Political Theatre category archive
A Tune for the Times 0
From the Youtube page:
This may not be one of Paul Simon’s most successful songs, but it was a fun vibe to work up at the start of a new school year – getting instruments out for the first time since a summer holiday. The original was the second single from the album “Paul Simon” (released 1972) and the inscrutable story in the lyrics is set in the Queens neighbourhood where he grew up. By coincidence, it was apparently performed with Stephen Colbert in 2015 on The Late Show – the programme that this week tore into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s record and showed some of his fiery testimony in the Senate, an episode which also made it into European news coverage (story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c….
Needless to say, the world is watching with alarm the compromising of America’s public health systems, including the dismantling of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) – which has now lost its chief medical officer, director of immunisation, and director of emerging diseases (among many others) – while misinformation spreads, rates of vaccine uptake plummet, new outbreaks of measles kill again, and some states gallop headlong towards removing mandates that had the overwhelming backing of the scientific and medical communities.
The Interview 0
At the Portland Press-Herald, R. Mark Bernstein asks, “If you needed a job done, would you hire a person with this resume?”
Suffer the Children 0
As we know, that’s not scripture. That’s a Republican family value. To illustrate:
Former USAID staffer Karen Van Roekel, writing at the Des Moines Register, is dismayed at the mean for the sake of mean in the Trump maladministration’s decision to shut down that agency. A snippet (emphasis added):
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Sam talks with Ari Berman about how John Roberts’s Supreme Supremacist Court has been working to gut the Voting Rights Act that, per the Encyclopedia Britannica, “aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States.”
America’s original sin of chattel slavery continues to take its toll.
The Rule of Lawless 0
At the Idaho State Journal, Jim Jones, who served as Idaho Attorney-General and on the Idaho State Supreme Court, reveals that he is somewhat concerned about the fate of the rule of law in the United States. A snippet:
Other nations, friend and foe alike, have seen the rapid erosion of the rule of law in America and are reconsidering the wisdom of continuing to rely on the US as a safe haven for investing in the future.
His entire article is worth a read.
Also, too.
The Fifth Horseman, One More Time 0
Afterthought:
The sign in front of RFK Jr. as he testifies reads “The Honorable Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
I submit that said statement is an oxymoron.
The Key to the Club 0
In the course of a longer article about Donald Trump’s plan fever dream to evict Palestinians from Gaza so at to turn it into a Trump resort–and the cruelty, avarice, and cold-heartedness inherent in said play–Tom Moran mentions, almost in passing, the lesson that Trump’s dupes, symps, and fellow travelers have learned. It’s quite simple, really.
Flatter Trump, and you’re in the club. Challenge him, and you’re dead meat.
Trumped Up Charges 0
Farron discusses how Jeanine Piro keeps trying to throw the book at persons for minor offenses, and how (and why) she keeps missing her targets.
Vaccine Nation 0
Speaking of Florida Man, it seems that the state of Florida wants to make polio great again.
Afterthought:
Now there’s brilliant political strategy:
- “Kill some kids,
Own the libs.”
Today’s Republican Party is a vile and loathsome thing.
Undue Process, Notion of Immigrants Dept. 0
Sam and the crew point out that the Trump maladministration’s campaign against immigrants is little more than ethnic cleansing under a different name.
A quote:
The whole point of due process is not that you are granted some type of special privilege. It is to establish whether the government is accurate or telling the truth in justifying the actions that it takes.
The Do-Nothing Party 0
Methinks Bill Sher is onto something (emphasis added):
The people in Washington who can actually stop Trump are not Democrats. They are Republicans. And we should be asking them every day when they will start.
I commend the entire article to your attention.