Sarah Palin Gets Her Message Across On Fox, All Right: She's Dangerously Clueless

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It's been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, watching Donald Trump wow the Republican world with his dazzling mixture of aggressive ignorance and utter crassness. He's like Sarah Palin on steroids.

But Palin herself remains a potent spokesperson for the forces of ignorance. And while a lot of her apologists and defenders like to claim that Palin is unfairly victimized by quick sound bites, she really makes a much bigger impression -- as someone so utterly clueless they should never be permitted near any public office again -- in longer formats, such as her wide-ranging and rambling interview yesterday with Fox News' Bret Baier.

It produced little exchanges like this one, on increasing the debt ceiling:

PALIN: Hells no. I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American public we're not serious yet. We're still gonna incur more debt. No. And we don't have to increase the debt ceiling here in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that, well, we have to despite the fact that we're raking in, the federal government, six billion dollars a day.

Take that money and service our debt first! And pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we're showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we're serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.

BAIER: So, what would you say to the Republicans who do vote for it, on the advice of some experts on Wall Street and around the country who believe that not increasing it would really hurt the economy and create a disaster?

PALIN: I would say, before you seriously think about voting to increase the debt limit and incur more unsustainable, immoral, unethical debt that is really going to ruin our country, to continue down this path -- prioritize, service the debt first, pay for the very essential services that are constitutionally mandated.

Let the states take care of a whole lot of these services and projects, and if a state wants to do something a little bit special, like some extra roads or some extra museums and monuments and cowboy poetry, let that state figure out how they're gonna pay for it.

Palin also sort of weighed in on the other presidential candidates, though you'll notice she actually says nothing at all about any of them, other than that she respects them because they're good Republicans and by golly she loves to see them running; and then remains firmly noncommittal about her own prospects for running.

Then she wraps it all up by suggesting that President Obama had foreign money flowing into his campaign accounts in the 2008 election -- which would, of course, be a crime. Baier asks her:

BAIER: Before I let you go, are you suggesting that the FEC may find that foreign money got into the Obama campaign in 2008?

PALIN: Am I wrong to bring up the fact -- and maybe, Bret, at this point you have more information than I do on where a lot of those dollars were that were unaccounted for. Remember that we saw much proof of a lot of the donations to Obama's campaign -- credit-card contributions under fake names, addresses that perhaps weren't even real addresses in the U.S.

You know, I hope that we don't just give up on making sure that we have free and fair elections -- not just Obama's! Heck, some on the GOP too! Uh, on the GOP side. Let's make sure that rules are being followed. We are a land of laws.

Methinks she's been dipping into Pam "Atlas Wanks" Geller's beandip again.

Apparently, God's Wrath Was Directed At Those Southern Tornado Victims

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

First we had the the professional corporate climate-change deniers snorting at the idea that global warming might have played a role in this week's devastating tornadoes in the South.

Now we have religious-right climate-change deniers claiming that they know what did cause those tornadoes: in fact, the storms were a product of God's wrath and an expression of his judgment.

This time it's Dr. Calvin Beisner, voicing his views on the radio show of the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer, via RightWingWatch:

BEISNER: What this tells me, Bryan, is that we need to recognize that natural disasters like this are like distant early-warning signals. There is judgment to come. We are all sinners. None of us, none of us is righteous enough to say, 'Oh, I wouldn't deserve it if that happened to me.'

I'm sure folks in Alabama and Georgia will be pleased to hear that God singled them out for judgment -- especially ahead of such godless places as Hollywood -- just to prove that it can happen to good people too.

And why are we getting God's wrath? you ask. Well, Pat Robertson has the answer -- it's because we've become a modern-day "Sodom and Gomorrah":

Robertson: And I believe that the anointing of the Lord has been here to fulfill the desire of those early settlers, to take the gospel from America throughout the world, and that’s what we’ve been here to do. But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t take a great scholar to tell you the United States has lost its moorings.

When you think that courts have denied children the right to pray in schools, that there’s a vendetta against religious belief, that now homosexuality has been made a constitutional right, that abortion has been made a constitutional right, the courts and judges have trampled on the early origins of our nation, they have distorted the meaning of the First Amendment. It’s all been done, and we’ve let it happen.

