Political Theatre category archive

The difference between this word salad and the one it mocks is that this one was tossed on purpose.

Aside:

You know Trump doesn’t have a prayer when he’s too crazy for right-wing fulminator Charles Krauthammer.

Via New York Magazine.

All you have to do is make stuff up (but it’s gotta be the rightwing stuff.

Via Atrios.

Via Juanita Jean.

Jim Wright is less than sanguine about the current state of the Republican Party.

Surprisingly enough, Facebook can be a force for good.

A Republican lawmaker accidentally cast his party’s first vote for the California budget in years because he was distracted by Facebook.

Assemblyman Scott Wilk was the sole Republican to vote for California’s record $117.5 billion spending plan Monday.

He later changed his vote, as California rules allow ex post facto changes to the official record of votes in the legislature.

This, by the way, is your Republican Party doing the tough, diligent work of governance. Also, pigs, wings.

Professor Tom Ginsburg explores the myths of the Magna Carta.

Just read it.

Headline of the day:

Jeb Bush prepares to launch candidacy, regain lost momentum

. . . which leads one to the question, “How can one regain what one has never had?”

Inquiring minds want to know.

I don’t understand the high value that the right wing places on mean for the sake of mean.

Daniel Ruth considers the con. A snippet:

Now Florida’s former governor is about to ask the American people to elevate another Bush to the presidency. Bush tried to assure naysayers that he would be his own man in seeking the presidency. Yet he has surrounded himself with legions of advisers, enablers, apologists, fundraisers, spin-doctors, bundlers, bootlickers and apparatchiks of both his father, George H.W. Bush, and brother. This isn’t a political dynasty. It’s the hustings equivalent of SPECTRE.

Read it.

You can’t make this stuff up; someone else already did.

Via Job’s Anger.

Shaun Mullen tries to understand “Clinton Fatigue” and realizes that it has nothing to do with the Clintons. It is, rather, a Republican thing, a strategy in deed if not in word. Here’s a snippet; follow the link for the rest:

The long and the short of the situation is this: Republicans have been fiendishly clever in keeping voters (and that supposedly liberal media) focused on her. If she cannot put the focus on us — as in the dividends voters should expect to reap from her presidency, a sure-thing win could slip from her grasp.

If a Democratic dill pickle had been elected to the Presidency, I’m confident we would now be suffering from Clausen (or Mt. Olive) fatigue.

Via Raw Story.

. . . now comes Rick Perry Secret Spy Glasses.

Via Job’s Anger.

Putting a check on those balances.

The fight between Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas and the state’s judicial branch has escalated, with the governor last week signing into law a bill that could strip state courts of their funding.

The measure, at the end of a lengthy bill that allocated money for the judiciary this year, stipulates that if a state court strikes down a 2014 law that removed some powers from the State Supreme Court, the judiciary will lose its funding.

Via PoliticalProf.

The Roanoke Times calls out Republican gerrymandering in Virginia. Here’s a bit from their editorial (emphasis added):

When it comes to elections, we are more like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who famously said of a certain Danish tradition: “It is a custom more honor’ed in the breach than the observance.”

This November, all 140 seats in the General Assembly will be on the ballot.

But that does not mean we will have 140 spirited campaigns, or even 140 listless and unspirited ones.

Most of those will be Soviet-style elections, with just one candidate on the ballot.

Noz points out that Rick Perry has a precedent.