Political Theatre category archive

They never cease to disconnect from reality.

Via Atrios.

From Bartblog:

Let’s make this Independence Day National Waterboarding Day! Here’s the way it would work: At each major public gathering on Saturday, July 4, 2009, have a crew there ready to waterboard all comers. Bring your conservative friends and relatives who deny that waterboarding is torture and challenge them to personally experience this ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ for themselves.

There’s more.

Minnesota Supreme Court rules that the winner of the election won the election.

which probably ain’t gonna happen, so we need a public option.

Brendan (warning: mild language but not as bad as you hear at any school bus stop):

I realize this may be news to many of the 556 members of the House and Senate receiving government-provided health care, but here in this place called “Reality” we’re in the middle of a crisis that has been building for years, and which just got worse as GM moved into bankruptcy, shedding thousand of jobs, including the “termination of health benefits and jeopardiz[ing] retirement benefits for current and former employees and their families.” We have millions without care, and a lot more who are routinely denied coverage by an industry that puts profits over the people it’s supposed to serve. And now you guys are signaling that maybe we won’t get a public option after all? You have to be shittin’ me.

Details here.

Reese Erlick debunks the hoop-la about the “Twitter Revolution” in Iran:

First of all the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter. While reporting in Tehran, I personally didn’t encounter anyone who used it regularly. A relatively small number of young, economically well off Iranians do use Twitter. A larger number have access to the Internet. However, in the beginning, most demonstrations were organized through word of mouth, mobile phone calls and text messaging.

But somehow “Text Messaging Revolution” doesn’t have that modern, sexy ring, especially if you have to type it with your thumbs on a tiny keyboard.

More importantly, by focusing on the latest in Internet communications, cable TV networks intentionally or unintentionally characterize a genuine mass movement as something supported mainly by the Twittering classes.

{snip)

The mass movement that sprang forth in the past few weeks has been 30 years in coming. It’s not a Twitter Revolution, nor even a “velvet revolution” like those in Eastern Europe.

This whole Twitter Revolution notion has more to do with Westerners being able to see the twits, while the reporters on the scene have been severely restricted. I heard an Iranian-American reporter on the Diane Rehm Show last week. At one point, she asked him a question and he answered quite bluntly, “I can’t talk about that.”

Some reporters and commentators–Andrew Sullivan, whose blog is a regular daily stop for me, is a prominent example–have been all gaga about collecting and publishing bits from Twitter, as if they somehow give a picture of what is happening in Iran. His enthusiasm is impressive and his sympathy for the underdog is commendable, but I skip those posts, just as Karen skips anything I post here about Linux

(Indeed, Sullivan has turned his blog all green as a sign of solidarity. I wore a black armband after the shootings at Kent State. Same difference, same lack of influence on the long-term course of events).

Reading the twits doesn’t help me understand what’s happening in Iran, no more than drinking Fresca truly quenches a thirst.

But if a thirsty man can’t find water, he’ll drink Fresca.

A friend of mine on the phone this morning referred to “that loony governor.”

I said, “Sanford? . . . I don’t think he was all that loony. I think he made a mistake, a mistake a lot of other men and women have made.”

Aside: I do not care that he had an affair, other than that he professes a political creed that claims to embrace and desires to legislate “family values” (meaning sexual Miss Grundyism and not meaning, say, good health care and a living wage, which in the Republican world have nothing to do with families)–embraces “family values” as opposed to embracing other persons’ families.

One more time: It ain’t the sex. It’s the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy that Republicans have institutionalized in their platform and behavior, of loudly pointing at and condemning in others what they do themselves.

Anyhoo, we kicked the topic around a bit and, then, after a little more discussion, she suggested that he actually belonged in the

(wait for it)

Read more »

Alexander Cockburn asks

How much easier it is to raise three–or 3 million–rousing tweets for the demonstrators in Tehran than to mount any sort of political resistance at home! Here we have a new Democratic president, propelled into office on a magic carpet of progressive pledges, now methodically flouting them one by one, with scarcely a twit or even a tweet raised in protest, aside from the gallant efforts of Medea Benjamin, Russell Mokhiber and their comrades at the healthcare hearings in Congress.

On the same general subject, DougJ asks

This amount of bureaucratic crap Americans have to go through to get health care sickens me. How on earth can anyone whine about government red tape when, right now, every . . . insurer and hospital has their own crazy set of forms you have to fill out (forms which usually only exist in hard copy or Microsoft Word form, btw)?

Susie lays it out.

Via the Great Orange Satan.

Returning from the beach to Pine View World headquarters.

In other news, John Cole demonstrates why news stories about the situations of individuals don’t necessarily support generalizations.

Steve at ASZ on war mongering:

Charles Krauthammer advocated the invasion of Iraq on various occasions for various reasons. He was vocal about the connections of Iraq to 9/11, and was proven wrong, he was vocal about the notion that Iraq had WMD, and was proven wrong, and he was vocal that conquering Iraq would be the first step in a Democratizing Domino Theory that would result in free and fair elections throughout the Middle East. Yeah, Krauthammer was wrong there, as well. It is this last theory that he’s pushing as part of his whine to get Barack Obama to step up the rhetoric about Iran.

Yeah, Charles Krauthammer is pounding out the drumbeats of war yet again, and along the way he’s writing irresponsible drivel filled with straw men and whacked out rhetorical accusations.

Addendum:

More here, via Andrew Sullivan.

Punditry, n., an endeavor in which being consistently wrong is the key to job security.

But it’s not a political option, so support a public healthcare option here.

Health care should be health care.

Not CEO care.

Because CEOs don’t care (follow the links for evidence).

Video via Susie. Mother Jones via Atrios.

It just doesn’t end.

How many . . listeners right now realize 16 Americans are killed every day on the job, seven days a week, 365 days a year?

How many people know that that had been improving since OSHA was created . . ., but over the past eight years that improvement stopped and in somei instances went backwards? .. . . (and) that that’s directly related to the disappearance of unions?

Phillip Dine on Radio Times (about 30 mins. in). Listen the the show here (MP3) or follow the link and search for June 15, 2008, and listen to Hour One.

Addendum:

More here.

Here. (Warning: Mild adult content.)

Read it here.