Political Theatre category archive

Our media: A study in peripheral preoccupation.

Pretty much all they could talk about at Mr. Obama’s press conference today was the non-links between Mr. Obama and Mr. Blagomumble.

An analogy: If they were standing on a corner within ten feet of a firey crash between a loaded school bus (we’ll call it “the economy”) and a loaded ambulence (we’ll call it “Iraq”), they would be too busy trying to stare down the dress of the lady next to them to notice the ruckus in the street.

Fortunately, Mr. Obama could give poise lessons to Cary Grant.

Via the Huffington Post.

Somebody needs to tell Janine Davidson that the election is over.

Senator Craig–ahem–stalled again.

Here.

Dick Polman votes for Bush.

’nuff said:

The Supreme Court this morning unceremoniously declined to hear an emergency appeal from a man who claimed President-elect Barack Obama is not qualified for the presidency because he is not a “natural-born” citizen.

H/T Karen for the link.

A corollary to Godwin’s Law. More from Steve at ASZ.

Hope.

Yes we did.

Because she said it best:

Can someone explain to me how it is that Peggy Noonan can claim that Bush kept us safe? Didn’t we have the worst terrorist attack in US history while he was president? Didn’t his team brush off warnings ahead of time and didn’t the president himself tell tell the CIA briefer on August 6th, 2001 that he had “covered his ass” by telling him that Bin laden was planning to attack inside the United States? Why should he get credit for “keeping us safe.” (I won’t even go into Katrina or the financial meltdown as measures of how well he did at other measures of security.)

Freakin’ delusional hack, courtesy of Josh Marshall:

. . . and I certainly wouldn’t take this bet.

Bush.

Delusional, as always.

Scott Ritter in the Guardian. Read the whole thing (emphasis added):

Bush, in his revealing interview, claimed he wished “that the intelligence had been different”, but that was never really the point. Bush, like so many others, had made up his mind regarding Saddam independent of the facts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Try as he might to spread responsibility for his actions by pointing out that “a lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein,” the fact is WMD was simply an excuse used by the president to fulfil his self-proclaimed destiny as a war-time president who would avenge his father’s inability (or, more accurately, sage unwillingness) to finish the job back in 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf war.

(snip)

The most important aspect of Bush’s interview rests not in what he admits, but rather in what he avoids, when he stated that the failure to find WMD in Iraq was “the biggest regret of all the presidency.” He doesn’t regret the decision that led America to war, or the processes that facilitated the falsification of a case for war. He doesn’t regret the violation of international law, the deaths of so many innocents, the physical destruction of Iraq or America’s loss of its moral high ground. He merely regrets the fact that his “gut feel” on Saddam’s WMD arsenal was wrong.

Furrfu.

I do not get charges on my cell phone bill for roaming. I have this plan, you see.

Roaming. Not the same thing as Roving.

My cellphone carrier is honest.

It roams. It doesn’t Rove.

(Truth. It’s not a Republican Thing.)

Via Atrios.

According to the test, I’m a

. . . Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

See the list of liberal breeds here.

Take the test here.

Via Delaware Liberal.

(Second link fixed.)

Some time ago, I described how, every time conservatism fails, Conservatives circle the wagons and claim that “X (insert conservative poster boy of the day) is not a true conservative.”

You can review the post here.

And here you can see history redundantly repeating itself all over again once more.

One more time: Contemporary Republicanism is a failed theory founded in greed and incapable of governance.

Oh sure, it looks good in a suit, speaks impressively in meetings, writes nice memos.

But it is morally, intellectually, and spiritually bankrupt.

The evidence is all around us.

Those who do not see it are those who refuse to look.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Jon Swift tautly, irrefutablely argues as to why the Walmart Tramplers should be pardonned. Read the whole thing, as he expands his reasoning to even wider perspectives. Here’s an excerpt:

Prosecutors may even try to score cheap political points by filing criminal charges against some of these bargain hunters, who have been called “savages” and “animals” by demagogues in the liberal media. Of course, my heart goes out to the family of this man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but while it is unfortunate that someone got hurt, capitalism is not a dinner party. There will always be some collateral damage in a free market. Socialists who hate capitalism are now trying to scapegoat these patriotic Americans who celebrated an American tradition by rising before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving to express their love of this country by partaking of the bounties of the free enterprise system. How can those of us who were not there judge people on the front lines of the Christmas shopping rush?

Via Andrew Sullivan.

No such thing, right?

Dave Zweifel in the Madison, Wisc., Capital Times discussing an article by Dan Shelley in the Milwaukee Magazine.

