Political Theatre category archive

The Teabaggers get one right correct.

In the Guardian, Gary Younge explores the interplay of Western realpolitik and Egyptian real politics. A nugget (emphasis added to highlight a well-turned phrase):

Moreover, it became apparent that while the west has been deeply complicit in what has happened in the region, it was not even remotely in control of what would happen next. Indeed, it was barely relevant. The protesters saw the US neither as the primary problem nor the solution. Washington’s preferred option of replacing Mubarak with Omar Suleiman in return for the promise of democracy at some unspecified future date revealed how little it understood what was happening in Egypt. This would have been the equivalent of a huge US social movement ousting Bush only to find him replaced by Dick Cheney.

(snip)

While the west has been wrongfooted, its ability to influence events has not been extinguished. Mubarak’s departure was a massive achievement. However, revolution demands not only the upending of the old order but the establishment of a new one. Removing a man is one thing; transforming a system is quite another.

Bill Maxwell comments on cultural baggage and double standards at the St. Petersburg Times. A nugget:

Although baggage is universal, the baggage of select groups is judged to be superior to others. Some are treated gingerly, even reverently. Others, such as that of blacks born and reared in America, get no respect. As I have said, we African-Americans are constantly admonished to get rid of our baggage, to “get over” our history.

I do not know of another group in this country whose history is viewed so cavalierly as being disposable.

Paradoxically, many white Southerners, even while channeling the defeated “Forget, Hell!” baggage of their slave-owning forebears, lead the drumbeat in telling the offspring of slaves to “move on” and forget all those generations of being human chattel.

Southerners, along with many Republicans nationwide, are not alone in rejecting black traits and patterns . . . .

He goes on to limp to what I find a weak, though not necessarily invalid, conclusion, arguing that President Obama’s victory in the presidential election resulted from his not showing signs of “black cultural baggage.”

I say “weak” because his discussion does not take into account the significant portion of the population which clearly rejects President Obama solely because he is not-white, those who cannot get past his not-white-ness to notice what he actually believes, says, and does.

See this column by Dick Polman; Polman was discussing voters’ willful ignorance, not race, but racial bigotry clearly forms part of the backdrop to the incidents he describes.

Bob Cesca details the Republican War against women in their attacks on Planned Parenthood. A nugget:

Why are Mike Pence (R–Barefoot and Pregnant–ed.) and the Republicans against women receiving cancer screenings and affordable oncological treatment?

Why is New Jersey governor Chris Christie against this? Christie vetoed a spending bill that would have funded non-abortion services for women via organizations including Planned Parenthood. Non-abortion services. Again, here’s the gist of the bill: “The bill, proposed by Democrat lawmakers in New Jersey, would have included funding for Pap smears, counseling, and other non-abortion services provided by the non-profit organization.” The bill would have cost the state just $1.1 million. A small price to pay for the health of lower-income and disadvantaged women in New Jersey.

Thoreau points out the, as regards international events, the world does not revolve around Foggy Bottom, nor should it. An excerpt:

The US government is, to be blunt, the bad guy here. The US government has spent decades propping up a dictator, giving him weapons, and sending people to his torture chambers under the name of “rendition.” If the Egyptians put in place a government that has no interest in playing games and doing favors for the government that sponsored their oppressor for decades, well, that’s what people with self-respect do, you know? Frankly, the primary question that any decent person should care about is whether the next Egyptian government will be brutal or humane towards Egyptians, and the next most important question is whether the next Egyptian government will be brutal or humane toward other people as well.

He has a point.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes a look at the current legislative proposals in Arizona to penalize persons for looking foreign (as long as “foreign” does not include “Canadian”). A nugget:

For all that, the most striking thing about the Arizona proposals — and CNN reports that 40 other states are weighing similar measures — is not their overreach but their shrill incoherence. It is worth noting that this is the 25th anniversary of an actual immigration amnesty signed into law by none other than President Ronald Reagan.

That this icon of conservatism would, like Bush, find himself so strikingly out of step with his followers today testifies eloquently to how strident, nonsensical and unpragmatic this debate has become. Rather than offer workable solutions, lawmakers are busy outlawing ethnic studies classes, requiring Latinos to carry papers like Jews in prewar Germany, decrying anchor babies and other boogeymen, competing to prove who can be toughest on dirt poor Mexicans, rousing the rabble in their xenophobic righteousness.

This is not statesmanship. It is not serious policymaking. It is not even adult.

It is a temper tantrum, the incoherent bawling of those who see fundamental demographic change coming and like it not one bit. They scream in the face of an incoming wave. But the wave comes just the same.

Subsidies for circuses are okay. Lawrence O’Donnell explains:

For highways and hospitals, not so much.

Via Bob Cesca, where there is some nitpickery in the comments, but the larger point survives intact.

Sarah Paiin’s speaking engagement in Colorado was canceled. The sponsoring group claimed that unspecified threats were responsible.

The cops haven’t heard about any threats. From TPM:

In addition to the Glendale police, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, the Denver Police Department and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation also told the Post they hadn’t received reports of any threats related to the Palin appearance. Meanwhile, the foundation’s website has been shut down for “revision,” and all comments have been deleted from its Facebook page. The posts announcing Palin’s appearance, as well as the one announcing the cancellation, also appear to have been removed from the group’s Facebook wall. (The cancellation post is available here.)

In a story in yesterday’s Denver Post, Kyle Glazier identified a more likely culprit.

The threat of no ticket sales.

In a Facebook posting Jan. 10, the foundation said Palin would speak at a fundraiser for military families. Tickets were $185 each. On Friday, the foundation’s media relations manager again announced the speech, and ticket prices had been slashed by 50 percent.

