Are you one of those crazy nuts who thinks there's no difference between the parties? Who thinks maybe that a small, elite ruling class just rearranges the nameplates every couple years to keep the rubes happy? Who suspects perhaps that the English Royal Family, along with the Illuminati, run a massive conspiracy to keep American political power in the hands of a secretive class of lizard aliens? Well then you certainly won't be dissuaded from your beliefs by the annual Al Smith dinner, an annual white tie affair at which the supposedly bitter rivals for the presidency swap funny funny jokes at each others' expense. DC has like three of these things every year too. Because partisanship is just a distraction to keep you from learning the truth! The truth that is exposed every year only by the cameras of C-SPAN! Oh, John McCain killed it. He was really funny! His speech is attached. Barack Obama's speech was actually pretty great too, his is after the jump.

" Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d'oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne, a tipster told Page Six." [Post]

The Obama campaign posted a little instructional video featuring Jay-Z yesterday. Who knew Jay was so familiar with voter registration laws? We look forward to his explanation of how the electoral college works next week. In the meantime, the video is below.

Boy, there are some real wackos out there, right? And this election, whoo, it really brings out the worst in the crazies. Stuffed monkeys with Obama stickers, shouts of "kill him," insane email forwards, there are countless examples from this miserable election of outright racism. But those are just fringe losers—bunch of racist nobodies, right? That's why it's fun that this week's three worst examples of outright bullshit hate-mongering all come from professional, official Republican party staffers!

Gee, it's almost like Barack Obama's campaign predicted McCain would distance himself from President Bush at last night's debate! How else could they have put together this clever ad refuting McCain's crazy claim that he's not George W. Bush? More importantly: they highlighted all the mugging and blinking because that's the important message here. They're very good, right? [via Radosh]

The Last Time: The early numbers on Wednesday's final presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain put viewership around 38.3 million — squarely between their second face-off (42 million) and their first tilt last month (34 million). Viewers who watched to the very end were rewarded with the accompanying bit of McCain prankery, which had Democrats nationwide wondering when Barack Obama had become a lobbyist. [The Live Feed; photo via Wonkette]

Sure, John McCain is a MAVERICK, but there is, as many voters have learned, a flipside to that. The Republican presidential nominee can be impulsive and temperamental, and it's only been getting worse toward the end of the campaign, making past incidents, like his hollering at Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller or his meltdown in front of the New Republic's Jeff Dearth, look like part of a very real pattern. Last night's debate was probably the last straw. McCain posted his worst-yet ratings in the post-debate polls, with his numbers falling most sharply, within live-reaction panels, in the wake of his comments on William Ayers, ACORN and opponent Barack Obama's alleged negative campaigning (which voters were predisposed not to believe). His incessant face-pulling, insane blinking and cranky interrupting (see videos after the jump) were equally destructive to his cause.

After three presidential debates, everyone has a pretty good idea of what they'll be able to mock (gently at first) about their next president. For George W. Bush it was his cocky, frat-boy persona and mispronunciations. That stopped being funny real fast. If Barack Obama wins, mockery will get more difficult, but he does tend to start sentences with "I believe" this and "I think" that. So arrogant and elitist, God! Plus, the ears. John McCain, meanwhile, says "my friends" too much and, especially tonight, blinks like a maniac. How erratic! Also, he pulls all kinds of just weird sarcastic faces when he's not interrupting people, as seen in the graphic at left, which appears to have already been crafted from tonight's footage. (In came from somewhere on Tumblr, but we don't yet know who made it.) McCain may be behind in the polls, but Saturday Night Live should really be in the tank, in its own self-interest.

Do you hear that? It's the sound of dozens of campaign reporters working the phones in a desperate attempt to scare up the first reaction quote from about Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe The Plumber, a small business owner who pointedly questioned Barack Obama on the campaign trail and became an incessant talking point for John McCain in tonight's otherwise boring presidential debate. McCain once again failed to deliver a performance that will help him steal supporters away from frontrunner Obama. Sure, his "I am not George Bush" line was a nice zinger that will be talked about tomorrow, but his Joe The Plumber fetish is far more fascinating.

