Political Theatre category archive

The voice behind the twits:

I can understand why President Obama believed that digging for the truth of Bushie behavior during the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq and in America’s Concentration Camps might not be worth the candle.

If you’re going to accomplish anything, you have to pick your battles.

The Bushies did so much damage in so many places (just consider the Mineral Management Service) that picking that battle, while it might satisfy moral outrage and re-establish principles of law and morality, would probably overshadowed all the others.

Nevertheless, the current administration’s choice to continue along the path of repressing information is most distressing. Glenn Greenwald:

When the history of the Bush era is written, the obvious question will be: what was done about the systematic war crimes, torture regime, chronic lawbreaking, even human experimentation which that administration perpetrated on the world? And the answer is now just as obvious: nothing, because the subsequent President — Barack Obama — decreed that We Must Look Forward, Not Backward, and then engaged in extreme measures to carry out that imperial, Orwellian dictate by shielding those crimes from investigation, review, adjudication and accountability.

All of that would be bad enough if his generous immunity were being applied across the board. But it isn’t. As numerous incidents reflect, as high level Bush lawbreakers are vested with presidential immunity, low-level whistle blowers who exposed serious wrongdoing and allowed citizens some glimpse into what our government does are being persecuted by the Obama administration with a vengeance. Yesterday it was revealed by Wired that the Army intelligence officer who reportedly leaked the Apache helicopter attack video to Wikileaks — and thus enabled Americans to see what we are really doing in Iraq and other countires which we occupy and attack — has been arrested (Wikileaks denies the part of that report claiming that the whistleblower also leaked to it “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records”).

More Raw Story.

I just installed Sunlight Labs Congress app for Android.

It’s a keeper.

Virginia Governor McDonnell joins other governors to support wind power. The group includes governors from North Carolina to Maine.

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“It’s imperative that we develop all of our domestic energy sources including wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas,” McDonnell said in a statement. “Our deepwater port, relatively shallow offshore waters, and offshore wind speeds give us the ability to move quickly to harness wind energy and bring it to market.”

It’s nice to see him talking something other than oil.

Today’s Non Sequitur, that is.

Go read the comic and then read the comments. Some of them do indeed bring the picture to life . . . .

Play the Name Word Game with BartBlog.

I actually qualify for one of these by history, though I suspect the only test to get one is the famous checkbook test.

Got a checkbook? Pass the test.

Wouldn’t want one.

Some lost causes deserve to remain lost.

Steve Hallock in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out that, in the eyes of some, the presence of brown people has long presaged the end of the Republic:

A newspaper editorial I read the other day argued that for the past 50 years, “migratory workers in the United States have been recognized as a problem, to themselves and to others.”

It continued: “For the most part they were and are agricultural workers: ‘following the fruit,’ as the saying is in California: picking cotton; harvesting wheat; gathering perishable crops from one ocean to the other. … They include many migrants who permanently leave their homes in search of better opportunities elsewhere, as the ‘Okies’ and ‘Arkies’ went to California during the Thirties.”

The editorial is from a 1950 edition of the New York Times. It is now 60 years since its publication. It’s also 109 years since the federal government first studied the migrant-worker situation and declared it a problem, 94 years since the Industrial Relations Commission published a report on the plight of migrant workers (many of them immigrants),

and 60 years since President Harry Truman appointed another commission to study the situation.

Unlike John Cole, I don’t claim to be an Obot. I certainly do not agree with everything that Mr. Obama does. When I vote for someone, I do not expect him or her to be a clone of me and to do only deeds of which I approve (that seems to separate me from some of my fellow lefties).

I have my doctrine, but I have found that being doctrinaire seldom facilitates progress.

Mr. Obama is a good and decent man who gets more things right than he gets wrong. And, frankly, I prefer calm thoughtfulness over silly cosplay.

(If you don’t know what “cosplay” is, giggle it.)

. . . because they really like blowing stuff up.

Steve Benen looks at how Turkey, which is a long-time ally of both the United States and Israel and a member of NATO, has suddenly become an enemy of both, according to some members of the right wing.

Remember that Turkey recently had one of its ships boarded on the high seas by Israeli commandos in an extra-legal assault; people died. In the old days, when I was a young ‘un, that was referred to as a “provocation.”

(The Israeli government apparently considers the mere existence of those who believe that the residents of Gaza need food, clothing, and medicine to be a provocation justifying what, had it been done by any other nation anywhere else, would be considered piracy. I consider the mere existence of certain persons to be a provocation, but that does not allow me to deny them food, clothing, and medical care.)

Now the Wingnut Wurlitzer (to use a phrase I’ve seen at Balloon Juice) is trying to transform Turkey into an enemy of the United States and Israel, despite history.

Benen specifically discusses Liz Cheney’s performance:

Even for Liz Cheney, this is pretty nutty. Turkey is not only a NATO member and long-time ally of the United States, it’s also been a key Israeli ally. Obviously, the May 31 raid has pushed the relationship to the breaking point, but labeling Turkey as a country that “threatens to destroy” Israel ignores years of history.

(snip)

Her entire analysis is completely absurd, but if recent months are any indication, this is a trend worth watching — how soon will other conservatives start characterizing another U.S. ally as an enemy?

History and facts are, of course, irrelevant in Greater Wingnuttia. WIngnuts are the Humpty-Dumpties of history.

They need more enemies because,

• when the only tactic you recognize is blowing stuff up, and
• when it’s bad form to blow up your friends, then
• you have to convert friends into enemies so you can fantasize about blowing them up.

No, it doesn’t make sense to me either, but I believe blowing stuff up should be avoided if at all possible (except maybe plastic model cars with firecrackers, but that was a long time ago).

But apparently it makes sense in Greater Wingnuttia, where fantasies of endless worldwide wars seem to satisfy on some deep emotional level.

Addendum:

The UK Observer opines:

As Israel’s security forces detained another ship attempting to run the embargo, the Rachel Corrie, the justifications for continuing the blockade were becoming ever more convoluted. As Bradley Burston, an Israeli columnist wrote last week, it is no longer about Israel’s defence but about the sterile business of defending the fact of the siege itself. It is worth recalling that the embargo was initiated not as a response to the rocket fire from groups in Gaza aimed at Israeli towns but in response to Hamas’s seizure of power in Gaza from a Fatah movement that had attempted to block Hamas’s popular mandate.

(snip)

History has shown blockades of this kind are rarely successful. Most notably, the decades-old US embargo of Cuba has achieved next to nothing. And the facts about Gaza are not difficult to establish.

As someone I know once said, Israel has its own wingnuts to contend with. And the Israeli wingnuts are running the show these days.

Furthermore, as someone else has pointed out, wars against ideas always fail. You can kill people; you cannot kill ideas.

Blowing stuff up rarely solves problems, here, there, and everywhere.

All things to all people.

Via Bart Cop.

Thoreau has a thought.

Fact Check dot org checks in on Arizona’s profiling statute. The discussion of the “But why the outcry? These people are here illegally, right?” argument is well worth the two minutes it takes to read:

Here’s Fact Check’s summary. Follow the link for the full analysis.

We’ll leave it to others to decide whether Arizona’s new immigration law is a good thing or a bad thing — but here we try to straighten out some of the confusing factual claims. First, a quick summary. Contrary to what the law’s defenders often say, the new statute does more than merely mirror federal law. For example:

• It’s a state crime for an illegal immigrant to apply for a job, or to solicit work publicly.
• The law also makes it a misdemeanor for a citizen driving a vehicle to stop to hire anyone if that “impedes” traffic.
• Citizens will be able to sue officials or agencies whose policies interfere with vigorous enforcement of federal immigration law.

On the much-discussed issue of whether the law permits or encourages “racial profiling,” we find:

• The amended law allows police to consider “race, color or national origin” when deciding whether to ask somebody for proof of citizenship, but only to the extent already deemed constitutional by the courts.
• It remains to be seen how police will interpret the law’s anti-profiling language in practice. State officials tell us they have yet to work out what factors police should be trained to use to establish “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status.
• Federal officials are open to criticisms similar to some of those being made about Arizona’s law. A federal manual for training state and local officials says they may consider whether a person has a “thick foreign accent” or looks “out of place” when deciding whether to ask them about their immigration status.

Finally, we examine a widely circulated chain e-mail written by an Arizona state senator who supports the law, and find her claims to be misleading. The violence against ranchers that she describes is real, but it is the work of Mexican crime cartels, not illegal immigrants.

