Newt Gingrich never got to complete his political career. He only lasted as Speaker of the House, a job he'd successfully wrangled after plotting his path for a psychotic 14 years, for a couple of terms, the latter half of which he spent as an incompetent figurehead. He was reprimanded and fined for ethics violations and forced out of power by the House Republican majority he'd brought to power for the first time in half a century.

At work, Mark Zuckerberg is the one trying, and often failing, to meet the demands of his 800 million users. But on vacation in Uruguay for eight days, the Facebook CEO gets to be the one issuing requests. And he's a rather insane customer.

Santorum, as followers of politics know, is the Bible-thumping Republican underdog who tied Mitt Romney at last night's Iowa Caucus. Santorum is also, as users of Google and followers of Dan Savage know, a neologism for "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex."

Well here we are, first voting night of the presidential season, and CNN is already completely insane, playing with ludicrous pastel penis holograms while Wolf Blitzer meanders around looking for some anxious correspondent to appear on a garish outer space screen and say nothing. Only in Iowa!...?? Let's get this over with.

The Gawker Political Desk will be covering the returns from Iowa tonight starting around 7:30 or 8. (Bad things happen if you start watching CNN's 80-person floppy muppet panel too early.) Pray to Allah for a Romney third-place finish!

Today is that great quadrennial celebration in American democracy: The eve of the day that our political system can completely stop caring about Iowa for another few years, aside from delivering the annual Christmas card of billions of dollars in useless farm subsidies. The Iowa caucuses, however, must be dealt with first, as Republican caucus-goers prepare to crown either Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, or Ron Paul as their new Harvest King tonight. How did things go so wrong? Let's go back and relive the crucial moments of this Iowa campaign season, together, by looking at some funny pictures and making dumb jokes.

Mitt Romney, who is up by 700 percentage points in New Hampshire at the moment, has dispatched his spawn to hold things down in "The Granite State" while he pretends to care about Iowans for a few days. Bad idea, Mittens. Because of your incompetent sons is spreading Birther talk up there! What is wrong with Matt Romney?

Everyone who is not a savvy financial professional would be well-advised to pursue a single investing strategy: buy and hold. That means, whatever you do, do not try to "trade" stock and mutual funds, as if you know what you're doing. Because you don't. Millions of Americans grasp this concept. At least two of their elected representatives do not.

I'm telling you, CSPAN is just some shit-hot television right now. Everything is incredible. Hell, I watched Ron Paul shake hands after a Des Moines rally last night for 30 minutes—in high-definition. It was great. It's the new MTV! And now what's this, Michele Bachmann jawing on the radio about guns and her favorite gun for a couple of minutes? Sure, tell us all about it.

In 2011, we watched as tech villains found creative new ways to violate our privacy. They misappropriated our social networking profiles, stalked us through our phones, and plucked secrets from our wifi networks. To help you better prepare for 2012's inevitable privacy attacks, we enumerate below the most worrisome threats you should monitor in the coming year.

It's the best part of any presidential election cycle: That period a few days before the Iowa caucuses when no one's working and so you just type some nonsense about the weather in Iowa. What if the weather is snow? Someone wins. What if it is anti-snow, or sun? Well in that case the other schmuck wins.

A sharp-eyed user of the social news site Reddit spotted this giant among the bystanders during Kim Jong-Il's funeral procession. Is this a genetically-modified superwarrior, or just a famous North Korean basketball player? (Click the photo to enlarge.)

I'm telling you, CSPAN is just some shit-hot television right now, in Iowa. Hell, I watched Ron Paul shake hands after a Des Moines rally last night for 30 minutes — in high-definition. It was great. It's the new MTV! And now what's this, Michele Bachmann jawing on the radio about guns and her favorite gun for a couple of minutes? Sure, tell us all about it.

Last year, veteran TV news producer Joe Halderman was sentenced to six months in jail for pulling a failed $2 million blackmail scheme on David Letterman, who was having an affair with a staff member. Now, the ID Discovery network's "On the Case With Paula Zahn" has hired Halderman as a producer. He's experienced, so he should be fine, as long as he does not blackmail Paula Zahn for $2 million.

So the New York Times' Dining section wrote one of those things for Southern food yesterday that it writes for every type of food, at one point or another: How there's a new wave of chefs trying to revive traditional fare with more expensive and local ingredients, etc. "They want to reclaim the agrarian roots of Southern cooking," the Times writes, "restore its lost traditions and dignity, and if all goes according to plan, completely redefine American cuisine for a global audience." Again: This is a standard Times food article template with "Southern food" plugged in.

Will the Occupy movement destroy the comely state of Iowa? Considering that they plan on interrupting a few caucuses and hollering in some offices, one can safely assume... no. But whatever they're planning on doing, it's apparently enough to scare the Iowa Republican party into secret bunkers, where they'll be safe from this nefarious grasp of "political activists."

It's hard to imagine that Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum were hoping to be days away from the Iowa caucuses and spending most of their time attacking Ron Paul, who just so happens to be crushing them all. But here they are, and boy howdy are they spitting hot fire at this crabby old doctor-paleolibertarian! Here are some highlights.

Rick Perry is still trying to convince Iowa voters that he's the most socially conservative candidate this godforsaken planet has ever seen, in his last ditch-attempt to get anyone to vote for him. We all remember when he was like, why are gays in the military when something something children Christmas Jesus? Then he pounced on his wife, putting her in her place. And now he's announcing that he's upgraded his anti-abortion club membership, after watching a movie about ladies.

Was Anthony Weiner America's first heteroflexible Congressman? This is the question we find ourselves asking today, as Traci Nobles—the Weiner flirtation object shopping a memoir involving semen sprayed all over a Congressional bathroom—returns to the public eye with chat transcripts describing Weiner's desire for group sex with men.

It's the end of the year, which means that it's time for Greek Orthodox clergymen and Armenian Orthodox clergymen to come together in order to "[scream] at each other and beat each other with broomsticks" during their annual cleaning of the Church of Nativity, where Jesus was born. As Jesus said, "If an adherent of a Christian sect with exceedingly minor theological or geographic differences crosseth into thine half of my birthplace whilst engaged in the very same charitable task as thou, thou must smite him with your broom."