But I was reading today about a place called Sodom and Gomorrah, and a man named Abraham stood before God, and he says, “God, there’re righteous people in that city, would you kill them along with the wicked, must not the judge of all the earth do right?” And God finally promised, “If I can find ten righteous in that city, I will spare it,” just ten. Well the time came he could only find six, so they destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

But there’re many righteous here in America, and we need to band together and pray that God Almighty will spare this great land and reestablish in our hearts the vision of the pioneers.

Well, considering that the storms struck hardest in states represented by some of the most hardcore global-warming denialists, maybe they're onto something with this whole "God's retribution" bit. Though not for the reasons they presume.

Donald Talks Dirty To The Ladies: Trump Launches Obscenity-laced Rant In Vegas Talk To GOP Women [unbleeped]

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'll bet the sweet ladies of the Spring Mountain Republican Women's club in Nevada weren't really prepared for this.

Speaking before several GOP women's groups who invited him to Las Vegas, Donald Trump launched into a profanity-laced tirade against President Obama and his administration's policies.

Among the bon mots, as you can hear in the amateur video above [originals here]:

-- Trump would deal with OPEC in order to lower oil prices just by being tough: "We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you're not going to raise that f—-ing price."

-- Here's how he'd tell China he intends to slap a tariff on their exports: "Listen you mother——ers we're going to tax you 25 percent!"

He sprinkled obscenities throughout, including one not in the video, describing Iraq: "We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road they blow them up, we build again, in the meantime we can't get a f---king school in Brooklyn."

Oh, and apparently he believes that the idea that Iraq could become a democracy is a joke. Which makes you wonder about his audience of former George W. Bush devotees -- especially when they applaud this loudly.

Now, I understand that, you know, when in Rome, blah blah blah. But you gotta wonder if Franklin Graham or the rest of the Religious Right still think Trump is a good horse to be backing, you know what I mean? Not to mention the Spring Mountain Republican Women's Club.

Conservatives Like O'Reilly Fleeing The Birther Bogosity Insist: What Racism?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly thinks it's just shameful that liberals are calling out the Birthers for their racism so last night he brought on Margaret Hoover and Alicia Menendez to talk about it.

Of course, Hoover thought it was entirely "predictable" that people would decry the innate racism of the Birther theories and their progenitors -- which is like saying it's "predictable" people would be distraught by a terrorist attack.

Then Menendez sort of agreed with Hoover, but added:

MENENDEZ: There are big conversations we need to be having about the fact that there are so many racial tensions and anxieties in this country.

O'REILLY: Well, let me stop you there.

MENENDEZ: When you start calling people racist...

O'REILLY: Let me stop you there. I don't see all of these racial confrontations in this country, and I do this every day. What I see is Barack Obama elected president with 43 percent of the white vote. He got something like 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. I don't see it. And unless you can show it to me, Alicia...

... Look, wouldn't you both agree that calling somebody a racist, anybody, without proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a vicious, hateful thing to do? Would you agree?

MENENDEZ: As vicious as suggesting that the president of the United States is not a real American.

O'REILLY: No, no, no. Just answer my question, Alicia. Calling somebody a racist without proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a vicious, hateful thing, yes or no?

MENENDEZ: I agree.

O'REILLY: OK, you agree.

MENENDEZ: I think that part of the reason you see that rhetoric...

O'REILLY: Now we have a cadre of people on national television doing a vicious, hateful thing. Yet...

MENENDEZ: But Bill, they're doing it in response to what was a vicious and hateful thing coming out of the right. And there were very few people like you who are being honest and calling it what it was.

O'REILLY: No. 1, you don't commit bad behavior and point to other bad behavior. And what came out of the right -- that's true, Alicia. Write it down. Don't justify bad behavior by pointing to other. Wait a minute. And the second thing is what came out of the right and was absolutely blown apart on this broadcast was the birth certificate might be
phony. I didn't think that had any racial overtone at all. It was a birth certificate deal.

MENENDEZ: So you think -- you think it's just coincidental that the first president to have this type of public questioning of his land of origin of being a real American happens to be our first black president? That's just a weird coincidence?

