MA State Senator Scott P. Brown won the Republican nomination for the late Ted Kennedy's US Senate seat, and now he has six weeks to prepare his concession speech.

Brown is notable for being hairy and naked in Cosmo many years ago, when, apparently, Cosmo was a way more awesome magazine.

He is a moderate, which means he opposes gay marriage and doing anything at all about the climate and thinks a government-run insurance option would be a Socialist takeover—but he supports abortion rights.

If Democratic candidate AG Martha Coackley wins, every pundit in America will obviously hail it as a victory for Barack Obama. (Hah, just kidding. Everyone knows that the only local or state races that qualify as referendums on Obama are the ones Republicans win.)

Candidate #1: Arlington, Tennessee mayor Russell Wiseman, who took to his Facebook page with a message of despair upon learning that Obama's speech had trumped Charlie Brown, on the teevee. We'll just blockquote this thoroughly worthwhile Commercial Appeal story:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."...

In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."

At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

No further comment. Contestant #2: News Corp! Which just bought a 10% stake in Rotana, a media company owned by Saudi Prince Waleed. Why the outrage? Well after September 11, you see, various Fox News commentators were outraged at Waleed! Because he suggested that maybe US foreign policy had something to do with the attacks. So NYC rejected a $10 million check from him. Media Matters has some choice quotes:

Bill Sammon: "[I]t's blood money and we're better off without it."
Sean Hannity: Al-Waleed's statement was "such an egregious, outrageous, unfair offense that I would have nothing to do with his money either."

Unless that money comes in the form of dividends from media company profits! So, vote for your god damn favorite. [Pic via]

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.

Yep, just your usual, everyday Congress stuff, putting together a "Republican congressional forum" in order to publicize this sort of thing:

The document was found in Dumpster outside of an ACORN office in San Diego, a House Republican aide said. Derrick Roach, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for statehouse in California, took thousands of documents last week from the trash outside the office.

According to this bombshell document, that a failed congressional candidate took from the trash outside of an ACORN office and that actual elected Republicans are now holding pretend hearings about, ACORN considered changing its name. Which, you know, might be because the one of our nation's two political parties has decided to base its entire governing philosophy around an all-consuming hatred of this fairly inconsequential network of low-income community centers that registers voters, provides housing and tax advice to the disadvantaged, and lobbies on behalf of the urban poor.

The Palin-Beck drama began when the former governor of Alaska told Newsmax she considers Beck "a hoot" and would be open to running with him. She repeated the coy "we'll see..." wink-nudge invite on Fox and Friends, prompting the king of televised weeping to dismiss Palin as frivolous, strident, and exceedingly female. First he asks her to stop using the word "hoot":

BECK: I don't think things are hoots. I don't. I don't think it's a hoot. I would never use the word hoot, and I respectfully ask that every time my name is brought up she would stop using the word "hoot."

And then he puts her in her place, the kitchen. He adds a note of self-irony about "evil conservative stereotypes," but does that actually redeem it?

BECK: I'm just saying, Beck-Palin, I'll consider. But Palin-Beck—can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She'd be yapping or something, and I'd say, "I'm sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I'm not in the kitchen." I mean, you'd have to live up to the evil conservative stereotypes, you'd have no choice, you'd have to. Look, I talked to the woman about it, I don't even know what she was saying.

Listen here:

Palin has a hair-trigger reaction to sexist slights—see Newsweek Cover Melodrama, The—so I would predict a wingnut feud, but in this case, Lady Alaska's martyr complex is going to conflict with her effusive love of right-wing media. Also, Beck's producers will likely pressure him to make nice. She's way too valuable to them.

Then again, if this most schadenfreude-rich year has taught us anything, it's that the only predictable thing about the Thrilla from Wasilla is her ability to hold grudges, so I'm going to call a 50-50 split on whether she flies into attack mode or sits back, arches an eyebrow, and quietly snubs him, instead. Hooray, now we have something to look forward to for after the holiday!

Beck's Sexist Reason For Ruling Out Palin-Beck Ticket: She'd Always Be ‘Yapping' Like We're ‘In The Kitchen' [Think Progress]

Correction: An early version of this post said Beck's Palin-slamming broadcast occurred today, but in fact it was yesterday.

Contestant #1: Hero lady Ann Coulter, a non-racist who said that Maxine Waters "couldn't get a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat without affirmative action." But Ann has a non-racist explanation!

Contestant #2: Former Bush flack Dana Perino. Who says, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Yep.

