Political Theatre category archive

A dollar to a doughnut that these are wingnut smears. Follow the link to read the whole post. Please.

From Fact Check dot org:

If these two nasty e-mail messages are any indication, the 2008 presidential campaign is becoming a very dirty one.

One claims that Obama is “certainly a racist” by virtue of belonging to Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which it says “will accept only black parishoners” and espouses a commitment to Africa. Actually, a white theology professor says he’s been “welcomed enthusiastically” at the church, as have other non-blacks.

Another e-mail claims that Obama “is a Muslim,” attended a “Wahabi” school in Indonesia, took his Senate oath on the Koran, refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and is part of an Islamic plot to take over the U.S. Each of these statements is false.

These false appeals to bigotry and fear remind us of the infamous whispering campaign of eight years ago, when anonymous messages just before the South Carolina primary falsely accused Republican candidate John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child by a black woman.

When the truth is against one, one resorts to lies.

And, after the last seven years, that surprises us how?

The field of pretenders to the throne of King George the Wurst presents interesting contrasts of genuineness.

On the one hand, we have the Empty Suit.

The Empty Suit is definitely not WYSIWYG.

Because there is nothing behind the facade. Unlike in the movie, there is truly nobody behind the curtain. Just some kind of amorphous entity that believes it should be president because, well, it believes it should be president.

On the other end of the scale is Mike Huckabee.

He is definitely WYSIWYG.

A sincere and honest Republican candidate.

That makes him truly an exceptional person.

Sadly, when you look closely, what you see is really not all that attractive.

Yeah, he does seem to have an affinity for the poor and the dispossessed, an affinitely that seems to be alienating him from his party. This, of course, is not surprising, as the Republican Party is now and has ever been the Party of Privilege and does not welcome those who speak for the dispossessed.

And, yeah, he seems very likable.

Of course, that is to be expected. He is an ordained Baptist minister. He is a people-person.

Think about it.

For a man or woman (whoops, he’s a Southern Baptist, they don’t allow women ministers these days) of good will, the ministry is a demanding calling. One’s time and one’s schedule is not one’s own. One must be ready to go when the phone rings, display sympathy to the unsympathetic, offer mercy to the merciless, kindness to the cruel.

Almost all the ministers I’ve known have been people persons (with the exception of one guy about two miles up the road who’s an arrogant conceited something-or-other–he even chased the local Boy Scout troop out of his church because they were too much trouble–but he’s the exemption that proves the deduction, or something like that.)

After extensive research (a phone call to my pastor), I determined that seminaries do not teach courses in how to be likable, which reinforces my initial believe that the Huck’s first-impression likability is part of his personality, and probably part of what led him to the ministry.

Now, I was brought up in the Southern Baptist Church.

And I am still very much a Baptist, doctrinally speaking, that is (I used to substitute teach in Roman Catholic Sunday School–it was such a temptation to discuss the concept of Baptism of the Believer, but I always resisted that temptation).

I grew up before the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by the Pharisees, who value the Law and Appearances more than they value faith and works, who value the Kingdom of the Earth more than the Kingdom of Faith.

And the Church in which I grew up did not deny the evidence of things seen.

Yeah, Huck is genuine. Genuineness is refreshing.

But it is not a qualification for office.

Neither is denial of reality. For if one denies reality in one place, one will deny it in another.

And we have seen what that brings.

Yet the most distinctive feature of Huckabee’s religiosity is, ironically, one that he skirts around. Huckabee is a creationist. At a debate last May he raised his hand when Republican candidates were asked if they disbelieved in evolution. He now insists that his personal beliefs on the issue are unimportant. At a news conference last month, when asked about his anti-evolutionism, he said: “That’s an irrelevant question to ask me – I’m happy to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what’s going to be taught in 50 different states.”