O'REILLY: It's born out of hatred for the man. They'll get -- the people who hate Barack Obama will latch onto anything.

S'funny: Do any of you remember Bill O'Reilly getting all outraged and denouncing Glenn Beck when he called President Obama a racist who hates white people? Hm? No, I seem instead to recall him launching a multi-city "speaking" tour with Beck.

Strange how O'Reilly's rather selective outrage works, isn't it?

What's especially noteworthy is that he and Margaret Hoover seem to believe that we're long past the days of naked racism and bigotry and that racial tensions don't really exist. Let me point them first to Baratunde Thurston's reply to Donald Trump on that score. Or, for that matter, to those little ol' jus' folks Tea Partiers who strangely seem unable to avoid racist outbreaks.

And nevermind that the Birthers are still going strong, even on Fox.

And seriously: Does O'Reilly believe that these nutcases continue to cling to their Birther beliefs, even after Obama has gotten out his long form too for them, simply because they hate Obama? And that their hatred of Obama has no basis in his race? And he expects the rest of us to be that naive? Really?

He better rename his show's motto "The New Spin Zone".

Sarah Palin To Share Stage With Gen. Jerry 'Jack D. Ripper' Boykin At 'Troop Tribute'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Gee, it sounds like a match made in Tea Party Heaven: Sarah Palin and Jerry Boykin, appearing on the same stage to deliver a good ol' fashioned right-wing fundamentalist "Tribute to the Troops":

Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker for Tribute to the Troops, a military and veterans appreciation rally at Colorado Christian University on May 2, 2011.

Boykin will speak on "Our Debt of Gratitude". Not sure what that means -- but since it's coming from the guy who brought you both Abu Ghraib and Waco, it could be anything.

As Kyle at RightWingWatch observes:

Since leaving the military, Boykin has joined up with self-proclaimed prophet Rick Joyner and become the Religious Right's resident "expert" on all things Islam and a leading member of the Religious Right's Spartan-like army. He is also the man who exposed the fact that President Obama is a Marxist who intends to use the health care reform legislation to build an army of Brownshirts loyal only to him ...

Indeed, it was while elucidating on this charge that it became clear that Boykin is a direct military descendant of Gen. Jack D. Ripper himself:



And of course, his "expertise" at all things Islam meant that he was the go-to guy when Glenn Beck was expounding on the looming "Caliphate" in the Middle East.

More recently, he's been declaring "Molon Labe" to the dirty America-hating secret-Muslim libruls who he's convinced are coming to take his "rights" away.

Combined with Palin's presence ... well, let's just hope that the critical mass of wingnuttery coming together in one place like that doesn't open a hole in the space-time continuum.

Oh Look. The Birthers Are Already Playing With The New Toy President Obama Gave Them.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Memo to President Obama: You may have thought you finally shut the Birthers up yesterday. But you will never shut them up.

These are people who are deeply invested, emotionally and otherwise, in believing that you are not a legitimate president. It's the only way they can cope with the concept of you holding the office of the presidency in the first place. All you really did yesterday was give them a nice shiny new toy to play with.

The proof was on Fox Business News last night, where Eric Bolling hosted a panel led by wingnut extraordinaire Pam Geller, one of the most reptilian creatures of the entire wingnutosphere.

The entire show was a discussion of Bolling's evident belief that what the president presented yesterday was a forgery:

BOLLING: Pamela, were any of these notation on here - I don't know if our camera can get it in too close --- you can see some of these numbers that are clearly written in handwriting on the side. We don't know what they are. Trying to figure out a zero, a two there, an X up over here, a one up here. Were they on the short form?

GELLER: Look, this is a certification of live birth. When I left the hospital, I left with a birth certificate. I'm sorry, I didn't bring with it me, but it looked very much like Donald Trump's. It's a little piece of paper, you've got the nurse -- you know what I'm talking about? Certificate - you know, birth certificate. This is a certification of a live birth. This is actually not a birth certificate.

BOLLING: I need to know this. You see this fold. This has clearly been photocopied from a book. You see that? It kind of folds back to, like, almost like a binding of a book. And then for some reason, there's a green border around it that had to be Photoshopped in. Trying to figure out why they would do that.

