Political Theatre category archive

Dick Polman recounts a list of recent unintentionally revealing pronouncements by Little Ricky.

Check them out for what they unintentionally revealed (or confirmed–either one works).

Pepe Escobar, writing at Asia Times, sees the formation of a no-way-out spiral into the dealing of more death.

A nugget:

What was the parade of European poodles thinking – that Tehran would just roll over and absorb the European Union’s oil embargo, scheduled to start on July 1?

No wonder Brussels was caught as a Gucci deer in the headlights when the news started to flow that Tehran would pre-empt the move and immediately slap its own embargo of crude oil exports to six European Union countries – deeply in crisis Club Med members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain plus recession-hit France and the Netherlands.

It took virtually no time for Iran’s Oil Ministry and then the Foreign Ministry to deny it; such a decision, technically, would have to be officially announced by the Supreme National Security Council, which also deals with the nuclear negotiations.

But only the deaf, dumb and blind wouldn’t understand the message; blowback for the ridiculously counter-productive European sanctions/oil embargo package will only plunge vast swathes of Europe further into deep economic pain.

A common fallacy among politicians regarding international relations is assuming that other nations will react the politicians want them to. They are correct about as often as Criswell.

I’m trying to think back over all the international sanctions I recall during my lifetime. I don’t have time to do research, but, off the top of my head, I think the only ones that produced a positive outcome were the ones against apartheid South Africa. The others tended towards failure (Cuba, for example, where the U. S. is pretty much the only nation left enforcing sanctions) or further deterioration of the situation (Iraq after the First Gulf War).

John Baer takes a detailed look at Little Ricky. A snippet:

For example, everybody knows that Santorum doesn’t like gays in relationships and doesn’t like gays in the military.

But he also doesn’t like women in the workplace, doesn’t like women in combat, doesn’t like women (or men) using contraceptives.

He says that contraception is “harmful to women” and society, and that “radical feminism” ruined society by encouraging women to work outside the home, which is one reason an Inky reviewer of his 2005 book, It Takes a Family, called Rick “one of the finest minds of the 13th Century.”

Dick Polman realizes that Mitt the Flip does indeed believe in something:

Despite his reputation as a weather vane, Mitt Romney is actually a man of firm conviction. He strongly believes that any rival who threatens his nomination deserves to be thoroughly trashed.

Which is why the gods of negativity have already begun to hurl thunderbolts at Rick Santorum.

Follow the link for the rest.

Meanwhile, a Republican operative tries to make a serious argument that Little Ricky Santorum is

. . . the most electable conservative remaining in the race..

“Look! Up in the Sky! It’s Super Drone!”

See Political Prof for the answer.

This is an episode of what Hanlon said.

Via BartCop.

Why, half a century after the invention of The Pill, has birth control become an issue?

Shaun Mullen thinks he knows:

With the economy finally showing signs of recovering and Obama’s approval ratings climbing back into the low 50s, Republicans and their presidential wannabes are being denied a cudgel that they have been swinging since Obama took office, so they are defaulting to the tried-and-true culture wars. That is, tried and true for them; most voters don’t give a spit. And how ironic that the mandate that Republicans now so vehemently oppose was being promoted by them in 1993 as an alternative to HillaryCare.

Follow the link for the rest. It’s delicious.

. . . then it must be scrapple.

As told by Noz:

. . . when most pundits say that “we must do something” about a problem in a foreign country, they usually mean doing something that involves killing people. ideas that do not involve killing people or arming other people so they can kill people is what they call “doing nothing.”

Dick Polman reminds us that Little Ricky doesn’t like how you have sex:

In fact, he’s (Rick Santorum, R., SigmundFreud–ed.) most dissatisfied with the way most American women have sex:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before is, I think, the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

(Link fixed.)

Click for a larger image.

Via BartBlog.

Mike Littwin is taken aback by the attacks on the Chrysler commercial that aired during the Super Bowl:

This commercial is so good, I wrote, it almost makes me want to buy a Chrysler product.

Almost.

You see, I had missed what was apparently clear to many others. I thought the reason Chrysler had spent $13 million on this ad was to sell Chryslers. The reason I had reflexively come to this now-controversial conclusion was that every other Chrysler commercial I’d ever seen was about selling Chrysler products.

And, not to belabor the point, but every Ford commercial and every Chevy commercial and every Toyota commercial and every Honda commercial and every Kia-with-hip-hop-hamsters commercial I’d ever seen was about the same thing. I thought maybe I’d spotted a trend.

Follow the link to find out how wrong he was.

A. Parents.

Denying birth control coverage to persons is ultimately coercive.

Karen Heller comments on the Catholic Church’s renewed attempts to dictate the sexual habits, not just of Catholics, but also of non-Catholics who happen to work for an enterprise that receives financial support from the Catholic Church.

Face it, that’s what a “Catholic Hospital,” to pick one example, is–an enterprise.

It may be an enterprise with charitable intent, but I can tell you from personal experience that it’s open to the public, it employs non-Catholics, and it sends a bill when it’s done with you.

In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jackie Hogan considers how Abraham Lincoln would fit in with today’s Republican Party. The conclusion: Not a chance.

A snippet:

While Republican candidates today win kudos for signing Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, it is unlikely that Lincoln would sign on, since he, in effect, invented income tax. That is to say, he was the first American president to sign federal income tax into law. And not only that, but it was a progressive income tax, with the wealthiest Americans paying a higher rate. He made no distinctions between earned income and capital gains — money made was money earned — and Lincoln’s administration needed its cut to pull the nation back from the brink of collapse. Strike One against Honest Abe.

Strike Two: He didn’t advertise his faith. The debate over Lincoln’s religious beliefs is a heated one. But there is good evidence that he questioned Christian orthodoxy, perhaps not so surprising at a time when biblical verses were routinely used in defense of slavery (See Note–ed.), an institution he found morally repugnant. While it is true that Lincoln frequently evoked the Divine in his speeches, he never took up membership in a church, and certainly never spoke publicly about his personal relationship with Christ.

___________

Note: Sound familiar?