Roadkill: OffTheBus's Ongoing RoundUp of the Awkward, the Ugly, and the Just Plain Weird

Edited by Richard Riehl. Kirsten Anderson, River Curtis-Stanley, Jodi Lampert, Julie Pierce, Debbi Plummer, and Denise Wheeler also contributed to this issue.

"But the tortoise won, right?": In a Kucinich camp email reminding supporters about a Dennis radio interview, we find the following claim: "In national polls, Kucinich has been steadily creeping up on the perceived Democratic front-runners - Clinton, Obama, and Edwards - and, in some recent on-line surveys, he has significantly out-polled those top three." No numbers are given, but according to the CNN/Opinion Research polls, he's moved from 1% in June to 3% in September. Now. That's. Steadily. Creeping.

"Giuliani campaign's coalition of Small Business wins truism of the day!": Here's the profundity from the Giuliani website: "Rudy Giuliani understands that you can't have employees if you don't have employers." Give this man a MBA!

"How about just one math teacher (for Richardson)?": Mathletes, rejoice! Bill Richardson has called for 100,000 new math and science teachers! In the 8/19 ABC News debate, he said we need help because US kids ranked 29th on math and science tests compared to kids the world over, when we used to be #1. But wait one second, Governor...FactCheck.org has called both statistics into question; U.S. 9 year olds actually were 12th in math and 6th in science; U.S. 13 year olds scored 15th in math and 9th in science, and nobody can find a study that concludes that the U.S. used to be #1 (horrors!).

"Goodbye, Fredcast!": Uh oh! The Fred Thompson campaign staff has discovered that FredCast, their name for the audio/video section of their website, has already been taken by a California cycling enthusiast named David Bernstein ("Fred" apparently is a nickname for high-end bike fans. Who knew?). So now they're asking us, the people, to suggest a new name. Here's an idea: how about "MittTV?"

"Rudy Giuliani, Man of Amusement.": The Giuliani campaign blog lists the following under "Rudy Fun Fact: "[Theodore] Olson And Giuliani Worked Together At Reagan Justice Department. "The 'Justice Advisory Committee' will be chaired by Theodore B. Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general and a revered figure among conservatives." (pause...) I know. We're still waiting for the fun part, too.

"Culture Alert!": On the Five Interchangeable Brothers blog, one of the Name-That-Romney-Boys put up the following regular-guy kind of post: "I couldn't help but think of one of my brothers' and my favorite movie when I was campaigning last week in Lake Elsinore: Strange Brew. "Elsinore" is the name of the brewery which is central to the so-called "plot" of the movie." Here's something else where "Elsinore" is the name of a place central to the so-called plot: it's a little play called Hamlet.

"From the You Might Want to Rethink That Role Model Department.": In a discussion about his endorsement by the International Association of Firefighters, Dodd likened himself to John Kerry in the 2004 campaign to suggest that Dodd could still win the nomination: "John Kerry was at 4 percent in the polls in December of 2003, two points behind Al Sharpton and 22 points behind Howard Dean. And he ended up becoming the nominee of the party." Nothing like comparing yourself to the nominee who --- what's that word --- lost?

"Fred Being Fred.": Fred Thompson reminisced about some of his maverick stances during his senate years: "I've cast a couple of 99-1 votes. I was the '1' during my career up there," Thompson told a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa, on Sept. 7, 2007. "My staff went nuts, you know, said this is the ruination of everything. I said, 'No, no, no, we'll just put out a little statement and explain this is just Fred being Fred.'" And if Fred isn't Fred, who is he?

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