However, regular readers of this column are going to have to wait yet another week for a standard Friday Talking Points offering. This week we are throwing out our format entirely, and instead providing an explanation of who we're voting for, followed by a call for reform in an effort to inject a possible silver lining to what promises to be a very contentious Election Day (no matter who wins). Yes, there will be optimism at the end of this column, specifically provided for people who are tired of the apocalyptic tone of the final pre-election week. So there's that to look forward to.

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So we had the final presidential debate this week, and Donald Trump went right on being Donald Trump, which should have surprised precisely no one by now. Our subtitle today, of course, refers to the two most amusing (or horrifying, take your pick...) things Trump said during the debate. Since then, both "bad hombres" and "nasty women" are trending online. Hey, when bad hombres and nasty women unite, anything could happen, right?

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Tonight was (finally!) the last presidential debate of the 2016 election season. I thought it was a better debate (if less entertaining) than the first two, personally. A lot of actual policy positions were discussed, the candidates interacted with each other without so much of the "everyone's screaming at once" interludes, and the moderator kept the subjects moving along at a good clip. So my overall impression of the final debate was that it was a lot more like a normal presidential debate than the previous two.

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With only about four months left to go in his second term in office, President Barack Obama just had his first veto overturned by Congress. Considering Obama's rather aloof attitude towards Congress (including even members of his own party), what is extraordinary isn't so much that Obama just got overturned -- it's that it hasn't happened before now. The contentiousness between the White House and the Capitol has been pretty fierce during Obama's term, but up until this week none of his vetoes has been overturned.

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There has been relatively little speculation this election year about what could possibly be the "October surprise." In a normal presidential election year, this is a fun subject to speculate about when the actual news from the campaign trail gets dull and repetitive. This year, of course, that hasn't exactly happened -- the political news has been anything but dull and repetitive, in fact. Because of this, most political reporters haven't even bothered to wonder if an October surprise will happen, much less what it might consist of. The few articles I've seen have suggested two possibilities: Wikileaks releasing more of Hillary Clinton's emails, and Vladimir Putin launching some military adventurism somewhere in the world. Both, it's interesting to note, would aid Donald Trump's candidacy. Perhaps one or the other of these will happen, but I think there's a different October surprise out there, and one which (depending on the outcome) might help Clinton, not Trump.

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Well, the first presidential debate is a done deal, and as always I like to quickly type out my own personal reactions before reading everyone else's, to give you an opinion uninfluenced by the herd mentality of the rest of the media.

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Before we begin, we promise we'll get to that rather-provocative subtitle later, as we turn this week's talking points section over to an attempt at providing campaign advice for Team Clinton. We've been long wondering why Hillary hasn't made some sort of effort to put these two large issues behind her on the campaign trail, and our frustration has led us to offering up what she should say in order to achieve this goal.

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One of the risks I regularly take as a blogger is to write and publish my own reactions to major political events (like debates) before I even look at what anyone else is saying. This assures the reader that my opinions and perceptions will be untainted by groupthink, and solely my own. I cannot follow the pack, as it were, if I have no idea where they're headed. But, as with any risk, occasionally it puts me in a position at odds with the political universe.

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Tonight we saw the NBC pre-debate. The non-debate debate. Officially a "candidate forum," both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump appeared on the same stage -- but not at the same time. The stage was an impressive one, or at least the exterior shots were, since it was held on an aircraft carrier in New York City. This was to highlight the subject of the event: foreign policy and the military.

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Senator John McCain is, as I type this, awaiting the results of today's Arizona primary election. The outcome will likely be that he will once again obtain the Republican Party's nomination for his Senate seat. But the results will probably be a lot closer than any of McCain's other primary races, because he is facing a Tea Party (or perhaps "Trumpesque") challenger who actually has a chance to unseat McCain. Discontent with McCain (and Establishment Republicans in general) from the Republican base voters is palpable -- so much so that McCain has been forced to support Donald Trump's campaign, even after Trump personally insulted him (and all American prisoners of war, for good measure) in a very public manner. But even if McCain, as expected, wins tonight, he'll then go on to face a Democratic challenger in what could also be a very tight race for him.

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