Political Theatre category archive

Megan Carpentier, writing at the Guardian, contrasts John Boehner’s leadership with the iron-fisted tactics of Tom Delay, who is currently living off the dole in some penitentiary somewhere.

Boehner may be the only person who could make Tom Delay look good.

A snippet:

Boehner’s willingness to let his freshmen members have sway, lest they complain about his forceful leadership style, set up the situation in which we find ourselves today: a small contingent of intransigent ultra-conservatives who care little about the real-world ramifications of a debt crisis and a great deal about ideology and personal brand are holding their own leadership – and the country – hostage to a plan of spending cuts few people actually thinks is desirable or sustainable.

Jamie of the Intoxination blog has an idea. A snippet:

In the corporate world, the bosses pay is generally based upon the performance of the company. We hear politicians say time and time again that our country should be ran like a business. Well if that’s the case then it’s beyond time to put this same general rule in play with our leaders. Instead of members of Congress deciding when and what raises they get, it’s time to base it upon the performance of our country.

It’s time to tell them that their benefits are on the line. Let them go out and deal with the insurance companies. Let them and their families get denied care. Make them feel the pain that a vast majority of our nation feels.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., expresses his feelings of foreboding in his column at the Chicago Trib.

The dogs of war are spoiling for this fight. So a putative Christian burns a Quran in Florida while others use arson to stop construction of a mosque in Tennessee. And now, there is this (the massacre of children in Norway–ed).

Maybe it makes you want to scream the obvious to those who have grown besotted with conflating extremism and Islam: Extremism has no faith. But they probably won’t hear you.

For the dogs are howling for holy war, an apocalyptic clash of culture and faith. Yet as troubling as it is to watch extremists bicker over which religion has the better god, what’s most troubling is not the bickering, but the extremism, which is now ubiquitous.

Read the whole thing, so you can appreciate the eloquent desperation expressed in the closing line.

The Republican Party seems determined to destroy the economy to win votes.

In the Guardian, Michael Shank considers the militarization of American foreign policy.

He sees three depressing and dangerous trends:

First, it has become standard to engage in wars with no measurable objectives and no explicit or quantifiable goals.

(snip)

Second, we have blindly paid the incredible costs our wars have entailed, which a Brown University study released last month, estimates at $3.7tn for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

(snip)

Third, it is now the norm for defence and development contractors to profit mightily off these wars. In war after US war, cases abound regarding fraud, corruption, kickback schemes and bribery, and, more generally . . . .

Read the whole thing.

C&L points out how war has become the overriding Republican priority, using this video clip as part of their evidence (follow the link for the full post).

One of the bozos in the clip has to gall to claim that President George the Worst “paid (in budgetary terms–ed.) for what he did.” And we wonder why Fox viewers are ill-informed:

This graphic is currently making the rounds. I’ve been wondering where to work it into a post. This seems like a good spot.

I still think one of the best and easiest things we could do to clarify discourse is to give the Department of Defense its original name back: Department of War.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Dick Destiny points out that Never having to declare victory has its perks.

At the Progressive Populist, which is biweekly printed aggregator of opinion and analysis pieces, Hal Crowther examines the right-wing’s fascination with Ayn Rand and finds it irrational. He includes an anecdote of meeting her when she was invited to speak at his school way long ago.

Here’s a snippet:

If corporate feudalism is your dream for America, she’s the prophet for you. Her naïve faith in capitalism and contempt for “the welfare state” are just what the right-wing doctor ordered.

Much of the rest, alas, will never fly in Alabama. Pundits have been delighted to note that the heroine of the new Republicans was a pacifist who opposed the Vietnam War, a feminist who supported abortion, an adulteress who preached free love, a bohemian who mocked family life and child-bearing, an elitist who sneered at the common man, and, after all her “nanny state” rhetoric, a recipient of Social Security and Medicare and a late, sick convert to the benefits of socialized medicine.

Worst of all, for tea-stained Christian Republicans, she was a militant atheist. In Rand’s ideology religious faith was the most abject form of weakness, a sniveling retreat from the hardheaded, self-centered “objectivism” her heroes impose on the world. She not only would have rejected Jesus and his gospels, she actually did—-repeatedly.

Oberman interviews Markos. The first minute and a half are worthwhile. After that, it’s back to horse race coverage:

Excerpt:

Capitalism in its rawest form is the terrible fear that somewhere someone is getting a dollar that a rich person might be sitting on.

At DelawareLiberal.

Addendum, Early That Evening:

Bob Cesca reports that the twit has deleted the tweet.

He can’t delete all the screenshots.

Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:

Atrios has the twit parade.

It’s a way for losers to lose more while taking everyone else with them.

Click for a larger image

Via Some Guy with a Website.

. . . gets the death penalty.

From the write up about the video:

Medina died in CCA’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia in 2009. Medina had been arrested a month earlier for not having a driver’s license. CCA whistleblower Brian Holcomb spoke with us exclusively to expose how the company repeatedly ignored Medina’s pleas for care of his heart ailment while he was imprisoned. Their negligence contributed to Medina’s death.

Andy Borowitz reports:

In what members of both parties are hailing as an important first step on the road to a deal on raising the debt ceiling, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner today came to an agreement that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is a douche.

Details of the negotiations at the link.

Via BartBlog.

The last time politics and religion were mixed, people were burned at the stake.

Frank Schaeffer. whose father was a founder of the “religions right,” points out that events such as the one in Norway have happened here, and that more can be expected.

He does not consider them to be “isolated incidents,” but, rather, events united by a the theme of a crusade:

The extreme language of Evangelical/”pro-life” rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts.

And the anti-government charge is being led by people who are either true believers, thus unable to reason, or people catering to the true believers so that they can remain in the good books of the Tea Party, which is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed.

Some people took the next step. The night of December 14, 2008, Bruce Turnidge was in handcuffs and sitting next to an FBI agent in Turnidge’s farmhouse in Oregon. He was ranting about the “need” for militias and cursing the election of an African American president. Hours earlier, his son, Joshua, had been arrested for allegedly causing a fatal bomb explosion.

There’s much more. Follow the link to read it.

We should be as concerned about homegrown fanatics, even the ones dressed fashionably in clothing we are used to, as we are about ones in exotic garb from far-away places with strange-sounding names.

Perhaps more concerned.

It is curious that those who purport loyalty to the Gospel of Love are so enamored of killing.

H/T Bill F. for the link at the top of the post.

Addendum, a Few Moments Later:

Via Contradict Me:

Notice how “organized terrorist attack” becomes “lone crazy individual” and “isolated incident” when perpetrator(s) are discovered to be white.

CLick through for the original image.

Source.