Political Theatre category archive

It’s rambling, and it’s funny; The bit on the voter fraud fraud is definitely worth a listen–it lasts for the first two minutes or so:

Jennifer Abel asks the question:

So: if the United States claims the right to use robotic attack drones to kill American citizens in foreign countries, does that mean we’ll say nothing when China inevitably uses drones to kill dissidents who have gone into exile?

Follow the link for her answer.

According to the complaint, Abbassi “was readily identifiable as Muslim by what she wore: a long shirt, pants, sweater and hijab, or Islamic headscarf.” She was detained at security for a second screening, but was allowed to board.

When boarding, Abbassi says she was on the phone with a Verizon representative in order to activate her smartphone. When the plane was getting ready to depart, Abbassi alleges she told the representative “I’ve got to go.”

Soon after, there was an announcement that an “administrative delay” would hold up the flight, at which point a TSA agent came on board and asked Abbassi to get off.

TSA took her off the plane, then cleared her to travel, but the pilot refused her admittance, claiming the crew was not “comfortable” with her on board.

And bigotry flew the skies.

Jon Stewart examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street vs. the coverage of Teabaggery.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awsome Blog.

Ten years in Afghanistan and what have we gained?

Tom Engelhardt worries that unrestricted use of drone warfare, with the accompanying certainty of killing innocent persons, is nearing. A nugget:

In reality, it’s not the drones, but our leaders who are remarkably constrained. Out of permanent war and terrorism, they have built a house with no doors and no exits. It’s easy enough to imagine them as beleaguered masters of the universe atop the globe’s military superpower, but in terms of what they can actually do, it would be more practical to think of them as so many drones, piloted by others. In truth, our present leaders, or rather managers, are small people operating on autopilot in a big-machine world.

As they definitionally twitch and turn, we can just begin to glimpse – like an old-fashioned photo developing in a tray of chemicals – the outlines of a new form of American imperial war emerging before our eyes. It involves guarding the empire on the cheap, as well as on the sly, via the CIA, which has, in recent years, developed into a full-scale, drone-heavy paramilitary outfit, via a growing secret army of special operations forces that has been incubating inside the military these last years, and of course, via those missile- and bomb-armed robotic assassins of the sky. The appeal is obvious: the cost (in US lives) is low; in the case of the drones, non-existent. There is no need for large counterinsurgency armies of occupation of the sort that have bogged down on the mainland of the Greater Middle East these last years.

In an increasingly cash-strapped and anxious Washington, it must look like a literal godsend. How could it go wrong?

Of course, that’s a thought you can only hang onto as long as you’re looking down on a planet filled with potential targets scurrying below you. The minute you look up, the minute you leave your joystick and screen behind and begin to imagine yourself on the ground, it’s obvious how things could go so very, very wrong – how, in fact, in Pakistan, to take but one example, they are going so very, very wrong.

Chauncey Devega reads the tea leaves. An excerpt (emphasis in the original):

First, the Tea Party is easily lampooned; However, their songs, folksy misspelled posters, embrace of ignorance as authenticity, and love of costumes are a type of political theater. Consequently–and this is a point that many in the pundit classes and other professional bloviators seem to miss–“the show is the thing.” Reasoned discussions of policy and good governance are made secondary to a sense of belonging. For folks who feel alienated, scared, and “want to take their America back” (from “the blacks, the gays, the atheists, the Socialists, the liberals” etc.) a sense of belonging is a powerful salve for alienation and anomie.

A key point. When the ghouls in the audience at the last three Republican debates howled for murder, death, and hatred of Americans who happen not to be straight, they were marking out the boundaries of their political community. Their cheers were not those of outliers; they were the id of a community that stood silent in complicity and agreement.

Second, as I argued elsewhere, the Tea Party with its hostile faux populism is a cult-like organization whose ethos has infected the Republican Party as a whole. Emotion trumps reason. Faith has been mated with ideology to create a worldview that is immune from critical interrogation and intervention. Heretics are burned at the proverbial stake of Right-wing talk radio and Fox News. And ideological orthodoxy is the prime directive, even if it means destroying the U.S. economy (as was seen during the debt ceiling hostage taking by the Tea Party GOP), or believing in fictions such as cutting the federal budget in a time of the Great Recession will magically create economic growth.

A snippet:

When you look at modern conservatism, these are people who are becoming increasingly immune to facts that dispute their world view. . . . that is really disturbing when you get into areas of public policy because it is leading them to advocate things that are really destructive.

Eric Cantor says no to jobs.

Harsh, but not inaccurate:

Bill Maher:

The next time you hear anyone say ‘job creator,’ I want you to picture [The Situation from Jersey Shore]. Yes, The Situation made $5 million dollars last year, and if he has to pay a little more in taxes, it won’t mean he’s creating fewer jobs. It will mean a tiny fraction of his money actually pays for the government that works to keep him alive. The EPA that contains his oil runoff. The Postal Service that delivers his body wax. The Bureau of Weights and Measures who weigh his dumbbells. The Centers for Disease Control that provides a steady supply of penicillin. And the military, who keep the Taliban away. Because if a single human proves that America is asking for it, you’re looking at him.

Another growth industry suffers: the one based on incarcerating human beings for profit.

In a memo sent Thursday to Virginia Department of Corrections employees, the agency’s director, Harold Clarke, explained that the state recently received informal notice of the decision from officials in Pennsylvania, and he expects Pennsylvania will soon deliver the written, 180-day notice required to end the contract between the two states.

Green Rock, one of 44 state prisons in Virginia, is in Chatham in Pittsylvania County. Opened in 2007, it houses roughly 970 inmates, all of them from Pennsylvania. No other Virginia state prison has Pennsylvania offenders.

(snip)

“The transfer of the Pennsylvania inmates from Virginia will place the department in a difficult financial situation,” Clarke wrote. “The revenue from out of state inmates not only pays for the operation of Green Rock, it also provides funding to other inmate beds.”

Adding a profit motive to imprisoning persons skews the balance away from justice towards incarceration.

Creating prisoners for pay must be ended.

Tom Papantonia interviews Chancey Devega on the Republicans’ odious Southern Strategy:

Excerpt:

. . . mostly a mix of old, white, angry people who are upset that a black man lives in the White House.

Please, someone, convince Ralph Nader to learn to play the flute, cut the soles out of his shoes, and go live in a tree somewhere far far away.

His habit of public self-gratification is not only tiresome, but also destructive.

He is unsafe at any speech.

The terrorism of fear is the goal of terrorism. It has turned our national fear of terrorists into its our own homegrown form of terrorism.

Dan MacArthur writes of modern day witch hunts:

Hebshi is a self-described half-Jewish, half-Arabic, dark-skinned mother of twins. Armed agents handcuffed her and removed her from a flight from Denver to Detroit on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Fighter jets accompanied the aircraft to its destination where it was isolated and surrounded by officers.

It seems that fellow passengers expressed suspicions to the flight crew about Hebshi and a couple of men sitting in her row who they believed spent an inordinate amount of time in the restroom.

Hebshi was placed in a holding cell, strip-searched and interrogated. She told The Associated Press that she felt “violated, humiliated and sure that I was being taken from the plane simply because of my appearance.”

She was released after four hours with profuse apologies for the inconvenience. But that was small comfort to Hebshi and certainly would be for my wife.

My wife fears she may be similarly targeted as a dark-haired, dark-eyed Nebraska-American — burdens she bears with grace in a blonde-worshipping, Big Red-loathing state.

Will Bunch on Countdown:

Via Bob Cesca.