So, I don’t really think I need to go into some great big diatribe about Rod Blagojevich. He’s a charlatan and a crook, and he’s lucky that we are a nation of laws, because that means that his punishment will not include being strung up in downtown Chicago and beaten to death with flaming, barbed wire baseball bats. That he insists on carrying on as if he’s still a legitimate leader is symptomatic of our times. We live in a kingdom of shamelessness, where there is no such thing as disgrace or dignity, only jeuvenile foot stomping and, apparently, seven dollar haircuts. When acting like a whore, whether it’s in Hollywood or Washington or Chi-town, is apparently enough to keep your name in the press.

And I’m not at all impressed with Blago’s “brilliant” bit of strategy, selecting a second rate public servant with no personal integrity to fill Obama’s spot in some callous attempt to play the race card. Yep. Burris is black. And no, I don’t give a shit. He’s unfit to take the position, and the reasoning is very simple. Any person who would willingly accept Rod Blagojevich’s offer, knowing what sickly corruption his administration functions beneath, is unfit to serve in the Senate. Any man that lacks the integrity or the common bloody sense to say, “No, I won’t be a part of this!” is unfit to fill the seat. And don’t scoff. Rumor has it that Burris was Blago’s third pick, because the first two turned him down rather than sully their names. Add to that the fact that Burris went from being outraged to being willing to let the courts decide whether he should be outraged about the seat selling in the first place, and you know what? Fuck Ronald Burris. Even for a politician, that’s an amazing lack of class.

On the sunny side of the Senate, it looks like Norm Coleman, a man who looks so unelectably sleazy I wouldn’t even leave him in the same room as other peoples’ daughters, is going to be packing up his shit and moving back home to Minnesota, because Al Franken squeaked by at the end of the recount. There are still some legal hoops Coleman can make Franken jump through, but the deal is essentially done. Fraken is a senator, and Coleman is a has-been. I hope it burns that he lost to a guy who has pictures of himself wearing a fuzzy, pink bunny suit on the internet.

And I hope Franken keeps on being Franken, because as sarcastic as he can be as a comic, I’ve heard the man talk politics and he’s for real. In fact, I’ve heard him give a first rate schooling to plenty a pundit and representative that thought they were safe behind a carefully crafted wall of empty talking points. And that’s the reason I want to see him in the Senate. Because the man is a fastidious bullshit detector, and he gets more than a “this supports my side” understanding of the details before he opens his mouth. And for all the talk of “outsider-ism”, he truly is an outsider in terms of the political system in Washington. And if nothing else, his election to public office probably gave Bill O’Rielly another ulcer. And that’s something I’m sure we can all take a little joy in.

I’ll admit that I’m surprised to see that one of my most anticipated games of the year, Prince of Persia, isn’t really selling that well. Oh, sure, it’s not selling badly per say. But it’s not moving the numbers expected of an Ubisoft flagship title around Christmas. Especially considering that it’s from a series of celebrated and favored games (where even the emo-whiny Warrior Within was, underneath it’s over-marketed bullcrap, an outstanding game from a playstyle perspective).

The one thing I’ve always liked about Ubisoft is that they aren’t afraid to screw with an established formula. Sometimes they expand upon it in small ways (as in the first few Splinter Cell titles), and sometimes they make games that are just good games - critics be damned. Beyond Good and Evil was one of these titles, if only anyone had ever played it. Other times they try something that only sort of works, as with Assassin’s Creed, and what they end up with is a very different experience that doesn’t quite fit the cookie-cutter expectations of their target audience.

Creed was by no means perfect, but it certainly didn’t deserve the hate and vitriol that the gaming community thrust upon it. People saw the promo and wanted “Prince of Persia in Jerusalem” because, for all of the community’s wailing about being given the “same old game” every year, that’s essentially what sells. Just as EA, who pumped out sequal turds until their pockets were bursting with money and are now taking a hit at the register because they finally have some unique and interesting IPs in their lineup. But what Assassin’s Creed at least tried to do was to create a new genre of game play. And yes, travel was a bit tedius, and the sword play could have actually used more Prince of Persia. But when Ubisoft got hammered with scores like in the 5-6 out of 10 range, I was admittedly baffled. Compare that with the 9.5 and 10 scores gifted to Grand Theft Auto IV which, while a very good game, is really just Grand Theft Auto III with a major graphical facelift and a more compelling main character.

