Political Theatre category archive

John Cole:

It seems to me that we have underestimated how deeply fringe actors like al Qaeda and the neocons or Ahmadinejad and Bibi need each other for political survival. The relationship isn’t even antagostic, it’s a symbiotic mutualism. Intractable, crazy antagonists legitimize the position of extremists who oppose them.

Read the whole thing.

This morning, while listening to Marconi’s Magic Box, I heard a spokesperson for Big Health Insurance babble on about how a “public option” for health insurance is a bad thing.

It took the interviewer the entire length of the interview and large amounts of lobbyist gobbledegook to get her to admit, under gentle questioning regarding a public option, that “it’s cheaper.”

Reuters:

California’s government risks a financial “meltdown” within 50 days in light of its weakening May revenues unless Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers quickly plug a $24.3 billion budget gap, the state’s controller said on Wednesday.

Read more »

Dick Polman on the Diva Dances at the the big Republican fundraising dinner that was held (Monday) night in Washington and the parallels between Newt Gingrich’s old lines and Palin’s new lines. A nugget:

When Palin indulged last week in the requisite party nostalgia, did she plagiarize Newt? It would be fairer to say that she borrowed liberally, as our elected leaders are wont to do. But it speaks volumes about the state of the GOP today that it invited and disinvited and reinvited and semi-disinvited and semi-reinvited a politician who recycles lines from another recycled politician.

And in the end, at the fundraiser last night, we got this gem of a line, courtesy of Pete Session’s welcoming speech: “Together, we are showing America that we are a unified party.”

What Digby said.

Plus Atrios on the “Obama Effect” (from MSNBC’s coverage of the shootings at the Holocaust Museum):

I didn’t catch who was speaking on the phone to MSNBC, but he said this kind of violence can be attributed to what he called “the Obama effect,” basically racist nutjobs being driven insane by President Obama.

Dick Polman recounts how the New York Times allowed itself to get spun–again (or is that “still”?)–on behalf of the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq. In doing so, he takes again takes on the Myth that Will Not Die: the myth that big media is somehow “liberal.”

Follow the link for the full analysis; it’s worth the five minutes.

. . . on May 21 of this year, . . . The Times led page one with a story that trumpeted a leak from the Pentagon; apparently, the paper had purportedly learned that prisoners released from Guantanamo and transferred abroad were flocking back to terrorism in alarming numbers. According to the Times headline that day, “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad,” or, as the first paragraph in the story put it, 1 in 7 released detainees “returned to terrorism or militant activity.”

That translated into a 14.3 percent recidivism rate,

(snip)

And once again, the story was flat wrong.

This past weekend – more than two weeks after the print story ran – The Times finally took steps to clean up the mess. On Saturday, it ran a lengthy “editor’s note” which admitted that the “1 in 7” statistic was way off base. Actually, said The Times, it would have been far more accurate to report “that about one in 20 former Guantanamo prisoners described in the Pentagon report were now said to be engaging in terrorism.”

Well, that’s very different. One in 20 translates to a 5 percent recidivism rate – a far cry from 14.3 percent. (And as for that 5 percent figure, here’s a bit of perspective: According to the Justice Department’s own figures, the recidivism rate for American prisoners – as measured by the rate of rearrests within three years of release – is typically in excess of 60 percent.)

Afterthought: The New York Times is the true recidivist here, backsliding to its reflex to support Bushie wars.

After taking the weekend mostly off to “summerize” (if “winterize” has become permissible, so too should “summerize”) my boat, a three-day task involving two trips to Boats-R-Us, I return to good news: Brendan has a gig.

Read his first effort here.

I will spend the rest of the day catching up with the news (I’ve ignored all but that in the daily paper), resting, and figuring out why my father liked putting peanuts in cokes (preliminary results are inconclusive).

Jon Stewart analyzes the coverage:

Dick Polman:

. . . U.S. Supreme Court judges, even while tending to the law, have always been influenced by their life experiences. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Consider, for instance, the infamous Plessey v. Ferguson case. It all started in 1890, when the state of Louisiana passed a law requiring segregated train cars.

(snip)

Let’s look at the ruling. First, this passage: “A (state law) which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races – a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color – has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races.”

