Anonymous No More

" 'YouTube is a website that allows kids to network with one another and make friends and contact each other,' Romney explained. 'YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000.' "

Ah--he meant MySpace.

How big an impact will Fred Thompson have--especially now that we learn he's raised only $3 million? (Of course he doesn't have a huge campaign team yet.) Jay Carney has been investigating:

"I have a piece in the coming print issue of Time on the hard-to-meet expectations being heaped by fretful Republicans on Fred Thompson's I'll-get-in-someday campaign for the GOP nomination. It says volumes about the state of the party, and about the level of discontent among GOP voters with the current field of candidates, that in some national polls Thompson is already challenging Giuliani for front-runner status. Now that he's shaken up his non-campaign campaign and postponed his official entry into the race until September, the expectations will only continue to build. Which means he'll have to deliver an announcement speech-for-the-ages when he does finally get in, or a lot of R's will be deflated."

Kos is practically chortling over Thompson's tepid fundraising:

"Maybe there's some expectation management going on and the numbers are better than hinted at here, but I laughed when Thompson and his people proclaimed he would run a "Howard Dean" type of race, as though saying it would automatically create this grass- and netroots phenomenon. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. But it's not.

"To make matters worse, Thompson's non-campaign campaign has already lost two top-ranking officials, including his campaign manager.

"So McCain is dead, Giuliani is tanking hard, Romney would be having trouble raising money if he didn't have his checkbook to fall back on, and now, the party's savior, seems to be exciting absolutely no one and can't raise money or put together an organization.

"So who will be the GOP's next savior? Gingrich? Cheney?"

Newt in 0'08? Probably not, says Politico:

"Newt Gingrich's long, slow striptease over whether he will seek the presidency in 2008 looks like it might come to an unexpected conclusion: a date with Fred Thompson. Publicly, Gingrich has been sending signals making clear that a presidential candidacy for him is becoming less likely. Privately, he and some of his closest advisers have been meeting with -- and, in at least one prominent case, going to work for -- the lobbyist-actor and former Tennessee senator. 'I've always said it was unlikely I would run,' Gingrich said in an interview last Friday with The Associated Press.

"And, he added, if Thompson 'runs and does well, then I think that makes it easier for me not to run.' "

Ryan Sager x

"Don't start printing up the Bloomberg for President bumper stickers quite yet. A Quinnipiac poll out today finds that even in New York City -- where voters know Mr. Bloomberg about as well as they could, and like Mr. Bloomberg about as well as they could (he has 73% job approval) -- 57% say they 'probably' or 'definitely' wouldn't vote for him. Only 34% say they 'probably' or 'definitely' would vote for him.

"Let those numbers sink in as the Bloomberg for president hysteria continues daily. Even in what should be the stronghold of our technocratic, smoking-banning, gay-marriage-supporting, Bermuda-jetting-off-to, trans-fat-meddling mayor, he gets . . . about a third of the vote. This is not a guy who can run a credible national campaign. Not for all the money in the world."

And here I was worrying about whether Lindsay Lohan is a drunk-driving menace:

"A panel has found that astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk, sources familiar with the panel's report said Thursday.

"Aviation Week also reported that the independent panel set up by NASA to study astronaut health issues found evidence of 'heavy use of alcohol' before launch that was within the standard 12-hour 'bottle-to-throttle' rule. Flight surgeons and other astronauts warned that drunken astronauts posed a flight risk when they flew on the two known occasions, according to the publication."

I don't know: Doesn't that sound a tad self-destructive before blasting off into outer space?

Finally, Rosie's replacement on "The View" is said to be . . . Whoopi.