Vote for the Queen of Thanksgiving now!

Durham operated companies in Indianapolis, Obsidian Enterprises and Fair Finance, that specialized in buying debt-ridden companies. The FBI did not give a reason for the raid, or for picking up Durham in LA, but the Indianapolis Business Journal has an idea:

...since Durham, 47, bought Fair in 2002, he had used it almost like a personal bank to fund a range of business interests, some of them unsuccessful... he and related parties owe Fair more than $168 million.

Oops! Let's take a look how he spent that, or whatever other, money he had! A BusinessInsider story notes that:

Durham's page on MySpace, a social networking site, revealed an R-rated pajama party in 2007. The page showed two naked women kissing and reported that Penthouse magazine model Martina Warren was in attendance.

The MySpace page is gone (although if any kind people have pictures of the gathering, send them here) but click through for a gallery and a field guide to a truly obnoxious man who boasted he sometimes forgets how many cars he owns. Or should that be owned?

Durham, who is a big Republican fundraiser, as if you couldn't tell by looking at his corpulent face, had a 100-foot yacht called Obsidian and homes in LA, Miami and Indianapolis (the big three of glamor, as they're known). Here's a picture of him and his close friend Ludacris on said yacht, courtesy of his Facebook page.

He apparently loved talking about how much money he had, because he gave interviews, and access for pictures like this, to Indianapolis Monthly ("Durham's sinewy girlfriend Jami Ferrell — a former Playboy playmate — sunbathes in the 90 degree heat") and CNBC in 2008 before everyone was revealed to be broke. Highlights from the latter next.

From CNBC: "Durham's main residence is a 30,000 square foot, 8 bedroom home in Indiana. The house has a pool, 2 state of the art kitchens, 3 bars, an exercise room, home theater and about 20 TV's — including 2 in the master bathroom's mirror."

From CNBC: "Tim Durham has a major weakness for cars. On any given day he can drive off in a Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, or Dusenberg. Durham owns almost 70 cars...but sometimes loses count."

From CNBC: "In the past the wealthy had private railroad cars....today they have jets. Tim Durham frequently uses his private jet to go where ever he'd like, even on very short notice. Durham says "it's a nice convenience to have."

And here are some more pictures from his Facebook account. This one is provisionally titled: 'leering mouth-breather.'

This is the lady his Facebook account says he's 'in a relationship' with. Obviously we know nothing about these people and they may be deeply in love. But the odds on her visiting him in jail, should he be charged and prosecuted with anything, seem slim judging by the company he keeps.

RNC member Jim Bopp and nine other committee members sponsored a resolution, to be considered at the party's winter meeting, outlining the nine essential tenets of the modern Republican party: calling Obama names and opposing everything he tries to do (besides escalating wars, unless he doesn't escalate them enough).

"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee; and be further

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, as they become known, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

So. You are allowed to disagree with two of those, if you would like to be a Republican, but disagree with three of them and you will be shunned.

Wait, you might be saying, I thought "cap and trade" was a market-based alternative to a carbon tax? To you, the RNC says "go back to Russia."

This does open up the door for a Republican who is pro-gay marriage and anti-gun, as long as they hate immigrants and love war. So, you know, still a big tent!

But they really should've gone further.

(11) We support the right of people to assemble and demonstrate peacefully, as long as they have guns and racist signs.
(12) We support keeping government out of Medicare.
(13) We support being oddly terrified of a loosely organized network of community organizers.
(14) We support claiming that everyone who accuses us of racism is a reverse racist.
(15) We support pretending we didn't support the bank bailout and purposefully conflating it with the stimulus bill.
(16) We support believing that angry southern white males are all the votes we'll ever need.

Sanford sent the most embarrassing love letters in the world to his Argentinian mistress and has refused to resign despite the most blatant sex scandal ever.

The State Ethics Commission announced a probe today, but won't say what questions Sanford faces, The AP though, points out that it reported some underhand and potentially illegal activities related to the affair:

the governor violated bans on using state airplanes for personal and political purposes; opted for expensive first-class or business-class seats - actions that apparently violated rules requiring lowest-cost travel; and failed to disclose on ethics forms flights he took on private planes owned by donors and friends.

He may still be impeached by Republican legislators for bringing "extreme dishonor and shame" on the state. Which would be ironic as he called for Bill Clinton's impeachment when the Lewinsky affair came out.

According to Reuters the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported resurgent levels of preventable diseases syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. "We have among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world," John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases, told the news agency. "We are not honestly and openly dealing with this issue and it's the larger issue of sexual health," he added.

