Most of the motley crew trying not to look like they're lining up a White House run in a couple of years have one or two clear, concise moments of idiocy that they will spend months dodging, obfuscating and fudging around:

• Mitt Romney: once strapped his dog, an Irish Setter named Seamus, in a carrier, to his car's roof. The dog got so scared that it crapped all over the car. The reporter who broke the story, in this Boston Globe profile meant it as an anecdote that demonstrated Romney's crisis management — because he stopped and hosed the car down or something. In fact it added to the slightly cold, creepy atmosphere that surrounds Romney. Also, he refuses to deny he wears special Mormon underpants.
• Newt Gingrich: was having an affair at the same time he led the pursuit of Bill Clinton for having an affair. This is apparently not hypocrisy because Clinton was impeached not for having the affair but for lying about it.
• Rudy Giuliani: is probably going to stick with running for the Senate in New York. But in case he decides to step onto the more vicious national stage once more, it's worth remembering that he used public money to finance an affair, remains friends with corrupt former police chief Bernie Kerik, cross-dresses and runs a very shady business.
• Ron Paul: is a racist. Or at least it seems that way if you read quotes from a political newsletter he put out in the 90s. Here are some extracts that would make delicious additions to campaign commercials in, well, anywhere black people live.
  

  If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.

  Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action.

  Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

  ...we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

• Bobby Jindal: his appearance in this video is bad enough. He looks like some combination of Kenneth the Page and Pinocchio. But in it he claims to have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a New Orleans lawman during Hurricane Katrina to cut through red tape and rescue people. Except he didn't. He overheard a conversation after it all happened.

  Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

• That leaves Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty — who is ironically seen as boring precisely because he is so scandal-averse. We're choosing to ignore South Carolina Governor and hiking enthusiast Mark Sanford because it beggars belief that he would even consider running for President after running away to schtup an Argentinian lady and lying to everyone about it. If you're wondering why Sarah Palin is not on this list — it's because she's bulletproof. She has been repeatedly caught lying, cheating and stealing. She's been repeatedly revealed as a moron in clever-person's glasses. Any other politician would have been sunk by any one of these scandals. But Sarah Barracuda has built a brand based on narcissistic ineptitude and a perpetual victim status. Perhaps the other candidates should try it.

Fred Thompson had Dobbs on his radio show today, and asked him if he'd given thought to a presidential run. Dobbs said "yes," adding that he's engaging the services of all sorts of experts to give him the best advice.

Which means that the 2012 primaries—even if Dobbs runs as an independent, his campaign will be perceived as an adjunct of the festival of white rage that will determine the GOP's standard-bearer—will, god willing, be nothing short of a phantasmagorical Hunter Thompson-esque fever-dream populated by snake-handlers, idiots, Mormons, and fat, chain-smoking television hacks. Between Dobbs, Sarah Palin, and whatever Glenn Beck's 100-year-war "plan" has in store for us, the wingnut beat will be a life-changing event for those reporters lucky enough to chronicle it in 2012. The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick famously pioneered the paper's "conservative beat" in 2004, but it was largely a survey of the intellectual undercurrents of neoconservatism and seems to have been abandoned. Whoever picks up the mantle from him in two years will be richly rewarded. It's never too early to start strategizing.

UPDATE: It was No. 3! According to the New York Daily News, Giuliani intends to run for Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate seat next year. That news comes just hours after Hakim's report that he'd opted not to run for governor. Hakim is probably pretty pissed right now.

