair as he is regarding the Iraq war.This column purports to be an intelligent argument against the installation of tolls only on route I-80 in PA, as mentioned in this prior post. I say “purports to be” because, immediately after Ferris tells us that the tolls are advocated by Gov. Ed Rendell and State Sen. Vince Fumo, Ferris, under the flimsiest of pretexts, immediately launches into a recitation of the charges against Fumo for mail fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and other charges, as if that has anything whatsoever to do with the issue.The importance of a serious discussion about raising funds for infrastructure repair, including highways and methods of mass transit, must be clear even to Ferris in light of the Minnesota bridge disaster that I noted in the August 3rd post. The bill for the “free lunch” promised by t ...

Another Reason For Larry Craig To Go 2007-08-31 12:09:00 With all of the furor over Larry (I’m Not Gay) Craig and the surfacing of the arrest tape where he tries to justify his finger-tapping behavior by saying he’s a “fairly wide� guy and he needs room to sit down on the head (or something – I’ll let you write your own snark for that one…I won’t go there), I think this is an opportune time to look at his performance in Congress as opposed to public men’s restrooms.We knew he didn’t support hate crime legislation on behalf of LBGT individuals or anything that ensured or protected their rights (as noted here), but it also turns out that Craig is an enemy of the environment. And while I know that isn’t headline news for a Repug, it’s a more noteworthy issue in Idaho, a state that depends on intelligent use of resources to balance the twin needs of making it livable for its residents and generating commerce to make people want to live there and sustain communities.This takes you to information on how Craig has been rated ...

Thursday Videos 2007-08-30 22:21:00 ...Happy Birthday to Ryan Ross of Panic! At The Disco ("I Write Sins, Not Tragedies"; actually, I write both - kind of a nod to little Alex and his droogs here)......Happy Birthday to bassist Charles Colbert of the band American Breed ("Bend Me, Shape Me"; crappy audio, ridiculous camera work, bad lip synching and more "air" instrument playing than actual musicianship, but dig those tacky '60s threads and hair styles, bay-bee - the song of course was a serviceable anthem of pop blue-eyed soul for its time)......Happy Birthday also to comedy madman Lewis Black (here is a bit about gays from a year or so ago in his most recent HBO comedy special that has all kinds of bad words in it, just so you're warned, but God is it funny - by the way, how many times today has Larry Craig told us that he's "straight"?)......and today would have been the 63rd birthday of Molly Ivins (in this tribute on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" from last February 1st, a 1986 report from Molly is replayed on "a ...

A Shining Milestone 2007-08-30 18:04:00 Yesterday I noted the 50th anniversary of Strom Thurmond’s filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights bill, which was the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history.Today, I’d like to recall a much finer moment in our history, and that is the 40th anniversary of the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall as this country’s first African American Supreme Court justice by the Senate (in the 1954 photo, he appears in the center with George E.C. Hayes on the left and James M. Nabrit on the right; the three comprised the legal team that won the Brown v. Board of Education decision).As noted here…Marshall graduated first in his class from Howard University Law School in 1933, and he was drafted by Charles Hamilton Houston (under whom he studied at Howard) to help with the civil rights battles then being waged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He first served as special counsel for the NAACP and then as the director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education F ...

Good Words From An Old Pro 2007-08-30 16:22:00 (I need a hit of caffeine to write this next paragraph first…OK, I’m ready now).I should point out from the start that I think former president Jimmy Carter did a poor job of handling the flap over his latest book about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you’re going to label it, “Peace, Not Apartheid,” you’d better be prepared to defend your position. And even though I think he has a point when he states that we definitely favor Israel too much in these matters (obligatory disclaimer on this: there is abundant blame on both sides, OK?), I don’t think he should have blown off Alan Dershowitz and his objections; there must have been some means for Carter to reply instead of trying to discount Dershowitz out of hand (granted, Dershowitz is not someone I would want to verbally cross swords with, but again, there must have been a way to work something out).Sorry to be ultra-verbose here; what I’m saying is that the just-short-of-an endorsement of John Edwards by C ...

"The Hood" Is Everywhere 2007-08-30 15:15:00 The Bucks County Courier Times reports today that Patrick Murphy is currently trying to secure $250,000 in federal funding for local police to combat gang violence in Bucks County. As the story by reporter Ben Finley tells us…The funds would bolster efforts by departments and schools to help officers, teachers and parents better identify gang activity. The money also would go toward surveillance, undercover work and other operations that involve gangs.For example, police are buying more cameras to catalog known gang tattoos and gang signs to better educate officers and teachers.…So far, the proposed spending has made it through a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the Commerce, Justice and Science Spending Bill, officials said. After being tinkered with in committee, the bill faces one more House vote, a Senate vote and a presidential approval, officials said.“It’s only a matter of time before [gang activity] affects every community in Bucks County if we don ...

