Day: 8/3/2011

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Palin Bus Tour

Posted by on August 3, 2011 at 12:44 pm. 10 Comments :

This is a prime example of why political parody has become so difficult. The subjects of satire are too good at making themselves look stupid without any help. What does that leave for those of us who satirize them? Check out Fox Nation’s article on a planned mid-August bus tour by President Obama:

Obama Bus Tour

Really? Please note the “Obama 08” poster on Fox Nation’s photo proving that Obama obviously used buses before Sarah Palin did. Seriously, it’s their own photo. Yet Fox implies that Palin invented the political bus tour? Are they daft? (Don’t answer that). Palin didn’t even come up with an original name for her road trip. She copied the name, “One Nation,” from the progressive and union movement that held a rally in Washington, D.C., last October.

I think that the Fox Nationalists are actually pretty close to the truth this time. They just left out a small detail. Palin didn’t invent the political bus tour, she invented the “aborted” political bus tour. As we know, the cross-country trip that Palin planned (and is still promoting on her SarahPac web site) lasted all of six days and never made it past New Hampshire. Then she blatantly lied when asked about why the tour came to a screeching halt:

Palin: “Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the ‘One Nation Tour’ has been cancelled…The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.”

The only problem is that, unlike every other Alaskan, she never showed up for jury duty. In fact, she wasn’t even in Alaska. A few days after making her jury excuse for quitting the bus tour, she turned up at the debut of her crockumentary, “The Undefeated,” in Pella, Iowa. Incidentally, the film was a rip-roaring failure at the boxoffice and is already heading to video and the discount bins at WalMart.

Sarah Palin is a pitiful joke. The only thing she’s running for is the bank to deposit the cash she cons out of glassy-eyed fans who somehow find something coherent in her word jumbles. And the only way Obama could be charged with copying Palin on this is if he rolls into a handful of towns and then jets back to Camp David for some R&R.

While The GOP/Tea Party Was Blackmailing The Nation…

Posted by on August 3, 2011 at 10:16 am. 2 Comments :

For the past month our country has been embroiled in a contentious debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling, a routine congressional function that has been done without controversy dozens of times. The farthest right faction of the Republican Party was determined to hold the nation hostage in their yearning to dismantle the social safety net and protect the wealth of billionaires. While that carnival was in progress, Washington and the press missed something else that holds some importance to the American people and the economy:

Jobs vs Debt(Source for job loss data: private sector / public sector)

Despite the GOP’s promise to focus on jobs when they assumed the majority in the House of Representatives, they have not produced a single jobs bill. In fact, they have endeavored to kill legislation that would create new jobs. Just before they left for recess after passing the debt ceiling bill, they left unresolved a bill to fund the operations of the Federal Aviation Administration. As a result, over 90,000 workers will be sidelined until congress returns in September. Not to mention, the Treasury will lose $1.2 billion in fees that will go uncollected.

That’s the GOP’s commitment to working families and reducing the deficit. In other words, it’s a hoax. And the media is their accomplice. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that 52% of news stories last week were related to the debt ceiling debate. Notwithstanding the fact that polls show that the American people are more concerned about jobs than debt, the media virtually ignored the issue of job creation and unemployment.

Now that the debt ceiling debate is at least temporarily resolved, it will be interesting to see what issue dominates news coverage next week. Jobs or the Obama’s dining at a fast food restaurant?