Political Theatre category archive

Jay Leno:

Texas governor Rick Perry said God is calling on him to run for President. But Michele Bachmann said that God is calling on her to run for President. You know, if God is that indecisive, he’s probably for Mitt Romney.

Via OhMyGov!

Unreliable reports are surfacing that Rupert Murdoch’s phone messages have been hacked.

Details here.

In other news, Leonard Pitts, Jr., reports on Fox News’s coverage on the voicemail hacking story (Hint: There’s hardly any).

Now, let us be fair and balanced here. Fox is owned by Murdoch and the last thing any news organization wants is to be in the awkward position of reporting on itself. To have to air that which might embarrass or damage colleagues or bosses is the definition of a no-win situation, especially since there will always be doubts, from within and without, about your ability to do so fairly. But when professionalism demands, this is what you do.

Fox is not a news organization. It is a propaganda mill.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

What the Booman said.

Mano Singham has a particularly jaundiced view of President Obama’s Kabuki moves:

Obama and the Democratic party leadership are not trying to get the best deal from the Republicans. They and the Republicans agree on what they want to do (cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits and provide more tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations) because that is what their bosses, the oligarchy, want.

What Obama is trying to negotiate is a way to get all these things without completely alienating his party’s base. He will go as far as he can get away with. That is why all these trial balloons keep getting floated and then denied.

Can’t say that I disagree strongly, since the Beltway Braintrust has convinced everyone inside the Beltway that outgo, rather than income, is the problem.

Meanwhile, Dick Polman collects some interesting quotations.

At least, that’s what Scott Herhold thinks, even though he says he’s not saying that. A snippet:

A colleague of mine, when asked if a U.K. phone-hacking scandal could break out in America, likes to reply: “We’re not organized enough to organize a three-car funeral, much less a sophisticated phone surveillance scam.”

There’s truth in her take. At most mainstream news media outlets, particularly at newspapers, the order of the day is survival. And phone hacking is both expensive and illegal, two major threats to longevity.

I’m not saying it could not happen here, particularly at tabloids like the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a variety of the escapades erupt at an online celebrity gossip site.

The reasons he cites later on in the article are actually quite persuasive and worth a look for anyone who expects it to happen here.

There’s another one he missed (or maybe he ran out of room).

Great Britain is a small country, less than 90,000 square miles. That’s roughly between the sizes of Minnesota and Michigan. Any significant newspaper there is necessarily a national paper, not just in influence (as the New York Times may be considered a national paper), but also in distribution. Even the Guardian long ago dropper the “Manchester” from its masthead.

That’s a lot of hungry cats in one cage.

A scandal at a British paper is therefore ipso facto a national scandal.

So I think it is unlikely to have happened here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that or some other scurvy practice at a regional rag.

Frankly, I think the cesspool of lies known as “Fox News” has done and does far more damage to the polity in its short life than the News of the World has done to Britain throughout the paper’s existence.

In the Chicago Tribune, Megan Crepeau decodes Congressman Allen West’s (R, My-Way-or-the-Highway) charge that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “not a lady” because she dared to disagree with one of his political stances.

After pointing out that the Congresswoman is neither a British peer nor a 19th Century robber baron’s trophy wife, she concludes with

OK, obviously these are ridiculous standards to judge any woman by these days — so much so that the word “lady” has started to be reappropriated by young folks like me, who use the word casually and ironically. I start instant message conversations to my female friends with “hey lady,” and it’s funny because I know the friend I’m chatting with is parked on her couch being as slovenly and unladylike as I am. “Ask a Lady” is a popular advice column on the website thehairpin.com. The website’s male equivalent is “Ask A Dude,” which gives you an idea of how seriously anyone takes the word “lady” these days.

But West takes it very seriously, and here’s why: When he said “lady,” he was speaking in code. To old-fashioned conservative men like West, “lady” just means “someone who agrees with me,” or at least “someone who disagrees with me quietly.” To be a “lady” is to be docile, calm and uncritical. West thinks that since his colleague is just a woman, not a lady, she doesn’t deserve to “be afforded due respect.”

Via Down with Tyranny.

Pure political theatre.

Any “big solution to a big problem” conceived in crisis mode is likely to solve nothing.

Nevertheless, I appreciate that President Obama has to play the hand he has been dealt from the bottom of the deck by the three-card monte dealers called the Republican Party.

The good part starts about halfway through, when the subject of Allen West (R., Cyberbully) comes up.

The Stand-Up Economist on how it works:

We don’t have a budget deficit because the left wing believes in mandates, or because the right wing believes in markets. We have a budget deficit because the centrist voters believe in magic!

