8:17 PM
The stage is set for tonight’s Presidential debate. Sarah Palin won’t be involved, so there might not be much in the way of post-worthy stupid. Her absence also means I feel safe flying solo on this one, because I probably won’t need anyone to talk me down.

I thought I would get into Bitterness Mode by watching “House,” but it’s a rerun. Damn you, Fox!

What began as an exercise in simple liveblogging quickly escalated into an unreadable disaster. As such, I have placed it behind a jump. If you really feel the need to read it, and watch my sanity slip away (in spite of my predictions), feel free to click through. You have been warned.

8:36 PM
I should not be feeling a sense of impending dread. And yet I am. And I am willing to take bets on just how misplaced that sense is. My money’s on “completely.”

8:50 PM
I really should have a labcoat. Everything I do would feel so much more official.

9:00 PM
All right CNN, do your worst.

9:03 PM
Tom Brokaw has promised me a Town Hall format for the debate, with questions sent in from regular voters. I hope some of them are hilariously stupid.

9:08 PM
One question in, and Obama already wants to kick AIG’s ass for misusing their bailout money. Meanwhile, McCain’s plan to fix the economy somehow involves lower taxes and, presumably, drilling the fuck out of everything. He hasn’t said “drill” yet, but I’m hearing it anyway.

9:10 PM
Brokaw: “Who would you appoint as Secretary of the Treasury?”
McCain: “Bite my wrinkly ass, Brokaw.”
Obama: “Maybe we should fucking interview some people before giving them the job.”

9:13 PM
Holy shit, McCain still thinks “suspending” his campaign was a good idea, and something worth bragging about. I’d like to reassert my belief that he is not involved with the running of his own campaign.

9:15 PM
Obama: “I have to correct a bit of Senator McCain’s history. Not surprisingly.” Boosh!

9:20 PM
Everyone wants to know how to fix the economy. The three questions thus far have been bailout-related. But neither candidate can provide an answer that anyone can understand, because the entire system is based on imaginary bullshit. Literally, it’s a matter of which organization currently owns documents symbolizing money that they may have at some point in the future. There’s no way to explain that sensibly.

9:22 PM
McCain tells us, ominously, that Obama has never gone against his party’s leaders. Almost as if they’ve never been as grievously wrong as the leaders of McCain’s party.

9:23 PM
There’s the drilling! Still a bad fucking idea that won’t work.

9:28 PM
Brokaw keeps telling them to stay within the time limit. They keep ignoring him. Disobedient candidates, or just a bad format for a debate?

9:33 PM
Unprecedented! Obama mentions 9/11 before the Republican. Also unprecedented! He makes fun of Bush’s urging to “go out and shop.” Sadly, instead of staying mean, he has to start pandering, promising offshore drilling and “clean coal” and a bunch of other shit that’s never going to work.

9:35 PM
Rum time.

9:39 PM
Brokaw: “McCain is allowed to lie about shit, as long as he does so within the time limit.”

9:40 PM
Obama’s found a way to bring the conversation back around to his tax plan, allowing him to address McCain’s made-up comments. He even managed to work his way back to the topic at hand (health care), thus avoiding accusations of Palinesque subject-changing.

9:42 PM
McCain: “It’s not hard to fix Social Security…”
Brokaw: “Medicare.”
McCain: “Okay, Medicare. But fixing Social Security is easy.”

Fucking what!?

9:47 PM
Jesus Christ, is this debate occurring in some kind of magical comedy-proof bubble? I mean, yeah, McCain’s pitching some pretty bad ideas, but he’s doing so generically enough to deflect my outright mockery. Obama occasionally works in a zinger that gets a chuckle out of McCain, which means… what, exactly? Does McCain think his opponent is so wrong as to warrant derisive laughter, or does he secretly agree? As in, “Yeah, I guess I did drop the ball on energy independence. That is SO me.”

9:50 PM
Drilling again. Is this seriously something that’s being talked about? Shouldn’t we all be a lot more pissed off that we haven’t gotten our jet packs and self-sustaining dome-cities yet?

9:52 PM
And Brokaw really, really needs to stop whining about the debate rules. I honestly can’t figure out who gets to talk when, or for how long, and I’m starting to suspect each question uses a different set of rules.

That’s how miserably pointless this debate is turning out to be. No matter how asshole-ish McCain’s behavior is, no matter how thoroughly Obama smacks him down, the only thing I can comment on is Tom Fucking Brokaw playing the role of whiny referee at an elementary school four-square game.

9:58 PM
Speaking of Brokaw, he just asked, “Is healthcare in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?” By giving them that third choice, he allows McCain to avoid looking like a total douchebag. Don’t fucking do him favors, Brokaw. Of course, Obama said it was a right, and McCain took the douchebaggery-avoidance option and said it was a responsibility.

10:04 PM
Moving on to foreign policy, where McCain has a chance to really let the stupid shine through. He’s talking about his experience. I am beyond uninterested. I agree with Obama’s positions, but he’s not really surprising me at this point.

10:10 PM
All right, you know what question I want to ask the candidates? Why is everyone actively trying to turn this country into a third-world hellhole? And why the fuck are we supposed to be happy about that? Why is there even a debate about healthcare, and why is doing the exact same thing that every other industrialized nation has done considered a dangerously radical idea? Why can’t a person get elected without mouthing platitudes about America being the greatest nation in the history of the universe, and claiming we can do no wrong? Why can’t Obama just come out and say, “Look, I don’t pray. And that gives me more time to actually fucking govern.”

10:14 PM
There we go, finally some stupidity! McCain has claimed Ronald Reagan was his hero, then said Teddy Roosevelt was his hero. And that’s as stupid as it’s gotten all night.

Wait, something big is happening…

10:20 PM
Indeed it was! Obama finally broke, and the results were awesome. He dropped a big “Fuck you” on Tom Brokaw and his little rules, and then took McCain to task for singing the “Bomb Bomb Iran” song, for calling for the annihilation of North Korea, for joking around about invading Iraq when we had barely gotten into Afghanistan, and for claiming that Obama wants to invade Pakistan.

And McCain’s response was the same old Bush-style gibberish. His argument, seriously, was that by simply describing his plan for Pakistan, Obama was somehow compromising national security by “telegraphing his punches.” Because as we all know, if you want to avoid military conflict, it’s a good idea to fucking surprise people. Just jump out of a tree, tackle a motherfucker, and shove a treaty in his face.

10:23 PM
In fact, fuck the debate. That shit McCain said earlier about admitting defeat in Iraq? How is that even possible without conditions for victory? I’m not asking him to lay out conditions for victory, either; I’m asking him to admit that doing so is fucking impossible. You know what the military is doing in Iraq right now? Defending themselves. As far as I can tell, they are being kept there just for the sake of remaining there. Their goal? Don’t get killed. It’s like some kind of twisted gladiator match, except everyone’s fucking sick of it and the Emperor can’t believe it’s still going on.

10:28 PM
This is, without a doubt, the least enjoyable thing I have ever watched. I am usually quick to come up with cranky political commentary — at the very least, I can bitch about what’s actually being said. That’s not happening tonight. It’s like the candidates are in different rooms, and Tom Brokaw is in a third room full of scientists who tell him he’s controlling the debate, when they’re really just administering a psychological test to see if they can drive him insane.

10:33 PM
Question: “What don’t you know, and how will you learn it?”

Damn good question, if you ask me. Raises the possibility for a bit of honesty slipping through. Obama jokes about his wife being smarter than him, then gives a campaign speech. McCain laments his lack of clairvoyance, then gives a campaign speech.

You know what? I know smart women (none of whom are running for Vice President), and I can’t see the future, but when someone asks me what I don’t know, those are not my first choices, answer-wise. You know what I don’t know? When I’m gonna get my fucking jet pack.

10:36 PM
Well, this was a complete clusterfuck. The candidates said nothing I didn’t already know, and nobody screwed up in any obvious manner. I could have summed up the whole debate with two or three updates, and at least one of them would have been about that “House” rerun. Instead, I wrote nearly 1500 words, and can afford to lose almost all of them.

And now James Carville is talking. Who wants to run off to Mexico for a couple weeks?