Political Theatre category archive

The Republican Party seems determined to destroy the economy to win votes.

In the Guardian, Michael Shank considers the militarization of American foreign policy.

He sees three depressing and dangerous trends:

First, it has become standard to engage in wars with no measurable objectives and no explicit or quantifiable goals.

(snip)

Second, we have blindly paid the incredible costs our wars have entailed, which a Brown University study released last month, estimates at $3.7tn for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

(snip)

Third, it is now the norm for defence and development contractors to profit mightily off these wars. In war after US war, cases abound regarding fraud, corruption, kickback schemes and bribery, and, more generally . . . .

Read the whole thing.

C&L points out how war has become the overriding Republican priority, using this video clip as part of their evidence (follow the link for the full post).

One of the bozos in the clip has to gall to claim that President George the Worst “paid (in budgetary terms–ed.) for what he did.” And we wonder why Fox viewers are ill-informed:

This graphic is currently making the rounds. I’ve been wondering where to work it into a post. This seems like a good spot.

I still think one of the best and easiest things we could do to clarify discourse is to give the Department of Defense its original name back: Department of War.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Dick Destiny points out that Never having to declare victory has its perks.

At the Progressive Populist, which is biweekly printed aggregator of opinion and analysis pieces, Hal Crowther examines the right-wing’s fascination with Ayn Rand and finds it irrational. He includes an anecdote of meeting her when she was invited to speak at his school way long ago.

Here’s a snippet:

If corporate feudalism is your dream for America, she’s the prophet for you. Her naïve faith in capitalism and contempt for “the welfare state” are just what the right-wing doctor ordered.

Much of the rest, alas, will never fly in Alabama. Pundits have been delighted to note that the heroine of the new Republicans was a pacifist who opposed the Vietnam War, a feminist who supported abortion, an adulteress who preached free love, a bohemian who mocked family life and child-bearing, an elitist who sneered at the common man, and, after all her “nanny state” rhetoric, a recipient of Social Security and Medicare and a late, sick convert to the benefits of socialized medicine.

Worst of all, for tea-stained Christian Republicans, she was a militant atheist. In Rand’s ideology religious faith was the most abject form of weakness, a sniveling retreat from the hardheaded, self-centered “objectivism” her heroes impose on the world. She not only would have rejected Jesus and his gospels, she actually did—-repeatedly.

Oberman interviews Markos. The first minute and a half are worthwhile. After that, it’s back to horse race coverage:

Excerpt:

Capitalism in its rawest form is the terrible fear that somewhere someone is getting a dollar that a rich person might be sitting on.

At DelawareLiberal.

Addendum, Early That Evening:

Bob Cesca reports that the twit has deleted the tweet.

He can’t delete all the screenshots.

Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:

Atrios has the twit parade.

It’s a way for losers to lose more while taking everyone else with them.

Click for a larger image

Via Some Guy with a Website.

. . . gets the death penalty.

From the write up about the video:

Medina died in CCA’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia in 2009. Medina had been arrested a month earlier for not having a driver’s license. CCA whistleblower Brian Holcomb spoke with us exclusively to expose how the company repeatedly ignored Medina’s pleas for care of his heart ailment while he was imprisoned. Their negligence contributed to Medina’s death.

Andy Borowitz reports:

In what members of both parties are hailing as an important first step on the road to a deal on raising the debt ceiling, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner today came to an agreement that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is a douche.

Details of the negotiations at the link.

Via BartBlog.

The last time politics and religion were mixed, people were burned at the stake.

Frank Schaeffer. whose father was a founder of the “religions right,” points out that events such as the one in Norway have happened here, and that more can be expected.

He does not consider them to be “isolated incidents,” but, rather, events united by a the theme of a crusade:

The extreme language of Evangelical/”pro-life” rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts.

And the anti-government charge is being led by people who are either true believers, thus unable to reason, or people catering to the true believers so that they can remain in the good books of the Tea Party, which is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed.

Some people took the next step. The night of December 14, 2008, Bruce Turnidge was in handcuffs and sitting next to an FBI agent in Turnidge’s farmhouse in Oregon. He was ranting about the “need” for militias and cursing the election of an African American president. Hours earlier, his son, Joshua, had been arrested for allegedly causing a fatal bomb explosion.

There’s much more. Follow the link to read it.

We should be as concerned about homegrown fanatics, even the ones dressed fashionably in clothing we are used to, as we are about ones in exotic garb from far-away places with strange-sounding names.

