Judging purely by outward appearances, you might guess that Learning Annex instructor Donald Trump is still some sort of "big wheel" in the casino business. But actually he is barely even in the business any more, because he's a loser.

Congratulations to the National Organization For Marriage, a group dedicated to making sure a large segment of the population cannot get married, on their successful campaign to scare people in Maine.

When the Bernie Madoff scandal broke, New York Mets fans were momentarily terrified because the team's owners had huge accounts with Madoff's firm. Turns out that was the Mets' best investment. Hey-o!

We as Americans are not in the shape we once (1942) were. Is it possible to "lose" the accumulated weight of decades of Cap'n Crunch, Nestle Quik, and Quarter Pounders? America's willing to give it a shot. With crazy schemes.

All the smart/ cowardly politicians bailed on the NYC mayor's race when Mike Bloomberg strongarmed himself back onto the ballot. But there is still a handful of comical challengers to our Mayor-for-life! Below, a guide to the losers.

Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis has a new job: lobbying for the post-coup government of Honduras!

Ruth Madoff is getting her passport back, so that she may—if she's smart—flee this country for an isolated life far, far away. Our poll of public sympathy for her did not come back with encouraging results:

"Everyone today wants to be a professional and most people believe they are." But most of you are deluded. Mark Penn is here to tell you why. And to spout further generalizations, for money!

To answer Time's headline: NO. Mark Penn should not get paid. He should be put in a box with insects. But apparently that is not an option!

Michael Steele was famous being the highest-ranking elected Black Republican in the country, when he was the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. Then he lost a Senate race. Now he is in charge of the Republican Party!

Bloomberg aide Kevin Sheekey is a late addition to our list of people who should be unemployed in 2009.

Professional loser Mark Penn—the strategist who can tell you exactly how to become disliked by each individual microsegment of the population—has a new book ad WSJ column. Let's talk about how stupid it is:

Ridiculously braided Guns "N" Roses frontman Axl Rose is destroying our national economy this holiday season through sloth and anger. And, even more, by not selling any freakin records:

Mark Penn should be shot from a cannon into the deepest part of the ocean. Instead he has a new Wall Street Journal column! Let's read it, and cry.

Be-sweatered fool and Clinton flack Howard Wolfson may follow his former boss to the State Department, where some sources speculate he may act as State Department Spokesman. That is, if he can get over his fear of flying, and the fact that no one in the press corps has any respect for him! [HuffPo]

Old-school journo Pete Hamill and Bill Kristol got together for a little argument, filmed by IFC's new Gideon Yago-hosted thing The IFC Media Project. As Bill Kristol is a sad joke and Pete Hamill is a legend, it was not really a fair fight. The topic, thankfully, allowed Bill to shill for his miserable lost war instead of having to defend Sarah Palin again. Hamill still schooled him. Kristol doesn't really think Americans need to see the "blood" and "coffins" that war creates, that way we can all feel much better about ourselves.

Times columnist Bill Kristol went on Fox back in June and told the world that this governor from Alaska named Sarah Palin would be the best Vice President ever! He loved her, very much, because she was a maverick. Five months later, she is a national joke, and he is a sad, sad man, trying desperately to salvage his credibility. "I met her for the second time in my life. I know we're supposed to be such great friends, but the truth is I've met her twice... I've spoken to her on the phone once. For all our great closeness," he tells The Observer, "I barely know her." Too late, Bill. You're all washed up! Since time immemorial the New York Times has kept its rich old conservative readers slightly satisfied with some token conservative voices in the Op-Ed section. For many, many years there was reliable old Bill Safire, the Nixon speechwriter, a member of the smart old educated class of Republicans who were able to write up support for disastrous policy implemented by the corrupt and incompetent with smart, almost plausible-sounding arguments. He left, replaced with John Tierney, a libertarian-leaning sort who didn't last long on the op-ed beat and now writes "researchers say a counterintutive thing" features instead. And there is David Brooks, a quietly doctrinaire Republican who fancies up his usual party line with armchair sociology. But Brooks broke with the party this year, calling Sarah Palin a cancer, leaving only poor, dumb, Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol, who tried to sell America on Sarah Palin, and ended up repeatedly embarrassing himself, over and over again, and losing John McCain his election. Now he just mumbles about hating the mainstream media, to all his mainstream media friends, in the pages of the New York Times. Already the vultures are wondering who'll replace him—you can be terribly wrong and stupid and remain a Times columnist indefinitely, but you must be terribly wrong and stupid in the service of the conventional wisdom. So Tom Friedman's Iraq columns get a pass, as does Maureen Dowd's constant stream of nonsense. But Kristol is no longer merely just a hack, he's a failed hack. No one bought his line this year. So maybe someone nutty and anti-Palin like, say, David Frum is next for the Affirmative Action Conservative Slot?

The saddest thing about the scene at John McCain's headquarters "party" in Columbus has to be the "Victory in Ohio" sign, captured in an near-poetic camera pan at the end of this video. The klieg lights probably aren't helping the McCain crew with its depression. Might we suggest bourbon?

Tonight, Barack Obama will appear on your television screen for 30 minutes in order to convince you to vote for him next week. He'll be on CBS, NBC, Univision, Fox, MSNBC, and BET. (But not ABC! Tune in for Pushing Daisies!) Obama's half-hour TV buy tonight has some historical precedent, of course; Ross Perot did it, and look where it got him! But for a good look at how far the Democrats have come, let's all go back to 1983, when the Democratic National Committee hosted, yes, a telethon. It, uh, it didn't go so well. In fact it went unbelievably, comically awry. As the 1980s began, the Republicans introduced and perfected their massive, modern fundraising apparatus, utilizing direct mail and donor targeting to build a database of party supporters willing to shell out cash whenever and wherever it was needed. In 1980, the GOP raised millions more from hundreds of thousands more than the Dems could manage. And they kicked the Democrats' asses. So, heading into the 1984 elections, the Democrats knew they needed a lot of cash to compete. The GOP had more than a million active donors, the Dems had almost 300,000. So the Democratic National Committee somehow decided that a star-studded telethon on NBC would solve the problem. They spent $5 million on the program, hoping to raise an initial $10 million over 18 hours on Memorial Day weekend. And it was a star-studded affair! As the AP reported:

When we remember the New York Sun, we'll try to remember the great local reporting and the fantastic sports page and the serious and smart arts coverage. Not so much the ideological inanity and loud constant taking of the precisely wrong side of every important issue of this miserable era. In trying to remember them that way, of course, one is best advised to skip most of their farewell edition. The goodbyes are not self-pitying, at least, but they reveal a newspaper that imagines it had some small role in the destruction of this country while turning a blind eye to the many myriad ways they could've continued on their crusade if they hadn't been so utterly out of touch. The opening of the farewell editorial sets the scene: