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: 35 0 59 4457

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

Terra Rants Anew From “Torture Yoo” 2008-01-17 14:45:00 Time to plunge into local wingnuttia in The Philadelphia Inquirer today, and I need my hip waders for this one (a refresher background post is linked below).It seems that Bushco sycophant John Yoo is fighting back against Jose Padilla, going on the offense as follows...Padilla is no innocent. Last summer a Miami jury convicted him of participating in an al-Qaeda support cell in the United States. Prosecutors now are asking the court to sentence Padilla to life in prison. The conviction did not even address his detention in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on allegations that he had returned from Afghanistan to carry out a "dirty" bomb attack on a major U.S. city. According to the Bush administration at the time, Padilla had received the green light from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks.The reason why none of this was mentioned was because no case could be made against Padilla on any of these charges (thankfully, just because Bushco alleges it, it doesn't make ...

Bushco's Sonar Sub-terfuge 2008-01-17 13:58:00 For years, the Navy and groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have fought a legal battle over the use of sonar in the world’s oceans to detect potentially hostile submarines. This is because of the effects of sonar on marine life, with so many undersea animals relying on sound for feeding, mating, and other functions necessary for their existence.And since it appeared that environmentalists were starting to turn the tide in favor of protecting marine life off the California coast, you can be sure that our ruling Repug cabal was going to involve itself at some point with the subtlety of an army boot to the groin.And sure enough, as noted here (the party of “states rights” strikes again)…The Bush administration jumped into a long-running legal fray in California on Tuesday, exempting the Navy from a law that environmental groups have used to prevent the use of a type of powerful sonar that is believed to harm whales.The waiver exempts the Navy from the Coastal Zone ...

Ignoring A Picket Line Isn’t Funny 2008-01-17 10:56:00 I know I promised I wouldn’t say anything about the WGA strike, but I wanted to take a minute and applaud cartoonists Ted Rall and Matt Bors for showing their disagreement with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s decisions to host their programs while the writers continue their walkout (as noted here).And while I’m at it, I have to express a similar attitude towards Bill Maher, who expressed his “love” for “my guys” during the “Real Time” premiere the other night, but managed to work in a dig anyway, saying that the “all or nothing” attitude by the WGA leaders on the strike is about the same mentality that led us into the Iraq war (want some apples with your oranges, Bill?).Also, I’m curious to see if his “Blogga, Please” segment remains when the strike finally ends; in it, Maher took some excerpts from sites and submitted them for response by guests Mark Cuban, Catherine Crier, Tony Snow, and Matt Taibbi. I suppose I should give Maher credit for that even if ...

Wednesday Videos 2008-01-16 22:51:00 Bush (once again, the band, not the waste of space - "Come Down").....and Happy Birthday to John Mayer ("Waiting On The World To Change"). ...

Wednesday News/Political Stuff 2008-01-16 22:09:00 Something to think about concerning John Edwards and the Nevada debate (from Brave New Films - and I know it's from Fox, but still...)......and I think this is part of why he scored so well (familiar themes I know, but so, so important)......Meanwhile, Pinch's quota hire at The Old Gray Lady tries to defend what is indefensible......and I hated on Bill Gates earlier I know - here's a kinder, gentler spoof than he deserves from Letterman. ...

Bill Gates, Friend Of The Working Man 2008-01-16 16:20:00 I tried to leave this as a comment in response to this post from Prof. Marcus, but it was too long, so…__First, it sounds like these unindicted criminals want to get into what used to be and may still be called “human factors engineering” in the defense consulting ‘biz; that was once my world in another lifetime. And, being Microsoft, they intend to utterly dominate the market and squash all competition, bringing them under heel to lick the refuse from their boots.Second, I’ve been meaning to post forever about my horror story with these bastards. For reasons that were utterly cosmic in their stupidity and which I will probably never understand, I upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 on a whim near the end of last summer from IE 6.The first thing that went wrong was the sudden inability of my anti-virus program to go get daily updates, and my spyware program didn’t work properly either (both AVG, good products, and both free – I had to buy the spyware program to fix one issue) ...

No Economy Of Common Sense 2008-01-16 15:20:00 The New York Times ran this Op-Ed piece today by Steven E. Landsburg, a professor of economics at the University of Rochester, who, among other things, has said that those who choose no health insurance should not receive (potentially life saving) treatment (as noted here). And he is a self-described “libertarian,” which, to me, means that he’s bought into the whole Ayn Rand, laissez faire capitalist, “me, myself, and I and everyone else can drop dead” thing.How sad.So it should come as no surprise that Landsburg’s piece in the Times today is a free-market love fest which contains this sickening piece of agit-prop…If you’re forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, you’re being extorted.Pardon me while I spit up a burrito at my PC monitor for a moment.This does, though, give me an opportunity to compare the earnings of American-based CEOs as opposed to their foreign counterparts (after all, isn’t it true ...

The Robertses Are At It Again 2008-01-16 11:27:00 There’s so much wrong with the latest screeching from Cokie and Steve Roberts concerning that oh-so-ugly partisanship that has Washington, D.C. in its grip that it’s really impossible to refute it all (and to be honest, even if I did, they’d just be back about a month or so later repeating it all over again – I don’t like partisanship either really, but I like zombie-like compliance with the corpocracy’s dicta as articulated by their media slaves even less).However, I just want to take issue with a couple of items. First…When political advantage is the only goal, any lawmaker who tries to reach across party lines immediately takes fire from his or her own ranks. Consider (John) McCain's courageous attempts to work with Democrats like Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. To hear his fellow Republicans, you'd think McCain represented Hades (Kennedy's home state), not Arizona.Oh, ha ha, did you read that? The Robertses made a funny! A slur against the commonwealth of Massac ...

