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 59 4457

Articles from The Liberal Doomsayer

Monday Political Stuff 2008-01-14 23:22:00 OK, Michigan Dems, you know what to do (h/t The Daily Kos)......and so do the rest of us (nice work by JedReport - glad Cate wasn't hurt in the car accident today).Update 1/15/08: David Sirota has more. ...

Dubya's Space Dreams A Flight Of Fancy 2008-01-14 16:48:00 Just noting that four years ago, President George W. Milhous Bush thus spoke the following (here)…WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saying "the desire to explore and understand is part of our character," President Bush Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and use the mission as a steppingstone for future manned trips to Mars and beyond."We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this -- human beings are headed into the cosmos," Bush said. "Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit." Meanwhile, on terra firma (here)…Despite the Bush Administration's public commitment to the space program, in the form of the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration initiative, which sets goals of returning men to the Moon, establishing a base there, and later mounting manned missions to Mars, the White Ho ...

Bill Kristol's Wankery Continues 2008-01-14 16:01:00 Slightly less obvious from last week, perhaps; from Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher here…Kristol in (today’s) column, which hailed the success of the "surge" in Iraq, concluded with this trump card: Now the Iraqi government has agreed on de-Baathification, a key gain that proves his point and pretty much destroys the Democrats' stand.Well, even that claim is debatable to yours truly. But as Solomon Moore of the Times notes, according to Mitchell…"…the (de-Baathification) legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries.And as noted in Moore’s story by Sunni politician Khalaf Aulian…“Many Baathists hated the Baath Party, but they were part of it to have a job,” he said. “By this law, we will push them into the insurgency.”Peachy (and for more ...

Smerky Slams "Obama-Rama" 2008-01-14 12:44:00 Philadelphia’s resident right-wing know-it-all Michael Smerconish concocted this yesterday in the Inquirer…On the morning after Hillary Rodham Clinton's upset victory in New Hampshire, I spoke to MSNBC host Chris Matthews. He said that after anchoring coverage on MSNBC, he had been up all night talking to the NBC pollsters, trying to figure out how the pre-vote polls all got it wrong in projecting a double-digit win for Barack Obama.Matthews wondered how they had been dead right in Iowa, and on the Republican side, but wrong with the Democrats.I think the following from this story about HRC’s New Hampshire win is pretty close to the mark…In the end, though, key voting blocs were there for Clinton - or were not there for Obama, depending on how the campaign frames it. According to exit polling conducted by The Associated Press and the networks, far more women voted than men; Clinton won 45 percent of them compared to 36 for Obama.Also according to exit polls, only half as many ...

Patrick Supports Our Vets Again 2008-01-14 11:02:00 Back to the Courier Times for this (in their “Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down” segment from Saturday)…(Thumbs Up) To Congressman Patrick Murphy for his willingness to fight the small battles for veterans.After hearing about veterans unaware of benefits they were eligible for at the state and county level — such as an exemption from paying property taxes — Murphy and another congressman wrote a letter to Daniel Cooper, the VA's undersecretary for benefits, encouraging him to better inform veterans.Cooper responded by promising to include a paragraph about local benefits in award notification letters, instructing veterans to contact their state and county governments to find out what other benefits they can receive.“It's a small thing, but it will go a long way to make sure all veterans receive all their benefits,” said Dan Fraley, director of Veterans Affairs for Bucks County, who said he gets five to 10 calls a year from veterans unaware of their benefits.Too often it seems poli ...

A New Fight Against Guns 2008-01-14 10:41:00 This letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday (no link available)…The New Year is a time for annual resolutions, and the standards for these include weight loss, exercise routines and spending quality time with loved ones. If, however, you spend a minute looking back at 2007 to try to develop a meaningful resolution, look at the nearly 400 families in Philadelphia who lost a loved one to gun violence and murder, more than 125 of the victims under the age of 25. Unfortunately that statistic included our family (sic).Eric was a 20-year-old college student, on the right track, going to school, working and enjoying his friends. His was not a typical gun death, barely newsworthy, but devastating to our family just the same. Perhaps if the gun laws included licensing and education requirements, his death may have been prevented. Our wish for the New Year is to help others avoid such a senseless death.Most people watch the news and feel sad, but most also feel powerless t ...

A "Real Time" Snow Job 2008-01-13 22:10:00 I know ThinkProgress noted here (h/t Atrios) that Tony Snow poked out from under his hidey hole to spout freeper propaganda on the writer's-strike-affected season premiere of "Real Time" on Friday ("everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of the war"; some day, elementary school classes of some other country/planet/universe that comes after us will study how the arrogance that gave rise to that statement helped denigrate every aspect of our political life, to our ultimate ruin if things keep going the way they are).I wanted to take note, though, of Snow yakking about "voter fraud" when Maher brings up the issue of the integrity of our voting machines (a typical Repug tactic, and watch how seamlessly he transitions to "REAL ID" in the clip below, but then Catherine Crier quite rightly notes that no case has been documented, and Snow quickly says, "Are you kidding" but then changes the subject without providing evidence, and kudos again to Crier to stating how important it is to have a ...

Saturday Videos 2008-01-12 23:15:00 I was really sorry to read here that the 40th anniversary of Johnny Cash's concert at Folsom Prison was canceled (here's "The Man In Black" performing "Folsom Prison Blues" in 1990 with The Highwaymen)......and to mark the end of the first week of ultra-conservative shill and Iraq War cheerleader Bill Kristol's new gig at the New York Times (where he ran into a bit of difficulty), here's "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats, featuring a very young Sir Bob Geldof (fitting for the only day Kristol's screeds appear, and yes, I know this song is about the shootings by Brenda Ann Spencer in San Diego in 1979, mentioned here). ...

Today's "Dubya Moment" 2008-01-12 10:45:00 From this post I found on the web site of the Baltimore Sun yesterday, concerning the visit of George W. Milhous Bush to the Middle East...BETHLEHEM, West Bank — After descending the stone stairs to the dim grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity, President Bush lit a candle Thursday and stood in silent, somber reflection at the place where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.Emerging a short while later into the sunlit courtyard outside, he described the experience as "a moving moment for me. ... For those of us who practice the Christian faith, there's really no more holy site than the place where our Savior was born."From this post by Chris Kelly at HuffPo yesterday..."War on the one hand is such a terrible, such an atrocious thing, that no man, especially no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it." - TolstoyAnd don't worry; even though Coulter would never return the favor and Kelly's post is funny, I won't take a shot at her as she ...

Friday Videos 2008-01-11 23:36:00 Louis XIV ("Finding Out True Love Is Blind" - kind of loud and a little spacey looking, for effect of course; "hey, carrot juice," huh?)......Happy Birthday to Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers ("Galvanize," a cautionary tale for sneaking into a club without proper ID; hip hop definitely isn't my thing, but it's got a good beat and the kids like it, so...)......happy belated birthday to David Bowie ("Ashes To Ashes"; I read that he was going for a Salvador Dali thing with this - vivid imagery and unforgettably strange)......and Happy Birthday to Vicki Peterson of The Bangles (their cover of "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" by Simon and Garfunkel; I think the movie clips are from "Less Than Zero," but I'm not 100 percent sure - foreshadowing what really happened with Robert Downey, Jr. a bit, though thankfully he's still with us). ...

Friday Political Stuff 2008-01-11 23:01:00 I've been meaning to give a plug to the campaign at The Daily Kos to encourage Michigan Democrats to vote for Willard Mitt Romney in their upcoming primary (more info here - and in a related vein, Jackie and Dunlop offer their commentary on the flap over Mitt and the dog doody on his car from awhile back; the "s" word is flying around all over the place here)......and for a complete change of pace, here's the trailer for "For The Bible Tells Me So" from Brave New Films (more info here - powerful stuff). ...

Trying To “Ground” “REAL ID” 2008-01-11 16:14:00 The Bushco beat goes on (here)…Residents of at least 17 states are suddenly stuck in the middle of a fight between the Bush administration and state governments over post-Sept. 11 security rules for driver's licenses – a dispute that, by May, could leave millions of people unable to use their licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings.And you just knew that DHS Secretary Mike (“City Of Louisiana”) Chertoff was in the middle of this somehow, didn’t you?(Chertoff), who was unveiling final details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to comply with the legislation.Or, of course, Chertoff could use some common sense for a change and actually delay implementation until the concerns of the states in question were addressed…but we know that’s not Bushco’s “M.O.,” don’t we?Chertoff, as he revealed final details o ...

Et tu, Ned? 2008-01-11 11:46:00 I gritted my teeth a bit, I’ll admit, when I read here that John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination; though I honestly don’t think Kerry was trying to slam John Edwards, I don’t think it showed much loyalty either (but then again, I think endorsing The Last Honest Man would actually have been the right thing for Al Gore to do in 2004; even though Lieberman had no shot, thank God, they did campaign together four years earlier).But when I read here from Matt Stoller that Ned Lamont, the former Democratic senatorial candidate from Connecticut in 2006, endorsed Obama, that’s when I knew I had to say something.I should note that the numbers definitely favor Obama over Edwards at the moment as we know, though Hillary has a huge lead in the super delegate count – sorry, but you’ll have to check The Daily Kos if you want to find out more about what that means exactly. And I also realize that many big Democratic names are jumping all over themselv ...

A Correct But Painful Strategy 2008-01-11 08:02:00 This Yahoo News story tells us...JERUSALEM - President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel's Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial's chairman said.Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial calling it a "sobering reminder" that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith.Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims.Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem's chairman, Avner Shalev."Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes," Shalev said.At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site (during World War II ...

Thursday Videos 2008-01-10 23:28:00 James ("Laid")......Jim Croce would have been 65 today ("These Dreams," with Maury Muehleisen, as always)......Happy Birthday to Shawn Colvin ("Round Of Blues," keeping it in a folky vein)......and happy belated birthday to Steve Harwell of Smash Mouth ("Walking On The Sun"). ...