The Liberal Doomsayer

Before Anybody Votes The Dems Out Of Anything…

doomsy — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:03:24 +0000

It might be a good idea to look at all the good that this Congress has accomplished – and does anyone seriously think anything approximating this will happen with the Repugs in charge of the House?

With Joe (I Apologized To BP) Barton running Energy and Commerce?

With Darrell (Philadelphia New Black Panther Party Scandal! Deal To Joe Sestak! William Ayres!) Issa in charge of the Oversight Committee?

….

And Speaker John Boehner???!!!!

Monday Mashup Part One (11/01/10)

doomsy — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:44:38 +0000

1) I don’t know who else has noticed besides me, but the punditocracy is absolutely losing its collective mind as we near the end of this election cycle with its “doomed Dems” narrative, which is totally unsurprising I know; basically, I defy anyone reading this to navigate more than three clicks across any web news site to see what I’m talking about.

And here is a sampling from yesterday’s New York Times, in which Sheryl Gay Stolberg does the best she can to concoct “Drudge bait”…

CLEVELAND — The upper deck was mostly empty when President Obama closed out the campaign season Sunday afternoon with a rally on the campus of Cleveland State University here. His aides looked grim, fiddling with their BlackBerrys as Democratic National Committee staffers scurried to get a crowd estimate from fire marshals: 8,000 in a hall built for 13,000.

It was a fitting coda to the waning days of a brutal election season for the president and his party. Mr. Obama spent the final, frenetic weekend of Midterms 2010 hopscotching the East Coast and Midwest trying to close the “enthusiasm gap” in key states. The task required him, at times, to confront the minor indignities that come with being demoted from rock star to mortal politician.

What, no sneaky references to the faux Doric columns from Obama’s Dem nomination acceptance speech in Denver in 2008? You’re slipping, Stolberg! And funny, but I honestly cannot recall the last time I read about a campaign speech by a Repug in which the empty seats were counted.

(And just for good measure, John Harwood depicted a “Republican rout” tomorrow here.)

Stolberg, however, has nothing on Peter Baker, who, along with Helene Cooper, brought us this (from here, concerning the recent plane bomb scare that quite probably originated in Yemen)…

WASHINGTON — Trying to manage a terrorism threat in the middle of an election campaign, the Obama administration is walking a political and national security tightrope.

Remembering the debates over whether President George W. Bush sought to capitalize on the terrorism threat in the days before the 2006 election, White House officials do not want to look as if they are seizing on a potential catastrophe to win votes. But at the same time, they remember when President Obama was criticized when he said nothing publicly in the three days after an attempt to blow up an airliner last Dec. 25.

“Every president has to be able to take off the partisan hat and assume the role of nonpartisan commander in chief when there is a security incident,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a former assistant secretary of homeland security under Mr. Bush. “The president should be the public face of the response to send the right signals to Americans worried about our defenses, especially those partisans who might be inclined to find fault with anything the administration does.”

Oh, and just in case we didn’t get it that the Obama Administration didn’t officially communicate with the media on the would-be Detroit pants bomber last December, Baker/Cooper go on to repeat it for good measure (of course, the period of time in question for Obama is three days, but I can recall nary a peep out of our corporate media slaves when a certain 43rd president went mute for six days in response to would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, as noted here).

There is still more hilarity in this column, as Baker/Cooper chide Obama again for his “breakdown” in responding last December (to which I ask the following: how many people were killed because of this “breakdown”), but by the end of the column, James Jay Carofano of the Heritage Foundation (now THAT’s a “fair and balanced” point of view) is wondering why Obama supposedly overreacted in the case of the most recent Yemen scare.

And Baker went one better on Stolberg, by the way, writing an entire Op-Ed column yesterday on Obama’s supposed elitism to which I won’t even waste my time responding – if I want to read the National Review (and I don’t, I assure you), I’ll read the National Review.

And in response to the supposed “apathy” of the Dem base, I give you this.

2) Next, I give you what is perhaps the most schizophrenic opinion column I’ve read in a long time (and if you guessed that it came from Fix Noise, then you automatically win an autographed photo of humanoid Megyn Kelly with her face contorted as she yells at Obama spokesman Bill Burton, based on this).

Former Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro decried sexism in political campaigns (good), but then adds fuel to the proverbial fire with the following (bad)…

But it’s not only Democrats against Republicans who sometimes cross the line. Take for instance, Carly Fiorina. Don’t tell me she didn’t realize that she was being sexist — as well as a tad ageist — when she said referring to Barbara Boxer in an off-mic comment: ‘”God what is with that hair? So yesterday.”

