He’s going the route of GWB, who is probably one of the most low-profile ex-presidents of recent history (seriously, even Nixon had more of a public life before Jimmy Carter left office); he may not be getting drunk every day, but Joseph Smith never said anything about prescription opiates, say.

Any word on whether Caribou Barbie’s contract with Fox is going to be renewed? 2012 was the year in which she was basically a non-starter for the wingnuts, from her anticlimactic announcement of her non-candidacy (which I think actually happened late in 2011) to not only not getting invited to the convention by the GOP but also not even getting to do commentary on her own network. Plus, of course, all the family drama which made Honey Boo Boo’s look classy.

Little girl in the upper left corner is all, “I asked for a palomino pony and got a strawberry roan, WTF is this shit?”

Shakira, you say?

I hope that you’re not hating on Dolphie; his pre-action-movie resume is rather impressive.

As for Jack Reacher, after having read four or five of the books (they tend to run together), I decided that the only real logical explanation for how he a) kept in such top shape and b) always managed to show up where some bad stuff was about to go down: he’s the result of a super-soldier program that relies heavily on Manchurian Candidate-esque posthypnotic suggestion. He’s basically programmed to keep himself in shape through body-weight exercises (Lee Child’s explanation of his physique–digging in-ground swimming pools by hand, plus drinking several gallons of water a day–are just embarrassing), and he’s given orders for where to go next to apply his singular skills via a cell phone hidden in his collapsible toothbrush, literally the only possession of his that he holds onto. It’s the only explanation that justifies why the army decommissioned him (the armed forces typically reduce numbers by reducing recruitment goals, not by “laying off” officers, especially hugely-talented ones with multiple decorations such as Reacher.

That Salon article seems to raise more questions than it answers. If she’s not a raving homophobe, how does she square that with being associated with and working with and for so many people who are? And the assertion that her own single motherhood is responsible for her working so hard for Prop 8 is like the version of Lex Luthor’s origin that says that he became a supervillain because he blames Superman for the loss of his hair.

Sad send-off gets sad trombone. Milbank gets his own bag of salted dicks for bullshitting about the real reason why Lieberman was shunned by Democrats: walking back his promise to abide by the results of the primary that Ned Lamont won. So Milbank was in college with Joe’s son? BFD. Part of being a friend is being able to tell someone straight-up that their old man is a son of a bitch.

Crazy… it’s as if she wants to actually get something done instead of flying off the handle like Allen West or Joe (Not the Rock Star) Walsh or some other apeshit one-term teabagger. The Man has gotten to her!

Nice to see the TBoggs exploring the exciting world of erotic asphyxiation together. No fur-lined cuffs for you’uns, no sir.

Also, I’d like to suggest the Josh Romney Project, in which we check in on Mr. Creepy Stare every once in a while, just to see how he is, you know, if he’s doing OK, going on extended unexplained absences, removing the occasional wheelbarrow of dirt from his unfinished basement, that sort of thing.

At first glance, this article seemed like the kind of tonguebath that the late, unlamented Hugh Sidey used to give George H.W. Bush on a regular basis in Time. Neither sympathy nor schadenfreude is particularly served unless Mitt is eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his finger while watching the original Battlestar Galactica (fellow Mormon Glen Larson’s melding of Star Wars with LDS mythology), and Ann has reduced at least two grandchildren to tears by screaming at them for using her scrapbooking supplies for their own crafts.

But Philip Rucker, who seems to have been the WaPo’s go-to guy for Mitt, seems to be a bit more subtly critical of his subject than he initially lets on, as the photo used for the front page of the article is Mittens on some Disney World ride with #1 creepshow son Josh. Then there’s some of his prior work, such as “Romney’s belief in himself never wavered“–and look who’s on the right side of the video preview screen! Maybe I’m reading virtues into Rucker that just aren’t there, but it’s pretty damn funny stuff.

That picture could be used by anyone on any dating site, regardless of gender or preference.

Ask Maria von Trapp and the lonely goatherd! Wait, I may not be remembering that story right.

Things I learned from this film:

1) Try not to be depressed at being a giant-headed freak.

2) Do not crush furniture in your blood-moon rage.

3) Keep on poopin’!

Ah, Joel Pollak. The guy whose ass was handed to him by Barney Frank, but managed to convince himself that he was so impressive in his public humiliation (and fooled by various attaboys) that he ran against Jan Schakowsky, against whom he had no chance of winning whatsoever. And now he’s flying Breitbart.com into the ground. I wonder if he spends his spare time trying to pick up women by pretending to be that one guy from MadTV.

I’m not wearing any panties.

Mr. Blue Sky – ELO
Bat Out Of Hell – Meatloaf
Black Friday – Steely Dan
Road to Nowhere – Talking Heads
Them There Eyes – Ella Fitzgerald
The Ties That Bind – Bruce Springsteen
Swan Lake Suite – Tchaikovsky, Royal Philharmonic
Jezebel – Joan Jett
Penny Lane – The Beatles
Bad to the Bone – George Thorogood & The Destroyers

Also, I’ll look at Coriolanus if it ever comes to my dingy little corner of flyover country (how can an action flick that ends in “anus” be all bad?), but I’m not necessarily encouraged by Gerald Butler’s presence–the preview screen for your embedded trailer has Butler looking as if someone at his local Whole Foods has just told him that they’re out of fresh pesto. But Ralph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes, who sometimes seems as if he’s just marking time until his OBE, looks even more badass than he does as Voldemort, so I’ll have a shufti if I can.

I posted a comment there saying that I was sure that they were not ratfuckers hired by the Romney campaign. For some inexplicable reason, it wasn’t OKed.

Despite everyone characterizing the whole thing as a mistake by Romney in the debate, there was nothing accidental about it.

Even if it wasn’t accidental, it was still a mistake. Romney’s famously weak on foreign policy; his trip during the Olympics was a disaster, and his attempt to get tough on China is all too easily deflected by pointing out his investments in that country and sending jobs overseas, as I believe Obama did during the debate. Despite Romney trying to make the meme that “Obama doesn’t have an agenda” stick, the president does have a foreign policy, and the parts that someone might legitimately object to (drone attacks, for instance) aren’t things that even the notorious Mormon flip-flopper will touch. So all Mitt has left to do is wave the bloody shirt, leaving him open to (legitimate) criticism that he’s politicizing a human tragedy. This last debate won’t go well for him, I think.

Has there been any doubt that Wolfe has lost whatever literary virtues that he may have once possessed ever since I Am Charlotte Simmons, aka College Students Fuck Like Bunnies, Holy Shit, Who Knew?

He wouldn’t make it five months, of course. He’d either be caught being blown by a prostitute in the front seat of his BMW or photographed staggering out of a rough neighborhood, crying, with his pockets turned out and pants soaked with his own piss.