It certainly seems strange that Giuliani would bow out now; he's been open about his interest in the job since August, and the path to nomination appears to be clear if he wants it. Plus, Bernard Kerik just pleaded guilty, eliminating the likelihood that unpleasant and distracting disclosures about their relationship would come out at trial. Here's some baseless speculation on why he bailed:

• Governing New York would be a shit-show, and could only be a liability for a 2012 presidential run. This is undoubtedly true—who wants to wrestle with a Democratic legislature for two years and preside over devastating budget cuts? But Giuliani knew this back in August, when he launched the whisper campaign, so it doesn't explain the sudden withdrawal. And the upsides in positioning himself for a run against Obama in 2012 are considerable: His governorship would be presented against the backdrop of a massive terror trial in New York City that he could nitpick on a daily basis as a shameful spectacle and hang around Obama's neck.
• He doesn't think he can beat Andrew Cuomo. According to Pollster.com, the most recent public poll around the time Giuliani started nosing around the governor's desk had Cuomo—New York's popular attorney general, who is likely to challenge Gov. David Paterson for the Democratic nomination—beating him by five points with 11 percent undecided, which amounts to a toss-up this far out from election day. A poll taken last week had Cuomo up by 12 points, with 6 percent undecided. And while 49% of New Yorkers say they want Cuomo to run for governor, only 32% say they want to see Giuliani's name on the ballot. Those are much less hospitable numbers, but still close to meaningless a year from election day. And Giuliani has amply demonstrated that he's a cruel dick who delights in destroying people, so it's certainly not like him to shrink from a chance to rough up Cuomo.
• He wants to run for Senate instead. The Senate was Giuliani's initial job choice after mayor, before God gave him prostate cancer and he had to bow out. And Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was appointed by Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton, is a weak incumbent with just a two-year track record to tout. Giuliani's close adviser Tony Carbonetti ruled out a Senate bid back in September, but maybe he's changed his mind. He's crushing Gillibrand in the polls right now, and the Senate could be a better place from which to prepare a 2012 presidential bid, lacking as it does all the unpleasantness associated with actually governing a nearly ungovernable state.
• He would prefer to secretly make millions of dollars from former cocaine smugglers and Arab dictators through Giuliani Partners, his consulting firm. Sounds like a plan, although most of those clients only pay those millions of dollars as a bet that one day he'll be governor of New York, or president.
• He doesn't want to run for president in 2012 against Sarah Palin, so why bother? He lost his first bid for the Replublican nomination for a reason: He's a gay-loving abortionist whose name ends in a vowel and whose children hate him. The ever-diminishing number of angry people who describe themselves as Republicans are going to flock to Palin over him. And maybe he's betting that terrorism—the only thing that he can flog on his resume, despite the fact that his role in the 9/11 attacks is more properly described as disaster management than anything to do with combating terrorism—won't be as ripe an issue on which to base a campaign in 2012.
• He's about to be indicted. Please?

But while the End of the World metaphor may seem a garden path festooned with posies and daffodils, a few yards down and the trail suddenly becomes a headline writer's inferno, a fiery pit of inexact analogy from which no media employee can hope to emerge unsinged.

The problem is that an apocalypse metaphor suggests something terrible has happened, while 2012's $225 million worldwide grosses suggest something incredible has happened. (Actually, of course, if you are a fan of actual living entertainment, the apocalypse is a very apt metaphor for 2012's success, but that's not the tale box-office round-up headline writers have to tell.)

So across the nation this weekend, our brave headline corps searched for the right way to draw on the end of the world metaphor to explain that 2012 did really well.

Variety walked right into the trap with "2012 destroys worldwide box office." 2012 destroyed world box office in the sense of it put a lot of money in them, and although "destroy" may be contemporary lingo for "won at" even that usage suggests an opposition as though it were 2012 vs. the box office...which takes you down a whole other rabbit hole. The Huffington Post followed Variety off this cliff (or perhaps it was the other way around) reaching for the box-office destroying imagery.

Both the Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times tried to come at the problem sideways by going with variations on "2012 explodes at boxoffice." This variation however, while more on the nose in terms of what the films grosses did, attempts to sidestep the apocalypse metaphor, not getting at all at the fact that the film is not just about someone placing a sparkler in a mailbox, but about the whole world collapsing, and if you want to get technical about it, the world doesn't actually explode in the film it more..crumbles.

