As the presidential campaigns round third and head into the home stretch on a Hail Mary buzzer beater hat trick of sports metaphors, there’s one certainty: You will be stunned.

It’s the season when desperate campaigns or excitable media pull some stunt or release information they expect will shock voters into changing their minds. They’re called “October Surprises,” but they’re not the good kind of surprises like when you’re about to cut into your birthday cake and out jumps a scantily clad woman. They’re more like the bad kind of surprises where you don’t know about the scantily clad woman until after you cut the cake. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Barack Obama’s big night! Democratic National Convention organizers have moved the final evening of the week-long event from the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver to Invesco Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos. It will be there where Obama will be named the party’s candidate, provided he can make a 50-yard field goal to defeat the Bengals. Otherwise the nomination goes to Adam Vinatieri. Rules are rules.

Actually Obama will just come out and give a speech about the future of America and how we all have to blah blah together for blah blah unity or whatever. Unfortunately this is what’s happened to political conventions, which, over 100 years ago, were really exciting. In 1880, for example, the Republicans took 30 ballots to nominate James A. Garfield, and that was only after a compromise wherein, to appease his detractors, he agreed to be assassinated the following September. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Barack Obama has secured the Democratic nomination for president, his focus can shift to the next major task: Petitioning Microsoft Word to include his name in spell check.

He can also choose a running mate. The Vice Presidency is a prestigious position held only by individuals who can “balance the ticket,” which is a roundabout way of saying “be a different kind of white guy.” For example, in 2000 Dick Cheney balanced George W. Bush’s ticket by having male pattern baldness. Read the rest of this entry »

It is very important that dutiful, patriotic American citizens exercise their constitutional rights Tuesday by going to the polls and casting a ballot for whichever of the candidates is, in their opinion, the tallest.

But if, like me, you are too lazy to find out how tall the candidates are, you pretty much have no choice but to vote based on policies and proposals and blah blah blah.

So you definitely need a thoughtfully produced guide to the candidates.

Good luck finding one.

In the meantime, here are my highly researched profiles of the major contenders, written under the influence of pure journalistic integrity, by which I mean “beer.” Read the rest of this entry »