Political Theatre category archive

And that goes for the “secret ballot,” too.

Brad Friedman reports that

Hackers Inject Univ. of Michigan ‘Fight Song’ Onto System During D.C. Internet Voting Scheme Tests

,

amongst other things.

I was going to hunt for this cartoon because it was in the local rag this morning, but Shaun saved me the trouble.

The Booman looks at Republican candidates from across the nation and observes

So, I can kind of get the attraction of the Republican slate of nobodies, who have no political experience. Even a Carly Fiorina has some appeal for this reason. But it turns out that randomly picking Republicans out of a crowd means that you get people with ginormous ethical problems who hold ridiculously radical views.

Read the link for the evidence.

The legacy of Citizens Benighted–floods of money from anonymous sources:

While big money in politics is hardly new, there never have been sums of this magnitude in midterm elections. The Center for Responsive Politics, another independent research group, estimates that in 2006, the last nonpresidential federal election year, independent interests spent about $300 million.

Further, never have so many donors been unidentified before elections; so far only about one-third of donors have been identified, the Center for Public Integrity study says.

Via the Booman.

Transcript here.

Will Bunch:

Indeed, people miss the entire point about the backlash when they try to define it strictly through a political prism. At the end of the day, the Tea Party movement is mainly rooted in a cultural revolution, whipped by winds of anxiety and fear — not just about the loss of so many middle-class jobs in America, but also about sweeping demographic and cultural change in America.

(snip)

The arrival of the first nonwhite president in 2008 in the person of Obama was like a lightning bolt, creating not only the “uncomfortable” feelings of future Tea Party joiners like Garcia but also inspiring theories that the new president is not an American citizen or is a secret Muslim.

Read the whole thing.

There is one thing of which I have no doubt. If the farmers were white, they would have been paid long ago:

For the ninth time, the U.S. Senate has denied funding for a settlement with black and Native American farmers who faced decades of discrimination in government loan programs.

Last week, following a protest by farmers in Washington, Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) introduced legislation to provide the needed $1.15 billion in funding. After negotiations between the Democratic and Republican leadership, the measure was set to be passed by unanimous consent.

But U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) broke with his party’s leadership and objected to the funding. Coburn also objected to the bill when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered it by consent back in May.

(Warning: mild language and innuendo)

Or not.

Sadhbh Walshe writes of counter-intuitive voting in the Guardian. A nugget:

The Republican party recently unveiled their “Pledge to America” in which they outline their plans to address the economic anxiety of the majority of Americans by awarding a $700bn dollar tax cut extension to the wealthy who are thriving and cutting spending on programmes that benefit the rest of the country who are not. What is surprising about this is not the lack of imagination (or shame) displayed in the GOP’s approach to improving prosperity for all Americans, but that so many people who are not themselves well-off support this generous gift to the rich.

(snip)

The generally accepted explanation of why many Americans, even those that are poor, are opposed to raising taxes for the rich is the enduring belief in upward social mobility or that they may one day be rich themselves. We still believe America is the land of opportunity. You can be born in the ghetto and rise to super stardom. A welfare recipient from a broken home may become president. But the truth is, for the vast majority of people, these dreams are out of reach and, in fact, the US actually has the lowest social mobility of any industrialised nation.

Follow the link and read the whole thing, especially the penultimate paragraph.

Afterthought:

“Penultimate.” Hee-hee.

Addendum:

Via The Booman.

I disagree with some (not all, especially as regards civil liberties) of his complaints about the Obama administration–last I looked, the Oval Office had rugs, drapes, chairs, and a desk, but no magic wand, but he’s correct about this.

The circular firing squad is getting old.

The issue should be working the vote, not sinking the boat.

TPM quoting President Obama from his interview in Rolling Stone:

One closing remark that I want to make: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible…It has been hard, and we’ve got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.

Via Bob Cesca.

Even the geeks at Linux Questions dot org are talking about it.

StevenD at the Booman Tribune comments so I don’t have to. A nugget:

When you ban books, you ban speech and you ban ideas. When you ban ideas you effectively neuter our right to free speech, not only for the author of the book but also for those who would choose to read it to discover what they might learn.

