While everyone else is fretting about Barry’s 47 percent poll rating, let’s instead enjoy the day’s real news:

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

In case you think Rasmussen went Jaywalking — pause while we scourge ourselves for even mentioning Leno — “respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party.” So everyone knew it was a fantasy ballot ahead of time.

But today’s hypothesis is tomorrow’s reality, and we look forward to Wolf Blitzer sterning informing us how Teabaggers are getting licked by their opponents election night.

Tea Party Tops GOP on Three-Way Generic Ballot [Rasmussen, via Political Wire]

In case this hasn’t landed in your in-box yet, it will soon. The genius is unknown, but the original is here.

Barack Obama, Tuesday:

these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

Robert Gibbs, Wednesday:

After the briefing, Gibbs went to the president for clarification. Gibbs then called me to his office to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in – there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It’s etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel.

Robert Gates, Sunday:

Because we will have a significant — we will have 100,000 forces — troops there. And they are not leaving — in July of 2011. Some handful or some small number or whatever the conditions permit, we’ll begin to withdraw at that time.

Woof.

Title: “Tiger Traits: 9 Success Secrets You Can Discover From Tiger Woods to Be a Business Champion”

Author: Nate Booth

Rank: 406,315

Blurb: “Tiger Woods’ success in golf (and in life) is not an accident.”

Review: “Nate Booth’s Tiger Traits has a wonderful way of exposing the tiger inside each of us.”

Customers Also Bought: “Training a Tiger: A Father’s Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life,” by Earl Woods

Footnote: Tiger Trait #6: “Let Actions Do the Talking.”

Tiger Traits [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Proposal:

The streets of Juneau, Summer 2007. In the background we see a capitol building, snow-capped mountains, and anything else suggestive of place. A group of ASSISTANTS runs around the stage, calling out for the governor — apparently she’s late for a meeting. As they disperse, SARAH enters, alone.

She’s bored. She’s frustrated. Being governor isn’t fun — not like being a beauty queen. Nobody notices her. Nobody cares. She can do better than that. Much better.

Song: “When Will My Ship Come In?” We learn her past, hear her aspirations, feel her ambition. She knows what she wants. She just doesn’t know how to make it happen.

Read more »

We’re not sure this qualifies as news, but…

Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.

But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not seen it.

“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn’t find any.”

Read more »

Our plan to workshop the Sarah Palin Musical off-off-off Broadway before unleashing it on a grateful public appears well-founded — especially when you consider the alternative:

In New York, Beck sold 17 tickets. In Boston, another 17. And in Washington, D.C., the hotbed of political activism, his tearful film drew only 30, Raw Story has found.

Glenn Beck’s new movie The Christmas Sweater — A Return To Redemption — released for a viewing Thursday night in hundreds of theaters across the country. While it performed better in the south and in rural, more conservative areas, his ability to draw viewers in major US markets was a bust.

“The theater’s almost empty,” a representative at Regal Cinemas in Manhattan told Raw Story moments before it began.

Perhaps it’s unfair to focus on markets where Beck didn’t stand a chance — but it was his choice to open in those markets. Then again, charging twenty bucks a head probably didn’t help. Neither did his choice to devote a major song-and-dance number to his 2008 butt surgery. We can do better.

Beck’s movie bombs in New York, Boston — and Washington, D.C. [Raw Story]