You know how both times Bush stole an election, people said they would move to Canada? Apparently it wasn’t an idle threat.
The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000.
In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000…
Not only that, fewer Canadians want to be in America.
Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.
No doubt many of those making good on the threat we have all uttered are from places already Canada-ish, like Seattle and Fargo and Portland(s). Those of us further south have a little harder time with the whole concept of frozen things. Still, our country is losing some of its best and brightest.
“Those who are coming have the highest level of education — these aren’t people who can’t get a job in the states,” [Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies] says. “They’re coming because many of them don’t like the politics, the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer.”
Would you have ever thought you’d understand — and agree — with that statement?
We welcome a new addition to our blogroll, er, sorry Jon, “web sites list.” This one was discovered by Buck during his live reporting from Florida’s “Serve to Preserve” global warming conference.
Ecorazzi bills itself as The Latest in Green Gossip, with current features on Rob Lowe’s testimony in Washington on behalf of hybrids, Courtney Cox’s line of global warming awareness t-shirts, and Madonna’s new movie on Malawi. At last, a way to waste time on celebrity scoop while feeling virtuous. Thanks, Ecorazzi!
I’m not sure if it’s the Mac person or the marketer in me but I find this likely meaningless bit of trivia fascinating. It seems Mac users have an edge over Dell owners when it comes to “social participation” online, which would include sites like this one. Here’s what they found:
Apple
Dell
Creators — Blog, publish web pages, upload videos
21%
12%
Critics — Comment on blogs, post ratings and reviews
25%
19%
Collectors — Use RSS, tag web pages
24%
14%
Joiners — Use social networking sites
26%
19%
Spectators — Read blogs, watch video, listen to podcasts
55%
30%
Inactives — Don’t participate in “social” activities online
34%
54%
Here at Pensito Review, one of us is totally Mac (hey, is that Uncle Tupelo on my Pandora station?), one of us is totally PC (Jon), and one of us goes back and forth, as expected from a registered Independent (Buck).
Take a break from whatever you’re doing tomorrow and check out Live Earth, the international music event to combat global warming.
Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.
Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms – TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels…
Live Earth was founded by Kevin Wall, the Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8, an event that brought together one of the largest audiences in history to combat poverty. Wall formed a partnership with Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection to ensure that Live Earth inspires behavioral changes long after 7/7/07.
Live Earth will stage official concerts at Giants Stadium in New York; Wembley Stadium in London; Aussie Stadium in Sydney; Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg; Makuhari Messe in Tokyo; the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai; and HSH Nordbank Arena in Hamburg.
Live Earth concerts will be broadcast to a live worldwide audience by MSN at www.LiveEarth.MSN.com.
The newest artist to be added to the list of performers is Yusuf, formerly known as Cat Stevens.
“When people are feeling better about the country they buy more flags. It was like this during the Nixon years.”
After decades in the flag business, Randolph Smith, president of Chicago-based Advertising Flag Co. Inc., said he has seen interest in the flag ebb and flow, according to the general sentiment people have about the country’s direction.
Immediately following the 9-11 attacks, for example, U.S. flag sales accounted for 25 percent of his business. Today, it’s about 16 to 18 percent and has been declining since 2003, he said.
“When people are feeling better about the country they buy more flags,” Smith said. “It was like this during the Nixon years. It wasn’t our bread and butter then either.”
Kimberly Sklarz, corporate secretary for Bartlett, Ill.-based FlagsUSA, said the run-up to the July 4 holiday, normally a busy time, has been particularly slow this year. The company’s U.S. flag sales were down 49 percent in June over the same period last year.
“It is a very sad time right now. We are just kind of baffled by how things are going and all because of the war,” Sklarz said. “We expected it to make some kind of effect on the company, but it is getting pretty bad.”
A quick check of my own home shows…no flag. On the 4th of July, 2002, one was out there. But too many speeches by Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney about the United States and Iraq and democracy and terror and liberty and secret prisons and going it alone and the way forward and surges and sacrifice that costs them nothing but costs others everything and support for people who betray America have left me feeling like most former flag-fliers: over it.
