The Fox Nation is very upset about an insidiously cute video from MoveOn.org that features kids advocating a Contract for the American Dream. Check out this horrifying example of child abuse for yourself:
Shocking, isn’t it? The gang at Fox & Friends thinks so too. The posting on Fox Nation displays the Fox & Friends segment, not the whole MoveOn video. And the response from the Fox Nationalists is typically restrained – to Nazi references, allegations of Marxist propaganda, and accusations against Obama who had nothing to do with it. For example:
Of course, no one on the right would ever consider exploiting children for political purposes.
Slandering the MoveOn kids as Nazis is standard operating procedure for the right. You only need to go back a couple of weeks to hear Glenn Beck saying that scores of slaughtered kids in Norway are “like the Hitler youth.” By the way, if you haven’t yet protested Beck’s repulsive comments, here is a list of his radio affiliates. Be sure to let them know that you refuse to listen to their station or patronize their advertisers while Beck is on the air.
In her latest Facebook treatise, America’s Quitter Queen, Sarah Palin, spoke out on the subject of the nation’s debt crisis and the recent credit rating downgrade. Titled “Conquering the Storm.” Palin attempts to take credit for predicting precisely what she and her Tea Party comrades deliberately created by refusing to negotiate on a balanced approach to debt reduction.
However, in delivering her ever-so-serious platform for economic renewal, she couldn’t help taking a swipe at the man who demolished her dream of being able to quit the Vice-Presidency of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Reaffirming her hostility to higher education and intellectual achievement, Palin mocked Obama’s grasp of the stumbling economy saying…
One doesn’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure this out!
Oh, doesn’t one? How about a Harvard Economics degree? Palin seems to think that the legal curriculum is the path to financial expertise. Her dig at Obama’s education is kind of like saying that one doesn’t need a degree in architecture to figure out marine biology. Technically, it’s true. There is a Dadaist elegance to her pseudo-logic. No wonder she knows so little about the media. Her degree (which took five colleges to acquire) is in journalism instead of farming. And by the way, Obama, who graduated from Harvard Magna Cum Laude, minored in economics.
But Palin isn’t done yet. She expanded on her criticism by belittling the President’s economic agenda as “magical.”
“By what magical thinking did we figure we could run up perpetual trillion dollar deficits and still somehow avoid the unforgiving mathematics of a downgrade?”
Unfortunately, Palin must have missed the news that S&P’s “unforgiving” math was off by $2 trillion dollars, and it was Obama’s economic team that corrected them. Subsequently, S&P had to rewrite their justification of the downgrade replacing economic concerns with political ones because the debt argument no longer satisfied the criteria for a downgrade. And the new political justification is where S&P indicted Palin and the TeaPublicans for their intransigence and resistance to commonsense tax reforms.
Palin ignored this criticism to, once again, play the victim:
“Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome.”
That’s an interesting allegory because, according to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, “while the Christians didn’t actually start the fire, they didn’t do much about putting it out either, because they saw it as the sign of the second coming of Christ.” The parallels between this and Palin’s socially conservative congregation are plentiful and disturbingly amusing. It was the Tea Bag Brigades that advocated doing nothing about the debt ceiling and letting the nation go into default.
The remainder of Palin’s Facebooking reads like a broken record of GOP platitudes extolling tax cuts, deregulation, and drilling here, there, and everywhere. She castigates the President for not offering a plan, but her own plan is one that has proven to be a failure. And if she can’t even put together a coherent criticism of her political opponents, how can we trust her to protect America from the terrorist plots of Al Roker?
Rassmussen Reports, the official Fox News source for conservatively biased polling, conducted an interesting survey over the weekend that asked:
“Some people have accused the Tea Party of acting like economic terrorists during the budget debates. Are members of the Tea Party economic terrorists?”
I suppose it depends on how you define “economic terrorists.” Would a party that advocates letting the nation default on their debt be considered terrorists? What about a party that asserts that an S&P downgrade would be a good thing (we’ve seen how that worked out)? What about a party that holds a nation hostage in order to force a political agenda down the throats of a populace that opposes the agenda?
