“The most famous plumber in the country” is unhappy with Vice President Joe Biden‘s comments that being a private businessman doesn’t qualify you to be president any more than being a plumber. For some reason, Samuel “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher chose as a venue to air his grievances PoliticsNation, where he found more common ground than one would expect with Al Sharpton about the fundamentally flawed tax code.

SEX. Now that I’ve got your attention, Bill Maher has a few words he’d like to say. In his show-ending New Rule tonight, Maher went after the media for pursuing the most titillating details of the Secret Service prostitution scandal instead of something more seriously important. While President Obama went to Colombia for a summit with Latin American leaders, it has not matched the media coverage of the Secret Service scandal because, as Maher argued, the media is so obsessed with sex they should be starting all of its coverage of the scandal with “Dear Penthouse.”

Today’s Daily Show began with some pessimism in the way of Mitt Romney– it seems that anyone who would be a good vice presidential candidate for him wants nothing to do with the ticket– from Condoleezza Rice to Marco Rubio to Tim Pawlenty. Stewart did find one person who said something less adamant than “Not me!” when mentioned for the bottom of the slate, however: Herman Cain, who also sat down for an extensive interview with John Oliver in which he delivered the American people from an alien invasion.

Following the end of Herman Cain‘s presidential run, the campaign gave around $19,000 to two political organizations based in Wisconsin: Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Property Network. According to POLITICO, both were run by “Cain’s top aides and footed the bill for about $40,000 of goods and services” that were utilized by the Cain campaign. But these groups are under investigation because it would be illegal for such donations to take place.

That Saturday Night Live would lead with a Rick Santorum sketch was a given, but it was unexpected that Santorum, played by Andy Samberg, and Mitt Romney, played by Jason Sudeikis, would meet at a bar to go over the primary season that was. I’ve complained a lot about the Republican primary cold opens, but this sketch was good. Mitt tipped the waitress with money in a sealed envelope, telling the waitress to give it to her husband since he’ll know better what to do with it…

On the heels of Countdown host Keith Olbermann‘s firing from Current TV, the network and sources close to it have been quick to buttress their case for the dismissal with details of the temperamental star’s antics. One such source tells Mediaite, among other things, that Olbermann went through 8 different car services (he doesn’t drive), and complained to the network that some of the drivers “smelled,” and “talked to him,” the latter detail echoing a leak that once dogged then-Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

You remember Herman Cain. The man who once vyed for the Republican presidential nomination with a 9-9-9 plan and pizza-centric rendition of “Imagine.” Well, he may be out of the race, but nonetheless he’s put out of a new video that’s garnered a bit of attention. Attacking stimulus plans, the short video shows a rabbit being shot. The rabbit happens to represent small business. “Any questions?”

It was “spooky.” Its message is that “we are all going to die anyway.” It “lowers the level of discourse.” It “raised the level of discourse.” It was equal parts David Lynch and PETA-bait horror movie. The panel on last night’s Red Eye had a lot of opinions about the latest ad from the Herman Cain PAC “Cain Connections,” in which a small child dumps water on a drowning fish to make the point that the stimulus isn’t helping the economy, while Cain looks on from a faraway cliff. And boy, is it a weird ad.

Herman Cain is no longer running for president because of a bizarre and embarrassing series of accusations involving several former employees, but during his time now on the sidelines, he has done little to dissuade Rachel Maddow and anyone else who engaged the theory that his breed of political activism is more performance art than ideology. Yes, he is planning a Beck-style rally in Washington, and still making weird YouTube videos, and his latest is of Mark Block smoking-levels of surreal.

This weekend, Nation of Islam anachronism Louis Farrakhan did his thing “for more than three hours” in Chicago, blaming America for 9/11 and warning that assassins are out to get President Obama. It didn’t take long for Sean Hannity to play Six Degrees of Jeremiah Wright with the story, noting that Wright had been photographed with Farrakhan and Sacha Baron Cohen spirit animal Muammar Gaddafi, and had also been photographed with First Lady Michelle Obama. What say you, Herman Cain?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appeared on Face the Nation today to make the case for Mitt Romney ahead of Tuesday’s critical primaries in Michigan and Arizona. He said that he fully expects Romney to win in Michigan, a state that the candidate has certainly been hard at work to win, but did not discount the possibility of Romney losing the state and the nominating convention in August would grow incredibly contentious with no candidate having enough delegates to safely claim the nomination.

Saturday Night Live brings us a glimpse into a not-so-distant future, a future when Barack Obama‘s second term leads us into a nightmarish socialist dystopia. Luckily, Newt Gingrich‘s vision for a moon colony became a reality.

Last night at a Republican fundraiser in Florida, former presidential candidate Herman Cain endorsed former rival Newt Gingrich for the GOP nomination, praising him for being a “patriot” and his willingness to press ahead in the race even after “going through the sausage grinder.” Cain appeared on stage at a West Palm Beach County Republican event a week after making his “unconventional endorsement” and made a presidential endorsement that was decidedly more conventional.