More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice
The DOD requested $7.5 million over six years to develop the “weapon,” which they hoped would chemically alter straight enemy troops so they would become attracted to each other. Theoretically, the hostiles would become distracted by their new relationships and stop paying attention to blowing us up. Later, morale would suffer as Joe breaks up with Jim, and Jim’s friends all tell him he’s so much better off because everyone knows Joe is jerk. Then one of them starts going out with Joe. And so forth.
The official line is that almost as quickly as the idea was hatched, it was scuttled. But the Sunshine Project, which monitors such hair-brained Defense Department activity via the Freedom of Information Act, says that ain’t so.
[Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond] went on to state that the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate, based out of Quantico, actually used the “gay-bomb” idea as a marketing tool in a CD-ROM from 2001-2002 and that “the Pentagon… submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country.”
More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice. That fact could blow up more Republican and Christian right fund raising campaigns than the best placed bomb, gay or otherwise.
While we all sympathize with the incredible psychological pressure Paris Hilton must have been under while being unable to shave her legs for three days, we have to wonder if, besides Al Sharpton (and maybe Lindsay Lohan and Michelle Ritchie), anyone really has a good reason to care about the story.
This is news: There’s a G8 meeting under way, the president is hung over, Lebanon is burning, Putin’s getting all Cold War-ry on us and soldiers and civilians are dying in Iraq. Yet our cult of personality remains obsessed with the story of the poor little rich girl who thinks it’s okay to get drunk and drive a car again and again.
‘Are we just so pathetic and so lonely that we have to live life through people like Paris Hilton?’
TVNewser provides a log of the shallowness of cable television’s reportage of Hilton’s release from jail yesterday:
10:36 am, MSNBC: Chris Jansing asks the Village Voice’s Michael Musto: “You know everything there is to know about Paris Hilton. Does she have a medical condition?” “Yeah, she’s crazy,” he says…
11:01 am, FNC: Co-host E.D. Hill: “It is a great day in America if your name is Paris Hilton or you are an illegal alien. Today, we’ll tell you why…”
11:56 am, CNN: Immediately following an interview with General David Petraeus about Iraq, Heidi Collins says: “Well you know, we’ll always have Paris, but she won’t always have a cell…”
12:08 pm, MSNBC: The cabler reveals an animation titled “Paris Hilton Free,” complete with a bark from her dog Tinkerbell. “Paris Hilton’s long, grueling ordeal behind bars has come to an end,” Lisa Daniels mocks…
12:10 pm, FNC: Jon Scott’s attempt to transition from the G8 to Hollywood: “While the president is in Germany, the world’s attention is focused on Paris — Paris Hilton…”
12:22 pm, CNN International: “These are live pictures from our affiliate KTLA, helicopter pictures of the home of Paris Hilton… We’re watching that home. Lots of cars down there.” Co-anchor Stephen Frazier transitions: “Let’s turn now to Harvard…”
12:44pm, MSNBC: “It’s good to be rich and famous in America,” legal analyst Susan Filan concludes. “It is; I wish I was both,” Lisa Daniels responds…
1:38 pm, FNC: “This was not a good punishment for her,” a Live Desk panelist says. “The real punishment for Paris Hilton, I think, would be that the media gives her no coverage at all… That would be cruel and unusual punishment for her…”
1:54 pm, CNN: Kyra Phillips asks a guest: “Are we just so pathetic and so lonely that we have to live life through people like Paris Hilton?”
2:25 pm, MSNBC: After talking about immigration, Contessa Brewer asks political analyst Pat Buchanan: “I have got to ask you, is it fair that Paris Hilton is under house arrest?…”
4:09 pm, FNC: Neil Cavuto jokes: “Do you know if Paris sold stock today?” “I don’t know if she knows what stock is,” his guest responds.
