Political Theatre category archive

Hard to disagree with this:

Caroline Kennedy apparently thinks that she is entitled to be appointed as the next junior Senator from New York.

She shouldn’t be. Think about it.

Her qualifications? Her name is Kennedy and she can raise a lot of fat-cat money for herself and for New York democrats who support her.

Her strategy? Ignore the voters and the press and meet with the political bosses behind closed doors to convince them to pressure Governor David Patterson to appoint her to Hillary Clinton’s seat.

Is there a more cynical message in the Age of Obama?

Who’s supporting her? Among her chief backers is New York City’s billionaire Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg who recently decided to ignore a legitimate and binding citywide referendum that prohibited him from seeking a third term. In one of the most appalling examples of an arrogant “the public be damned” attitude, Bloomberg convinced the City Council to overrule the will of the people so he could stay in City Hall. He’s a big contributor to many of the folks who supported this brazen move.

Legendary Tammany Hall boss Carmine De Sapio would love both Bloomberg and Caroline for bringing back the old “power to the bosses” style of politics.

The columnist goes on to point out that Kennedy has voted in only about half the contested elections in New York since 1988. She appears to have no political vision (as opposed to political leanings), not even a defective one.

The columnists suggest that Governor Patterson will likely name Andrew Cuomo, just to get him out of the political landscape of New York state and away from being in a position to oppose any future ambitions that Mr. Patterson may have.

Aside: One of the characteristics of the very rich is that they get used to getting things without working for them.

As an appointed Senator, Caroline Kennedy would probably be no worse than most elected Senators and better than many (can anyone say, “Norm Coleman”?), but jeez oh man.

No jobs, no money, no sale, no end in sight:

The sales pace (of new houses–ed.) for November was the lowest since the 401,000 rate in January 1991. Sales are down 35.3% compared with November 2007.

In a separate report, sales of existing homes for November fell 8.6% to 4.49 million annualized.

A pro-bono class action lawsuit (or, more accurately, a “no-class” action lawsuit):

The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Army veterans along with the National Veterans Legal Services Program, a nonprofit group that represents veterans and active service members in disputes with the government.

The veterans allege that they each were discharged from duty after an Army review board concluded that they had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and thus could no longer serve.

Yet, in violation of federal law, the suit contends, the veterans’ disabilities were not rated severe enough to qualify them for both ongoing disability payments and medical coverage for themselves and their families.

Just to sum up, they were too sick to keep their jobs, but not sick enough to be disabled.

Corollary: Up is down. Down is up.

Bill Shein explores the Current Federal Administration’s exit strategy.

Fact-based governance.

The country is not ready for that.

Bush leaves footprints on the clothing industry:

The shoe hurled at President George W. Bush has sent sales soaring at the Turkish maker as orders pour in from Iraq, the U.S. and Iran.

The brown, thick-soled “Model 271” may soon be renamed “The Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush,” Ramazan Baydan, who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic., said in a telephone interview today.

Via TPM.

We shall know tomorrow.

We have a special election today. The woman who won the seat in Delaware’s lower house in November resigned to take a job out west somewhere. (The Republican Party did not even try to mount a campaign.)

Apparently, the job offer came along way too long after all the deadlines had passed for making any changes to the ballot.

There are approximately 1200 persons registered to vote at that polling place and approximately 17,000 voters in the representative district as a whole. In the November 4th election, approximately 9,000 persons voted (8,400+ for Obama) in the district, over 800 at that polling location.

I got to the polling place at about 12:15 p. m. My neighbor, who was working as one of the poll judges, said that fewer than 100 persons had voted so far that day.

Addendum:

Approximately a 6% turnout.

Kovach received 1,540, or 51.2 percent, of votes cast Saturday. Democrat Mike Migliore received 1,467, or 48.8 percent.

[EDITORIAL MODE ON]

Both of them seem like fairly reasonable guys. Their platforms were very similar, which is as much a reflection of Upper Delaware as it is of anything else. The campaigns were about at invisible as a campaign for the House of Delegates could be.

Nobody rang my doorbell or left a doorknob hanger. Kavach seemed to do a better job of getting yard signs out early, which appears to have been the primary method of campaigning (by “appears to be,” I mean that they may have done some other stuff also, but not so anyone other than local party activistis would have noticed).

[EDITORIAL MODE OFF]

TerranceDC speculates over at the Booman Tribune.

I’m listening to the podcast of yesterday’s Talk of the Nation, discussing Rick Warren.

Somebody called in and said that he really didn’t believe it when Mr. Obama said that he was against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but against gay marriage, that it merely was something a politician would have to say just to get elected.

I must point out that, so far, Mr. Obama has given no indication of having lied about any of his beliefs “just to get elected.”

Kinda hard to deal with it, ain’t it.

Criswell predicts that this is just a cover for screwing the workers:

The White House said on Thursday it is considering the option of an “orderly” bankruptcy as it weighs aid for U.S. automakers and Chrysler LLC prepares to shut down all of its 30 factories for a month.

Addendum:

Sometimes it is nice to be wrong.

It’s not going to take a very big building to hold one copy of Incurious George.

Artist’s conception of the George W. Bush Presidential Library below the fold.

Read more »

Republicans and their toadies seek to berate Mr. Obama into violating US District Attorney Fitzgerald’s request not to say anything yet. Emphasis on the yet.

Typical.

The Rule of Law means nothing to this lot.

MarketWatch posts its list of the ten best and ten worst performing stocks of 2008.

John Cole, that is.

The attempts of the press to make something out of nothing are just mind-boggling.

For those of us who have minds.

Diebold voting machines don’t count:

The missing five votes failed to register during the original count and again during a recount, according to The Dayton Daily News. They probably never would have been discovered had it not been for a special statewide spot check mandated by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has long been skeptical of the accuracy of electronic voting.

The votes only materialized when a memory card was put back into the voting machine that used it on election day. That practice isn’t typically followed when tallying votes.

The company changed its name, but it’s still Diebold.

Serendipitiously, this builds on my previous post.

If you don’t pay attention, you might actually fall for the crap.

Jamison Foser on what passes for reportage these days. Read the whole thing (emphasis added):

Whenever reporters think — or want you to think — they’ve uncovered a presidential scandal, they waste little time in comparing it to previous controversies. Yesterday, CNN’s Rick Sanchez tried desperately to get the phrase “Blagogate” to stick — the latest in a long and overwhelmingly annoying post-Watergate pattern of ham-handed efforts to hype a scandal by appending the suffix “-gate” to the end of a word.

(Mucho snippage)

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the media’s attempts to link Obama to the Blagojevich scandal has been the volume of news reports that are purely speculative — and not only speculative, but vaguely speculative. That is, they don’t even consist of conjecture about specific potential wrong doing. They simply consist of completely baseless speculation that Obama might in some way become caught up in the investigation at some point in the future, for some reason. It’s little more than, “Maybe Obama will be involved.” Well, sure. And maybe he’ll play shortstop for the Washington Nationals next year.

More here. (Via Will Bunch.)

Via Atrios.

H. L. Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

See Fact Check dot org.

Take the tour here.

The rest of us have taken a hard look at the Republican Party.

It is not a pretty sight.

Nor, for that matter, is the train wreck of an America they have created over the past eight years.

Take a hard look at itself. No.

Take a slow boat to China.

Oh, I forgot, they’ve already sold us to China.

It should just somehow go away and let grown-ups run the country.

Video via the Huffington Post.