And how did she stand by when Sen. John McCain issued an unheard of jab at a colleague in the Senate, when he said about Barbara Boxer after distorting her record that “I should know (how difficult she is on defense issues) because I have had the unpleasant experience of having to serve with her.”

For those who don’t know how the Senate works, no Senator refers to his colleagues in that matter. John McCain has never referred to any colleague before like that. He thought he could get away with it because she is female.

If the women of Arizona go on the Internet and Google three words: John McCain, rape and gorilla — they might see where he is coming from as far as women are concerned.

OK, I think we need to step back a bit here.

To begin, Ferraro is clearly angry about McCain involving himself in the California contest between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. And Ferraro has a right to feel that way, even though I don’t think this happened only because of Boxer’s gender; former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist involved himself in the South Dakota contest against former Senator Tom Daschle and on behalf of John Thune, which was also a low blow.

Also, I am not going to excuse some of the truly lowbrow remarks by McCain that he has uttered in his public life – if you do what Ferraro suggests, you will indeed find the type of language she’s referring to.

However, I think it’s more than a little self-defeating for her to make those remarks in a column where she’s decrying hateful language.

Besides, who is Ferraro to say this when she had no trouble spouting some genuinely racist remarks while supporting Hillary Clinton, a sample of which is noted here?

3) Finally, I just want to make a bit of a personal plea concerning tomorrow’s elections.

Yes, I’m going to say that you should vote Democratic – no surprise there, I’ll admit. And I believe there are a lot of good reasons to do that.

And one of them has to do with the fact that, for the first time in over 10 years, this guy won’t figure into the outcome of anything (even though he was ineligible in 2008, his policies were very much at issue then as I believe they still are now).

My request is that you vote Democratic because of the good work done by the Democratic majority in Congress, notably of which is health care reform, jobs bills, the Lily Ledbetter law and granting the FDA more power to enable the safety of the food supply (there are a lot of other reasons, but I think those are some good ones for starters).

All I ask is that I don’t read everywhere in the universe on Wednesday that the Repugs took over at least one house of Congress because all the “professional left” had going for it (the people who powered Obama’s victory two years ago first and foremost) was “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

Please click here to find a polling place in your neighborhood.

Let’s keep doing the hard work we need to do up until the polls close tomorrow to make it plain to everyone in the world that our support for Democrats is based on moving this country forward for real, as opposed to running away from the past.

A “Trick” Only From “No-Treat” Steve King

doomsy — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:09:57 +0000

And in response, to help Matt Campbell, click here (to say that King is nuts is an understatement).

Corbett A Real “Space Cadet” On Vote Suppression

doomsy — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 22:42:32 +0000

And as you watch this, particularly at the very end, keep in mind that Corbett is the chief law enforcement officer in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

To respond, click here (and here).

The Courier Times Gives It Up For “No-Corp-Tax” Pat

doomsy — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:02:15 +0000

In a thoroughly unsurprising development, the Bucks County Courier Times endorsed Pat Toomey for the U.S. Senate from PA today (here)…

For sure, (Joe) Sestak, a Delaware County congressman and retired admiral, is far to the left of Toomey. He has energetically supported President Obama’s initiatives on the economy and health care reform – and makes no apologies for that. He argues that the stimulus bills and the bailouts, vilified now as immense debt diggers, were necessary to stanch economic disaster and widespread unemployment.

Looking at the glass “half full” for a minute – when it comes to the bailout of GM, the company is now poised for an IPO and may actually turn a profit in the short term, as noted here (throwing “good money after good,” if you will).

Continuing…

A Harvard graduate, Sestak was equally supportive of health care reform, including a liberal-favored government-run public option that was not included in the final law.

I hate to break the news to the Courier Times, but Sestak voted against the public option, as noted here (see “Fun With Committee Votes”).

Continuing…

Toomey, a former Lehigh Valley congressman, would extend the cuts for all Americans and pay for them by cutting spending, including rescinding the unspent portion of federal stimulus money.

As noted here as of last July, “According to Recovery.gov, $55 billion of the unspent ARRA money comes in the form of tax benefits for middle class and working families.”

So, by saying he wants to reclaim “unspent funds” from the stimulus, what Toomey is really saying is that he wants to raise our taxes.

Continuing with the editorial, Toomey also says that he wants to “cap discretionary spending unrelated to national security”; as far as I’m concerned, that’s an extreme position when even a partisan like Senate Repug Bob Corker of Tennessee says here that defense cuts have to be “on the table.”

Also, I’m concerned that Toomey says he would “create competition among health care insurers,” which to me is more code in favor of allowing insurers to compete across state lines – it doesn’t make me happy to point out that a mechanism for this is already in place in HCR, as Ezra Klein tells us here…

(1) “Let families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines.” This is a long-running debate between liberals and conservatives. Currently, states regulate insurers. Liberals feel that’s too weak and allows for too much variation, and they want federal regulation of insurers. Conservatives feel that states over-regulate insurers, and they want insurers to be able to cluster in the state with the least regulation and offer policies nationwide, much as credit card companies do today.

To the surprise and dismay of many liberals, the Senate health-care bill included a compromise with the conservative vision for insurance regulation. The relevant policy is in Section 1333, which allows the formation of interstate compacts. Under this provision, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho (for instance) could agree to allow insurers based in any of those states to sell plans in all of them. This prevents a race to the bottom, as Idaho has to be comfortable with Arizona’s regulations, and the policies have to have a minimum level of benefits (something that even Rep. Paul Ryan believes), but it’s a lot closer to the conservative ideal.

And of course, Toomey supports “tort reform”; as noted here, it was enacted in Ohio but hasn’t lowered rates (as if Toomey cares about that).

Oh, and Toomey of course supports privatization of Social Security, and the Courier Times editorial board is just ducky with that…what a shame that they apparently didn’t read the following letter in their own newspaper today (here)…

On the subject of Social Security, the president cannot direct the Social Security Administration to issue a COLA. The COLA is mandated by law using the Cost of Living Index for urban and clerical workers for the previous fiscal year.

If a COLA is not generated, then the law prohibits a COLA for the following year. Congress can change this by amending the law to consider the cost of living for seniors.

Those receiving Social Security were sent a $250 payment. This was requested by the president and Congress approved it with a vote. It was funded by the stimulus money. If you do not think you got this, check your bank statements for May or June. Some federal retirees got a tax credit and not a direct payment.

Social Security is solvent for the next 25 years. The money being paid covers the obligations so it is not adding to the deficit. The deficit is caused by unfunded spending, such as tax cuts with no corresponding cuts in spending, or two wars lasting a decade that included billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

If workers are allowed to divert some of their Social Security payments to a private account, that will result in a loss of funding to Social Security; and as an obligation set by law the taxpayers will have to make up the loss, higher taxes, to provide the benefits to the beneficiaries. No one has considered this as the unintended consequence of “privatization.”

Susan Gibbons
Fairless Hills, PA

Finally, Toomey supports reducing business tax rates – please watch Keith Olbermann’s report here (first video) and then try to tell me why I should give a fig about tax liability for corporations.

Meanwhile, to support someone who will actually support us (and time is short now, people), click here.

A McConnell Lesson In “Priorities”

doomsy — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:37:27 +0000

Just another reason to support Democrats next Tuesday…

(Oh, by the way, PA-08 residents, you might want to look at this.)

Just Another Day In “Teabagger America”

doomsy — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 04:05:57 +0000

From “1984,” by George Orwell…

“…always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Kind of explains this, IMHO…

K.O. Bags The Teabaggers

doomsy — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 03:45:23 +0000

Terrific, important stuff that would have been pointed out long ago by our corporate media if they had been doing their jobs – here is Part One…

…and here is Part Two.

Oppose Rand Paul – Get Your Head Stomped

doomsy — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:41:15 +0000

And somehow based on this, I think it will be kind of hard to sweep it under the rug, as they say (and to do something about it, click here).

Update: Oh, but Tim Profitt had a “bad back,” and that explains it (here)…riiiiight.

BP’s “Dudley Do-Wrong” In Action

doomsy — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:38:07 +0000

(I was overdue to sneak in a “boomer” reference, by the way.)

“Worst Persons” (Christine Flynn of Wisconsin forged docs to try and get herself out of jail but misspelled the judge’s name – what a charming character; Idaho Gov. Butch Otter stages a “town hall” event at a library in Jerome and doesn’t tell anyone, including the people who booked the library for a wedding reception (huh?); but Bob Dudley of BP, Tony Hayward’s replacement, gets the “Worst” nod for this – how about a big, heaping, steaming glass of STFU?)