Stephen Colbert

McCain uses Wikipedia which is the voice of the people, thus McCain is using the words of the people... according to Stephen.

The Lieberman jokes are particularly funny...

It turns out that the much-fabled "Colbert Bump" is real. In a paper titled The Colbert bump in Campaign Donations: More Truthful Than Truthy (pdf), James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego proves that Democrats appearing on the show receive 44% more money in the month following the appearance than those who do not appear:

As you can see, he also posits a Republican "Colbert Bust," though the data is less reliable.

So much for Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that Democrats stay far away from the Colbert Report.

(Hat Tip Chris Suellentrop)

As of this writing, Stephen Colbert has become the first presidential candidate to actually pass the 1 million strong mark, with 1,005,608 members in his Facebook group.

In other news, Chris Dodd, who has been a strong progressive voice on the campaign trail lately, is coming out strong against overpayment to corporate lenders by the government on student loans. Dodd wants the total costs of those over-payments recouped and funneled back into the Pell Grant program, which would raise the maximum grant by another $100 per semester.

Also worth checking out this morning - the Missoula Independent has an in-depth profile of Matt Singer, CEO of Forward Montana.