This slightly disproves the Republican idea that the good lord will prevent teenagers, filled to the brim with hormones, from having sex because it's sinful etc. The Obama administration say they will reverse the policy, after they've got around to reversing the 337 other really bad things that Bush did.

We could not help but to enter Bill O as a contender after his classic "Devil's advocate" bit last night:

Let me play Devil's advocate here: Barack Obama wants to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. Which is a good thing. And you know that, as a soldier, we can't kill all the Muslims. So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good, moderate Muslims as we can.

Not kill them all? Provocative! His competitor is Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the American Family Association:

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military...
Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.
This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.

The preposterousness of allowing Muslims to not be killed, or the Islamo-realism of banning them, just in case? Vote now!

[Pic via]

The scorched earth style of opposition does indeed work at dragging down Obama and the Democrats' numbers. But it also keeps approval of Republicans down, and "generic Republicans" still do not poll better than Democrats. They're probably poised to pick up 15 to 25 House seats next year, especially if Democrats again don't bother to get the youth vote out and if the "recovery" continues to be jobless. But the Republican were also supposed to hold on to an upstate New York district they've represented for 150 years, until the tea parties, Sarah Palin, and the Club for Growth got involved.

Maybe the excommunication of moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava was an aberration, and the grownups will rein in the activists and run electable Chris Christie types. But if they do, the disgruntled anti-authoritarian Glenn Beck acolytes will rebel.

Already, the Club for Growth—which threw a lot of money at NY-23 and in doing so gave the seat to the Democrats—has endorsed Marco Rubio for Senate in Florida. Rubio is the conservative challenging popular moderate governor Charlie Crist. As governor, Crist enjoys approval ratings in the high 60s among Democrats, independents, and Republicans. But Marco Rubio enjoys the support of George Will, The National Review, and the aforementioned very wealthy Club for Growth.

Rubio is, at the moment, polling below the likely Democratic nominee, which is a feat, because no one knows who the Democratic nominee is, as a race against Crist was not expected to be winnable.

Meanwhile, out in broken California, the Republicans have decided to launch a real challenge to Senator Barbara Boxer for the first time since she took office. With Boxer facing rising unfavorable numbers, former Hewlett-Packard executive McCain campaign insider Carly Fiorina decided to throw her hat in the ring. Fiorina has a lot of money, good name recognition, and might appeal to moderates and women who are tired of Boxer. So, of course, True Conservatives are beginning to rally behind a crazy man named Chuck DeVore, an Assemblyman who is currently tied with Fiorina in the polls.

What sort of Republican is this DeVore character? Let's look at something he wrote last week in an Amazon review.

American Progressives and European fascist theorists admired each other and exchanged ideas. From William James to Georges Sorel, from eugenics to the militarization of society ("War on Poverty" anyone? It was William James who penned the "Moral Equivalent of War" in 1906), both the American left and European fascists sought to remake society using crises to urge action to justify bigger government at the expense of individual liberty.

Ronald Reagan had it right in 1981, when he remarked that Roosevelt's New Deal had much in common with Mussolini's fascism, including frequent words of praise from Roosevelt's brain trust directed towards Italy in the 1930s.

Good luck becoming a Senator from California, sir!

This is all sort of like if Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy had been to run clones of himself in all 50 states, instead of diverting money to Democrats who actually had chances to win. So there are basically two end games:

• Republican infighting leads to unelectable candidates losing what should've been easy pickups across the board.
• Apocalyptic death cult masquerading as Republican party makes the usual midterm gains, Congress promptly shuts down federal government again, Obama impeached for lying under oath about where he was born.

It's a good thing none of the tangible benefits of health care reform are scheduled to go into effect until 2013! Otherwise the Death Panel lines would be unbearable come 2011.

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.

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona, decided it would be for the best of the debate that a child be brought forth and tortured by being used as an exhibit by Rep. Shadegg, as he helped floor members understand something about the health care bill basically ensuring this kid would be broke or dead or addicted to smack or all of the above. Watch as the kid tries to do what I want to do, which is eat the microphone:

Yeah, kid, NOM, indeed. But old people like babies so whatever, nobody blinks at what kind of patent ridiculousness this is. But when the "Fat Pride Community" talks about getting healthy, nobody listens to them, even though they're 2/3rds of our country. And what do they have to say? It's not just about getting skinny. O RLY? And who is this talking for them? Professor Bacon, that's who. Seriously:

"I get so angry when I feel people pushing a weight-loss agenda," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco and author of "Health at Every Size," a book published last year whose title has become the rallying cry of the fat pride community. "What we're doing in public health care policy is harmful. We give a direct and clear message that there's something wrong with being fat."