Andrew Bacevich on the futility of blowing stuff up over there while letting stuff go to hell over here. A nugget:

From one administration to the next, the US government has failed to anticipate the threats actually endangering the well-being of the American people. Worse, when those threats materialize — here at home, not in Central Asia or the Persian Gulf — authorities respond belatedly and ineffectually. Even as Washington has fixated on distant wars of dubious necessity, Americans have lost their savings, lost their jobs, and lost their homes. Some have lost their lives, others have lost their livelihood.

Most of the criticism I’ve heard and read concerning President Obama’s handling of BP’s wild well boils down to this:

Prez ain’t talkin’ enough trash.
More trash talk, that’s the ticket.
More trash talk, that’s the fixit.

It’s the best catch there is. Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune:

But the (Arizona) legislation assumes that tougher enforcement at the border and within the state will magically banish these problems. In fact, those options have already been tried, and all they have done is make things worse.

The supporters of the law, meanwhile, overlook the obvious. There is a simple way to stop the lawless stream, protect Americans living on the border, improve adherence to law and reduce the costs of accommodating people who have no right to be here.

The solution? Stop focusing on trying to keep illegal immigrants out and start focusing on letting legal immigrants in.

Enforcement-only advocates often say they are not opposed to foreigners coming here as long as they follow the rules and obey the law. They should take a number and wait their turn, we are told, like the teeming masses of yore. It makes perfect sense until you discover that for most of those who want to come, legal admission is just about impossible.

A co-worker several years ago told me of a friend of his, a carpenter. The carpenter had a helper who was illegal and wanted to be legal. The helper was smart, industrious, honest, all those things one would want. My co-worker knew and liked the helper and believed that he was an asset to any community.

So the helper returned to Mexico and they began to work through the paper work to prove that the helper was qualified to do the job, that no one else could or would do it, and so on. After months and months of red tape, the helper was ready reenter. It looked like everything was fine.

At the border checkpoint, the last official he refused him entry for some reason never really made clear.

It was an arbitrary and capricious act, a symptom of an arbitrary and capricious process.

My co-worker, who tends to be quite conservative politically leans so far right his right shoulder touches his right ankle (he and I used to have great conversations on the way to the jobsite, because he was also open-minded and able to disagree without being disagreeable) was and is outraged at the injustice of the immigration what-passes-for-a system

Steve Benen on those complaining that President Obama can’t work magic with BP’s wild well:

At this point, the discourse seems to boil down to

• a) those who want to see the president don a wetsuit and head to the Gulf floor;
• b) those who want to see the president don a cape and fly around the planet really quickly in order to reverse time; and
• c) those who want to see the president pound on podiums and lose his cool, as if that would make a difference. (Thanks, Maureen Dowd, for comparing Obama to Spock again. That never gets old.)

Karen said it well.

BartCop imagines Libertarianism carried to its logical extreme (warning: it’s brutal satire).

Republicans screwed up government so bad that I cannot blame the current administration for failing to fix everything at once. Depressed and saddened, yes. Angry at the government, no.

There are so many garbage cans to carry to the curb and only so many pairs of hands to carry them.

Dick Polman is not so charitable as I.

All told, MMS had fostered “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” – all this, at a time when MMS regulators, in three reviews, repeatedly minimized the prospects for an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Actually, it was worse than that. Under federal law, offshore oil drillers are supposed to map out strategies for reducing their environmental impact – but MMS, during that three-year period, waived the federal rules for Gulf of Mexico projects roughly 750 times.

Let us note that the years covered in these reports – 2005 to 2007 – happened to coincide with the second term of the Bush administration. This should hardly come as a shock. Hewing to its conservative principles, the regime was infamous for the ways in which it demonstrated contempt for governance, and the MMS behavior was contempt on steroids. Fittingly, the guy who directed the MMS Gulf of Mexico office was awarded with a big promotion in 2007.

But it’s a waste of time to heap full blame on the Bush team, because those people didn’t know any better. It was hardwired in their DNA to celebrate the presumed glories of unrestrained market freedom; in the party’s ’08 parlance, “Drill, Baby, Drill.” The Obama administration, on the other hand, was supposed to be different. The new brooms were brought to town for the express purpose of erasing the Bush stench and reestablishing the principle that responsible governance is actually a good thing.

MMS=Make Mine Spillage.

Zandar:

Just because the economy is bad and there are lots of problems America faces today, doesn’t magically make Republicans any more competent, folks.