Taking a second stab at it, in a second box office story, however, the LA Times proved the power of the do-over and pretty much managed to get both the metaphor and the enormity pretty much on the nose with: 2012 spells doom for its competition at the box office."

The Associated Press got the epic scale right but in doing so really walked away from the entire end of the world theme and got pretty clunky in the process coming up with: 2012 has worldwide box-office bang of $225M.

The Wrap played with the theme while avoiding the metaphor with "Master of Disaster: $225M Worldwide for 2012."

The New York Times showed either wisdom or incredible cowardice and walked away from the metaphor entirely, hitting us instead with the heart-stopping lush imagery of "2012 Opening Earns $65 Million." And we can't imagine the Wall Street Journal's headline is an example of the sort of gumption Rupert Murdoch was hoping to inject into the place when he bought it up: "Disaster Film 2012 Opens Atop Box Office."

Our congratulations go out to all those who made the effort to work with this slippery analogy. To use another one, in headline writing as in life, as in football or baseball, sort of but not exactly, you only lose by not playing.

• With fans already camped out awaiting its Friday opening, New Moon, the latest installment in the Twilight cycle, has already broken its first record, becoming the all-time leader in advance ticket sales, according the Fandango's rankings. The ticket seller reports that a full 86 percent of its sales over the past week were for New Moon. The US government has advised all citizens to prepare a safe room in their homes that will be kept free of all media, warning the incoming vampire tsunami over the next week will overrun every available crevice of television, newspapers, magazines, internet and human speech, flooding the populace with a deluge Twilight propaganda. [Deadline]

• Use whatever big bang metaphor you like, 2012 did that at the box office this weekend, hauling in $225 million worldwide. Precious also impressed on a much smaller scale, taking the number four slot with $6.1 million while running on only 174 screens. The weekend also gave some hope to Disney's promise that A Christmas Carol would prove to have legs through the holiday season despite its tepid opening. Carol dropped off a mere 26 percent from its opening weekend. [Variety]

• The Academy of Motion Pics met in a low-key, old fashioned, just-among-friends ceremony to give out its special awards off-camera this year. Special Oscars were handed to Lauren Bacall, cinematographer Gordon Willis and producers Roger Corman and John Calley. The evening was full of low-key speeches and tableside toasts to the honorees. Warren Beatty heralded the wonder of attending an Oscar event where "Nobody's worried whether 36.9 million people are watching us, or 29.2 million." The off-camera nature of the event apparently inspired the stars to their most-long winded heights. Time it took to hand out four awards: three and a half hours. [NY Times]

• Variety chronicles the keeping the trains running resigned mood at MGM as the company waits to be auctioned off and wonders whether it will continue to be a standalone studio. While the wait goes on, development work continues on The Hobbit, James Bond 23 and a Poltergeist reboot. Audiences will rejoice at the news that the studio is guaranteeing it will release the already completed Red Dawn, Hot Tub Time Machine and a 3D retelling of Cabin in the Woods. [Variety]

• Mediaweek reports on "Growing Pains at Hulu." The portal is apparently demonstrating why joint ventures in show biz are fraught propositions as conflicts have been springing up between the ABC, NBC and Fox staffs whose companies co-founed the site. [MediaWeek]

We are some fucked up people, yo.

I mean, believe me, I totally see the appeal in the universe breaking LA off the coast and hiding it 4,000 feet under the sea, like the afikomen of God that will never be cashed in and found, because—sorry, LA—it's LA. Though apparently some people got teary during the part when the Kogi Truck gets swallowed up by an acid-spewing mutant volcano, so I guess it's a complicated emotion. But why are we so desperate to see what the end looks like? Because we're sadists? Masochists? Because we'd like to imagine a world in which only we exist and everything else just doesn't? [Related: Welcome to Lower Manhattan.] Because we want it all to just be totally fucked and end, and we want a hand in it, like that kid who spends five hours building a beautiful sand castle only to "Godzilla" it out of existence for six seconds?

Or because it looks sick? Which apparently, it did. To the tune of $225M.

The 162-minute disaster epic...blew away the competition and took in $65 million in North America in its opening weekend and $160 million worldwide. All totaled, the Roland Emmerich movie, which cost $200 million to make (and tens of millions more to market) grossed $225 million.

That's gotta be it. When the world ends, it's not like we're going to be able to watch it being so awesome. Also, we're all gonna die and it's gonna be crazy but, like, will it really look that cool? Hell to the no, BobbyBrown! It'll probably look like The Road or something. Gray and stupid and dusty and boring. But that's life, you know? Less Roland Emmerich, more Cormac McCarthy. Besides, only in Fakeland can anybody give a shit about Amanda Peet living through the end of the world. OH COME ON.

And then there's this Precious movie. The critics HATED it. Like this one:

Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious. Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show.

Ha, oh, just joking, that's batshit Armond White from the New York Press. This guy eats the innocence of children for breakfast and snacks on Labrador puppies for lunch. Also, he hated Up. But! Precious, which is a "the world sucks" movie of a different stripe, did well, too. Look:

The indie movie "Precious," which Lionsgate bought at Sundance, took in about $6.1 million in just 174 theaters in nine cities. That's an impressive $35,000 per-screen average.

Now, granted: 2012 was on about 40 bazillion more screens, but seriously, compared to the other top per-theater take ($19,095 for 2012), it's a pretty incredible number, and a 200% increase from last week's Precious take. That 200% number is not a joke.

Lesson, learned. It goes something like this: when I make my autobiographical epic, I Hope They Smoke Adderall In Hogwarts, I'm going to make sure to append the words "Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey Present." If only real-Hollywood were so smart. Dumbasses. Imagine if they did that to 2012. They would've made enough money to destroy the world for reals. Until then, we have LA's fake-comeuppance to go see again and again and again. Basically, yes:

[Photo of The Great Alderaan Explosion of '77: "Complicated Feelings," Mixed Media, provided by the artist.]

2012
The Story: As per Mayan predictions, the world ends a few years from now and John Cusack leads a band of survivors who try to figure out just what to do with that. From veteran world-destroying director Roland Emmerich.
The Pitch: Independence Day meets An Inconvenient Truth
Who It's For: People who's need to see stuff get exploded is so strong they are willing to put up with having a bit a little left-wing messaging in the process (e.g. The White House gets destroyed by one of its own aircraft carriers, get it?)
Cause for Hope: The city destroying effects seem to have risen to the challenging; this won't be your grandfather's apocalypse.
Cause for Concern: The dialogue might not be bad enough to be funny, might level out at merely bad.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 5

THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX
The Story: A fox (voiced by George Clooney) turned away from a life of crime to respectability yearns for the thrill of the chase.
The Pitch: Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer meets The Darjeeling Limited
Who It's For: Hoodie Nation
Cause for Hope: Extremely lively fun-to-look at stop motion animation; the non-reality of the medium reduces the perpetual Wes Anderson problem of every character existing in its own self-contained emotional Universe where they can preen for the camera.
Cause for Concern: Despite being little statuettes of animals, every character in the film still manages to come off as a smug, self-absorbed Wes Anderson character; Jarvis Crocker makes perhaps the most irritating cameo in recent cinema in a pure pander to the Hoodie base.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 6

PIRATE RADIO
The Story: When rock and roll is outlawed on the British airwaves in the 1960's a group of renegade DJ's (led by Philip Seymour Hoffman) set sail and broadcast from a floating station.
The Pitch: Pump Up The Volume meets Almost Famous
Who It's For: Aging rockers, and aging rockers-to-be.
Cause for Hope: Immensely watchable cast led by Hoffman, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh
Cause for Concern: Creaky familiar story of bad boys standing up to the uptight morality police.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 6

