The Daily Show makes fun of President Obama's “I didn't know about this until I heard it on the news” explanations for recent scandals.

Jon Stewart skewers folks talking secession and other dire consequences in the wake of Obama's re-election.

The Daily Show assembles a panel of experts to analyze the panels of experts analyzing debates.

Some people think Clint Eastwood's 12-minute schtick with an empty chair at last week's Republican National Convention was great theater. Others think it was bizarro sad.

Your opinion may depend on your political leanings.

Republican Mike Baumgartner, the state senator from Spokane hoping to  unseat U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, is apparently a fan. So much so that his campaign is staging its own Eastwood moment on Friday, announcing that Baumgartner will debate an empty chair at  the Spokane Republicans Breakfast Club.

Baumgartner has been frustrated for months at Cantwell's refusal to commit to debates. At one point, he proposed one debate per county, which would be 39; he has since lowered the number to 10. Last week, her campaign said they would debate, but declined to say when, where or how many times.

So at 7 a.m. Friday at the Riverview Thai Restaurant, 1003 E. Trent, he will debate an empty chair, the campaign announced this morning.

“Participating in a debate during an election campaign is a civic duty of a public servant. It is admirable this empty chair is willing to serve the voters of Washington so graciously and without hesitation,” Baumgartner said in a press release.

This strategy is not without risks, of course. Suppose, for example, the empty chair were to win the debate?

If this morning's CNN fiasco on announcing the Affordable Care Act wasn't a good enough reminder about how bad the media frenzy can get over something like a major Supreme Court ruling, this segment from The Daily Show on Wednesday night showed how silly the news network talking heads have been all week.

This may be the funniest send up of the Rick Perry hunting camp name controversy. But be advised that it may be the most concentrated use of the “N word” in a single television segment.

By the way, Wyatt Cenac's contention that Washington has a “Niggerhead Mining District” does not seem to be quite accurate. There is, however, a Niggerhead Creek and a Niggerhead Road that leads up to a gold mine in the McCoy Creek area, and a Nigger Creek Placer Mine in Chelan County.

BuzzFeed boiled the debate down to 75 seconds, which is pretty good. But the best take off, as usual, came from Jon Stewart. It can be found inside the blog.

OK, I admit I watched much of the GOP presidential debate on Monday, because, well, it's sort of my job.

But the whole set up — New Hampshire, seven candidates, town hall meeting style questions, a full phalanx of talking head analysts parsing every word — did have me checking the calendar to make sure that I hadn't slept Rip Van Winkel-style through 2011 and awakened in January 2012.

Truth be told, I had a similar “What year is this again?” feeling when folks in Washington started announcing in the last week runs and non-runs for various statewide executive offices on the 2012 ballot.  And some of the full-time political geeks who do campaigns for a living admitted similar feelings in conversations.

So I gotta wonder, how does the rest of America — you know, the real people who have lives and  jobs and other things to occupy their minds — feel about presidential debates nearly 18 months before an election? The Daily Show may have captured it best.

Gary Locke, the state’s former governor and the country’s current commerce secretary, is the featured guest tonight on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Really. Spin Control can’t make this stuff up. (And if we were going to make stuff up, would  this be it? We think not.)

Anyway, alert eyes in the Capitol Building tipped us to the note on the Comedy Central site that list Locke as tonight’s guest. Last night’s guest? Snoop Dogg.

Talk about diversity.

Not exactly what every member of Congress aspires to, but Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has a spot in Jon Stewart’s opening Wednesday night. She’s one of the featured clips in Scoldplay, or Jackass Carrousel, in which Stewart points out that members of both parties seem to dismiss the need for an apology when it’s a member of their party that’s under fire, but want an “I’m sorry” from a member of another party.

She’s about 2:30 into the segment.

Jon Stewart on the Daily Show points out a few bad calls by CNBC, after Rick Santelli’s outburst against “loser” homeowners.