This week's Absurdity Today! takes on the Republican Wars, climate change, Roku and getting fired from a Christian school for being pregnant, or maybe it was...something else? Laugh here.

Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" video serves as inspiration for this parody honoring Alice Paul and the Women's Suffrage movement. Soomo Publishing has also created teaching resources to help students understand how women fought for the vote nearly a century ago.

Perhaps some of the men speaking on today's politics should remember that it's too late to pretend women don't matter, or that they can dictate to us about how to live and be. Thanks to those brave women and those who have come after them, our voices will matter in 2012. That's a fact some Republican candidates seem to have forgotten. But we haven't.

Mitt Romney thought we should let Detroit go bankrupt. Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

If Mitt had his way, Detroit wouldn't be repped by badasses like Eminem and Clint Eastwood. It'd just be some dude, chillin on the couch, dreaming what might have been.

But gosh, Mitt sure did feel strongly about that whole "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" thing. Huh. Now that GM is the number one auto company in the world again and TARP funds have been repaid, do you think we'll hear anything about that call between now and November?

Michigan's electoral votes will be bitterly contested twixt now and then. It's important to remember the fate that would have fallen Detroit--and Dearborn, and Livonia, and Hamtramck, and all the other areas that rely on that industry--had Mitt been at the helm.

On a personal note, yes those are zits on my face, yes I am too old to be getting them. It's a hectic time dude, get off my back.

What kind of woman supports Rick Santorum?

I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created— in the sense of rape—but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.

We don't know, so we had to imagine. Rick is still seen by some as a promising candidate, supportable by right wing fundamentalist leaders. This enthusiasm is only dampened by the fact that nobody outside of right wing fundamentalist leaders particularly gives a flying fuck about Rick Santorum.

But as his campaign flounders awkwardly along like—Oh, I dunno—a man-on-dog sexual pairing trying to jog mid-tryst, it's a good time to be reminded: There are piggish elements within our body politic who will always, always, always abuse women's rights for political gain. And that Rick Santorum's "google problem" was never just Dan Savage's brilliant gag, it has always been the things that he actually says and does.

Frothy lube may stain your futon, but Santorum stains the American political landscape—until such time as his well-established inability to win actual votes brings the Santorum slide to a messy end.

Liberality: Toxic Swamp

$Blind In Texas$: The Corporatists vs. The American People

Pacific Views: Grafitti Art

pourmecoffee: Oddly compelling artistic video depicting every one of the 2053 nuclear explosions from 1945-1998

The Satirical Political Report: A parody of David Brooks' ideological parity

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Electronic Cerebrectomy, Dogs and Jeans, Of Course, I Could Be Wrong...

Click here to download or view in WMP also

Fake Boxer:An eruption of lies from your lies volcano, Dr. Condaliezza-lies-a-lot!

This parody of last week's Senate hearings once again proves how much truth can be told with humor. There is no mistake that Jon Stewart's audience is more informed than Bill O'Reilly's. On Scarborough Country, I heard Joe Scarborough complain that SNL 'just doesn't get it" by using President Bush in parodies. SNL has been lampooning presidents whether they be republican or democrat since it's inception, and the criticism that republicans are making against SNL is as usual ridiculous.

Welcome Free Republic. We've gotten many hits from your site to view this video. Please ask your host not to cancel our account next time for absolutely doing nothing except posting one comment that told you guys where to go to see Mel Gibson and Michael Moore on the People's Choice awards.

I don't think that counts as trolling. If it does, let m us know how.

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Tucker Carlson was deeply concerned yesterday on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show about Harry Reid's remarks linking joblessness to domestic abuse earlier this week while promoting the jobs bill:

Carlson: It's completely over the top! Look, this isn't any landmark piece of legislation. It's relatively small. There was no reason to pull out this rhetoric, to get this heavy on behalf of something this relatively unremarkable. I think it shows the pressure Reid is under, having failed to deliver health care, and frankly the pressure is at home, in his state, Nevada, where he's going to lose his seat, it looks like. So this guy's in a pressure cooker.

... This is kind of the dog food case, you know, the kind of classic, or cat-food case, 'Vote for this or your grandmother will be stuck eating pet food.'

Political rhetoric can reach a point of ludicrousness -- a point of over-the-top-ness that is counterproductive, it's laughable. It becomes a parody of itself. I think the Senate Majority Leader just reached that point.

Hmmmmm. I wonder if this qualifies for Tucker's standard of "getting heavy on behalf of something this unremarkable":

I don't think I've ever seen a president or a government do anything that I thought was out-and-out evil. I mean, we've gotten close. I think rendition is pretty darned evil. But this is enslaving, what our president has proposed and what is in this new bill. Changes in the tax deductions for charitable giving!

We've got a whole big bunch of similar examples.

Funny that Carlson only notices when a Democrat pulls out a real-life example of the consequences of Republican obstructionism. Then it's "over the top." But call the president a socialist? Why, that's just beanbag.

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Bill O'Reilly must be feeling a bit sensitive these days about the ongoing mockery of his work over at Comedy Central in the form of Jon Stewart's Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's show, which is essentially a running parody of O'Reilly anyway.

Last night, he even deigned to respond -- first, to Stewart, with smug, self-serving BS, and then to Colbert by attempting comedy. Which, as you can see, might be funny to someone with long-term dementia, but otherwise ... well, Bill, don't quit your day job.

Actually, the self-serving crap was really quite funny:

O'Reilly: Like Mr. Stewart, we like to poke a little fun -- but we're not hateful. Unlike Jon, we give the entire story, because our audience wants that.

That gave me quite a chuckle.

Image crossposted from here, or click image for full version. Open Thread below....

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Video and more from Media Matters:

In a June 4 article headlined "Judge tosses school official's lawsuit against Fox News," the Associated Press reported on the dismissal of a school superintendent's lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade for repeating as fact an online parody news report of a school prank that included fabricated quotes attributed to the superintendent. The judge called Doocy and Kilmeade "gullible," as the AP noted, and while he dismissed the lawsuit, the Fox & Friends segment in question marked at least the third time since 2004 that Fox News has issued a retraction and apology for airing a fake news report that repeated false information. In fact, the segment aired after Fox News' Vice President for News John Moody reportedly warned staff in January 2007 that "seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC." In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote:

The facts in this case -- a morning cable news show derisively reporting events and statements obtained unwittingly from an online parody -- should provide grist for journalism classes teaching research and professionalism standards in the Internet age. But First Amendment principles developed long before the Internet still provide protection to the gullible news program hosts against this public official's claims for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. Poetic justice would subject the defendants to the same ridicule that they accorded the plaintiff. But in real life, the aggrieved school superintendent must be satisfied with their later retraction and a professional reputation sullied less than theirs. Read on...

Somehow, this comes to mind.