If Barack Obama picks someone out of the box — a Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb, perhaps — then I think we have a good chance of winning.  But if he goes with a safe choice, a vanilla choice like Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, or Joe Biden, we’re sunk.

McCain’s pick really isn’t as important.  McCain’s victory is predicated on making Obama unacceptable, not on selling John McCain.  At the end of the day the only moves that count are Obama’s.

I’ve played the Battlefield series since its inception in 2002 with Battlefield 1942. In that time, I’ve been team-killed for planes, run over by my own teammates, and killed in a barrage of friendly artillery fire many times.

I’ve been playing on XBOX Live since 2003. In that time, I’ve had my sexuality questioned, my skill disparaged by team mates, team-killed mercilessly, and generally been reminded of why I hated bullies in high school.

Lately, I’ve been playing the new XBOX 360 game Battlefield Bad Company, which has mixed the traditional Battlefield team-killing, with XBOX Live idiocy.

Case in point: two nights ago I spawned on a new server to find myself instantly attacked by my own squad mates. Not just team mates, but squad mates. Their leader tossed a grenade at me and immediately started telling me about how he was going to kill me.

Instantly, I was surrounded by him and his goons in a tight circle.

“What are you going to do about it, Jeff?” he said to me.

I had not spoken to him, yet. Didn’t intend to. Instead, I pivoted around the circle until I found the leader and knifed him. For a moment, the bullies were shocked.

“He knifed me!” the guy shouted, surprised.

His friends opened fire and killed me.

“He knifed me!” the kid squeaked again. There was a tinge of admiration in his voice.

Deciding that I couldn’t hurt my permanent stats by committing another inevitable team-kill, I left the server for happier pastures.

You have to have a thick skin to play on XBOX Live. Really, I have nothing more to say than that.