Setting aside whether or not we should apply rhetoric like “terrorist” to political adversaries, the result of the poll was that nearly a third (29%) of respondents said that they do regard the Tea Party as terrorists. That’s an astonishing result. Fifty-five percent disagreed and 16% are undecided. That means that nearly half the country believe that the Tea Party are, or might be, terrorists. And remember, this is Rasmussen, the wing-nuttiest of all pollsters.
These results drive home the point I made when I wrote Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party? It is a discredited constituency that couldn’t fill the back room at an Applebys. Yet for some reason too many in the media and in Washington, including Democrats, take them seriously. That breakdown of mental acuity helped to sap trillions of dollars of wealth from asset markets in the past couple of weeks.
Additionally, the Rassmussen poll shows that…
“…a plurality (43%) of all voters think the Tea Party has made things worse of [sic] the country in the budget debates in Congress. Thirty-two percent (32%) say the Tea Party has made things better for America, and 14% say it’s had no impact. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.”
Again, this is Rasmussen! If a plurality of voters in a Rasmussen poll think that the Tea Party has made things worse, the real number must be a substantial majority. Consequently, any politician who throws in with the Tea Party is representing a phantom movement and contributing to the harm that these phony radicals are causing.
More likely, they are serving their AstroTurf masters at Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-funded frauds. A good percentage of the millions of dollars that it takes to produce the mirage that is the Tea Party is surely flowing into the campaign accounts of Republicans across the nation. But given the results of this poll, and virtually every other one on the subject, these greedy pols will soon regret their decision.
Author and Rupert Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, is reporting that Murdoch and his crime family may be staring down charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act:
“Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect.”
Wolff documents the magnitude of the corruption at News Corp that has become so integral to their corporate culture that they don’t even regard what they’re doing as corrupt. Wolff also notes the mechanism by which Murdoch has evaded justice to date:
“…it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here. That sting involves regular taunting and, often, lies.”
No kidding. Fox News, in particular, brazenly lies about their perceived enemies who include pretty much any Democrat. Certainly President Obama has been the frequent target of dishonest attacks. Currently Media Matters is the victim of a sustained campaign that misstates the law in order to challenge their tax-exempt status. And the Fox-led assaults against ACORN, Climate Change, immigrants, and voting rights have all been subject to the fabrication factory run by Murdoch and company.
The RICO statutes may be just the vehicle to rein in these crooks. Here’s hoping that the legal authorities will crack this case and bring the Murdoch Mob to justice.
Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the United States Congress. You may have heard media reports that it was the country’s credit rating that was downgraded, but the statement issued by the S&P is unambiguous with regard to their reasons for the downgrade and whom they hold responsible:
[T]he downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges […] The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.
To be sure, the S&P threw in a few references to the outstanding debt and the inadequacy of the remedies contained in last week’s legislation, but their persistent focus on political failings was inescapable. Notwithstanding the challenge from the White House that their math was “fundamentally flawed,” the S&P proceeded with the downgrade because the math isn’t the main driver of their analysis. They made plain that the primary reason for their decision was the bad behavior of the political players and that it is Congress who deserves the downgrade.
Not surprisingly, the American people agree. A new poll from the New York Times/CBS News shows the disapproval rating for Congress at 82%. Breaking that down further reveals bad news for Republicans who were dominated by their tiny Tea Party flank:
All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.
Forty-three percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April.
Sixty-three percent of those polled said that they supported raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year, as Mr. Obama has sought to do — including majorities of Democrats (80 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (52 percent).
Forty-four percent said that the deficit was mostly caused by the Bush administration.
The same poll showed President Obama’s approval rating to be more than twice that of the Tea Party. But that didn’t stop Fox News from posting a link to the poll on their Fox Nation web site with a headline that said the exact opposite.
Perhaps it is not within the jurisdiction of the S&P to rate the performance of Congress, but it is difficult to dispute their conclusion. It would be nice if the media analysis of recent weeks in Washington were this astute. Yet the press continues to treat the Tea Party as if it were a popular expression of the people, rather than an AstroTurf invention of wealthy special interests.
