Happy Halloween, America

Overheard in the bathroom, I kid you not:
Gentleman A: Are you going trick-or-treating?
Gentleman B: Yeah, and i've got a real scary costume.
Gentleman A: Oh? What are you going as?
Gentleman B: A banker.

Liz Edwards and Grant Park

So, first things first. Every one of you, should you have an hour or so of time to be horrified, dazzled, and educated, should watch this discussion on health care between Elizabeth Edwards and Ezra Klein. Both of them are incredibly knowledgeable about the topic, and you will learn a lot. For example, the current foreclosure crisis? Half of the foreclosures happening in recent years are because of uncontrollable medical costs (also sourced here and here).

Also, I'm pleased to announce that on election night of this year, I'll be in Grant Park with several hundred thousand other people for the Obama rally* and hopefully victory celebration. I initially wasn't sure about this because A) Chicago gets cold this time of year and B) I've spent the last 14 months keeping an election blog, I feel like I should be there on election night. But the opportunity to be there with the Obamas on a night like that was too good to pass up. So Wyl's going to take over election night blogging (although I may ask him to kick in some updates that I may or may not be able to send from my web-enabled mobile device) and hopefully we'll all have good reason to call in sick on Wednesday morning.



*How could I turn down an opportunity to attend a Democratic event in Grant Park in an election year (ending in 8) that will be kept safe and orderly by Mayor Richard Daley's finest police officers? I'm sure nothing will go wrong. As Hizzoner (the original) said, "The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder."

Snarky though it may be, I really love this ad.



The wink is really what does it.

Syria

I can remember back in 2003, during the actual invasion part of the Iraq war, wondering how long it would be until we went to war with Syria. I figured at the time that it would happen before the 2004 election, but it looks like it may be George W. Bush's parting gift to John McCain.

We can't bomb Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, but we will attack Syria to kill some other guy (not defending the other guy, I'm just sayin').

The Stevens Verdict

Ted Stevens is officially corrupt. In other news, rain might get you wet.

John McCain's quest to rid the federal budget of porkbarrel spending has just taken a giant leap forward. Similarly, the American justice system has just taken a giant leap to defend its current incarnation and undo the PR damage done by the first OJ trial.

I suspect Stevens will never get the chance to learn that jail is more than just a "series of bars" (although, like the internet, it's not a truck) but it makes me feel better anyway just knowing he lost.

Who took all the mirrors out of the White House?

Former Bush speech-writer David Frum has an interesting and unfortunately astute column in the Post this morning. He argues that the McCain campaign is not only losing the race for the White House, but that the way he is doing it is sabotaging the rest of the Republican Party.

McCain got the formula backwards: he campaigned during the center during the primaries, and then upon discovering that he had no party base, campaigned to the right during the general election and sacrificed all of those "swing" votes that any candidate needs to get elected. As such, McCain is not only leeching campaign money from congressional races, but also making the race that much harder for vulnerable Republicans in states and districts where the electorate is far more moderate. As such, he's setting the GOP up to lose more seats than they would if they had a better presidential candidate.

Frum then turns his argument to the defense of a divided government: keeping the Congress and the White House in the hands of opposing parties, for the sake of checks and balances. His proposed plea from the Republican Party to the voters of America reads as follows.

We're almost certainly looking at a Democratic White House. I can work with a Democratic president to help this state. But we need balance in Washington.

"The government now owns a big stake in the nation's banking system. Trillions of dollars are now under direct government control. It's not wise to put that money under one-party control. It's just too tempting. You need a second set of eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability. Otherwise, you're going to wake up two years from now and find out that a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It'll be a big scandal -- but it will be too late. The money will be gone. Divided government is the best precaution you can have."

Alas and alack, if only Frum and his ilk had had that same concern 8 years ago when they took control of all three branches of government, and pissed away $16 billion on an extraneous war to a company once run by the Vice President that doesn't seem to be paying taxes in this country.

Someone should please mention this to John McCain, who's incensed by how much American businesses have to pay in taxes.

Bleep the Press

So, I was watching Meet the Press yesterday. Senator McCain was on, and as always, watching him talk for 20 minutes led to a whole lot of eye-rolling and me muttering "yeah, yeah, yeah" to myself, and one loud decoration of "What the fuck!" that scares the cat. Today's WTF moment:

"Well, look, I would be glad to review the Reagan record, but the Reagan record was certainly one that reined in spending."

In response to that, here are some graphs.












As you can see:
1) Raw debt skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
2) Debt as a percentage of GDP skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
3) The national budget deficit skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
4) Federal spending has been on a consistent, unfettered rise since 1970.

And thus we come to the inevitable conclusion that on at least (at least) one issue, John McCain is full of crap.

