Political Theatre category archive

Zandar on Rand gestures.

It’s all too much–hype, that is.

Via Atrios.

Daniel Ruth points out that, when it comes to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, “J. D.” most definitely does not mean Juris Doctor (emphasis added):

Most of the nation’s Republican governors, even those who adamantly oppose Obamacare, have cautioned Rubio, Cruz and the Gang of Kaztenjammers that shutting down the federal government would have a catastrophic impact on their state economies.

But Rubio and Cruz have never had to manage a business or a bureaucracy. Threatening to shut down the country because you didn’t get your way is not statesmanship. It’s juvenile delinquency.

I used to pass the wind farm in Somerset County, Pa., several times a year.

Give me graceful wind machines over smoking stacks and cooling towers any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Picture via The GreemMiles, which adds commentary.

Frankly, I think the primary reason that Hilary Clinton is receiving so much attention as a possible candidate is 2016 is name recognition, but, really, now folks, it’s a long time until then.

In the meantime, Chris Matthews considers the current Republican assault on Clinton and what it says about Republicans.

It’s both comic and pathetic that the Republican Party is reduced to attempting to censor television network programming.

Warning: Language

Afterthought:

One of his stories was the subject of an editorial in today’s Inky.

He’s baaaaaaack!

And he’s still a one-note samba.

Dick Polman:

And Santorum is serious about being up there. Word is, he’s mapping another run with his loyal inner circle, and he’s heading back to Iowa this month, presumably without his sweater vest. Plus, he used his Meet the Press appearance to play some politics – insisting that the current terrorist “chatter,” and the resulting embassy closures, have happened only because President Obama is a wimp.

Politicizing terror? Gee, I never saw that one coming.

novaSlim sticks his tongue firmly in his cheek and writes a prescription for ending racism, to be implemented by its targets.

Via Contradict Me.

If you’ve been noticing the story of San Diego Mayor “All Hands on Deck” Filner, there’s nothing new here, but this is still a hoot.

Below the fold, because, on one of my computers, it autoplays.

Read more »

Collateral Damage:

This week, instead of being in the Caribbean as part of a planned four-month humanitarian mission to South and Central America, a skeleton crew gave hundreds of students a tour of the (the hospital ship USS Comfort–ed.) vessel’s empty hospital wards, describing for them what the waterborne, state-of-the-art medical facility is capable of doing, given the chance.

Scott Maxwell looks at Florida’s “school reform” efforts, most recent marked by the resignation of the Florida Commissioner of Education for cheating.

A nugget:

Honest brokers would admit the current, test-obsessed system isn’t working.

But the reformers actually claimed the higher failure rates were fine and dandy — simply the result of higher standards.

It’s a fascinating little world these reformers have created for themselves — one where they claim success when scores rise or fall.

That’s why I neither celebrate nor lament Bennett’s resignation Thursday. He wasn’t our main problem. He was merely a figurehead for it — a high-profile cog in a machine hellbent on undermining public schools.

He’s right, you know.

The schools have not been “reformed.” They’ve been deformed.

In case you have ever wondered about the difference between “stupid” and “teh stupid,” Historiann graciously provides a definition.

Jonathan Chait is not optimistic.

He believes that the right-wing has decided that, if they can’t save the country from the forces of truth, justice, and the American Way, they might as well just burn it down.

A nugget:

The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses—partisanship, obstruction, gridlock—don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.

And the worst is not behind us.

Bill Maxwell sees an insidious undercurrent in the charter school movement: the rebirth of seg academies. A nugget; follow the link for the rest:

No matter how we frame the debate, we are talking about contemporary segregation academies — those private schools that proliferated during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as a way for whites to circumvent the desegregation order of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. After these academies took hold, many public schools, especially in the South, were left with mostly black students.

Operating with public money, charters are more subtle in determining who attends them. In addition to location and word-of-mouth marketing, many self-select by establishing curricula that appeal to specific groups. Touting their core mission, they do not mention diversity in their recruitment.

At my breakfast meeting this morning, someone brought up the Trayvon Martin case. I went off, pointing out that the bigots never give up; they just go into hiding from time to time and then try again.

Chris Honore is dismayed by the Republican intransigence on SNAP.

The GOP has indeed been transformed, but into what? Republicans are consumed by a rigid ideology and a persistent and debilitating mean-spiritedness that is paralyzing their ability to compromise and therefore to govern. They are not simply a cohort of grumpy men and women gone anachronistic. They are a party that is doing incalculable damage to our nation with a studied righteousness that is appalling, claiming Pyrrhic victories that have consistently put doctrine before the common good.

Methinks he is too restrained.

She’s back, and she’s still not a witch.