Political Theatre category archive
Ryan’s Derp 0
Reckon he figures he’s done all the damage he could.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Thom explains how Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy led to Donald Trump.
Which Hunt? 0
Juanita Jean corrects some terminology.
The Rule of Lawless, Warranted Intrusion Dept. 0
The news is full of stories about what the Mueller investigation’s raid on Michael Cohen’s office and home might portend and I will not speculate. You can find plenty if speculation at legitimate (and, no doubt, illegitimate–see below) news sites.
Nevertheless, I will this teeny contribution from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman regarding the nature of the search warrant (emphasis added):
(snip)
Such exceptions are rare, however. Judges asked to approve such an exception and grant a search warrant must be convinced of a prima facie case that a crime has occurred and that the lawyer had somehow been involved in the actual commission of that crime. That’s always a high bar for prosecutors to clear, and it no doubt becomes even higher when the client in question is the president of the United States.
In other words, this is no fishing expedition.
All the News that Fits 0
Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican think-tanker, is dismayed to realize that one of the things he helped tank was truth. Here’s a bit of his article; I urge you to read the whole thing (emphasis added).
What I didn’t understand then was how destructive a total lack of common reality could be. While I chided the filtered evening news model, I didn’t realize we’d replace it with an anarchic ecosystem of unvalidated truths. I never imagined conservatives could be so successful in undermining the credibility of the traditional media, and I never envisioned a world where common truth ceased to exist.
(snip)
In this model, stories do not need to be true, or fair. They need to make people mad enough to share them.
Sympathy escapes me.
Television Comedy 0
“There’s One Now” 0
Dick Polman muses about how to spot a sociopath.
Russian Impulses 0
Shaun Mullen reports on Manifest Manafort Destiny while mincing no words. A snippet:
For openers, Manafort’s entire career has been one exercise in evil after another.
(snip)
The distance between circumstantial and provable can be substantial. But if the Russia scandal has taught us nothing else beyond the fact that virtually every key Trump player is a bad actor, it is that if something looks like a coincidence, it almost certainly is not.
Twits on Twitter 0
Wall-eyed twits:
A Trumpled Terrain 0
Thom steps back and looks at the big picture.
“Boots on the Ground” 0
Elie Mystal discusses the implications of Donald Trump’s desire to use the military to enforce immigration laws. It’s not pretty.
Here’s a bit:
(snip)
I don’t expect that President Trump understands that law, or cares why it’s there. He’s pissed that Ann Coulter didn’t send him an Easter card, and so he’s blurting random, untrue things about immigrants again. He seems to be under the impression that there is some kind of “caravan” of brown people bearing down on us from Mexico. Maybe they’re being led by Charlzie Theron down the Fury Road. Honestly who can know what’s in this man’s head.