O Beautiful For Spacious Skies

For amber waves of grain.

You probably remember how the rest of the song goes. If not, just catch one of Mitt Romney's speeches. Stephen had a clip of Romney's victory speech from last night, the part where Mitt recites the words to the song. (If it would have been Herman Cain, it would have been sung, but I digress.) Of course at first Stephen had the wrong clips of a different night, many different nights and speeches, of Mitt Romney reciting the words from "America, the Beautiful." I now think that Stephen was using humor to highlight the fact that Mitt seems to keep using those familiar and patriotic verses over and over again. It's almost like he has a plan to make that song his own.

I figured why not get a few facts about these spacious skies and amber waves to share with my readers. So, I Googled "O beautiful for spacious skies." Well, of course, near the top of the results, is an entry by trusty old Wikipedia for the song, "America, the Beautiful." Then I did a double take, for right after it, in the Google results, was a link to a YouTube video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the song. What's up with that? You do know that Romney is a Mormon, right? And then I looked at Google images. Not surprisingly, there were lots of images of spacious skies, lots of images of amber waves of grain, lots of images of patriotic things (flags, fireworks, soldiers, eagles), and then there it was. A photo of Mitt Romney! So then I went to a website to see the lyrics and there was an ad for Mitt Romney.

It's obvious Mitt is trying very hard to have people salivate whenever they hear that song. And to have them think of Mitt Romney. Other candidates will be associated with other things. Stephen even mentioned Rick Santorum. And who can hear Michele Bachmann's name without seeing a pair of false eyelashes? For Herman Cain, it was 9-9-9. For so many candidates, there is one thing that will always be identified with them. Mitt Romney must be trying very hard to choose what people think about when they think of him. Will it work? Come back in 11 months and ask me then.

Perhaps more interesting on the show, in fact, the best part of the show was Stephen at the FLICKTRONIC-TRON 5600. Man, Stephen has got flicking down to an art. CNN needs to practice their flicking or people will stop going to CNN for news and only get their news from The Colbert Report.

Later in the show, Stephen checked in with all his good friends at WOI-DT abc 5 News to find out what's happening in Des Moines, Iowa. The excitement was more than I could bear.

The guest tonight was John Heilemann, National Affairs Editor of New York Magazine. Thankfully, they did discuss the recent Iowa Caucus and all the candidates. Although Romney won by an 8-vote landslide, Santorum, in a three-way with two other men, was such a close second that you could almost call it a tie. Now many of them head up to New Hampshire and then on to South Carolina. The excitement keeps building. It will be a fun ride heading to November.

Colbert on Vacation - Day Three

I - O - WA.

I think they should have spelled it IOA. Then they would have 3 letters and 3 syllables, but I digress.

Stephen should head to Iowa today. Most of the politicians have moved on, so it won't be quite as windy. There's lots to see besides the corn in Iowa. Biking, Festivals, Golf, Wine and Beer, State Parks, Bed and Breakfasts, Campgrounds, the list is nearly endless. Find out all about those things to do at Travel Iowa's website. There's many famous Iowans that you've probably heard of - President Herbert Hoover, Carrie Chapman Catt, Grant Wood, John Wayne, Ashton Kutcher, Elijah Wood, Donna Reed, Glenn Miller, and Meredith Wilson. And not a single one of them was a farmer who grew corn. So, yes, more really happens in Iowa besides corn growing.

And there's history to find out about. Effigy Mounds National Monument is located in northeast Iowa as is the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area. Stephen can find out everything he ever wanted to know about Herbert Hoover at the Hoover Library and Museum in West Branch.

He could visit the capital of Iowa, Des Moines for a ton of stuff to do. He should look at the official website of the City of Des Moines and see the cute photo of a small white dog catching a red frisbee. Yep, it's about the Dog Park. Stephen knows all about dog parks.

Other fun, scenic, quaint or exciting towns to visit include Dubuque, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Decorah.

So, Stephen, pack that backpack and head back to Iowa.

Turtles Don't Like Peanut Butter

Colbert Super PAC has got more than 10,000 heroes. And tonight, Stephen added two more heroes, Charlie, 10 and Grace, 8, to the Hero Crawl at the bottom of the screen. They sent him $13 to help with freedom or liberty or freeberty. Stephen needs to decide what he's going to do with his Super PAC. And he is confused, so he had friend of the show, Karl "Ham" Rove on for advice. But, you know what, he's shy.

Therefore Matthew Dowd, ABC News Political Analyst and Chief Strategist for George W. Bush's Re-election Campaign showed up to offer Stephen some good advice. Stephen's Super PAC needs to stand for something. Well that's going to be kind of tricky. What should it stand for? Luckily, you can tell Stephen. If you have signed up for the Colbert SuperPAC, like I have, then you should be getting an email from Stephen tonight. If not, go to Colbert Super PAC and click on the link "I Stand For" and let Stephen know what you stand for.





What should he spend the money on? Issues, Candidates, Negativity? Well, that was a little worrisome. However, Stephen did say this, whether that means he supports negativity or positivity, he did repeat this from his mother: "If you don't have anything nice to say, you better back it up with a lot of money."

Guess where Stephen should start running ads. Here's some hints.

1. It's a state.
2. It's one of the smaller states.
3. You only need four letters to spell this state.
4. There are more vowels than consonants in the name.
5. It rhymes with Pie-ow-a.

And as far as those turtles who don't like peanut butter, well while Stephen is getting used to having the power of this Super PAC, he just kind of blurts things out as if they are words of wisdom. Most recently, he blurted "Turtles Don't Like Peanut Butter" and then put it on a T-shirt and then, well what's next? Not even Stephen knows for sure, but he thinks he will be selling all those T-shirts on the website.

For all the political whiz kids out there, showing up as Stephen's interview guest tonight was former Louisiana Governor and Herman Cain look-alike, Buddy Roemer. He's running for president but he's not walking into Iowa, at least not for the big shindig. It takes $15,000 to get a booth at the GOP carnival that will soon be in Iowa, plus probably a whole lot more money to buy trinkets for Iowans in hopes that they will remember how much they like the trinkets. I hope I have all that right. Buddy did not elaborate, so I'm just kind of piecing together what lots of different people have said.

So, to summarize:
Turtles, ham, stand, Dowd, Roemer. If you don't have time to read the whole post, you can skip down to this paragraph and get the condensed version of tonight's The Colbert Report.

* * * Update March 30, 2012. For more information about Stephen's Super PAC and information on how to get a Turtles Don't Like Peanut Butter t-shirt plus lots of other neat stuff, read about the Texans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow Super PAC.

Awkward

Remember when Stephen was talking about Tim Pawlenty? (Also called TimMAY, Timbo, T Paw, and the Ol' T Paw.) Well it seems one of Pawlenty's first campaign decisions has turned out to be somewhat awkward. One of his aides in Iowa, Benjamin Foster, was arrested on charges of public intoxication and trespassing.

You can read about it here at CNN Politics - political ticker.

Also here at The Gazette, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa paper.

One more here at Pawlenty's home town paper - StarTribune.

Although Tim Pawlenty comes across as quite a boring person, it seems his staffer sure knows how to Par-ty.

Perhaps Benjamin Foster needs some "proper etiquette" training. Stephen is just the person to provide that service.

Update: Spelling of Ankeny in Iowa has been corrected. Thank you to An Iowan in Comments.