Comical gazillionaire Mitt Romney continues to believe he has a shot in “h-e-double-l” of becoming the Republican nominee for president, despite his anti-Christian “faith” and his gay-liberal health-care-reform Taxachusetts history. So he’s off to Iowa, the King of States, exactly three years before the 2012 Iowa caucus. Romney is on a book tour! He has written a new book — by staring at “magic stones” inside a hat, and then divining various Olde English verses from these rocks. [Boston.com]

IT IS YET ANOTHER SARAH PALIN STORY and it is no one’s fault but that of Sarah Palin, alright?, or possibly that of Meg Stapleton, who evidently forgot to explain to Sarah Palin what “Iowa” is. Right so, some Iowa-based group of Iowa-caucus participating conservatives invited Palin to speak at some banquet next month. Something about families, definitely a pro-family thing where everyone eats food and claps to prove how much they love families. Except Palin is charging the Iowa people $100,000 for the privilege of having her campaign for President during their fancy eating and clapping meal, and all the Iowa people can do is laugh and laugh. MORE »

RON PAUL HEADS TO IOWA! WOW, this LEDE: “Revolutionary Republican, courageous conservative congressman and Constitution defending former presidential candidate, Ron Paul is coming to Iowa November 14th, to support Kent Sorenson’s state Senate seat bid.” The Iowa Republican might as well have just taken a picture of itself covered in the dust jacket of an Andy Warhol biography and texted it to Ron Paul. Gross gross. [The Iowa Republican via Glenn Thrush]

HA! What have we here, buried in this nothing news item about Tim Pawlenty going to headline the “Ronald Reagan Dinner,” the proceeds of which benefit Republicans In Iowa, or Republicans From Iowa, or Republicans Without Iowa, something like that. Ummm… voila: “In July, organizers of the event had said they had tried to line up former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee.” It is too bad that the Iowa Republicans were unable to convince, with money, their first choice of speaker and instead had to settle for someone who did not quit their governorship. Tim Pawlenty this is embarrassing! Do not do this! [Des Moines Register via Ben Smith]

Haha, Steve King, a Republican congressman from Iowa, did a really funny impression of misunderstood hyperbole last night on wingnut radio! He goes: The problem with the “slippery slope” argument—i.e., if the gays are allowed to marry other gays, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from marrying their own gay parents!!—is not that it’s hilariously overwrought, which it is, it’s that it has not been taken far enough. MORE »

• GO TO HELL, BIG CITY HUMOR-CRATS! Jesus, can’t wait to see what this guy whines about the next time we direct national traffic to one of his articles from our snobby bisexual computers in Metropolis: “Much of what Wonkette posts is sweating with anti-rural sentiment, attacking, for example, our newspaper for not being a major urban daily (thank God, because unlike the Seattle Post Intelligencer or Chicago Sun-Times, which Wonkette would no doubt respect, we can still turn a profit).” It’s true, we only make fun of rural communities, never major east coast cities like, say, “Washington D.C.” But we’d like to thank this dingbat for introducing us to the hilarious term “urban snark.” We still have no idea what that stupid fake word “snark” means, but at least we know that it comes in an “urban” flavor. [Daily Times Herald]

In a story that’s not quite true but makes for a catchy angle that we’re happy to run with, a madcap old lady in Carroll County, Iowa, is selling her television machines, which now only have one channel, Obama Channel. Deloris Nissen, 78, clicks the damn clicker on these machines to try and find her Tuesday night programs, but all she sees is that same Obama in his golden halls or hamburger restaurants, doing god knows what. Enough! Sell them. MORE »

Iowa Rep. Steve King, easily one of the top five House wingnuts and perhaps the most overtly evil and sneering one, has this to say about why we shouldn’t close Guantanamo Bay (where we could still keep the innocent Uighurs, whose imminent release was ordered by a federal court in 2008): MORE »

Jesus fucking christ. Remember back in 1780-something, when we had actual smart people writing our founding documents in beautiful longhand when they weren’t inventing new kinds of ploughs and bifocals and shit? Now our nation’s top legislators just type away like petulant teenage girls, with their thumbs, about how the president is so awful for spending the weekend in Paris. We are all stupider for having read this. [Chuck Grassley's Twitter]

By the Comics Curmudgeon

OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE THOSE GAY LIBERALS DONE NOW? They have taken Iowa, possibly our least gay state, and gayed it all up, with the gay marrying, and … such! One sign of the state’s previous extreme heterosexuality was Grant Wood’s famous painting, American Gothic! Boy, that sure is a symbol of traditional middle American values that everyone can easily recognize! But what if some puckish artist — or a series of puckish artists — were to make it … gayer? MORE »

GAY MARRIAGE LEGAL IN IOWA: The Iowa Supreme Court has released its big gay marriage ruling and guess what, it ruled that denying gay marriage is unconstitutional. The gays can now get married in America’s Heartland! Iowa, everyone is so nice there. Everyone was so nice to us there on our convention road trip last summer. Turns out they were just trying to gay-marry Ken! UPDATE: Yowza. Those muslin latte-sipping arugula judges really stuck it to the mouth-breathers with this one. [Des Moines Register]

The Senate, for those unfamiliar with the august body, is sort of like the US version of the House of Lords; and like the House of Lords it is populated with harelipped dauphins who make ribald jokes with each other between bouts of pleurisy, gout, and cavorting with fast women, such as each other’s spouses. After the jump: the Iowa Republican totally pwns the North Dakota Democrat, who is unable to pleasure his wife. MORE »

Human dumpster Sarah Palin hasn’t held many unnecessary interviews in the last few weeks, what the hell is wrong with her? Does she want this thing in 2012 or not?? Her lazy ass needs to be in cold motherfuckin’ IOWA right now and every week for the next few years, going to fried steak dinners with the Des Moines Register people and what not. This is what one must do. John Edwards put four goddamn years into that state and look what happened, OH RIGHT, he’s President. Well, Sarah Palin may not have the “grit” of John Edwards, but she’s at least creeping her way back onto the interview circuit. The safe outlets only, of course. Now let’s see what she told the wingnuts at Human Events about her experience on the McCain campaign… ah, she did nothing wrong and wasn’t allowed to do enough right. MORE »

Democratic Superstar Tom Vilsack nearly won the nomination, until he dropped out in … what, 2006? No, it was February 2007 — almost two years ago! And he endorsed Hillary. So she paid off his campaign debt, which wasn’t really very much as his campaign consisted solely of old props from a local high-school musical version of 1984. MORE »