Wednesday Videos 2007-08-29 22:18:00 VHS or Beta ("You Got Me"; sorry, but I think this guy has issues)......Happy Birthday to Me'Shell NdegeOcello ("Cloud Nine," with Motown's Funk Brothers and some other great singers - not the whole song, but close enough)......Dinah Washington would have been 83 today (a nice slide show accompanies "You've Got What It Takes" with Brook Benton, courtesy of YouTuber JEBauder1948 - this lady had seven husbands and lived only as far as 39)......and Charlie Parker would have been 87 today ("Hot House" with Dizzy Gillespie, from 1951-52 during the bebop heyday; Parker especially was a reference point and influence for so many artists - I can't believe the emcee asked if "you boys" had anything else to say...Strom Thurmond would have been pleased). ...

A Moment In Portsmouth, N.H. 2007-08-29 21:08:00 Please take a few minutes to watch this YouTube video of John and Elizabeth Edwards speaking about health care. Thanks.(I mentioned earlier that the Repug approach to providing health coverage, Mitt Romney's in particular, is rightly described by Edwards as "worse than the cure." With that in mind, I'd like to see any of the Repugs field the remarks from this brave lady from Lincoln, Nebraska.) ...

An Anniversary Of Intolerance 2007-08-29 17:24:00 (Posting is iffy for tomorrow, by the way…)Fifty years ago today, former Repug senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina conducted the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history (24 hours and 18 minutes, believe it or not) in an unsuccessful attempt to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1957.As Joshua Zeitz tells us here…Staunchly opposed to racial integration, he gave a campaign speech in 1948 in which he promised that “there’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” He warned his followers, “Think about the situation which would exist when the annual office party is held or the union sponsors a dance.” His focus on constitutional questions like “states’ rights” and “federalism” was a matter of political expediency rather than noble conviction. After World War II, in which America had defeated a state built on rac ...

A Census Calamity 2007-08-29 15:19:00 Between the war, Katrina, and the prospect of Mikey Fitzpatrick returning to the spotlight once more, I know I’m just full of bad news today (sorry, but I’m not done yet).The New York Times had twin doses of disillusionment concerning the latest census report, including the following excerpt from this editorial…Sputtering under the weight of the credit crisis and the associated drop in the housing market, the economic expansion that started in 2001 looks like it might enter history books with the dubious distinction of being the only sustained expansion on record in which the incomes of typical American households never reached the peak of the previous cycle. It seems that ordinary working families are going to have to wait — at the very minimum — until the next cycle to make up the losses they suffered in this one. There’s no guarantee they will.The gains against poverty last year were remarkably narrow. The poverty rate declined among the elderly, but it remained unchange ...

Forget Godot; We're Waiting For Mikey 2007-08-29 13:01:00 Will he run in ’08 or won’t he?That seems to be the question among Bucks County Repugs in the PA-08 congressional district (and I don’t mean to exclude the slivers of Philadelphia and Montco included also) based on this headline story that appeared in the Courier Times yesterday…“We're hoping Mike is going to run, but right now we're not really sure,” said Harry Fawkes, chairman of the Bucks County Republican Committee.In a phone interview Monday, Fitzpatrick said he won't decide whether to run until “later this year” and not before the conclusion of the ongoing county commissioners race.Fawkes said the 2008 congressional race is barely a blip on the party's radar right now and said the committee's focus is on the 2007 election.“To be honest, I'm not even thinking about [the congressional race],” Fawkes said.Not even thinking about it? Well, I guess I wouldn’t either, given news like this.I should grudgingly point out, though, that the Repugs always seem to ...

Two Years To Forget 2007-08-29 11:59:00 Here and here are Daily Kos posts on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which we somberly observe today (I’m going to highlight this paragraph from DarkSyde’s post, since I think that’s an appropriate remembrance)…The tragic lesson of Katrina is what will happen when men and women who openly despise our government -- who brag they plan to weaken it until they can drown it in a bathtub -- are allowed to govern. After telling the nation that they and only they could keep us safe from any and all threats, the neo-clowns were caught off guard by a Weapon of Mass Destruction called 'water,' arising from a storm that could be seen lumbering toward the Gulf Coast from the surface of the moon for a week. Choose your leaders wisely; these neo-GOP idiots couldn't run a rib-joint let alone the United States of America. And sooner or later, given the chance, it will be your town they drown in the bathtub.I thought this column from Roland S. Martin at CNN was interesting, thoug ...