Political Theatre category archive

The Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Current Federal Administration can’t jail someone just because he wants to, however he trumps up the evidence:

A federal appeals court in Washington has invalidated the Bush Administration’s finding that a detainee held for more than six years in the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “an enemy combatant,” and ordered the government to release him, transfer him, or offer him a new hearing.

In a ruling decided Friday but released today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Chinese Uighur captured during the early stages of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, was inappropriately designated an enemy combatant at a hearing known as a “combatant status review tribunal.” The court said the United States can no longer hold him.

It is time for Mr. Bush to recognize that this country has a president.

Not a king.

But he won’t.

Michael D. at Balloon Juice.

Someone must have taken the telephone away.

No, racism has nothing to do with it.

Really.

Nothing at all.

You can buy these from (guess who?) the Texas Republican Convention.

(Aside: No, I won’t link to them. If you want one of these, you gotta go find it yourself.)

Via Sadly, No!

Addendum, 06/19/2008:

Steve over at ASZ has more. Follow the link for the full rumination (emphasis added):

The Texas Republican Party has banned a vendor at their convention. The vendor was trying to sell political buttons with bigoted phrases on them.

(snip)

I suppose this is good news, that some semblance of control is being exercised over Republicans who can often be quite ugly. But I’m guessing they can’t control of all the Republican entrepreneurs out their (sic) who want to show their ugliness on their lapel buttons. I would argue Republicans created this ugliness with their concentration of wedge issues and their embrace of such talk stars as Limbaugh and Coulter. So let them live with it. I’d say most of America is tired of this sort of ugliness, and tired of the divisiveness that seems the only way the Republicans can work.

When he’s McSame:

Oh, yeah, and about that “support of men and women in the military”? See here.

Yeah, really.

Over here, at Brendan’s place (warning: language).

It’s positively stenning stunning.

I missed the whole birth certificate thing.

Fox News:

Note that it’s not Malkin, though one would expect something like that from her foul little mouth.

It’s the Fox News crawl, done by the Fox News snakes staff.

Via Duncan.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Fox has since said that the producer responsible for the crawl exercised “poor judgment.”

Well, yeah.

Poor judgment in revealing his or her fundamental racism.

(Because, face it, someone without racism would have never have even thought to display something of that nature. The idea would not have come to him or her.)

Or, more likely, the fundamental racism of Fox News’s approach to Senator Obama’s campaign.

This is beyond disgusting and beyond poor judgment.

But at least Fox News has put its cards on the table.

Oh, yeah, and while we’re at it, bought any tomatoes lately? You know, the ones that aren’t getting inspected because the Republican Congresses kept ripping inspection money from the budget.

Via Booman Tribune.

ASZ sheds the tears.

Phillybits has uncovered startling, incontrovertible evidence that there is such a thing as a terrorist fist jab. You owe it to yourself to go here and see it for yourself.

And then follow the link in his post for even more evidence of terrorist body language.

Will Bunch, commenting on a column in today’s local rag, makes the case.

Via Reuters, Obama Girls:

It is hardly a “tired negative attack” to point to a plain fact from the record. Unless, of course, you are McMaverick.

From Fact Check dot org. Follow the link for a the full analysis:

McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had “voted for every investigation.”

McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information.

The McCain campaign accused the Obama campaign of “tired negative attacks” for pointing out and documenting McCain’s gaffe.

The BBC has a fun little quiz on the Republican and Democratic primary races. Take it here.

I’m not going to bother to discuss the last night’s speeches by Senators McCain and Obama. But Brendan has a great commentary:

As Christina and I listened to the speech we kept waiting for Senator Clinton, the losing candidate, to say “…and the best way to achieve these goals today is to unify our party and support the winner of the Democratic Primary, Senator Barack Obama.” We never heard those words: instead, we watched the losing candidate try to upstage the winning candidate. And this person wants to be vice-president? She doesn’t even have the class to bow out gracefully, how could she be expected to embrace an office charitably described as “not worth a bucket of warm piss” without constantly upstaging the President? It was a classless and tasteless move. I don’t know what the hell she was thinking.