What really surprised me about the new Prince of Persia is the character development, and the sheer volume of dialogue in the game. Occsaionally the Prince’s quips do get annoying, as with any gaming character. But the purely “optional” dialogue sequecnes between the Prince and Elikah are actually wonderfully done, recorded believably, and add an entirely new dimension to the game that one might dare to call “character development”. Maybe it’s a sad thing that non-cringeworthy voice acting and interesting characters are worth pointing out as an exception in a game - though they’re often the rule and not the exception for Ubisoft (yes, yes, Warrior Within, I know), and that deserves recognition. And that development is not unique to the Prince of Persia franchise. The afore-mentioned Beyond Good and Evil was filled with compelling, interesting protagonists. And hell, Sam Fisher and Irving Lambert feel more like “real” people than most television and movie characters.

One of the principle complains I kept reading was that there was no way to really “lose” in the new Prince of Persia. Technically, your character cannot die. In the event that you miss a jump or get taken down to no health by an enemy, your companion resets the encounter. In the event of the climbing sequences, she pulls you back to the last place you stood on firm ground. During battle, she resets the fight, often allowing the boss to regain a large portion of his health. And these critics are right. You cannot die in Prince of Persia. They’re also missing the bloody point.

If you want to get right down to it, you cannot die in the last three Prince of Persia games, either. For one thing, you had the time rewinding powers that let you re-try difficult jumps or undo poorly thought out attacks. And there was also a save feature in place, coyly disguised as the Prince’s faulty memory. In fact, I can’t think of any game that I’ve played in the past several years where death was any impediment to progress. All Prince of Persia does is automate the quicksave and quickload buttons so you don’t have to tap them every time you fuck up. And to be honest, the new “saving” feature actually adds some measure of challenge to the movement sequences, since you don’t get to simply rewind your mistake. You must start the entire sequence over from your safe “starting” point.

So, from a console standpoint, what they cut from the game was an annoying “death” screen that I’d see a few hundred times and a constant set of trips through the save / load menu. I can live without those things. Now, I do think that the boss fights could have been handled more appropriately. Those just seemed like an endurance match, with quicktime events popping up so often they scarecely felt like quicktime events and almost became gameplay elements. Almost. So the boss never-die feature was imperfect, and until you figure out each boss’s technique you may be fighting them for a long time. But the overall arch of the game, the style with which it was carried out, and the cleverness with which they turned the final boss fight (no spoilers) into a test of what Prince of Persia is really about as opposed to a combat twitch-fest deserves more praise, honestly, than the game has received.

Ironically, the other game on my 360’s to-beat list is Bionic Commando: Rearmed. As a huge fan of the original, I have to say it’s pretty breathtaking to see a non-franchise title receive the sort of fan service restyling that Bionic Commando did. There are plenty of elements of the game that have been updated - there are both new and improved weapons which can be hot-swapped mid-level, many of the bosses (as much as BC had them) are completely redesigned, and the bionic arm is insanely powerful in comparison to the original title. But the reason that I mention Bionic Commando is that it was traditionally a difficult game, and it still uses a “lives” system. You have a limited number of chances, per level, to not die. Failing that, you get booted out to the stage selection screen.

Of course, Rearmed uses a saved game feature, unlike the original which had to be defeated in either a single sitting or else was a slow, lurking death sentence for your NES (as the console sat on pause for hours at a time). There are no quicksaves in Rearmed, and while you can acquire extra lives, the supply is by no means infinite. Add to that the fact that several of the bosses take some practice and coordination to learn to fight. So does all of that makes Rearmed a harder game?

No, not really. It just makes it take longer to beat. As long as you have the requisite skill required to beat the trickier stages, you will eventually (by either luck or rote memory) defeat them all. You’ll figure out every swing sequence and time every bazooka shot to the point where you are killing off-screen enemies as you progress. Because the truth is that in games like Prince of Persia and Bionic Commando, where the environment is a principle enemy, your ability to move through that environment is as much a test of your gaming skill as the enemies you defeat.

And what happens in Bionic Commando is that you learn the earlier portions of the stage better than the later ones, because you have to traverse them over and over again. Death has, at least, some meaning because of the greater penalty involved. It also makes the game less enjoyable during several sequences where the game does feel as though it is punishing you for its own learning curve (including one where a boss does not count as “defeated” until his death animation completes, and should you die in that time, you still fail. . . I damn near gave up on that encounter at first because I couldn’t figure out why I was still losing). Interestingly, because of the “connected world” aspect of Prince of Persia, as well as the surprisingly enjoyable “scavenger hunt” sub-quests (and I normally hate scavenger hunt mechanics), my overall ability to move through the stages and perform the acrobatics is pretty balanced across the board - a claim I simply cannot make in regards to Bionic Commando.

