And, once again, Uncle Squeaky opens mouth and inserts his "Iran with nukes is cool" lunacy foot in...  the  e n t i r e  nation ignores him.

"We were turned down by all the Sunday talk shows, including Fox News Sunday, which promised us an interview," Benton said. "And we were turned down by all the shows today."

Paul was initially scheduled to appear on NBC's "Today" show Monday morning, but the appearance was canceled.

"He was tentatively booked, but because of logistics and timing reasons with the news in Indiana and Somalia, we couldn't do it," said Megan Kopf, a spokeswoman for the "Today" show.

Benton said "Meet the Press" was one of several Sunday shows that Paul had a "loose arrangement" with to go on if Paul did well in the straw poll, but when he did, "their answer was, sorry our show is set."

"It was an effort to shut Ron out, no question," he said.

I'm shocked!

As of the writing of this comment, 119 total votes have been cast in the online poll over on the right.  109 of those votes (91% of the total) have gone to "congressman straw poll" himself.  However, earlier this morning, Real Clear Politics released a new bi-weekly average, and even though I'm not thrilled with where my candidate-of-choice is sitting, I know that the RCP Average is a fairly reliable poll track.

If those RCP numbers were to be applied to our online poll, then the current track would look like this:

• Michele Bachman (Minnesota) - 9.6% ≈ 11 votes
  
• Herman Cain (Georgia) - 5.0% ≈ 6 votes
  
• Newt Gingrich (Georgia) - 5.0% ≈ 6 votes
  
• Jon Huntsman (Utah) - 2.2% ≈ 3 votes
  
• Thaddeus McCotter (Michigan) - 0.0% ≈ 0 votes
  
• Ron Paul (Texas) - 8.8% ≈ 10 votes
  
• Rick Perry (Texas) - 18.4% ≈ 22 votes
  
• Mitt Romney (Massachusetts) - 20.2% ≈ 24 votes
  
• Rick Santorum (Pennsylvania) - 1.8% ≈ 2 votes
  
• none of the above / someone else - 12.3% ≈ 15 votes