Pawlenty 2012 - It Was Disappointing

I did it! I predicted what Stephen would talk about on his show.

Okay, pretty much a no-brainer. The big news was the Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, so naturally that's what Stephen went with. But my prediction was better than the AP, who apparently gave a lot of kudos to candidate XXX in one of their news stories.

Previously I had hoped there would be some analysis of the relationship between popular food and votes and to some extent, Stephen did have some number crunching concerning the delicious happenings in Ames. Michele Bachmann handed out 6,000 tickets at a cost of $180,000 to her campaign and by doing so was able to get 80% of the votes she paid for.

The Big Loser was Tim Pawlenty and Stephen did have his ground-breaking and inspirational video: Pawlenty 2012 - It Was Disappointing. And now everyone is wondering what Stephen is wondering. Who will get Pawlenty's supporter?

Of course none of this matters much compared to the Colbert Super PAC. It stole the show out in the middle of the state that is in the middle of the country. Texas Governor Rick Perry got 719 write-in votes and all of them were spelled Parry. Actually, technically, no one knows since the Iowa GOP won't release that information. So, Stephen has issued a challenge to WOI news team in Des Moines to dig deep and uncover the truth. If they find out, they can broadcast on The Colbert Report or Stephen will broadcast on their show.

Incentive? You betcha!

Stephen had a great guest on tonight. Ambassador Susan Rice, no relation to Condoleezza Rice, is the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Stephen kept trying to trip her up but she held her own and was able to do most of the talking. In fact, it was so good, it apparently ran over, at least Stephen said it did, and so he's putting the whole interview up on the web, just like Jon Stewart often does. However, we don't really know if it ran longer than the show because if it did, we did not see it. Sounds to me like it could just be a trick to get us to visit Colbert Nation to find out whether or not it ran too long.

The good thing is that even though the show apparently ran long, Stephen still had time to tell us how to help with the famine in Somalia, where millions of people, many of whom are children, are at risk of starvation.

Just text AID to 27722.

Hot Dogs, Get Your Free Hot Dogs

Well, the Fundraising Dinner for the Iowa Republican Party held in Ames, i.e. the Iowa Straw Poll is over and Michele Bachmann won.

Tim Pawlenty is out.

In what was actually a large picnic with free food and free tickets, the person who did the best job of providing really tasty food got the most votes. I wonder if anyone served my recipe for Holy Smoke Satan Sandwiches. It sure seemed like a natural fit, but I was not able to travel to Ames, Iowa for the Iowa Straw Poll, so I don't know.

It would be interesting to have another poll, maybe at the Iowa State Fair, to see what is the most popular summer picnic food. Then have someone do analysis to see if in fact the candidate who serves the most popular food also ends up the Winner of Straw.

My hope is that Stephen will talk about the Iowa Straw Poll, or Tim Pawlenty, or Michele Bachmann tonight on The Colbert Report so that I can finally feel like I predicted what he would talk about "in the future". But, I have found that predicting Stephen's behavior is not as easy as it would seem.

In closing, here's some numbers I got from reliable sources on the Internets.

4,823 - Number of votes Michele Bachmann received on August 13
311,995,173 - Population of USA today
$400 - Cost for a week of camp with Hot Dog USA Jump Rope Team
62 - number of restaurants in Ames listed here