The Daily Show spotlights the stark difference between campaign Obama and governing Obama.

I had read that the opening of the CNN-Tea Party sponsored Republican debate on Monday had been over the top but it took The Daily Show to drive home the point, again, of what a ridiculous circus US politics and its media coverage have become.

As predicted, in an attempt to gain attention, Michele Bachmann has ramped up the crazy, going after Rick Perry by suggesting, without any evidence whatsoever, that the anti-HPV vaccine Gardasil could cause mental retardation.

Who knows where she will end up.

In reading about the things that the audience at the Republican debates booed and applauded most enthusiastically, I was reminded of this scene from the classic Mel Brooks’ comedy Blazing Saddles (1974).

After the previous Republican debate last week, Jon Stewart nailed the development in the Republican party that I wrote about in this post.

(via Eschaton)

Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian, spells out what constitutes a traditional or Bible–based marriage.

When Michael Steele was the head of the Republican National Committee, he ran a scandal-plagued operation and his attempts to put a good face on his party’s politics made him look like a buffoon.

Now that he is free of the institutional constraint of having to defend everything his party does, he turns out to be an astute, interesting, and engaging observer of the current political scene, as this interview on The Daily Show reveals, where he speaks quite frankly about the divisions within the party that have emerged as a result of the loss of control by establishment Republicans.