McCain's performance yesterday didn't do anything to contradict the claims that his behavior is "erratic." Brokaw came at him out of the gate with talk about his trailing poll numbers, which put him immediately on the defensive. He started talking about how he doesn't agree with the polls, but how if he did, he still has Zogby on his side saying that he's only three points down (counting on the fact that no one has noticed that throughout this election cycle, Zogby has consistently been the least accurate and a persistent outlier from every other polling service). After that, he devolved into nongrammatical, nonsensical sentences that started on one topic and ended on something not at all related, sputtering talking point buzzwords at random and trying to piece them together as well as he could.

So, you know, I'm sure we don't want to spend the morning arguing about polls that are accurate or inaccurate, but I will stand before the American people with my view that, that I think that we don't, we cannot fine small business people and their, you know, or their employ--small business people who have employees without health insurance, that he's going to fine them if they don't have, have the insurance policy that they want, that Senator Obama wants them to have.

On the economy, look, we just, we just figured it out with "Joe the Plumber." Americans just figured it out. He wants to spread the wealth around. And every time there's a poll, there's a different tax plan. There's a different tax plan for America. He's the guy that Senator Obama voted to--for a Democrat budget resolution with will impose taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year.

The last time a president of the United States that did that was a guy named Herbert Hoover, protectionism and raising taxes.

That's what--listen, even the flat tax people somewhat pay more. Even--you put into different, different categories of wealthier people paying, paying higher taxes into different brackets. I mean, and the, and these are different times, my friend. These are times of the biggest financial crisis we've faced in America.

So, so let me just tell you again, I also said, when I opposed the Bush tax cuts, said--that is left out of this equation, I said I've got to--we've got to get spending under control.

That's, that's what, that's what our fundamental belief--the reason why we have governments. In times of crisis, we go in and we try and help the people, especially in this situation where they're the, the victim of a drive-by shooting by excess, greed and corruption in Washington and Wall Street. And again, I and others said we have to have legislation to rein it in. Senator Obama didn't lift a finger.

Well, in simplest terms, if their neighbor next door throws the keys in the living room floor and leaves, then the value of their home is going to dramatically decrease as well.

Michigan, as I understand it, is second--one of two states in America that has a declining population because businesses are fleeing the state. So the worst thing we can do is increase taxes. And Senator Obama wants to do that, and now it's $200,000. I guess last week it was $250,000. It changes with ever--whatever the polling data tells him and his advisers.

Senator Obama wants to "spread the wealth around," "fairness." And that, that is the most liberal economic position that I've seen in the United States of America. Just a fact.

Her husband is a--works the third shift on a oil--in--facilities on the North Slope. He's a--they, they have a--she has executive experience and has given back money to the taxpayers.

Look, she [Gov. Palin] lives a frugal life. She and her family are not wealthy.

Powell

In case you missed it, here's Colin Powell's extremely well-phrased and well-considered endorsement of Barack Obama.

Oops. Turns out "Joe the Plumber" is related to Charles "Keating 5" Keating and owes money on back taxes.

The Final Debate - First Thoughts.

Much to my surprise, I thought the debate last night was the best one yet. There were a couple of pretty lame questions, but in general I thought the discussion he provoked was vigorous and fairly worthwhile to listen to. Both candidates appeared a bit tired and were fumbling over words at times, but they each had moments of surprising clarity. Obama, in the end, can claim victory, if only because he didn't have to do a whole lot. He stuck reliably to a good format: spend the first half of his responses negating McCain's attacks, and spend the second half of the response offering his policy plans. McCain, as a result, was left perpetually on the offense, taking potshots at an opponent who was too calm and too well-prepared for his attacks to do any damage.

It's also worth mentioning that McCain's spastic grinning and irrepressible eye-rolls didn't do much to mask his contempt. Thanks to Anna for tipping me off that there's already been an animated gif made.

Conscience Round

From the Wikipedia entry "Execution by firing squad":

In some cases, one member of the firing squad may be issued a weapon containing a blank cartridge instead of one with a bullet, without telling any of them to whom it has been given. This is believed to reduce flinching by individual members of the firing squad, making the execution process more reliable. It also allows each member of the firing squad a chance to believe afterward that he did not personally fire a fatal shot (for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the "conscience round"). This reinforces the sense of diffusion of responsibility. While an experienced marksman can tell the difference between a blank and a live cartridge based on the recoil - the blank will have much lower recoil - there is a significant psychological incentive not to pay attention and, over time, to remember the recoil as soft.

Considering the likelihood that many of the undecided voters remaining these few short days before the election are older white Boomers or senior citizens, and that many of them might welcome any reason not to vote for Senator Obama which would excuse from their minds any spectre of racial bias, I am left wondering what form of conscience round McCain will offer them tonight.

