It's worth noting that if current polling trends continue there's a chance that Bush could face deadly serious political consequences; should the Democrats retake the House or Senate in a year the fur may fly. The Public is waking up and smelling the white phospherous (warning: ugly ugly link) and isn't too happy about how everything has gone down. There's a legitimate (though slim) chance that Bush could even face impeachment, or slightly more likely a series of investigations into his administration which could lead to a Nixon-esque resignation under duress.

I'm not getting my hopes up -- the Democratic party's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is storied and epic -- but the political and legal logic is there. Should the Dems actually forge a vital coalition tapping the massive charge of static energy building up between the moral outrage on the Left and the desire catharsis in the Center/Right, the sparks just might be enough to short out the Republican Noise Machine.

And yeah, I know a lot of politics lately. Election-time, ok? I actually went on a date last night and that was prety good too, but I don't tend to kiss and blog, so you'll have to bear with my interests.

The beautiful freaks at Downhill Battle have a new campaign: Kill Bill's Browser - Switch to Firefox. This is raising the stakes. Backed by a $1/referral offer from Google, they're making a push to drive the next wave of adoption.

What's interesting is that the new browser wars are more likely to be fought over associated services. Right now the main thing in play is who gets to handle things from the "search" bar, but the future will see more refined and specialized services. This is what the Flockers want to do, though in the short term their revenue stream appears to be replacing Google search with Yahoo and suckling from that teat. I think we've got a ways to go before these services really break.

The interesting thing is that the break-out of these services will coincide with the maturation of today's teenagers. There are political implications here too; the 2008 election will see the largest potential youth vote in US history. The right candidate with the right online campaign could make serious waves.

Anyway, if you browse with IE, get ready to be annoyed coming here.

For those of you who aren't wild web-surfers on the political front, here's a quick wrap on things I've been watching:

As anticipated, Mayor Mike gets four more years, and downticket Democratic incumbants rule the day across the board. Lesson learned: heavily Democratic New York City is saddled with an aging and increasingly ineffective political machine which is highly vulnerable to high-profile attacks from maverick Republicans. The machine has to open up at some point, it's just a matter of whether or not this happens as a result of total system failure, or as part of a plan to revitalize city politics. Don't bet on the latter.

In California we approached flawless victory on the ballot initiatives. Big ups. My company worked this campaign and I think we even helped.

Lots of other points of light: Intelligent-design took a big hit in some school board elections; anti-gay ballot measure failed in Maine; Gubinatorial victory in NJ (nice work Stolls) and VA.

Electoral reform initiatives fail in Ohio. Hopefully they'll try again amidst the '06 electapalooza.

Slashdot | EA To Sell Game Music on iTunes

Those who doubt the hit potential of video game theme songs probably haven't seen Billboard's Hot Ringtones chart lately, where Koji Kondo has sat right near the top for 55 weeks. Who's Koji Kondo? He composed the theme for 'Super Mario Bros.,' which ranks this week right between the Black Eyed Peas and Bow Wow featuring Ciara.

I had a similar thought last night when my random iTunes shuffle put on one of the songs from Halo. Video games are an outlet for a type of creativity (musical composition) that's had its traditional showcases all dwindle in popularity -- the symphony, the musical comedy -- or else become crowded with pop music -- e.g. motion picture scores. Seems to me that as the gaming industry expands, it will provide more and more opportunities both to showcase and to subsidize creativity. That's cool.

I also got to thinking about how the intelligent interweaving of music into gameplay has a lot to do with the value of a game. Sunday I played a little of Rockstar's The Warriors with A-stock. A rockin' good time. The gameplay is fantastic, but very different from GTA. I see it as a logical extension of the Double Dragon, Final Fight side-scrolling beat-em up. Very well done, and it has context-sensitive music which is often used to clever/ironic effect.

Yeah, I think if I ever get rich, I'll invest in making video games. Not coding them, but directing. Get some smart people to do the nuts and bolts (or more likely license a kick-ass engine) and really run wild with the creativity aspect.