Political Theatre category archive

In case you think Chauncey de Vega’s use of the word “despise” cited in the preceding post is too strong, here’s a nugget from E. J. Dionne:

In our fixation with a deeply ideological debate over government spending, we have lost track of what really matters. Washington, acting in concert with other nations, should be focused on creating jobs and restoring growth. It needs to deal with a housing mess and personal debts that have destroyed the balance sheets of millions of households. It needs to increase consumer purchasing power. And it should be expanding public investments in the nation’s future, not cutting them.

Yet the world is looking to the United States to help power a recovery and provide leadership at a time when we are suffocatingly inward-looking — and when ultraconservatives are so dogmatic about slashing government that they are prepared to boot away our nation’s influence. Default? No problem.

“We weren’t kidding around, either,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told The Washington Post. “We would have taken it down.” He said it with pride, yet the “it” involved the American economy and America’s standing around the globe. This is patriotism?

The Republicans’ debt ceiling fanaticism is paying off with what Bloomberg describes as a rout in global stocks.

Why were they willing to defy good sense and past practice and cause the first downgrading of the credit of the United States of America since 1789?

Chauncey de Vega has a theory:

Let us be frank and state the obvious…a reality that so many in the mainstream media are loathe to admit: The Tea Party GOP and its highwayman want to destroy President Obama because he is a Democrat. But, they despise him because he is Black.

And they are willing to take the rest of us down with him.

Before you dismiss his theory because it sounds icky and gross and “we don’t want to talk about that,” click to read the whole thing, then decide whether or not he’s got a point.

These are not nice people.

Dick Polman parses the Standard and Poor’s report on the downgraded credit rating of the United States.

Whatever you think of S&P, which has a demonstrated record of incompetence (AAA-rated securitized mortgages anyone?), Mr. Polman’s analyis is quite worthwhile. A nugget:

S&P believes that the Republicans will protect their rich friends by blocking the expiration. The money quote: “We have changed our (fiscal projections) because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the (deal).”

Hence, a credit downgrade. Such is the tragic damage wrought by ideologues – at a time when most Americans deplore the ideologues.

One more time: Truman was correct.

In the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts, Jr., recounts a partial list (a newspaper column, probably not even a book, is insufficient for a complete list) of the wing-nut racism directed at President Obama, then sums up:

See, here’s the thing: If, as is frequently said, Obama represents America’s future, what do they (the racism-dealers–ed.) represent?

You know the answer. Worse, they do, too.

Click and read.

Via Paying Attention.

It says something about the current Republican Party that a quite conservative governor with a record of enacting layoffs and cuts in services gets to be a hero for simply saying something sane (Warning: Short commercial at beginning):

Via C&L.

Asia Times reports on what appears to be the principle export of the United States. Here’s a bit from the intro:

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the George W Bush presidency. By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling – a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence – in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged – provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

Read the whole thing. It ain’t pretty.

Here’s more from Nick Turse at TomDispatch.

Chancey de Vega quotes from Salon:

In light of this recent history, it is clear that the origins of the debt ceiling crisis are to be sought, not in generic American conservatism, but in idiosyncratic Southern conservatism. The goal, the methods and the passion of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right.

From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States.

Follow the link for his discussion.

Matt Damon calls out some wingnuttery, and the cameraman too (Warning: Mild Language):

Via DelawareLiberal.

Jonathan Bernstein tries to step back and get some perspective on the debt ceiling debacle. It’s recommended reading. A nugget:

(L)ots of people just don’t understand the limitations of the presidency within the political system. There’s some of that now, too.

Voters put a lot of teabaggers in the House in the last election. As Helen Philpot observes (in another post that’s recommended reading),

You get what you vote for.

Addendum, a Few Moments Later:

Also, the Booman:

I don’t know if it is just dawning on people or what, but electing dozens of tea baggers to Congress means that horrible things are going to happen. When you finally find out what those horrible things are going to be, you shouldn’t act shocked. This is why it was vitally important that people on the left show some unity of purpose instead of taking their ball and going home. But, when did that ever happen with a Democrat in the White House? . . . It’s just who we are, and why we lose. Still, the magical thinking is depressing me.

President Obama is not the problem. Republican policies and tactics are the problem.

President Obama cannot fix the problem.

Only voters can.

Peter Bergman discusses why this is not politics as usual. It’s only about 10 minutes. Listen up.

To follow up my previous post:

Bill Maher tries to be sound absurd.

Obama said he had been left at the altar a couple of times. And he asked a great question. He said, ‘Can they say yes to anything?” A Democrat now has offered cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the Republicans still said ‘no.’

What is the Democrats’ next offer?

Kansas goes back to being a slave state? Obama moves back to Kenya?

Actually, I think he’s pretty much nailed what the Teabagger dream.

The Booman explains that nothing Obama could have done would have produced a compromise on the debt ceiling.

In doing so, he maintains (I think correctly) that President Obama had no way of averting the stalemate, because the Teabaggers in the House of Reprsentatives are implacable true believers. I suggest that everyone inclined to think President Obama has a magic wand to make the stupid stop read the post. A nugget:

For every Robert Reich who is carping on the left, there are a dozen unhappy Republicans who think the GOP is acting recklessly. John Boehner’s speakership is in ashes. Michele Bachmann in now polling about evenly with Mitt Romney. The GOP is having a huge internal fight and is loathed and mistrusted by the entire international community. They have been exposed for the radicals that they are, and the people disagree overwhelmingly with their behavior and their approach.

It could have been different. The president could have refused to accept any coupling of the debt ceiling to budget cuts. He could have, rather, argued he needed more money to stimulate the economy. He could have tried to convince people of that. But, in that case, we’d still be here this weekend facing default. And we’d be the party divided and unpopular. Obama, not Boehner, would be the one whose career was a smoking husk. And the people would be blaming the Democrats for their intransigence, instead of the other way around.

The truth is, the 2010 midterms were a catastrophe. They had horrible consequences. This weekend was one of those consequences, and it couldn’t be avoided through “leadership.”

The persons who think that the best thing to do in an election is a kneejerk “throw the bums out” really need to pay attention to the bums who want in.

Sure, politicians, including those of good will, have trouble keeping campaign promises because they, like the rest of us, don’t live in a vacuum, but what they promise tells something about what they believe, and what they believe matters, because it affects how they act.

The teabaggers campaigned on a platform of destruction. Now they are trying to fulfill their promises.

And no one should be surprised.

Also this.

President Obama’s administration sets deportation record.

Via