Earlier today, Herman Cain stopped by CNN to discuss his life post-candidacy and he was asked about one of his most headline-grabbing activities; his partnership with Stephen Colbert. CNN’s Kyra Phillips asked him if he was worried that Colbert was “using him for a punchline.” A thoughtful Cain responded that it was a “mutual use.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain enthusiastically tore into President Obama and his State of the Union address Tuesday night, calling the economy “anemic.” “With all due respect Mr. President, some of us are not stupid,” Cain exclaimed. “The state of the union is not good!”

The conventional wisdom throughout the weekend was that the longer the fight between the GOP candidates goes on, the more it hurts the party. Well, Rush Limbaugh has never been one for conventional wisdom. Today, Limbaugh continued putting forth his feeling that it would be great to see the fight go all the way to the convention. But he noted the worry that many Republicans seemed to have about it, theorizing that they never thought they could beat President Obama, were only trying to get control of both the House and the Senate, and are in a “full-blown panic” now simply because they don’t think a Newt Gingrich nomination can do that for them.

It’s been a very, very wild ride for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich– one that began with what appeared to be a quixotic campaign against presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, took a nosedive when his campaign staff resigned en masse, peaked too early before Iowa, fell once again as the focus shifted to Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, and here we are again, I guess it must be fate.

Herman Cain is on the ballot in South Carolina which, given that he dropped out of the race a long time ago, would usually not be much of an issue. But thanks to Stephen Colbert‘s endorsement, Cain is once again a player. Having been a former frontrunner in the Republican race, however, Cain found himself defending his appearance with Colbert from claims that the two were “trivializing the process,” and told Neil Cavuto today that he did it to court youth and college voters, and that Colbert was correct in pointing out that the “FEC rules are broken.”

The rally that Stephen Colbert and Herman Cain are currently holding in South Carolina, the “Rock Me Like a Herman Cain: South Cain-olina Primary Rally,” is one of the most awesomely bizarre things currently going on in the world of politics (especially when you consider how many times Cain cancelled appearing on just Colbert’s regular show). However, it makes sense. As Cain said at the beginning, “Stephen Colbert couldn’t get on the ballot. I couldn’t get off it.” It’s a perfect partnership!

Fortunately for those of us not in South Carolina, MSNBC has the rally streaming live on the Internet and you can watch it below.

Soledad O’Brien gathered together a panel to weigh in on former president Jimmy Carter‘s analysis of Newt Gingrich‘s “coded racism” in the way he addressed GOP debate moderator Juan Williams. And to enjoy a little breakfast together.

Stephen Colbert has been very concerned about going to jail since he decided to explore a run for President of the United States (of South Carolina), so much so that he gave his SuperPAC to Jon Stewart and, apparently in complete non-coordination with each other, Colbert SuperPAC is going after Stephen Colbert. This time, the pro-Herman Cain ad stars Samuel L. Jackson, and blasts Colbert for “turning our election into a circus.”

Thanks to South Carolina election law, Stephen Colbert — who polled at 5% among GOP candidates with likely voters last week — is unable to officially accrue any votes as a write-in candidate in the Palmetto state’s primary this Saturday. So Colbert hit on an unlikely strategy: tell people who support him to cast their vote for Herman Cain. And Cain, whose name remains on the ballot despite suspending his campaign in early December, is welcoming the effort with open arms:

Stephen Colbert wasn’t able to get his name on the ballot in South Carolina despite polling at around 5% (better than Jon Huntsman!) down there, mostly because he didn’t even try. This is a problem for the SuperPAC that has definitely nothing to do with him, but they found a solution: find another name on the ballot no one is actually campaigning under, and squish Colbert in there. To that end, here is an (Non-)ColbertPAC ad endorsing “Herman Cain.”

Chalk this one up to a case of “opposites attract,” or perhaps things can be so vastly different that they circle back around to being near identical. Bill Maher had former Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain on his program last night, and not only did the candidate not say “999″ or quote Pokémon (that we know of), the two laughed and chatted like old friends. Maybe the world won’t end in 2012 after all.

Princeton professor Cornel West appeared on Fox News’ Hannity, his first time since 2006, and was grilled by host Sean Hannity over inflammatory comments he had made on CNN back in October about then-Presidential candidate Herman Cain, where he said “Get off the symbolic crack pipe and acknowledge the evidence is overwhelming”, referring to Cain’s dismissal that racism held people back in a significant way. “By symbolic crack pipe, what I meant was he’s living in Never Neverland, anybody that downplays the prison industrial complex, when it comes to the way our brown sisters and brothers are treated with immigration policy, when it comes to the glass ceiling still at work even though we have a black president, racism is still real!”