Back in 2000, RAW and I took a course in political science together. It was something of an odd course; one offered at UH only once every four years, focusing on an event that not-so-coincidentally only happens every four years. The name of the course was American Presidential Elections.

Of course, that was the year 2000, and so everyone had to write their final essays for the course not knowing who had won the election.

One of the more interesting items that came up in the course, however, was the phenomenon of the "October Surprise." Basically, it's a tactic of mudslinging campaigning; you hold on to some bit of juicy dirt on your opponent as long as possible before releasing it into the wild, hoping that you can use it to hurt your opponent without their having time to come up with a decent response.

So far, I count at least three "October Surprises" this election cycle, on the national scale.

First up: The leak of a "classified" document - the "National Intelligence Estimate" - on the status of the war in Iraq. Interestingly enough, when information "leaks" like this hurt Democrats, they want an inquisition, and when they help? Oh, what "brave souls" are doing the leaking. The same I'm sure is the case for Republicans, or any other political entity, but it's always funny to behold; the people who were screaming about getting someone for "leaking classified information" one day are lauding the leak of classified information the next.

Second up: The unveiling of the "Mark Foley Scandal."

Now, the Foley scandal has all sorts of juicy tidbits. Part of the problem is that Foley was an "in the closet" gay Republican, and as such pretty much immune to any repercussions as long as it was the Republicans who'd have to do the ousting; after all, there's nothing that the supposed "party of diversity", the Democrats, would like than to go on the talk shows and hammer the Republicans for firing a gay man for being gay.

The second problem? Every page involved in the "scandal" was either an adult, or so close to being 18 that it's hard to draw the line. The third problem? This isn't happening in a vacuum. The discussions in all of the IM logs that I've seen appear to be mutual, which means he's - gasp - a gay man doing naughty things with another gay man. If he weren't also a Republican, I have no trust that the Democrats would have been doing anything other than their best to bury this and protect Mark Foley.

The last problem? Yeah, the timing. This could have been brought up months ago, but the release was timed to coincide with the election too well. As Elim Garak stated on DS9: "I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."

This is one of those coincidences that can't be trusted.

The latest "October Surprise" is a release by the British magazine "The Lancet" of highly inflated casualty counts in Iraq.

The problem with this? Not only is their study methodology discredited, they tried the same stunt in 2004, releasing a study with highly inflated counts just in time to try to influence the 2004 US presidential election.

And un-shockingly, the major newsmedia, in quoting the Lancet's report, are failing to report on this.

Coming back from the other side, we have Harry Reid in trouble for some illicit land dealings that look quite suspicious. Again, the timing of the release is also suspicious, and could easily be Republican "October Surprise" that they've been holding on to as well.

Which leads only to the question - what will next week's "October Surprise" be?