The former vice presidential candidate seems to have been caught using curious crib notes during an interview this past weekend at the high-profile Tea Party Convention in Nashville. While speaking about her top political priorities, Ms. Palin gazed at her hand in a rather suspicious manner.
Later, Web researchers zoomed in on her left palm and found the following words scrawled in black ink: “Energy, Budget cuts (with “budget” crossed out), Tax, Lift American Spirits.” In an ironic twist during the speech, Ms. Palin worked in a jab against President Obama’s often-mocked use of TelePrompters. You can watch the clip below or check out a close-up here.
Palin's tea-party convention speech, consulting her palm notes.
But palm-gate wasn’t the only bit of news sparked by Palin. Her defense of Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “retards” raised eyebrows, as well – Read full article…
What do you think about Sarah Palin and “Palm-gate”? Comment here
Michael Jordan has serious money to burn — and last night after the Super Bowl, His Airness was flexin’ the size of his wallet … in the form of a ridiculously expensive ride.
The basketball legend left a Super Bowl after-party in Miami last night and rolled out in a brand new Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano — base price: $300K. Riding shotgun — his hot, 30-year-old girlfriend Yvette Prieto.
Watching the Super Bowl ads is as much a tradition as the game itself. During this year’s contest, a few interesting trends emerged. There were commercials focusing on what it means to “be a man” as well as a couple of ads with too many tighty-whiteys (don’t worry, we’ll explain). A slew of big names like Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Doritos all brought their A-game, but some of the lesser-known brands were buzzier – Watch all of the top Super Bowl Ads now…
For years, Toyotas have been praised both for high quality and maintaining their worth. These days, the Toyota in your garage is no longer like money in the bank. Some dealers are refusing to accept Toyotas for trade, while others are paying considerably less than they did just two week ago. Kelley Blue Book has dropped the value of recalled Toyotas by as much 3 percent. The auto research Web site Edmunds.com estimates resale or trade-in values could fall up to 10 percent in the short term.
The decline will likely continue as long as uncertainty and defects continue to shadow the world’s No. 1 carmaker. Kelley, which two months ago named Toyota the best brand for resale value, says recalled models are now worth $200 to $500 less per car. Another cut of the same magnitude is planned as soon as the coming week unless the recall controversy abates and demand for Toyotas stops declining, Kelley spokeswoman Robyn Eckard says.
Similarly, since the first recall for sticky accelerator pedals on Jan. 21, Edmunds’ estimate for the trade-in value of a 2009 Toyota Camry has fallen by 4 percent to 6 percent to $13,967 while the 2009 Toyota Corolla has declined 6 percent to $11,233. At River Oaks Chrysler-Jeep in Houston, general manager Alan Helfman told his used car manager to knock 30 to 40 percent of the book value off any recalled Toyotas or Prius hybrids traded in.
Chuck Eddy, a Chrysler dealer in Youngstown, Ohio, said he’s heard of other dealers refusing to take recalled Toyotas in trade, but said he’ll still take them at reduced values. Two auction houses, where dealers sell trade-ins if they decide not to keep them, have told his dealership that they won’t take recalled Toyotas due to legal liability fears. Eddy says customers are nervous about buying Toyotas and the auction houses have further limited his resale options.
Jack Fitzgerald, who owns 12 dealerships including two Toyota stores in the Washington, D.C., area, said he would buy every used Toyota he can get because he’s confident they will retain their value. Fitzgerald said the recall concerns are overblown and should pass quickly once Toyota gets the repair parts to dealers -Read full article…
What do you think of the Toyota recall?
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Kicking off their controversial national convention in Nashville last night, Tom Tancredo, the one time GOP Congressman, presidential candidate and confirmed wing-nut, presented the opening speech. To make certain that the event got off to the right start, Tancredo proceeded to give the most racist speech I can recall since David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan leader turned politician, amazed us with his vile dribble.
Ripping into Obama, Tancredo announced that the president had won his office because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”
This was no accidental choice of words. Back in the days of the Jim Crow south, literacy tests were used to take away the right to vote from the majority of African Americans. It was a practice successfully employed to deny these rights from the late nineteenth century right on through to the 1960’s when it was mercifully ended by The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and one that continues to be one of the darkest stains on our national history.
Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president — ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of “Bush 1 and Bush 2.”
“Thank God John McCain lost the election,” he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration.
