As long as we're talking about Newt's profound conquering of Arizona, Nate Silver looked at Gingrich's odds of winning the GOP nomination earlier this month. The takeaway:

Overall, I would read three of these factors, establishment support, personal liabilities, and (especially) fund-raising, as being clearly negative for Mr. Gingrich. This contrasts against one, ideological positioning, which is potentially favorable for him. He has both strengths and weakness in the key early-voting states, meanwhile.

That balance is unfavorable enough to suggest that his chances of winning the nomination are weaker than his polls alone would imply. That certainly does not mean that his chances are zero, or 1,000-to-1 against. If Republican voters decide that they really don’t want to nominate Mitt Romney, Mr. Gingrich could be the last man standing. But even if Mr. Gingrich continues to gain in the polls, he will have some major weaknesses to overcome.

At the Daily Dish, Sullivan unloads on Newt:

It is the latest abject humiliation for Mitt Romney, as yet another unelectable clown becomes the front-runner. It's not often I agree with Paul Begala, but the Democrats must be somewhat aghast at their good luck. Check out the favorable/unfavorable polls on Gingrich assembled here. Republicans like him, but not without some severe doubts. But the general public really doesn't. His best rating is a negative 3. More typical is a negative 16. Even Rasmussen's white/GOP-leaning sample backs Obama over Gingrich by 6 points, with Pew and Quinnipiac showing Obama's lead in double digits.

Related: "Obama's 'lazy' comment taken out of context," USA Today; "Romney takes Obama out of context again," Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[Buzzfeed]

Metal thievery isn't a new idea, and the number of city parks that have gone dark due to copper wire disappearing is evidence, but it seems like there must be some bad ju-ju that goes with stealing from cemeteries:

"It's definitely a new low," says Lan Price, assistant manager of Ridge Crest Memorial Park in Batesburg-Leesville, S.C., where thieves recently stole dozens of vases.

The thieves were crafty, he says. Instead of just dumping the flowers, they would stick them in the ground, making it seem as if nothing was wrong to anyone driving by.

No one knows for sure how many vases have been stolen, partly because the crime can go unnoticed. But such thefts have been reported in the past year from Nevada to South Carolina.

The vases, about 10 inches high and three inches in diameter, are made of bronze, an alloy rich in copper. They typically screw into a plate on the grave marker and are secured with a small chain. Although the price of copper has dropped about 20% this year, most major metals prices are still near historic highs.

"Cemeteries by nature are open to the public," says Jessica McDunn, spokesperson for Service Corp. International, which provides funeral and cemetery services all over North America. "In a way, we're kind of an easy target."

You might have noticed that there have been a few changes to the Weekly Wide Web recently, some design stuff to make the site a little cleaner, but also some actual changes to the comment section. You probably can figure this stuff out yourself, but here's a summary of this round of changes:

1. Now you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to individual comments. Choose your own standards for whether you choose to vote and which direction. I mostly vote based on spelling and whether an insult about my intelligence or genetic makeup is particularly clever. You can also sort the comments by popularity instead of by time of posting.

2. We've added a comment box to the flagging process, so you can provide a bit more detail about why a comment should be pulled.

3. If an article is particularly popular and you want to load additional comments, that now happens without reloading the entire page. This may not seem like a big deal, but this should save you a few seconds, and that sort of thing adds up over time.

Of course, we're always interested in how we can improve the experience of reading the Tucson Weekly and The Range online. Feel free to email me and let me know what you think.

Clearly, the general strategy for any retailer is to give potential shoppers some sort of positive feeling about their establishment, whether that's the feeling of getting a bargain, that making a purchases conveys some sort of cool factor, or general convenience. However, that-store-that-reminds-me-of-Mervyn's Kohl's seems to be going a different route: running an ad using an incredibly annoying song that everyone hates at this point and showing somewhat despicable behavior by an actress pretending to be one of their customers. Interesting concept, Kohl's, completely ignoring everything anyone ever learned about marketing.

The Gingrich surge is alive in Arizona: Newt now leads the GOP pack here, with the support of 28 percent of GOP voters, compared to 23 percent for Mitt Romney, 17 percent for Herman Cain, 8 percent for Ron Paul, 5 percent for Jon Huntsman, 3 percent for Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum and zero percent—yes, zero percent—for Gary Johnson.

That's according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling. Read the details here.

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling notes:

Gingrich's leads are a result of Cain's support finally starting to really fall apart. For an 8 week period from the end of September through last week Cain was over 20% in every single poll we did at the state or national level. Over that period of time we also repeatedly found that Gingrich was the second choice of Cain voters. Now that Cain has slipped below that 20% threshold of support he had consistently held, Gingrich is proving to be the beneficiary.

One thing that's striking in looking at Gingrich's numbers … is that he leads among both Republicans who identify with the Tea Party and those who don't. … [I]n Arizona he's up 33-18 on Romney with Tea Partiers and 26-25 with Republicans who don't identify that way.

The Arizona … numbers are more evidence that even with one competitor of his after another collapsing, Romney is just not showing the ability to make a surge. … [I]n Arizona his 23% now is basically identical to the 24% we found for him when we polled the state in May.

There is one piece of good news for Romney though …. In Arizona he and Cain are each the second choice of 30% of Gingrich supporters with Perry at 11% and no one else in double digits. Assuming that Cain continues to fade, Romney will be well positioned if Gingrich does end up imploding the way every other flavor of the month in this race has.

There's reason to think Gingrich could get stronger before he gets weaker though. … [I]in Arizona he's the second choice of 39% of Cain voters to 10% for Romney. If Cain keeps going down, Gingrich is likely to keep going up.

Also, it appears that Jeff Flake is running away with the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate next year:

Arizona looks like a snoozer with Jeff Flake already polling at 53% to 7% for Wil Cardon, 5% for Bryan Hackbarth, 2% for Clair Van Steenwyk, and 1% for Douglas McKee.

Flake is pretty well known and well liked with 48% of voters expressing a favorable opinion of him to only 13% with a negative one. That net favorability of +35 with primary voters is up from +28 when we last polled Arizona in May, so he appears to be wearing well as he becomes better known. Even though he received a fair amount of publicity with his candidacy announcement last week Cardon has only 18% name recognition and it breaks down 7% rating him favorably and 11% unfavorably, not terribly impressive numbers.

Cardon may have trouble challenging Flake on the right- that's actually where Flake has his strongest support right now with 62% of 'very conservative' voters expressing a positive opinion of him and 63% planning to vote for him in the primary. It looks like a pretty up hill battle for Cardon.

Details here.

Slideshow

A Last Look at the Red Room

Click to View 14 slides

It turns out Grill didn't make it to their planned Tuesday night closing, running out of food last night and closing, seemingly permanently.

Tucson Weekly contributor Mel Mason was there for the end of the Red Room, and allowed us to share her photos of the night.

From their Facebook page:

Yes, it's true. Grill is now officially closed for eternity. I know we told you we would be open for another day, but you cleaned us out. The food is gone and our sanity was lost long ago. We appreciate your loyalty over the years, and while we know you will all soon move on, we hope you never find anything more comforting than the hate and tots we brought to you for the past twelve years. Thank you to everyone who came out to say goodbye, and a special thank you to all the former employees who pitched in and helped us these past two days. So long, Tucson.

Looks like Arizona football has a new head coach. If you stick to his record at West Virginia, that's something to be excited about. His more recentl 15-22 stint at Michigan is somewhat less impressive, however.

The Arizona Wildcats have found their next head coach. According to multiple reports, Rich Rodriguez will be announced as the next head coach of UA football within the next 48 hours. Nothing has been made official by the UA athletic department, but an announcement could be made as early as this evening from Tucson.

Bruce Feldman, who might have the most credibility of any national football writer, just tweeted the news:

Expect Rich Rodriguez to be named the next Arizona head coach in the next 48 hours according to sources.

This is huge news for the University of Arizona. Mike Bellotti, the former head coach of Oregon, was the hot name over the weekend among reporters and boosters, but Athletic Director Greg Byrne was using it all as a smokescreen to land Rodriguez, who had been coveted by multiple programs across the country.

Confirmed! (via @greg_byrne):

I love the idea of shopping local but sometimes during the mad-rush of the Holidays getting sucked into buying corporate, lets be honest, is easier and less time consuming. But this holiday season Yelp.com is asking Tucsonans to take a pledge to shop locally and they're making it easy.

From Nov. 25 through Dec. 24, follow Tucson's Yelp.com and Twitter, #yelpshopstucson, for daily updates and recommendations of where to find interesting and unique gifts.

In addition to helping you, Yelp is also helping the community through several benefit events hosted throughout the month. Coming up Dec. 1 is their first dinner and drink soiree at MAST, 299 S Park Ave, which will benefit Local First Arizona .
Overall I think what Yelp is doing is a thoughtful way to celebrate the season and is very helpful, especially for people like me who wait till the last minute. This way you can find cool local merchants while also buying awesome gifts for friends and family.

The shopping season is upon us people...

Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini weighs in Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' ability to represent Southern Arizona:

The problems on Giffords' right side mean only that she is a woman who now moves cautiously, aware of each step. What better practice for an elected official?

And while the limitations of her eyesight mean that she cannot rely on first visual impressions, isn't that a good thing? Isn't the ability to look deeper into things before making a judgment a form of clarity?

Combine that with someone who, as she continues to improve, will bring to the job a kind of empathy and humanity seldom seen in Washington.

Since January a lot of us have emptied the well of our vocabulary speculating about Giffords and her future, which still is not certain.

But now that we’ve seen her and, to a lesser degree, heard her, I'd say there is only one word necessary to describe the constituents she represents:

Lucky.