THE MESSENGER
The Story: The life of an army officer (Ben Foster) responsible notifying war deads' next of kin becomes complicated when he becomes romantically involved with a fallen soldier's widow.
The Pitch: The Hurt Locker meets The Great Santini
Who It's For: Serious drama with contemporary issues fans.
Cause for Hope: Strong festival buzz, intense looking performance by Woody Harrelson in army uniform; Samantha Morton always impresses.
Cause for Concern: Heavy downer of a subject in these downer times.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 7

DARE
The Story: Three high school seniors (Emmy Rossum, Zach Gilford, Ashley Springer) on the cusp of diving into the world get involved in a complicated relationship.
The Pitch: Cruel Intentions meets Reckless
Who It's For: People who like very serious looks at high school kids sex lives.
Cause for Hope: Looks more thoughtful and interesting than typical high school film; happy return to the screen of Sandra Bernhard.
Cause for Concern: Seems to lean heavily on the shock value of threesomes and bisexuality.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 6

WOMEN IN TROUBLE
The Story: Ten wacky urban women make a mess of their personal lives.
The Pitch: Sex and the City meets Wedding Crashers
Who It's For: Girls night out, preferably post a few dozen mojitos.
Cause for Hope: Men get plenty of annoying, immature, shoddily built buddy comedies so why shouldn't women.
Cause for Concern: It would take an extreme level of commitment to the principle of female bonding not to find this ensemble deeply annoying.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 3

• The Wrap writes of the challenges facing AMC in following up on the success of its two original shows, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Since the pair of critical darlings launched, the network's development team has changed and this weekend's debut of The Prisoner marks the first try-out for the new execs, with two new series coming up behind it. While the kiniptions Mad Men provokes in the media have always been hugely disproportionate to its raw audience size, which is generally in the one to two million range, Men's success is due to a little fluke of its audience demographics. The Wrap notes that more than half of its viewers earn six figure incomes, making it pretty much the official show of American rich people. But while Men and Breaking are bringing in cash for the network, the piece notes that between them they can only produce 26 episodes a year, a long, long way from the sort of programming pipeline needed to take the network to the next level, revenue-wise. And what with the economic downturn, America's rich have a lot more time to dedicate to their Tivo's and their needs must be fed. [The Wrap]

• Fox has re-signed Emma Watts to serve as its President of Production for the next three years, a move which Variety says, "keeps Fox as a bastion of stability at a time when studios are rife with executive shakeups." [Variety]

• Charlie's Angels may be coming home to the little screen. ABC is reportedly on the brink of a deal to bring the story of three little girls who went to the police academy back full circle to where it all began for them. Josh Friedman, who wrote Fox's Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles is on board to executive produce the show. And now they work for him. [Variety]

• American box offices are bracing this weekend for a medium to large-sized tsunami of cash unleashed by the release of 2012. The disaster epic is expected to take in between $50 - $55 million this weekend with no other major film entering wide release against it. The film enters the marketplace with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 38 which The Wrap points out is an improvement over the 9 percent positive rating of director Roland Emmerich's previous film 10,000 B.C. [The Wrap]

• The Vice-Chairman of Lions Gate said that his company would be interested in buying MGM but "It's all about price," that is, if they can get the James Bond franchise for very little money, sure they'd be happy to do that. While trumpeting the news the LA Times makes the "imagine that/you don't say" point that, every company in Hollywood would be willing to absorb MGM and Bond if they can get them for nothing or next to it. [LA Times]

• The Who have been booked to entertain tens of millions of drunken, nacho-engorged football fans when they play the halftime show of this season's Superbowl. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Despite SAG's rejection of proposed terms, AFTRA's membership ratified a new contract with video game makers, taking a 2.5 percent pay raise for its actors. [Hollywood Reporter]

Ben Smith followed Mike Huckabee around for a while as he sold his new Christmas book.

Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas. He used to be fat, and then he got skinny, and now he is getting fat again. He's also basically as crazy Christian as they come, but he masks this with a genuinely likable sense of humor, which is why he has a TV program on Fox now.

