Movies produced by right wingers always suck, and they never make money. (See the recent release of “Atlas Shrugged,” an “objectivist” fantasy based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, which circled the drain after its first weekend, for example.) So it would have been a surprise if “The Undefeated,” the deceptively titled documentary about the Quitter from Wasilla had done boffo box office when it opened in limited release this weekend. Why anyone would waste their hard-earned money on a puff piece about a unpleasant, vindictive ignoramus is another question.
Here, from IndieWIRE, are the preliminary numbers:
— Polebrity Sarah Palin, writing on Facebook, on President Obama’s economic policies, ignoring the fact that it is her team that keeps walking away from the negotiating table.
If you ignore people who are desperate for attention, they will go away. Here’s proof:
Amid diminishing media interest, [the GOP’s most recent losing vice presidential nominee and former governor of Alaska who quit mid-term] has quit her high-profile bus tour halfway through and returned to Alaska with her family, according to RealClearPolitics.
The move puts a damper on widespread speculations that [the former governor’s] “One Nation” bus tour, which launched on Memorial Day, was a potential precursor to a potential White House bid for 2012. [She] never made it to her scheduled stops in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire…
The “One Nation” tour launched with intense media interest, as reporters initially followed [her] and her family on the road, diligently trying to decipher the former half-term Alaska governor and ex-GOP vice presidential nominee’s 2012 intentions. But after being ignored and mislead [sic] and denied interviews or access, reporters’ attention fizzled.
What have you seen so far today and what are you going to take away from your visit?
– The question to Sarah Palin from a reporter in Boston to which she infamouly replied, “He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.” When called on the massive flub later, Palin falsely claimed she was responding to an ambush question: “And in a shout-out, gotcha-type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly. And I know my American history.”
PALIN: He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.
Months ago, Lawrence O’Donnell correctly predicted the day on which Donald Trump would admit he was not running for president — that day, May 16, being the deadline for NBC’s announcement that they had picked up Trump’s reality show for another year. The fact that the show is the network’s top rated primetime show (or at least it was before the Donald aligned himself with the racist birther movement) should have been made it cinch that Trump never had any intention of running — that it was all a big publicity ploy.
And, if stories that NBC upped his salary to $60 million are true, as publicity ploys go, Trump’s fake presidential aspirations were stunningly effective.
Now O’Donnell has turned his sights on Sarah Palin. He reminds us that on March 2, Fox president Roger Ailes fired all the pols on his network who were seriously considering running for president. Palin and Mike Huckabee were not among them.
It was fun to be at the Madison capitol today to protest Sarah Palin and the tea partiers.
There were about 1,500 tea partiers, many bused in by Americans for Prosperity, the rightwing group funded by the Koch brothers.
The tea partiers were surrounded by about 3,000 or more pro-labor supporters, who let their presence be felt with raucous chants and boos and cries of “Shame, shame, shame!”
“Recall Walker,” the protesters chanted over and over again, as well as, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker has got to go.”
Another chant was “Tax, tax, tax the rich!”
As with all the historic Madison protests this year, creativity marked the signs of the pro-labor activists.
“I Can See Waulkersha From My Sign,” one of them said, playing off of Palin’s gaffe about Russia, as well as governor Walker’s name and Waukesha County, where highly irregular vote counting occurred during the recent Supreme Court race…
The tea partiers waved their usual “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and held signs that said “Walker for President,” “Walker/Palin,” and “Economic Freedom.”
One tea party sign seemed anti-Semitic: “Give It Up, Kloppenstein!” It was referring to JoAnne Kloppenburg, the candidate who ran for the Supreme Court against David Prosser. Kloppenburg is Jewish…
Rightwing provocateur Andrew Breitbart stirred up the tea party crowd.
And when Sarah Palin was announced, the tea partiers gave her a big ovation, and the protesters booed heartily…
Dumb gets old quick, according to a recent CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll. The better we know the Tea Party, the less we like it. Here’s how those surveyed rated the movement that gave us Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, former Alaska partial-term Gov. Sarah Palin, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, among others:
Favorable: 32%
Unfavorable: 47%
Never Heard Of: 7%
No Opinion: 14%
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight took these results and combined them with earlier polls to show a trend tea baggers can’t deny. With each passing day, their approval numbers go down, down, down.
Silver concludes that Republicans, who scored 44% favorable and 48% unfavorable in the same CNN poll, have the most to lose if the tea baggers get dunked.
I’ve long been of the view that the Tea Party, despite nominating poor candidates in a couple of key races, was a significant net positive for the G.O.P. in 2010, both because it contributed to the “enthusiasm gap” and because it helped an unpopular Republican Party to re-brand itself in never-out-of-style conservative draping. But if the Tea Party ain’t over yet, the point in time at which it was an electoral asset for Republicans soon may be.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”
“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.”
“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.
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.”
Movies produced by right wingers always suck, and they never make money. (See the recent release of “Atlas Shrugged,” an “objectivist” fantasy based on Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, which circled the drain after its first weekend, for example.) So it would have been a surprise if “The Undefeated,” the deceptively titled documentary about the Quitter from Wasilla had done boffo box office when it opened in limited release this weekend. Why anyone would waste their hard-earned money on a puff piece about a unpleasant, vindictive ignoramus is another question.
