Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote a Times op-ed in which he promised everyone he will not enter the presidential race, and everyone should cut this op-ed out of the newspaper and save it, like some kind of precious insurance policy. Apparently, after all of Bloomberg's friends abandoned his non-existent presidential campaign to support the infinitely more charismatic John McCain, he traveled from city to city like some kind of sad robot to bore everyone with "plain" talk about "common sense" solutions. The experienced convinced Bloomberg he is the perfect man to "steer the national conversation," which somehow he will accomplish by dropping out of the race (that he was never in) and banking the $1 billion he was (not) going to spend on presidential campaign ads. The nation has been deprived of a great and logical man. [NYT]

Television comedian Stephen Colbert raised the most astute (and amusing) critique to date of the New York Times' failed investigation of presidential candidate John McCain for suspected canoodling with a lobbyist: If you are going to smear someone, McCain or whoever, at least do so properly, effectively and to devastating effect. Don't be all wishy-washy like the Times, whose boring headline on the McCain investigation read, "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk." The word "sex" never appeared once in the article, even thought it was basically about sex; the dirtiest the Times ever got was the word "romantic." The Times is clearly outmatched in its newfound spurious scandalmongering hobby by right wing media, which have perfected the art of escalating mere rumors into mainstream news stories, from Hillary Clinton murdering Vince Foster to Barack Obama being a Muslim extremist. Here is the best chunk of Colbert's bit:

Michael Kinsley's column about the reaction to the Times' story about John McCain's alleged lobbyist romance is annoying, because it is a Michael Kinsley column in Slate, but it is also pretty spot-on in its parody of New York Times Kremlinology: "I may be creating the possibility that some people might worry that other people might think that I have created the appearance of suggesting that the New York Times has created the possibility that some people might worry that other people might think that McCain has created the appearance that some people might worry that other people might think that there could be an appearance that McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist." Funny cause it's innuendo! Meanwhile, Michael Isikoff's Newsweek story on same suffers from having its most newsworthy scoop sacrificed to the web last week, but it has a couple entertaining details:

Reporter Michael Isikoff's story of John McCain's unethical relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman is up at Newsweek! It's been speculated that news that Isikoff was working on the story is one of the many factors that prompted the New York Times to "rush" their version into print earlier this week. Isikoff's story comes with a nice little mini-bombshell: proof that McCain already lied in his "sweeping denial" of the Times story!

An email tipster discovered John McCain's family blog has been infiltrated at the deepest level by enemies of America. Meghan McCain, daughter of the Republican presidential candidate, is really into the keffiyeh, scarf of Middle Eastern Precious Freedoms Haters, and even wears it on the so-called Straight Talk Express, and also in the presence of her apparent sympathizer mom Cindy McCain! Republicans of course will murder McCain for this horrifying development, because they are fashion whores who know the keffiyeh is so over. Two more shots of Meghan "Mullah" McCain after the jump.

Meghan McCain, daughter of John and frequent blogger, did not comment directly on her father's current sex scandal, but she did write a few words of encouragement to her parents, and bemoan the state of modern politics. She followed that up with 500 pictures of herself. [McCainBlogette.com]

Tucker Carlson, on John McCain: "I instinctively jump to the defense of anyone whose private life is violated." Tucker Carlson, on whether or not the Clintons still fuck: "Of course it's an issue." [ThinkProgress]

The New Republic's story-of-the-story of the New York Times' story of how John McCain might've fucked lobbyist Vicki Iseman is up, and, as could probably be predicted, it's the story of Bill Keller being a total pussy and not letting his reporters go with all the awesome juicy stuff they were totally sure they had nailed down, provable or not. It's also the story of how now, basically, the standard for publication at the Times has slipped measurably closer to, say, ours.

HuffPo Political Journalist Extraordinaire Sam Stein wants to know why the New York Times ran their odd story on alleged lobbyist-fucker and MAVERICK presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain now, of all times. Popular conspiracy theories include: they wanted to wait until the story wouldn't affect McCain's stunning primary victory, because they love him, or hate Rudy Giuliani; they wanted to dump it when it would be least effective against McCain, in the long winter between the end of the GOP primaries and the start of the bloody general election battle, because they love McCain; they wanted to wait until the Dems could use it against him and not maybe have to face a Republican candidate without an embarrassing cheat-y past, because they hate America and love Democrats; finally, they ran it now because after it had been killed twice, they finally cleaned it up and hedged its claims sufficiently to meet their standards of publication, just in time to beat a New Republic piece about how they killed the story. Our money, more or less, is on the last one.