Perhaps more concerned.

It is curious that those who purport loyalty to the Gospel of Love are so enamored of killing.

H/T Bill F. for the link at the top of the post.

Addendum, a Few Moments Later:

Via Contradict Me:

Notice how “organized terrorist attack” becomes “lone crazy individual” and “isolated incident” when perpetrator(s) are discovered to be white.

CLick through for the original image.

Source.

Jay Leno:

Texas governor Rick Perry said God is calling on him to run for President. But Michele Bachmann said that God is calling on her to run for President. You know, if God is that indecisive, he’s probably for Mitt Romney.

Via OhMyGov!

Unreliable reports are surfacing that Rupert Murdoch’s phone messages have been hacked.

Details here.

In other news, Leonard Pitts, Jr., reports on Fox News’s coverage on the voicemail hacking story (Hint: There’s hardly any).

Now, let us be fair and balanced here. Fox is owned by Murdoch and the last thing any news organization wants is to be in the awkward position of reporting on itself. To have to air that which might embarrass or damage colleagues or bosses is the definition of a no-win situation, especially since there will always be doubts, from within and without, about your ability to do so fairly. But when professionalism demands, this is what you do.

Fox is not a news organization. It is a propaganda mill.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

What the Booman said.

Mano Singham has a particularly jaundiced view of President Obama’s Kabuki moves:

Obama and the Democratic party leadership are not trying to get the best deal from the Republicans. They and the Republicans agree on what they want to do (cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits and provide more tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations) because that is what their bosses, the oligarchy, want.

What Obama is trying to negotiate is a way to get all these things without completely alienating his party’s base. He will go as far as he can get away with. That is why all these trial balloons keep getting floated and then denied.

Can’t say that I disagree strongly, since the Beltway Braintrust has convinced everyone inside the Beltway that outgo, rather than income, is the problem.

Meanwhile, Dick Polman collects some interesting quotations.

At least, that’s what Scott Herhold thinks, even though he says he’s not saying that. A snippet:

A colleague of mine, when asked if a U.K. phone-hacking scandal could break out in America, likes to reply: “We’re not organized enough to organize a three-car funeral, much less a sophisticated phone surveillance scam.”

There’s truth in her take. At most mainstream news media outlets, particularly at newspapers, the order of the day is survival. And phone hacking is both expensive and illegal, two major threats to longevity.

I’m not saying it could not happen here, particularly at tabloids like the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a variety of the escapades erupt at an online celebrity gossip site.

The reasons he cites later on in the article are actually quite persuasive and worth a look for anyone who expects it to happen here.

There’s another one he missed (or maybe he ran out of room).

Great Britain is a small country, less than 90,000 square miles. That’s roughly between the sizes of Minnesota and Michigan. Any significant newspaper there is necessarily a national paper, not just in influence (as the New York Times may be considered a national paper), but also in distribution. Even the Guardian long ago dropper the “Manchester” from its masthead.

That’s a lot of hungry cats in one cage.

A scandal at a British paper is therefore ipso facto a national scandal.

So I think it is unlikely to have happened here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that or some other scurvy practice at a regional rag.

Frankly, I think the cesspool of lies known as “Fox News” has done and does far more damage to the polity in its short life than the News of the World has done to Britain throughout the paper’s existence.

In the Chicago Tribune, Megan Crepeau decodes Congressman Allen West’s (R, My-Way-or-the-Highway) charge that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “not a lady” because she dared to disagree with one of his political stances.

After pointing out that the Congresswoman is neither a British peer nor a 19th Century robber baron’s trophy wife, she concludes with

OK, obviously these are ridiculous standards to judge any woman by these days — so much so that the word “lady” has started to be reappropriated by young folks like me, who use the word casually and ironically. I start instant message conversations to my female friends with “hey lady,” and it’s funny because I know the friend I’m chatting with is parked on her couch being as slovenly and unladylike as I am. “Ask a Lady” is a popular advice column on the website thehairpin.com. The website’s male equivalent is “Ask A Dude,” which gives you an idea of how seriously anyone takes the word “lady” these days.

But West takes it very seriously, and here’s why: When he said “lady,” he was speaking in code. To old-fashioned conservative men like West, “lady” just means “someone who agrees with me,” or at least “someone who disagrees with me quietly.” To be a “lady” is to be docile, calm and uncritical. West thinks that since his colleague is just a woman, not a lady, she doesn’t deserve to “be afforded due respect.”