* Man, I am about done with politics for the year? How about you?

* Let’s just say it again because it can’t be emphasized enough: Ron Paul is an unelectable nut, and if you don’t understand that, you’re a crazy person. Do we really have to bring up the racist newsletters written in his name (racists and anti-Semites love Ron Paul and he seems quite keen not to discourage them… along with truthers)? CNN brought them up, and Ron Paul’s reaction? Run away!

And then there is that blame America first impulse that has no place in the Republican Party. For instance, his instinct was to proclaim Wikileaks traitor Bradley Manning as a hero.

And do you know he’s previously endorsed Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney for president?

Nut.

Unelectable.

And if you don’t understand that, you have no place in politics.

Still, I kind of hope he wins Iowa so we can’t once again make fun of how stupid and pointless these early primary states are.

* New poll actually shows Romney leading in Iowa, and he’s spent nearly no time there. The guy has good organization. I find I’m slowly starting to think to myself, “This Romney guy is actually pretty good.” It’s like the end of the book 1984. “I love Big Brother!” If you can’t change things, might as well take the bullet to the brain and embrace them.

* Newt Gingrich told a gay person that if your number one issue is gay marriage, he’s probably not the candidate for you. And this is news? Well, other outlets portrayed it as, “Newt tells gay people don’t vote for him!” I guess you don’t need basic comprehension to be a journalist (technically, I’m a journalist). Would have been nice for Newt to remind the guy that Obama is “against” gay marriage too… or at least too much of a pandering coward to pretend otherwise.

* North Korea is saying they got condolences from Jimmy Carter for the passing of Kim Jong Il, and Jimmy Carter has not said otherwise. I know it’s unprecedented, but can we deport an ex-president? He doesn’t even seem to like this country, so he might actually want that. Maybe Norway will take him; they did give him a peace prize.

* Complex molecules have been found on Pluto. This would be a really interesting discovery… if it were found on a planet. But since it was found on Pluto — that nothing rock floating somewhere — who cares?

* Wisdom of the Day from Shelby Fero:

“There are no stupid questions.” – someone who’s never watched a movie with my mom

* Tonight in the MAACO Bowl, 7th ranked Boise State (11-1) plays nothing ranked Arizona State (6-6) who fired their coach. Yay the BCS system and the awesome bowl match ups it produces! Boise State is moving their football program to the Big East (Idaho is East of some things) which is currently an automatic qualifier in the BCS, but that will probably be stripped soon. Well, half the fun of rooting for BSU is seeing them try but never get the respect they deserve. Underdogs!

* So there’s a big congressional fight over this measly payroll tax cut. I like tax cuts, but considering the straights we’re in, this a big useless thing to be spending a lot of time on. If you needed further proof that Obama is an unserious person, it’s that he’s trying to draw the line on this — a two month extension of piddling. It probably does help with some job creation by reducing cost per employee, but come on: After all these years, this is the best Obama has right now? I feel like we’re scrounging around for table scraps. And why doesn’t Obama want to pass the House bill that would extend it for the whole year? Because it would force him to build the Keystone pipeline and ::gasp:: create more jobs.

Obama is absolutely useless. Why aren’t the Republicans constantly chanting that fact?

* Obama says he is the fourth most accomplished president. The presidents ahead of him by his estimation? Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and President Logan from 24.

* Obama has had a bounce in the polls recently which people think comes from the economic news of unemployment falling. Of course, that’s happened because people have given up hope of finding jobs and have stopped looking for work thus removing themselves from the unemployment statistic. So Obama used to like hope, but despair works better for him these days.

* Who is the most charitable nation? The U.S.! And it’s not just on account of us being richest as lots of other rich nations didn’t make the list. Of course, there’s lots of people who want to end charity by taking the money we could be giving and having the government distribute it. In really socialist nations, people don’t know charity because helping others is supposed to be the government’s job so we don’t have to worry about it. No wonder then two of the least charitable nations — China and Russia — are Communist and former Communist.

* About a third of the world identifies as Christian. The Romans had experience with a lot of religious movements, but they found most of them blew over when the leader was killed. Christianity… not so much.

* Here’s the trailer for the new Rainbow Six game. You may notice something topical about the politics of the terrorists:

It almost seems like they’re supposed to be Occupy Wall Street, but then again they’re middle-aged and not a bunch of college kids, they’re wearing suits, seem to have a knack for organization, and are racially diverse.

Still, I’m holding out hopes for a level where you shotgun hippies.

* A poll shows that most Americans don’t think candidates from either party will do a good job as president. I think this is a step in the right direction. Usually in politics, we say one guy is great and the other guy is bad and the they’ll say their guy is great and our guy is bad. But can’t we compromise and agree they’re all awful? Treating all politicians with contempt is the first steps towards a smaller government, because when you hate and distrust them all, you realize how imperative it is to give them as little power as possible.

* Q. What do you call someone who thinks it’s a bad idea to sell guns to Mexican drug cartels? A. A racist.

I think it’s safe to say that racism has replaced patriotism as the most popular last refuge of a scoundrel. But really, what does Holder have left? This Fast & Furious thing is so awful to the point of being cartoonish. Unless he wants to do the right thing and resign in disgrace, what’s he got left other than to throw any charge he can think of out there? Certainly not dignity.

* New one from Biden: “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy.” They’re just sort of tyrannical, backwards, violent people we’ve been fighting for the last decade, but no one should take that as meaning we don’t like them and don’t want to be friends.

* Apparently a couple people have used these things called “neti pots” and died from brain eating amoebas. To which my reaction is: THAT’S A THING?!!

Yes, apparently there are brain eating amoebas (well, they’re not technically “amoebas”) that just sit around in bodies of water waiting to get in through your nose and eat your brain. And if that happens, there’s a 98% mortality rate. It just rarely happens (it needs to be heated water), but apparently a neti pot can help if you use tap water because lots of tap water has BRAIN EATING AMOEBAS!

Somewhere near you right now is a body of water with little amoebas resting in it saying, “Brains! Brains!” WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS?!

* Here’s a new one for my argument that atheism isn’t so much anti-religion as just itself an ill-defined and flighty religion. It’s from the New York Times arguing you can be good without God — and sure, you can do good things but the question is always “why” and once again I’m frustrated with how illogical the arguments are for that. She lists a number of moral judgments she says are “obviously true” but never expounds on why they’re obviously true — other than they feel really wrong. She doesn’t even attempt to make a logical argument. A lot of people feel homosexuality is wrong… so is that obviously immoral too or what sort of consensus do we need?

And what if you’re a sociopath and have no natural feelings of right or wrong — are you then not bound by morality? (this is something I explore in one of the novels I’m working on) To give it a more concrete case, let’s say you’re a sociopath who runs a country — like North Korea — and get a lot of benefit from the “obviously bad” things the author lists such as torture and slavery. Can you make a logical argument to this person not to be awful to people to his own benefit? Society sure didn’t stop Kim Jong Il, so I guess he had nothing to worry about.

The author of the piece objects to nihilist atheists because… I guess that just feels wrong again. But the nihilist seem to me more honest and more like they actually tried to logically think through their philosophy. To me, it seems clear the author believe in some sort of divinity to the drive to do good — that’s it’s not just some mindless directive from evolution — but for some reason she wants to leave her god ill-defined and unexamined and just uses lots of verbiage to dance around that fact.

* Apparently Harry Reid has been stealing ideas from Sunny:

Harry Reid, what a one man conviction of how awful our concept of government is in that we have people like him making decisions that actually affect other people.

* Wisdom of the Day: “It’s ‘New Year’s EVE,’ not ‘New Year’s STEVE.'” –Bill Corbett

* New Dark Knight trailer!

Looks like it gets political. Apparently Catwoman is a member of the Occupy movement. Ace has some commentary on what he considers the heavy-handed messaging in Nolan’s Batman films, to which I respond that Ace is a dumb stoopid and these movies are awesome. And if you’ve seen the Dark Knight, you have to agree I have the more reasoned argument.

* Kim Jong Il is dead… or so reports the North Korean media in the one time we’re inclined to believe them.

The atrocities committed in North Korea on daily basis are a little too much for a humor blog to mention, and as Jonah Goldberg pointed out, I wonder what history will think of us for just standing around and letting it happen. All us non-barbaric people of the world could get together and do something… but it would be hard and people would die and there would be protests. You have two things you can focus on in life: To try and do good or to try and avoid evil. Right now, we’re kinda set in the latter. Trying to do good just causes problems, so better not try at all.

So some other insane sociopath is likely to take over North Korea, but these cults of personality always fade with each generation so who knows if he’ll keep it. And a military conflict is always a nice distraction for someone trying to hold power, so we have to watch for that.

Still, I’d like to think an evil dictator dying is a good thing. You can use all sorts of atrocities to bitterly cling to power for your short, measly life, but it all ends one day and it ends forever.

* Ron Paul is ahead in Iowa. The advantage of him winning that state is it would be as clear a statement as any of how irrelevant Iowa is and that we need to stop paying the Iowa caucus so much attention. Where do we even get these early primary states?

So, if it were between Obama and Ron Paul, who would you vote for? I’m leaning Obama there; he’s a known entity and can at least be bullied into doing what’s right. Ron Paul would just stand back while nukes are launched at us and say, “We had this coming for abandoning the gold standard!”

Anyway, expect the gloves to come off if Ron Paul wins Iowa. I don’t know what they’ll dredge up, though; other than the anti-Semitism, racist newsletters published under his name, trutherism, and “blame America first” foreign policy, the guy is pretty clean. Plus, he has some good ideas on the Fed.

* The House GOP aren’t cottoning to the payroll tax cut extension the Senate approved. The GOP won’t be satisfied until they get all their demands… plus more demands they haven’t even thought of yet. Expect Obama to look all resolute and then capitulate. The thing to remember about Obama is that he’s much more scared of you than you are of him. Much much more scared.

* There’s apparently a movement to ban exotic animals from circuses. So what would that leave? Acts with cats and squirrels? Or just nothing but clowns? ::shudder::

Of course, I haven’t been to a circus since I was five or even thought of going to one since then. They seem more of something one would go to for entertainment in the 1920s. Kids these days have things like Call of Duty video games to entertain them. If there are any exotic animals, they’ll be emptying an M-16 mag into it.

* “Osama Bin Laden, Moammar Qaddaffi, Kim Jong Il… 2012 is looking like a major rebuilding year for evil.” –Jim Geraghty

* BTW, if you’re looking for more Christmas gifts, you can send a gift Kindle book to people. It’s sent to their email, and then they can put it under any Kindle account they want (or just read it in the cloud reader if they don’t have a Kindle or a smart phone or an iPad or one of the many other things you can read Kindle books on). And I know a great book to gift…

* I have a new New York Post column and in it I argue we shouldn’t worry about a potential cellphone ban and just feel lucky we’re allowed to drive at all. I make a pretty good argument cars would not be approved for general use if they weren’t invented until today and are basically a grandfathered freedom of a different time.

“So you’re proposing that people speed around in tons of metal? You must mean only really smart, well-trained people?”

“No. Everyone. Even stupid people.”

“Won’t millions be killed?”

“Oh, no. Not that many. Just a little more than 40,000 a year.”

“And injuries?”

“Oh . . . millions.”

* Also, I’ll be on Talk of the Town with Larry Rifkin at about 12:30pm ET talking about Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything.

* So, another Republican debate last night — the last of the year. Newt Gingrich got beat up a lot (while having some good answers like his condemnation of Obama on delaying the Keystone pipeline) and the FOX News commentators did put Ron Paul’s full crazy and “blame America first” foreign policy ideas on full display for Iowa. The main thing, though, was that Romney did well. Really well. Like he had so many good sounding answers — including great attacks on Obama — that I wanted to forget how much I don’t like him. With Gingrich fading, we might want to think of embracing the inevitable and learning to be like Romney. He’s not so bad. He’s like shape-shifting robot, but if he’s on our side, that’s kinda cool.

So, I think we can like Romney if we try hard and just not think about a few things. And we also will need to be prepared for lots of talk about “magic underwear” in the general election.

* By the way, Mitt Romney has picked up the endorsement of Nikki Haley. There’s some talk of her being a VP nominee, and she would be a twofer — a woman and a minority. Of course, she’s not a popular minority like black or Hispanic — she a minority minority from a group that doesn’t have a large voting block.

Oh, don’t tell me you’re above affirmative action in picking candidates. We’re not pushing out the best man for the job in favor of a minority or a woman as there is no best man for the job — they’re all politicians.

* We’ve declared an official end to the conflict in Iraq. So I guess we’ve won… maybe. I don’t remember conflicts in the past being so ambiguous on the outcome. Well, maybe in a hundred years we’ll know for sure.

* Christopher Hitchens has died. He was a great and quite cantankerous writer. He was also a famous atheist and will now find have found out whether he was wrong or… nothing.

* Wisdom of the Day: “Finally told my parents they’re gay!” –Megan Amram

* This morning I started work on my next book for HarperCollins. Thanks to the sales of Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything, I was asked to write another book. This one will be on my solutions for all the problems facing America. Hopefully it will start a movement when it comes out with me as leader.

Hmm… I’ll need a leader hat…