Well, the GOP surprised everybody by having another debate this evening. Is there one tomorrow morning, too? The Czar has lost track.

Further, the Czar was going to skip this one tonight because he had stuff to do. But the Царица really wanted to watch and asked if the Czar would join her. So he did, but in between one boy yelling at the iPad, and the other attempting to build a massive roller coaster out of small pieces (this has been an ongoing engineering project now in its second week), and the Czar trying to copy some files from his laptop to a freaking external drive, he missed a lot of it.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to copy a 400 MB file using Windows 7? The damn operating system keeps locking up. It has been this way every since the Czar jumped to Windows 7. Sure, it fixed the nightmare of Vista, but there is this small problem that it cannot copy files to external drives of a terabyte. The Microsoft forum is rife with complaints about this problem, which no one there seems to be able to duplicate. Indeed, there are suggestions that the problem is with this, that, or the other, and that Windows 7 is not the problem. On the other hand, some nice folks came up with a little app called TeraCopy that, for free, totally fixes the problem. Anyway, this has really pissed the Czar off that once again it takes the free market to prove that Microsoft long ago lost control of its own operating system and the kids working there have little idea how any of it works.

But we digress.

On the positive side of the debate:

Mitt Romney was back in old form, again. He smiled and chuckled at serious condemnations of his background and policies, and delivered some stunning attacks on Obama. This has been made possible because Romney, smartly, doesn’t give an Ionian fig what Newt somebody or other says about him: the only opponent Romney is staring down is Barack Obama. He wound up looking pretty savvy tonight at all points. But seriously, if your stupid operating system cannot copy files, what good is it? For heaven’s sake, issue a patch that at the very least rolls the copy process back to Vista. Ironically, copying large files was something Vista did pretty well.

Rick Santorum finally seemed to get the attention he has been craving: he occupied a good portion of the debate time, and he knew he had a golden chance to score. And he did: he punished Ron Paul on Iran (again), and demolished the tired old man’s spurious charge that he was a liberal. Paul himself even slipped and referred to Santorum as a big government conservative—when he was explaining why Santorum was a liberal. Santorum looked pretty good again, but slipped when he explained his “spendometer” concept; he had a solid chance to dismiss claims he is a lobbyist, but instead went in a weird direction with that.

On the so-so side of the debate:

Newt Gingrich was given very little time to talk. He mostly agreed with the others, once again, and weasled out of explanation regarding his recent attacks on Romney. Gingrich did score a massive hit—to thunderous applause—when he accused the media of pushing a less-than-urgent gay agenda at the expense of Obama’s attacks on Catholic policy. Someone needed to say it, and he sure said it. But everyone else treated Gingrich as a has-been, and the Speaker himself seemed a little small and sorry tonight.

Rick Perry did better at this debate than he has at nearly every other debate. He threw out a scathing attack on Obama’s war on religion, the reality of serving in the armed forces as a way of framing how you see Iraq, and how his outside status has kept him clear of the lobbyist mudslinging. But Perry still seems dazzled by the lights, and his odd pauses and verbal em-dashes still remind the Czar of the high school football star struggling through his oral presentation on the Treaty of Ghent. A good night for Perry, but likely not good enough. Anyway, how is it some guys can give a copy utility away for free that works so flawlessly, which pretty much proves that Microsoft screwed the pooch on their own operating system?

On the negative side of the debate (and you saw it coming):

Jon Huntsman is a snotty show-off. He reverted to his tired tropes, even using his overdrawn phrase “time for a serious conversation” in his first answer. And he brought up what a utopia Utah became under his governance, and how all this mishmash of issues is not as important as China. China, China, China. And he even spoke Mandarin live on stage! Ain’t he dreamy? He seems to be reaching to convince us that a progressive. intellectual rich guy who has lived overseas is a better Presidential choice than Barack Obama, who is of course a progressive, intellectual rich guy who has lived overseas. Romney was awesome when he pretty much told Huntsman to shut up: that everyone else on stage spent the last three years getting Republicans elected, while he was carrying out his master’s orders. Romney seemed to say that purely out of annoyance, but it certainly worked to Romney’s advantage.

Ron Paul was the target of numerous attacks. The Czar thinks the other candidates are just sick of him, and can only imagine how irritating the guy is in the green room before the debate. Paul played defense all night: he was not asked about the Fed, about Iran, about spending, but was hammered on his use of George Soros-funded sources as the basis of his attacks on the others, on his lack of a coherent foreign policy, about those infamous newsletters, and most importantly how a guy—blasting the others for being lobbyists—managed to get a lot of earmarks for his own Congressional district. Perry called him a hypocrite to his face. A really bad night for Paul. But the Czar wagers Ron Paul could write an operating system that copies a couple of half-gig data files from one drive to another without causing Explorer to crash totally. Holy cow.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.