Shelley wrote that conservative radio hosts around the country, including Sykes and Wagner, were e-mailed daily talking points from the Bush White House, the Republican National Committee and, during election years, GOP campaign operations. They would also check frequently with other talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh’s Web site and the online sites of conservative bloggers, to make sure everyone was on the same page.

Via Raw Story.

Kos, on Republicans’ expressing desires to emulate the Democratic machine:

Yet here’s the funny thing — their machine is still bigger and better funded than ours. If I could trade Daily Kos for Fox News and the entire AM radio dial, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d make some major changes at those media outlets, of course (beyond a change of ideology), most of them dealing with how they interact with their audiences online, but really, their problem isn’t that they don’t have an equivalent to Daily Kos or MoveOn, their problem is that their ideas suck, and now progressives have enough of a machine to counteract their lies and smears.

Remember, a party predicated on the notion that government sucks and can’t do anything right can’t possibly run an administration that doesn’t suck and can do anything right. Competent conservative governance would instantly invalidate conservatism’s core tenets. That’s why Bush named horse lawyers to FEMA, and why fourth-tier law school grads have infested every corner of the Justice Department. George W. Bush wasn’t an anomaly, he delivered the most effectively conservative administration in history.

(snip)

So now the Patrick Ruffinis on the Right argue that they need their own machine to replace their powerful existing one, as if shiny new websites will suddenly fix what ails them. In reality, their problem is that their ideology has failed. Conservatism has failed, in a very public way, and people now recoil from its siren song. That’s not a marketing problem. It’s as if people suddenly realized that what they were drinking wasn’t Coke, but New Coke. And hundreds of millions of dollars wasn’t going to fix that problem.

A note from the reality-based world: Democrats are not docile enough to have a machine, at least not on a national level. What Democrats had this year was a decision to be on the right, which means the left, side of history this time around and a candidate who is a good, decent, honorable person.

And the capable assistance of the Republican Party, which, once it gained power, showed us what Republicanism (as opposed to principled conservatism) is really all about.

ASZ has more.

Addendum, Later that Same Day (If I Ever Planned This Wouldn’t Happen):

Delaware Liberal has more, here and here.

Transcript here.

Aside: In the Bushie world, “family values” refers to sex. They have nothing to with honesty, honoring the public trust, fiduciary duty, or any of that other boring old stuff that involves other people’s money. Or other people’s lives. It’s just other people’s not having anything other than hetero sex within marriage–except for Republican Congresspersons, appointed officials, lobbyists, heads of mega-churches, and people like that there–that must be worried about.

Or values.

Via Raw Story.

Oh, this is beautiful. Mithras cuts to the quick.

Follow the link. Read the whole thing.

Here’s his precis of the intellectual and strategic underpinnings of Republicanism:

The ideology of conservatism is based on the idea that people are basically evil, and that a successful society creates traditional norms and institutions in spite of and in order to control that evil. In this view, good people were obligated to use power in order to keep everyone else in line and prevent social changes that almost certainly would lead to bad results. The strategy that developed was to sell this idea to the various conservative factions on the theme of virtuous strength v. degenerate weakness.

To the racists, conservatism could say, “You’re right. You are the noble white people who built Western Civilization and the United States, the greatest country on Earth. Now these darkies want to take it all away.” To the fanatical anti-communists, conservatism could say, “You’re right. Capitalism is the highest form of human virtue because it requires people to compete for resources and demonstrate their skill and intelligence in a true meritocracy. Anything that hinders that competition is evil, and Communism is the quintessence of evil – it is an international conspiracy solely meant to destroy capitalism.” To the religious wackos, conservatism could say, “You’re right. God the Father preordained the natural state of things that should be reflected in human society, but Satan is leading these sluts and sodomites astray. You are the good people who are doing God’s work in fighting their evil ways.” To the rich, conservatism could say, “You’re right. The mob of poor have discovered that they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury, from your pocket, and if they succeed they’ll never work again and society will collapse. We have to stop them.”

Addendum (H/T Alison for the link):

From Erik Lundegaard:

cf. 1964 and 2008:

Two Arizona senators. The first attacking the Civil Rights Act, the second attacking what may be the culmination of that Act. A friend of mine once said, “When I was a teenager I realized that you could either be successful or you could be right,” and in the early 1960s the Democratic party decided to be right, finally right, on the issue of civil rights and on the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and since then the Republican party has been successful largely on the back of that decision. But maybe not now. Maybe this period, in which I’ve lived my entire life, can finally be bookended. Ended. Maybe.