Yet, we are faced with a number of candidates on the right for political office this year who would joyfully and wholeheartedly limit your right to read what you want given the opportunity, as well as a number of other rights you now possess or for some, hope to receive. In some states this is already a regular occurrence. Many candidates support the elimination of net neutrality, a threat your ability to access and read the blogs and online publications of your choice.

The Republicans are constantly concerned that Democrats are going to take away their “rights” by which they usually mean the right to own an unregistered handgun or other firearm. Funny, though, how they have so little concern for a freedom that is far more important to our society: the freedom to think what we want, to say what we want and to learn what we want.

Have you noticed that all that fabled government waste always seems to be in someone else’s jurisdiction?

Via Oh! My Gov.

Date: Saturday, September 25th

Time: 9-10:30 a. m.

Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (west side of Dam Neck Rd. between Princess Anne Blvd. and Rosemont Rd.; access via service road at Lansdowne Ct. next to the Farmers Market).

Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 &6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a pretty good buffet, too–plenty of variety).

More information here.

Jonathan Zimmerman, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, asks

So it turns out that Martin Luther King Jr.’s most trusted photographer was actually a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, passing along material about King and other civil rights leaders. Why did he do it?

That’s the wrong question. Nobody will ever know why Ernest C. Withers – who was in King’s motel room on the night of his murder – informed for the FBI, as a Memphis newspaper reported last week. Withers died in 2007, following a brilliant career that earned him the nickname of “Original Civil Rights Photographer.” He had secrets, and he took them to the grave.

Instead, we should be asking why the FBI was paying people to spy on King. And, most of all, we should be asking why our kids don’t know it.

Open up your son’s or daughter’s American history textbook, and try to find any reference to the FBI’s decade-long effort to harass and discredit King. You’ll search in vain. In our official version of history, it never happened.

He concludes, that, you will pardon the expression, it is a collective whitewashing of the history of that period, a way of denying the radical nature of a movement confronting 350 years of institutionalized racism, mixed with retroactive shame at that history. Read the whole thing to follow his reasoning.

I suspect it is for the same reasons that we rarely see more than a mention of the Trail of Tears.

Via Balloon Juice.

Having trouble keeping track of who’s running for what in the Virginia Beach City Council and School Board races, I compiled a program of the players for my own use.

The council contains 11 members, counting the mayor, who serve four-year terms. Five terms expire in one even-numbered election year; six terms expire on the alternate even-numbered election year.

This year, seven candidates are running for two at-large seats.

Two candidates are running for each of the following district seats: Bayside, Lynnhaven, and Princess Anne. The incumbent is running unopposed for the Beach District seat.

In a weird quirk having to do with the history of the City of Virginia Beach, all city voters can vote for every seat.

The City of Virginia Beach resulted from the merger of Princess Anne County and the Town of Virginia Beach in 1963. A “District seat” means that the person representing that district must reside in that district, but, unlike in most jurisdictions, does not mean that only voters in that district may vote fo the person representing that district.

At the time of the merger, Princess Anne County was sparsely-populated farmland. The system was created to reduce the likelihood that the concentration of voters in the Town of Virginia Beach (roughly the area in the upper-right quadrant of the map within a few blocks of the Atlantic Ocean) would overwhelm the relatively small number of voters in Princess Anne County, while still maintaining a form of “one voter-one vote” in city elections.

You can download a copy of my election program.

Please report any errors and I will fix them promptly.

Just as an aside, I never became a Democrat. I looked at my voting record of 30+ years and realized I always had been a Democrat, votes for Larry Coughlin (R-Pa.) and Bill Roth (R-Del.) notwithstanding.

So I came out.

John Cole:

Yes, I understand the Democrats suck, and yes, there are a fair number of really bad Democrats (Ben Nelson, I’m looking at you). And maybe it has always been this way, and I have just woken up, but it sure seems like the choices between the two parties are as distinct as they have ever been. In one day, we have clear evidence that the Republicans are choosing to vote for bigotry over the rights of gays, bigotry (over) extending opportunity to immigrants, and the big corporations over the consumer. Anyone who says there is no difference between the two parties needs their head examined and their driver’s license taken away.