Political Theatre category archive

Via Bob Cesca.

Andy Borowitz reports:

“Michele Bachmann is a staunch believer in the theory of Intelligent Design,” he said. “However, Intelligent Design cannot explain Michele Bachmann.”

But Dr. Logsdon added that Rep. Bachmann remains an attractive candidate, especially for those Republican voters who find former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin “too cerebral.”

Via Bartblog.

TomDispatch looks at how words about war have been redefined.

Here’s a sampling. Follow the link for all nine of them and the reasoning underlying his definitions:

• Enemy: Any super-evil pipsqueak on whose back you can raise at least $1.2 trillion a year for the National Security Complex.
• Covert War: It used to mean secret war, a war “in the shadows” and so beyond the public’s gaze. Now, it means a conflict in the full glare of publicity that everybody knows about, but no one can do anything about. Think: in the news, but off the books.
• Withdrawal: We’re going, we’re going… Just not quite yet and stop pushing!

Via Asia Times.

Via Bergman and Ossman.

Via Oliver Willis.

No doubt konservative kool-aid is on the menu.

Republican politicians were gathering near Vail on Sunday for a semiannual retreat aimed at promoting business-friendly policy.

The meetings are organized by two of the nation’s most powerful conservative political donors, Charles and David Koch of the privately held energy giant Koch Industries. Their brother, William Koch, who on Saturday paid $2 million at a Denver auction for a tintype image of Billy the Kid, also is a conservative political donor, but he does not participate in his brothers’ activities.

Having been raised Southern Baptist, I have found the Southern Baptist Convention’s veer towards wingnuttery over the past three decades to be most distressing. (It is no coincidence that the trend started when Texans took over the leadership of the SBC, altered the structure of governance, undermined basic Baptist tenets, and attempted to enforce autocratic rule.)

I know it also distressed my father, who was descended from generations of Baptists. Indeed, the little Baptist Church in which I was raised stood on land donated by one of my ancestors shortly after the Revolutionary War, when persecution of Baptists by the colonial government came to an end (in the Virginia colony, the Church of England was the established church,; supported by tax dollars; others, including Elijah Baker, who founded my father’s congregation, were persecuted).

Anyhoo, the path of the SBC troubled my father so much so that he sometimes wondered whether the congregation would do better to leave the SBC and join the Yankee Baptist Church American Baptist Association. As a practical matter, the congregation ignored Nashville as much as it could and went its own way.

Now comes a hint of Christian charity from the SBC.

Not much more than a hint, but still a hint. Cynthia Tucker reports in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. A nugget:

Last week at its annual meeting, the Southern Baptist Convention called for “a just and compassionate path to legal status” for the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented workers. The “messengers,” as the convention delegates are called, also denounced bigotry and harassment toward those who are here illegally.

The resolution was hotly debated, and it carries no imprimatur of authority for the millions of Southern Baptists across the country, whose churches take pride in their autonomy. They have no hierarchy — no pope or bishop to enforce adherence to church doctrine.

Furthermore, the clause in the resolution that dealt with legalization barely survived, with just 51 percent of the messengers supporting it in an early vote, according to the Baptist Press.

The delegates later added an amendment which noted that the Baptists were in no way endorsing “amnesty,” a hot-button term without any precise meaning.

It is telling that Christian charity squeaked by with a margin of one percentage point.

I am more and more leaning to believe that the charter school movement is one more Trojan Horse for raiding public funds to stuff private pocketbooks.

Elmer Smith of Philly dot com cites a study that is pushing the lean even farther:

Do you know where your children are?

They may not be where you think. If they are among the 40,000 students enrolled in one of the city’s 71 charter schools, chances are they are in no better place today than they were when you transferred them.

If they are one of the 3,460 Philadelphia kids who are enrolled in cybercharters, they are at best in limbo and probably lost in cyberspace.

That may be the most sobering finding in the data released last week in a Stanford University study of charter schools across the country. The report by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes asserts that students in cybercharters are performing far below students in traditional district schools.

In reading and math, cybercharters performed below average in comparison with district schools at every grade level tested. That was without exception.

(snip)

That may be the best business model in all of education. But at a time when the state is claiming that it can’t afford to provide for basic education subsidies, paying the same rate for cyberschools as for brick-and-mortar schools is an unconscionable waste.

Afterthought:

No, charter school grasshopper, “Trojan Horse” did not originate as a computer term.

Date: Saturday, May 28th.

Special Guest Speaker: Edith “Pat” Harrington from “Voter Registration.”

Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (Map).

Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 $6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a good value for the price).

More information here.

Slightly over a year ago, Dennis G. at Balloon Juice wrote a long post on theft of labor as a tactic of the rich and powerful to get more rich and powerful. Here’s a bit (I would recommend the whole thing–it explains the purpose of Reagonics):

The Confederacy really wasn’t about slavery. That was just a tactic. The real issue was finding the best way to steal the labor of others.

Before the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the 13th Amendment (which Mississippi has still NOT officially ratified) slavery was a State sponsored institution in America and it was the easiest way to steal the labor of others. Protecting the simplicity of that labor stealing system is why the Confederates started the Civil War.

Now Georgia tries to bring back press gangs, dressing them up as “probation officers.”

“Incognegro”: Two liberal black bloggers infiltrate the Right Online conference:

A bit from the write up:

Elon and I receive quick glances at our credentials as we walk through the door. Neither of us can believe it — we’re in! Our hearts are pounding. We are immediately conspicuous — it’s hard to find any other black faces in a sea of white ones. Heads turns and people stare…hard. I start walking toward the front but Elon wisely suggests that we head for some empty seats in the back near the one other black conservative we see. Given that we stand out, best not to attract too much attention to ourselves lest we be recognized by a more plugged-in, net-savvy conservative. After all, a couple of years ago, Right Online speaker Erick Erickson and I had had a public and ugly battle on Twitter in which he kinda made an ass of himself. And Elon’s This Week in Blackness has achieved its own strong internet following.

Via the Booman.

Very creative.

California state Controller John Chiang announced Tuesday he was halting pay for state lawmakers, saying their budget plan was not balanced and did not meet the state’s requirement for them to be paid.

Chiang issued his decision after conducting an analysis of the budget package pushed through by Democratic lawmakers last week on a simple majority vote. Lawmakers said they believed that action allowed them to continue receiving paychecks, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the package, saying he didn’t want to see billions more in borrowing or questionable maneuvers.

The larger issue is that California has rendered itself ungovernable. Governor Brown seems to have the guts to make push come to shove.

H/T Karen for the link.

Imprisoning brown persons for profit(eers):

Harold Meyerson considers the wingnuttiness of most of the declared candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination and wonders who’s responsible.

Then he suggests an answer:

How did the Republican Party become at once so insular and unmoored that winning its presidential nod requires an extremism that would give Barry Goldwater the creeps? Many are responsible for the Republicans’ descent into madness, but pride of place surely goes to Fox News chair Roger Ailes, the onetime Nixon aide who created a counterfactual network that in turn helped create a counterfactual Republican Party. Ailes, we now learn from a recent article in New York Magazine, despairs over the current crop of Republican candidates, but he has no one more to blame than himself for driving more electable Republicans from the race. The man who gave Palin (as well as Huckabee, Santorum, and Gingrich) a regular gig at Fox, according to one Republican close to Ailes who’s quoted in the article, now thinks “Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid.”

Via DelawareLiberal.

In Mitt World, it’s always Opposites Day.

Joan Venocchi considers Mitt’s position on the auto industry (first, criticizing McMaverick during the campaign of the Republican nomination for proposing nothing, then criticizine President Obama after the election for doing something) and on Michigan’s overall employment situation (not so hot, despite the improvement in the auto sector):

If they (jobs numbers–ed.) stay that way and Romney is the Republican presidential nominee, he will try to use them to make Michigan voters forget that first, he criticized McCain for doing nothing. Then, he criticized Obama for doing something.It’s classic Romney — in favor of something and nothing and on the side of everything.

One could argue the Mitt the Flip is a weather vane/vain (either spelling works) blowin’ in the winds of whatever the hell sounds good today.