Does Huckabee’s creationism matter for his claims to the presidency? It matters a lot, but it is important to be clear why. The problem is not that Huckabee is a fundamentalist who believes in the inerrancy of scripture. One of the defining principles of the US polity, and the single most important document of the enlightenment, is the Virginia statute for religious freedom of 1786, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. It stipulates that there be no religious test for public office. Religious adherence, or the lack of it, is a matter of personal conscience in which the state has no business.

It’s okay for our leader to be a realist. It is even okay for our leader to be an idealist. Hell, an idealist might be nice.

But it is not okay for our leader to live in a fantasy.

BTDT.

Afterthought:

Oh, yeah. He releases rapists to prey again.

Jonathan Last in today’s local rag:

Mitt Romney: Dead after Iowa. Now the carcass has been cremated.

Why don’t people like Romney? His campaign has become the most remorselessly dishonest operation in politics today. He’s for abortion; he’s against abortion. He’s going to dominate Iowa; he’s thrilled with second place. He thinks the early states are determinative and national numbers are meaningless; he’s running a national campaign and not concerned with early small states. On the morning of the primary, he said that he was going to win New Hampshire. He lost by five points. Voters can’t trust a single thing he says.

I watched his concession speech.

There’s no there there.

Jon Swift makes sense of the Iowa caucus. His analysis should be required reading. He starts by explaining how the results of the caucuses actually have nothing to do with the results of the caucuses:

The presidential nominating process is pretty complicated itself, but very few people other than pundits who have spent years analyzing them understand the Iowa caucuses. The winners of the Iowa caucuses are not decided by who comes in first but instead by a very complex mathematical formula that calculates the quantum spin of the vote, which can be pretty confusing to the layman. It has to be complicated to make it difficult for people to steal the election and more unlikely that voters will get angry and kill each other, the way they do other, less civilized countries where people understand what is going on. So in order to make the results of the Iowa caucuses a little easier for most people to understand, here are some simple explanations of who the real winners and losers were . . . .

Follow the link for the full analysis.

Via TPM Election Central.

Romney now:

“There’s no way that Senator McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say that he’s the candidate that represents change — that he’ll change Washington. He is Washington,” Mr. Romney said while speaking to reporters on Friday.

Romney then, when he was campaigning for his gig as governor:

One of the reasons the people of America honor Senator McCain and why I’m so proud to have him standing with me today is that he has brought American values to the debate on the issues we care about.

He has always stood for reform and change.

It’s fun watching the Republican establishment run from Huckabee.

John Cole has as interesting take on it. Huckabee is their own Frankenstein’s monster:

And it is JUST what the GOP deserves. Look, all you establishment Republicans, I know you weren’t serious about Terri Schiavo. That is why it was so depressing watching you throw the concept of federalism out the window to pander to these guys. But they were deadly serious. The same with all the anti-gay stuff. I know a number of the Republicans I grew up with could not care less about the current ant-gay marriage jihad some want to wage. I know most of my republican friends really aren’t homophobes. But you had to bend over to the religious right, and this was an easy way to get their support. besides, who were the log Cabin Republicans going to vote for anyway? The same with stem cells, abstinence only, etc. Whatever you have to do keep ‘em quiet and keep ‘em voting- you will accept a certain amount of ignorance, religious hokum, and bigotry, just so long as the votes keep coming.

Pah!

In Decemeber, President Bush claimed to pocket veto the defense authorization bill because his administration concluded — after the bill was passed (and a bill he demanded–ed.) –that a provision in the bill would “imperil” Iraqi assets in the U.S. (of course, the administration’s panic attack over pissing off the Iraqi government isn’t necessarily supported by the facts). But the administration scrambled to dispose of the bill nonetheless, and now the military is facing the headaches and consequences:

The Army has temporarily halted bonus payments for more than 20 enlistment, re-enlistment and service extension programs pending enactment of authorizing legislation. […]

Of course, no one he knows personally is over there. And no one he knows personally, I am certain, lives from paycheck to paycheck.

Josh Marshall:

More here.

