Five Thirty Eight, one of the myriad election projection sites around the web, has a piece far more interesting and entertaining than another story on how divide the number 538: the Electric Minor Political Scandal Acid Test.

We all have our biases, and we all wonder how it is that some story we just don't care about, like what's on Obama's lapel or McCain's use of his wife's jet as opposed to her car, takes off on the web while important news like Zimbabwe goes undiscussed. 538 has an explanation for this, and based on about 26 years of watching politics like a hawk I think he's mostly right. The test boils down to:

1. Easy soundbite.

2. Appearance of hypocrisy or other serious political negative.

3. Does it tell us something we just know is true?

4. Is it safe for the opposition to use?

5. Are people bored?

Based on these criteria (more fully explained at 538), we can see why Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem took off. BLACK NATIONALIST OBAMA PREACHER YELLS GOD DAMN AMERICA IN CHURCH ON 911!

Perfect.

But you can apply the test to any of them. WARMONGER BUSH USED DADDY'S CONNECTIONS TO DODGE VIETNAM DRAFT! would have been dynamite, had it not been superseded by something even easier: LIBERAL MEDIA SMEARS REPUBLICAN WITH FAKED DOCUMENTS!!! And so Dan Rather lost his job, and John Kerry lost his election.

In fact, you could probably condense the test even further. Can you put the scandal in capital letters, and if so, how many punctuation symbols can you add before it gets embarrassing? Based on all of this, I can see two potential scandals becoming major embarrassments if further evidence or events warrant: McCain's explosive temper (SHOULD THIS MAN HAVE HIS FINGER ON THE BUTTON?!?), and the fact that surrogates claiming to support Obama are sabotaging his candidacy by minimizing or laughing off McCain's heroism (LIBERAL BRIE EATERS SPIT ON MCCAIN'S SACRIFICE!!!) That or something to do with arugula.

Of the two, I expect the temper to have more legs when it matters. Obama can throw Wesley Clark and any number of idiot bloggers under the bus. His bus has 18 wheels. McCain, on the other hand, has to drive his bus, or someone will have an accident.

Via John Scalzi.

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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Angry Asian Man is a blogger who offers excellent coverage of racism against and media treatment of Asians; I find his work indispensable as a father of Asian kids. Today he's got a post about John McCain's use of the slur "gook" in the context of previewing "Gook: John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters," a new book by Irwin Tang. Angry Asian Man has blogged about McCain's use of the term before, inspired by the recent re-circulation of a 2000 news story about McCain's unapologetic use of that word in the 2000 campaign:

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I don't know, but apparently McCain's people think it would take the descendants of great Americans like Thomas Jefferson. Specifically, descendants with serious issues with black people.

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My worlds just collided. One of my favorite columnists at ESPN is the author of Tuesday Morning Quarterback over on their Page 2, Gregg Easterbrook. Am I the only one that didn't know that he is a member of the Brookings Institute, a contributing editor to The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly, and a editorial contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and author of a book called "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse"?

I guess I shouldn't have stopped reading when I got to the "In addition to writing TMQ…" part.

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European truckers and other frequent drivers are protesting high fuel prices. Various government luminaries are proposing a McCain/Clinton style repeal of gas taxes, which in the red-tape-intensive Europe would require the sign-off of the entire freaking EU, a task that would be described as Herculean if Hercules were a bureaucratic wonk.

Yet it's not clear what truckers are hoping to accomplish by cursing the darkness. Even in Europe, the government is not price-fixing gasoline. Market forces largely out of the government's control, and evidently out of its comprehension, are fixing gasoline prices. As was discussed here in America earlier during the Obama/Clinton smackdown, cutting the taxes is a Hello Kitty bandaid on an arterial gusher. What's worse, you're going to drop the price an insignificant fraction, encourage people to drive significantly more because of irrational human behavior, and thereby drive up demand and drive up the prices even higher. That's stupid. Unfortunately, many politicians would rather do a stupid, stupid thing than admit that government is at best powerless and at worst actively harmful when it addresses some economic forces. If they admitted that, people might have less faith in the government, and therefore less faith in them. Prestige would dwindle. Power would wane. Politics would cease to be even show business for ugly people; it would be merely ugly people for ugly people. Who wants that?

Not John McCain, at least. He's back to calling for a gas tax holiday. At least he hasn't yet stooped to the Clintonian levels of sneering at economists.

The less I say about last night's Democratic primary results the better. I've already tipped my hand about how Hillary Clinton managed to convert me from neutral to distaste, and there's not much point in me describing how listening to her speech Tuesday night made me want to swerve into oncoming traffic.

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John McCain, recognizing that he is perhaps two years behind Ron Paul in building an army of internet-savvy flying monkeys, has created a point system to encourage his minions to spread his talking points on blogs across the land.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

Wow! The McCain Online Action Center! And you get … points! What are they redeemable for? It's not entirely clear. Prestige? Bragging rights? Ambassadorships in the McCain Administration?

Whatever it is — I see this as a challenge. Who is the Popehatter who can get the most points based on blog posts that are not, in read carefully enough, complimentary to McCain? Scroll down on the page linked above and leave a message. Here's what I left:

Blog: Red State
Blog Username: ProudAmerican
Blog Body: I KNOW that John McCain is a proud AMERICAN unlike baroc HUSSEIN obamma! I was at a rally for JOHN MCAIN and a man walked up who was NOT WEARING AN AMERICAN FLAG PIN! In front of a VETERAN! And LADIES WERE PRESENT! John McCain saw him and got mad and kicked him in the groin so hard that he became incontinent (the guy without the flag pin, not John McCain). That's the kind of patriotism and leadership we need!

I'll let you know if I get points.

A little something for our new friends.

Did you know that Octopus sex is impossibly intricate and competitive? Had you ever heard the term mating arm? (I hadn't..) I think this makes me fear Octopi even more.

Do you think I might have posted this at least in part to get Octopus Sex into Ken's search terms?

Melissa McEwan has a reminder of why we should perhaps, just maybe, worry a little bit about John McCain and his bad temper.

If I said something like that, I would be utterly, completely, and immediately destroyed. We're talking total conversion of matter to energy. You know, I'm just sayin, is all.