Political Theatre category archive

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Robyn Blumner reflects on the continuing story of the Archie Bunkers.

Archie felt he knew who was changing the rules: women, minorities, hippies, homosexuals and college boys.

But the real forces that were inexorably reducing his economic prospects were imperceptible to him. The conservative political wave, from Richard Nixon on, that the flag-waving Archie fell into lock-step with was to be the undoing for people like him. Those politicians and their corporate partners would be his silent enemies, de-leveraging worker power through union-busting, unfettered outsourcing and keeping minimum wages low.

Just read it.

Psychologist Larry Samuel attempts to explain Republicanism.

I’ve participated in my share of protests over the years.

Shouting at someone in mid-sentence may be a lot of things–it may even sometimes be warranted–but I really don’t see how it can be considered “having an ‘open conversation.'”

Afterthought:

Why do some of my fellow lefties seem to think that the way to get what they want is to alienate potential allies?

New York Magazine’s Dan Amira explains why conservatives are up in arms about New York City’s “Bike Share” program.

He thinks it has little to do with bicycles or bicyclists (including the type of cyclists that I recently heard called the “spandex mafia”) and everything to do with what bicycles and bicycling symbolize to the conservative mind. A nugget:

But, in a way, the depth of conservative animosity for a bike-share program makes perfect sense. Because, as the Venn diagram above indicates, Citi Bike finds itself at the very nexus of five different things that conservatives hate.

Follow the link. Methinks he has a point.

Via Dick Destiny.

In the usual bad taste.

Update:

The video has been pulled, I think because it was broken. I will repost it if it becomes available. Fixed.

The Tampa socialite who unwittingly triggered an investigation that ended the careers of CIA director David Petraeus and former Central Command leader Gen. John Allen asserted Monday in a lawsuit that the federal government violated her privacy.

The suit is likely a non-starter, as Petraeus was CIA director and national security and all that.

But it promises two things: providing lots of comic relief and not ending well.

The other certainty is that it’s more of what Dick Destiny calls the “culture of lickspittle.”

Llewellyn King has qualms about the proposal for a “shield law” to enable reporters to protect their sources.

No, he’s not concerned that such a shield law would protect the guilty, but, rather, that it would jeopardize the innocent. A snippet (emphasis added):

That is why, although I begin like any old war horse by kicking at my stall when the government goes after reporters, I would urge those now supporting a federal shield law, known as the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013, to think carefully. I don’t think it will work, and I think it will create large loopholes around the sensitive issue of national security. That is what sets a federal law apart from those on the books in the states.

Once there is a law, common decency, societal values and tradition are abandoned. Clever prosecutors see laws not as barriers but opportunities. One fears that the law rather than supporting the broad protections of the First Amendment could, in fact, detract from them.

The basic tenet of the proposed law is to require judicial review before the mastiffs of government begin their sniffing. Their (sic. from context, the mastiffs of government–ed.) goal is always to root out the source of the reporter’s information and to punish, and possibly destroy, that person.

I don’t know whether I agree with him, but my years of observing political news leads me to agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence–the one in bold.

When the government expresses “national security concerns” as regards news, it’s frequently newspeak for “personal and political embarrassment concerns.”

Melissa Harris Perry rounds up the stupid.

Michael Smerconish, himself a representative of shrinking tribe, that of sane conservatives, thinks that Michelle Bachmann is more than a representative.

He thinks she’s a representative representative. A nugget:

Bachmann epitomizes what the Congress has become: polarized, pugilistic, and pernicious. She leaves with no legislative accomplishments, unless one considers obstructionism an achievement.

The Richmonder.

Jon Tevlin will miss Michelle Bachmann. He laments the triumph of her opponent.

A nugget (emphasis added):

It’s not that Bachmann hasn’t tried. Her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, a plank of her short but dazzling presidential bid, fell victim to the same assassin as all of her grand schemes and big ideas: the pesky but persistent fact.

Facts have plagued Bachmann like a flesh-eating virus, nibbling away at her statements with reckless abandon, making short work of the skeleton of her ideas.

Field points out the one constant in American “conservatism.”

It is quite true, and it’s not at all pretty. A nugget.

Since the Founding, the Right has decried government interference with the “free market” and intrusion upon “traditions,” like slavery and segregation, as “tyranny” or “socialism.”

Read it.

Delaware Dem notes the end of the Bachmann Spinner Overdrive era in Congress.

Ezra Klein reflects on the narrowing of the Republican political mind:

Imagine a policy spectrum that goes from 1 to 10 in which 1 is the most liberal policy, 10 is the most conservative policy and 5 is that middle zone that used to hold moderate Democrats and Republicans. The basic shape of American politics today is that the Obama administration can and will get Democrats to agree to anything ranging from 1 to 7.5 and Republicans will reject anything that’s not an 8, 9 or 10. The result, as I’ve written before, is that President Barack Obama’s record makes him look like a moderate Republican from the late 1990s.

Do read the rest

ABC embraces its role as GOP flack.