Political Theatre category archive

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Steven M.:

We really have to start treating Donald Trump’s transparently phony faux-“flirtations” with electoral politics the way baseball broadcasters treat idiot fans who run onto the field — just turn the cameras away and don’t provide any coverage at all.

More trump cards at the link.

Intentions are irrelevant.

A groundbreaking study by the think tank Demos released last week found that 10,000 tweets containing a racial slur are posted on Twitter every day, although a majority of these tweets are not intended to be racist.

If you act like a racist, you are a racist.

If you don’t realize you are acting like a racist, you are stupid or you are lying to yourself. And you are probably not that stupid.

Warning: The usual bad taste.

New Jersey, always classy.

Since publication, a note was added to the story online indicating the newspaper had misquoted some off-color comments Drewniak made about one of the people involved in the scandal that has embroiled Christie’s administration.

“An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Drewniak referred to the Port Authority’s executive director as a ‘piece of crap,'” the correction said. “While Drewniak did call him a ‘piece of excrement,’ it was David Wildstein who referred to the executive director as a ‘piece of crap.'”

Shaun Mullen wonders whether the Republican Party has given up on winning the Presidency, settling instead on barricading itself in the individual states. I know it sounds crazy, since the all-horserace-all-the-time news industry seems to think that the Presidential election is the only one that matters (it isn’t–just ask the people of North Carolina, to pick one), but his argument deserves a hearing.

Here’s a nugget:

Although no one will dare say so publicly, the leaders of the Tea Party lunatic fringe that has become the tail that wags the party dog don’t care if the Oval Office remains out of the Republican grasp. Pushing a conservative agenda in Congress and on the state level is enough. This was all but confirmed in a New York Times article about Tea Party-backed PACs raising tons of money while PACs like moderate stalwart Karl Rove’s Crossroads are treading water. There was nary a peep about winning back the biggest prize of all. Toppling moderate stalwarts like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was more important.

Follow the link for his full discussion, including the math.

Libido always is close to the surface in the pervy party that is preoccupied with sex.

On the one hand, experience shows that it’s silly to think about “front runners” two years before the nomination. On the other hand, silliness can be entertaining.

And the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Dan Simpson has compiled quite a list of made-in-America mistakes. Here’s one:

The first, no doubt provoked by the pathetic, anticlimactic Super Bowl, with its ad for the Maserati Ghibli, which we all are unlikely to be able to afford, is the tax-free status of the glittery National Football League, composed of very profitable teams owned by America’s 1-percent elite. The NFL’s not paying taxes dates from its early days, when people were not required to put their children to work in factories to buy a ticket to a game. The NFL should pay taxes.

Follow the link for the rest. It’s a collection of doozies.

At Boston Review, Claude S. Fischer struggles to understand Libertarianism and, particularly, its appeal to a certain segment of geeks.

What difference does this history and anthropology make to libertarian arguments about the good life? Plenty. If libertarians would move real-world policy in their direction, then their premises about humans and human society should be at least remotely plausible; we are not playing SimCity here. Instead, libertarian premises arise from a worldview that was strange at its origin and is strange now, after the global triumph of liberalism.

If you wish to understand the strange contemporary revival of Ayn Rand’s fever dream, this article is a good place to start.

Intellectually, Libertarianism is a fancy impressive-sounding rationale for justifying heedless, craven selfishness. Practically, it’s camouflage for Republicans who are ashamed to admit it.

Chris Christie goes all high school. A nugget from Dick Polman:

Nothing illustrates Chris Christie’s precipitous plummet more exquisitely than the punch he delivered this weekend to the groin of former ally David Wildstein.

Here’s some free advice for the increasingly unloved guv: If you truly want to tout yourself as presidential, even in the midst of a burgeoning scandal, then don’t behave like a peevish juvenile with a tenth-grade mentality. Because most people think of high school as a distant time and place best left in the rear-view mirror.

What the Booman said.

Via BartCop.

Reg Henry goes on the wagon for a month and find parallels between teabaggers and another group of tea fanciers: parallels of fanaticism and excess. A nugget.

What ironies abound today. We have a small political faction severe as the old drys but instead railing against the intoxicant of federal spending, an issue which did indeed need attention just as the dive saloons of yesteryear were an invitation to a hatchet.

Of course, this being America, everything gets taken too far. The drys of yesteryear made the whole nation as miserable as one of my Januarys. Today’s Tea Party, averse to compromise, has been happy to shut down the government in honor of a Constitution that is all about establishing a functioning government dependent on compromise.

The Booman remembers Pete Seeger.

Via BartCop.