Political Theatre category archive

Feeling the heat:

Facebook users who “share” or “like” content that insults the Thai monarchy are committing a crime, Minister of Information and Communication Technology Anudith Nakornthap said Tuesday.

(snip)

Insulting a monarch is a crime known as lese majeste, and Thailand’s laws against it are the most severe in the world. Even repeating the details of an alleged offense , such as on social media sites like Facebook , is illegal under the lese majeste law and the related Computer Crimes Act, “which says that spreading illegal content , either directly or indirectly , is a crime,” Anudith said.

Thom Hartmann discusses what being pepper-sprayed is like with 84-year old Dorli Rainey, who knows first hand.

New rule for twits: Don’t get your Brownback up or you might end up in the doghouse.

First, a little context: Emma Sullivan, an 18-year-old high school senior, wrote a disparaging tweet about Brownback, saying “he sucked in person,” and signed it with a #heblowsalot hash-tag.

Brownback’s office wasn’t too pleased with the tweet, and it eventually landed Sullivan in the principal’s office.

Sullivan was supposed to write a letter of apology — which she said would be insincere — but the school district has let her off the hook. Now Brownback is the one apologizing.

Follow the link for the statement, which Bob Cesca considers exceptional for its straightforwardness and lack of the mealy-mouthed “if anyone was offended” wording so common today.

At the Guardian, Clive Stafford Smith demolishes the myth, promulgated by the U. S. military and the CIA, that there is anything “surgical” about remote control death from the sky. A snippet:

The BIJ (Bureau of Investigative Journalim–ed.) reporting begins to fill in the actual numbers. It’s a bleak view: more people killed than previously thought, including an estimated 160 children overall. This study should help to create a greater sense of reality around what is going on in these remote regions of Pakistan. This is precisely what has been lacking in the one-sided reporting of the issue – and it doesn’t take an intelligence analyst to realise that vague and one-sided is just the way the CIA wants to keep it.

Read the whole thing, then decide whether the apt response is to weep or to scream.

Mitt Romney is distinguised by the belief that he should be president because, well, he should be president because, well, he should be president because, well (click, whirrrr).

Video via Raw Story.

Audio tape of all Fox News pundits, past and future:

Image via Sampler, repository of the unusual; some images NSFW.

It is notable when Newt the Gingrinch sounds more reasonable than Mitt “Well, What Do You Want Me To Say?” Romney.

At Philly dot com, John Timpane considers the “meme-mification” of the pepper spraying of protestors at the University of California at Davis, examining theories about why images and pastiches of that indicident spread so rapidly.

A nugget:

Andrew Mendelson, chair of the department of journalism at Temple University, points to Pike’s nonchalance: “The body language he shows in spraying, transposed into these pictures, works really well as a visual representation of the shared frustrations among the Occupy community at the way they’re being treated by mainstream media and the police.”

“That image was just too striking not to stick with people,” Wolford says.

Nonchalant cruelty towards the defenseless does tend to catch the eye, as Xeni Jardin points out at the Guardian:

Pike’s dissonantly casual body language in the context of violence brings to mind the photos from Abu Ghraib; Lynndie England smiling and giving the camera a thumbs-up in front of tortured prisoners. And, in a fit of macabre recursion, some of the casually pepper-spraying cop meme images reference those very photos from Abu Ghraib. Lynndie and Pike, two “bad apples” taking the fall for systemic problems with the institutions each represent.

Addendum:

[chortle]

We laugh because otherwise we cry.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Philly dot com says:

The failure of the congressional supercommittee to trim the federal deficit is the latest example of Obama’s inability to make a deal with Republicans.

Last time I looked, President Obama was not in the negotiation room.

More accurate would be

The failure of the congressional supercommittee to trim the federal deficit is the latest example of Republican intransigence refusal to compromise with Democrats.

Documenting the distortions:

A nugget:

It is clear that those that question the methods have a problem with the message.

At the Guardian, Joshua Clover explains the threat from the Occupy Movement. A nugget:

A spectre is haunting the United States – the spectre of tents. Apparently, they are the greatest threat to order, to education, and perhaps to capitalism, in a generation or more.

The sin of the Occupy Movement has been to exist.

Freedom of speech exercised against what in my younger days was called “the Establishment” is tolerated as long as it stays in the backwaters (sort of like this blog). Once persons start actually to notice it, the tear gas, or, these days, the pepper spray and tasers come out.

Click for a larger image.

Via Some Guy with a Website, whose comments on the cartoon are worth reading.

Newt the Gingrinch wants to steal your Christmas and give it to Wall Street Banksters.

Incidents with poor citizens of Mexico clearly no longer count as incidents, but incidents with wealthy citizens of predominantly white, northern European countries may turn out to be something altogether different.

Afterthought:

I’m certain that Alabama never expected its law to apply to white folks and the only reason this is news is because someone did apply it to a white folk.

Your reaction, when you read the story (admit it, you thought, “Gosh, they arrested a white folk”) is sufficient evidence of the law’s origin in bigotry and of its immorality.

On this week’s episode of Wait! Wait!, someone joked that, whereas the Democratic Party might want to undo the last 30 years of Republican ascendancy, Republican goals are much loftier: Undoing the Enlightenment.

Actually, it’s too true to be funny. From the Concord, New Hampshire, Monitor (registration may be required):

A bunch of our representatives really do want to take us all back to the carefree, constitutionally correct days of the 1780s.

They are members of a committee set up earlier this year to study the impact of federal aid and programs in New Hampshire. A few weeks ago they made their report, and it’s a doozy. It is not a sober, serious analysis, replete with facts, expert testimony and sophisticated analysis.

Instead – as my incredulous lawyer husband noted after reading it – it’s more of an incoherent manifesto that might emerge from a late-night college dorm bull session. One fueled by several six-packs of beer. In this case, the kids are tossing out, willy-nilly, a grab bag of ideas of how governments should be run. Or, more to the point, not run.

Via Atrios.

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