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...

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.

On Monday, May 20th, hundreds of homeowners facing foreclosure and housing rights activists from across the country will rally outside of the United States Department of Justice to demand Attorney General Holder hold the Wall Street Banks that ravaged America’s economy accountable. Dozens of struggling homeowners are prepared to risk arrest in non-violent civil disobedience or set up an ongoing occupation outside the Department of Justice until demands for Wall Street accountability and relief for their communities are addressed.

Demonstrators today are using their bodies to send a message to Eric Holder that it is time to stop shielding the big Wall Street banks from prosecution. Hundreds of homeowners who have been playing by the rules while the big banks have cheated them are risking arrest at the Department of Justice to make an unmistakable statement: it is about time for the government to side with poor and middle class folks who the bankers have screwed rather than those banks who have been cheating them.

The Campaign for a Fair Settlement and the Alliance for a Just Society put together devastating reports in April and May, the first of which points out that the administration has yet to prosecute a single major bank or top level executive for the widespread fraud leading to the system's collapse, while the most recent report discusses how much better the economy would be if the administration was forcing the big banks to actually help homeowners who had been hurt by the banks. From the report:

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