Behold, a fabulous, leaked clip from this Sunday's new Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons!

This is obviously a parody of the original voting machine satire, which was made for the 2004 election in Florida:

--Posted by Bob Powers on 236.com

Best. Daily. Show. Opening. Ever.

This has gotten ridiculously out of hand. First some right-wing nutjobs are shouting things like "Terrorist!", "Kill him!" and "Off with his head!" at McCain-Palin rallies when Obama's name is mentioned (a note: what do they think this is, Alice in Wonderland or the 16th century?), but NOW we have slashed tires at an Obama rally, death threats to Obama supporters who display Obama/Biden lawn signs and a baby black bear has been brutally killed . And it's only Monday.

WHAT THE F*#@ IS GOING ON WITH THIS COUNTRY?!?!

Where is all this hatred coming from? Is the naive, racist, pro-KKK mentality still alive and well enough to incite this much evil across the country? If you don't like a particular candidate, that is all fine and good. I, for instance, despise and loathe Chris Buttars, LeVar Christensen and Jason Chaffetz, but I would never in a million years threaten to kill their supporters' entire families! Much less kill and dump a baby animal (or any animal) as some sort of morbid, sadistic, messed up symbol!

Where has the morality of Americans gone? Where is our sense of decency?

From Western Carolina University:

A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said.

Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.

“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.

From Chicago:

Two supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama found handwritten death threats in their mailboxes Thursday and reported them to Villa Park police.

A 74-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man with Obama signs in their front yards near the 600 block of South Villa Avenue received similar letters that had a Villa Park Village Hall return address. "Get the Obama signs off your property—now," the letter reads. "Failure to obey this order will result in the immediate death of all family members." Both residents said they will not remove their signs, though the man, who had voted Republican for 25 years before switching parties this year, said his wife is worried about letting their 7-year-old son play alone outside.

From Fayetteville, North Carolina:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain’s campaigns said they were unaware of the acts.

Susan Lagana, the North Carolina communications director for Obama, said it was extremely disappointing and unfortunate that “people would have to experience something like that.” Mario Diaz, communications director for McCain, did not respond to a call late Sunday.

Sarah Revis, who lives on Wilkes Road, said the slashed tires left several women, including a single mother and a toddler, stranded and upset. At least four tow trucks were sent to move the vehicles from the Crown, Revis said.

“This is an embarrassment to this city and to me as a citizen,” Revis said. “I’ve seen women out here crying and men cussing. This is a crying shame.”

This is a person running for office who has been confronted with an uncomfortable and inconvenient fact and her response to that is to look into the camera and lie to you enthusiastically and repeatedly. I know I'm not supposed to use that particular "L" word, the "liar" word in politics. It's considered impolite. But sometimes, the most important thing you need to know about a politician is the frequency and enthusiasm and skill with which they lie to you.

Saying a politician is a prevaricating, mendacious truth-stretcher or whatever other thesaurus words we can come up with for lying is just far less efficient than calling a lie a lie, and a liar a liar.
-- Rachel Maddow

This Week's Political Roundup

Richard Cohen, Washington Post: "But what about Palin? Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if Clinton had given the audience a "hiya, sailor" wink? Can you imagine the feverish blogging across the political spectrum if Clinton had claimed credit for stopping a bridge that, in fact, had set her heart aflutter? What if she had shown that she didn't know squat about the Constitution, if she could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers or magazines she read or if she had claimed an intimacy with foreign affairs based on sighting Russia through binoculars?

Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been withheld from Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption" -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked."

Dana Milbank, Washington Post: "McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more."

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, 'Sit down, boy.'"

Joe Biden, DNC VP Nominee: "That is not patriotic and it will stop, it will stop in an Obama-Biden administration! Enough! I've had it up to here! Don't lecture me on patriotism! I'm dead tired of being taken advantage of. I'm getting tired of it."

David Letterman: "So now, in an attempt to save his [McCain's] campaign, they’re talking about coming back. You see what I’m saying? So we said, 'Sure, we would love you to come back.' And even on the phone, he said, 'I’ll bring…Sarah.' But they’re being squirrely. Politicians can be squirrely. Because we have a date picked. We do this show every afternoon at 5:30. He wants to do the show at 5. So one –- we have no guarantee he’s going to show up, period. And we’ve kind of already rearranged our schedule on his behalf to save the economy, right? By getting that big-headed kid in here to talk about the politics. You know what I’m driving at? I just don’t know if we can trust him. And by the way, I don’t need to remind you that the road to the White House runs right through here."

Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show: "As you may have noticed, there's a really scary economic meltdown happening in much of the world right now. As you may also have noticed the Republican presidential ticket seems more frightened of Barack Obama than it is of consecutive 700-point stock market drops and whole country is turning up bankrupt."

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: "Get the (bleep) back to work! For (bleep)'s sake!" (just watch the video, eh?)

John Cleese, as read on Countdown:
"An Ode to Sean Hannity:

Aping urbanity

Oozing with vanity

Plump as a manatee

Faking humanity

Journalistic calamity

Intellectual inanity

FOX Noise insanity

You're a profanity

Hannity."