He won Iowa in 2008. He is raising a lot of money. He just won a Gallup poll of potential 2012 Republican candidates. But he has two problems: Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney.

Palin is the more marketable and exciting version of him, both because she says much dumber and insane things and also she is an attractive lady. Romney is the guy who will almost certainly actually win the nomination, because the sensible money guys in the party like him, despite the fact that he is Mormon Robot.

Here is Huckabee being totally not bitter about Sarah Palin stealing his gimmick:

"Some of the people who had excoriated me and really been very dismissive of me for views that I had taken, and labeled me anything from a populist to an ignoramus - the same people have been very defensive [of] and laudatory to Sarah Palin," Huckabee noted, adding that he'd invited her to appear on his weekly Fox show but "could never get any contact."

"I'm glad she's getting the props - I know I'm not nearly as attractive," he said with a guileless grin.

Now Huckabee is just eating his way across America, trying to get people excited about his book, insulting all the other Republicans who were and are mean to him. Pat Toomey and the Club for Growth—the Wall Street wing of the activist conservative movement—still hate him, which will make fundraising hard. And he still openly hates and ridicules Romney, which will probably prevent him from getting the VP slot.

You don't really need to worry about the Republicans in 2012. Unlike solar flares and earthquakes and volcanoes and stuff.

Sure, if you live in New Jersey or Virginia you might've thought the gubernatorial campaigns in those two states were mostly about taxes and jobs (and weight), but that is wrong. These were shadow reelection campaigns for Barack Obama, and he lost both of them, because he is a failure.

Republican Bob McDonnell won in Virginia by a huge margin against Democrat Creigh Deeds, who was a white, conservative Democrat from southern Virginia, thus ensuring that not a single member of the coalition that won VA for Obama in 2008 would turn out to vote.

In Jersey, Republican Chris Christie squeaked by incumbent Jon Corzine. Corzine's was the campaign Obama belatedly lent his support to, once Corzine's double-digit polling deficit shrank to a couple points. This campaign was entirely about property taxes, basically, and so a Republican who campaigned entirely on cutting proptery taxes won.

Once again, gubernatorial elections have almost nothing to do with national politics. They are not House and Senate races. Meanwhile, in the nation's only two House races yesterday, Democrats won. They won handily in a California race that no one paid attention to, because a safe Democratic seat staying Democratic is not as newsworthy as a safe Republican seat that almost went to a Republican until national movement conservatives freaked out and excommunicated Dede Scozzafava from the Church of Teabagging. And then a Democrat won in New York's 23rd. He won a seat that's been a gimme for Republicans since a 1992 redistricting. (Before it was redistricted, this area of the state has been Republican since the 19th century. In 2002 the Republican ran unopposed.)

Please keep in mind that Obama picked up a new Democratic vote in the House of Representatives while you read some analysis piece on how Obama has just been crushed, politically.

As we said before, the special election in New York's 23rd was the only race yesterday that had anything to do with national politics, because movement conservatives inserted themselves into the race and promptly lost. In what could easily actually be a preview of next year's midterms, teabaggers and the conservative Club for Growth and Sarah Palin all threw their support behind a candidate they found more acceptable than the Republican, and their guy lost. As activists from out of town flooded the district, shouting nonsense about ACORN and waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags, imagining they'd already won, the Democrat turned out the vote and rode to victory on the back of union support and the president's popularity in the region.

And look at that: unions and GOTV made the difference! Hell, some of that might've won New York for Bill Thompson, even without Obama's support!

Here is the real lesson about and for Obama, though, and it touches on every single race yesterday: in 2008, Obama borrowed Howard Dean's 50-state strategy for the Democrats—open and staff DNC offices in every state to organize and run campaigns at every level—and applied it to the presidential primaries and general elections. He raised a ridiculous amount of money and compiled an amazing email list and organized a huge number of volunteers and won the presidency.

