I sure am gonna miss Bill Hader, who is leaving SNL. Here he is in a YouTube from last year (not work safe).

Open thread below...

On Friday, Fox News' Monica Crowley informed Hannity's audience that President Obama and his administration have an "ideology of control" just like communist, socialist, and fascist regimes of times past.

Over the weekend, we heard comparison after comparison of the IRS so-called scandal to Watergate. Even David Gregory chimed in on that chorus by legitimizing the claims rather than forcing the squawkers to justify their claims.

Similarly, Paul Ryan's claim that connection between the IRS and Obamacare is somehow sinister and threatening is yet another dog whistle to the Tea Party masses.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul is trumpeting the fanfare over Benghazi and trying to flog Hillary Clinton with it. Of course, it's not just intended to flog Hillary, but also to serve as a clarion call for the masses to rise up this summer yet again.

On the extreme side of things, we have radio hosts claiming Obama is really the first openly gay president who hasn't come out of the closet yet. Um, okay. But wait! There's more.

According to Virginia's Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate, winger pastor EW Jackson, Democrats are slave masters and Obama is really a Muslim. Did I mention that Mr. Jackson happens to be black?

What we have here are the beginnings of a long, hot summer, with tons of manufactured discontent. Unlike 2009 and 2010, wingers don't have Obamacare to kick around anymore even though they think they do. They've had control of the House since 2010 but haven't done anything with it other than repeal ObamaCare 37 times, block every job bill that had a chance of actually improving the lives of Americans, and thump their chests about Benghazi and other stupid inventions.

All of the noise is, as Katrina Vanden Heuvel called it, deployment of weapons of mass distraction, sacrificing real issues and governance for political point-scoring, brewing a summer with town hall meetings full of angry elderly white people shaking their fists at evil Democrats for scandals Republicans caused.

Over the weekend I watched The Billionaires' Tea Party, which is an updated version of AstroTurf Wars made during the health care town halls. It includes footage from American Majority training sessions where participants are instructed in the fine art of gaming everything from Amazon reviews to social media. It was a good review in anticipation of what they plan for this summer and 2014.

The Occupy movement and all activists should be prepared to take them on this time. They do not get to benefit from the element of surprise. Most people who aren't insane know there's an effort afoot to gin up everything they possibly can to keep this president and Democrats from doing anything worthwhile, but we don't have the Villagers on our side, nor should we ever expect to.

If I were you, I'd put those local town hall dates in my planner and plan to attend, if only to counterbalance the insanity they're about to unleash on us all.

Not a good place for poor people, because the suburbs are greatly lacking in the kind of aid programs you can still find in most cities, and they're usually very sporadically served by public transit, making car ownership more of a necessity than it would be in a city:

Bucking longstanding patterns in the United States, more poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis.

As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67% between 2000 and 2011 — a much bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published today. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities.

Authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube cited a long list of reasons for the shift.

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Customer John lives in the gnawing belly of East Texas and sends us some insight into the pits of hell.

When you can’t understand why people in East Texas keep electing Louie Gohmert, Steve Stockman, and other assorted fools, here’s a bit of a hint: sometimes they just don’t know any better.

Take the local newspapers for example.

Click the little one to get the big one or open it in a PDF because we are technologically sassy at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.

This is the Tyler Morning Telegraph.

It’s an AP story which includes information that there is no evidence that President Obama ordered or even knew about the IRS targeting groups wanting tax exempt status.

You would not guess that from the headline, now would you?

And while the story includes the fact that other Presidents may have used the IRS for punishment of their political enemies, the headline indicates that President Obama is familiar to scandals.

When the AP files a story, local newspapers can and do write their own headlines.

The same story appeared in the Boston Globe except “Scandal” was replaced with “Allegations” in the headline as did the Fresno Bee, NBC News, and even KTUV.

Every other replay of the AP story used the word “allegation.” The East Texas newspaper used “Scandal.”

And they put the story in the “FAITH” section. Yes, they do still have freedom of religion in East Texas: you can belong to any kind of Baptist Church you want to.

Why would political news headline the FAITH section of the local newspaper, you ask?

Because you have to accept on faith that Barack Obama has cloven hooves.

John promises to keep an eye out for more of this crapola.

Juanita Jean blogs at the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.

First of all, you don't need to be Sigmund Freud to understand the kind of deep, twisted misogyny that leads to fantasies about shooting a powerful, accomplished woman in her private parts. I'd even go so far as to suggest that old Pete can only perform with women with the aid of a certain little blue pill. (After all, he didn't suggest shooting her in the knees.) Do men who have successful, loving relationships with women have fantasies like this? I'm guessing not.

There's no way you can convince me that Pete isn't trying to encourage his listeners to act as surrogates for the job he's too impotent to do himself. And while the legal responsibility for such cheerleading can be murky, most of us are ethically aware enough to see where the moral responsibility lies:

Extremist radio host Pete Santilli is defending and reiterating his inflammatory attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stating on his program that he wants "to shoot her in the vagina and let her suffer right before my eyes."

In a May 17 rant captured by Right Wing Watch, Santilli called for the Bush family and President Obama to be shot and for Clinton to be "shot in the vagina." The Secret Service told TPM Media that they would investigate Santilli's comments in order to "determine what a person's intent is when making comments like this."

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Why was this woman from Occupy Our Homes Atlanta tased? Because they can.

It's the second day of the action that brought the Home Defenders League and allies in the Occupy movement to rally at the “Bring Justice to Justice” event at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. Dozens of underwater or foreclosed homeowners were arrested in non-violent civil disobedience.

They're still holding a vigil at the Department of Justice. This OOHA resident fighter was tazed and violently arrested this morning while peacefully protesting at the Department of Justice. She was there with others demanding that Eric Holder and the DOJ prosecute and jail bankers for their economy-crashing crimes.

If there is any one person besides Wayne LaPierre who might be responsible for domestic terrorism in this country, it's Larry Pratt. Blend that persona with a little Alex Jones, and you get a full contingent of right wing nuttery. In this one segment, Pratt claims:

• Obama is a 'full-bore Marxist' and communist
• Obama and the Democrats 'had to steal' the last last election with 'barely 50 percent of the vote'.
• Obama is out to grab every last bit of power he possibly can.

To anyone who is rational, this is so ridiculous it deserves a solid mocking. Someone winning the presidency by 5 million votes is hardly "barely 50 percent" but of course, that message is for the True Believers who say 5 million voters stole the 2012 election because surely America couldn't elect a black guy twice.

Here's the full transcript, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

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Via Slate, this wonderful little vignette amidst the devastation:

Let's hope there are more stories like this coming out of Moore, Okla., where people continue to pick through the rubble of their town for family, friends, and pets who managed to survive the massive tornado.

In the video below you'll meet Barbara Garcia, an elderly woman who rode out the storm by taking refuge in the bathroom of her since-destroyed home. Things get good—and may just get a little dusty in your office—at about the 1:35-mark when she discovers her missing dog, shaken but seemingly largely uninjured, in the rubble.

"Well I got God to answer one prayer to let me be OK, but he answered both of them because this was my second prayer," Garcia says, partly to the camera and partly to herself.

And in other good news, the medical examiner has lowered the number of estimated deaths from the monster tornado to 24.

Truly awful people. Really all that needs to be said.

(h/t Heather)

What a preening jackass this guy is.

The tornado damage near Oklahoma City is still being assessed and the death toll is expected to rise, but already Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says he will insist that any federal disaster aid be paid for with cuts elsewhere.

CQ Roll Call reporter Jennifer Scholtes wrote for CQ.com Monday evening that Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides.

Coburn added, Scholtes wrote, that it is too early to guess at a damage toll but that he knows for certain he will fight to make sure disaster funding that the federal government contributes is paid for. It’s a position he has taken repeatedly during his career when Congress debates emergency funding for disaster aid.

Scholtes points out that Coburn was one of 36 Republican senators who voted against disaster funding for Superstorm Sandy in January.

The bodies aren't cold yet, and Coburn's already putting on his green visor and counting nickels. Not only is this morally offensive, it's terrible economic policy.

But I'm sure this clownery will be called "brave" and "principled" by the village media.