Tuesday clips

Tuesday clips

Must see TV: Howard Dean subbing for Keith Olbermann. YEEEEEEAH!

One great thing about lame ducks is they can say whatever the hell they really think. Retiring Sen. George Voinovich, R-OH, on his own party's increasing irrelevance outside its regional base: “We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?’ ”

Another lame duck is Kentucky's Jim Bunning, who is, how do I say this nicely... screw it. Senile. Anyway, he's finally been squeezed out of his re-election race. Kos wants him to quit early out of spite so KY's Democratic governor can name the replacement. Don't laugh: Bunning said it first.

Sarah Palin is officially beyond lame duck but this cosmic re-interpretation of her resignation speech is also must see TV:

This is a but old but the great Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight was a number-cruncher before he was a political guy, and the first candidate he ever supported was... Dave Loebsack? It's not a big leap from crunching poker odds to crunching political odds.

Last week I told you that the Birthers are just channeling the Al Smith Secret Tunnel To The Vatican story. But now it's worse: it seems "not a citizen" is dog whistle politics for, and I'm not kidding here, the ultra-fundamentalists who think Obama is the antichrist. Best conspiracy since the Rotfang Conspiracy.

"Conspiracy theorists believe the world is run by schizophrenic shadowy organizations who--despite conspiring with millions in perfect silence--can't resist putting clues in things like major public monuments and every note of currency ever printed," notes this Cracked classic. "Making the average Batman villain look like Professor Moriarty."