GELLER: Well, this whole border is suspect. I mean, if you're taking a scan of something, it would, to your point, it would be white. Why is this the color of the same --

BOLLING: Note this - note this, you guys, April 25, 2011 -- two days ago -- is when this was requested from the state registrar, Alvin Onaka. So we'll keep our eye on it. We'll keep digging. Hey, listen. It may or may not be, but certainly opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.

The absurdity didn't end there. Perhaps the height of absurdity came when, as Ben Dimiero at Media Matters points out, Bolling suggested that the doctor who delivered Obama should have traveled forward in time in order to know that he had delivered the president:

Memo to President Obama: You may have thought you finally shut the Birthers up yesterday. But you will never shut them up.

These are people who are deeply invested, emotionally and otherwise, in believing that you are not a legitimate president. It's the only way they can cope with the concept of you holding the office of the presidency in the first place. All you really did yesterday was give them a nice shiny new toy to play with.

The proof was on Fox Business News last night, where Eric Bolling hosted a panel led by wingnut extraordinaire Pam Geller, one of the most reptilian creatures of the entire wingnutosphere.

The entire show was a discussion of Bolling's evident belief that what the president presented yesterday was a forgery:

BOLLING: Pamela, were any of these notation on here - I don't know if our camera can get it in too close --- you can see some of these numbers that are clearly written in handwriting on the side. We don't know what they are. Trying to figure out a zero, a two there, an X up over here, a one up here. Were they on the short form?

GELLER: Look, this is a certification of live birth. When I left the hospital, I left with a birth certificate. I'm sorry, I didn't bring with it me, but it looked very much like Donald Trump's. It's a little piece of paper, you've got the nurse -- you know what I'm talking about? Certificate - you know, birth certificate. This is a certification of a live birth. This is actually not a birth certificate.

BOLLING: I need to know this. You see this fold. This has clearly been photocopied from a book. You see that? It kind of folds back to, like, almost like a binding of a book. And then for some reason, there's a green border around it that had to be Photoshopped in. Trying to figure out why they would do that.

GELLER: Well, this whole border is suspect. I mean, if you're taking a scan of something, it would, to your point, it would be white. Why is this the color of the same --

BOLLING: Note this - note this, you guys, April 25, 2011 -- two days ago -- is when this was requested from the state registrar, Alvin Onaka. So we'll keep our eye on it. We'll keep digging. Hey, listen. It may or may not be, but certainly opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.

The absurdity didn't end there. Perhaps the height of absurdity came when, as Ben Dimiero at Media Matters points out, Bolling suggested that the doctor who delivered Obama should have traveled forward in time in order to know that he had delivered the president:

BOLLING: Very quickly, Pamela, this doctor right here, the guy who signed it four days after the birth. He passed away, but his wife today, TMZ had his wife saying I had no idea. She didn't know about it. His son said I had no idea. It came as a complete shock to him as well. If you gave birth to the president of the United States, don't you think your family would know about it?

GELLER: Maybe he doesn't know about it, either. I mean, I think it's very telling that for three years he didn't release it. There's a big question there. We have to say why -- why didn't he release it after three years?

As Dimiero acidly observes:

The doctor died in 2003.

Let that sink in for a second.

At the time, Barack Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois. If the doctor had told his family before he died that he delivered the future president, that would have spawned a much more interesting conspiracy theory (he's a wizard!). Apparently Eric Bolling thinks obstetricians give their families a list of the most interesting people they delivered -- with a special section for "potential future presidents" -- before they die.

Then Monica Crowley chimed in with the argument that Obama might now be disqualified because he was not "a natural born citizen" because his father was African:



Rather hilariously, Crowley claims that the "courts have not adjudicated" the issue of the meaning of "natural born citizen" -- when, in fact, they have done so numerous times. Most recently, the current Supreme Court rejected this argument without comment.

Crowley is just promoting the next phase of the Birthers' claims, one that's been floating out there for awhile and has gone nowhere -- for good reason.

But that never matters to these fanatics.

Obama Releases His Long-Form Birth Certificate. No Apology From Trump, Just Glory-Grabbing.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Apparently, President Obama decided that the Donald Trump Birther Circus was becoming enough of a distraction that he wanted it dealt with, so this morning he released his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii:

Now, normally I would not comment on something like this, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff swirling in the press on at any given day and I've got other things to do. But two weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we're going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.

And so I just want to make a larger point here. We've got some enormous challenges out there. There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work. Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices. We're going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get ahold of our deficit and our debt -- how do we do that in a balanced way.

And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, important debates. And there are going to be some fierce disagreements -- and that’s good. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. And I am confident that the American people and America’s political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems. We always have.
But we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.

And of course, who should step up and claim this as a glorious moment but the Carnival-Barker-in-Chief himself:

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish," Trump said, adding, "Our president has finally released a birth certificate."

However, he said he would have to check out the certificate himself and wondered why the president didn't do this "a long time ago."

Of course, Obama actually released a birth certificate back in 2008 -- but it wasn't enough to satisfy nutcases like Trump and his political adviser, WorldNutDaily's Joseph Farah.

Trump has nothing to be proud of: Indeed, he owes the president an apology -- for smearing his name and casting doubt on his birth and citizenship.

Not that we'll ever get it. After all, Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry.
Ari Melber has a great piece up at The Nation about the naked racism that lies just beneath the surface of Trump's attacks on Obama:

Even respected liberal commentators have given Trump something of a pass for the racial tension animating Birtherism. Hendrik Hertzberg, the authoritative essayist, argues in this week's New Yorker that Trump's appeal to birtherism is "part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality" by Republicans, like denying the science of global warming, or believing that "contraception causes abortion."

I think that a loose relationship with the scientific method surely helps conspiracies spread, but Birtherism draws on passions that depart substantially from greenhouse gasses. It is a putatively non-racial, vaguely constitutional way to challenge the legitimacy of the first black president and appeal to racists without sounding officially racist. Sure, there may be plenty of GOP tenets running counter to reality nowadays, yet none evoke the suppressed fury of the Birthers. They won't go away. They are an audience-in-waiting for any amplified race-baiter, from Lou Dobbs to unserious presidential candidates. Indeed, Politifact, the fact-checking site for politics, says its article about the issue, (with a link to the certification of live birth!), is the most read item that it has ever published.

And really, does the White House honestly believe that releasing this piece of paper will satisfy these nuts? Already, here's the headline over at Fox, via ThinkProgress:

They're never going to stop. Now they'll just move into another phase.

Where Wrong Is Right And False Is True: The Inverted Moral World Of The American Right

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Digby, commenting on Rick Perlstein's marvelous piece in Mother Jones on the rise of our current "mendocracy" and the legitimation of lying by the modern media, added this:

This history provides an important foundation for my ongoing quest to understand the right's ability to operate without the constraints of hypocrisy or consistency in an environment of epistemic relativism so extreme that we end up believing that wrong is right. It's literally mind-boggling.

There are a couple of mechanisms by which this is occurring. An example of the first kind was this truly mind-boggling exchange between Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney the other day on Fox News, wherein Crowley leapt upon the recent releases of intelligence from Guantanamo via WikiLeaks to declare that they established once and for all that, by golly, torture really did work!

VARNEY: I want your judgment. Do you think President Obama would order it done?

CROWLEY: I think if there were an imminent threat, the commander in chief, regardless of who it was, would order it done, yes.

VARNEY: And you think it should be done.

CROWLEY: I absolutely think it should be done. Listen, the commander-in-chief has one job, and that's to protect American lives. You need to do what's necessary when faced with an imminent threat to do it.

Nevermind that Crowley's evidence that torture works is dubious at best. But it's breathtaking how quickly Crowley and Varney leap over the question: If torture works, should you do it?

What seems not to cross either Crowley's or Varney's minds is the notion that the president might have a higher calling to the nation than simply keeping Americans alive -- that preserving the Constitution and, concomitantly, both our long-term security and our standing in the world as a moral beacon, might be such a higher purpose. The president has an obligation not to make America into a nation of torturers, too. (Of course, it's worth observing that the previous president -- an object of ardent admiration by both these pundits -- not only had a disastrous record on this latter obligation, he was also an abject failure in terms of preserving American lives, too.)