The statement from the S&P effectively declares that, were it not for the intransigent extremism of the Tea Party, the country’s credit rating would still be triple-A. And if the press would stop pretending that the Tea Party has any real significance, the country would be better off in a multitude of ways. So thanks to Tea Party dementia and media madness America can proudly enter the 2nd Dip of its Great Recession.
Once again, Fox Nation outright lies in a headline article. The arrogance of the Fox Nationalists is astonishing in that they will brazenly lie even while providing a link to the source data the exposes them as liars.
Here we have Fox Nation headlining that President Obama is more unpopular than the phantom Tea Party. The source is a poll by the New York Times. But if you look at the actual poll results you will find that the truth is exactly the opposite of what the Fox Nationalists are saying. From the Times:
“The public’s opinion of the Tea Party movement has soured in the wake of the debt-ceiling debate. The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll.”
“The president’s overall job approval rating remained relatively stable, with 48 percent approving of the way he handles his job as president and 47 percent disapproving.”
To repeat, 48% approve of Obama while only 20% approve of the Tea Party. That means Obama’s approval is more than twice that of the Tea Party. What’s more, Obama is viewed favorably by slightly more people than view him unfavorably. The Tea Party is viewed unfavorably by twice as many people as view it favorably.
The only way to spin this poll positively for the the Tea Party is to deliberately misconstrue the data by taking into account only the unfavorable numbers as if they existed in a vacuum. The liars at Fox fail to acknowledge that nearly 40% of respondents were undecided or hadn’t heard enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion (more evidence that it is a phantom party). Of the respondents who do have an opinion, they dislike the Tea Party by 2-to-1. If that ratio held as people became more aware of the Tea Party, their unfavorables would shoot up to 66%.
Leave it to Fox to lie to their audience and produce a community characterized by ignorance and wishful thinking. It is this sort of disinformation that creates delusional political factions like the Tea Party in the first place.
[Update 8/17/2011] New polling shows that the Tea Party is even less popular that atheists and Muslims.
Fox News has been engaging in a relentless campaign against Media Matters for more than a month. They began in June with allegations that Media Matters had violated their tax-exempt status by factually covering Fox News broadcasts as well as other right-wing media. The Fox campaign included frequent solicitations on the air (more than 30 times) by Fox anchors beseeching their viewers to file complaints with the IRS challenging Media Matters’ non-profit status. Amongst those participating in the onslaught were Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Steve Doocy, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg.
The latest salvos come from two fronts: 1) An official filing of an IRS complaint against Media Matters by a Fox crony (more on that later), and 2) from the Fox Business Network which has just completed a three-part series on the subject.
The arguments presented by Fox Business were pitifully weak and often contradictory. For instance, the article stated that some of Media Matters’ activities were “not found in the scope of nonprofit tax law.” That’s a contorted argument because the tax law was never meant to include every imaginable activity that might occur. There is nothing in the law that says that an exempt organization can provide Italian food during meetings, but that doesn’t mean they are in violation of the law if they send out for pizza.
The article also quoted Marcus Owens, a former IRS official, as saying that his remarks in defense of Media Matters were misconstrued. The only problem with that is that the article itself quoted Owens explicitly defending Media Matters saying that their activities are “generally protected by the first amendment,” and that they are “not going to jeopardize its tax-exempt status.” So the article is disparaging its own source. It further points out that…
“Media Matters says in its tax returns that it has not engaged in political campaign activities or lobbying. But Media Matters has run items that advocate for legislation, which would violate the tax law if it became a substantial part of the nonprofit’s activities.”
And what does the article regard as “substantial?” A single 2004 posting on the Media Matters web site in support of the Fairness Doctrine. That’s it. Compare that to the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters, a conservative mirror image of Media Matters. NewsBusters conducts persistent campaigns including one in opposition to the Fairness Doctrine. They also have campaigns against immigration, George Soros, and in support of the Tea Party. These are not years-old, isolated efforts. They are current and ongoing. Yet Gray has not filed a challenge to the tax-exempt status of the Media Research Center. Or the Heritage Foundation. Or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Or the Tea party’s own Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.