Look, if your complains about the new Prince are the graphical style (though I can’t see why) or the ending (which was ridiculous, but at least different), I can see your point of view. I may disagree with it, but I can at least understand it. But if you’re bitching because the game isn’t “teh hardcorez”, then I have a suggestion for you. Every time you die, quit to the main menu and load your last saved game. There you go - artificial difficulty restored. For everyone else, I can’t recommend the new Prince of Persia enough. Give it a spin. And if you haven’t played Rearmed yet, seriously, get off your ass (I only waited so I could play it on the 360 with a proper controller). Rearmed is as much a blueprint for how to refashion a side-scrolling classic as Metroid Prime was a blueprint for how to transfer it to 3D. And I hope Capcom paid attention, because the new Bionic Commando title is on the horizon!

I’m sick of being told that America is an inert nation - a desperate scrabble-clawed lunge, the clouding breath of men who realize that the trouncing they took two weeks ago makes naked the lie that we are a nation unwilling to progress. I’m sick of hearing that a President who wins the American people by nine million votes must be cautious, but a President who wins by three million - after losing by a handful - has a mandate. I’m sick of these feckless, shallow men in empty grey suits manifesting on my television to tell me how bloody relevant their perpetually wrong opinions are. I’m sick of being told that America is a nation of limitations. Of small-mindedness. Of petty, knuckle wringing, back stabbing never-ran leaders living in infinite disconnect with the people they have promised to serve.

I’m sick of being ashamed of the things that my country does in the equatorial shadows of jingoism and false bravado. Of a government that should not, will not, and does not. Of empty smiles and tremendous egos asking me to tighten my belt because the yowling maw of imperious corruption knows no abatement. I’m sick of the very suggestion that the wholesale pillaging of my generation’s future is in our own best interest. Of the terms of our indenturement being draped in the flag of patriotism. Of being told that the bootprint on the back of my neck is some violet badge of courage.

I’m sick of the status quo being a benchmark instead of the minimum. Of the shrill chorus of hollow voices that have told us about all the things America cannot do out of one side of their mouths while attacking my love of my country out of the other. Of the audacity to mourn the passing of our darkest hours. Of the scalpel-mouthed minority staking out a surreal survival on the ragged edges of self delusion that tells me my America isn’t possible because theirs has failed them. Because theirs has failed us all.

I’m sick of being told that America cannot come together. That we are divided, sequestered by our beliefs. That the trivialities that separate us are insurmountable by the dreams that unite us. That fear of the “other” is a family value. That some damn fool ideological jigsaw puzzle version of our country, sliced along artificial borders, carved by ancient rivers, and sundered by the non-corporeal unreality of an electoral college makes us foreign to our brothers and sisters. That America must always be viewed as a Jackson Pollock in reds and blues. That I didn’t watch Americans - not liberals or conservatives, but Americans - carry their shared sorrow in buckets and their unbreakable resolve in their souls under the ghastly plumes of a mutual heartbreak.

I’m sick of being told that we cannot.

Yes we can.

Although my posting this is kind of like the echo of an echo of an echo, I figured I’d let everyone know that Penny Arcade has officially launched Child’s Play for this year. I figure since the non-gamer contingent of my readership is likely much larger than it used to be, I’d give everyone a heads up. And rather than some mishmashed explanation of what Child’s Play is, I’ll just give you the blurb right from their website.

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over two million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With over 45 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child’s Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, so please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!

This charity event has always hit home for me because, when I was in Kindergarten, I was one of those kids. Now, I was incredibly lucky that my stay was brief, I made a complete recovery, and I had two amazing parents who were there for me as often as I could want. Not every kid is that lucky. And even with those advantages, I remember what it was like sitting in that bloody hospital bed day after day. So Child’s Play is important to me.

To that end, I’m asking everyone who reads and enjoys my site to consider giving something to the charity. It doesn’t have to be an expensive purchase, and if you have a personal preference against video games, there are plenty of other toys, movies and incidentals to choose from - I usually go in for at least one set of Leggos in addition to whatever games I buy. Or you can make a straight donation. What’s great about Child’s Play is that Gabe and Tycho don’t have any sort of real overhead. Anything you donate will go right to the kids - about the closest thing they have do to overhead is paying to ship the donations to the various hospitals.

Last year they shattered the $1 million mark, which is pretty exciting on its own. I know everyone’s budget is a bit smaller this year, so we’re not all going to be ponying up for 360 Elites. But please consider giving something. And for all of you political wonks and malcontents out there, if this Presidential election has taught us anything, it’s that the small contributions of a large number of people can make all the difference in the world. Though really, if you have a heart at all, these letters should more or less put you on notice.

Every election cycle, there’s one concern that I hear from most of the people that I talk to about their candidate choices. Specifically, that those choices suck because they seem so much alike. I heard it constantly in 2000 (if only we knew). And I heard it a lot in 2004, where I agreed with it much less myself. I haven’t heard it very much now in 2008, which I take to be a good sign. People can see the distinctions between Obama and McCain - even those people that aren’t sure which one they are voting for today.

But most of the distinctions that I hear from people are surface noise. Campaign preferences. Stylistic choices at best. Very few people get deeper into the differences than their stances on Iraq and how much of a tax break they’ll be handing out. Maybe that’s what motivates some people, and hell, those are issues that motivate me. But what I don’t hear anything about is the most core difference between the Democratic and Republican offerings for President this year. And I reference them by the party as much as by the individual candidates because this difference has become pervasive across each party’s platform.

In 1776 some no good, rabble rousing, north-eastern commie liberal named Thomas Paine published a pamphlet titled Common Sense. It outlined, in very specific and articulate detail, the grievances that many colonists held against King George III and made the case for American independence. One of the core tenents of his pamphlet was that the rule of law is the only way to truly guarantee freedom from tyranny - because human beings were entirely to fallible. “For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

This same philosphy was later incorperated into the Massachusets Constitution by another of those north-eastern liberal elitists, John Adams. He drew a clear distinction of powers and roles for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the government, explicitly stating that no member of one branch had any business wielding the power of another, “to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” This same guiding principle can be traced back to the Magna Carta and even to the establishment of habeas corpus. It does not guarantee that the law is always right, or that the law cannot be challenged. It simply states that the law is to be followed, and that those in power have neither the right nor the authority to usurp it.

Now to be fair, many Presidents from both parties have been guilty of violating this concept - including several whom I truly admire, such as Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Of course, there are a few that have placed themselves above the law for much less admirable reasons, and under much less dire circumstances. Nixon comes to mind quite easily. But the sum of all these infractions combined is dwarfed by the sheer scope and thoughtlessness that the Bush administration has overextended its authority since 9/11. You can argue that everything Bush did was for the good of the country - you’d be wronger than armpit flavored macaroons, but that’s beside the point. The ground I’m staking here has to do with the philosophy behind his actions, and what they say about our democracy.

This is all a matter of how a person views the law and, by extension, the founding principles of our government. There are many people in this country - and in the Bush administration especially - who see the law as an obstruction. A hinderance. As just another rule that should be ignored or avoided at all costs. If there is a way to technically avoid the legal requirements of the law, that is good enough. By renaming prisoners of war to enemy combatants, they figure they’re off the hook for obeying the Geneva Conventions. By renaming torture “enhanced interrogation” we can claim that we don’t torture prisoners. By claiming that the Vice President isn’t part of the executive or legislative branches, he can avoid the rules of ethics and oversight that govern his office. To them, the law is a nuisance. Some archiaic bunch of nonesense that they know better than. In short, they see the law as a burden.

It makes me sick.

I’m not going to tell you that every law we have on the books is brilliant or perfect. In fact, there are a lot of them I think should be changed. And we have processes to change them. But that process isn’t to simply disregard or ignore the ones we don’t approve of. Fulfilling the minimum legal requirement of the law is an empty gesture if you are knowingly breaking the spirit and intention of that law. We don’t prohibit torture because there is a law that says so. We prohibit torture because it is both heinous and ineffective. We don’t limit domestic spying simply because there are restrictions on the books, we limit it because it is an invasion of privacy.

It is simply not enough for our leaders to skate around the intention and the meaning of the law on the pretense of fulfilling it’s technical standards. They should be proud to fulfill the letter of the law, and proud of a country that secures such freedoms for its people. Our leaders should want to obey the law. Following the laws that govern and protect this country shouldn’t be seen as a punishment but as an act of patriotism. I know it sounds crazy to all of our cynical ears. But if we don’t have leaders that believe in our laws and believe in our government, how can we ever expect this system to work?

