Political Theatre category archive

The Chicago Tribune reports on a numbers game in McHenry County, Ill., west of Chicago, in which brown persons who spoke Spanish were listed as white, rather than Hispanic, on police officers’ traffic stop reports:

In examining department, state and court data from 2004 through 2009, the Tribune’s investigation indicated:

• The problem grew worse each year. By 2009, the statistical analysis showed, 1 in 3 Hispanics cited by deputies likely were mislabeled as white or not included in department data reported to the state.
• If mislabeling and underreporting are taken into account, the department’s official rate of minority stops would have towered over its Chicago-area peers rather than appearing average.
• Department brass repeatedly missed warning signs of potential problems, even after a deputy complained that some peers targeted Hispanics.

Follow the link and draw your own conclusions.

Oh, look!

One-party rule.

Yet another shoe has dropped in the battle over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-public employee union law — with state Republican leaders now apparently defying or attempting to circumvent a court order that temporarily blocked implementation of the law.

Details at the link.

Also, Angry Black Lady’s post at Balloon Juice is worth a read. The excerpts from the opinion of the court order mentioned above are gems.

As Atrios points out, an executive that is determined to a court can finds a way.

I think it was Andrew Jackson who said, of a Supreme Court ruling, “They made the decision. Let them enforce it.”

Democracy is ultimately a contract among the governed and those who govern about how those who govern shall conduct themselves. If one party breaks the contract, they break democracy.

I think this airs the issues as fairly as five minutes could allow.

Guess we know the answer to that one.

Via Kiko’s House.

Via TPM.

In the Guardian, Charlotte Higgins examines theories why the assault in Libya was named “Odyssey Dawn.”

My favorite:

Bigwigandfiver (who I assume commented at the site–ed.), suggests another route. “What are they trying to tell us? That this is a 10-year mission and none of the ships will ever actually come home again?” By taking “dawn” as figuratively meaning “beginning”, the phrase could indeed be interpreted this way. However, Odysseus’s journey would not, as the reader suggests, be a propitious example for a military operation. In his 10-year slog home, the Greek hero loses his entire fleet and all his comrades, though he does win through in the end to butcher the suitors who have been importuning his wife Penelope in his absence.

Aside:

This does seem to be an apt description of the war in Afghanistan.

Thoreau considers teabaggery, explaining why he does not consider it “conservative,” but radical. A nugget:

And while I’m not the biggest fan of public sector unions, I would characterize what happened in Wisconsin as more radical than conservative, at least to the extent that these words still convey their older, descriptive meanings rather than a partisan label (for “conservative”) and a fringe designation (for “radical”). Even if one supports the Wisconsin legislation on the merits (and keep in mind that I won’t support any bill that makes the police unions the top dogs), it is still radical. If you are radical, be radical, but don’t call it conservative. (I would further state that while I’m not the biggest fan of public sector unions, being in one and all, any change in the public sector is usually better if it is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.)

Via Some Guy with a Website, who has commentary

The Philly Daily News in a editorial supporting Elizabeth Warren’s conduct in organizing Consumer Financial Products Bureau. Emphasis added.

The new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Republican Spencer Bachus, of Alabama, recently shared his self-described “Main Street” perspective with hometown reporters. “In Washington, he said, “the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

Later, Bachus amended his comments to allow that well, of course, there should be some bank regulation, but his worldview – and that of his colleagues – is apparent. And the 2 1/2 hours they spent haranguing consumer champion Elizabeth Warren at a House subcommittee hearing last week banished any doubt.

Mike Littwin considers yet another war:

This is no surprise. You get in a war and Americans support Americans, which is, for the most part, as it should be — and as all presidents confidently expect it to be.

This is how wars start. And in this case, the war starts without any real debate, without a word spoken in Congress, without any philosophic discussion about when or where to use force.

How wars end, though, is another matter.

The whole thing is worth a read.

David Sirota traces today’s conventional wisdom to yesterday’s fiction.

I’d think his argument silly except for this: so many persons in power seem to believe and act on stuff that just ain’t so, such as that wars can end wars, killing people makes evil disappear, crushing the poor is virtuous and wise.

It’s called “suspension of disbelief” and is a key factor in the ability to believe that characters on a stage mouthing prepared words are represent real people doing real things.

An excerpt:

Take the change in the economic attitudes of young people. In 1980, a Higher Education Research Institute survey showed that less than two-thirds of college freshmen said being “very well-off financially” was their top priority. By the end of the decade, that number had risen to roughly three-quarters — and has hovered near that mark ever since.

What contributed to the change? A steady ’80s diet of Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties,” Ricky Stratton on “Silver Spoons” and a larger “greed is good” ethos that equated the American Dream with following “The Secret of My Success.”

Likewise, at the beginning of the 1980s, Gallup polling found just 50 percent of Americans — still carrying the scars of Vietnam — expressing confidence in the military. But that number jumped to 85 percent by the end of the decade and has remained high.

Why hasn’t it dipped back down to early-’80s levels in the face of bloated defense budgets and controversial wars? Because even as militarism received a short-term boost among adults in the 1980s via Reagan’s martial cheerleading, it was solidified for the long haul among ’80s kids through war-glorifying films and video games — not to mention combat-themed toys, which hit their highest sales levels since World War II.

Dick Destiny lists the top ten reasons for yet another war.

Here’s number 10. Follow the links for the rest:

All the serious people in DC and northern Virginia, plus the oil companies, are for bombing Moe.

Automating FUD. This is not good.

From the Guardian:

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an “online persona management service” that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

This is currently running in Times Square.

Smoke the teabags.

More Rall here.

Via Balloon Juice.