Congressman John Fleming (R, LA) recently posted an article on his Facebook page showing disgust for Planned Parenthood’s “abortion by the wholesale.” The article titled Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex was created by The Onion in May 2011 as satire. Fleming posted the article thinking that it was real.

Someone commented under the post:

The Onion is satire, how exactly did you get elected?

via The Daily What and Literally Unbelievable

image via Literally Unbelievable

The White House has posted a behind-the-scenes look at the process of writing President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address.

The President has been brainstorming with the speechwriters and huddling with the policy team. He’s come up with new ideas, rewritten language, and reordered pages. For President Obama, this isn’t simply an editing exercise. He’s invested in creating the State of the Union because he sees it as his opportunity to take his vision for the country to the American people directly.

via Curiosity Counts

Last night Stephen Colbert announced he is forming an exploratory committee for his possible candidacy for the “President of the United States of South Carolina.” In order to do so, he transferred command of his super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow to Jon Stewart. Colbert formed his super PAC—a political action committee that can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, individuals, and other PACs—in June of 2011.

Colbert is currently exploring a run for President of the United States of South Carolina. Because of this, he cannot be associated with any Super PACs, although he has asked Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow to forward any periodicals of an “adult nature.”

Primary Elections Explained by C.G.P. Grey

KoPoint Wire is a new opinion and content-aggregating blog focusing on media, politics, sports, and technology. KoPoint founder Dan Patterson is starting off by hitting the road to cover the Republican presidential primaries.

“Iowa Nice” by Scott Siepker and Paul Benedict is a punchy informational video that challenges a few stereotypes about the nice people of Iowa.

via Daily What & Towleroad

“Politicians Under Video Surveillance” by Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus is an art installation in which 75 fake security cameras were clustered around political candidate ads in Madrid. The installation occurred on November 19, one day before a Spanish election. We recently wrote about another work by Luzinterruptus: Radioactive Control, Installation of 100 Glowing Figures in Hazmat Suits.

For our installation Politicians under video surveillance, we carried 75 fake security cameras with us, of the type which detect movement and possess an intermittent red light and we trained them on the advertising used by the parties in their electoral campaigns, observing from close up the faces that were touched up for the photos, of the politicians elect.

photos by Gustavo Sanabria

via Super Punch

Our friends at Nerdist have announced who they have “officially endorsed” for the 2012 presidential campaign, a turquoise-farming puppet named Marvin E. Quasniki. The outspoken Mr. Quasniki (through Nerdist) has posted his presidential campaign announcement (filled with expletives) and a man on the street segment video.

Tonight’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show opened with Rachel talking about Laughing Squid and my recent blog post about Moustair, the Tumblr blog with the strange collection of photos featuring men’s moustaches as their own hair.

Our beloved Doggie Diner Dog Heads make a cameo as well.

via Emma Welles

C.G.P. Grey takes a look at How The Electoral College Works and The Trouble with the Electoral College.

Bad Lip Reading has come up with a suitably silly and downright dada take on campaign speechifying that leaves Auto-Tune the News, the last great YouTubeness contribution to political discourse, way back in the rear-view mirror.

Here’s their groovy takedown of Barack Obama’s lip-flapping: “Trick The Bridesmaid” which confirms that there is no partisan exclusion to the parody-making. “Are you really drinking my bottled judgement?”, indeed.

But honestly, the current crowded field of Republican challengers is providing the best fodder for this innovation in words-in-mouthing. Like this little nugget from Texas Governor Rick Perry, “I cannot wait for a medieval cookie, a Cinnabon, hot yellow kool-aid and save a pretzel for the gas jets!”. I’m pretty sure he really said that.

Fans of interim Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco pulled out all the stops to help earn him the permanent mayoral seat in this music video titled Ed Lee Is…2 LEGIT 2 QUIT which remixes the original hit song, 2 Legit 2 Quit, from rap artist MC Hammer. The video features some Bay Area personalities including Ashkon, MC Hammer, SF Giants pitcher Brian Wilson, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Will.I.Am of Black Eyed Peas, 49ers football legend Ronnie Lott, former SF mayor Willie Brown, Google executive Marissa Mayer and more.

My my my, music hits me so hard,
Newsom left and they put him in charge,
Thank you, for blessing me,
and the rest of the city with Mayor Ed Lee
Got us all sayin’ “Run Lee Run”
Only 5 ft 5, but he gets (bleep) done
So tell them other candidates to find a bus pass,
Unless you ridin with us…FEAR THE MUSTACHE!

The video was produced by Portal-A Interactive and was funded by a committee called San Franciscans for Jobs and Good Goverment which is headed by Ron Conway and Sean Parker.

via TechCrunch

President Obama has launched a Kickstarter project to solve the debt problem.

via Funny or Die

Is America Ready For Its First Gay Atheist Female Robot President?

According to The New New York Times, it might just happen in 2567.

original source unknown

via Guigo Reader, Chris Menning & meme-meme

Prolific prankster artist Steve Lambert is building a giant truck-mounted sign that reads “Capitalism Works for Me.” The sign will tour the United States on the bed of a truck, and passersby will be able to take part in the project by choosing “true” or “false”–their votes will be tallied on the sign for all to see. Lambert will document the tour with a website and eventually, a book. He’s raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

You may remember Steve Lambert from such pranks as the fake New York Times edition that announced the end of the Iraq war, or his project to talk to anyone about anything. He’s also the guy with The Most Awkward 404 Not Found Page on the Internet.

