Political Theatre category archive

An offering from Unqualified Offerings:

(Some manufactured wingnut faux outrage; follow the link for details–ed.) discussed yesterday, does put me in mind of an apparent difference between right-wing and left-wing calls for “sensitivity.” Both sides have these, but the right wing versions are often about the importance of respecting the victim-group’s hatreds.

(snip)

“You liberals will tolerate everything, but you won’t tolerate intolerance Har Har Har!” chortles the conservative, thinking he got in a total zinger.

When one’s politics are based on being hate-full, one desires respect for the hating.

It is a step closer to military rule.

More here.

Make mine a triple Scotch with a Bourbon chaser.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

New reality show: Republican Shore, with Snooky and The Donald in a situation:

Business mogul Donald Trump is questioning Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann’s loyalty after she repeatedly sought his advice but then chose to skip a debate he is hosting.

Trump told Fox Business Network on Friday it amazes him Bachmann would meet with him four times and phone for his guidance, only to snub his Dec. 27 debate in Iowa.

My friend has a theory about how to deal with illegal immigrants.

I believe we should treat them like politicians. If they get away with it, it means they are smart enough to stay.

January 21, 2013: Wall Street will rest easy tonight.

Via Steve Benen, whose post is worth a look.

Annoying liberals. It what the base values most.

Click for a larger image.

Via Some Guy with a Website, who also points out this.

Via Contradict Me.

At Psychology Today, R. Michael Alvarez attempts to understand why so many Republicans want to give Mitt the Flip:

Recently the Los Angeles Times reported on some interesting focus groups that probed the opinions of typical Republican voters. The story noted that while these voters all wanted to see Obama defeated next November, that “none showed particular excitement about the current slate of Republicans hoping to run against him.”

In particular, these Republican voters saw Romney as distant and unlikeable. When the focus group moderaters asked the participants to describe what family member each Republican candidate might be, Gingrich was described as a close family member, “a grandfather, a father, a favorite uncle.” But Romney, who the talking heads think will be the eventual nominee, was described in distant and negative ways—my favorite, “The dad who’s never home.”

He goes on to consider how Mitt might flip his image.

Though no doubt causing a flap, that’s the one flip certain to flop.

As a counterpoint, courtesy of Steve Benen, here’s Mitt condemning flip-flopping, yet another issue on which Mitt has flipped:

At SeattlePI dot com, David Horsey traces the roots of the conspiracy to take down Herman Cain’s candidacy. It’s been a-brewing a long time.

A nugget:

Sure, go ahead and scoff. Go ahead and believe Cain is merely the latest politician to be toppled by a bimbo eruption. Go ahead and ignore the clear truth: Herman Cain is such a big threat to the Media Lords’ leftist agenda that he had to be eliminated.

This conspiracy goes back much farther than the brief months of Cain’s campaign, of course. It began back in the 1960s when the liberal media elites identified a Kenyan-born baby with an American mother; a child they could groom in secret to become their tool to destroy Christian America. They arranged a fake birth announcement in Honolulu’s newspapers, indoctrinated the boy in the Muslim cesspool of Indonesia and, when the time was right, brought him to the exotic, multiracial pleasure garden of Hawaii where he could easily fit in and begin his surreptitious climb to power.

Follow the link. It’s worth it, if only to see the editorial cartoon.

. . . a cultural construct that exists only in the eyes of those who see it, though it be a powerful fiction, a brain-eating destructive zombie of a lie.

CrookedTimber recalls the Immigration Service’s list of races from 1914:

African (black), Armenian, Bohemian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Cuban, Dalmatian, Dutch, East Indian, English, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Herzogovinian, Irish, Italian (North), Italian (South), Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Magyar, Mexican, Montenegrin, Moravian, Pacific Islander, Polish, Portuguese, Roumanian, Russian, Ruthenian (Russniak), Scandinavian (Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes), Scotch, Servian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish-American, Syrian, Turkish, Welsh, West Indian.

The prosecution rests.

Via Bart Cop.

Steven M. thinks he has figured out why the Republican Party persists in promoting policies and theories, such as voodoo economics, that are demonstrably false:

I think Republicans see themselves the way Wall Streeters see themselves — as people to whom nothing really bad could possibly happen, no matter how dire America’s problems are. If they get in, push more tax cuts that increase debt, and make spending cuts that worsen unemployment and leave more infrastructure to crumble, they’ll just find some scapegoat, sexting or illegal immigrants or Dodd-Frank, to blame everything bad in America on. If that doesn’t work, they’ll start a war, and make it just controversial enough that Democrats will hesitate to support it, then treason-bait those Democrats for their hesitancy.

Follow the link for the rest of his reasoning.

Herman Cain is off the stage, but the circumstances of his exit, stage rightwing, raises larger questions.

This weekend, Bob Cesca observed

By the way, it’s revealing that an affair is cause for Republicans dumping this guy, and repeated instances of sexual harassment where there are legitimate female victims isn’t a cause for dumping him.

Thom Hartmann explores this question with a caller, without reaching a conclusion:

I have my own theory.

It has to do with beliefs about who should be in control of the wombs of the world.

Buried deep in the Republican “family values” psyche is a belief that it should not be women.

At Comically Vintage.

If you listen to nothing else, catch the bit about six minutes in where Mike Papantonio describles how Newt the Gingrinch is the perfect Republican candidate: