Great Big Ones

Stephen Colbert has the largest cajones of any major comedian working today. He was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people -- for the second time, as he lets everyone know at the official event. An excerpt:

Of course, all of us should be honored to be listed on the TIME 100 alongside the two men who will be slugging it out in the fall: President Obama, and the man who would defeat him, David Koch.

Give it up everybody. David Koch.

Little known fact -- David, nice to see you again, sir.

Little known fact, David's brother Charles Koch is actually even more influential. Charles pledged $40 million to defeat President Obama, David only $20 million. That's kind of cheap, Dave.

Sure, he's all for buying the elections, but when the bill for democracy comes up, Dave's always in the men's room. I'm sorry, I must have left Wisconsin in my other coat.

I was particularly excited to meet David Koch earlier tonight because I have a Super PAC, Colbert Super PAC, and I am -- thank you, thank you -- and I am happy to announce Mr. Koch has pledged $5 million to my Super PAC. And the great thing is, thanks to federal election law, there's no way for you to ever know whether that's a joke.

By the way, if David Koch likes his waiter tonight, he will be your next congressman.

Great huge brass ones.

Read it all.

#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Colbert strikes again. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) lied openly on the Senate floor about Planned Parenthood, claiming that 90% of Planned Parenthood's services are abortions. When his office was called with the FACT that the actual figure is 3%, they claimed that Sen. Kyl's remarks into the official Congressional record were, in fact, "not intended to be a factual statement." In other words, Sen. Jon Kyl is officially a liar.

For Colbert, of course, who coined the phrase "truthiness" as the lies that feel true due to fitting our steadfast preconceived ideology, hence repeated over and over by organs of the Right like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, etc. until George Orwell spins all the way out of his grave and straight into Newt Gingrich's skull. Birtherism is truthiness. I'd argue that 90% of Tea Party nonsense is as well. And some of you would tell me that's being generous.

The upshot is an hilarious Colbert bit that didn't stop here:

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Colbert by tweeting hilariously ridiculous lies about Sen. Kyl with the hashtag as his fig leaf:

Jon Kyl is an accomplished nude hula dancer. He is not welcome in Hawaii. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

For the past 10 years, Jon Kyl has been two children in a very convincing Jon Kyl suit. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl cheated on Sandra Bullock. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Once a year, Jon Kyl retreats to the Arizona desert and deposits 2 million egg sacs under the sand. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Citing religious reasons, Jon Kyl refuses to utter the number 8. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl once ate a badger he hit with his car. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Carly Simon wrote that song about Jon Kyl. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Legally, Jon Kyl cannot be within 100 yards of Helen Mirren. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl has a shrine to Scooter from the Muppet Show. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl was sent from the future to kill Sarah Conner. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Which was then picked up all over the Twittosphere by fans who invented their own, and now by Senate Democrats themselves. And on the Senate floor by new fan favorite, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand even got into the act:

“For my friends and colleagues, this is a factual statement,” Gillibrand said. “Current law already prevents federal money from paying for abortions. This has been the law of the land for over 30 years. Shutting down the government for a political argument is not only outrageous, it is irresponsible. The price for keeping the government open is this assault on women’s rights.”

And yes, I got into it as well:



What's about it is that today's GOP, for the most part, lies every day, big ones. Like the lying budget assumptions behind Rep. Paul Ryan's Republican budget -- the killing of Medicare, the lowering of taxes on the rich from 35% to 25%. Like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who admitted he lied (by omission) in his campaign and lied bald-faced as Governor in his arguments for passing a ban on collective bargaining by public unions:

Asked if he had really campaigned on a plan to roll back collective bargaining rights, Walker repeatedly danced around the question, insisting he had campaigned on a “range” of promises to impose fiscal discipline. But Connolly kept pressing the point, and finally asked him point blank: Did you “explicitly” campaign on this proposal?

“No,” Walker conceded. He then went on to repeat his claim that he campaigned on a range of issues, and insistted that Wisconsinites should not have been surprised by his plan because his views on collective bargaining had long been known.

...

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn’t save any.

Way to go, Scottie! You're no Tricky Dick, that's for sure.

A long but entertaining list of GOP #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatements here, click for explanations:

• Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves."
• "The Estate Tax Destroys Family Farms and Small Businesses."
• "Death Panels."
• "A Government Takeover of Health Care."
• "No American is Denied Health Care."
• "The Health Care Law Adds to the Deficit."
• "Barack Obama Was Not Born in the United States."
• "Barack Obama is a Muslim."
• "Public Employees Are Overpaid."
• "We Went to War [with Iraq] Because We Were Attacked."
• "Abortion Causes Cancer and Psychological Trauma for Women."

The Not Intended to be Factual Party. Someone is finally calling them out.

Starting with Sen. Jon Kyl's staff calling him out themselves.

Behind the Col-Mask

Stephen Colbert lays it all out in reddit, answering questions from that audience thanks to a promise he made if the site raise over a half million dollars for DonorChoose.

It's a pleasure to learn about the guy, his method, his training, his doubts. This one is my fave answer:

When you are young and single, there really isnt anything to worry about.

Will you starve? Not likely. I worried that I didnt have enough gumption to get work. That I wouldn't know how to network or something. But at a young age several people, some professors and directors, told me I had talent, and that it was mine to husband if I was willing to work. Those kind words sustained me, many times.

I mostly just said yes to any opportunity to get on stage. Pay or no pay. Equity, amateur, comedy, avant garde, and improv especially. Chicago has a great improv community, and I could get up on stage a lot after I got to know the other members of the community. I called it getting in trouble. You say yes to something, then you are in trouble. You have to deliver. Each mini-crisis I forced myself into made me work hard.

As for true doubt, it got under my skin deeply only once. I was newly-married and I was offered a part I would have loved, but no pay. I had worked for six years doing anything, but had made a deal with myself that if I ever was to have family I could support, I would have to insist on pay. A small rule, right? But hard for a young actor to keep. Mostly you don't really get paid.

I said no to the part and immediately (I mean within minutes) went into a spiral of panic that lasted for months. I was sure I had made the wrong decision (I hadn't) and would never get a part like it again. But the worst feeling was that I knew I truly wanted to be an actor and there was no turning back now. I was too old to do anything else. This was a feeling I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Yep, Stephen Colbert once again proving himself a man of his word -- and a man of the people.

District of Colbert

Stephen and Congress. Pure gold.

He had to go through this:



To say all this:



Best line is a tie between his reference to the Gospel of Matthew and his slipping in the Iowa cornpacker gag!

The Storm

Credit where credit is due: Karl Rove protege and McCain '08 Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt "comes out" in favor of gay marriage to the Log Cabin Republicans, likening it to Civil Rights.

Meanwhile, the "storm approaching" ad by anti-equality activists has spawned a few good parodies, but none better than the master himself:

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The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
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One wonders if the GOP can expand their tent as Schmidt would like, or remains prisoner of the religious voters, as he references as well:

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt declared. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

Perhaps the GOP with have the toughest time surviving the oncoming "storm"...already in progress.

McCain Green Screen

Stephen Colbert gave his fans some footage from Sen. John McCain's ill-conceived "counterspeech" on the night Obama clinched the Democratic Presidential nomination and asked them to help make John McCain more exciting.

Here's some faves I just discovered. This one is real eerie, very well grafting McCain into the sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still:



This one's quick -- just twelve second -- and both masterful and cutting, pretty close to the line but just so well executed:



How about McCain in classic original series Star Trek?:



And now mapped beautifully into the cinematic masterpiece, Citizen McCain:



Nice punch line.