I’m excited that this piece takes on what for most Americans is a taboo, or even nonexistent subject: whether global, hegemonic capitalism actually works for most people! But whew, talking about that is boring! And telling people what to think is worse! This sign gets passers by to participate in deceptively simple vote (True/False) which only pretends to offer resolution. Every aspect of the interaction draws them in to more complex questions and conversations, leading to new thoughts and ideas about a better world!

The hilarious speeches by Seth Meyers and Barack Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Seth and Obama really let Trump have it in their speechs. Trump’s reaction in the audience is priceless.

In “The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?” by RSA, Evgeny Morozov presents a strong critique of the popular idea that the Internet breeds democracy. Maybe our tweets didn’t topple Tunisia’s authoritarian goverment after all.

See Also:
- Language as a Window into Human Nature on RSA Animate
- 21st Century Enlightenment on RSA Animate

John Stewart interviewed former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on The Daily Show, which included an often awkward, yet very insightful conversation about the war in Iraq.

On January 4th Gavin Newsom, the current mayor of San Francisco, will become the Lieutenant Governor of California. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will be choosing his replacement. Jesse Sanford and Participant Labs have created a website where people can vote for a the new mayor via Twitter to help the supervisors make their choice.

A Twitter-based shoutout tally, the site allows visitors to choose one of the candidates for SF’s interim mayor and send a Tweet registering their support. It tallies all votes and presents the results for all to see; because the votes are based on Tweets, they are transparent and individually available for recounting.

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is official now, so it’s a good time to recall this recent The Daily Show video aimed at Senator John McCain. McCain has a track record of changing the basis for his opposition to repealing DADT. And as it became clear that repeal was imminent, Jon Stewart and team wanted him to know that It gets worse, referring to McCain’s legacy in the wake of defending a policy that has restricted the rights of gays in the U.S. military.

Comedy enlisted to makes a point about LGBT civil rights has given us a lot of great funny in recent years, like Prop 8 the Musical and Stephen Colbert’s parody of the pro-Prop 8 Gathering Storm ad. But as is often the case there are serious issues at the root of the laughter. The Daily Show sketch references two awareness campaigns and it’s worth taking a moment to mention them both.

The ad referred to in the Daily Show piece, in which the Senator’s wife Cindy McCain appears, is from The NOH8 Campaign, which begain in late 2008 in response to California’s Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage…

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8″ painted on one cheek in protest.

This particular ad was in response to suicides by several young gay men which gained national attention in the fall of this year. All those deaths were linked to bullying by peers, and the ad aims to raise awareness of the unfortunately rampant problem of LBGT kids being harassed in school. It features celebrities from Gene Simmons of KISS to that guy from Dancing with the Stars sending the message that bullying is wrong and that we can all do something to help.

The Daily Show’s “It Gets Worse” phrase is a play on the It Gets Better Project:

In September 2010, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. In response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school, they wanted to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better.

Now there are well over 1000 videos from all over the world online with personal stories about how “It Gets Better”. These include celebrity testimonials as well as those uploaded by everyday people.

Groups of LGBT employees at several tech companies have made videos for the project including folks from Google and Facebook…

Recently several White House staffers added their own “It Gets Better” video (below), following on the heels of videos by President Obama and Vice President Biden coming out of the closet. NOT REALLY! But they did talk directly to gay youth to encourage them to stay strong against the ridicule they may be experiencing.

White House Staff: It Gets Better from The White House on Vimeo.

You can watch more videos on the project’s website. Both of these campaigns support The Trevor Project which has advocacy/educational programs for LGBT youth and a a 24/7 Lifeline for kids who need help.

San Francisco has become notorious for having poor cellphone coverage. People usually blame their wireless carrier for this, but a big part of the problem is that, like many communities across the country, local NIMBYs have opposed efforts to install new antennas that would significantly improve wireless reception.

Some of the opposition stems from scientifically dubious anxiety about the health effects of wireless antennas. Some stems from aesthetic concerns. But the bottom line is that coverage in San Francisco sucks in no small part because local elected officials have sided with anti-antenna zealots to block the installation of new antennas.

Over at Bernalwood, a new blog I created for San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, I just published a post-mortem on the Great Bernal Hill Antenna War of 2010. The bottom line here is that if you want better mobile service, you may have to become politically involved — because chances are the NIMBY activists and antennaphobe zealots who oppose new antenna installations already have the ear of your local politicians.

[via Mission Loc@al]

image via San Francisco Planning Department

Just after Thanksgiving, Stephen Colbert stepped out of character, fought off the post-turkey nods and SHOUTed responses to questions from members of the social news website reddit.com. He had promised the interview as a thank you to the community for supporting Donor’s Choose to the tune of $500K. See below for more details.

Note from the reddit admins: back in October, when reddit was helping raise money for DonorsChoose, Stephen Colbert (major reddit fan, BTW) provided us with an extra incentive: if we raised $500,000 before the rally, he would let reddit ask him anything. Well, you guys held up your end of the deal ($575,000 and counting, with the vast majority of donations coming from redditors). You asked some great questions. And now, we have answers to the top 11, as voted by you.

Stephen’s original response was in all-caps, due to being composed on a special iPad app while he was presumably curled up on the couch in a post-turkey coma. If you want to see that rough cut, it’s available here. Otherwise, what follows is a slight reformatting.

Colbert talked about the Reddit-driven donation drive on an episode of his show at the time.

Ron English imagines what some of the products that might be produced if CA Proposition 19 passes tomorrow.

Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and Ozzy Osbourne battled it out on stage at the Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear today in Washington DC, playing “Peace Train” vs. “Crazy Train”.

[via Lori Dorn via Mediaite]

President Barack Obama was a guest on last night’s episode of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.