Now, this passage: “We (reject) the assumption that the enforced separation of the races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is…solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it.”

Sounds to me like those white male judges were partly influenced by their life experiences in a white supremacist era.”

In summary, you could say that the old white guys of the Republican Party are in Danae-al (click the image for a larger view):

More Danae-al here.

Especially for an outsider. Mr. Obama succeeded as an outsider in Chicago politics and learned well.

Delaware Dem analyzes how he baited the trap for the Repulsicans to descend forthwith into rampant nuttiness:

President Barack Obama is a shrewd, intelligent politician and tactician. Those on the right who think he is stupid, or nothing but a speechmaker who cannot think without a teleprompter, have severely underestimated their opponent, almost irredeemably so. President Obama knows all too well the nature of his opponents. He set a trap for them this past week that the virulent right wing base of the Republican Party, with all of their, shall we say, tendencies, fell right into.

The method to his madness: if your opposition is going to destroy themselves, step out of the way.

He nominated a judge who is more qualified in judicial experience than any Supreme Court Justice currently living. Indeed, she has more judicial experience than any judge going back 70 years. I have read some of her opinions already, and I must say, if she has an judicial philosophy, it is conservative and not liberal. She follows precedent, and shows restraint.

(Delaware Dem, by the way, is a lawyer. When he analyzes judicial opinions, he knows whereof he speaks.)

Affirmative action was created to redress a wrong.

. . . the idea behind affirmative action is that it allows opportunities for qualified people who otherwise would have been unable to access them because of racial/ethnic reasons. Indeed, the notion is that such persons actually deserve such opportunities and will excel if given them. The counter argument to affirmative action is basically that it allows less qualified persons of color to obtain slots in schools/jobs based on unfair preferential treatment.

Here’s the problem: if Sotomayor did receive affirmative action help in getting into school (and I don’t think that we know that she did) then she is a pretty lousy example of an undeserving recipient, as she clearly took full advantage of her opportunity. Someone who graduates Summa Cum Laude from Princeton clearly deserved to be there.

As such, she would be (again, assuming she even received such a benefit) a perfect argument for affirmative action.

And, as a product of Jim Crow, I know damned well that lots of talented persons were denied lots of opportunities by the ruling majority. I saw it. And it still goes on. It’s just not so blatant as it used to be.

Every time you think they’ve reached the bottom and there’s no more swamp left, they turn around and burrow deeper.

Follow the link for more Auth.

is a frightening and hate-full thing.

It is, indeed, base.

At Liberty (sic) University, firings will continue until thought improves.

Oh.

Wait.

Kevin Roose writes at the Guardian:

When I arrived at Liberty for my semester “abroad”, I expected to find a campus full of ballot-punching Republicans. I found those, but I also met Christian feminists, Christian civil libertarians, Christians opposed to the war in Iraq, Christian gay-rights activists and other Liberty students who challenged the norms of their parents’ generation.

As evidenced by the 32% of evangelicals between the ages of 18-29 who voted for Barack Obama last November, “Christian” and “Republican” are no longer synonymous in America, and Liberty’s pathetic attempt to maintain a unified political stance by silencing dissent shows how out of touch the university is with its own student body.

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Andrew Sullivan on the Sotomayor nomination:

He (Obama) is doing to the GOP collectively what he did to Clinton and McCain and Cheney: he is aiding and abetting their self-destruction.

The more they recede into fantastickal thinking, the less influence they have.

The less influence they have, the more they recede into fanstastickal thinking.

And so on.

Watch the fantasies demolished:

The Question, from Dick Polman:

Will the GOP, prodded by its conservative base, dare to assail a woman of color who rose from humble beginnings on sheer merit; who was formally tapped for the federal district bench by a Republican president (George H. W. Bush); and who was confirmed in 1998 for a federals appeals court seat by a Republican Senate, voting 67-29? (By the way, those 67 Yes votes included 25 Republican senators…seven of whom are still serving.)

The Answer:

Damed straight!

There’s a great summary of it here. It sums the whole thing up so neatly I can think of no way to excerpt it.

All that was missing was the folding chair:

Stephen Colbert on John “Permanent Organ Damage” Yoo in the Philadelphia Shrinquirer: