TONIGHT'S DEBATE IN FIVE WORDS: Get a room, you two!

(Sorry. Still an Obama guy, but I suddenly don't hate Hillary anymore. That may change.)

"NO SUBSTANTIVE POLICY DIFFERENCE" REDUX: After watching that debate--I'm convinced! The differences were: "I'll be long-reaching change" versus "I'll be safe change." But change is apparently on the table! Nobody was taking Wolf's bait to fight either. I think the Hillary campaign has decided that anything that looks anything like dirty trickses is not going to fly this year, and especially not against Obama, and the new strategy is: kill with kindness. It might be enough to stop the bleeding.

"NO SUBSTANTIVE POLICY DIFFERENCE": I keep hearing this (and if I wasn't a lazy, bad blogger I'd go find some links) and I'm not sure how true it is. I mean, isn't Hillary (based on Bill's record, and I guess her war votes too, and just the general Clintonian preference for taking the politically more expedient path) more likely to blow some shit up then Obama?

(Hey, if your main issue is the drug war--and it's pretty close to mine--who do you vote for? I imagine Obama would be better on it, just because--again--you know the Clintons aren't going to anything different in general, so at least with him you got a chance at something different. But Stop The Drug War says don't get my hopes up. And the Hillary people tell me Barack's an ordinary politician that the media's in love with, so I might as well just vote for Hillary. How very inspiring....)

ETA: Obama has made some noise about marijuana decriminalization, so that's something.

YEAH, JUST TO PILE ON HERE: With Giuliani out now the number one worst possible presidential scenario has been avoided, and we can all be thankful for that. Now the question becomes, who's more awful out of Hillary and McCain? (Which is why I'm pro-Obama, it's an easy decision with him versus anybody.)

IF I MAY GET EASTERBROOKIAN HERE FOR A MOMENT: The Patriots are the defining team of the Bush years. Being introduced as a team in the first post-9/11 Superbowl, just a bunch of blue collar guys not given much of a chance against the Greatest Show on Turf--it was such a feel-good moment when we needed a feel-good moment. And here they are now, the most hated NFL franchise since the 70s, having been convicted of cheating and not having to pay a competitive price for it. It's a Bushian arc! (If only in terms of approval ratings. Look--it's an Easterbrookian analysis. It doesn't have to make sense.)

The above probably makes Eli into Barack Obama, so it's utility as a metaphoric explication of the Patriots is questionable. Still--Patriots, Patriot Act, amirite?

"TESTOSTERONE TO ME IS SO IMPORTANT FOR A SENSE OF WELL-BEING AS YOU GET OLDER": Your quote of the day that made me laugh for some reason.

THAT'S JUST POLITICS LOL: I swear, there is no more annoying defense of the Clintons than that. At least Talk Left tried to make an actual argument defending their latest shenanigans--though I myself am unconvinced by one link to somebody's diary from three months ago.

A week ago I could have gone with any Dem candidate, but things start looking a little bit bad for the Clintons (Iowa, the ambiguous Nevada result) and they react like they have been....I don't want people who govern like that in power again. End of line. So let's go you-know-who (now available in Hebrew.)

MAN, THIS COULD BE TOTALLY UNFAIR: But it seems like a lot of your bigger lefternet blogs have steadfastly refused to pick a candidate, I guess so they don't say something they regret later, and it's annoying. You're telling me, lefternet, that you really don't have an opinion on Bill making skin color campaign issue number one of the moment? Or Hillary's Reagan bullshit? I feel like only the wonkier blogs have stated their preferences at this point, like Kevin Drum's Hillary love or the gang at ObWi trending Obama.

It's the ObWi gang who's got me in an Anyone But Hillary mood at the moment. Publius, then hilzoy then hilzoy again. And they'll probably end up supporting Hillary if she gets the nod, but I'm not a durn demmycrat and if anybody can get me to vote Republican in '08 it's the Clintons.

Not that I won't change my mind in the next 10 months, McCain can be a legit scary dude and "President McCain" sound like the name of a fictional President in your average 80s low-budget science fiction dystopia (the ones where the United States is strangely depopulated and most of the movie takes place in abandoned factories.) But as for right now there's an Obama beanie with my name on it just as soon as I get paid.

CAN YOU NAME A GREAT TEAM GRIMMER THAN THE 2007-08 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS?: What are "Questions Bill Simmons would be asking if he wasn't from Massachusetts," Alex?

(Note: If he has mentioned this, I apologize. But he's become unreadable for obvious reasons so I can't really check for myself.)

MEMO TO THE PS3-OWNING INTERNET: If you're trying to format your external hard drive to FAT32 so the PS3 can recognize it, just use GParted. It's graphical, easy to use, and doesn't give you the opportunity to screw things up like with the terminal-based partition editors. Take it from one who knows.

Then again, I'm like, "Why am I bothering? You know how many copies of Q*bert you'd need to fill up 50 gigs?" But maybe I'll stick a bunch of movies in there and never have to take a DVD out of the case again. I dunno.

(Q*bert actually available at Playstation Network, the sick man of next-gen console download services.)