Holy crap. Watch this anti-Romney campaign ad.

It’s from Newt Gingrich. We have a Rethuglican paying to push a progressive liberal political message on television.

When Romney wins the Republican nomination, can Obama just borrow these ads and run them for his campaign? Or won’t it work because Obama has benefited so much from Wall Street donations?

(via Salon.)

The Republican scores in Iowa are 25, 25, 21, 13, 10, 5, and 1. For an in-depth discussion of these remarkable numbers, we turn to our political analyst, Bob.

Thanks, Bob. These are very good numbers. 25 is clearly the winner, but the other 25 is very, very close. 21 is less than 25, but it’s still a good number, and I’m sure 21 is very pleased…although, of course, a bigger number would be even better. 13 and 10 are even smaller numbers.

5 and 1 are the littlest numbers. They are going to have to try much harder to get bigger if they want to stay in this race!

Excellent analysis, Bob. What does it mean that we have two 25s though?

It means that the election is very exciting so far, Bob, and that now more people will turn on our show to find out which one gets a bigger number. Compare it to the Democratic caucuses, where one person got 100. Boring, Bob, very boring.

So this means we get to keep our jobs, Bob?

Yes, Bob, and that is very good news indeed.

Now turning to our field reporter, Bob, we have an interview with one of the candidates.

“Sir, how do you feel about your number?”

“Well, Bob, it’s not a bad number, it could have been bigger, but it’s about where our polls predicted it would be. So we feel very good about our number.”

“Back to you, Bob.”

Thanks, Bob. And coming up after this commercial break, our chief political analyst Bob will explain these results to you with dazzling computer graphics.

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Here is Bob, who will make these results meaningful by making them very bright and shiny and dynamic.

Thanks, Bob. We have created an animated chart of these results. Big numbers are shown as this very large, erect penis, much like yours if you got an offer to do a nude interview with Katy Perry, and small numbers are shown as this tiny little nubbin, like you’d see in a cold locker room after losing the big game. What this shows…

Bob, wait a minute. Isn’t one of the candidates a woman?

Ha ha, yes, Bob, but no clitoris is ever going to get as big as this magnificent purple monster, so it hardly matters, right?

Ha ha, of course. Go on.

As I was saying, Bob, we’ve illustrated all the candidates here, as you can see, and, well, they’re all pretty flaccid so far. None of them are even at half-mast yet, but the top candidates have clearly gotten a little tickle from Iowa and are beginning to stir.

Our job here on the Political Show in the next few months is to flatter and cajole these dicks until one is so aroused that he intimidates all the others into slinking away. We’ll be here every day, reporting on their relative turgidity until one is the biggest.

The power of the press, Bob. By the way, do you have a chart of the Democratic results?

We do, Bob, but the office here is pretty white and we found it too frightening to contemplate. Don’t worry, though, we’re ready, once the Republicans have sorted out who has the biggest number, to do what the media does best, and in the run up to the election we’ll be right here, fairly and objectively reporting the two penis sizes right down to the millimeter, right up to election day.

Good work, Bob. And may the biggest number win.

And that’s all from the election desk. Stay tuned as we bring in a series of pundits to talk about these numbers all day long.

Perhaps the Hitchens piece I just posted wasn’t curmudgeonly enough for you; seasoned Pharyngula veterans are already deeply cynical. If that’s the case, I have just the thing: Matt Taibbi has posted A Christmas Message From America's Rich, in which you can read about how corporate CEO’s are allowing you to have cake.

Most of us 99-percenters couldn’t even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It’s called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don’t do them, because, well, we live here. Most of us wouldn’t take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, or put our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, or steal the life’s savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him a bunch of worthless securities.

But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billions in bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs to new locations in China and India. They defraud the pension funds of state workers into buying billions of their crap mortgage assets. They take zero-interest loans from the state and then lend that same money back to us at interest. Or, like Chase, they bribe the politicians serving countries and states and cities and even school boards to take on crippling debt deals.

What I’d like to give them for Christmas is a revolution, and a metaphorical row of pikes for their heads.

Ashley Miller asks, “Why does anyone like Ron Paul?”, and then does a fabulous job listing all the reasons Paul is a disastrous nutcase. She pretty much answers her own question with a thoroughly documented and reasoned “YOU SHOULDN’T!”, but if you want even more of an explanation, read the comments. Apparently reddit linked to the article, and every Libertarian kook in the world funneled their way to this one article, where they left their outraged comments.

Rarely have I encountered such a vile stew of misogyny and stupidity, outside of youtube comments, as you’ll find on that thread. It reminds me why I detest Libertarians, and Ron Paul in particular. The man would be a total disaster for the economy, in addition to being a poisonous social regressive.