Are you a gay Californian looking to get married? You could do it right now! To someone of the opposite sex. But if you want to get gay married, you will have to wait until activists get their shit together.

Even though no one knows that there's anyone running against him, Mike Bloomberg's numbers are falling. So yesterday, in a campaign speech, he promised to make all the trains run on time.

Maureen Dowd has discovered that Sarah Palin actually embodies most of the misogynist stereotypes that Maureen Dowd has traditionally attributed to Hillary Clinton.

Remember how Sarah Palin graduated from her fiftieth college with a degree in communications? What the hell happened to addle this woman's mind so much that she can no longer form logical sentences? We went to the tapes to investigate.

Mayor Bloomberg has spent $37 million on his mayoral campaign so far. Where's it all gone? In addition to the $20 million that's gone to the firm that produces Bloomberg's TV ads and the $1 million or so that's has gone to pay his campaign staff, campaign finance records released today also list office snacks ($72,000) and pizza ($7,000), which, the Times's City Room blog reports, is usually ordered from Goodfella's Brick Oven Pizza on Staten Island. Why the mayor's staff needs to order pizza from another borough isn't explained—maybe his campaign volunteers like their pizza cold?—but the mayor's pizza tab isn't the only curious item on the list of expenses. (Not that it really matters: It's the mayor's own money that is being spent, so if he wants to order his pizza from Naples and have it delivered to NYC via Air Bloomberg, that's up to him.) But the $50,000 that Team Bloomberg has spent on phone expenses? It's a little early to be planning for Hanukkah, yes, but finding gifts for billionaires who have everything is a huge pain, less us tell you. So we're making it public here and now. Mayor Bloomberg's very first MagicJack is on us. So step off. [NYT]

During the McCain campaign, Roveian media strategist Steve Schmidt proved that he was a shitty Roveian media strategist. He was also responsible for the Palin pick. But he quickly grew to regret that.

Both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and challenger Mirhossein Mousavi won 60% of the vote in today's Iranian elections. Hooray for democracy! Iran does elections just like America does, too: with crazy, confusing ballots.

Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota will not seek a third term. That is pretty boring news, right? Except that it might end up really sucking for Al Franken!

Political reporter Adam Nagourney went to Minnesota to explain just what the hell is going on there to New York Times readers. It is a mess.

Bloomberg Spends $3 Million on TV Ads in Mayoral Race [NYT]
Related: Mayor Mike's New Spanish Language Phrasebook [Cityfile]

Hm. Only the Washington Post would call a White House job "the ultimate status symbol in [a] generation's caste system," but regardless: all the Obama kids need work.

Michael Bloomberg has been speaking a lot of Spanish in recent weeks. He now often ends press conferences with a few Spanish phrases and has been been taking questions from Spanish-speaking reporters, too. Unfortunately, despite nearly six years of one-on-one tutoring sessions, Bloomberg still has trouble spitting out a sentence without making a mistake: When he was asked about the recent snowstorm, for example, he pointed out that the "the streets have cleaned" and "it was a lot of windy." With the mayoral election fast approaching—and considering challengers like William Thompson and Anthony Weiner are taking Spanish classes, too—the mayor is going to have to do a lot better if he expects to win over the city's Latino population. And he's going to have to do more than simply chat about the weather; he's going to have to connect with voters on a much more personal level and demonstrate he understands their culture and concerns. To that end, we turned to our in-house translator to put together a few phrases that the mayor might want to memorize as he meets voters over the next few months. ¡Buena suerte, Señor Bloomberg!

The Minnesota GOP noticed that, hey, some Obama appointees were having tax problems. And then they remembered that last year, Al Franken had some tax problem, in California! So they made a YouTube.

Obama was a hope-mongering starry-eyed radical centrist socialist realist bipartisan FDR 2. At least in the fantasy worlds of his supporters! But it's hard to reconcile everyone's contradictory hopes, once they're invested in you.

Noted drunk college drop-out David Plouffe just got a million-plus dollar book deal, and he doesn't even have a Tumblr. (Does he?) Here's the dumbest quote from the story:

Here is your year-end recap of "The Year in Politics," as half-remembered by a tired drunk, on New Year's Eve. We didn't make it a "list" or give it an "angle."

Hillary Clinton "loaned herself" $13 million last January, when she was losing to Barack Obama in the primaries, and now she has written that loan off, so the 2008 primaries are finally over.

Oh, the poor, sad McCain campaign just sold all of their leftover campaign crap, for pennies. And of course some reporter bought some used Blackberries and guess who didn't delete anything off it?

Oh, good for Ryan Lizza. The campaign reporter was going to write a book about the 2008 election, but then David Remnick hired him and said "don't write a book, write for my fancy magazine instead," and so Lizza did. Now he's got a deal to write a book about the first year of Barack Obama's presidency, which ought to at least be a nice change of pace from all the books about the 2008 elections we're about to get, yowza. Of course, he's still not alone: also writing a book on Obama's first year is Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. Everyone else who's ever been published is, of course, finishing their 2008 election books. Let's take a look at the lineup: Newsweek's Richard Wolffe is writing Renegade: The Education of Barack Obama. He's got reporting from the trail, interviews with Obama and aides, and his sexy accent. Will Be Published: June 2009. Should Be Published: The day after inauguration, when Obama's terrible secrets can finally be revealed. Too late, America! Evan Thomas and the staff of Newsweek will release 250 pages on the campaign, based on the seven-part Secrets of the Campaign piece we all read on the internet. The title: Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive, and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama. That is a terrible title. Will Be Published: Early January. Should Be Published: This week. Well, it basically was published last week, but whatever. Washington Post's Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson are working on their own untitled campaign book, "a narrative history of the entire campaign." Will Be Published: Fall of 2009. Should Be Published: Are you serious? Fall of 2009? We'll be reading books about the 2010 midterms by then guys! Get it done ASAP! New York's John Heilemann and Time's Mark Haperin are working on a book too, without a title or publication date. Should Be Published: Never, unless Heilemann dumps Halperin. Then publish it whenever you like. Historian Michael Takiff's book? We know nothing about it. He would like it to be called The Making of the President 2008. But no one has bought it yet, we don't think? Sad. Should Be Published: In July, like Theodore White's Making of the President 1960 book was, back when people read books. Not-Quite Campaign Books: Washington Post's Anne Kornblut is writing Rejection: Why America Isn't Ready for a Woman President PBS's Gwen Ifill is writing The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Jabari Asim is writing What Obama Means MediaMatters' Eric Boehlert is writing a book about bloggers. Did we leave anyone out? Yes, probably. Americans Clamoring For All Things Obama [LAT] Newsweek's Wolffe Inks Obama Book Deal [Calderone/Politico] Books Written and Inspired by Obama Get an Election Boose [USAToday] Washington Post's Anne Kornblut Writing Hillary Book for Crown in Mid-Six Figure Deal [NYO] A Race to Deliver Election Books [WSJ]

Today, Newsweek posted the final chapter of their Special Election Project, the annual How He Did It book they've published for each presidential campaign since 1984 (when the answer was much easier: he just ran against Walter Mondale). The reporters assigned to the special project are embargoed from those publishing in the regular magazine, so they get jucier anecdotes, more hilarious quotes, and revealing stories, all of which are then packaged and in such a way as to make the winning campaign look like a well-oiled machine and the losing campaign look like a parade of idiots. Did you read the whole thing? We did! We'll share with you the funniest bits, the important takeaway, and the already solidifying conventional wisdom. In short, this is the story of the 2008 campaign: the Hillary Clinton campaign was a stressful psychodrama, the Obama campaign was an intellectual exercise, and the McCain campaign was a ragtag bunch of misfits who stumbled into an insane family nightmare from Twin Peaks, Alaska. Let's begin with Hillary and co. Hillary The Clinton campaign was beset by the vicious infighting among assholes, basically. The biggest and dumbest asshole was chief pollster/strategist Mark Penn!