Political Theatre category archive

It strikes me that, if the money spent on creating new bureaucracies “to fix troubled schools” were spent on classrooms, teachers, and supplies for said schools, the schools would not need fixing and a lot of bureaucrats would have to find honest work.

Wingnut twits.

John Romano, newspaper columnist, thinks he has figured out Senator Marco Rubio’s aptitude. A nugget:

Sen. Marco Rubio is positioning himself to run for … .

Columnist.

Trust me on this. I know the signs. The smirks. The sarcasm. The complete disregard of any fact that might get in the way of the point he is trying to make.

Read the rest. The evidence is compelling.

If you want a better understanding of the math behind opinion polls and an introduction to separating good polls from bad, read Kevin O’Brien’s short primer on polls.

Zandar looks behind the press releases:

The reality of course is that the GOP doesn’t want to fix their problems with women, LGBTQ, Latinos, African-Americans, young people, and anyone with a working conscience. They want to punish them until those groups stop voting, and then win from there. Nobody believes the GOP has the backs of anyone but themselves. They’ll never win on that nonsense. But convincing voters that armies of leftist brownshirt thugs will harm them and their loved ones, and that the people supporting Democrats no longer should qualify as Americans? Well, they’ll still get at least 40% of the vote that way, every single time.

The only reason Republicans haven’t won on the fear vote nationally yet is because the last guy from their side is currently painting cats and dogs, and from 2001 to 2008 they had that fear vote locked up tight. It can happen again, and at the state level it already has.

Read the rest.

More news from the 27%.

Via Watchdog.

Dahlia Lithwick suggests that, in the light of Republicans’ deciding that they need special training to talk to women, perhaps turnabout is fair play. A nugget:

So, for instance, you have perhaps become accustomed to asking your Republican congressman to respect your reproductive choices when it comes to matters of birth control and abortion. You may have been attempting to make logic-based arguments about bodily autonomy and the right to control your own economic and professional destiny. But next time you talk to a male Republican member of Congress, try this one instead: “Daddy? Can I please borrow the keys to my uterus?”

That was my first thought on reading about the NSA’s infiltrating MUDs and MMOGs.

Robyn Blumner takes down the gamers at the NSA:

Terrorists playing online video games to confound the enemy? Sounds like a modern Get Smart episode, and a far-fetched one at that.

But there it was on the front page last week as yet another spying revelation from former NSA contractor turned whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The secret documents showed that America’s masters of spycraft thought it possible that terrorists were training and communicating while hiding behind avatars in popular virtual games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. This prompted spies with the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to infiltrate the world of online gaming in such ridiculous numbers that a group had to be assigned to make sure the spooks weren’t colliding with one another.

The effort was a bust. Nothing came of it except to underscore the bloated surveillance state the United States has created.

Follow the link. After the snark, she gets serious, and her thoughts are worth the three minutes it takes to read them.

Ed Kilgore thinks that reports of a struggle between Republican extremists and “moderates” are, at best, delusional. He believes that the extremists won a long time ago. A nugget:

. . . conservative activists are so skeptical of politicians–at least those this side of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul–that they are perfectly happy accepting an unprincipled “pragmatist” who is totally in their thrall via highly public litmus test signatures and specific commitment to future action. By the time he went down to defeat in 2012, Mitt Romney was an absolute prisoner to the very forces in his party who trusted him least. The same thing happened to “maverick” John McCain in 2008; by the end of his campaign, he was basically a figurehead on a ticket led emotionally and ideologically by Sarah Palin.

The Republican Party’s reaction to Nelson Mandela career and death tracks right along with the path of Nixon’s odious Southern Strategy in transforming the Republican Party into the Party of the New Secesh:

Susan Feiner spins the tale of Ebeneezer Cruz, a fairy tale with a fanciful ending.

Encore presentation.

The Homestead is a ritzy place. One would expect a better class of clientel.

Chris Honoree considers the giblets in the Congressional gravy boat.

Just read it.

Moved below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

Autoplaying is rude.

Read more »

The Booman has the right idea about opinion polls.

A. P. Ticker throws in the towels.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.