Political Theatre category archive

On the Media considers why the disconnect between US reporting and international reporting on the Drone Wars, particularly the lack of domestic coverage of civilian deaths (emphasis added).

According to an article in The New York Times last week, the Obama administration treats “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”. Brooke talks to Chris Woods, reporter for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who has been working with reporters on the ground to confirm and put names to civilian casualties of drone strikes, about the discrepancies between his reporting and the reports of the US government.

I love the “if I hit you, you must be guilty” reasoning.

Follow the link to read the transcript or listen to the story.

At Asia Times, Nick Turse looks to the future Drone Wars. A nugget:

In some ways, of course, the future is now. When the first Terminator movie was released in 1984, its HKs seemed as futuristic as its time-traveling cyborg title-character. Nearly three decades later, we’re living in an age in which armed robots do regularly surveil, track, and kill people. But instead of a self-aware computer network known as Skynet, it’s the American president or his intelligence officials and military officers who determine the human targets to be terminated by unmanned hunter-killer craft.

Sally Kalson examines the recent kerfuffle over Joe Ricketts (grandowner of the Chicago Cubs, may they dwell forever in the cellar that they have made their own) and yet another attempt by the Republican Party to stir up racial animosity. She considers the duplicitous role of PACs. A nugget:

This arrangement (anonymous PACs–ed.) makes it possible for politicians to work both sides, denouncing sleazy tactics while benefitting from them. Now that there are no limits on political spending independent of campaigns, wealthy donors can exert more influence than ever on the political process. As the rejected plan noted, voters “still aren’t ready to hate this president.” So “how to inflame their questions on his character and competency, while allowing themselves to still somewhat ‘like’ the man becomes the challenge.”

Stephen Colbert analyzes Mitt the Flip’s outreach efforts and enumerates the groups to which he must reach out:

PoliticalProf has some thoughts. A snippet:

I know, I know: you’re thinking politicians lie as a defect of character. They lie because they’re liars. So why bother to discuss it?

I want to suggest that there’s a different, more persuasive account for why politicians lie: They lie because we make them lie. They lie because when they lie, we reward—meaning vote for—them. And when they don’t lie, we punish them—by voting for the other candidate—who, of course, lied to us.

My point can be made in a single, dramatic example, although I am sure that many will resist. In his Democratic presidential nomination acceptance address in 1984, Walter Mondale famously said: “Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Walter Mondale went on to lose to Ronald Reagan in the greatest electoral college defeat of all time, 525-13. After his reelection, Ronald Reagan raised taxes multiple times, including a massive shift in tax burden from corporations to individuals as a consequence of the 1986 tax reform act.

Read the rest.

Thom wonders whether the Iowa Republican platform, which, among other things, call for teaching creationism in public schools, presages the national one and why the loonies seem to be in charge.

Gamy gaming.

Enthusiasts boast of their (drones–ed>) surgical accuracy and exhaustive surveillance, operated by all-seeing technicians from thousands of miles away in Nevada.

But that’s a computer-game fantasy of clinical war. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher – plausibly, given the tendency to claim as “militants” victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.

Do the arithmetic: batting somewnere between .263 and .336 at getting the wrong persons. That average gets you batting at the top of the order in the bigs.

Dick Polman thinks he’s figured out Mitt the Flip’s attraction to the Donald.

He advances several theories, then settles on this:

Remember, Romney spent the primary season trying in vain to unite the base behind his candidacy. He still apparently lives in fear that the most unhinged folks on the Republican right will stay home on election day, having convinced themselves that he’s too sensible to vote for. Which is why Romney has tried on occasion to show that he too can be unhinged. It’s pander politics 101.

Click to read the rest.

(For folks too young to understand “Agnew.”)

Bill Maher skewers birther theorizing:

Via Delaware Liberal.

Mike Papantonio considers Abraham Lincoln’s and Thomas Jefferson’s warnings about banks and bankers.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the “should-have-been-a-RICO trial” continues.

In the Denver Post, Curtis Hubbard classifies six variants of political (non-)apologies. See how many you recognize.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

At the Guardian, Gary Younge examines the continuing success of the odious Southern strategy. A nugget:

One of the appeals for some whites of voting Republican is a desire to maintain whatever limited racial privileges they have acquired over the years combined with a fear that what little they have will be taken away by feckless non-whites and undocumented migrants. While in Nevada in 2010 I asked a white Republican without health insurance why she wouldn’t support a candidate who might give it to her. “I never really got into that Obamacare insurance stuff,” she said. “My mind is focusing 250% on this illegal immigration.”

None of this means all Republican supporters are racist. But it does suggest they make their appeal on racial grounds . . . .

Where, if you are entitled, you wear teflon.

Otherwise, otherwise.

You, too, can be droned.