Political Theatre category archive

Whom someone admires says much a person (and about a political party).

Jim Wright marvels at Sarah Palin’s recent speech. Here’s a bit:

I’m a skilled writer, I’m even more skilled at mockery, and there is nothing I could have penned that would have come close to that golden horde of … well, hell, you can’t call it word salad, it’s more like finely ground mulch. Compost.

Edit: No in retrospect, mulch and compost are the wrong words. “Word salad” is pitifully inadequate. It’s more like Word Coleslaw. Wordslaw!

Do read the rest.

Chauncey Devega explains how terrorism is not “terrorism” when it’s done by the white right people.

Pennsylvania Republicans are on fire with the white heat of self-righteousness (emphasis added).

For Bucks County Republicans and power brokers, the parties at Claire Risoldi’s extravagant mansion near New Hope were unforgettable affairs.

(snip)

Occasionally, guests would whisper about where Risoldi got her money, since her only known job was in her daughter’s law office. She often explained that she inherited a windfall from her late husband’s successful tile company.

State prosecutors provided their own theory last week: rampant insurance fraud. The Attorney General’s Office on Thursday charged Risoldi and several members of her family with bilking insurers out of $20 million after her mansion caught fire three times in five years.

Had she worked for a Wall Street Bank, she’d have gotten a bail out, not a bail bond.

Afterthought:

If my house caught fire three times in five years, I’d want a new house or, at least, an arson investigator and a private eye.

She, however, had a burning desire for her cause. She carried a torch for Republicans. Republicans flicked her Bic. She was a fan of the Bu-Tane Clan. Republicans lit up her life. She was on fire for the cause. She let her light so shine under the bullshit bushel. She glowed little glow-worm glimmered glimmered.

I’ll stop now, but you can continue. The opportunities are endless.

Daniel Ruth is doing his homework before hitting the hustings. A snippet:

For my part, I’ve been studying Apocalypse Now, The Shining, Blue Velvet and Joan Crawford’s biography for tips on how to be certifiably loopy on the Republican primary debate circuit.

I figure if I show up on the stump decked out like George Washington, demand a return to the pelt standard, call for an electrified 300-foot-tall border fence (land mines optional) and the repeal of Obamacare in favor of a universal national health care system providing free Vaseline petroleum jelly for every true American, I’m at least halfway up Pennsylvania Avenue.

Via Job’s Anger.

Via Job’s Anger.

Mitt the Flip hasn’t changed his spots (but you can be certain that, if he could, he would).

Charter schools are the new seg academies.

French comedians mock Fox’s mythical French “No-Go” Zones.

Via C&L.

January 21, 2015 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Political Theatre | Bookmark this post

Michel Olszak doesn’t think much of Arizona’s recent law to require a “civics” test for high school graduation. He looks at how this law was rushed into being and observes:

Isn’t it good practice to give legislation time for analysis and assessment and to allow all interested parties a reasonable opportunity to weigh in? That’s one big reason for having two chambers in legislatures — to ensure a bill isn’t rushed through only to discover later something was missed.

So the irony is that Arizona students will be required to take a civics test imposed on them by politicians in desperate need of a civics lesson themselves.

But this measure isn’t about education, as you might suspect. It’s about politics and the power to push things through.

An example of good governance would be more valuable than this SNL skit of a legislative performance.

Full Disclosure:

When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days when Martin Luther King, Jr., was being pilloried as a commie revolutionary subversive determined to destroy “Our Way of Life (TM),” my state required high school graduates to have passed a course on “government.” Passing the course in no way predicted how conscientious a citizen one would become.

Politicians love to talk up the “heroes”* in our military, to pontificate on Veterans Day, to pose on the parade grounds, until it comes time to care for soldiers and sailors and their progeny.

Then, all bets are off.

____________

In politician-speech, all soldiers and sailors are “heroes,” whether or not they have done something heroic. Calling them “heroes” beats giving them decent paychecks, funding the Veterans Administration, or giving a damn about them when they come home.

Jonathan Chait examines the history of Republicans’ frequent boouts with the vapors and finds historical precedent. He uses a New York Times op-ed by Karl Rove operative Peter Wehner as a springboard. Here’s a bit:

This apocalyptic strain has regularly infused conservative rhetoric. Milton Friedman compared John F. Kennedy’s program to fascism. Ronald Reagan warned that, if Medicare passed, the government would inevitably force doctors to live in cities where they did not want to, and future generations would no longer know “what it once was like in America when men were free.” (Conservatives continue to tout that speech today, as if it had proven prescient rather than deranged.)

Wehner proceeds to assert that conservatism “isn’t a rigid ideology, it leaves itself open to self-examination and self-correction. Authentic conservatism has a high regard for things empirical, for facts that can lead us to better apprehend the truth.” This is also pretty much the opposite of actual American conservatism.

In other news, Dick Polman reports on Chris Christie’s State of the (mis)State(ments).

Daniel Ruth handicaps the entrants. Here’s a bit:

As you know, the Republican primary field already is shaping up with all manner of has-beens, never-were’s, retreads, delusional wanna-bes, hucksters, demagogues, windbags, poseurs and tea party lackeys. And that’s just Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Then there’s the rest of the cast of “Mis-Taken.”

You have a pretty good idea the GOP field is more wobbly than a dreidel when Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s answer to Groundhog Day, has announced he is thinking about a comeback, which is a bit like eagerly waiting for Ashton Kutcher’s next film project.