Sadly, McCain may be mostly sincere, but he is wedded to the failed policies of a failed president. But his ad is right on target.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Of course, no one really knows what Mitt Romney believes, because he has more skins than a chameleon.

But, ya know, he makes stuff up real good. From Fact Check dot org:

Romney’s latest ad attacks McCain in New Hampshire with false and misleading claims:

• It claims McCain “voted to allow illegals to collect Social Security.” That’s untrue. Nobody who is in the country illegally could be paid any Social Security benefits under McCain’s immigration bill.
• It implies McCain supported “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. That word isn’t accurate. Illegal immigrants wouldn’t have received a blanket pardon under McCain’s bill. Instead, they would have had to pay thousands in penalties and fees to gain legal status. In fact, in 2005 Romney called McCain’s proposal “reasonable” and said it wasn’t amnesty.
• The ad says Romney “cut taxes” in Massachusetts. While he did cut some taxes – for example, enacting business tax credits – tax rates remained unchanged. Plus, Romney raised state revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars per year by increasing fees and closing corporate tax loopholes.

What an empty suit. Romney really doesn’t seem to believe in anything except that he deserves to be president. And he seems willing to believe in anything that would further that goal.

Because he looks good in a suit, I guess.

Remember, he used to be a consultant.

What is a consultant?

Someone who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, and keeps the watch.

(And I’m no fan of McCain either, but, really, there’s plenty of facts to attack him with. No reason to make stuff up. But, then again, making stuff up is the Republican way.)

Josh Marshall:

Hilary Clinton, who gives me the willies. From Fact Check dot org:

In a recent ad, Clinton claims members of the National Guard and military Reserve didn’t have health insurance until she and a GOP colleague took action.

We find the ad misleading. In fact, active-duty Guard and Reserve troops already were covered by federal insurance, and four out of five non-active-duty guardsmen and reservists already were covered by their civilian employers or other sources.

Clinton did help expand and enhance health care coverage for reservists but can’t claim credit for creating coverage where none existed, as this ad implies.

Follow the link for the full analysis.

Give this article in the latest American Scholar a look-see.

Then be afraid.

The sweeping authority that Nixon claimed in theory, George W. Bush has acted on again and again. The preemptive attack on Iraq was the most visible of his presidency’s actions resting on that claim— actions we can’t fully count because so many have been undertaken in secret. This pattern has made the issues of presidential power and the separation of powers as important today as they have ever been. From 2003 through 2006, when the Republicans occupied the White House, controlled both houses of Congress, and held sway on the Supreme Court— and, really, since the administration came to power in 2001— there was little checking and balancing. Instead of ensuring that the executive branch was properly enforcing the law— holding meaningful hearings about Abu Ghraib, for example, or about the detention of enemy combatants— Congress often acted like an extension of the White House.

(snip)

If the scope of executive power were a burning topic of politics, the breakdown allowing the power to expand dramatically might not feel so momentous— whether you regard it as a breakdown in the American legal process or in the system of checks and balances. Among the current Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, however, none has attacked executive supremacy as forcefully as past candidates assailed judicial supremacy. None has made executive restraint a rallying cry. Torture, illegal surveillance, and other contentious practices of the Bush administration have drawn criticism from candidates of both parties, but not one of them has focused on the underlying problem.

The most urgent legal and political issue of our time might as well not exist. Since 9/11 our democracy has functioned like an autocracy. In making one significant choice after another, the Bush administration has repeatedly done what Nixon only threatened to. But this is a nonissue in the current presidential race. That is so even though what’s at stake is a fundamental judgment about the nature of the presidency and, therefore, of the Republic.

Practicing to be the next Limbaugh:

A Princeton University student who argued that his conservative views were not accepted on the campus confessed to fabricating an assault and sending threatening e-mail messages to himself and some friends who shared his views, authorities said yesterday.

Princeton Township police said Francisco Nava was not immediately charged with any crime, but the investigation was continuing.

Phillybits has more.

