Surgeons replaced yet another hip on George Herbert Walker Bush today so he can hopefully live long enough to fix whatever Junior screws up tomorrow with the “Iraq Surge to Total Defeat” plan. MORE »

We were hoping for the USS Nancy Pelosi, but it looks like Gerald Ford is getting his aircraft carrier after all.

Learn all about this stupid new development, after the jump.

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In all the pretend mourning for America’s pretend president, the comical stories of Ford’s two would-be assassin gals is probably the weirdest yet most-ignored aspect of his brief time at the White House.

Here are some fun facts: On two separate occasions just 17 days apart, two women attempted to kill Gerald Ford in California — and if not for a last-minute blunder by the women themselves, either attempt could’ve very well put Ford in the Michigan dirt 30 years ago.

Let’s meet the creepy gals, after the jump.

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* Gerald Ford: greatest President since the last one that died. [WP, NYT, USAT]
* President Bush dips his pen into the inkwell of free-market editorials. [WSJ, NYT]
* Strategy memo stolen from Rudy Giuliani’s campaign mildly shocking for the 292 million Americans that don’t live in New York City. [WP]
* Massachusetts will put gay marriage on a statewide ballot in 2008 — get ready for two years of marketing gayness to Irish-Catholics. [WP]
* No one has a clue if Barack Obama’s bong hits will become poll hits in a Presidential race. [WP]
* Democrats really, definitely launching “100-hour legislative blitz,” just as soon as the “Lets get ready to rummmble” guy shows up. [NYT]
* Hippies plan protest at Capitol tomorrow, will discuss impeachment over vegan burritos. [WP]
* African-American members of Congress from the South assume leadership positions in the House, finally. [WSJ]
* Military’s “emergency-funding request” reads like a Pentagon Christmas list. [WSJ]

* 15% fewer murders! [Frozen Tropics]
* Goodbye ciggies, hello bunnies! [Metroblogging DC]
* Who goes to the library these days? NO ONE. Local library tosses fags like Solzhenitsyn, Faulkner & Aristotle. [The Happy Booker]
* If you read the fine print on the WP Blogger Summit you see that the event features a panel of the paper’s online and print executives. You can ask them questions about how big kid journalism is done. Then, at the after party they’ll get you drunk and either contract you to work for free, or trick you into explaining RSS feeds. [DCist]
* In this modern world, one can dream a dream of having his funeral liveblogged. [Poofygoo]

A Michigander to the bone and a class act to the end, Gerald Ford’s moving deathbed tribute to the state he represented so well was apparently a bitchin’ update to the classic muscle car. MORE »

According to CNN, Israel-hating ex-president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosslyn have been entrusted with the physically demanding job of bringing the dead body of pretend president Gerald Ford to Michigan, where it will be put under the snow in a solemn ice-fishing ceremony. MORE »

As the nation pretends to mourn our pretend president, what people are really thinking about is Bob Dole’s smooth ‘n sexy new look. MORE »

* Names and Faces: Wayne Gretsky celebrated New Years in DC, at Morton’s Steakhouse. $850 tip. [WP]
* Yeas and Nays: Ford press sec Ron Nessen says pardoning Nixon was an act of great courage… Lonesome John Edwards picked the wrong week/day/year to announce his candidacy for President… Cap Police sent out an alert last Friday reading, “At 6:30 p.m. this evening in the Upper Senate Park, cannons will be test fired. This will create a loud noise.” [Examiner]
* Page Six: Tony Blair will apparently move to Miami after he steps down, according to always-accurate British tabloids… Katie Couric did not make Condoleezza Rice cry. [NYP]

Happy Ford Day! We, unlike many of you, are working today, but we’re still totally mourning our 38th President. The Wall Street Journal has a very touching story on one of Gerald Ford’s half-dozen childhood homes. It seems that Grand Rapids, like the rest of Michigan, fell on hard times a couple decades ago, when everyone lost their jobs because of Margaret Thatcher or something. One of Ford’s houses ended up in a very bad neighborhood run by illegal-immigrant gangs and drug dealers. Then in the 1990s, a couple gentrifiers bought it and fixed it up and became Ford’s best friends. MORE »

* Former US President Gerald Ford is still dead. [WP, NYT]
* Kissinger: Still evil, sycophantic sonuvabitch. [NYT]
* The Democrats who now control congress argued among themselves briefly over whether they should let Republicans help draft legislation, then decided to bind and gag them instead. [WP]
* Boy, we had this great strategy for winning the war in Iraq, and then all this chaos started going down, it sucked. But seriously, it was a great plan. You woulda loved it. [NYT]
* Thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their country, we were gonna let 500 into the U.S. this year. [NYT]
* 3,000 dead in Iraq, and most of America doesn’t know one of those 3,000. [WP]
* The NRA has some crazy new pamphlet warning its members that the the new democrats will steal their guns, even though the new Democrats are pretty damn pro-gun. Also, someone forgot to credit Wonkette. [WP]
* Jeb Bush’s official Florida Gubernatorial portrait features a bible and a Blackberry, Bush family will never, ever, ever go away. Also, he uses emoticons. [NYT]
* Breaking: People aren’t very good at giving up bad habits. Doctors say, “change comes from the heart, not the head.” You should probably stop seeing any doctor who says that. [WP]
* Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still dead. [USAT]