Millionaire/billionaire (choose which one you think is accurate) Donald Trump accepted an offer from former Massachusetts Mitt Romney to in effect be a surrogate for him and in his new role Trump ripped into chief anti-Romney candidate former Senator Rick Santorum. And he did it in characteristic Trump style: blunt peppery: Donald Trump demonstrated Monday that he has no qualms about going after one of Mitt Romney’s chief rivals, Rick Santorum. “There’s nothing – there’s...

A lot of the buzz now is about the possibility of a brokered Republican convention — the emergence of some kind of a new conservative political savior that’ll jump into the race and save the party from the often bumbling and unloved former Massachsetts Gov. Mitt Romney or the current anti-Romney favorite, former Senator Rick Santorum. Santorum has already got some GOPers wondering if he’ll prove to the Sharon Angle of 2012. Is this likely to happen? Increasingly I think the answer...

A new poll indicates that the big battle to win Michigan’s Republican primary has now tightened considerably with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney quickly picking up steam and former Senator Rick Santorum perhaps heading in this primary to the fate of other “anti-Romney’s” that shot up in the polls: he seems to be losing ground fast. The Republican race for President in Michigan has tightened considerably over the last week, with what was a 15 point lead for Rick Santorum...

If you thought fast-food restaurant hamburgers were a little plastic tasting when compared to what you grill at home, you may soon be in for a new taste. Forget meat, forget plastic — how about test tubes? Yes, test tube hamburgers may be on the way: By generating strips of meat from stem cells researchers believe they can create a product that is identical to a real burger. The process of culturing the artificial meat in the lab is so laborious that the finished product, expected to arrive...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune Was it nuance, backtrack — or spin? Up and coming anti-Romney Republican Presidential nomination candidate former Senator Rick Santorum got into some hot water in the media due to one of his red meat comments this weekend that elicited a satisfied, loud belch from sated conservatives. It was a comment that should win him some votes in GOP primaries but also risks scaring away some independent and non-Christian voters. Had he raised the issue of President...

ESPN got into a a linsational tub of hot water over a racially tinged Lin headline: Intentional? As someone who worked for some years in the media both cabling (before internet) stories from abroad as a freelance correspondent for newspapers from Europe and Asia, and as someone who worked on the staff of two newspaper chais, I’d guess this is more due to an oversight error. Someone either just used a dumb pun with racial connotations and it got by an editor or the editor didn’t think...

A look at the world’s oldest photographs:

Yes, kids, in real life sometimes there are happy endings, even when the earlier story at times made you want to cry and you felt fearful about how an earlier chapter would end. Kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart got married in Hawaii — speeding up her planned date to avoid media disruption and is now said to be radiant: Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at the age of 14 from her bedroom at knife-point and held captive for nine months, was married in Hawaii this afternoon. The ceremony had been...

An email from a younger TMV reader talking about music involved the name of Ray Charles. So here are two videos that may be of interest. 1) From 1997, towards the end of his life, Ray Charles singing Georgia On My Mind (From “Live At Montreux 1997″): 2) Then go back to Feb 1973 and enjoy this very funny video of Charles guest starring on NBC’s “Flip Wilson Show.” Wilson was an African-American comedian who had a highly popular weekly show on NBC and since his death...

The cable news networks yesterday were dominated by either long pieces of or live broadcasts of the star-studded Houston funeral of Whitney Houston. CNN has this excellent short video showing some key highlights:

A new Harris Poll of presidential rankings is fascinating, especially when viewed along side a new and somewhat similar Gallup Poll. It finds Americans believe Ronald Reagan was the best President since World War II (ahead of Franklin D. Roosevelt) and Richard Nixon the worst: Twenty-five percent of Americans rank Reagan as the best president in a survey conducted by The Harris Poll. Franklin Roosevelt was ranked second-best with 19 percent of the vote. On the flip-side, George W. Bush and Barack...

why does former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin want a brokered convention? There are three main theories.

Partisans may insist history views Presidents one way and public perceptions may indicate that most Americans view it another. And, later on, the historians weigh and that consensus becomes the longterm conventional wisdom. A new Gallup Poll finds the public views Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as the best of recent Presidents. Americans believe history will judge Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as the best among recent U.S. presidents, with at least 6 in 10 saying each will go down in history as...

Up until now former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has sort of been like the high school boy trying to invite a girl to the prom. Now he’s like a dumped boyfriend: Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has dumped Romney for rising anti-Romney rival for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination former Sen. Rick Santorum. Romney must be severely shocked: Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s decision to withdraw his support from Mitt Romney and throw it behind Rick Santorum didn’t just...

Is the Republican Party heading to a brokered convention? Once upon a time, it was considered almost a cliche that in a tough primary fight someone would say that their party was heading to a brokered convention, even though they have been rare. But now speculation about one on the GOP side is increasing, witness the number of news articles blossoming on the subject and the Republican bigwigs talking about it. The increased talk is illustrative of what is now an indisputable fact: former Massachusetts...

For years people have talked about “pack journalism,” but increasingly our politics is “pack politics.” Someone seizes on an attack point, and then it’s all over the ideological cable shows, talk show hosts pick it up and run with it as an attack point. And then — before the people using the attack point know it — it seemingly has a life of its own. Perceptions are formed — and solidified. Is that’s what happening now with the Republican Party’s...

Several polls show former Senator Rick Santorum ahead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Romney’s home former home state of Michigan. Conservatives seem to be continuing to look for the perfect anti-Romney. They seem to be singing a variation of this song.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is starting to get lots of attention on You Tube. We’ll post some on Barack Obama and others at later dates. But here’s a sampling of some Romney videos, some funny, some critical some favorable. He gets interviewed by a high profile historical international celebrity (this is part of the increasing number of videos featuring this monster of history but they still are funny): A musical number: A celebrity endorsement: A Polisci 101 Project: The...

Why is Democratic political maven David Axelrod smiling? Are Republicans actively working with Barack Obama’s senior compaign strategist David Axelrod to lose the votes of many women voters? To be sure, the GOP will always have its die-hard followers, and people of both sexes who will sincerely see things via it’s prism. But two tidbits today are not going to enhance the image of some GOPers and their party. For instance, Foster Freiss, the big-buxer business man bankrolling a portion...

When asked about polls that suggest former Senator Rick Santorum is poised to be Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the upcoming Republican presidential Michigan primary, Romney flatly says: “That won’t happen.” But the latest poll suggests former Massachusetts Governor whose father served as Michigan my have to repeat it often to be severely convincing: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has a slim lead over Mitt Romney, an indication the Michigan native son has yet to...