With apologies to the Doors:

FactCheck dot Org investigates Guiliani’s flip-flops:

In a Nov. 29 article we faulted former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for saying flatly that New York “was not a sanctuary city” for illegal aliens. We pointed out that the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service listed the city among 32 that followed “sanctuary policies” and placed it under the heading of “sanctuary cities.” Giuliani campaign officials later complained to us that the CRS was mistaken and said we should have dug more deeply and reported the CRS’ error. They characterized the CRS list as one intended to include only cities that do not allow local law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities, and they said New York didn’t belong on such a list.

We took up their challenge, digging into the specific policies of cities on CRS’ list, including those that openly call themselves “sanctuary” cities, and comparing those policies to Giuliani’s. We found the following:

• The policy ordered by Giuliani as it relates to law enforcement differs only in minor respects from those of cities, including San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., that openly called themselves “sanctuary” cities or places of “refuge.” New York police could turn over the names of illegal aliens to federal immigration authorities if “suspected” of a crime, while San Francisco required that a suspected criminal also be booked on felony charges and in custody, for example.
• Immigration experts we consulted said New York’s policy differed but little from others that CRS put under the heading of “sanctuary” cities. “If you commit a crime … well then, in virtually all of these localities and states, you’re no longer protected or insulated,” said Marshall Fitz of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
• We also found that New York appears on another list – this one prepared by the National Immigration Law Center – of 70 jurisdictions that had policies “limiting local enforcement of federal immigration law.

Full disclosure:

I believe that the current furor over immigration has more to do bigotry than with morality or legality.

I believe that the pandering of many of the candidates for the Republican nomination to the anti-immigrant wing of the party is pandering to racism. But, then, that’s the Southern Strategy.

As much as I find many of John McCain’s positions distasteful, I must honor him for not piling on the bigotry train.

Putting aside my belief, formed over 57 years of observing the political landscape, that any Democrat is better than every Republican, I believe that a Guiliani presidency would be as much a catastrophe as the Bush presidency has been.

Of course, that goes for a Huckabee presidency or a McCain presidency or almost any other Republican presidency.

It also might go for a Romney presidency, as soon as Romney decides what he believes.

From the This Is To Good To Pass Up Department (aka the Department of Not Being Able To View the World Critically Department):

Daniel DiRito at ASZ:

Number Ten:

They’re opposed to sectarian conflict in Iraq but in favor of sectarian politics in the United States.

Number Nine:

They’re opposed to homosexuality and same-sex relationships but they’ll vote for a presidential candidate who does drag and lived with two gay men if he can beat Hillary Clinton and her “typically” unfaithful heterosexual husband.

Number Eight:

They wouldn’t dare vote for a Clinton given Bill’s disgraceful sexual antics in the White House but they’re happy to support a candidate who used New York City funds to carry on an adulterous affair.

Number Seven:

They criticize Democratic candidates for suggesting they would only nominate pro-choice judges to uphold the law of the land while they require their own candidates to pass religious litmus tests in conflict with the law of the land.

Number Six:

They’re in favor of abstinence only sex education even if it leads to more unwed teen pregnancies and more parent sponsored abortions (call it the evangelical version of NIMBY – not in my back yard; NIMBU – not in my babygirl’s uterus).

Number Five:

They’re in favor of the separation of church and state if it involves opposing a congressional inquiry into the fundraising and spending habits of leading televangelists but opposed to the separation when it comes to selecting a presidential nominee.

Number Four:

They support candidates who endorse more funding for AIDS in Africa while embracing a candidate who favored quarantining AIDS patients in America as well as having Hollywood fund AIDS research instead of the government.

Number Three:

They tout Ronald Reagan as their political icon despite the fact that he was unable to acknowledge the toll of HIV on gays in America or even utter the word AIDS…while they and their churches now run around talking about saving Africa from the ravages of HIV…as long as it doesn’t involve condoms.

Number Two:

They talk about their Christian values while they favor denying health care treatment to the children of illegal immigrants. Family values apparently stop at the waters edge (that would be the Rio Grande river).

