Times are tough for Indonesian Barack Obama impersonator

Indonesian Barack Obama impersonator Ilham Anas, forced to ride the train like a schlub

Barack Obama is visiting Indonesia this week to talk about American-Muslim relations (have fun, buddy,) discuss Asia’s role in world economics, and maybe check in on his alma mater, State Elementary School 01 Menteng.* That’s great news for the people of Indonesia, who will finally encounter a man in a suit who does not exhort them to detonate night clubs or answer customer service calls. It’s less great news for Ilham Anas, who will suddenly find himself the second-best Barack Obama impersonator in town. Frankly, it’s another setback in a bad year. According to Anas, the President’s declining popularity has meant less work for him, as the mere sight of a man who strongly resembles Barack Obama is no longer sufficient to delight everyone. “This year, it’s definitely not like it was at the beginning,” Anas said in an interview with Reuters. “I still get jobs, but most of them are overseas.” And with that, Ilham Anas definitively establishes himself as a funnier Barack Obama impersonator than Fred Armisen.

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Friday links! Rule of the commentariat edition

It’s been a bonanza week for news commentators, with earthquakes, tell-all books, people saying “negro” two years ago—everything that makes a vibrant political discourse thrive. The big news, though, was that a certain someone jumped from national electoral politics to the big show: cable news commentating. When Bill O’Reilly welcomed Sarah Palin to Fox News, he told her that she had acquired a powerful tool, a bigger megaphone that she could at last use to shout back at her critics. The implication was that being a Fox commentator was a position of greater power than being governor of Alaska. And was he wrong? Sarah Palin is more popular now than she was when she had the full might of the Republican Party behind her. Rush Limbaugh has outlasted the Contract With America, three Presidents and presumably dozens of minor coronaries. And Glenn Beck can’t think. Powerful men all, and it’s hard to argue that they wield less influence over the American people than do Pelosi, Boehner and Reid. Perhaps that is as it should be. I, for one, welcome our new and increasingly bloated masters, and urge them to form a new government of Real Americans and questionable analogies to Hitler just as soon as they can. Won’t you join me in considering the beautiful world they’re creating? No? Okay, back to cat videos, then. I’ll see the rest of you after the jump.

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Second biggest idiot of his age, Michael Steele soldiers on

Michael Steele and, ironically, the only entity in his life he hasn't called "dog."

Now must be a hard time to be an idiot in the American press. You go to all the trouble of writing a book that says the party whose national committee you chair isn’t ready to lead, get yourself on Hannity and make a bunch of invidious comparisons, then wrap up your remarks with an old-timey ethnic slur, only to be bumped from the national snarklight by Sarah Palin. You just can’t compete with that bitch. It seems like every time a prominent political figure does something stupid, Sarah Palin jumps in and yells that FDR faked polio so he could sit down all the time or whatever. Sometimes it feels like the incompetence of major political figures exceeds demand, and guys like Michael Steele—who would be saying crazy shit at Wisconsin Right To Life rallies in any other incompetence economy—are forced to practice their art in obscurity. Poor Michael Steele. When it comes to being a complete jerkoff, he’s Salieri to Palin’s Mozart.

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Tea Party beats GOP on three-way generic ballot

The Tea Party candidate for President in 2012. N.ah, I'm just kidding—they would never nominate a Jew

The Tea Party candidate for President in 2012. Nah, I'm just kidding—they would never nominate a Jew

Okay, this is weird. Rasmussen Reports announced yesterday that their most recent poll shows the Tea Party beating the Republican Party by a five-point margin on a three-way generic ballot. A generic ballot pits nameless candidates against one another in a theoretical election; in this case, Rasmussen asked “If congressional elections were held tomorrow, would you vote for the Republican, Democrat, or Tea Party candidate from your district?” Democrats led the pack with 36% of the vote, the Tea Party got 23%, and Republicans finished third with 18%. Astute observers will notice that leaves 22% of those polled undecided, and also that the Tea Party does not, uh, exist. I assume the same poll found that Americans overwhelmingly reject cap-and-trade in favor of having Bigfoot drink carbon out of clouds, and want the government to stay out of health insurance so that costs can be determined by the invisible hand of David Bowie in Labyrinth.

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Michele Bachmann uses Fox to tout fake “Super Bowl of freedom”

The longer you look at this picture, the more her facial expression ceases to be a smile. Seriously. It's like one of those Magic Eye things.

The longer you look at this picture, the more her facial expression ceases to be a smile. Seriously. It's like one of those Magic Eye things.

Now that Sarah Palin has been eaten by a grue, the mantle of Person In the Republican Party Who Might Actually Believe That Stuff  has been taken up by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. You may remember Bachmann from her bizarre assertions about the US Census and its possible role in a massive government conspiracy—something she stopped talking about after a census worker was killed in Kentucky. Like Palin, Bachmann believes in an American People whose will is diametrically opposed to that of the federal government—particularly the Congress part of the government, which she, bafflingly, is a part of. Also like Palin, her signature issue has become health care reform. Despite polls showing that most Americans favor a public option, Bachmann knows that “real, freedom-loving Americans” oppose the government “taking away [their] health care.” To make their voices heard, she’s taken it upon herself to organize a protest on the steps of Capitol Hill at noon today, at which she encourages protestors to enter their congresspeople’s offices and demand that they vote against health care reform. “This is the Super Bowl of freedom, this week,” she says. How can Michele Bachmann find the resources and communication apparatus to organize such a Super Bowl, in which an abstract concept competes with another, unnamed abstract concept on a week’s notice? Well, fortunately there’s Fox News:

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