Via DelawareLiberal.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Oscar the Grouch, that is:

Via Mano Singham.

Which do you prefer?

Via TPM, which has the Republican response, q. v.

John Cole comments on said Republican response:

Wingnuts get very offended when you point out what will happen if their ideas are allowed to become reality.

Via Hanlon, who’s on a roll this week.

Obvious.

As you read this, rich and powerful people in Washington, DC are trying to determine not whether they should cut programs designed to help low and middle-income Americans, but by how much they should cut those programs. The rich and powerful people in DC are making these cuts in order to pay for tax breaks they recently gave to rich people and large corporations. Additionally, the cuts are being made at the behest of the lobby organizations and media operations owned by rich people and large corporations.

If that isn’t a class war, I don’t know what is.

Via Balloon Juice.

Writing at SWVA Today, a small regional website in Southwest Virginia, Robert Cahill takes a common sense look at teabaggery.

His sensible analysis deserves wider currency. A nugget.

I don’t understand some of my fellow Americans these days. This deadlock in Washington has me puzzled completely. Now I basically lean to the Democrat side of things but not 100 percent. Never have and probably never will. I like to think that I and most of my fellow citizens are kind of middle of the road.

That’s why I am so puzzled by the folks calling themselves the Tea Party and their man in Congress, John Boehner. They seem to think they are the average American but they, or at least their leaders, surely have a different vision of being a citizen than I do.

Last year, according to recent news reports, General Electric made over $14 billion.Yet thanks to the large number of tax breaks available to mega-businesses, such as GE, they did not pay any federal taxes. That’s what I read: GE paid none. Apparently Boehner and his buddies think this is just a wonderful arrangement. Me, well I don’t think it’s so fine and dandy.

I seldom have much truck with Bob Barr. I cannot read anything he writes without remembering his disgraceful and cynical championing of the impeachment of President Clinton.

Nevertheless, as my old boss used to say, even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.

His take on TSA’s exploding implants warning seems to be on target:

The timing of TSA’s release of this latest “plot” is suspect, considering the recent and substantial criticism to which TSA has been subject because of its highly questionable tactics; such as repeated pat downs of small children and targeting diapers worn by cancer-ridden octogenarians. No doubt, TSA Administrator John Pistole made sure the “bomb implant” reports were made available quickly to supporters in Congress and the White House.

Even as TSA continues to employ every scare tactic it can muster to justify its existence and large budget, it is extending its reach far beyond the airport checkpoints that have given rise to so many horror stories of invasive pat-downs and naked body scans. At TSA, mission creep has become an art form.

TSA and agents with its parent, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), now consider it their mission to stop private vehicles on highways and search them. They have also begun to search bus and train passengers, sometimes after they exit the carriers; and the feds believe also they have authority to search people at shopping malls and elsewhere, such as sporting events. It is only a short step from such expansive ideas, to the notion that to protect the country, TSA and DHS have to be able enter (sic) private homes and businesses in order to ensure there are no terrorist tools therein.

Conor Friedersdorf, who sometimes subbed for Andrew Sullivan before Sullivan left the Atlantic, checks out the celluloid paean to Sarah Palin, The Undefeated* (Variety’s review is a must-read) in Orange County, California.

He did not have to worry about being disturbed by twits on Twitter, Facebook frolickers, or sexting seniors.

A nugget:

It isn’t strictly accurate to say that I sat through the whole movie alone. Just as the previews started, two young women walked in giggling together and took seats three rows behind me. Afraid that they’d ruined the only story I had at that point — What If Sarah Palin Starred in a Movie and No One Showed Up? — I hoped they’d at least oblige me with an interview, and so they did.

(snip)

“So, um, what made you come out here tonight?”

“We’re going to Disneyland tomorrow,” Jamie said, “but she just got here, so we decided we should go out.”

“We looked online for the latest movie playing,” Jessie added. “But all the Harry Potters were sold out, and then we saw ‘The Undefeated.’ We don’t even actually know what we’re seeing.”

“Well welcome to California,” I said. “You’re about to see a documentary about Sarah Palin.”

“Oh, really?” they said, and started giggling again. I think they were expecting an action flick. When I returned to my seat, I thought maybe I’d talk to them after the movie, and get the perspective of two people who went in with no expectations. But they only lasted 20 minutes before walking out.

Via John Cole, who points out that, in choosing between the witch and the sorcerer, the audience chose the sorcerer.

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*Quitting is not technically the same as losing.