This really is a simple and clear moral issue: Does America torture or not? It is not just a cliche but a great truth that "the torturer is the enemy of all mankind". Which side are we on?

But in the inverted moral world of conservatives, that is not even an issue. All that is at stake for them is criticizing any liberal politician or policy and ardently defending any conservative or Republican. That's their moral compass.

This same imperative is what drives the second mechanism by which the Right's world is turned inside out. And that is a simple and uncomplicated refusal to accepts facts as realities and to embrace lies in their place -- if those lies burnish the emotional narratives upon which the Right ultimately relies for its appeal.

This is manifest particularly in the case of the Birthers, who are singularly immune to fact, logic, reason, or rationality, and ultimately reality. Instead, they've built their little bubble world and nothing, NOTHING will draw them out.

Here's Michelangelo Signorile dealing with a Birther on his radio show the other day, which provides a classic example of this:



This is why President Obama's release this morning of his long-form birth certificate will not be the air-clearing catharsis he hopes it will be -- it's just the beginning of the next phase in the Birthers' conspiracism.

Because the overriding narrative in all this is what matters to these folks -- namely, that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president.

They absolutely need to believe this, you see, because these folks are all right-wing authoritarians.

As I've explained previously:

Right-wing populism is always fueled and populated by right-wing authoritarians -- people who believe that the nation/state needs strong rulers and that it's the duty of citizens to obey them assiduously. This why they suffer so much cognitive dissonance when the nation's top authority is a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Marxist/fascist -- and why their first impulse, in such situations, is to embark on a vicious campaign of delegitimization (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). It's why they basically go insane.

And it's true not merely of the Tea Partiers, but of Beltway Village Establishment conservatives too:

Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority -- and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle.

So they turn the world upside down: Torture is hunky-dory, truth is falsehood, facts are fiction. It's the only way they can continue to cling to a worldview that constantly runs aground on the hard shoals of reality.

The Public Shrugged: Guess They Won't Be Making 'Atlas Wanked' Parts 2 And 3 After All ...

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Hear that sound? That's the sound of a hundred right-wing Randian hearts breaking:

Despite our commenters predicting that “This movie and this idea will grow and grow like a Tsunami” and that “This movie will break records… for years… remember “Star Wars”?,” the film managed a decent enough limited opening a few weeks back picking up $1.7 million at around 300 locations, but this past weekend, it took a hefty 50% drop, despite adding more than 150 screens to its count suggesting that the rails had already run out on the film’s commercial prospects.

And it’s fair to say the film’s hefty drop was down to the critics—“Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1” managed only a 7% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics happy to tear the film a new asshole. Even Jeff Otto, who reviewed the film for us, who took a far more impartial look at the film that this writer could have managed, gave it a rare ‘F’ grade, calling it “an aimless, amateurish and, more to the point, stone cold boring piece of drivel.” All in all, it seems to mean that Aglialoro won’t push ahead with his plans to film the rest of the book.

24 Frames talked to the producer, who told them “Critics, you won. I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2… Why should I put up all of that money if the critics are coming like lemmings? I’ll make my money back and I’ll make a profit, but do I wanna go and do to? Maybe I just wanna see my grandkids and go on strike.” A strike? Now that’s something that Rand would certainly have approved of. No one loved the labor movement more than she did.

As Aglialoro suggests, he won’t lose money on it—the film was produced far too cheaply for that—but it seems that the effort involved, the low profit margins, and the critical brickbats slung at the film, have sapped his desire to get Rand’s work on screens. So, a victory for our liberal media elite conspiracy! Oh, shit, uh, we mean, uh… Look over there, there’s evidence of Barack Obama faking his birth certificate!

In reality, “Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1” was, ironically, crushed at the free market—the film had every chance of being a crossover hit, but it was marketed exclusively at a niche audience of Tea Party types, who either didn’t bother to show up, or don’t exist in sizable enough numbers to sustain a film like this. Essentially, it’s the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” of Objectivist thinking.

Quick, someone get Jonah Goldberg and John Stossel a couple of crying rooms! The magic of the marketplace has spoken ... and their movie sucks!

My guess is that the movie was every bit as tedious and hollow as the book:

Glenn Beck Slags Huckabee And Breitbart Again -- But Hey, There's No Feud Here!

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

As his Fox News show reaches the end of the road, Glenn Beck has been feuding with a couple of noteworthy figures on his own side of the political aisle -- with his Fox colleague Mike Huckabee, labeled by Beck a "progressive" Republican (which in Outer GlennBeckistan is the equivalent of being called a cancerous Nazi) and with Andrew Breitbart, who is still pissed that Beck "threw him under the bus" over the Shirley Sherrod fiasco.

On his Fox show yesterday, Beck tried to address these feuds by claiming that he really doesn't have any serious differences with these two -- they're all on the same side, after all. Then he proceeded to quarrel further with Breitbart by going on ad nauseum about how important God really is to America -- a sly way of holding Breitbart up as unworthy for the Religious Right folks out there in his audience, and also absurdly misleading: Their differences really aren't about religion. Beck has mostly parted ways with Breitbart over the fact that not only has Breitbart misled, distorted, and lied egregiously in his attacks on liberals, he made the egregious misjudgment of getting caught at it.

And he continued his attacks on Huckabee, even while claiming to be dismissing their differences. Indeed, he continued to insist that Huckabee is a "progressive" -- which for Beckheads means he is heading down the path to Nazism (indeed, he's in the same category as neo-Nazis) and is a cancer on the American body politic.

Beck has even tried to claim he didn't say these things. But then again, it isn't only conspiracy theories that can be easily disproven. So can outright lies.

Was SB1070 A Success For Arizona? Pearce Claims U-Haul Rentals Prove It Was. Problem Is, He's Lying.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Russell Pearce is getting increasingly desperate to claim that Arizona's police-state immigration law, SB1070, has been a big success for the state.

So much so that now he's just making shit up:

State Senator Russell Pearce claimed this week he has proof that the controversial illegal immigration legislation is doing its job in Arizona.

Pearce, who authored SB 1070, points to a rise in U-Haul rentals as evidence that Arizona's tough immigration law is forcing illegal immigrants to leave the state. But does Pearce's claim hold true?

... Now that SB 1070 is approaching its one year anniversary, Senator Pearce has claimed that illegal immigrants are leaving Arizona "in caravans" and that U-Haul is busier than ever with one-way trips leaving the state. 9 On Your Side called U-Haul to check on Pearce's claim.

However, the truck rental company confirmed to KGUN9 News, since SB 1070 became law, it's helped 0.5% more people move into than out of Arizona in 2010. These same numbers spiked to double digits, 13.2% to be exact, during the first three months of 2011. Therefore, according to U-Haul, its numbers prove Pearce's claim may not be entirely accurate after all.

Or you could just call it a lie. Because that's what it is.

Especially because we already know that SB1070 has been an unmitigated economic disaster for Arizona:

“I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.”

The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we've explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state's undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state -- some of which are already being felt.

A new study from the Center for American Progress, "A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona" lays it all out in great detail:

The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession.

Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy.

Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.

Glenn Beck's Final Days At Fox: Kind Of A Pathetic Spectacle, Really

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

After all the damage that Glenn Beck has inflicted on the national discourse in the past two-plus years at Fox News, no one will be missing him anytime soon. We especially won't miss the nutty chalkboard rants, which really became so tedious that I don't doubt they played a big role in his steep ratings decline.

But since this is his last week at Fox coming up, he's getting all nostalgic and trying to sum it all up for us, his loyal viewers. He seems to be trying to ball it all up at once, as he did Friday with a session that included one of his fake "town hall" audiences, which he then tried to gin up into an angry mob by telling them that their way of life was going to be destroyed by a conspiracy of secret radicals in the Obama administration.

Oh, and Obama is just another Octavian, according to Beck: conspiring to destroy democracy so that he could assume dictatorial powers.

It's kind of pathetic, actually, because at this point it's just so much hot air escaping into the ether: irrelevant and insignificant.