A Brief Thought On Tom Manion 2008-01-16 10:08:00 I’ll be respectful towards the declared Repug opponent against Patrick Murphy for the 8th district seat in Congress (ignoring Madden and Lingenfelter for now) as long as he acts in a similar manner, but I must point out something based on this Philadelphia Inquirer story (and I’ll also ignore for now Manion’s laughable claim that somehow Patrick Murphy is responsible in part for the partisanship in Washington, D.C., though Manion has to run on something, I realize - Brian Scheid and the Courier Times have more here)…(Tom Manion) moved to Bucks County with his wife and two children in 1990, when he joined Johnson & Johnson (Manion is an executive with the big pharma company).OMG, you mean Manion isn’t “a lifelong resident of Bucks County” like the beloved Saint Mikey?Well then, I’m sorry, but I have no choice then but to trump up the admittedly idiotic story line that Manion was “dropped into” our district by the Republican National Committee during the presidenc ...

Monday Videos 2008-01-15 23:04:00 Arctic Monkeys ("Fluorescent Adolescent"; so sad when clowns go bad - tsk, tsk)......Happy Birthday to Don Glen Vliet, otherwise known as Captain Beefheart ("Click Clack" live from Paris in 1973 - wonder what those silly French people were thinking when they watched this?)......happy belated birthday to T-Bone Burnett, here with "Earlier Baghdad (The Bounce)"; I haven't quite made up my mind on this yet, but it's interesting......and Happy Birthday also to Iris Dement, performing "You Can Close Your Eyes" with James Taylor. ...

Monday Political Stuff 2008-01-15 22:24:00 Concerning this "Huckabee moment," doesn't it make you all "warm and fuzzy" for The Man From Hope-Less, you "values voters" (should scare the crap out of anyone in this country with a brain, though - h/t The Daily Kos)......and congratulations to The Mittster on winning in Michigan tonight (tongue planted firmly in cheek here)......and K.O. brings us the "Worst Person In The World" from yesterday (and by the way, it's "Jonah" Goldberg, alias the Doughy Pantload - don't ask)......and to get serious for a minute, I wonder what this man would have made of all of this (he would have been 81 today)....Also, here's a link to his speech at the Barratt School in South Philadelphia in 1967.Update 1/16/08: This is somewhat "off-topic," but that's OK; check out the thread commenter Ron is referring to here from J.D. Mullane's blog post. I haven't managed to read all of it yet, but it sounds like our ol' buddy J.D. got called on some of his typical liberal-baiting language and had a meltdo ...

Happy Landings For "Bubble Boy" 2008-01-15 16:22:00 This tells us…Alan Greenspan, a former Federal Reserve chairman, is joining the hedge fund Paulson & Co. as an adviser, the New York-based company said Tuesday.And this tells us…As rising delinquencies on subprime mortgages escalated into a global credit crisis this summer, some in the $1.8 trillion hedge fund industry thrived, like Paulson and Scion, while others fell.And The Shrill One tells us this about Greenspan…(Greenspan is) like a man who suggests leaving the barn door ajar, and then - after the horse is gone - delivers a lecture on the importance of keeping your animals properly locked up.As Krugman said, the chutzpah is breathtaking. ...

Patrick Murphy Finally Has A Repug Opponent!! 2008-01-15 15:10:00 As I live and breathe, it turns out that Tom Manion of Doylestown, a 53-year-old pharmaceutical executive and a recently retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, has decided to challenge Patrick Murphy for the U.S. House 8th district seat in PA (here, with Mikey cheering from the sidelines, of course).I will give Manion the respect of acknowledging that he lost his son Travis, 26, in Iraq during his second tour, and we should extend our thanks to both of them for their sacrifice on our behalf and in particular to the father for enduring such a tragic loss.However, if Manion intends to act in accordance with the foul boilerplate concocted by the Bucks County Republican Party (an example of which appears in the sign…these people live in their own particularly demented version of wingnuttia), then I can assure you that he will receive the same treatment Mikey did from your humble narrator.Manion held a meeting with reporters at his house today at 2 PM, so I am sure that he has annou ...

The Edwards Freeze Out's "Exhibit A" 2008-01-15 14:14:00 I apologize for continuing to beat this drum, so to speak, but I would ask that you consider this New York Times story written today by reporters Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer for a minute or two. It pertains to the efforts of the Democratic contenders for president and their courting of the Hispanic community.The Times reporters devote a lot of space to the efforts of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as you might expect, noting also that former Arizona governor and presidential aspirant Bill Richardson is Hispanic. There is also mention of former Clinton administration HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa…hell, even Al Sharpton is quoted, taking the opportunity to provide the laughable observation that, somehow, Obama “has not been part of…efforts to make (racial) progress.”This story is about 1,250 words in length. As noted, it pertains to the Democratic presidential campaign.And John Edwards isn’t mentioned even once.And I really d ...

BoBo Almost Makes My Head Explode – Film At 11 2008-01-15 11:23:00 David Brooks of the New York Times continues to embellish the corporate media narrative that the campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the presidential nomination are nothing more than the triumph of “identity politics,” which is pretty much defined as someone running for office to represent a group that has been actually oppressed in some fashion or merely perceived as having received that treatment (here).This does at least three things, I realize. First, it keeps the “divided Democrats” theme lurking out there in the shadows of public consciousness somewhere, and second, by excluding John Edwards, it implies that white males have no place in the Democratic Party. Third (as always), it gives Brooks a launching point from which he can foist more misinformation on us.This is not really news, I know. However, Brooks does go off on this right-wing riff that is really a doozy…All the habits of verbal thuggery that have long been used against critics of affi ... Film