The difference between the two speeches was stark: where Clinton riled up her supporters with implications that she’s not done yet (she certainly didn’t concede) by arguing that she got the popular vote (which again, isn’t what’s important in the primary), Mr. Obama was gracious in victory . . . .

The Nation:

More than a decade ago McCain voted against the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gave the green light to media consolidation. He also loudly opposed the efforts of commercial broadcasters to quash low-power noncommercial FM broadcasting in 2000. Progressives applauded in both cases. But as chair of the all-important Senate Commerce Committee, which was responsible for implementation of the Telecom Act, the Arizona senator resisted numerous opportunities to mitigate its worst excesses. The hallmarks of McCain’s “leadership” have been: (1) a failure to promote the public interest; (2) hypocritical pro-consumer rhetoric that hides pro-business action; (3) a fundamental misunderstanding of technology and economics; and (4) troubling, at times scandalous, loyalty to particular special interests.

While most of the attention to February’s New York Times investigation of McCain’s relationship with Vicki Iseman focused on speculation about romantic entanglement, shockingly little attention was paid to the revelation that in 1999 McCain had, as Commerce Committee chair, pressured the FCC to issue a critical TV station license to Paxson Communications, for whom Iseman was lobbying. McCain’s approach was so aggressive and so out of bounds even for corporate-cozy Washington that then-FCC chair William Kennard complained about the senator’s attempted intervention. Paxson’s executives and lobbyists contributed more than $20,000 to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, and its CEO lent McCain the company’s jet at least four times for campaign travel. The senator’s symbiotic relationship with Paxson and telecom giants like AT&T is rarely mentioned on the Straight Talk Express.

Also unmentioned is the crucial role McCain played in shaping the Bush-era FCC. It was McCain who personally and aggressively promoted Michael Powell (see note–ed.) to serve as FCC chair, and who defended Powell’s attempts in 2003 to rewrite media ownership rules according to a script written by industry lobbyists. While other senators objected to those rule changes after more than 2 million Americans communicated their opposition, McCain sought to preserve them. And he remains joined at the hip with Powell, who unabashedly thinks the job of government is to promote the interests of the largest communication firms. In May Powell represented the McCain campaign on a panel discussion at the annual conference of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

It is unlikely that McCain would reappoint the disgraced Powell as chair. But it is reasonably certain he would appoint someone who shares Powell’s deafness to the pleadings of public interest. The senator’s 2006 vote against maintaining net neutrality suggests that his commitment to the business objectives of AT&T outweigh any commitment to the public interest. Straight-talk soundbites notwithstanding, McCain will be a reactionary force on media issues across the board.

Note: Follow this link to learn more about Mr. “What Big Media Wants Big Media Gets” Powell.

The Demon Princess looks at Senator Clinton’s campaign’s conduct and the flap over the Michigan and Florida primaries.

Yeah, the flap appears to be flapping more and more slowly, though agonized supporters of Senator Clinton appear to be swearing to destroy the Democratic Party, since the Senator’s attempt to end run the rules has been stopped with only a five yard gain (and no touchdown in sight). Follow the link for the full demonic analysis:

What a sad and debilitating circus for the Democratic party, and one that lends more than a little credence to what guest Pastor Pfleger of Obama’s (now former) church in Chicago lampooned as Hillary Clinton’s sense of “entitlement,” especially after the DNC rule-makers all got together and decided to seat the delegates of the contested Florida and Michigan primaries, albeit with just half the votes they would have had otherwise IF THOSE STATES HAD FOLLOWED THEIR OWN PARTY’S RULES.

Seems to your Demon, that, as Donna Brasile noted, if Hillary had followed through on her promise to play by the rules in Florida and Michigan, where voters were told well in advance that their votes wouldn’t matter if they insisted on defying party rules about not trying to race around and cut in line ahead of other states without waivers from the DNC to do so, she couldn’t now be accused (justly) of whining that the rules should be changed to benefit her.

I used to know someone from Massachusetts. I once asked, “How can you take the city name Hav-er-hill and turn it into Hav-rill?” (That’s “Hav” with a long a, by the way.) The response: “I don’t make the rules.”

As I have pointed out, Senator Clinton agreed to the rules. But apparently with crossed fingers.

I’m tired of crossed fingers from our elected (and appointed and civil service and military) officials.