Bill O’Reilly has done the impossible. He’s got me cheering for an evangelist who says homosexuals and people who don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are going to hell. Through the magic of O’Reilly’s utter foulness, I am now on the same team as Bill Keller, who according to the Tampa Tribune, “writes a daily devotional published on his Web site and e-mailed to more than 2 million subscribers. His live, call-in program is televised weeknights at 1 a.m. in the Tampa market.”
Keller: Going on O’Reilly “requires you are really prayed up surrendered”
Keller recently appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, taking the usual abuse and sanctimonious hot air from Bill, who tried to appear to be the voice of reason. The topic was Mitt Romney, whose faith Keller has consistently referred to as a cult (go Rev.!). His charge that a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan has Americans United for the Separation of Church and State asking the IRS to revoke Keller’s tax exemption.
Keller posted his reaction to being beaten up by O’Reilly on his web site, www.liveprayer.com. And he makes some good points. FOX, O’Reilly, and most of their viewers, he says, only pretend they love Jesus and the flag.
As “conservative friendly” and “Christian friendly” as FOX News tries to portray itself, it is still very much part of the world…Anyone who goes into that environment taking a Biblical position on the issues and telling people Jesus is the only way to be saved, immediately comes under intense fire. The world for the most part may believe in God, but they don’t honor Him, they clearly reject His Truth, and very few have really committed their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ.
In addition to speaking to an audience that for the most part rejects Biblical Truth, I was also dealing with exposing a satanically inspired cult that has done a masterful public relationship job of getting people, including many Christians, to believe they are “just another Christian church.” As I have stated often, the teachings and theology of the Mormon cult are completely inconsistent with Biblical Christianity…
You’d have to call Anita Bryant, the former beauty queen gone anti-gay zealot gone born again Christian gone divorced gone bankrupt orange juice spokesperson, a reluctant hero. But a new exhibit in South Florida does just that, commemorating the 30-year anniversary of her crusade and its monumental unintended affects.
Anita Bryant in 1977: “I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children”
In 1977, singer Anita Bryant successfully campaigned to repeal a Dade County ordinance banning discrimination against gay men and lesbians. [The recently called home Rev. Jerry] Falwell came to South Florida in support and two years later created the Moral Majority. Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly quickly joined Falwell in becoming outspoken opponents of gay rights.
“This is where they all had their stage debut,” said Jack Rutland, executive director of the Stonewall Library & Archives and organizer of the exhibit “Days Without Sunshine: Anita Bryant’s Anti-Gay Crusade…”
“In a completely unintended way, Anita Bryant was about the best thing to happen to the gay rights movement,” said John Coppola, exhibit curator and former head of exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “She and her cohorts were so over the top that it just completely galvanized the gay rights movement.”
Rutland goes so far as to call Bryant the mother of the gay rights movement…
Bryant, now 67, declined to comment when contacted at her Anita Bryant Ministries International Inc. in Oklahoma City.
Singing from the age of two, Bryant became Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and was a second runner-up in the 1959 Miss America beauty pageant. She had three big pop hits: “‘Til There Was You” (1959); “Paper Roses” (1960); and “In My Little Corner of the World” (1960). In 1960, she married Bob Green, a Miami disc jockey, with whom she eventually raised four children. She became a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission in 1969, and nationally televised commercials featured her singing “Come to the Florida Sunshine tree”, and opining that “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine”.
…concerns over homosexual recruitment of children inspired the name of Bryant’s political organization, Save Our Children. Among Bryant’s assertions during the campaign were “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children†and “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters.â€
Bryant was also a pioneer on the receiving side of getting “pied,” as the YouTube video above shows. Before she took that pie in the face during an anti-gay press junket, such tactics were rare. So anyone who enjoyed seeing Ann Coulter pied should really thank Anita for leading the way.
But Anita’s fortunes took a dive after she spoke out.
Her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission also was allowed to lapse because of the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns, the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice, and, at least reportedly, because of her divorce.
Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time and in 1980 she divorced him. She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they have tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues. Commercial success has been elusive, and they have left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001).
Who knows? Without Anita’s St. Bernard analogies and parental paranoia, gay people might still be in the closet. At the very least, she was fun to make fun of. Actually, she still is.
