Let’s make all would-be Wall Street investors watch informative, cautionary videos before making their investments. Show them videos of families being evicted from their homes after foreclosure. Show them police perp-walking executives to the police station (The “Perp Walk”: A Visual History, for example). Have investment counselors advise them of the potential pitfalls of Wall Street investing: sneaky fine print, massive fraud by the banks, complex investment vehicles not even bank CEOs understand, dividends lost to inflated executive bonuses, loss of capital and financial ruin. Afterwards, send investors home for a suitable waiting period before allowing them back to sign on the dotted line.

A Democrat in the North Carolina legislature recently recounted his conversation with a GOP colleague who asked how much the state spent on needs-based financial aid for kids who wanted to go to college. The woman thought the state should not spend any, saying, “… until you have the money, you ought not go.” Again, sound, debt-averse austerity-think. The precautionary principle at work — emphasis on caution. Surely, there is another Republican legislative initiative in that.

America just had a major real estate meltdown. Millions of homeowners are under water. So, in keeping with the new fiscal austerity, let’s eliminate all government support for low-cost mortgages. Make people save their money until they can afford to pay cash for their homes. No spending on home furnishings or renovations, either.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

The Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court now allows “independent-expenditure only committees” like Colbert’s to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or attack candidates. But with the debut of Colbert’s first television ads ahead of Iowa’s Ames straw poll, it is clear that Colbert’s target list is broader than candidates and campaign finance.

Another YouTube video points to one aspect of the Colbert super PAC’s targets that deserves more attention from progressives. In it, Teller, of the magic duo Penn & Teller, describes how magicians use human pattern seeking to trick both the eye and mind.

Teller begins, “One thing that magicians do is take advantage of our natural inclination to study something that we see done over and over again and think that we’re learning something … If you do that with a magician, it’s sometimes a big mistake.” With Fox News as well. Especially if you think you’re learning something.

To make their illusions work, magicians use that pattern reflex to manage audience attention and lead them to false assumptions about reality. Penn & Teller do more. Their magic/comedy shows bring audiences into the act by exposing how the tricks are done.

What the Iowa ads from Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow do is something similar. By calling out grifter super PACs by name, by revealing to the audience in satirical fashion how political ads attempt to manipulate them, Colbert lets the audience “in on the trick.” He’s telling them what to watch for when “out of state groups” like Grow PAC and Jobs for Iowa PAC “flood the airwaves” with their ads.

Faced with the massive amounts of money that flowed into conservative political ads in the wake of Citizens United, progressives face the daunting prospect of finding ways to fight back. Lacking comparable funding, there seem to be few ways for grassroots groups to mount an effective messaging counteroffensive. But few doesn’t mean none.

The Agenda Project’s “America the Beautiful” ad targeted Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan and – buying no air time – garnered tons of earned media after it went viral on YouTube. But that “earned media” strategy probably is not workable for mounting a sustained campaign against millions of dollars in corporate-funded ad buys.

Yet in spite of that, and unlike most progressive organizations, Colbert has positioned himself to fight back in the mainstream media against the Citizens United money flood – just what the progressive community wants, if not in the high-minded way it might imagine for itself. But even Colbert’s modest effort in Iowa is better than the mainstream messaging vehicle progressives don’t have. As much as they might value Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” progressives have not yet embraced Colbert’s super PAC as much more than Onion-like satire.

That could be a missed opportunity. Because Colbert has the national presence and media platform progressive groups lack for raising money and mainstreaming the kind of smackdown most political advertising deserves. Besides, attempting “serious” in this political environment might be a riskier maneuver than the progressive movement can successfully pull off. “Maybe the whole system has become such a joke,” writes the New York Times‘ David Carr, “that only jokes will serve as a corrective.”

Joining Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow’s efforts to spotlight other super PACs’ manipulation just might be progressives’ best bet for gaining ground in an otherwise asymmetrical fight. (As a bonus, Colbert adds donors’ names to the HEROE$ crawl that runs during his show.) Expect Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC to get extra special attention from Colbert’s super PAC. That alone should merit progressive financial support.

As the Fox News Channel’s short-lived “1/2 Hour News Hour” graphically demonstrated, humor is one of the few areas of political warfare where liberals wield superior firepower. In a battle in which they are otherwise outgunned, it would be a mistake for progressives to dismiss Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow’s effort as a mere comedic stunt rather than help Colbert deploy it to maximum effect. Of all people, progressive “dirty hippies” should be able to appreciate what it is like to be treated as unserious.

A three-way debate among GOP POTUS contenders Trump, Palin, and Cain would be Teabagger Comedy Hour. Let’s look into the special Dirty Hippies crystal ball, and see what would transpire. It would be broadcast on FOX and co-moderated by David Brooks (in a show of bipartisanship) and for gravitas, Andrew Breitbart.

The night gets off to an energetic start as Palin demands Trump and Cain’s foreign policy credentials. She wilts a little when she realizes (belatedly) Cain has actually served overseas. Oopsie! (No, it was actually Alan West who served overseas, not Cain.) It just doesn’t hold up to some closed-door speech she gave to a trade group in Hong Kong. That’s what happens when the only newspapers you read are your own press clips.

Trump goes on the attack by challenging first Cain’s citizenship and then Palin’s college grades. Cain boasts about his business expertise and tells The Donald, “You’re fired!”

There’s a lengthy interlude where Trump and Cain compete to see who loves capitalism more, but when a moderator pipes up and reminds them that Presidents must make public their tax returns, The Donald balks and Palin blanches a little.

The two reality tv stars ridicule the radio guy. (Breitbart gets some licks in too, as he has a dog in this fight.) Trump offers his beauty pageant and many (ex-)wives as proof he loves women; Palin offers herself as proof she loves women. “See? I love them so much I am one.”

Cain says he embodies the American dream of hard work and pizza sales. Crickets from Palin and Trump.

Results from real-time polling show it’s a three-way split: people who like bumpits say Palin won, bald people say Trump won, and people who like pizza say McCain won.

(Eh, what’s that you say? That’s not John McCain? OHHHH. *blink* *blink*)

Post-debate, Trump sends angry photocopies of magazine articles marked up in Sharpie to his opponents, while Palin’s ghost-Tweeter snarks in unintelligible sentence fragments and then longer, equally unintelligible sentence fragments on Facebook.

Cain issues a press release reminding his opponents that his name is Herman, not Barack. And it’s Cain, not McCain.

You betcha.

OK, whatever you say, Herbert McCain.

There’s a kerfuffle over whether Palin trademarked the term “You betcha” or no, and whether anyone else can use it besides her.

FOX, CBS, CNN, ABC, and NBC devote THREE days of news coverage over the tag line “You betcha.”

There, I think I just saved you from paying attention to three months of GOP presidential campaigning plus a “debate”. You may safely ignore them now.

X-posted from Jazz from Hell