Your associate editor was prepared to go to this funny-sounding debate party last Friday at the D.C. headquarters of libertarian masturbation pamphlet Reason, one for which Bob Barr was invited to yell at Obama and McCain on the teevee, live. Ineffectiveness and vanity on this level is, of course, the very essence of libertarianism. So instead your editor incoherently liveblogged from home, viciously drunk (sorry!) and FAR AWAY from the old yelling octoroon. But Liz Glover went in our stead, and she brought a sidekick! MORE »

The State of Texas says you must file to be on the presidential ballot 70 days before the election, and both Barack Obama and John McCain allegedly missed the deadline, so now whackadoodle Libertarian Bob Barr will be President of Texas while the rest of the nation has to make do with the geezer or the other guy. MORE »

• Huckabee and Barr will embarrass themselves publicly with some other losers, just to see who would fail more tragically as a stand-up comedian. [DCist]
• In her world-famous acceptance speech, Sarah of the North quoted some batshit Nazi who also wanted to assassinate FDR. [Ben Smith}
• Palin and McCain are pretending to have an extramarital maverick sex with each other so that racists can have their own Barack&Michelle. [Daily Kos]
• The North Korean army will destroy its enemies by arranging itself to appear as nothing more than an MC Escher drawing. [Matthew Yglesias]
• Rachel Maddow has had her MSNBC show for all of 48 hours, so it’s high time Fox News finally pulls through with a homophobic comment. [Ezra Klein]
• Barack Obama commanded a pack of rabid wolves to run north, to Alaska, so they could devour Palin. These wolves feed on the flesh of hockey moms. [HuffPost]

Ron Paul’s very special press conference has ended and, we regret to inform, it featured no “Tournament of Losers”-style death match among the various third-party candidates he invited. He totally copped out and endorsed three third-party candidates: Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin. He was planning on endorsing Bob Barr, too, but selfish Barr didn’t want to share the blessing with his fellow losers and refused to show up. Ha ha, Bob Barr is in loser-denial. But Paul redeemed his hazy endorsement of these competing hippie agendas by revealing that Phil “Nation of Whiners” Gramm tried to force him into endorsing John McCain. And somehow Paul fended off his heroically persuasive powers! MORE »

Look, Ron Paul, YOU WIN, FINE, YOU AND YOUR SUPPORTERS ARE GREAT, now will you please go away for a long time and play with your gold bricks, alone? Of course he won’t, which is why he’s making yet another “special announcement” tomorrow about some useless new thing he’s cookin’ up. He’s almost as bad of an attention whore as Ralph Nader, who Paul has invited to tomorrow’s press conference. Cynthia McKinney too! Bob Barr too! Chuck Baldwin (the Constitutional Party candidate) too! What a depressing quintet of failure. MORE »

Some mega-suburban evangelical church in Southern California will be the scene of the most epic political battle since Jesus took on the Romans: Saturday at 5 p.m. (8 p.m. Eastern), Obama and McCain will be locked in soundproof glass torture chambers while a goateed “powerful evangelical” hobbit will chillingly ask them questions about religions and whatnot. MORE »

First, plans were made for the Republican convention in St. Paul during the first week of September, at the Xcel Center, starring John “Oh him” McCain. Then, wacky freedom-fighter Ron Paul and his Campaign for Literacy anounced a Paultard rally, a weeklong thing that would also take place during the first week of September, but at the Pepsi Center in Minneapolis. Oh and there’s also a socialist May Day rally of some kind, which we only know about because hey, free Steve Earle concert. But also: dirty hippies and laborists. And today we learn Ralph “Malph” Nader is having his secret rally in Minneapolis, too. MORE »

Bob Barr looks like Reverend Jeremiah Wright and will probably cost John McCain the election, and for these two reasons alone Barack Obama makes love to Bob Barr’s voodoo doll in his hyperbaric Hope chamber every night. You see, 6% of Zogby poll respondents said they would vote for the Libertarian candidate for president, and this is the exact size of the margin Obama leads by. Score one for Liberty! MORE »

Proving that Obama’s 15-point lead in last week’s Newsweek poll was a liberal hoax, a hot new LA Times poll has Obama’s lead diminishing to a statistically insignificant 12 points, or 15 if you include fictional losers Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. Also, among voters who said they’d vote for McCain, only 45% are “enthusiastic” about doing that (Mexican vs. Muslim, pick your poison etc. etc.), while that figure is 81% for Obama. This just goes to show how screwed the Democrats will be come November. Sooner or later these Obamatards will realize that in the Real World, you don’t “like” politicians or presume they’ve got anything good to offer; you vote for the schlock you completely fucking hate, because why set yourself up for disappointment? [LA Times]

Just when you think nothing can top the antics of Paultards and Hilltardz, the Naderites of Elections Past are back to show you how it’s done. Despite being completely ignored by all media, Ralph Nader gets 6% of the vote in a new CNN poll. WTF? MORE »

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, a white landowning male, looks exactly like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s black Muslim pastor. Why won’t Bob Barr denounce his unpatriotic phenotype? [Slate/Trailhead]