Without even waiting for the other snobbish and judgmental rules of the new immigration bill to go into effect, the Bush administration is plowing ahead to put all the costs of coming to this country on the new residents. No matter how much benefit you believe we get from immigrants — whether it’s a lot or a little — this hardly seems fair.
But no one ever accused George W. Bush of being fair. The new asking price for citizenship tells us that in his view, the only good immigrant is a rich immigrant.
When my grandfather was an illegal immigrant from Italy in the 19-teens, his family could have never afforded fees like these
…the Bush administration made final Tuesday a new set of fees that will significantly hike the cost of becoming a U.S. citizen or legal resident.
Beginning July 30, the citizenship fee will rise to $595 from $330. Those seeking to become legal permanent residents will see the cost nearly triple to $930 — plus a fingerprinting charge.
The $930 is higher than the $905 fee proposed for legal residency in February, when critics charged that the government was pricing residency beyond the reach of many potential applicants.
But, in what Citizenship and Immigration Services chief Emilio Gonzales said was a change in favor of families, the cost to process a child as a legal resident will be cut to $600 from the proposed $805.
That means a family of two adults and two children will pay $3,060 to become legal residents, compared to $1,100 under the current fees.
But, see, we really need the money. We have to grow the government even more, as we have at unprecedented rates already, under Bush.
Citizen and Immigration Services needs the additional $1 billion that the fee increases will raise to hire personnel, upgrade computer systems, train employees and make other improvements…
Gonzales acknowledged the fee hikes are steep, but vowed that the increased revenue would help reinvent the agency, with a 20 percent improvement in service in the first year…
The agency gets more than 90 percent of its funding from the fees and will have a budget of about $2.3 billion after the new fee structure goes into effect, officials said.
I don’t know about you but I’d say that having the Immigration Service work 20 percent better is money well extorted.
When my grandfather was an illegal immigrant from Italy in the 19-teens, his family could have never afforded fees like these. It was all they could do to scrape up the money for some fake papers and a ticket on a boat bound for Ellis Island.
Unfortunately, Grandpa spent the whole voyage arffing over the rail or passed out in steerage, so he failed to memorize the false information in his papers, such as what his name was supposed to be, who had sponsored him, where he would be living, who his closest relatives in America were, etc. He was shipped right back to Italy. The next time he made the crossing, he studied harder and gave the right fake answers. He passed his citizenship test for real in the 1950s.
The recent news out of Kentucky was just awful,
They found the senator unconscious and horizontal.
And since his hospitalization,
There’s been little news about his condition,
But now everybody’s having a 20-minute conversation with Mitch McConnell.
“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”
An Associated Press-NORC survey found that 44% of American Jews hold a favorable opinion of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, compared with 39% who view him unfavorably. By contrast, just 32% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while 59% said they have a negative view.
“Their New Deal is socialism for the super-rich (and their own enrichment) even if it means increasing poverty, inequality, and illness at home and around the world. They also want to rewrite history to ignore and outright deny our past flaws while banning books that say otherwise from our libraries. And they select even our military leaders based on their version of political correctness over ability.”
— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by Deadline, in his July 4th message.
President Donald Trump is asking for $1,500,000 million for the military for next year. That’s close to $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) more than we were spending on the military in fiscal year 2025, before Trump took office, Alternet reports. This increase is huge by any measure. It comes to around $4,600 per household. It is around 8% of the total budget.
A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.
A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Around 40% of voters in the 2024 election said the economy was their top issue, far outstripping any other matter. And those voters favored Donald Trump by 60% to 38%. Many say they were moved by his pledges to tame inflation, rebuild U.S. infrastructure, cut red tape and trim government waste. … About a year and a half later, more voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy than approve, 61% to 35%, an average of polls by the Cook Political Report found this month.”
A Reuters analysis of Trump’s public comments from June 23 through July 6 (13 days) — when a string of left-wing Democratic candidates won their party’s primaries in New York — found he invoked communism 81 times.