Robert Duvall may have been one of the few Hollywood Republicans to avoid the cinematic turkey that was An American Carol, but that doesn't mean the venerable actor isn't willing to speak out about his political opinions. This week, Duvall attended a $1,500-a-head GOP fundraiser where he was tasked with introducing vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and the actor let loose with a series of left-bashing statements that would place him firmly on the elder side of the McCain/Letterman War of '08:

There are two acceptable political affiliations if you work at Google: Hyperlibertarian Paultard, or reflexively Democratic Obamamaniac. Vint Cerf, one of the guys who actually created the Internet back when it was a Pentagon-sponsored research project, and now works at Google as vice president in charge of being the guy who created the Internet, has put himself in the latter camp by officially endorsing Obama. Since Cerf is such a powerful voice, he might as well be speaking on behalf of Google itself. But the reason he's throwing Google in the Obama camp is painfully shallow and self-serving.It's all about net neutrality. What's "net neutrality"? As far as we can tell, it's a bunch of rhetoric that amounts to regulations that affirm Google's God-given right to avoid giving Internet service providers a cut of advertising revenues. An Obama presidency would mean Google can save money on lobbying fees. Well, times are tough, and every penny counts. It's good to know that even the saintly Vint Cerf votes on pocketbook issues. He's the father of the Internet, and he approved this message.

The most important thing to remember about tonight's Presidential Debate is that if you want to watch it you'll need to Tivo Project Runway. Also kindly old Bob Sheiffer will moderate and the candidates will be sitting down, at a table. Sheiffer is a genial old Texan who is probably a Republican and therefore is in the tank for McCain but that won't actually make any sort of difference. Barack Obama double-dared John McCain to make Ayers accusations to his face and McCain promised that he would but honestly we won't be surprised if he doesn't bring it up explicitly. The debates exist in their own parallel universe outside the headlines so don't expect too much substantive difference in subjects covered and arguments made. But it still might be better than last week! Because they're sitting down. Debates where the candidates sit at the same table almost always feautre more lively discussion than the boring podium ones. The candidates have a harder time delivering speeches to an audience or to the camera and they sometimes accidentally engage in discussion with each other. Or they just snipe back and forth, like Cheney and John Edwards in 2004. (That debate was awesome. GAY DAUGHTERS FOR EVERYONE!) Who knows what crazy tactic or stunt McCain will try but it will probably fall flat. Obama will be serious and cool like before. If Obama's current lead is momentum than that momentum will increase. If it is a high that will tighten as we get closer to election day (our theory!) it will tighten a bit. And you know even if it is interesting it probably won't "matter" except in the only way the last two debates "mattered": as part of the ritual of finally deciding that one of these jokers will be ok to see on tv for the next four years. The end!!!

So every day during election season, campaigns release "talking points" to their media surrogates on the tv, friendly reporters, and, often enough, unfriendly reporters. Now, on the eve of a big important presidential debate, Barack Obama's campaign has—breaking!—"issued a set of debate 'talking points' to media on Wednesday morning, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal." Mr. Drudge adds: "The memo oddly mirrors much of the main press analysis and theme of the current campaign." This is because the point of talking points is that a) they reinforce what media people are already saying and b) they are usually repeated verbatim on TV within minutes of being disseminated. This is kind of an inexplicable DRUDGE EXCLUSIVE because even the people who still get their talking points from Republicans already know what the Obama talking points are? Anyway. The talking points are attached, because why not. It's kind of a neat peek into how all the bullshit artists on your cable TV get through the day.

