A spokesperson tells the AP that Texas Gov. Rick Perry won't merely hint about a presidential run on Saturday, as previously reported, but he'll announce that he's running. So that means it's ~98% official, approximately, maybe.

The Republican candidates have all gathered in Ames, Iowa tonight for a terrifying Fox News debate. Did they really need to do this on a night with so many wonderful NFL preseason games? Lord, do they ever hate America. Anyway, what will they babble about, and who will win, and what else? Let's explore!

Stephen Colbert's "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow" Super PAC has released its first television ad in Iowa ahead of this weekend's Ames Straw Poll. Colbert has decided to endorse the non-attending Texas Gov. Rick Perry as a write-in, but spelled "Rick Parry." What else... the ad has some jokes and stuff in it? We don't know, just watch it and think whatever you think.

The Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, which some would consider the summer's best opportunity for middling Republican presidential campaigns to build momentum or fail completely, is only a few days away! So what mixture of carnival games and free food will the contenders use to trick voters into supporting them? Let's run down the list.

Fred Karger looks like a presidential candidate. He sounds like a presidential candidate. Hell, he is a presidential candidate — the only (openly) gay one currently in the running, who's now polling neck-and-neck with Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination.

Check out the rad flier that Timmy "Two Percent" Pawlenty has been handing out to supporters in Iowa. He protects guns. He has protected guns! He will continue to protect guns. There he is in orange, even, with a gun, and cute gun mittens. Vote TPAW! Please? Ehh... no.

The folks at Team Obama, like many, see Mitt Romney as the likely Republican nominee for president, and they're already plotting how to "destroy" him, limb by limb. How will they do it? Essentially, Obama will point at Mitt Romney, look to the audience, and whisper, "Just look at this fuckin' weird loser over here, amirite?"

So Michele Bachmann kept her campaign promise about not voting to raise the debt ceiling. She voted against everything, however Tea Partyish — including Cut, Cap and Balance — that would have raised it one farthing's worth. And now, in a spectacularly brazen dismemberment of factual truth, she's blaming S&P's decision to downgrade U.S. debt on the fact that the debt ceiling was raised at all.

Death-loving prayer overlord Rick Perry is getting ready to launch a presidential campaign, it appears! And in his first act as a kinda-maybe frontrunner, he plans to screw over Tim Pawlenty and/or Michele Bachmann in Iowa.

Congresswoman and Republican presidential candidate/shoo-in Michele Bachmann's made the cover of the latest Cosmo Newsweek—an honor that comes with a new if not entirely original nickname ("the Queen of Rage") and complimentary #QueenOfRage Twitter hashtag. Too bad the photographer startled her like that, eh?

Worried about the U.S. government's recently-downgraded credit rating? Don't be! Texas Governor and possible presidential candidate Rick Perry and 30,000 people just asked Jesus to help out with all of America's problems, and he should be here in an hour or so.

Remember when a Mitt Romney political action committee received a $1 million donation from "W Spann LLC," a mysterious company that was created in March and dissolved in July? And we all thought it was al Qaeda or Dr. Claw or someone? Turns out it was just a regular old rich guy!

Now we know why Gov. Rick Perry is aggressively trying to change Texas' state university system to one where teachers are paid by how much money they bring in, and students are treated like "customers": It's to take on revenge on the professors who gave him horrible, no-good, very bad grades during his college days.

Jon Huntsman seems like a nice guy and a fine retail politician. Check him out in this clip showing off his legendary musical skills at a shop in Manchester, New Hampshire. There's some guy on the keyboard playing terrifying outer-space death tones, and then Huntsman's like, hey it's my turn, now watch me go all Charlie Brown on this fucker.

Here's just the latest sign that our campaign finance laws are healthy in every way the Founding Fathers could have imagined: A secret company that no one knows anything about has given Mitt Romney's SuperPAC $1 million and quickly dissolved into nothingness. The folks behind this fly-by-night operation are probably relaxing on a beach in Mexico by now! Oh man.

Probable presidential candidate Rick Perry, like other Texas governors, has a history of executing tons of people. The most famous case is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed under Perry for burning down his home with his three children inside, even though there's significant evidence that he didn't do it. How will Perry ever get past this in a presidential primary? Trick question! He doesn't have to "get past" anything, because Republican primary voters like him for doing this.

Yesterday, we published an item based on a former Newt Gingrich staffer's claim that Gingrich assembled his 1.3 million Twitter followers—a number that he's taken to bragging about—in part by buying fake Twitter followers. A lot of people did not think that was true! But today social networking search firm PeekYou announced that it had crunched the data and come to the conclusion that roughly 106,055 of Gingrich's million-plus followers are real people. The rest are fakes.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry looks to have a fine chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination if he runs, which he probably will, no? Just look at this "teaser" SuperPAC ad that his rich Texas supporters are running for him in Iowa. It is happy happy happy. Balanced budgets! Millions of jobs! Corn, being husked! Rick Perry will do all of these things for America, when he rules it as his fiefdom.

Yesterday Newt Gingrich laid out a new argument for why he should be the GOP presidential nominee: He's got the most Twitter followers. But according to a former Gingrich staffer, he bought them.

It looks like former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman does have more supporters for his presidential campaign than that one guy in Iowa. Look as he gets mobbed by fans outside the Treasury! Man, this guy is famous. In China. [via Daily Intel]