Political Theatre category archive
And the Morals of the Story Are . . . . 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear draws some lessons from the recent Alabama Senate special election. Here’s a couple; follow the link for the rest.
5. BUT: let’s be honest, a candidate like Strange would have probably beat Jones pretty handily.
6. That last point shows the Republican Party has a continuing problem of letting its base choose candidates in the primary who are repulsive to the general electorate. See Todd Aiken, Joe Miller, etc.
The Galt and the Lamers, Republican Roulette Dept. 0
Dick Polman looks at the Republican tax deform bill and tries to figure out, why, for Pete’s sake, just why are they rushing ahead with this monstrosity.
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
A constituent writes an open letter to his Congressman asking why he refuses to do his job.
So Much Winning . . . . 0
Farron looks gleefully at the track record of candidates endorsed by Donald Trump.
Hey, Little Girl, Want Some Candy? 0
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Sanity Claus.
Immunity Impunity
0
Bob Egelko explores Donald Trump’s lawyer’s claims that, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, if the President does it, it’s not illegal. A snippet:
“That would mean that if the police were corrupt, you could never investigate the chief of police,” said Hadar Aviram, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. “The law enforcement system is not the private police of the president. It belongs to all of us.”
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Thom and his guest discuss methods that Republicans use to steal democracy.
News Hawks and News Hawkers 0
Dick Polman considers the source.
Both Sides Not 0
Afterthought:
“Republican Family Values” has always been a con and a scam.
Republican politicians make “used car dealer” and “real estate developer” look like honorable professions.
All the News that Fits 0
In the Raleigh News and Observer, Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., considers the wasteland that constitutes contemporary news coverage in the United States. An excerpt:
In those latter days of print supremacy, few foresaw the chaos generated today by “social media,” which is so often anti-social in effect. Add a twittering president who regards newspapers as “enemies of the people” and applies epithets worthy of a banana-republic caudillo to his critics : “the failing New York Times” and “the lying Washington Post.” Donald Trump is so prolific a source of fables and fantasies that the Post counts them in the hundreds. You needn’t be deeply schooled in psychology to identify his epithets as the projections of his own ingrained hostility to truth.
In a related article, Bella DePaulo attempts a taxonomy of Trumpian lies. A snippet:
Now let me tell you what I found when I tallied Trump’s cruel lies. Instead of adding up to 1 or 2 percent, as in my previous research, they accounted for 50 percent.
Cavalcade of Stupid 0
Dick Polman reviews this week of Republican antics.