The New York Times today runs five—five!—pieces on how many voters have somehow deduced that presidential candidate Barack Obama is a black man. Adam Nagourney reports that Hillary Clinton advisor Harold Ickes (he's also, it should be noted, a former Jesse Jackson aide) "routinely shaved off a point or two" from Obama's poll numbers to account for secret racistness. You can tell he was doing this during the primaries, right? Harold, people who won't vote for Obama because he's black aren't lying to pollsters. Because they sure as hell weren't lying to the Times reporters who went into the field to report on race.

Democrats are thrilled to see Obama ahead by more than 10 points in the polls. But they're not counting their chickens just yet: Al Gore was leading the polls in mid-October of 2000 and then, well, he won except that he lost. But if you're a Democrat and looking for further evidence that you're going to have a reason to celebrate on November 4th, there's good news courtesy of an authority you can really have faith in: Rose Rosetree, face reader! Salon had the expert physiognomist gaze at pictures of all the important people, and Barack's great big forehead might as well have "leader" tattooed on it: Its wideness means "having ideas, goals, ideals" that will overcome the "obstacles that might get in your way." Even more reassuring: Obama and Joe Biden are "nostril twins."

There's a big dinner in New York tomorrow in honor of Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, CBS News' Katie Couric and various other smug media elitists will be there, along with Sen. Hillary Clinton. The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees have been asked to give 15-minute speeches, but only one has requested an a teleprompter to keep him from just repeating "Who is the REAL Barack Obama, my friends" over and over for the entire speech. Organizers are confused, the Post reports, because they've never met a politician who couldn't give a 15-minute address without elaborate technological aids, and in fact no one has asked for a teleprompter for this event, ever, but really McCain just knows he'll be tired out from personally insulting and snubbing Barack Obama in a variety of innovative new ways at tonight's debate.

Jim Downey was once fired from Saturday Night Live, along with cast member Norm Macdonald, for repeated "OJ Did It" jokes on Weekend Update. He eventually made his way back to the show as chief political satirist, which basically puts him near the center of both politics and pop culture this year, with his sketches, no less pointed than his OJ material, earning mention in televised debates and re-airing on cable talk shows. But the influence of Downey and his show has been artificially inflated, he tells the Observer, by fearful news networks, who would "like to make sarcastic comments about candidates , but their role as news people prevents that:"

In the good old days of the 1960s, everyone was always scared that Black People were going to burn all the cities down. They burned a couple pretty good, understand, and then all the white people left the cities and things sucked for a generation or two, until the white people all came back, thanks to Rudy Giuliani. Now, though, if Obama loses, Black People will burn all the cities down, again! It's true, syndicated talk radio host Bill Cunninghan (that is an actual photo of him) said so, on his radio program.

So of the seven million people who watched Sarah Silverman's Web video promoting "the Great Schlep" to Florida to convince Jewish grandparents to vote for Barack Obama, how many do you think actually made it to the kickoff trek? Try 100, and from the sound of things in the Times this morning, half of them didn't even have any relatives down there to begin with, so they ended up just lecturing random elderly people, like this guy. What is Sarah Silverman, chopped liver?? Actually, it doesn't matter, since the comedian didn't even show up herself, so you can't exactly blame her fans for doing likewise. There are three more weekends left, prospective schleppers, assuming your grandparents haven't already mailed in an absentee ballot. If you do make the trip, don't forget to bring the official talking points, including the ones about how Obama is a very safe type of black person:

You know a story is sketchy when even a British tabloid looks at it and goes, "You know, this seems a bit salacious and over the top," as the Daily Mail has just done with the rumor, dating to August but now resurfaced, about how Barack Obama maybe got too close to an anonymous young staffer during his 2004 senate campaign, before Michelle had her exiled to the Caribbean, but probably the whole thing is just a big Republican smear. The Mail tracked the woman down somewhere in the West Indies — they won't give her name or location, dodgy Fleet Street hacks! — and she said "nothing happened. I just left... I switched careers. That’s it." Then the paper got a mysterious call from a London lawyer, and now the right-wing bloggers are saying the scandal has been basically proven.