Number One:

They’ll never make enough money to truly benefit from George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich or condemn his doubling of the national debt but they’re happy to call the Democratic candidates who supported an increase in minimum wage and favor a national health care system “unacceptable tax and spend liberals.”

It is one thing to allow one’s religious and moral beliefs to inform one’s vote.

It is quite another to allow self-ordained “religious” figures to stampede one’s vote.

Over at PoliGazette. The entire post is worth a read:

To a lot of Europeans, and Americans as well, U.S. presidential campaigns are a mystery. Perhaps three-time presidential loser Henry Clay explained the process best in 1839 when he said, “I had rather be right than President.” In other words, you have to be wrong to be right for the U.S. presidency and that is just as true today as it was in 1839. The purpose of a presidential campaign is to give the candidates the chance to repudiate, back way from and explain away as many of their old positions and actions as possible in order to convince extremists and one-issue voters in their parties to nominate them. Then the candidates must run to the middle and regret a few more positions and actions they took in the past in order to get elected. Finally, once they are elected they must never change their minds or admit to any mistakes at all no matter what the situation. President Bush is a perfect example of how this strategy works. While running for President he regretted most of what he had done in his life, from his drinking to his performing badly in school and in business, which just made him more likeable. Now that he is President, he can’t think of a single mistake he has made.

The main task of most of the Democrats running for President is to prove how wrong they were (as far as Democrats are concerned) about Iraq. Although New York Senator Hillary Clinton surged to the front of the Democrat candidates on the strength of being wrong about health care and all the other wrongs committed while her husband was President, her inability to completely regret her vote on Iraq, has given other candidates an opening. When it comes to being wrong on Iraq, Clinton can’t seem to get it quite right. She says that she made the wrong decision for the right reasons and that if she knew then what she knows today, she would have made the right decision, which is at least better than being right for the wrong reasons, but not good enough for some people. Some Democrats are saying that she isn’t the right candidate if she can’t just say she was wrong. The early strength she got from admitting that her health care plan was all wrong, or, at least, that it was the wrong plan for the right reasons, has been jeopardized by her stance on Iraq. And now her husband has made things worse by saying he was right on Iraq from the beginning, which blurs Hillary’s message that she was kind of wrong.

Via (natch) Jon Swift.

Josh Marshall has taken the trouble to compress the Republican candidates ads into one place, so you can watch them once, then Tivo them for the rest of the campaign.

Just check the numbers:

The Bush administration intends to slash counterterrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments across the country by more than half next year, according to draft budget documents.

The Homeland Security Department has given $23 billion to states and local communities to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, but one document says the administration is not convinced that the money has been well spent and thinks the nation’s highest-risk cities have largely satisfied their security needs.

The department wanted to provide $3.2 billion to help states and cities protect against terrorist attacks in 2009, but the White House said it would ask Congress for less than half — $1.4 billion, according to a Nov. 26 document. The plan calls outright elimination of programs for port security, transit security, and local emergency management operations in the next budget year. This is President Bush’s last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, 2009.

In other words, Bush isn’t running again, so there’s no reason to play the fear card.

Unless, of course, you are a somewhat questionable I didn’t say that philandering ex-mayor of New York.

Via Le Show.

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel . . . .

As I mentioned earlier, I avoid the candidates’ debates, because, frankly, I think they are useless.

The debates, that is. (And most of the candidates.)

But Dick Polman’s analysis of last night’s exercise in Republican posturing is, with apologies to MasterCard, priceless.

And with further apologies to Bugs Bunny, all that I can say is, “What a bunch of maroons!” (Courtesy Barbneal.com)

And FactCheck.org weighs in with, well, facts:

And Tim F. has a question.

Addendum, 11/30/2007:

For a more reflectice, less dismissive, and certainly less snide commentary, go here and search for the archives of November 29, 2007, or listen here (Real Audio) .