Huzzah for the Can-Do spirit of Americans, who continue to just pile on the pounds despite the nation’s crushed economy. Turns out you don’t need much money to become obese! And without jobs, Americans have more time than ever to sit in front of teevee eating another bucket of corn-syrup taco-ball cheezey-poop pasta-bowl Grease Dipperz™. So, let’s all give a KFC double-drumstick round of applause for Mississippi, with a literally staggering 32.5% of its population medically obese. Second prize (a truckload of trans-fat soaked Chocohoglick-brand chocolate-flavored Globulez™) goes to West Virginia, Alabama and Tennessee, each boasting obesity rates of 30% or higher. MORE »

How are the Republican politicians doing with the email today? Not too good, as usual! It’s a busy Monday, as one Republican official already got busted doing racist anti-Michelle Obama stuff on the Facebook, and now we’re learning about some super-funny racist emails sent out by a Tennessee GOP legislative staffer for Republican state senator Diane Black. Let’s meet the charming Sherri Goforth, who sent the image above to god knows how many people because, ha, a Negro in the White House? MORE »

Beautiful young Meg McCabe has a new swoonworthy lust object: the figuratively and literally dashing Tennessee Representative Bart Gordon, an exceedingly fast runner for a human! He’s even faster than romantic rival Aaron Schock, who despite being much younger came in second in the Capitol Challenge Charity Race yesterday. (Possible problem: Gordon is a Democrat.) The 60-year-old Gordon won the event again, as he has every year since he was a wee chicken of 40. If Gordon ever retires from legislating, he will have a wonderful career of just running like the dickens. [The Tennessean]

Magic prize goes to anybody who can figure out what these people are even protesting.

Wonkette drive-by operative “Gerogia” from Tessennee sends this photo and writes: “AIG was founded in Nashville. I live near the HQ in Nashville. A few days after the bonus debacle they blacked out the AIG logo. On my way to the gym last week I was startled by this new sign. I guess they renamed themselves and the marketing wizards are billing us (TAXPAYERS) for new signage, letterhead, business cards ect … Seriously this is what they are busy doing with our money …” SOMETHING LIKE THAT. They replaced the AIG logo with that of one of its non-corrupt subsidiaries. Meh, same difference to us. So now you’ll want to throw your Molotov cocktails at and poop on all AGLA signs, fyi.

The chair of the House Republican Caucus in the world’s stupidest imaginable governing body — the Tennessee state legislature — is this guy named Glen Casada. Even though “Casada” lacks the proper vowel-to-consonant ratio required to be a “Real American,” this guy, along with some other Knox County legislators, will be listed in a new lawsuit challenging Barack Obama’s citizenship in the United States, which he runs. Have we written about this yet? Who knows anymore. MORE »

Here’s video of the Democrats and their evil moderate Republican boyfriend seizing power from the wingnuts yesterday. Look at poor “Jason Mumpower” sob all over his family Bible and laugh, meanly. [Balloon Juice]

Ha ha, so it took the Republicans until now, somehow, to take control of the Tennessee General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction, and their agenda includes such long-awaited items as making all Muslims die, making Intelligent Design the actual state religion, and then making all, uh, Hindus die or something, if there’s time! The assembly was prepared to elect some insane wingnut as House Speaker today to carry out this righteous agenda, until the Democrats, at the very last minute, all voted for a moderate Republican, and this moderate Republican voted for himself, and now he is House Speaker! Republicans loudly booed him in the chamber! Free abortions for all! MORE »

Boys and girls, it’s a Thanksgiving miracle — six days early! Our beloved Fred Thompson, the languid, pedicured Southern dandy who made a very sleepy run at the Presidency for about two weeks before returning to his cognacs and backgammon games and expensive Italian colognes, has surfaced again! Even better, he has surfaced to announce his retirement from awful dull vulgar politics. MORE »

We all remember Fred Hobbs, the proud member of Tennessee’s Democratic Executive Committee who recently confessed that he thought Barack Obama was “terrorist-connected.” He has been apologizing all week, and in a letter to colleagues he explained what was running through his mind: his comments “did reflect questions I had after what I had seen reported on Fox News, but I should have taken some time to check the accuracy of what I saw on television before speaking publicly.” Fred added that he also doesn’t know how to drink water or walk without falling sideways, or whatever it is the human beings are doing these days. [Chattanooga Times Free Press]

One of the funniest, tragic outcomes of Obama’s takeover of the Democrats is how certain factions of the party — white, rural “yellow dogs” or “blue reds” or “purple assholes,” depending on the current lexicon — cannot, at all, give support to Obama, for fear of losing support in their red-leaning districts. This comprises 10-25 Democratic members of Congress and virtually all Southern branches of the party. Now, silence is one thing. But when they start literally calling him a terrorist — as some Democratic leaders in Tennessee are doing — to distance themselves, then that might be a modest form of overkill. MORE »