Political Theatre category archive

Via Bartblog.

Story here.

Later:

Some analysis here.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it (emphasis added):

Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word “choice” from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies.”

(snip)

In asking its question SurveyUSA used the same exact words that NBC/Wall Street Journal had used when conducting its June 2009 survey. That one that found 76 percent approval for the public option: “In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance–extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?”

Think there’s a reason the WSJ/NBC poll’s wording was changed? Nah. Couldn’t be.

Via Noz.

Johann Hari, writing in the U. K. Independent, considers how unreason took over the Republican Party. It’s a long article, but worth the 10 minutes it takes to read it. A nugget:

In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin.

When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn’t compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of “Drill, baby, drill” have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right’s world-view – to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation – has swollen. Now it is all they can see.

One of my favorite podcasts is Linux Outlaws, primarily because the two hosts, an English geek and musician and a German university student, have so much fun and laughter in recording it (fun fact: they had been podcasting for almost a year before they met in person).

Yesterday, I listened to their latest. About two-thirds of the way through, the conversation drifted to American health care. A summary of their views:

They are amazed and disheartened that Americans are upset because the President wants everyone to have health care.

Frankly, so am I.

Or from anywhere else at this point.

The Booman explains.

One more time. With them, incompetence is not a policy. It is a worldview.

Air America asks, “What if Liberals packed heat at a Tea Party?”

Yeah. What if.

Watch Ron Reagan speak sense and Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation speak double-talky gobbledegook:

Related: A TPM reader shares some thoughts.

More persons need to confront the lies directly:

I have heard Congressman Frank interviewed several times. He doesn’t mince words.

Via Huffington Post.

TimF at Balloon Juice locks and loads.

I can’t top this.

And the new cars? Another way of looking at it could be as affordable housing.

A caller to the Diane Rehm show looks at the arguments against health care reform and nails their internal contradiction:

Argument One: No government program can be good.

Argument Two: Private insurers can’t compete against the government.

And follows it to the logical conclusion:

If no government program is good and
if the private insurers can’t compete against a government program,
then the private insurance system must therefore be really, really bad.

Read more »

Rick Perlstein channels Richard Hofstadter.

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers — these are “either” the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president — too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters’ signs — too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don’t understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can’t understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

Frankly, I think a strong case can be made for junking the whole concept of journalism degrees and instead requiring aspiring journalists to study history.

Maybe then they could recognize when what was old is new again.

Via Atrios.

Republican health care policy:

Give me liberty and give me death.

Via Wait! Wait!

Oh, man, this is a hoot.

Details here.

And what he said about Miley Cyrus, spot on.

In fact, I wouldn’t pay to see her old man in concert either. His music is no more country than Wonder Bread is bread.

Medicinal marijuana, the DIY way; a dealer talks about a delivery (“Barry,” of course, is a nom de noone):

“And ya know, I don’t make any profit when I hook him up,” Barry went on. “The guy’s sick. It’d be wrong to make money off some dude that’s in dire straits like that.” Funny how a pot dealer can grasp that, but the CEOs at Cigna, Aetna, and the rest can’t.

Warning: All too true, but Not Safe for Work.