Straight to VHS
At self-promotion, Sarah Palin is a natch,
Her ability to hog the limelight’s unmatched.
She’s got chutzpah and aplomb,
But her documentary’s a bomb —
Instead of “The Undefeated,” it’s “The Unwatched.”
Month: July 2011
GOP 2010 Campaign ‘Pledge to America’ Broken: ‘We Will Fight Efforts to Use a National Crisis for Political Gain’
By threatening to crash the U.S. economy if they do not get their way in negotiations on economic policy, House Republicans, led by their tea party cohort, have rightly been accused of holding the economy hostage.
Only time will tell if this completely made-up crisis, with its dire ramifications for the financial well-being of every American family, is, as it appears to be, a classic Republican overreach. But two things are certain now: They created this debt ceiling “crisis” solely for the purpose of extorting the Senate and administration into enacting laws that benefit the Republicans’ wealthy corporate sponsors to the detriment of the middle class and wage earners.
And, by creating a national crisis for no other purpose than political gain, they have rendered quaint a key promise they made to independent voters in their 2010 campaign “Pledge to America.”
David Weigel revisited the House GOP’s campaign Pledge yesterday and found this gem:
One In Six American Workers Cares for an Elderly or Disabled Person
One in six
Americans who work a full- or part-time job also report assisting with care for an elderly or disabled family member, relative, or friend. Middle-aged, low-income, black, and Hispanic Americans are among the most likely to be caregivers.
Jeb Bush Doesn’t Completely Rule Out 2012 Prez Bid
You never say never. This is a standard answer that I’ve kind of learned how to give which is — you never say never, but I never rule out being on Dancing with the Stars either.
— Jeb Bush, in an interview on Fox News, not completely ruling out a presidential bid in 2012.
Ho-Hum, More Calls for a Third Political Party
The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It’s more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin. … America needs a third-party movement to break the hammerlock of the financial elites. Until that happens, the political class and the media conglomerates will continue to spew lies, American militarism will continue to destabilize a growing swath of the world, and the country will continue its economic decline.
— Jeffrey Sachs, writing in the Huffington Post.
What Obama Needs Is a Good Primary Challenge
I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), quoted answering questions on a radio show, saying it would be a good thing if President Obama faced a primary challenge.
Palin Movie Is a Bomb
$24,000
Total gross pulled in this past weekend by the Sarah Palin documentary, The Undefeated, despite increasing its playdates by 40% this weekend in 14 Tea Party-friendly locations, only to watch box office revenue decline by more than 63%. Distributor Arc Entertainment announced Sunday that the film soon will be available on pay per view, Reuters reports.
GAO Audit: Federal Reserve Gave $16 Trillion in Bailouts, Including to Foriegn Banks and Corporations
$16 Trillion
Amount given unilaterally by the Federal Reserve to banks and corporations around the world in bailouts after the financial meltdown at the end of the Bush administration, according toan audit by the Government Accounting Office ordered by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.
Norwegian Right-Wing Anti-Islam Terrorist Cited Tea Party, Nazis
In fact, for American conservatives, especially members of the tea partyist movement, the perpetrator of the attacks was much closer to home, ideologically speaking. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, has much more in common with American right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph than he does Osama bin Laden.
Here is Breivik, writing in his 1,500-page manifesto, titled “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence”:
Illegal Immigration from Mexico Declines to Net Zero
From the right-leaning San Diego Union-Tribune:
The overall undocumented population in this country last year was 11.2 million, down from its peak of about 12 million in 2007, the Hispanic Pew Center said. Mexicans accounted for 58 percent of that group, or about 6.5 million from a high of 7 million in 2007.
The annual inbound migration from Mexico is about one-fifth or one-sixth of what it was about a decade ago, when it was about 500,000 each year, said Jeff Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew center. Demographers said outbound migration to Mexico has remained stable at about 150,000 annually.
Passel pointed to three factors that are likely to have caused the decline:
