I feel like I’m awaiting the results of a critical medical test, or maybe the results of a life-sentencing trial. CNN just threw up a map on one of their myriad fancy screens showing where they’ve been getting calls reporting voting problems and irregularities. The dots skew heavily and collect in the most important toss-up states, of course, and all over the South.

As a television station receives more than 25,000 complaints about broken machines, vote-switching, intimidation, registration failures, and up to seven hour waits to cast a ballot for the next President of the United States, you’ve got to wonder how raucous the rest of the world’s laughter is tonight. We know their eyes are on us; we’ve been promising everyone a lot. So as the greatest country in the history of the world heaves and lurches and struggles to let its citizens vote, let’s click frantically on the internet for answers and affirmations while we wait on line.
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The new “biopic” from the master of the conspiracy movie isn’t a bad film, but will leave you feeling afterward like you’ve seen a better one. This is due to the dazzling transcendence of Josh Brolin’s performance, which catapults him forever from being “that one dude who bangs Diane Lane and has Barbra Streisand for a stepmom.”

Everything you’ve heard about Brolin’s dead-on turn is true and then some; he nails Dubya down to the befuddled furrow between his eyes. As for the rest of it — well, it’s nothing that we didn’t know, and not even the most damning stuff. Stone actually goes rather gentle on the guy, giving him the classic movie arc: you just keep wanting him to beat the odds and succeed!

(There are no spoilers for this film unless you were born after the year 2000. Eight-year-olds: fuck off)

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I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty exhausted these days by the news cycle. It’s hard to muster concern through all the worn-down defensive apathy. I never thought I’d miss the years where I anguished over Bush’s mounting high crimes and misdemeanors. Oh, how I would blog about impeachment, back in the halcyon days when we had money! Those sunny times when all we had to worry about was hurricanes wiping out our cities, and no one thought twice about the prospect of their retirement savings wiping out.

We’ve been on this ride for a very long while. Remember when Hillary was our biggest concern? I miss her girlish pranks, too. The last few months have run roughshod over my already frazzled, news-addicted psyche. At this point I’ve reached the very depths of cynicism: I don’t even want to give them my outrage. Nothing is surprising or unexpected anymore. And I think you may be with me.

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John McCain could not skulk around the stage this time like Gollum, though he grunted and grimaced enough; thankfully he had to keep to his appointed seat across from a serene Barack Obama. Let’s be honest about what we saw tonight. We saw our near-president Obama, confident and sometimes amused at the baseless attacks — he was comfortable enough, now, to show his disdain whenever McCain lied. Both of them looked exhausted, but Barack’s hair has taken on a silver cast throughout the race, the very real experience of constant campaigning taking its toll on him. And then we saw his opponent.

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As the global economy staggers on crazy legs and even rich people stop taking taxicabs in New York City, the McCain campaign, solidly losing for the first time, has struck back like a vicious, cornered animal in the run-up to tonight’s debate. We knew they were mean; the election until now had proved them to be brutally calculating and soulless. But with their chips literally down, McCain/Palin doesn’t have anything left to lose, and they’re cashing in on fear and hatred and sound bites.

They can’t talk about the economy, can’t offer any means of fixing it, or of denying their connection to it, and no one wants to talk about the Middle East. Harking on Rev. Wright runs the risk of reminding all the people they’ve convinced Obama is a Muslim that he is, in fact, a Christian.

So the McCain campaign has piped up their ridiculous focus on Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, a 63-year-old Professor of Education at the University of Illinois. Both were on the board of a community anti-poverty group eight years ago in Chicago. A very long time before that, in the Age of Aquarius, Ayers was part of the radical antiwar group the Weather Undergound. This is the man you’ve heard called a “terrorist” by no less than Potential-President-in-Waiting Sarah Palin (never forget).

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