Political Theatre category archive

Via Some Guy with a Website.

Ed Schultz, of The Ed Show, is from these parts and was back visiting over the weekend, so the local rag profiled him. It was interesting.

Here’s bit of it:

Schultz’s politics have flipped in the last 15 years. Early on, after changing the format of his radio show from sports to politics, he was a conservative.

(snip)

The shift came in the mid- to late ’90s, when his radio show was based in Fargo, N.D.
“I was taking my show on the road and going into rural America and seeing some infrastructure that was crucial to the country starting to crumble,” he said. “I found myself aligning with what the Democrats were trying to accomplish.”

Schultz said the conservatives’ recent “radical and discriminatory attacks” on public education and teachers’ unions hit home. His mother, Mary Schultz, was an English teacher at Granby High School; his father, George, was an aeronautical engineer for the government. Schultz, the youngest of five children, described his life in Norfolk as “very typical and very middle-class.” Education was paramount.

“We’ve had multiple generations of success with public education,” said Schultz, a 1977 graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead, which he attended on a football scholarship. “But all of a sudden, the conservatives have decided to target public education, and I struggle with that whole premise.”

Scotus baseball.

Via Balloon Juice.

Consolidating the coup:

The (Wisconsin–ed.) state Senate majority leader says votes by Democrats don’t count in committee because they remain in contempt.

Republican Scott Fitzgerald saThe state Senate majority leader says votes by Democrats don’t count in committee because they remain in contempt.

Addendum, the Next Day:

The Republican Politburo has apparently decided that enforcing one-party rule was a bad PR move.

. . . open the mind.

Chaunceydevega considers the difference between “white” and “White”:

Ultimately, Whiteness is the ability, in this society at this time, to determine how and when one will experience discomfort. Thus, the memes of reverse discrimination, white “victimhood,” liberal “racism,” and white conservative “oppression,” when Whiteness is even a tiny bit unsettled or its primacy challenged. In total, its status quo ante is dominance.

Follow the link, read the whole thing, and bookmark the site.

Recognizing Women’s History Month:

From the transcript:

There was a lot of positive news about the strides we’ve made, even in recent years. For example, women have caught up with men in seeking higher education. In fact, women today are more likely than men to attend and graduate from college.

Yet, there are also reminders of how much work remains to be done. Women are still more likely to live in poverty in this country. In education, there are areas like math and engineering where women are vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts. This is especially troubling, for we know that to compete with nations around the world, these are the fields in which we need to harness the talents of all our people. That’s how we’ll win the future.

Bill Maher:

The Libyan rebels this week kind of hinted to the United States that they could use a little help.

Right.

Like, America would just blunder around the Middle East killing people without all the facts.

That doesn’t sound like the America I know.

Erstwhile nominee for a Republican Congressional nomination sues Facebook, claiming that Facebook cost him a gig in Congress.

He was planning to campaign for the nomination via Facebook, so he could be the one to get steamrollered by John Dingell in the November election. Instead, he got steamrollered in the primary.

(Majed) Moughni then outlines a plan by which he would accumulate thousands of Facebook friends who in turn would “spread the message to overthrow the longest serving member of Congress,” in the general election against Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) who has been serving in the House of Representatives since 1955.

But instead of starting the next great internet-based political revolution, Moughni’s page was pulled by Facebook administrators last June 10, right around the time he had added his 1,600th “friend.” About two months later Moughni finished fourth in a crowded GOP primary field, Rep. John Dingell then easily captured his 29th term in November’s general election.

Facebook says that Mr. Moughni’s page was pulled “after he had received several warnings regarding ‘suspicious or anomalous behavior.'”

He wants just his page back.

Writing at the Asia Times, Michael T. Klare predicts the end of cheap oil.

To put the matter baldly: the world economy requires an increasing supply of affordable petroleum. The Middle East alone can provide that supply. That’s why Western governments have long supported “stable” authoritarian regimes throughout the region, regularly supplying and training their security forces. Now, this stultifying, petrified order, whose greatest success was producing oil for the world economy, is disintegrating. Don’t count on any new order (or disorder) to deliver enough cheap oil to preserve the Petroleum Age.

It’s a long piece but well worth the time, especially the section on the history of European and American intervention in the Middle East.

Glomarization points out the irony of a tsunami hitting California just as the Republican Dystopiacs try to eliminate tsunami warning systems.

Aside:

I haven’t commented on the situation in Japan because, really, there is nothing I can add to what others are already saying and feeling.

If you wonder what looting looks like:

Via Balloon Juice.

Angry Black Lady:

We’re four Senators and one President away from Thunderdome. Still wanna primary Obama?

Warming: Graphic imagery.

Via BartBlog.

Simon Jenkins comments of the pressure to intervene in Libya.

It’s a lot of macho posturing by politicians and commentators who want to be macho by remote control. They will not be in harm’s way and will watch their strategies unravel from the safety of their television rooms. It’s not like they got anything right about Afghanistan and Iraq. Or Viet Nam in 1954. Or Nicaragua in 1909. Or Guatamala in 1954. Or Iran in 1953. . . .

Here’s a nugget. I think the part I’ve emphasized catches the nut of the matter:

Happy days are back for the sofa strategists and beltway bombardiers. After the miseries of Iraq and Afghanistan, a Libyan no-fly zone is just the tonic they need. If you zero in from carrier A, you can take out the Tripoli air defences while carrier B zaps the mercenary bases and carrier C zooms with special forces to secure the oilfields. You might tell the Americans to go easy on Leptis Magna after what they did to Babylon. Otherwise, let rip. You can sense the potency surging through Downing Street’s veins. This is how wars begin, and beginning wars is politically sexy.

Read the whole thing. I find his arguments persuasive.

Via The Richmonder.

Conventional wisdom, which may be correct, has it that the right is better at “framing” issues–that is, twisting issues in their favor–than is the left. Andrew Sullivan cites an article that their shamelessness might have something to do with:

One thing they understand very well at Fox, and in the conservative movement more generally, is the political value of shamelessness. As long as you say what you’re saying with conviction, it doesn’t matter how absurd or hypocritical it is.

A piece from the latest On the Media investigates how this may work; it casts some light on how an issue’s “framing”–the language used to describe it–serves to influence subconsciously persons’ reactions. From the OTM website:

While editors and journalists worry about whether a simple word choice could influence their readers, politicians take another tack. They use metaphors all the time, explicitly in order to persuade people to view things their way. Lera Boroditsky, a psychology professor at Stanford University, conducted an experiment to see just whether this kind of metaphorical framing really works.

Follow the link to listen or to read the transcript, or listen below:

Via BartBlog.

It is likely not wise to take on The Force, but it’s safer than taking on the GingGrinch.

Addendum:

Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the Huckaster’s differential standards: One for a Palin, the other for a Portman. And he has the citations to prove.

Republicans will say whatever sounds good in the moment. They are persons of sound bites, not substance.