“LIKE MUSSOLINI”: THE MORE INTELLECTUAL ALTERNATIVE TO YOUR STANDARD HITLER SIMILE. Here’s another weirdly boring thing from the new Clinton oral history that also exposéd the fuck out of Boris Yeltsin getting drunk that one time. “Describing one interview in which Clinton was evaluating Gore’s campaigning during the 2000 election, Branch writes, ‘Gore lacked confidence in a light touch. Whenever he tried to be aggressive, said Clinton, Gore could come off ponderous and harsh, like Mussolini.’” OUTLANDISH! We will pre-order one million Kindles immédiatement. [Mother Jones]

ROMNEY’S HOT NEW POTBOILER DUE OUT IN MARCH: Smut merchant Mittens “Willard” Romney will publish a sexy new nonfictional work, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, an unapologetically graphic 304-page how-to guide to Tantric brain-sex with the awesomest nation on earth. Reserve your copy now! [NBC's Newly Redesigned Local News Sites, Which Are So Purty]

Once upon a time, this nobody governor in, uhh, one of the southern states, but not a famous one like Florida, got a book deal. He was supposed to write about how to be conservative or something, A Southern Gentleman’s Guide To Being Conservative, but then this nobody governor turned into Mark Sanford, the Sparkin’ Thing, with his soulmate The Argentine Firecracker, and his nice wife The Kindly Wife Who Kept It Together, and basically we were in teevee miniseries territory, so of course Sanford’s publisher has killed his book. What? MORE »

Mark Sanford was all set to publish a book about “fiscal conservatism” or some other boring topic, but then he poked that South American lady and now he is a Tainted Whore of Babylon with no credibility, fiscal policy-wise. Will the publisher still put out his dull economics text or what? Will they scrap the whole thing and force him to write a SALACIOUS TELL-ALL MEMOIR instead? We hope so! [Political Ticker]

Among the more bizarre aspects of the tragic “John Edwards is a sex lizard” story that broke last year was the part where a long-term aide claimed that he, the aide, was the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby and took her in to live with him and his wife and children for a while, all bankrolled by that lawyer and Democratic financier who’s now conveniently dead. The aide, Andrew Young, is shopping around a book that will presumably spill the beans on the very important question of who the father of the little Edwards-looking tot really is, because why else would you buy the goddamn thing, right? MORE »

When Rod Blagojevich lost his cush job as governor of Illinois, everybody wondered how he would ever be able to put food on his family again because he was qualified to perform zero useful functions outside of being America’s Clown. But then he got a book deal and people were all, “Oh hey nice six-figure book deal you got there, even if it’s chicken scratch compared to what you could have gotten in bribes if you’d stayed in office.” Now we “turn the page” on another “chapter” (GET IT???) of this exciting story. MORE »

Barack Obama once again demonstrated his callous unconcern for the American people by signing a major book deal right before he was sworn into office. Obama received a $500,000 advance for a middle-school reader’s version of Dreams From My Father on January 15. This obscene amount calls for a congressional investigation, and harsh words from Christopher Dodd! It also suggests that the only way to secure a decent book advance these days is to get elected president — a process that is only slightly more difficult than getting a publisher to look at your manuscript. [Washington Times]

Man, kids lurrrv Barack Obama, probably because his name is easy to pronounce and he’s not a scowly old creep. Well, that’s one explanation … for losers! An alternative theory has it that the children’s book industry transformed our nation’s youth into a wandering herd of Obama zombies by releasing a whole bunch of presidential biographies for kids to read. MORE »

In a calculated move designed to insult America, Senator Chris Dodd has signed a book deal. His book will be out in June. Not that he’s actually penning a single word of it — it is “By Sen. Christopher J. Dodd with [random writing slave]” — but c’mon Dodd, save the heroic legislative deal-cutting memoir for when the unemployment rate starts going down (in 400 years). Worse yet, the working title is Thirteen Days: How the Financial Crisis Changed the Politics of Washington. Fuck you, Cuban communists! MORE »

Roll Call is a venerable old Capitol Hill rag we should read more often, as it has to do with “politics” etc., but it costs munnie$ for a subscription, so meh. It probably has lots of valuable information and things! Anyway, people on the Twitters think it might be shutting down. At least, MSNBC cartoonist guy Daryl Cagle thinks so. However, some other guy thinks this is just the craziest thing he’s ever heard. MORE »

After her cruelly brief tenure as a vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin is poised to perform a time-honored ritual for national failures and people who have completely humiliated themselves, repeatedly, on the world stage: she will write her memoirs, and she will be paid many millions of dollars for it. And she will waste all her millions of dollars on raw-silk Versace jackets and a new meth lab for her seventh child, Pistol. MORE »