Listen, it’s obvious I have some pretty strong views about Sarah Palin. It’s not exactly a secret I was trying to keep. But at the most basic level, what I knew about her from very early on was that she sees our government and our laws as just another thing getting in her damn way. Her attitude upon being elected mayor of a town smaller than some high schools in this country was that she could do whatever she bloody well pleased until a court specifically told her she could not. That she wouldn’t even try to obey the law until she was legally forced to by another branch of her own government. Someone like that has no business being in in office, and certainly shouldn’t be allowed to shape the direction of the country. And whether John McCain either can’t see that, or just doesn’t care is a moot point. It renders them both unfit for office.

So for those of you that haven’t voted today, I want you to consider what sort of person you want in charge of your country for the next four, possibly eight years. And remember that, first and foremost, we are a nation of laws, not men.

It may have been ten years coming, but at long last Fallout 3 is on the shelves and, more importantly, on my computer. This was one of those rare, so-unlike-me launch day titles that I simply had to have. And was it worth it? Well, I’m a scant six hours of play into the game (and I am already considering re-rolling based on what I’ve learned about how the mechanics work and vary from the previous titles). But the simple fact that I’m sitting here at work, physically itching to go home and play like a Jet junkie desperate for a fix should tell you what you need to know.

Fallout 3 trades in the isometric sort-of-3d tile based system for the standard first/third person environment that virtually every game uses currently. And yes, Fallout 3 has a lot in common with Oblivion. Though I’d say it’s far more than just Mad Max meets Elder Scrolls. I’m sure there are some Fallout die hards out there that will curse the very inclusion of a three dimensional environment and a twitch-capable combat system. To be honest, the twitch portion leaves much to be desired, but in a lot of ways that feels intentional. The real combat takes place with the VATS system, which should feel instantly familiar to old school Fallout fans and is a vastly superior way to approach combat. So if you’re worried that Fallout 3 is just Doom with dialogue trees, don’t be. Combat is much deeper than that.

Specifically, combat is much tougher than that. Admittedly, I’m playing the thing on maximum difficulty because that’s just how I roll, but even sampling the game on an easier setting simply caused me to have to apply the same clever tactics fewer times in a row. Overall, I’d say the combat is still clever and tactical, just a bit more frantic. The one improvement I can see is that it doesn’t result in nearly as many no-win situations, which were my single greatest point of frustration in the previous titles.

But don’t take that to mean that the game is easy, or that it lacks serious consequences. Save states aside, dead still means dead in Fallout. And the Karma system is there in full force, judging your every action and choice. So far I’ve already run across at least one character that didn’t want to help me out because I was such a goodie-two-shoes, even with my wildly unchecked Charisma bearing down on his ever so plyable ears. The voice acting has been very good so far, and one thing that I do prefer over the previous titles is the fact that you are never taken out of the game’s perspective. Accessing the PipBoy is a matter of raising your wrist to the screen, and all conversations and dialogues take palce through your normal view. Granted, that’s a pretty common feature ten years removed from the last real installment of Fallout, but the disjointed loading and unloading of interface to talk to NPCs always bothered me a bit.

On the flip side, there are loads in the game. Essentially, there is an overworld, and within that overworld there are locations which load as separate areas (many of which have sublocations which are additional loads). The load time is fast, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a shame that it couldn’t have been done more seamlessly, especially in the case of the small, one or two room stores and buildings inside the already modest sized towns. For a game that’s all about immersion, I find it disjointing, though your mileage may vary.

Since we’re getting annoyances out of the way, I’ll just make a few remarks about the game’s engine and move on. Movement could be smoother in general. Though the isometric view is gone, I still feel on some level like the characters are navigating down extremely rigid tracks and paths. Usually it’s not noticable, but when it does come up it’s just about all you can notice. There are also reports of crashes and hang ups, which I pretty much expect with PC game launches at this point. I heavily suspect the game leaks memory, based on the degrading performance I experienced and the fact that I’m not alone. And for a lot of players, there are unusual sound issues (ambient noises completely drowning out combat, speech and music). But I started playing the game about two hours after it was even available, and I expect that most of these things are temporary bugs that won’t even affect 1% of players and will disappear for We The Beleaguered within the week.