This is just not cool.

WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE.

The GOP has been going on about Barack Obama's connection to Bill Ayers, a former obnoxious hippie who is now a respected philanthropist and upstanding member of the community. They also love reiterating that his middle name is Hussein, in an attempt to pin him to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

And now, we have news of William Timmons, who John McCain not only has a casual association with, but has asked to join his campaign as head of his presidential transition team (which oversees the process of turning his campaign into an actual presidency that flows smoothly from the previous one). Timmons (a lobbyist, who McCain professes not to consort with) was involved in an effort during the 1990's to ease economic sanctions on Iraq, on behalf of Saddam Hussein. The two men with whom he worked on this project were convicted of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign regime (not to mention a hostile one).

In what universe is this okay?

• McCain professes to hate lobbyists, yet surrounds himself with them.
• McCain is playing guilt by association by trying to pin Obama to Ayers and Hussein, one of whom has spent decades working to better the community and one of whom Obama has no legitimate ties to, but apparently McCain's people do.
• If Iraq was as much of a threat as the GOP would have us believe, Timmons was in fact working actively in opposition to the national security of the United States of America.
• We are currently involved in a war in Iraq, in many cases against the people Timmons was working for. How many people have died in Iraq in the last six years, and how many people have died in conflicts related to the Weather Underground in the last six years?
  

Can we just vote now and get this the hell over with?

The Debate

I'm in Washington DC tonight watching the debate with my co-author Anna and her gentleman friend Dan. Here are my thoughts, as we go.

9:05 -- This is Obama's answer to the first question of the last debate.

9:06 -- A minute later, now you answer the question about how you help the middle-class, which is your bread and butter issue. Except for the part about how to deal with it quickly.

9:07 -- McCain's plan for fixing the economic crisis quickly also isn't very quick. If we could stop buying fuel from other countries so easily, we would have done it a long time ago.

9:09 -- Anna offers us beer. Dan and I quickly accept.

9:10 -- Dan asks whether or not Obama brought any new talking points to the debate. Obama says "no." The only new thing he's said is that he'd put Warren Buffett in charge of the Treasury.

9:11 -- Anna asks me to point out that Brokaw is wearing a "Live Strong" bracelet. I note that he's also wearing a red tie.

9:12 -- McCain talks with pride about "suspending" his campaign. Laughter is stifled throughout the room.

9:13 -- McCain blames Obama for taking too much money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, without mentioning his own campaign manager, Rick Davis, who was still on Freddie's payroll through August.

9:17 -- McCain has faith that the economy can stop getting worse before it gets better. That is silly.

9:20 -- Obama is giving a DAMN fine answer to how he can be trusted with tax money, even though I'm pretty sure he will indeed be increasing spending, which he said here that he'd cut.

9:21 -- DAMMIT JOHN MCCAIN. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT BEING A REFORMER IN A BROKEN SYSTEM. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM AND YOU HAVE BEEN THE BROKEN SYSTEM FOR 25 YEARS.

9:22 -- Obama looks so serene while McCain is talking that I'm not sure whether it's funny or if it comes off as patronizing.

9:26 -- One woman in the back row started smiling so wide it hurt when Obama knew the price of gas in Nashville.

9:27 -- Can someone tell both Obama and McCain that the president doesn't have a line-item veto?

9:29 -- Can we talk about this spending freeze idea a little more? How bad of an idea it is to stop federal spending?

9:33 -- Obama is arguing the "let's be a good example for our constituents" strategy of corporate regulation.

9:37 -- Anna is yelling very much at Tom Brokaw about Obama not being able to rebut McCain on healthcare costs and tax policy.

9:39 -- Purple-shirt in the back row (who got excited about the gas price thing) has a SERIOUS crush on Obama. She's got "Dream Lover" by Mariah Carey playing in her head.

9:41 -- McCain is getting really condescending, not only to Obama but to the audience. He's discussing Social Security and Medicare reform like we're kindergarteners.

9:43 -- Can Tom brokaw stop throwing John McCain as many favors as he can? Jesus H.

9:43 -- Joe Lieberman isn't a democrat. He's the political equivalent of a louse living on John McCain's scrotum. Dealing with Lieberman isn't an example of being bipartisan.

9:46 -- Barack Obama is discussing the creation of the computer. Al Gore is sitting at home doing the Marge Simpson groan.

9:46 -- At long fucking last, Obama is going after McCain about being in Congress for so long and yet here we are.

9:47 -- The snark factor and the little passive aggressive barbs between Obama & McCain are getting pretty intense.