Oh, ho, ho! A conspiracy! The tasty-meat industry has infiltrated all walks, it seems! But they might be screwed, as the House has started debate on the current legislative package, which will eventually lead to a vote on something like a 2,000 page bill, the contents of which most Americans seem to think include a provision that says something along the lines of "YOU, SIR, OR MA'AM, ARE GOING TO DIE. WE ARE GOING TO KILL YOU, AND YOU ARE GOING TO ENJOY IT! AND ALSO PAY US TAXES TOO, THANKS!" So they're getting together and freaking out, screaming mean things at a building where nobody can hear them inside.

"Kill the bill!" a few protesters yelled, egged on by a woman with a megaphone. "You'll be starting a civil war, you fascist tyrant!" yelled Andrew Beacham, 27, of nearby Falls Church, Va. Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail, said in an interview that he believed Mr. Obama was a fascist because-

I'm sorry, what?

Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail,

Unless he's fighting for provisions in the health care package to cover taxpayer-supported Bumble and Bumbles, I will stop processing information past that sentence. And he's not, and I did.

Oh, whatever. If there's anything nice that these Town Hall meetings have yielded, it's that we're no longer shocked and disturbed by the fucked up rhetoric plaguing our national debate. It's hard to be disappointed once something becomes the standard, no? These guys are just being ridiculous, now. Like this one, who killed a bunch of trees just to prove a point that the bill is long and complicated.

....(The representative) took a foot-high copy of the House bill to the podium when he spoke. "This bill steals freedom, and those of us that believe in freedom have contempt for those who would steal our freedom and contempt for this bill," he said in a shout, heaving the papers to the ground below the low stage.

What kind of asshole would do that? Let's go back to the first part of that paragraph...

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona..

Oh, you mean, the baby-puppeteer? Yeah. That one.

Forget obesity for a moment. There are thousands of pages in the legislation. Hopefully, there's at least a milli or two in that thing set aside to look into the causes, effects, and ways to prevent important conversation-born at-large jackassery from infecting our country any further. The biggest health care crisis we've experienced in the history of our country is the one we've brought upon ourselves since we started talking about health care: that we, and our conversations about things that should matter, are getting patently stupider every time we have them.

Before he became the new media director of the Republican National Committee (because they noticed that he could switch a computer on and had also donated to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth) he worked in video at Microsoft. Where he did this little web interview. It is, somewhat ironically, about being careful what you say in front of the cameras. At about 25 seconds in he mentions that Al-Qaeda are really very effective communicators and make a good example for Fortune 500 companies (and therefore, one would presume, major political parties).

Which, to be fair, is a pretty good point. And as the modern-day GOP is moving to an increasingly extreme position, perhaps not a bad analogy. But I bet the right-wingers Herman works for wouldn't think so. Dick Cheney has been known to beat the snot out of toddlers with a pool ball in a sock for making such anti-American suggestions.

His blog says he's a former talk radio host. And that he took the job, earlier this year, because "Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and President Obama's professional political staff show alarming signs of being hard-core authoritarian elitists convinced of their own might, wisdom and infallibility and their Neitzchian [sic] belief that if I only gave my daughter over to The State she'd be better for it." I don't know what that means either, or what he thinks Nancy Pelosi and Nietzsche want to do to his daughter. But the animation of Michael Steele dancing, the decision to name the RNC chairman's blog 'What Up?' and the general strangeness on the site make more sense now.

The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have nothing to do with Obama or national politics, at all, except in that Obama did not do as much campaigning and organizing in those two races as the Democratic candidates would've liked. Otherwise, they are strictly local races and the results will reflect only the material concerns of the residents of those states. Still! They have been in the news a lot, so let us talk about them.

New Jersey: Incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is a very rich former Goldman Sachs executive. Despite that, he was a pretty good liberal Senator, for a couple years (he voted against the war!). But then, like a moron, he decided to govern the ungovernable state of New Jersey. He was promptly met with a government shutdown and huge budget problems and a populace that enjoyed the various programs the government provided but did not want to pay so many taxes all the time, or at all. And so he has had to cut spending, which makes everyone mad, and raise some taxes, which made everyone mad.

So waddling in comes Republican Chris "The Big Man" Christie, who has a brilliant plan: he will cut taxes! And cut wasteful government spending! Sounds wonderful! Christie was initially kicking Corzine's ass in the polls, and Democrats wrote off Corzine. But Corzine, who is very rich, remember, launched a hilariously negative ad campaign against Christie. Now, because Christie is fat and also because he's refused to give any details at all on what he would do as governor besides "not be Jon Corzine" (but mostly because he is fat), he is neck-and-neck with Corzine.

That tie is also thanks to this guy named Steve Chris Daggett, who is running as an independent, which means "the guy you vote for if you hate Corzine but don't want to vote for a fat Republican." Daggett is running on a platform of cutting everyone's property taxes, which is always a wonderful idea.

This one is a toss-up.

Now: do you see anything in that summary about Barack Obama's approval ratings, or health care reform's popularity, or Nancy Pelosi? No, you don't. This has nothing to do with anything besides the terribleness of New Jersey's government and populace.

Virginia Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms, which is nuts, but it keeps things interesting. So there is Republican Robert F. McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. But stupid Deeds is a rural southern Virginia Democrat, not one of the rich suburban northern liberal Virginians, so he is not really exciting those Obama voters! Or black voters! So the coalitions that helped Obama win Virginia will probably not be turning out for Deeds. McDonnell is a tremendous asshole but this race is his to lose. Once again: this has nothing to do with national politics, except that people who vote on national issues don't usually turn out for off-year races.

New York's 23rd Congressional District This one is wonderful. Barack Obama appointed a Republican congressman from a safe Republican upstate New York seat to be the Secretary of the Army. The local Republicans decided to nominate a local Republican assemblywoman to take his place. But!!! While she is a Regular New York State Republican, she is also pro-abortion and pro-gays. So, hah, the complete lunatics who run the national Republican party, with blogs and TV shows and so on, went nuts and decided to throw their support behind the Conservative Party candidate.

New York's Conservative Party was invented to police the local Republicans, who have a tendency to be more liberal than Republicans elsewhere, because they want to get elected. It was also invented so that William Buckley could run for mayor on a "John Lindsay sucks and I am so awesome" platform. (Fun fact: Buckley supported congestion pricing! And also police brutality. He was always big on police brutality.)

So! The regular "moderate" Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was called all sorts of names by the internet, and every Republican who endorsed her, like Newt Gingrich, got called even more names, by the internet. The Club For Growth then organized the grassroots conservative campaign for the Conservative Party candidate, some guy named Hoffman who does not actually live in the district and who is also not very smart. Sarah Palin's Facebook page sealed the deal, and suddenly every Republican who wants movement approval and money had to endorse Hoffman. Scozzafava finally quit the race (though she remains on the ballot) and, hilariously, endorsed the Democrat.

Hoffman will probably pull this one off. Frank Rich thinks this is a good thing, because the Republicans are forcing out even more of their electable moderates, and making the party more extreme and more white. Josh Marshall seems to concur, comparing it to when Rush Limbaugh was making everyone apologize to him a while back.

And, ok guys, it is maybe beneficial to the Democrats for the Republicans to become even less inclusive and even less able to adapt to the new America and all that.

But honestly, because of our intractable and entrenched two-party system, all this really means is that the next time the Republicans take back control of any portion of the government they will be even more destructive and evil than they were before.

There is one last race you should keep an eye on, though:

Queens NYC City Council District 19 This race to represent Bayside pits Democrat Kevin Kim, who'd be the first Korean-American elected to the New York city council, against Republican Dan Halloran, who is a pagan lord who worships ancient Norse gods.

As the Tribune first pointed out, Halloran is "First Atheling," or prince, of a Germanic neo-heathenist "theod" or tribe. State records show that he incorporated the group in 2002 with the official name of "New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief."

Colloquially, Halloran's followers refer to their tribe as "New Normandy," with a territory that incorporates New York City and parts of New Jersey (some of Halloran's Pennsylvania tribesmen recently broke away — with his blessing — to form their own group, which they call "Arfstoll Thjod").

Obviously there's nothing wrong with being a modern pagan (except that it is dumb), but this particular branch of paganism has been quite popular with white supremacists. Not that this guy his a White Supremacist! Like many Pagans, he may just enjoy playing dress-up.

Media Matters found Rush reading this item on air today and agreeing with it, somehow. We're thrilled to hear we're on the same page in terms of made-up economic theories, Rush. Do you want to go bowling some time? Email us.