I’d love to write more, but honestly I’ve only spent a few hours with the game and I don’t want to pass final judgment on the experience without even making it to the second town on the map. But I will say this. Anyone giving this game a “perfect” score needs to have their heads examined. Perfect means perfect, and Fallout 3 isn’t that. But anyone giving this game a score that doesn’t say, “You should buy this right now!” is also full of shit. This is a title that already wants to be amazing, and wants it bad. I’ll be back in a week or so to let you know whether it wants it badly enough.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Upon coming home last night, Fallout 3 patched itself (hurray for Steam). Whatever the patch was, it resolved my sound issues completely, and also improved my outdoor graphical performance. I don’t know if the patch actually did both of those things directly or if fixing my sound simply stopped the game from wonking out so the graphics engine wasn’t hanging up waiting. Either way, that’s less than a twenty-four hour turnaround on a widely reported problem - most MMO companies, who I expect to be perma-patchers, don’t resolve bugs that quickly.

So, what should I be churning out this week? A pie chart of Sarah Palin’s campaign expenses? A venn diagram of things Joe The Plumber is and is not? Perhaps a comparison matrix of what socialism means depending on whether you are criminally stupid or not? To be honest, the temptation lingers. I do like selling t-shirts, after all.

But the truth is that I’m done with this campaign. Done with these characters. Am I surprised that Sarah Palin dropped $150,000 of donated money on some new threads? No. Not even a little bit. In fact, when I expressed the opinion that she’s just a self serving bitch hooked up to a perpetual ego machine, some people took offense. This whole wardrobe story is just more of the same from her. Is it any surprise that the former mayor who thought her power extended infinitely unless a court ordered her to obey the law would abuse her campaign contributors by dropping three times the median American family’s income on a wardrobe revamp? It wasn’t to me. And it shouldn’t have been for anyone willing to pierce the paper-thin veil of Hockey Mom Folks-ism to see the petty arrogance behind it.

On the up side, in about eleven days, Sarah Palin will be an afterthought. A cultural aberration. A punchline. Just another embarrassing footnote in the long line of minor tragedies and social disgraces that scar the political landscape. Jon Stewart and David Letterman will begrudgingly mourn her passing. Tina Fey will get to talk in her normal voice again. She won’t be coming back in four, eight, or even twelve years. She’s not a diamond in the rough. As Vice-Presidential candidates go, Sarah Palin couldn’t hold Dan Quayle’s coat.

Even the argument that she was George Bush in a dress (ewwww) doesn’t hold water. Bush had connections. He had “people”. He had his father’s money and his mother’s sneer. He knew, at the very least, that he’d better surround himself with people who knew what they were doing. And while he might not have done a bang up job - ever - he could at least hold a press conference. He had a proven track record. Admittedly, it was a record of feigning compentence long enough to drive whatever he was currently in charge of right into the ground. But hey, at least it was experience. The absurd part is that if Bush looked no different than McCain to many voters, he actually looked better than Palin. The revolting part is that the GOP ran her anyway.

As far as I can tell, there are really two bright spots to the Sarah Palin candidacy. The first, of course, was my flow chart. But the second (and I’m willing to concede, slightly more important) was the utter repudiation of the political myth that any asshole can get elected if they tow the party line and memorize their talking points. Palin did everything that a dim bulb in the spotlight could have possibly done to set up an infinite crecendo of false choices. She was a common sense, small town, America loving, Christian family mom, and her opponent was an eggheaded, city-slick, secret Muslim terrorist.

And it failed.

Do you hear that, traditional media? The politics of character assassination, the up-and-under shiv to the fear centers of your panicky audience’s frontal lobes missed, and missed badly. Even the pundits who carried water for eight years of the most unpopular President in American history are unable or unwilling to attach their names and reputations to Sarah Palin. Hell, her own campaign staff can hardly defend her. Maybe. . . just maybe, the American public is getting sick and tired of The Stupid.

Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning. With John McCain trailing in the national polls by anywhere from five to fourteen points, and with his electoral college prospects putting him at anywhere from a 2:1 to even a 3:1 disadvantage, McCain needed to knock Obama flat on his ass in order to have a chance at winning the election. And he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even come close. To be fair, this was McCain’s best debate performance thus far. He was more aggressive than the first debate, and he didn’t wander around the stage in a daze like in the second debate. He even got his creepy reptile tongue under control - for the most part. The problem was that Obama was also on top of his game tonight, and after being stymied by the Phony Town Hall format of the second debate, Obama seemed eager to go toe-to-toe with McCain. This was a very aggressive Barack Obama, and he cut exactly the right figure tonight. He hammered McCain on his mischaracterizations without coming off as a jerk or (if you’re a jackass Congressman from Virginia) “uppity”.

McCain vowed to bring up William Ayers and ACORN at this third debate and he made good on that promise. I’m sure the base was atwitter with excitement. To be honest, so was I. I’ve grown tired of hearing about Big Bad Bill Ayers, and Obama took the opportunity to shoot the comparison down. He even did so without resorting to a Keating Five remark. It would have been within the scope of the discussion, but it also would have validated McCain’s fearmongering to compare the two relationships. The truth is that most people either didn’t know about Bill Ayers, or else they had some vague idea of who he was. McCain didn’t make the case thoroughly enough to damage Obama before he slapped the issue down. I thought from the very beginning (when Hillary floated the concept) that it was a losing tactic. McCain probably could have pushed back and inflamed the issue, but as soon as he met with resistance, he backed down. For a moment, just for a moment, I almost felt sorry for pre-defeated John McCain. Then he did that creepy tongue thing and my pity turned back into disgust.

As for the ACORN business, that remained unresolved. I’d have liked it if Obama had asked McCain who gave ACORN’s keynote speech in 2006 (hint: That Other One), but I think he honestly just didn’t want to dwell on the subject. It was part of his technique of not going tit-for-tat with accusations that left McCain looking like the candidate focusing on non-issues. It didn’t help Johnie Boy any that he described a couple hundred phony voter registrations as “perpetrating the greatest fraud” against democracy. With the $700 billion clusterfuck on Wall Street fresh in our minds, and an illegal, unnecessary war in Iraq that went from lasting six weeks to six years, all under the auspices of the Republican party, McCain really should have better checked his language. His exaggeration was Obama’s gain.

I’ll give McCain credit though, he tried to hit a classic Rovian note - by playing the outraged victim of smear attacks himself. But like every other part of his campaign, it was a shaky premise with no follow through. And he failed to address Obama’s counter-accusation that McCain’s own running mate, Sarah Palin, says Obama “pals around with terrorists” on an almost daily basis. It was there that McCain shifted from Rovian rope-a-dope into stuttering deafness. It was his emergency fallback position throughout the night. Whenever Obama refuted his position or brought up an inconvenient fact, McCain simply restated his original position without reaction. The public has seen that batch of stupid for the past eight years in our current President. We’re bloody tired of it.

Pro-Tip: The trick to a successful rope-a-dope, John, is being tough enough and tenacious enough to withstand your opponent’s attacks until he wears himself out with over-eager aggression. Truthfully, you don’t have the stamina to pull it off, and Obama is too clever to go off on a nasty tear during a debate.

Truly, though, the highlight of the evening, and the moment that most people will remember, was McCain’s deer in headlights moment. I swear, it was Palin-esque. The short of it is that McCain either misunderstood Obama’s health care plan or he figured he could lie about it without being called out on his inaccuracy. Obama wasn’t having it, though, and considering how the night progressed up to that point, I’m surprised McCain had the balls to try for such an obviously fraudulent claim. Realisitically, I think McCain was genuinely shocked at Obama’s response. I don’t think he had any idea about the exemption for small businesses. It was sloppy debating on McCain’s part, and it made him look uninformed and just plain stupid. Ah, to hell with that. It made him look Sarah Palin Stupid.

And speaking of Sarah Palin Stupid, it must have taken every last ounce of willpower Obama had, when asked why he thought Joe Biden would make a better Vice President than Sarah Palin, not to burst out laughing in Bob Schieffer’s face. At first, I thought he was going to pussy out and take the super-high-road. For the most part, that’s what he did, by talking up Biden and more or less leaving Palin’s inadequecy as an unspoken truth. But right at the end of his response, Obama expressed confidence that Biden could lead the country if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to him. It was an innoccuous and even self defferential comment, but it was also deadly clever. Because unspoken in the pregnant pause before John McCain began his response, everyone watching the debate had the same thought. “What if something were to happen to McCain?” And I can assure you, the non-stupid majority of America isn’t buying a ticket for that logic train.

And if there is one guy I never, ever want to hear about again (though we all know I will), it’s Joe The Fucking Plumber. Both Obama and McCain were guilty of constantly, endlessly, laborously taking every economic issue they had to discuss and turning it into a refferendum on Joe The Plumber’s very own personal financial situation. There is no annoyance scale capable of scoring my hatred for the phrase “Joe The Plumber”. It’s worth at least ten “My Friends”s, and perhaps as many as fifteen “You Betcha”s. Truly, it was the hokey, hackneyed lowlight of the entire debate. I certainly didn’t expect, going in, to hear Joe The Plumber’s name referenced more often than Ayers, more often than Sarah Palin. It just didn’t make sense.

At least, not at first. I mean, the whole tedious, hokey process of relating every last scrap of economic information to the life of Joe The Plumber just struck me as out of place. It seemed to trivialize what was otherwise a very important discussion - and to be honest, Joe The Plumber wasn’t even a very good “everyman” because his income is far higher than the national average and even substantially higher than most small business owners. And yet both Obama and McCain continued, relentlessly and unerringly, to treat Joe The Plumber as if he was not just a metric to judge their economic plans but the only applicable standard by which to gauge the economy. Suspiscions ablaze, I did a bit of digging into this Joe The Plumber guy and what I found, quite frankly, shocked me. . .

That Oktoberfest directly precedes election day in this country is perhaps the one well-placed blessing of the year. It certainly seems as though the McCain boys are all taking part, because rarely does a campaign, even one as desperately beleaguered as this one, go so far off the deep end so quickly. The GOP bought too far into its own bullshit rhetoric over the past eight years, assuming that the public would still come along for the ride. Terror! Fear! Evil Do-ers! They were lurking in every shadow, hiding in corners and subway stops. Scheming behind Fourth Amendment protected phone lines. Loitering just outside the the cold sweat nightmares of innocent Americans. How quickly we forget that insanity, that Manchurian Candidate hysteria. Some six long years go, swarthy vigilantes from parts unknown were going to put anthrax in your cable bill and blow up your local supermarket. And those damn filthy terrorist sympathizing Democrats weren’t going to lift a finger to stop them!

And like the stumble-stepped ravings of some four-AM drunk, the Republicans just go on shouting those same old lines out into the darkness. Barack Obama is a secret muslim. A terrorist. An arab. A Marxist. He is other and different and impossible to understand. He’s whatever the thing you fear right now happens to manifest itself as. But the Republican party has just now realized that most Americans are shaking in fear, not of the invisible enemy, but of the paper monster. To hell with anthrax - if there’s a letter more toxic than a notice of foreclosure, I’ve yet to read it. People care a lot less about terrorism when they suddenly don’t own anything worth blowing up. And it’s a bit hard to care about something called the Weather Underground when you can’t even make the rent on your shitty basement apartment.

But don’t tell that to old man McCain - he’s got his heart set on pulling out a sqeaker through a carpet-bomb campaign of brick-shitting fear, and he will keep hammering away at the cloudy, smoke and sawdust suggestions that despite better than half the country supporting the man, Barack Obama hates America. McCain tried to scare people with claims about inexperience, and that didn’t work. He tried to scare people with tall tales of taxes, and even that GOP staple fell flat. So now he’s going full on fearmonger! Going, as he openly admitted to Jon Stewart several years ago, “to crazytown”.

It used to be that they secluded this stuff. Kept it hidden, away from the prying eyes of the traditional media. If there were competent sociopaths running this cowardly mud drag, we wouldn’t hear about push polls to Jewish towns in Florida saying that Obama supported the PLO until sometime next March. I’ll say one thing for Cheney, he knew how to keep his minions on a tight leash, and he wielded his brand of bowel liquefying hate like a samuri spinning a katana. The McCain folks, in comparison, are blasting away with a twelve gauge in a crowded mall.

They’ve forgotten that the nastiest of this sort of filth needs to be kept inside the base. It needs to be the quiet thrum of that fringe freakshow ten percent that would vote the party line even if they tried to run Zombie Reagan for office. The majority of Americans don’t want to hear that much crazy coming out of a man to whom they might be handing nuclear launch codes. And they’ve grown tired of the implausible deniability of sending your hatchetmen out to spread the lies and then waving them away, innocent faced, the next day in front of the press. The public knows what Swift Boating is, Johnny boy, and they don’t like it.

They’re tired of hearing about how Barack Obama might be Kenyan or how John Kerry looks French. They want to hear about how they’re going to pay their electric bill. How they’re going to send their kids to college. How they’re going to retire before they hit eighty. John McCain’s wonderfully insulated world, while not as cushy and worry free as George W. Bush’s, doesn’t have room for those sorts of plebian concerns. And he knows he can’t win by speaking to them, because all he has are empty platitudes about low taxes and something he daren’t still call trickle-down economics. Because by now the public is tired of being pissed on.