After the election, Obama turned those campaign resources into Organizing For America, "a grassroots network wielding some 13 million email addresses to mobilize former volunteers on behalf of the administration's agenda." And then they folded it into the DNC and they didn't do anything with it for months. And then it turned out that this massive organization couldn't be utilized to do much besides fundraise and canvass, and furthermore its ties to the DNC and the White House mean it can't actually be used to push progressive causes, which are the causes that this massive volunteer army cares about.

This means, basically, that the DNC has neutered Obama's progressive volunteer army and that massive volunteer army has consumed the DNC. The whole operation is now a 2012 reelection campaign already in progress, and if you are a local Democrat looking for organizing and canvassing and fundraising support of the kind Howard Dean promised to create for you back when he was in charge, you are shit out of luck.

This is the most worrying indicator for 2010. They need to fix this.

This "pretending to be George Washington on Twitter" game is actually one of the least embarrassing things about Newt Gingrich, of course. He was also the first Speaker of the House to be forced to pay a $300,000 penalty for ethics violations, he shut down the federal government because the president was rude to him during a plane ride, he left his first wife as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from cancer, and he left his second wife for one of the women he was sleeping with during his impeachment crusade against Bill Clinton. Never in his political career have his favorable ratings outweighed his unfavorables. And he keeps accidentally giving awards to porn producers and strippers.

But he is a dreamer! And we will hear about how he is considering this run for president for years, and no one will bring up all the terrible things about him, besides scumbag bloggers.

Forward men, forward!

[Illustration: Weekly World News]

"Will you ever run for president again? Yes or no," Curry asked.

"No," replied Clinton.

Ok. Done. Good. Right? That is enough of a straight-up denial to satisfy anyone! Unless, like, you run a website of some sort, and are also trying to drum up interest in an upcoming book about Hillary Clinton's relentless ambition. Then you would make this interview, with its question about Hillary being "marginalized" that comes entirely from your own writing highlighted, your top story. And you would also say that Hillary is lying about not wanting to run for president, any more. Because you are basically shameless, and you are Tina Brown.

Good news: your book, The Clinton Chronicles, is due to be published next year. Just make sure to keep planting stories about how dissatisfied and unhappy Hillary is, in the meantime!

It's all obviously a charade in which everyone pretends that expectations for this woman were so low that her ability to read lies written by some anonymous party functionary was somehow surprising. But these very different reports on how her little talk was received are fun.

The New York Times on reactions to Sarah Palin's speech to Hong Kong investors:

A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.

"The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations," said Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners.

"She didn't sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative," he said, adding that she mentioned both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "She brought up both those names."

The Times of London on reactions to same:

Several audience members reportedly walked out of Ms Palin's speech 30 minutes before the end, citing "more important things to do" or describing the talk as "too partisan and too much like a speech at the Republican convention".

One senior fund manager told The Times that the 80-minute lecture, and the lack of an opportunity to fire any questions at Ms Palin, was a disappointment. "You would think that with her team of speechwriters and a supposedly media-free environment Palin could have afforded to be either funny or thought-provoking, but she was neither," she said.

Curious!

[Photo: AP]

Equality California announced officially that they will not bother trying to get Proposition 8 repealed until 2012, when they'll push for a constitutional amendment permitting same-sex marriage.

See, it's hard to raise money, when the recession is going on, and also when you are not bothering to do anything because raising money is hard.

And there is all this insane and stupid activist group infighting about the various rich people who forgot to do anything about Prop 8 until the Mormons took control of the issue and pumped their huge Mormon dollars into the anti-gay marriage campaign.

So, yes, brilliant, throw your next gay marriage fight during the next presidential election year! Make sure to add a ballot initiative about immigrants getting abortions in black churches, too, while you are at it. To boost turnout.

The book, according to Regnery, the right-wing publishing house paying Allen to pay someone else to write it, will bring "together two all-American passions-politics and sports-and reveals what Washington could learn from the enduring principles found in athletic competition and team sports," which in the South means stop letting the blacks play quarterback. (He's looking at you, Michael Steele.)