The remainder of the series consists of an abundance of nonsense. It suggests that having tax-exempt status is equivalent to having a government endorsement. It cites an IRS ruling that “a nonprofit will lose its tax-exempt status if, among other things, a significant portion of its communications consist of viewpoints or positions ‘unsupported by facts.'” Of course, Media Matters is notoriously stringent about providing factual support for everything they post.
In addition to Fox News and Fox Business, the Murdoch propaganda family continued piling on Media Matters with articles on Fox Nation that still retain the first position in their “New Stories” section, despite being more than a month old. The Fox Nationalists posted links to a pre-filled-in form that could be printed out and mailed to the IRS. News Corpse has requested information from the IRS on the volume of complaints, if any, they have been receiving in the past month. That request is still pending. However, it may be safe to surmise that the response of the Fox audience was not particularly impressive, because they had to resort to filing their own complaint indirectly via former George H.W. Bush counsel, C. Boyden Gray.
In filing this complaint, Both Fox and Gray asserted that they are unaffiliated with one another. Gray insisted that he is not representing Fox and is not on the payroll. What they neglected to disclose is that Gray was previously identified as a both a Fox News Supreme Court Analyst and a Fox News contributor. This puts in doubt their claims to being unaffiliated, and it destroys any pretense of transparency.
Gray’s obviously biased perspective is well represented in the letter he sent to the IRS. The core of his complaint is the allegation that Media Matters has “declared war” on a television news channel [Fox News]. Of course the truth is that Fox News had long before declared war on Media Matters. Consequently, Media Matters may just be regarded as defending itself from a powerful, international, media megalith.
Gray’s complaint began with a claim that “Media Matters’s efforts to harm Fox News are intended to weaken the Republican Party.” Gray offers no support whatsoever for that claim. The truth is that Media Matters is merely attempting to demonstrate the bias on the part of Fox News for the GOP. And despite Gray’s charge, every example he cites of Media Matters allegedly attacking Republicans actually show that they are reporting on what others in the media are saying about the party.
Gray also makes a rather incoherent argument that the IRS is somehow violating the free speech rights of Fox News by granting Media Matters tax exempt status. The tortured case he makes seems to be that such status somehow punishes Fox News. Suffice to say that he never explains how, or establishes that Fox News’ rights have been violated in any way.
But the height of Gray’s Inanity is his contention that Media Matters has embarked on an “unsupportable attempt to tie Fox News to the Republican Party.” However, tying Fox News to the Republican Party is about as difficult as tying your shoelaces. The support is overwhelming and includes surveys that show the extreme imbalance of Republicans to Democrats on Fox News. It includes the rampant utilization of talking points directly from GOP sources on one program after another throughout the broadcast day. It includes memos from executive editors directing their anchors and reporters to frame stories favorably to right. It includes the overt hostility and racism that Fox Nation publishes repeatedly.
Setting all of that aside for the moment, it would interesting to hear how Gray would reconcile his assertion that Media Matters is trying to “weaken the Republican Party,” with his assertion that any attempt to tie the party to Fox News is “unsupportable.” If the party and Fox News are unconnected, then how could one be harmed by attacking the other? Gray’s arguments are an endless loop of contradiction. They can’t both be true.
Given a full examination, Gray’s complaint to the IRS is amateurish blather. He fails to prove a single point in his letter. But he does manage to prove that Fox News, and the Murdoch-led News Corp, is a deceitful and unethical enterprise for endeavoring to partner with Gray on this puerile exercise. they are exhibiting their proclivity for bullying their perceived enemies and using their media perch to smear those with whom they disagree. They are a criminal enterprise and should be treated as such. Hopefully the investigations just getting underway will put these gangsters where they belong.
The GOP field of candidates seeking the 2012 presidential nomination is pretty settled. The only significant holdouts are the Texas evangelical, secessionist governor Rick Perry, and former half-term Alaska governor, and Fox News bobble-head, Sarah Palin.
