So John McCain was trying to stay awake as they steered him down the plane ramp and Hillary Clinton was eating Xanax the way Reagan ate jellybeans, when both felt an icy sting in their spines, and suddenly they were paralyzed and sprawled across, in McCain’s case, a sticky jet tarmac and, in Clinton’s case, a Marriot short-wired carpet.

Then the icepick wielder slipped off his military-issue sniper gloves and replaced them with elegant leather that matched his overcoat and suit, and Colin Powell, desperate to rehabilitate his formerly-stellar reputation after squandering it as Bush’s “good soldier” before the U.N., crisply told reporters that he might actually vote for a Democrat this year, then went on to praise Barack Obama.

Which blew the shit out of McCain’s rep with the military and independents and croaked Clinton’s increasingly weird attempts to explain that she’s an agent of change having been in public life for 35 years, and, in short, gave Obama a huge credibility boost.

The times they are a-changing….

Ah, Baby Boomers. Live by the song, die by the song.