All Sorts of Tomfoolery Going Down in Iowa

Eh, it's a holiday, but the Iowa thing we've been talking about for a while happens in two days, so I'm forcing my unpaid ass to post all the latest news -- including how Mike Huckabee may have kinda sorta actively destroyed his chances yesterday! And it's after the jump! Bulleted lists and videos and such!

In case you haven't heard about Mike Huckabee's presser in Des Moines yesterday, it went like so: He was going to start airing a new negative ad against Mitt Romney in response to this particular piece of crap . In the press conference room, there were several posters with still shots from the ad that attacked Romney's record. When the presser began, Huckabee told the crowd of hundreds of reporters that he had had a last minute change of heart and decided to pull the ad from teevee networks. He claimed that he didn't want to sink to Romney's level and would only campaign on why he, Teh Huckbeez, should be president from now on. How nice and genuinely heartfelt of him, right?!

This is where things come undone.

He proceeded to air the ad for the room, just so they wouldn't get cynical and claim he had never made it, what with reporters always getting all cynical like. The room -- which again hadhundreds of reporters and teevee crews and photographers-- broke into uproarious laughter, because any halfwit can smell the Pathetic at play: He won't air the ad himself, but he'll show it to reporters so they can write about its contents, camera crews can record it from the projector, photographers can take shots of the stills posted in the room. Saves a little bit of money by way of television advertising fees, don't it? Especially since Huckabee told them he would only show it one time, so they better watch it REALLY CAREFULLY:

Bye bye, tacky Huckabee campaign. Send Jesus our love.

In other news:

* Polls -- Des Moines Register poll provides some good news for Obama and Huckabee yesterday. The poll was conducted before Huckabee's extremely newsworthy press conference from hell, however, so he probably has like 4% now. A CNN poll came out around the same time and is more dead-heaty, although the heat is not quite as dead as it may have been a day or two beforehand. The heat should really just decide to be dead or alive and leave the rest of us out of it. Alas.

* Ways To Ruin Your Legacy As A Great Speaker, Part 1: Bad Metaphors. Quoth Bill Clinton yesterday: "This is the only country where we let the health care financing tail wag the health care dog... Any time the tail wags the dog you get in trouble." And taking a bad metaphor crap in the "vote for my wife" toilet also gets you in trouble.

* Joe Biden is criticizing Hillary for saying that Pervez Musharraf will be up for election in Pakistan, when its only parliamentary elections that are coming up. In other news, Iowans are interested in things that aren't this.

* Nader supports Edwards. This should help his chances, considering how much Democrats like Ralph Nader after he stole votes from George W. Bush in 2000 to give Al Gore the presidency. No?

* I hate Ralph Nader.

* Bill Richardson is on a bee line straight to the Oval Office, says Bill Richardson.

* Dennis Kucinich says that in the extremely rare event he doesn't run away with the caucuses on the first ballot, they should vote for Obama, because it will cheer him up or something.

* And finally, Iowa could mean precisely jackshit .