John McCain went to Iowa yesterday and talked to the editorial board of the Des Moines Register (why we don’t know, that paper is very important for about two months every four years and is otherwise just your garden-variety moon colony fishwrapper). The exchange gets testy over the issue of Sarah Palin’s creds, and we see what Jonathan Martin calls “an emphatic, combative and at times surly John McCain.” It’s clear that this Des Moines editor lady is in the tank for the black. Oh we remember this lady’s voice! She moderated those two INCREDIBLY BORING Iowa afternoon debates last December, remember? Alan Keyes was in one? No? We’ve been doing this too long… [Jonathan Martin]

The big news on the Internets this morning: The REQ-edited Des Moines Register issued its coveted endorsements last night, and it’s Clinton for the Demrats and McCain for the Republicans. REQ — real name Carolyn Washburn, which, if you google, will take you to various hate websites — was clearly impressed with the rapidly sinking quality of Hillary’s campaign and the non-existence of McCain’s in Iowa. MORE »

Well, it will be hard for the Demrats to top the Republicans’ showing yesterday, and by hard we mean extremely easy. Hopefully the Random Editor Questioner (REQ) got her shit together overnight and will exploit the candidates’ prejudices with petty race-baiting binarisms, rather than talk about fiscal or education policy. Our liveblog will kick off in this very post at 2 p.m. EST, which rapidly approaches. Meanwhile, check out the above clip from yesterday’s Hardball in which Chris Matthews says he wants to waterboard Air America’s Rachel Maddow. Oh, and get drunk, right. MORE »

Former president Clinton was campaigning for that wife of his in Iowa yesterday when a cyborg from the planet Universityofiowa heckled him. Clearly Tom Tancredo has been targeting the wrong kind of illegals. MORE »