As it turns out, all I ever needed to be convinced that Sarah Palin should run for president was this minute-long ad, which manages to edit together the half-dozen complete and syntactically correct sentences that Palin's been able to get out in her public career, aired over a series of low-resolution photographs (maybe switching to HD will help? Nope!) and set to the strains of classic Pure Moods jam "Adiemus," by Adiemus. Though, to be honest, I'd basically support anything that features "Adiemus." Sarah Palin, genocide, terminal illness, whatever—just play "Adiemus" and I'm behind it 100 percent.

A Fox affiliate in Atlanta plans to run a story tonight about a woman claiming she had a 13-year affair with Herman Cain. How do did we learn about this? Herman Cain just popped up on CNN to warn us. A hot scoop for Herman Cain!

We're still monitoring Mitt Romney for the moment in which his bottled-up frustrations rise to an unsustainable level and he explodes, in triumphant fashion. But what would it look like? Well, there'd be body parts to go along with the machine parts laying all over the place, of course, since it would be an explosion. But stories of his previous outbursts offer some clues for what the build-up to the final blast might look like.

Now that Herman Cain's sliding back into a comfortable third place in the polls and no one cares about him anymore, how should he spend all that money he raised while he was the frontrunner? "Converting the campaign into a PAC and paying yourself a million dollar salary for the next few years" would be our plan, and it's probably his for further down the road! For now, though, he'll make fancy cartoons like this one, about the 9-9-9 tax plan.

As Governor of Texas, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry enacted a policy of providing in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, thereby not completely alienating the country's fastest-growing populations. For this, he was roundly punished by the Republican electorate. But he has a secret weapon: America's favorite fascist Joe Arpaio!

The old trolls at the Manchester Union Leader—New Hampshire's largest paper—have endorsed Newt Gingrich in the state's upcoming Republican primary. But the pundits on Twitter still had questions! Questions like, who is the union leader who is endorsing Newt?

"The Romney campaign suggested that Gingrich was using the quote out of context." — Poor Mitt Romney, being misquoted like that! Too bad his campaign just said misquoting opponents is A-OK, as long as it gets people talking about Romney.

Did you hear Michele Bachmann at Tuesday's Republican debate saying that terrorists have made six different attempts on Pakistan's 15 nuclear sites? That's not information that's ever been made public! Which raises the question: did Bachmann just leak classified information to a national audience?

The CNN Republican national security debate is currently underway in Washington, DC. At its onset, moderator Wolf Blitzer invited the candidates to introduce themselves after providing them with a sample: "I'm Wolf Blitzer, and yes, that's my real name." When it was Mitt Romney's turn, the former Massachusetts governor said, "I'm Mitt Romney, and, uh, yes, Wolf, that's also my first name." Except that Romney's first name is actually Willard?

If you had any doubt that Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign is little more than a vanity effort designed to snag camera time and sell copies of her hastily written memoir, add this to the evidence locker: According to internal campaign documents, her own treasurer says she has no plans to field employees or volunteers in Florida, Texas, Michigan, or California, and the campaign hopes at best to raise just $30 million—a lot less than it generally takes to win a national primary.

Here's Mitt Romney's first television ad! It is fantastic, in the sense that it manages to encapsulate, in the span of one minute, the entire Romney "brand": boring, wrong, nonspecific and slightly dishonest. (It's not so fantastic in the "at all engaging to watch" sense.)

Badly! Presidential candidate and congresswoman Michele Bachmann's new memoir Core of Conviction is out, and Mother Jones' Tim Murphy has read it, for some reason. Here are some of the wrong things Bachmann wrote in her book, about herself.

Mitt Romney is a good Mormon, a model member really, who does not drink alcohol or coffee or smoke tobacco. Sorry, let me fix that: Mitt Romney was a good Mormon, or at least considerd such, until today. He's come clean and admitted that he has, in fact, imbibed death juice and — dare we say it? — puffed a death puffer. Another flip-flop, and one that could land him an eternity on whatever distant sulfuric planet it is (Delaware?) that they keep Mormon Hell on these days.

Newt Gingrich is just a factory of rich, intellectual, stimulating ideas that no one has ever considered before, as Newt Gingrich is the only person who meets the intelligence threshold necessary to conceive him. Gingrich himself has been telling us this for 30 years, and finally — finally — we cretins have agreed to coronate him as president. Sorry, to keep you waiting, sir! Now that we've come to our senses, let's look at some of the impeccable policy ideas perfected each day in the Gingrich Idea Cave that will make it to the Gingrich Administration.

In case it wasn't obvious already, Herman Cain's brief outreach to the Muslim community to atone for his unending list of inflammatory statements is definitely over.

Herman Cain stuck around for three segments on tonight's Late Show, during which a noticeably "I'm not here for this" David Letterman listened to him give rambling half-truth answers to questions about everything from his "999" economic plan, to his smoking campaign manager (who was there, smoking), to the sexual harassment allegations that have mired his campaign as of late. A clip of Letterman and Cain's tense discussion related to the sexual harassment scandal is above.

Well at least I haven't gaffed, says Michele Bachmann, the woman who confused the birthplace of John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy, the state where the first shot of the Revolution was fired with New Hampshire, Elvis' birthday with the day he died and vaccines with the cause of mental retardation - all in the past year.

Pity the Secret Service, a law enforcement agency positively stretched to its limits, what with all those mentally ill drifters from Idaho on missions from God trying to assassinate the president and whatnot. But no, that can wait, guys. Herman Cain needs some protection! (Incidentally, that's the same exclamation that began every National Restaurant Association job interview from 1997 to 1999.)

Newt Gingrich is the latest in a host of Republican presidential candidates to savor the "frontrunner" status given by the media. But just as fast as they giveth, they taketh away, as Jon Stewart illustrated on tonight's Daily Show. A clip of the segment is above.

Today we learned that Rick Perry, everybody's favorite bumbling bumpkin from Texas, is not quite done making a fool of hisself. Fortunately for Perry, he has a frantic team of PR people waiting in the wings to apologize for his inevitable mishaps. One commenter was kind enough to send us today's statement: