Well well, so he DID show up after all.   Once again, full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter who has donated to his campaign.  I am… or rather WAS… a pretty big admirer of McCain's Luke Skywalker campaign in 2000 right before Rove crushed any sense of idealism I had, leaving only an empty husk of bitter cynicism.  Okay, it's Friday night… so what else to do except watch the FIRST MOTHERFUCKIN' PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE?!  I just came back from Mexico, so no live-blogging for this one.  But, as is tradition, I have crafted a drinking game, just for you assholes.  The last one (for Obama-Clinton) was way too elaborate.  So I'll just stick to some basics.  As usual, I invite my fellow bloggers to freely edit the rules as they see fit, and make comments regarding the actual debate, in the uh, comment below.

See the jump for the rules, now it's time to ditch you losers and play some Warhammer Online!  Remember, swearing is required, real talk about the issues is discouraged, and keep it orky.

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From CNN's top of the page blurb:

Lehman Brothers intends to file a petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code

I've noticed that the GOP has gone, to use a technical term, completely go-nuts apeshit over Sarah Palin.  It's weird.   And since this Friday, I've been trying to figure out why I felt that way.  And I think I've figured it out.

Do you guys remember Senior Prom?  There was always one guy who didn't get his first choice, or 2nd, or third.  Anyway, he ended up going to the Senior Prom with a Sophmore or something.  And he tries to play if off like she was his first choice, and goes ALL OUT to convince EVERYONE of this.  She gets a corsage the size of her head.  The limo is extra long.  The guy dances a little too close, a little too grope-y.  You know what I'm sayin'?  And in doing so, he only further emphasizes the fact that she very clearly was not the first choice. 

I've been resisting the siren call of Red Alert 3 for some time.  I was never that much of a fan of the CnC franchise to begin with anyway (I'm from the Starcraft camp).  So when my internet buddies get all geeked out over this and that, I get excited… but I don't get EXCITED.  Even when they announced a Japanese faction, I still felt I could resist despite my fetish for all things azn.

Then those assholes at EA release this.  DAMN IT.

Above is the little girl who sang during the Chinese Olympic ceremonies.  Very cute.  Next to her is the girl who actually fucking sang.  She got cut from the ceremony because she didn't fit Official Chinese Little Girl Cuteness Standards.  It's really no surprise, given China's psychotic obsession with a perfect Olympics, but it's nice to see that other countries can be rancid assholes about physical appearance too.

China: We can bring the stupid just as hard as the US.

Mark Penn's brilliant strategy to defeat Obama: HE AIN'T 'MERCAN!

"It also exposes a very strong weakness for him — his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Penn wrote, according to the article by Joshua Green.

Wow.  How the hell did THAT not get him fired?  Oh right, incompetence.

I just spent 15 minutes trying to come up with a snappy headline.   But seriously, how I can beat the one Time used?  I found a decent headline to use!  Straight and to the point, so I jacked it.  THE ARTICLE, I JACKED THE ARTICLE.  Money quote.

The reason, officials at the French Institute for Research Into Use of the Sea (Iframer) say, is Oyster Herpes Virus type 1 (OsHV-1). That virus, has proliferated along France's Atlantic coast due to a mild winter and abundant rains that allowed ocean water to remain warm, scientists believe. Those same conditions have also created an abundance of plankton — a cornucopia of nutrition that the shellfish have gorged on.

Fully fed and assured of more food whenever they wanted it, the youthful oysters turned their energies and attention to their sexual organs, leaving the rest of their system vulnerable to herpes infection.

The French supply of oysters has been nearly wiped out.  Because of herpes.

Sorry for the lame-ass title.  I'm coming down a caffeine high.   One of the big worries regarding the Bush Administration's BRILLIANT strategery of locking up suspected terrorists in BF-Nowhereistan was the loss of moral high ground.  For instance, we can't tell China to knock it off with the jailing of political dissenters without at least a couple people giggling.

It's hard enough being President.  Now the next guy has to do clean up too?

Let's face it, we're all geeks. Some of us are closet geeks, casually mentioning a "passing interest" in video games, while trying to hide the Halo socks we're wearing under our wing tips. I'm sure all of us have made a secret geek rendezvous on the down-low, maybe for a quick game of Magic. Some of us have found sanctuary in geek communities that have sprung up in vibrant urban areas.

And then there's the San Diego Comic-Con which is like a big "Geek Parade" for those of us who are out and proud. Eric, a compatriot from my Bovine Conspiracy days, has made his trip there and has compiled a photo album of those geeks who are REALLY proud. As usual, his captions are sometimes better than the pictures themselves. My favorite is "Black Cat and Pervert".

I think they'll get everything right but the point.

Cheering for a professional sports team is a fundamentally stupid thing to do.  From a cost/benefit analysis, it doesn’t make any sense.  You are putting in ridiculous loads of time, money, and emotion into an organization that owes you nothing.  There is an implicit agreement to be sure.  Buy tickets to the team and the team will put forth its best efforts to put on a good show (aka, a winning effort).  But as any Buffalo Bills or Cincinnati Bengals fan can tell you, that’s not always the case.   Pro teams owe their fans nothing.  And if fans vote with their pocketbooks… there’s always another city, another community.

This post is about the Seattle SuperSonics, who recently left Seattle for Oklahoma City.  The 15th largest TV market in the nation traded places for the 45th.   I’m a Seattle Sonics fan, or rather, I once was. 

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So I'm loading up a game of Civ IV, and I notice one of Russia's new Leaders is Stalin. Granted, Chariman Mao is also in this game… but seeing Stalin there just felt kinda odd. Now, Ramses II, Genghis Kahn, and Qin Shi Huang are also selectable as leaders for their respective nations, bloody bastards all. But they're super ancient compared to these recent dictators. So while these people were pretty brutal killers, they also had TREMENDOUS impact on the course of history. So yeah, seeing Mao and Stalin all smiling there may feel kinda weird, but it's hard to argue their exclusion.

So why isn't Hitler selectable? Now, putting Hitler in as a selectable leader of Germany would cause a SHITSTORM across the nation.  But I have to ask, what makes Hitler so untouchable?  Is the Nazi movement so embedded in our national consciousness that it instantly causes revulsion?  I can (and have) played Civs with Mao and Stalin with no problems, and those guys are definitely up there with Hitler.  But I would never, EVER select Hitler as a civ leader. Is it because Hitler's systematic murders are so exhaustively recorded and documented? 

The cynical side of me says, "It's because Mao and Stalin killed their own citizens. Hitler did not."

A special thank you goes out to DaveSid in our forums, who provided me with the badges and banners for each faction. To recap, setup and strategy for the Obama-Clinton-McCain three way free-for-all Dawn of War slugfest were covered in the first entry in this series.

Alright, so now you have a sense of who the players are. Now it’s time to see the actual game, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their strategies. But before I drop the science on you, let’s get some things right out in the open.

• I’m an Obama supporter and I’ve donated to his campaign. If by donate you mean I bought a sweet hoodie from the man.
• I admire John McCain and would have probably voted for him this cycle if Obama hadn’t run. I realize he’s done some skeezy things politically.
• I’m don’t particularly like Hillary. In fact, during the primary season, hearing her speak would cause me to turbo vomit.

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Politics are like real-time strategy games. They involve a careful gathering of resources and split-second decisions of their use. Ideally, the combination of tactical strategy and a more urgent pace than turn based would produce a typical match like speed chess; exhibiting fast pace, intense thinking, and tactical strategy. In reality though, the games comprise of memorized build orders and a game pace so fast nearly all strategy is thrown out the window. The only people who triumph are those losers who play for hours and hours on end; memorizing hotkeys while their vocabulary atrophies into Three Letter Acronyms. Does that sound familiar?

We've just had a historic primary season, or so I'm told. And you, dear reader, are probably sitting there in front of your computer, empty beer bottles strewn about, thinking, 'Now what the hell just happened? And where are my pants?'

Well hang on, I'm about to explain it to you, using the hyper-violent RTS Dawn of War, by Relic entertainment. By the way, your pants are behind the toilet. Go put them on before reading this; no one should have to see that shit.

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I don't think it's a particularly big stretch to say that corruption played a pretty big role regarding the damage in the Chinese earthquake.  The corruption is horrifically rampant, and though China took the step of making a National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, it hasn't really stopped it all that much.  But China isn't afraid to use executions as a deterrent.  After the Chinese Toy Scandal, they killed their head of the FDA With Chinese Characteristics for taking $850k (US$) in bribes (My reaction was twofold.  'Why did it take so long?' and 'That little?').  So I was readily anticiapting the annoucement of some executions.  Or not.

China is learning more from the US every day.  Next week they'll annouce a special Task Force to decide whether or not to submit a recommendation to form a committee to start a Special Investigation.  Come on China, don't tell me the Olympics made you guys a bunch of pussies.