Political Theatre category archive

Warning: Mild language.

Jennifer Abel tells a horrifying story.

It should be unbelievable.

It isn’t.

Jay Leno:

Well, the presidential race is getting interesting. In an effort to clear up his reputation as a flip-flopper, Mitt Romney will give a speech on health care. And then, right afterward, he’ll give a five-minute rebuttal.

With apologies to Peter Bergman, from whom I stole the title. He doesn’t think T-Paw has a prayer with the teabaggers. His reasoning:

The kooks in the tri-corner hats wrote Mitt off long ago, and Huntsman may be fatally flawed because he heeded the call of our crypto Muslim President to placate the communists in far off Cathay.

That leaves T-Paw, who’s done his damnedest to kiss the Tea Party’s ring. He’s performed his mea culpas for protecting the environment, and is parroting the cant of draconian budget cuts and tax relief for the rich. But it won’t be enough. Pawlenty, bless his beige, Minnesota persona, isn’t crazy enough for the Tea Party. If they can’t convince Bachmann or Palin to lead a third party, they’ll write them in, or do whatever they can to spoil the GOP’s chances in 2012, and perhaps for decades thereafter.

Via DelawareLiberal.

The Shockoe Literary Messenger, in an attempt to explain their disappearance, theorizes that Gingrinch supporters appear to have been raptured.

More at the link.

Attack as a substitute for thought: it’s what one does when one is capable of the former, but not of the latter.

But ever since (16-year old high school student–ed.) Myers decided to write a letter to tea-party queen Michele Bachmann last month, challenging the GOP congresswoman from Minnesota to debate over the U.S. Constitution, her father says she’s been getting stung by the party’s most poisonous fangs.

“People are calling her a [word for a female anatomy part], a left-wing commie, a slut and a whore. They say they hope she gets gang-raped,” said Myers’ father, Wayne Myers. “And those are some of the nicer things they’ve been saying.”

There no doubt is a reason why the Republican Party so fears voters.

Via Balloon Juice.

Donald Luzzatto, Editorial Page Editor for my local rag, is normally on target with his columns. That doesn’t mean that I always agree with him, but that his opinion is normally well-reasoned and worth a listen.

Today, however, in a column regarding the Gingrinch’s recent flippity-flops, he said something quite out of touch with reality, but illustrative of the media’s need to insist that, for each “on one hand,” there must be an “on the other hand.”

Follow the link for the full column; this is the bit I’m interested in (emphasis added):

Thirty years later, no matter where you look, that legacy is utterly gone. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have patience to spare for the slightest variance from what is an increasingly thin and brittle party line. That’s not new, of course. But I’m not sure I’ve seen such a stark example of the unanimity principle at work as in the past few days.

Name for me one prominent Democrat who has been forced to retract and apologize for a policy position because of uproar from the herd of cats sometimes called the “Democratic base” or from, say, for example, MSNBC.

(. . . . . . . .)

That’s what I thought.

On the other hand, there is no other hand.

The Republican sadistic streak resurfaces:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum doesn’t think former POW and torture survivor John McCain quite understands how torture works.

Santorum was on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, and responded to a question about Sen. McCain’s (R-AZ) repeated assertions that torture doesn’t work and that there’s no evidence that it led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

(snip)

“And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.” I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative.

Why don’t they just go buy some magazines from one of those yellow (why are they always yellow?) stores with the windows blocked out and satisfy their needs in private?

I’m tired of hearing their skeevy fantasies.

I took this post down for maintenance. Fixed.

Take action here.

Noz has an excellent suggestion.

politicians should not be allowed to claim their words were “taken out of context” without making them identify the proper context and explain how pulling the quote out of context changed the original meaning of what he/she said.

Follow the link to find out his reasoning.

Except it’s not all that silly.

Folks who call themselves“sovereign citizens” have been known to kill people.

According to the search warrant affidavit:

Simmons stopped Jones because he saw hand-written words “Virginia” and “private use” placed over the man’s license plate.

Jones locked his doors and barely cracked open his window and refused to identify himself. He told Simmons he was a “free citizen on a free highway” and provided different names. The trooper asked for identification at least 10 times.

Proctor and Ossman figure out Ron Paul’s health care plan. The revelation comes about 22 minutes into the podcast at the link:

“He wants to legalize heroin and he wants to get rid of Medicare.

I’ve got it!!

You legalize heroin and get rid of Medicare, so when people get sick, . . . they just shoot up and everything is cool!

Note: Next Monday, the “Current Show” link will update to a new show and this show will be moved to the Show Archive.

And this surpises us how?

Donald Trump says he’s not running for president.

The reality TV star said in a statement Monday that he won’t seek the Republican nomination.

I don’t know that I agree wholeheartedly with those who have said all along that he was only in it to pimp his lousy television show; Trump has had enough success as an empty suit blowhard that he could easily think he could pull off yet another con.

Then reality ate his lunch and his lousy television show and the horse he rode in on.

Your Fourth Amendment rights are being nibbled away. The ACLU is fighting to protect them.

More here.

Kung Fu Monkey:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.