What a great comedy ad that Herman Cain's campaign released yesterday, right? It's heartwarming to see one of these old, grizzled campaign hands, in this case chief of staff Mark Block, finally getting in front of the camera in his own element: Smoking a cigarette outside some building. Then there's terrible music, Herman Cain gradually smiling over the course of 10 seconds, the works. It's strange and exciting, effectiveness aside! And yet the image of this man smoking left many political writers somewhere between confused and horrified. What does the cigarette "mean"? It's today's hot topic.

Herman Cain is incredibly pro-life and doesn't personally believe that it should be allowed in special cases like rape or incest. And yet his attempts to soften the edges of this rigid position are creating, for him, a miserable self-induced error that Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are loving. Cain makes it worse each time he brings it up! What dumb new "tweak" did he unveil today?

Rep. Michele Bachmann's broke, flailing presidential campaign is now being straight-up Newtered: Her entire New Hampshire campaign team, which was only about six people, has quit. Their reason was something along the lines of 'What's the fucking point?'

So last night: greatest debate ever, right? The vicious babies on stage, God bless , were so busy sniping at each other about who had more Mexicans in their front yards that Anderson Cooper barely had any time to make the cheesy situational jokes that is CNN's calling card. Hoo boy, what a madcap muckfest. Then again, we're kind of worried about Mitt Romney, whose head and a good chunk of his upper torso will soon disappear in a horrific explosion.

The metropolitan region of Las Vegas, Nevada, has suffered economic collapse more brutal than anywhere following the bursting of the housing bubble. Eighty percent of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages in some parts of the city. It suffers from worse unemployment than any other major metropolitan region in the country. And now, worst of all, the city will have to host a bunch of assholes running for president in tonight's 432nd GOP presidential debate since Labor Day. Who will "win"? The rich guy always wins.

Rick Santorum, who is constitutionally incapable of not whining whenever he opens his mouth, had a whiny response to being made fun of on Saturday Night Live this weekend.

You know all of those dumb jokes about how Herman Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, just thinks about pizza all the time? Well here's Herman Cain himself making one of them 20 years ago at the Omaha Press Club. The difference is that his joke — a performance of John Lennon's commie song "Imagine" but with lyrics about pizza — is rather well plotted!

The great news about a Herman Cain presidency is not just that we'd have a president who hates ever thinking about foreign policy. We'd also get his 9-9-9 tax plan, a cartoonishly regressive transfer of the tax burden to the lower and middle classes! Okay, even our Congress isn't dumb enough to pass this. But. This is what Herman Cain's running on, so why not check out some fancy reviews, hmm?

Okay, sorry, this post probably should have been tagged "NSFW" due to the large image of an old man's melting face. But let's move beyond courtesies: Was Ron Paul's eyebrow collapsing during Tuesday's debate? This image appears to show a fake eyebrow just stone cold fallin' off.

Yet another poll confirming Herman Cain's rise to the top of the presidential candidate pyramid has come out today. Public Policy Polling finds him securing 30% of the national primary vote in its monthly poll, a 22 percentage point gain from last month. What is going on here?

Good news for disenchanted liberals who are resting their last electoral hopes on the Massachusetts Senate campaign of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren! She raised $3.15 million in her abbreviated third quarter, doubling Sen. Scott Brown's total.

The Republican party's latest affection in its presidential candidate speed-dating process, Herman Cain, is not and does not pretend to be this cycle's "foreign policy candidate." He doesn't want to be, and you can't make him! Instead, when quizzed about international relations, he will just mock his own lack of knowledge. That's his winning charm, maybe?

Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the Ohio hobo who got famous by asking Barack Obama one boilerplate question on the 2008 campaign trail, has filed to run in Ohio's 9th congressional district! His presidential campaign can wait until 2016.

Rick Perry raised $17.1 million in the third quarter, which is expected to be the finest haul of all candidates! Is there a way for him to purchase an end to his polling free fall? Oh, probably.

Newt and Callista Gingrich, authors of creepy children's elephant porn, love the comedy film The Hangover enough to see it seven times. It's "totally stupid, but we can't help ourselves," said Gingrich, who is allegedly running for president.

We're nearing the part of the presidential campaign where Herman Cain was supposed to drop out and collect on his modest name recognition by going on a book tour. But something's gone terribly wrong: He's somehow the frontrunner, now? So he'll abandon his campaign for a month to go on a book tour anyway.

The Rick Perry bad lip-reading video that transfixed the world last week now has a companion piece in this audio-doctored Michele Bachmann campaign clip, in which the rapidly receding candidate reveals the appropriate gift for a prison party (milk, not backyard meth), the number of Jew persons at the Hispanic prom (one), and a possible side-effect of the HPV vaccine (retardation). Oh wait — she actually said that last one.

Finally, the definitive image of the Newt Gingrich 2012 presidential run has emerged: Callista Gingrich, sitting opposite an elephant furry, selling propaganda to children.

Here's a congresswoman who was, and maybe still is, running for president, named... let's see... it's not Buddy Roemer... maybe it's Buddy Roemer?... Bachmann. Michele Bachmann. Here's "Michele Bachmann" telling the country to not to "settle," on anything, ever. "Don't settle in your spiritual life. Don't settle in your personal life. Don't settle with your career goals." Sure, sounds good! No settling. (This presumably does not apply to Israeli settlers.)

Insurgent presidential candidate Herman Cain took to the Sunday morning yakkfests yesterday to celebrate his total dominance over all things political and, on Fox News Sunday, flesh out his suggestion that 'Hail to the Chief' be tweaked a bit. How would you change it? asks host Chris Wallace. You'd make a HIP HOP version, right? Hmm. That's a "hmm," Chris Wallace.