Allen's character, such as it is, didn't really triumph in his 2006 senatorial re-election campaign, which he lost after referring to an opposing campaign volunteer of Indian descent as "macaca" from the stage during a rally. The librul media reported that "macaca" is French for "monkey," and used by white Tunisians to refer to the local black folk. Which is crazy because Allen was a good ol' boy from Virginny, so how would he know from "macacas"? Turns out his mother's parents were Tunisian, so that explained that.

Then Larry Sabato came forward to say that when they were in college together, Allen said "nigger" and "wetback" a lot, probably because Allen never gave Sabato any earmarks. And then when a reporter pointed out that Allen's mom was Jewish, Allen accused them of casting "aspersions," because who wants to be called a Jew in public?

So there's George Allen's character for you. In 2005, a National Journal insiders poll ranked Allen as likeliest to nab the GOP nomination in 2008. Here's to hoping that his new book is an attempt to rehabilitate himself for 2012.

The Washington Post heaps praise upon the cheating South Carolina governor's wife today, with a piece calling her "the hero in this story." (Well yes, by default.) And it also points out that she is the brains of the operation! And, a "friend" says:

"She's the hero to her children, and I think she's the hero to this state. In the midst of this tragedy, she is standing strong to who she is and what she believes in. . . . I think Jenny has not had these types of ambitions, but I think every woman in South Carolina would vote for Jenny Sanford for governor right now."

Hm. But would the men? She's Catholic and from Chicago! No matter! New York's Daily Intel jumped on the bandwagon, calling her "a symbol the Republican Party could really get behind" (this will infuriate Meghan McCain, probably).

And then Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is thrilled that this happened, announced that he was proud of Jenny and ashamed of Mark. It is one thing for a bunch of media jackals to say this, but it seems a little "not really his business" for Tim to be all psyched that a fellow Republican Governor's wife hates him.

But Michael Roston was maybe the first to just come out and say it: "Jenny Sanford should be the Republican Party's candidate for president in 2012."

So Jenny Sanford for governor, or president, or lady-pope, or whatever! She will surely welcome the scrutiny and attention and its effects on her young children!

[Photo: AP]

Hannity has a terribly newsworthy interview with the always-reclusive Queen of the Frontier. And Mr. Drudge has a scintillating excerpt! Here are the probing questions our man Hannity asked:

HANNITY: What do you make of – look at the state of the economy now...
HANNITY: You know but it goes back - It does go back a little to the campaign. I mean, ‘spread the wealth, patriotic duty…'
HANNITY: Well, is that how you feel?
HANNITY: Socialism?

You can probably just make up all the answers yourself, and make more sense and be less enraging than Palin. The 2012 campaign is coming along nicely!

The idiot-liar, Ms. Governor Sarah Palin, was supposed to headline the joint NRSC/NRCC Republican fundraiser, this June. But because she is hiding in Alaska still, where no one can hear her say stupid lies every time she opens her mouth besides polar bears and penguins, it turned out that that was a "miscommunication" between "her political team" (the party hacks) and "the governor's office" (her husband and people she went to high school with and one of those polar bears).

So they replaced her with the next best thing: Newt Gingrich! Everyone loves Newt, because most people have forgotten how much they hate him.

Isn't this sad, actually? Their hopefuls are a guy who quit congress in disgrace ten years ago and the loser VP candidate from their last losing ticket. Was Jack Kemp busy that weekend?

Well, the website is for the Republican Governors Association, not Michael Steele's RNC, and it's actually just bite's Obama's fancy web-style, with the comforting blue everywhere and those rays of sunshine coming from somewhere on the horizon. Because apparently Republican governor's think they're the future of the party! Specifically the governors of Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina, because yeah, all those guys will be able to point to really, really prosperous and successful tenures by the time 2012 rolls around.

(Um, also of note: when we first looked at The GOP Comeback site, the fourth picture in the little banner was Ms. Sarah Palin of Alaska. Not sure what happened there!)