Good fucking lord, can’t we get any work done around here without a crisis erupting every hour? We were quite happy to let things slide while we caught up with the paying customers, but we didn’t expect them to fall off a cliff. Given the circumstances, we’re left with no choice but to resort to The Link Dump From Hell:

• Psychogeezer checks into rehab: Proving once again he’s not afraid to take bold steps in a crisis, John McCain concedes the presidential race five weeks before the election. We look forward to watching Barry debate a cardboard cutout Friday night. Not that we expect anyone would notice the difference.

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We’ve been highly distracted with geek chores the past couple of days, and we’re discovering that trying to catch up with the Financial End Times is like missing an episode of a primetime serial — we have no idea how that polar bear got there, but we imagine it’ll make sense eventually.

So pardon us while we attempt to wrap our exhausted mind around this:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) warned his former colleagues that they would pay a price in November for backing the bailout now — and that John McCain could ride to victory over Barack Obama by persuading voters that the bailout is really the “Obama-Bush plan.”

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If it seems like the world is vanishing from your grasp piece by piece, well, it is. One day your comments are taken away from you, the next week the whole posting engine goes south.

And while we would gladly accept $700 billion to fix it, fact is your money’s no good here, just like the rest of the world. Either the Evil Hamsters deign to fix the database, or they don’t. At least, being hamsters, it won’t take much gold to sew their parachutes.

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“This is a desperate attempt to gain political advantage using scare tactics and deceit,” said Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman.

How does he do that? How does Tucker Carlson’s bastard child say that in the face of eight years of Rovian politics? Who taught him how to lie like that? What pampered Eastern elite college did he attend on Daddy’s money?

Turns out he didn’t. He went to a Western state university. A very Western state university. A state university so Western, you can hop in your Pinto and be walking the Florence beach within an hour.

Tucker Bounds, Boy Liar, Campbell Brown’s Punching Bag, went to the University of Oregon.

My university. My home town. My fucking turf.

It’s not like there aren’t assholes among the Duck Diaspora. One of them owns a sneaker company, although we treat him nice because the money he saves from Asian sweatshops buys some nice buildings on campus. And the dead half of Simpson-Bruckheimer was responsible for putting Tom Cruise in a fighter jet. And we were really proud of Yosuke Matsuoka until he, um, signed up Japan with Germany and Italy a few generations back.

But we prefer to talk about Prefontaine. And James Ivory. And Randy Shilts. And Wayne Morse, one of the two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. (The other? Ernest Gruening of Alaska. Small world!)

It’s okay, we’ll be fine. At least it rains a lot in Eugene — the stench has probably long since washed away into the Willamette.

Crisis Draws Attention to McCain Social Security Plan [WSJ]

‘Dynamic Duck duo’ help propel McCain’s campaign [Oregonian]

U.S. Drafts Sweeping Plan to Fight Crisis As Turmoil Worsens in Credit Markets [WSJ]

As we were about to say last Sunday before we got tired of sounding like an oracle and spiked the post, this might be the most critical week of the election: the week the caricatures settle in.

Events overtook our discussion anyway. Who cares what Sarah told Charlie? That’s a pre-9/15 attitude in a post-9/15 world. The past keeps disappearing at an alarming rate this season, and we’re sure something will happen this afternoon that makes us forget this morning. And whatever it is, Geezer will promise to reform that too, just after he tells us not worry about it.

But despite our admonition to not pay attention, we do peek at polls occasionally, especially if they promise to enlighten us beyond who leads among 1,100 adults stupid enough to answer the phone.

Even if takes — let’s see — seven grafs to find what we’re looking for.

And sure enough, what we find is this: Nothing has changed. Including the fact that everyone continues to ignore the only consistent statistic all year: your age.

If you’re under 45, odds are 3-2 you support Obama. If you’re over 65, the odds reverse. In between, even. You can chart that with a ruler, left to right.

This election is a war on Boomers, and it has been from the start. Sarah Palin didn’t change that, probably because anyone her age or younger can see what an idiot she is without the intercession of Uncle Charlie.

Everything else is a smokescreen, mildly interesting chatter at best. If you expect to live until at least 2035, you’re voting for your future. If your chances of surviving McCain’s first term rival McCain’s, you’re begging for one more chance to fuck up the world royally before passing what’s left of it to the next generation.

McCain Seen as Less Likely to Bring Change, Poll Finds [NYT]

So, while we were bravely rescuing Cynics Party commenters from being cast adrift on an ice floe, apparently Geezer said the economy is sound, and then he didn’t, which was before or after he pulled a Gore and claimed squatter’s rights on the Crackberry, but definitely before Failed HP CEO Carly Fiorina said he doesn’t have the cojones to run a Fortune 500 company, while we discovered that Talibunny lurves them tanning beds, which makes the odds of Geezer croaking first from skin cancer less certain.

Oh, and Nader’s talking to parrots.

We give up. Just throw the election into a blender and we’ll check back later.