The Fed is planning to detail its “exit plan” this week, the WSJ says. This exit plan is the means by which the Fed will gradually reverse the tremendous stimulus it is still pumping into the economy and financial system. As we’ve noted often over the past year, the Fed is in a bind. During the financial crisis, it bought hundreds of billions of dollars of real-estate and other assets from banks to reduce mortgage rates and ease the pressure on bank balance sheets. This, in turn, pumped hundreds of billions of new dollars into the economy, which has enabled the banks–and bankers–to make a killing over the past year. The question is how the Fed can reverse this stimulus without killing the economy.
The idea behind giving the banks cheap money was that the banks would lend it to consumers and businesses. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened: Since the start of the crisis, bank lending has fallen off a cliff. The banks are, however, lending to the Federal government, which needs to fund record deficits by borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. The combination of the Fed’s desire to stimulate lending via cheap money and the government’s desire to stimulate the economy by running a huge deficit has made it a great time to be a bank: Banks can borrow from the government at artificially cheap rates and then lend the money back to the Federal government at higher rates, pocketing the difference.
And now it’s going to get even better to be a bank. Why?
Because the first part of the Fed’s exit plan will reportedly be to – Read full article…
Learn how to identify sneaky marketing tactics before your next trip to the store. “Consumers need honest labeling so they can spend their food dollars wisely and avoid diet-related disease,” said CSPI senior staff attorney Ilene Ringel Heller, co-author of the report. “Companies should market their foods without resorting to the deceit and dishonesty that’s so common today. And, if they don’t, the FDA should make them.”
You can often decipher the truth amid the lies and misdirection by carefully reading food labels. We take a look at nine things the CSPI identified as the most common ways food labels mislead so you can prepare before your next trip to the grocery store – Read full article…
Learn how to identify sneaky marketing tactics before your next trip to the store. 'Helps maintain a healthy heart'
A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence of sperm. A woman with a birth defect that left her without a vagina still got pregnant after she was stabbed shortly following oral sex with her partner – Read full article…
South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford recalls how she made the “leap of faith” to marry husband Gov. Mark Sanford even though the groom refused to promise to be faithful, insisting that the clause be removed from their wedding vows. “It bothered me to some extent, but … we were very young, we were in love,” she said in an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters to air on “20/20″ Friday. “I questioned it, but I got past it … along with other doubts that I had.”
After their November 1989 wedding, the newlyweds moved to Charleston, S.C., where she discovered her husband was extremely frugal — even “cheap.” Sanford said her husband gave her less than romantic gifts for her birthday. “He drew me a picture of a half a bike, and then for the next birthday or Christmas I got the picture of the other half a bike, and then he delivered the $25 used bike,” she recalled. For another birthday, Mark Sanford gave her a diamond necklace, which she adored, but then he took it back. Sanford told Walters that her husband’s frugality didn’t bother her.
“Once I came to understand that it really was deep-seeded in him … it didn’t bother me so much,” Sanford said. “That’s who he is. And isn’t that one of the delicious challenges that you find in marriage? That you have to get to understand what makes somebody else tick in some respects?” Despite his thrift, Mark Sanford was a loving, affectionate husband she said. One day her world came shattering down when Sanford said she found a letter in her husband’s desk, which made it clear to her that he was “having a sexual relationship” with 43-year-old Argentine businesswoman Maria Belen Chapur.
Sanford said she was in the dark about the depth of his devotion. Even after Sanford learned of her husband’s unfaithfulness, she said the governor pleaded with her to stay with him, but also begged for permission to visit Chapur, whom he called his “soul mate.” – Read full article…
Jenny Sanford: Mark Refused to Promise to Be Faithful, Had Phrase Removed from Wedding Vows
One thing magazines love to do is call dibs on who will be the new “It” celebrities in the year to come. Sometimes they pick stars whose careers are destined to take off, occasionally they make incredible calls with near-nobodies who later become A-listers, and usually the majority of their picks fade into oblivion. While we’d like to think celeb bible Vanity Fair puts a great deal of thought and planning into its annual “New Hollywood” issue, this year the editors really limited their scope when it came to choosing the next big stars. (Or perhaps they overemphasized the “Fair”? ) Every woman on its new cover is extremely thin and very, very white. Unless Vanity Fair considers one redhead to be diversity, we feel the need to cry foul – Read full article…
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