Apparently, back when Beyoncé met Barack and Michelle Obama (and he proved that he can do the "Single Ladies" dance), before Michelle called Barack out on his dance moves, Michelle told Beyoncé that she's happy her daughters look up to her — who, truth be told, does seem pretty fucking normal by comparison to some other train wrecks tweens idolize. Beyoncé, it sounds like, is still freaking out that Michelle said that. She isn't, however, freaking out as much as Mike Rawls, who is a huge Washington Wizards fan and apparently spent much of Friday night's game between the Wizards and the Chicago Bulls trash talking with the President of the United States. And you thought he was cute before.

Oh, you want to hear about actual politics? No, I know you don't, so I should probably mention that this morning, Michael Steele called the Rush Limbaugh brouhaha a "sideshow distraction" and the Democrats cooked the whole thing up months ago when they realized that Rush Limbaugh has worse popularity numbers than Dubya (or Jeremiah Wright) and that Limbaugh was likely to stumble right into their trap. Which he did, followed by the entire Republican establishment! And while we're talking sideshow train wrecks, the National Enquirier is reporting that John Edwards has told Elizabeth that he really did knock up his mistress, Rielle Hunter, which is a truth I pretty much figured out last summer when I put together a time line of events related to Rielle.

Fine, real talk. Iran has pretty much told us to fuck off again because we're not willing to disavow the established nation of Israel; moderate and conservative Democrats aren't actually keen on the idea of spending even more money and raising rich people's taxes, and the same Republicans who thought it was a great idea to eliminate the minority party's ability to filibuster judicial nominees a couple years ago now plan to... filibuster the new President's judicial nominees. Also, Obama has finally started "consultations" on eliminating the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Norm Coleman wants to get a new election and Obama has declared March Women's History Month.

As for Brad Pitt, the movie star is going to be meeting with Nancy Pelosi today, which is way more interesting and honorable than Pelosi's bow to the demands of the NRA yesterday.

• Good news first: Obama is up in the polls in Pennsylvania and Iowa and tied in Minnesota and Nevada. Also, most people blame Republicans for the current economy crisis. Unfortunately, he's pulling staff from North Dakota, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska. That can't be good. [CNN, CNN, CNN]
• A new poll shows that, since putting Palin on the ticket, McCain now polls evenly with Obama on the question of who understands women and what's important to us. Obama used to have a 34 point lead. [Politico]
• Obama's got a new ad in which he (rightly) accused McCain's health care plan of being a massive program of deregulation, sort of like how McCain used to love the deregulation of financial markets, too. That the kind of change even an NRA member might fear more than an ammo tax these days. [Huffington Post]

• Speaking of, the NRA has started running ads against Obama saying that he wants to tax guns and ammo. That's all they got? Taxes? No more "cold dead hands" now that Charlton Heston's hands are cold and dead? [Marc Ambinder]
• John McCain's Brazilian mistress is out there talking about him. She thinks he's still cute. We think visualizing John McCain boning is our new weight-loss plan. [Daily Mail]
• Biden's having trouble prepping for her debates because —as we've pointed out — Palin's record is so fucking thin he's basically just prepping to debate McCain. Aw, Joe, it's ok, she doesn't much know what she thinks on a lot of issues either. [Politico]
• In a completely undeserved casualty of the liberal hatred of Sarah Palin, sales of the Chilean winery Palin's Syrahs have bottomed out in San Francisco. Good wineries should not be made to suffer! [Politico]
• Unsurprisingly, George Bush doesn't think CEOs should be financially penalized for running our country's financial system into the ground. But this was the same guy who thought giving the Secretary of the Treasury unlimited powers without judicial oversight was a good idea, so what the fuck does he know? [Think Progress, Huffington Post]