The thing is, Palin is not running. She has no campaign staff; no organization in early primary states; no press office. Polls place her near the bottom of the pack and losing to President Obama by 20 points. She is not engaging in public appearances. In fact, her much ballyhooed national bus tour was aborted after just six days without ever making it off the east coast.
Too bad. I wish she were running. It would add another element of comic relief to supplement Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. With Donald Trump out of the game the comedy factor took a serious hit.
The problem is that Fox News is still pretending that she’s a candidate and, by doing so, they are deliberately lying (so what else is new). Several months ago there were four Fox employees who were also speculative candidates for the Republican nomination: Palin, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huckabee. All four were in precisely the same position with regard to the race. They were all openly exploring campaigns and discussing it in public. At that time Fox gave two of them, Gingrich and Santorum, ultimatums insisting that they declare their intentions or be terminated. There was no apparent reason for excluding Palin and Huckabee from that edict.
Since then Gingrich and Santorum officially declared and Huckabee bowed out. This leaves Palin as the only prominent Fox employee still dangling. But with no visible manifestation of a candidacy, can she be taken seriously? The fact of the matter is that if Palin was a candidate in earnest, Fox could not keep her on the payroll. At this late date they would have to insist that she either fish or cut bait, just as they did with Gingrich and Santorum. She could not be both undecided and a Fox News contributor.
Evidence of the Palin predicament occurred yesterday as two Fox News analysts admitted on the air that they temper their criticism of Palin because she is their colleague:
Greg Gutfeld: The only problem with talking about Sarah Palin is that she works here, and it’s like a coworker. And if I say something bad and I see her in the hallway I feel really awkward and wrong.
Bob Beckel: It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with your paycheck. That’s why you feel awkward about it. I know exactly what you mean. I’ll be honest, I’ve pulled my punches.
These admissions are not surprising and are not limited to Gutfeld and Beckel. It is the law at Fox News as it was laid down by the boss:
Roger Ailes: For the first time in our 14 years we’ve had people apparently shooting in the tent, from within the tent…We prefer people in the tent not dumping on other people in the tent.
So how does a Fox News reporter cover Palin when he has been warned by his boss not to criticize fellow tent-dwellers? That’s the problem, and that’s why Sarah Palin is not a candidate for president. Fox knows that they can’t cover even a potential candidate who receives a Fox paycheck this late in the game. If Palin has not informed the network that she isn’t running, they would have to sideline her. Since that has not happened, it’s a safe bet that she has already told them that she’s out of the race.
If that’s the case, then Fox News knows that a prospective candidate has opted out, but they are keeping it secret. That is not acceptable behavior from a legitimate news enterprise, which of course, Fox is not. They are withholding a significant news item that journalistic ethics would require they disclose. Particularly because the only reason for them to withhold it is for their own financial benefit, and for that of Palin.
What’s worse is that they are brazenly manipulating the course of the election in a manner that has implications for the other candidates and, of course, the voters. It is long past time for Fox to come clean and reveal what they know about Palin’s alleged candidacy. And in the unlikely event that she really is undecided, then Fox should suspend her just as they did Gingrich and Santorum.
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:
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.
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:
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?
In her latest Facebook treatise, America’s Quitter Queen, Sarah Palin, spoke out on the subject of the nation’s debt crisis and the recent credit rating downgrade. Titled “Conquering the Storm.” Palin attempts to take credit for predicting precisely what she and her Tea Party comrades deliberately created by refusing to negotiate on a balanced approach to debt reduction.
Author and Rupert Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, is reporting that Murdoch and his crime family may be 
In filing this complaint, Both Fox and Gray asserted that they are unaffiliated with one another. Gray insisted that he is not representing Fox and is not on the payroll. What they neglected to disclose is that Gray was previously identified as a both a Fox News Supreme Court Analyst and a Fox News contributor. This puts in doubt their claims to being unaffiliated, and it destroys any pretense of transparency.
The GOP field of candidates seeking the 2012 presidential nomination is pretty settled. The only significant holdouts are the Texas evangelical, secessionist governor Rick Perry, and former half-term Alaska governor, and Fox News bobble-head, Sarah Palin.
(Source for job loss data: