Some of these will seem trivial, and others will seem more serious. My guess is that at least a few will ring true for you - and if they don't, well, at least you can have a good laugh at my expense. Here they are in no specific order:

1. I will stop lying to my exercise machine: When it comes to my relationship with workout machines, I am nothing short of a pathological liar. Whether at home or on vacation, I tell the machines I meet that I weigh 173 pounds when I really weigh about 10 pounds more than that. In other words, when I program my workout, I tell the machine I'm the weight I want to be, but not the weight I actually am. Why do I do this and what the hell do I really think I'm getting away with?

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But he didn't stop there.

We tracked down Rush's most inflammatory statements so you don't have to listen:

* "The NRA was very classy and laid back for a week. They didn't say anything, didn't get involved, didn't attempt to exploit it one way or another. They are the greatest, the largest gun safety organization in the country."

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Surprise, it's Rush Limbaugh.

On his radio show this afternoon, Limbaugh called the NRA leader "an adult looking for real solutions," and said he was "disrespected" by Code Pink protesters who, he claimed, would never interrupt a hearing on Benghazi.

"No matter what he said, Wayne LaPierre sounded like an adult looking for real solutions, but that's not what this country's interested in right now. Sorry. The adults are not running this show," said Limbaugh.

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As Rush details on his web site, Lanza -- whose mother, Nancy, was reportedly a doomsday "prepper" -- either couldn't deal with the possibility of the Mayan apocalypse on Friday or wanted to "save people" from it.

As he pushed this theory, Limbaugh had it both ways. "I'm not espousing it, I just want to bounce off of it." Here's how he bounced:

The theory that Adam Lanza somehow had been convinced the world was gonna end Friday and he was discombobulated by it. His mother was a prepper and a survivalist and showed him guns and he went in there and did what he did to either deal with the pressure of it or maybe save people from the end, who knows what.  It happened in China, is the point.

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But as repulsive and predictable as that narcissism is, it did inadvertently spotlight a significant problem plaguing our civic discourse. Call it Shut Up and Sing Syndrome.

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This week, the Republican soul searching and polite recriminations via anonymous quote exploded into an all-out war of words between representatives of two wings of the party that have never gotten along, but largely kept quiet for the good of the conservative cause.

In one corner are the consultants, Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 campaign, and Mike Murphy, who advised Mitt Romney. In the other corner is Rush Limbaugh, the embodiment of the conservative id in human form. We don’t have a dog in this fight as there’s blood on both of their hands, so just sit back and enjoy.

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One day, when he was in his teens, he said to himself, “Look here, Skinch Painter, this old world owes you a living, and all you’ve got to do is collect it.” Wandering the Ozarks of Missouri, he inhabited a cave and relied on nature for his food and clothing. He hunted, fished and gathered nuts and berries, wearing only animal skins and going barefoot.

“Labor is a useless sin,” said Skinch. “The time a man spends working is just so much time lost from living.”

We can just about see Fox News sending a camera crew out to interview Skinch, and one of its handsomely paid straight men wrapping up the piece with an offhand, “See, you don’t need government handouts. If you don’t want to work, you can do what this guy does. At least he’s not a taker. The rest of us in this country, we’ll continue to work for a living.”

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“It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires,” he said. “It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer.”

As Alex Seitz-Wald explained yesterday, this is a potentially huge development. For more than two decades now, the Republican Party has been absolutely, unanimously opposed to income tax hikes. This might just be Kristol speaking for Kristol and no one else, but if his words signal – or trigger – an actual shift within the party, the policy consequences will be serious. It could also set off an intraparty civil war.

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The working title is "Rush," Cusack's New Crime Productions confirmed, offering no other details.

Hollywood director Betty Thomas, who's set to work on the film, said the production company is putting finishing touches on a script that will star the actor. Production is set for next year, Thomas said.

Limbaugh is in the front ranks of colorful and provocative media figures. Earlier this year, Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" on air for arguing to Democrats in Congress that health plans should pay for contraception.

This week, the host mocked Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his "bromance" with Obama after Christie praised the president's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Cusack as Limbaugh isn't typecasting, politics aside. Cusack is a slender, dark-haired 46-year-old, while Limbaugh is 61, balding and portly. But Hollywood's makeup experts have probably had greater challenges.

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According to Google Trends, Cutter has been more searched than top Obama aides David Axelrod or David Plouffe, despite their relative seniority. Among the top searches for her are "married" and "husband," Axelrod is mostly sought out by people looking for his Twitter handle. And while Axelrod and Plouffe catch plenty of flak from the right, unlike her male colleagues, Cutter's attacks are often personal and vicious, occasionally with gendered undertones.

According to a Romney aide anonymously quoted by BuzzFeed this summer, Cutter is "some hack political adviser from Chicago who has nothing to point to in her own life." The comment came during a row over Cutter's factually accurate claim that Romney could have committed a felony by filing conflicting reports with two government agencies about when he left Bain Capital. Why the aide had to suggest Cutter's life is pointless to respond to a factual claim is unclear.

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The frequency and outlandishness of their conspiratorial imaginations grows in sync with their desperation. With Obama leading in most polls and the election season drawing to a close, it seems like a good time to recap some of the more ludicrous conspiracies hatched by our conservative fearmongers. So with our tin-foil hats securely strapped on, let's  venture down the primrose path of hair-raising hypotheses.

1. Cooking the Unemployment Rate

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Indeed, with Mitt Romney falling behind in the polls, there’s been a fair amount of speculation this week about the effects of a Romney loss on the Republican Party. The Hotline’s Reid Wilson concluded, for example, that "the fallout from a Romney loss has the potential to reverberate through the Republican Party for a decade" by pushing the GOP further and further away from moderate, voter-friendly positions.

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But the politics of penis size? It’s forever about size.

Days ago, a new (and, I think, seriously flawed) study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine claims – as its title says – “Women Who Prefer Longer Penises Are More Likely to Have Vaginal Orgasms (but Not Clitoral Orgasms).” Those who take the time to read the full study, however, will find that penis size doesn’t seem to be terribly important to women’s orgasms.

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Greg Sargent makes the excellent point this week that part of what’s happening is that Obama has pulled even or ahead with Romney on the question of who would do a better job on the economy, partly because a lot of people still blame George W. Bush for creating these economic problems but also because a lot of people are newly optimistic about the current economy.

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An Italian study found that penises are on average around 10 percent smaller today than 50 years ago. The study cited weight gain, pollution, stress and smoking as possible factors in the shrinkage, but Rush suggests otherwise.

Scoffing at the idea that air pollution might influence our physical constitution, he stated, “I think it’s feminism... it’s tied to the last 50 years — the average size of [a male's] member is 10 percent smaller than 50 years — it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else.”

Listen to the audio, via Media Matters:

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It's now taken for granted on the far right that the statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo condemning the anti-Islamic film that sparked the violence (which was expressly not authorized by the Obama administration) is tantamount to "apologizing to Al-Qaida," as Fox News host Steve Doocy said this morning. But for those prone to believe Obama is a secret Muslim radical, or at least feckless enough to sympathize with them, there's always been that one key bit of evidence that even a heavy does of cognitive dissonance can't ignore -- Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden.

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"If Obama wins, it’s the end of the Republican Party,” he said.

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