The New York Times ensnared John McCain in one of the worst-timed and most pointless scandal stories ever written last night, quoting two anonymous sources who claim McCain confessed to never-specified but vaguely "inappropriate" behavior with a female telecommunications lobbyist, rode with her somewhere on a jet, and then his twitchy, neurotic aides supposedly decided the lobbyist had to be kept away from the senile old man. This all happened nine years ago and was outlined on Drudge Report two months ago, when there would have been some kind of point in the Times running even this tepid story because the Republicans had not yet rejected slimy philanderer Rudy Giuliani in favor of straight-talking maverick of integrity John McCain. But now McCain is the nominee in all but name, and this sad, toothless scandal story will be long forgotten by the time the general election rolls around eight months from now. What was the Times thinking?It was probably thinking about how its editor Bill Keller is developing a reputation for spiking stories when powerful people ask him to.

CNN's Jack Cafferty would like to tell you a story about John McCain, about how he made seniors and disabled veterans cry helplessly, about how McCain could not make a decision on whether to support them or the conservatives in a recent vote on economic stimulus. He'd like to tell you about how McCain is "pathetic" and "wimped out" on voting on the issue, unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the other senators running for president. Cafferty's rage as he tells you this story is so intoxicating that it almost seems beside the point to mention his blatant deception.

Every year the people you probably think are the worst in the world all gather in Washington, DC for the Conservative Political Action Conference. We went once—it was kinda fun! Ann Coulter says something "shocking" every year and also GOP candidates show up to ask everyone to please vote for them. This year, John McCain—not particularly popular with the CPAC crowd to begin with—will be introduced for his talk by a video of former president and current deathless saint Ronald Reagan. This may not go over well!

Democratic primary

Billionaire non-presidential-candidate Michael Bloomberg might have been drafted for President of Robotic Efficiency by his dozens of grassroots supporters, but now they've all been seduced by angry old maverick John McCain and Bloomberg never said he wanted to be the stupid president in the stupid first place. Supporter: "I think as soon as McCain started pulling ahead, it became really clear to me that that was probably the swan song." [NYT]

Matt Drudge would like to remind you that GOP Presidential Frontrunner John "Maveirck" McCain hates gooks. He will link to an 8-year-old story, if necessary. That is all. [DRUDGE]

Google has banned all personal attacks from political ads running on its ad network. "'Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon 'is okay, but 'Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair' is not,' writes Peter Greenberger on the Google Public Policy blog. Which of course means if Google had its way with the rest of the world, you'd never have heard of John McCain's black baby, Hillary Clinton's cookies or Barack Obama's drug dealing. Boring!

A dashing Wolf Blitzer, standing on a massive shiny CNN stage, announces John McCain wins New Hampshire primary with approx. 12% of the precincts reporting. Right now some very blonde lady is talking about the fight between Romnney and McCain going "mano-y-mano" Over on MSNBC, Keith Olberman is focusing on the losers. Some sad-eyed puppy of a man at the Romney HQs: "There is a man on the stage playing guitar but no one is singing along." On CNN there is yet another blonde woman at the Mitt Romney headquarters and now we can see the guy on stage with the guitar. She kind of (the reporter) looks like Tinsley Mortimer. OMG IS IT? Oh, no. Wolf just called her Mary Snow.

McCain and Obama: Are they very different? The same, but different? Kinda the same? It's a magical media world of imagination where anything's similar or different in critical ways if you believe in yourself! [NYT, NYT, Slate]

John McCain is getting pushy with the New York Times over a Jim Rutenberg story he wants killed, according to Drudge. The planned piece, six weeks in the making, alleges that McCain gave special treatment to a lady lobbyist over pending telecom legislation. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday, sources reveal, but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about jounalism [sic] ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election," Drudge says. Drama! Also—convenient! Makes us totally forget about yesterday's news that the Times had acceded to a White House request to change the subhed on their CIA story.

Senator and presidential candidate John McCain stops off in Silicon Valley, is greeted by a half-empty room and interrogation by original Red Herring founder Tony Perkins. "Pretend we're your VCs that have given you some money..." [San Jose Mercury News]