Political Theatre category archive

At Bloomberg, Stephen L. Carter ruminates on “principles.”

I can’t say that I agree with all his conclusions or examples, but I do think it’s worth a read. Here are two snippets:

When politicians and their supporters refer to “principles,” they usually don’t mean it in the sense that Aristotle or my father did. “I’ll preserve Social Security” or “I’ll never raise taxes” aren’t statements about fundamental beliefs. At best, they are examples of conclusions to which one might reason from fundamental beliefs. Probably, however, they aren’t even that — they are simply lines that have tested well with focus groups.

(snip)

Too much of life nowadays revolves around the notion that self-interest is a principle. It isn’t. It’s just an animal instinct — a useful one, to be sure, in the functioning of markets, but a dangerous one to unleash on an entire society. When we fret about the epidemic of academic cheating, for example, what we are really seeing is the predictable result of the abandonment of principle by we adults who are supposed to be setting an example.

President Obama on Ayn Rand, via TPM (emphasis added):

Have you ever read Ayn Rand?

Sure.

What do you think Paul Ryan’s obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

Well, you’d have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a “you’re on your own” society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

This is consistent with the comment I heard from a lady who said that, when she was in college, she learned quickly to avoid dating men who were reading Ayn Rand.

Via Bartcop.

Via Mother Jones.

Via Bartcop.

As usual, in Onion there is truth.

Via The Commander Guy.

Jay Bookman wonders why Mitt the Flip has suddenly decided to trumpet the navy and reaches a conclusion:

In Romney’s view, the fact that 4 percent of the world’s population controls a mere 50 percent of the world’s naval firepower, almost five times the amount of the second-ranked power, leaves that 4 percent dangerously vulnerable.

. . . Why is Romney stressing naval expansion in his campaign remarks? Take a look at the map of swing states. Virginia is critical to his election hopes. Virginia is also home to Newport News Shipbuilding, which with 21,000 employees is a major contractor with the U.S. Navy.

Leonard J. Pitts, Jr., considers the undercurrents of Mitt the Flip’s binders full of women and finds himself transported back in time:

A pattern takes shape here. Between Romney’s binders full of women, and Rush Limbaugh branding a woman a “slut” because she thinks contraception should be part of her health insurance package, between Rep. Todd Akin’s belief that the uterus somehow filters out unwanted sperm and Rep. Allen West’s chastisement of an opponent’s failure to act like a “lady,” it becomes increasingly obvious some socially conservative men are stuck in a time warp. Akin, West and Limbaugh hunker down like Davy Crockett at the Alamo, behind modes of sexist condescension that were getting old when the Beatles broke up. Romney tries to show he “gets it” by disinterring a trope from the era of Jheri curls and Max Headroom.

When’s the last time any of these boys had a date?

In the world outside their time bubble, women run states and nations, fight fires and litigate cases, perform surgeries and grab rebounds. And yes, they still tend boo-boos and fix meals, too.

Back in time is, natch, where these folks want to be, back in the Never Never Land that never existed of Leave It to Beaver* (never mind that Barbara Billingsley was a working mother).

______________________

*I couldn’t stand that show, probably because my brother liked it.

Helen Philpot quantifies Mitt’s lies, then concludes

Too bad we don’t have Sarah Palin this year. She wore her crazy on her sleeve, but Romney is actually pretty good at misleading voters. Don’t let him mislead you. He may look Presidential while his is lying, but do we really want to make this about looks? If we did that we would have to include the wives and Michelle Obama is a knock out.

Read the rest.

Bizarre, in a quite Randian way.

Jon Stewart asks the question:

. . . setting aside that the President didn’t actually do any of these things, why did the President do these things?

Via TPM.

At Philly dot com, Ronnie Polaneczky explains why she was unable to write a cutesy-poo column about the debates and women in binders:

What Romney has had from birth, and what he takes for granted, is a level of well-being that 99 percent of Americans will never know. His wealth has allowed him to put miles of distance between himself and the potential for disaster. And his stunning lack of empathy blinds him to those who aren’t so fortunate.

He and his ilk will never lose sleep at night worrying how to pay the heating bill.

(snip)

Romney and his campmates believe that this brand of well-being is attainable for anyone who will just work hard enough for it.

Except then there would be no schoolteachers, who work hard – but at middling wages. Ditto for cops, and soldiers, and firefighters, and medics, and office workers, and cashiers, and waiters, and social workers, and bus drivers, and lab techs, and just about every kind of worker whose sweat contributes to and supports a greater whole called America.

We can’t all run Bain Capital. If we did, who would tend to Romney’s houses? Bus the tables at his fundraisers? Clean out the stalls where his wife keeps her horses? Or fix the tires on her Cadillacs when they go flat?

What Romney has done, by dishonoring the 47 percent – and forgetting the 99 percent – is dishonor work that he himself would never do. And in doing so, he dishonors those who do it.

Read the rest.

Noz.

I have nothing to add.

More here.

Via Blue Ridge Data.

Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

Heh.

“But I think Gov. Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” the president continued. “You mentioned the Navy, for example. And that we have fewer ships that we had in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed.”

“We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so, the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s what are our capabilities?”

Unsigned yards; Fabiola Santiago reports from Miami:

I woke up one recent morning to Romney-Ryan signs propped on my neighbors’ lawns.

No surprise there. Many are Republicans, and although I’m not a fan of Romney and my vote is for the sitting president, I was thrilled by the voter spirit.

Shortly after, my next-door neighbor put up his signs: Obama-Biden.

I wanted to break out the champagne. Long live democracy.

Americans who were born with the unalienable right to disagree and dissent may take for granted their elections, but for so many like me who have lived in totalitarian regimes, elections are a cause for celebration.

But my joy was short-lived.

A politically thin-skinned klepto in our small gated community stole my neighbor’s signs — the only ones in support of President Obama.

One of my acquaintances here, a fellow lives in an exclusive neighborhood near the Beachfront, has put up two Obama signs.

Neither one lasted through the evening of the day on which he planted it in his lawn.

H/T Carolyn for the link.

Via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

(The first time I posted this, I inadvertently left a caret (“>“) off the end of the code for the embed and it broke the blog. “For want of a nail” etc.)

In the Tampa Bay-Times, Robyn Blumner defines the terms. A snippet:

Diversity

Obama: The pluralism contributing to our nation’s strength and vigor. Romney: Something in a portfolio.

Follow the link and increase your word power.