The party isn’t complete without the nuts (emphasis added):

Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams dropped his reelection bid on Monday, and fired some parting shots at the Tea Party and the hard-line conservatives he thinks are hurting the party’s electoral success.

“I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying ‘uniting conservatives’ is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state,” Wadhams wrote in a memo to the Colorado Republican State Central Committee obtained by The Denver Post.

(snip)

“I have loved being chairman, but I’m tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party’s role is,” Wadhams told the Post.

I predict that his short-term prospects in the Republican Party are less than propitious.

Jamie finds the bright side:

A divide is seriously growing between the GOP and the faux party they created. Now they have no control over it and it will end up costing them dearly. Of course for our side, this is great news and even better entertainment.

Last week, I was at a non-political gathering and the chit-chat before festivities began turned to current events. One of my compatriots was salivating over the prospects of a Republican Palin-O’Donnell ticket in 2012–the prospects for the Democrats, that is.

Jay Leno, via OhMyGov!:

The Egyptian protesters are using Facebook to get away from the police, but the police are using Farmville to build fences to keep the protesters in.

Experts now say the protests in Egypt were started by bloggers. Bloggers started the whole thing on Facebook. In fact, the No. 1 choice to replace Mubarak — Justin Bieber.

There is a certain delicious irony in this:

The online group of hacktivists known as “Anonymous” infiltrated the network and websites of an Internet security company after learning the company planned to sell information about the group to the FBI.

The website of Washington DC-based HBGary Federal was hijacked Sunday along with the Twitter account of CEO Aaron Barr. The company’s website was defaced with a message that read, “This domain seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet.”

“Your recent claims of ‘infiltrating’ Anonymous amuse us, and so do your attempts at using Anonymous as a means to garner press attention for yourself,” the messaged continued. “How’s this for attention?”

Follow the link to learn why Mr. Aaron Barr (it is so difficult not to type “Aaron Burr“) has unplugged his router. Seems his bid for publicity has attracted port scans.

While thinking that Anonymous’s actions are ultimately rather pointless–it’s deeds are roughly the internet equivalent of tee-peeing the lawn of the principal and school board member that you don’t like–I admire the chutzpah here.

On a more serious note, to the extent that persons in authority persist in thinking that there is a group called “Anonymous,” they betray their lack of a clue and their overall $luser-dom.

It’s not a group when the only qualification for membership is showing up.

It may be a chance meeting on the inter-streets, a mob, a gang, a vested interest, or (current beaten-to-death buzzword) stakeholders (apologies to Dr. Van Helsing), but it’s not a group.

The press paints Anonymous as if it were The Gathering.

Hell, it’s barely a gathering.

Bill Shein looks at the Republican Party’s plan to decrease unemployment by decreasing the workforce through eliminating “job-killing regulations.”

(In Wingnut World, everything not sufficiently wingnuttificacious is ipso facto “job-killing.”)

Ya gotta read it.

A nugget:

“If you look here,” Ryan said, using a laser pointer that “accidentally” blinded several liberal bloggers in the press gallery, “you’ll see that as a result of our legislation, injuries and premature deaths from air and water pollution, food-borne illness, leaks of nuclear radiation, heavy safes and anvils falling on pedestrians, and so on, will reduce the labor force by nine percent over 10 years.”

Currently, the national unemployment rate is exactly nine percent.

Shorter Rand Paul:

Crash.

The current issue of the Nation has dueling columnists discussing the Citizens United ruling. You can read both of them at the link, but, as far as I am concerned, here’s the clincher, from the second of the two articles at the link (emphasis added):

We invented the business corporation for one reason—its economic potential. It makes sense, therefore, to vest it with constitutional protection for its property. It is, however, a huge and unsupported jump to vest business corporations with noneconomic constitutional rights (like free speech and the privilege against self-incrimination) that flow from respect for human dignity. Robots have no souls. Neither do business corporations. Vesting either with free speech rights is legal fiction run amok.

That bit about self-incrimination is not hyperbole.

Verizon has already attempted to hide behind the Fifth Amendment to avoid inquiries into corporate malfeasance.

No there there:

“They found something ‘unidentified’ in my groin,’’ my husband had time to tell me, before the TSA guy motioned me to back out of the doorway.

I felt angry, helpless, and punchy (silently teeming with nervous har-har-har one-liners about my husband’s groin), and tried to recollect the opinion I’ve had ever since the beginning, late last year, of heightened airport scannings and patdowns: that these measures are a disturbing invasion of privacy, but that on the off-chance that they might avert — or deter — even one airborne disaster, the overall societal benefit might outweigh the individual violation.

(snip the waiting)

Then they opened the door and told my husband he could go. They were careful not to apologize for the procedure, but they did say they were sorry my husband had had to wait so long for the supervisor to show up. They handed me my husband’s boarding pass. We never learned what the unidentified thing in his groin was.

Follow the link to read the whole thing, including the author’s quite rational musings on privacy vs. security.

But I don’t think all the reasoning in the world can make this feel any less skeevy.

Frankly, I’m glad that my road warrior days are over.

Image via Boing Boing.

(Slightly edited at 4:00 p. m.)

Grant Miller takes on the those who view the Constition of the United States of America as a sacred, immutable writ forever destining the nation to live in 1787, except, of course, for changing stuff the they don’t like, such as the 1st, 13th, and 15th Amendments. A nugget:

We face some serious challenges as a nation these days, and our representatives seem even less willing than usual to consider responsible solutions. Instead, they increasingly cluster around the Constitution, competing with each other to be seen as its true defenders.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not the Constitution that needs protecting. It’s the environment; it’s our competitive position in the global economy; it’s the triple-A rating of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Click for larger image.

Background here.

Suggested by a segment from the Bob and Elvis Show.