It was nice that both prez candidates ended the night on the same note; ie - now that the campaign is over, let’s all make a real effort not to be jerks to each other.  I feel our ability to do that here in MA may be hampered somewhat by our continued payment of state income tax, but at least the odds of passing through a second-hand marijuana cloud will go up a little.  Kumbaya, we shall overcome, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it…abolish affirmative action?

On the flight tip, I have a stage check on Monday that will thumbs-up or thumbs-down my progression to the solo cross country section.  That is: piloting a gas tank with a huge sword on the front, alone and basically unsupervised, above you / your loved ones / your property.  To the residents of Maine and NH: please try to keep your normal “firing rifles into the air in celebration of your freedom” to a minimum.

1. My sister Maria got engaged to Eduardo in July.  They’re great people who are even better together, and I’m psyched to have Edu and his peeps joining the family.

2. If the weather holds, I’m flying with my instructor down to Hyannis this afternoon.  I’m plotting two courses; one that assumes we get cleared into Logan’s class B airspace and another that takes us around it.

3. TJIC and I are both looking forward to seeing some off-duty cops get thrown in jail for punking civie flaggers on worksites.

4. The same economic events that are (rightly or wrongly) nudging people Obama’s way in the national election may also nudge people toward Yes on Question 1 locally (repeal of MA income tax).  Setting aside the whole “they promised to bring taxes back to 5% and ignored our ballot initiative to force them to” angle, I think there’s a decent case to be made for how repealing the income tax could not only help the regional economy, but lead to higher state tax revenues over the long term.  I understand why some state employee unions are flipping out over it, but hockey stick curves aren’t just some evil myth invented to prey on teachers.  Then again, easy for me to say.  Good luck, everyone.

For both debates, coverage from the Right has followed (and will continue to follow!) this pattern, which while logically consistent is also batshit crazy.  Worst of all, it smacks of the same flavors of clinging victimhood that the Right (correctly!) identifies as counterproductive among some sectors of the Left.

Phase 1:  “The game is rigged.”

The debates will be unfair, because the moderator is always some left-wing nutjob.  This follows from the premise that the moderators are drawn from the MSM, and everyone in the MSM is a left wing nutjob.  Jim Lehrer is biased.  Gwen Ifill desperately wants Obama to win so she can sell more books.  Giving a straight answer to a debate question, for a conservative candidate, would be implicitly surrendering to the bias of the event itself.  It is a conservative candidate’s patriotic duty to say what he or she came to say, regardless of what biased questions are posed by the moderator.  The pressure of being forced to go up against both the moderator and the opposing candidate is so great, that if our candidate is somehow able to recite his or her talking points while retaining some coherent English sentence structure, may our cup runneth over with bonus points.

Phase 2: “If you heard it was a blowout, we only won the game by a little bit.  If you heard it was close, ZOMG we rocked impossibly hard!”

Whatever you heard, our candidate slew the double dragon of the moderator and the opposing candidate.  We know this because our candidate didn’t recoil into a pre-linguistic state on camera, or degenerate to the point of shitting on the podium and throwing feces into the crowd.  He or she formed thoughts despite the hopes, dreams, schemes, and expectations of local/remote Communists, local/remote Terrorists, and anyone who writes for a newspaper or appears on a nightly news broadcast.  Any pre-debate doubts on our part had little if anything to do with his/her past performances, and most if not everything to do with how his/her performances were subsequently reported in the liberal MSM.  You see, we’re all partially brainwashed by the constant media barrage of liberal messages, so we’ve lost our ability to properly determine for ourselves what a broadcast of underprepared and/or totally incoherent nervous babbling looks or sounds like.

Feralchimp’s meta-scorecard:

• Biden and Palin each performed WAY better than their [detractors hoped / supporters feared] they might.  Minimal incoherent babbling from Palin, no F-bombs from Biden.  Ship it!
• Those hoped/feared performance levels were both lower than what people really expected in both cases, but much closer to expected in Palin’s case.  The worst case scenario was so bad for her, people on the Right were unironically talking about getting shitfaced as a coping mechanism.
• Biden debated better than Palin, but Palin debated [ more (better than expected) ] than Biden.
• Biden supporters saw Biden win the show.
• Palin supporters saw Palin win the show.

If you think that setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq equates to “raising the white flag of surrender,” and anyone could be President given a year or so of the right speech coaching, McCain/Palin is the ticket for you!

If you think that giving judges the power to force lenders to write down the principal on a failing mortgage is anything other than the government using threats of force to unconstitutionally void contracts between consenting parties, Obama/Biden is the ticket for you!