9:49 -- I wish McCain would stop referring to us as "my friends."

9:50 -- Obama just got a softball lobbed at him, right over the plate, and he's taking his sweet-ass time attacking it. His eyes should have lit up and he should have dove right in. Speed up. Get energetic. You have a good plan. Get excited!

9:52 -- We should be doing a shot every time either candidate says the word "fundamentally." Thankfully, I'm not playing that game tonight.

9:54 -- McCain went over the red light for jokes about hair plugs? Really?

9:55 -- Purple sweater has "Wind Beneath My Wings" in her head.

9:57 -- Obama is trying his damnedest to rebut McCain on his health care bullshit, but there isn't enough time left before the election to dig through what McCain says in 2 minutes.

10:00 -- Anna suggests that this election would be in the bag for Obama if McCain wet himself in a debate. I explain that I'm not going to blog about hypotheticals, but then I do anyway.

10:02 -- Obama is going after McCain on this experience/judgment thing. Good. Because McCain's judgment sucks, so it's obvious that his experience doesn't mean squat.

10:03 -- If McCain's shoulders were alright, I would suggest that Obama & McCain just box instead of debate.

10:08 -- "exacerbating our reputation?"

10:08 -- Purpleshirt looks like Gollum in a close-up.

10:10 -- Thank you thank you thank you for talking about stopping the drug trade out of Afghanistan.

10:11 -- John McCain's hero was Teddy Roosevelt ... the trustbuster? Right. Also Ronald Reagan.

10:13 -- Brokaw is a really shitty moderator.

10:14 -- Obama is going after McCain hard on this "speak softly" crap. THANK YOU.

10:17 -- Purpleshirt has "I Only Have Eyes for You" by the Flamingos in her head.

10:18 -- John McCain's war strategy depends on the feelings of the people whose country we've invaded? We're screwed.

10:19 -- McCain isn't going to have another Cold War... except for that part where he's going to keep accusing Putin of trying to rebuild the Soviet Union and challenge him on everything he does. Talk softly my entire ass.

10:22 -- Obama isn't speaking very confidently about this whole Russia thing, and he really needs to be.

10:26 -- McCain mentions again a "league of democracies" -- has no one ever told him about the UN?

10:32 -- I feel like McCain got the last word on a lot of things in this debate. That matters, and I take issue with Brokaw letting it happen.

10:36 -- Has David Gregory any said anything that had any substance? Ever?

The scorecard: McCain came across as a cranky, cranky man, but Obama didn't fight back nearly as hard as he could have. Unfortunately, Brokaw really stifled the debate. I honestly can't say who I think won, because I felt like the discussion was too constrained. Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan, though, seem to agree that Obama won. Taegan Goddard too.

Killing time again

As I wait for my lovely hostess here in DC to get off of work for the day, I'm sadly stuck cooling my heels in a Starbucks on 11th with a laptop that I call Mingus. I've been on the ground in the capitol for less than an hour and I'm already taking note of the weird place I'm in.

1) The public transit trains are carpeted. This just strikes me as an excruciatingly bad idea. Any public transportation vessel should be fully ready to be hosed down because the need will arise.

2) The train stations were apparently designed by the set designers who put Logan's Run together.

3) As I was looking for a place to hang out, preferably with wifi, I started noticing a lot of Abraham Lincoln themed gift shops. Why? I just happened to be accidentally wandering by Ford's Theater. Chicago's a place where people get excited when they see that guy from Wilco in the street, and they only line up to take photos of The Bean. Haplessly ending up at the place where the man who ended slavery in America was shot is on a different scale.

4) I'm in a Starbucks, and I'm the only one in it with a Macbook. I didn't think Starbucks was allowed to open in the morning unless they had a customer ready with a Macbook.

In other news!

• I have learned today, much to my chagrin, that the world will not be ending this year. Much to the surprise of no one but myself, the Chicago "best record in baseball" Cubs have been eliminated from the playoffs in the first round and will not be winning the World Series for the first time in a century.
  
  
• Harold Meyerson has an interesting column today in the Post about presidential guilt-by-association and suggests that perhaps John McCain's current association with former Senator Phil Gramm might be a lot more nationally toxic than Obama's former association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
  

  Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

  Meyerson also notes that McCain has done little to stifle rumors that Gramm would be a strong runner in a McCain presidency for Secretary of the Treasury. That alone should be cause for Obama to take the election in a landslide, but I don't think they're reading this in Texas. If I'm wrong... hi, Texas!
  
  
• Afghan President Karzai is now facing accusations that his brother is involved with the heroin trade. I'm actually surprised that we haven't heard more about the opium business since the invasion in 2001. It spiked downward at the time, but it's up to record highs again. It wouldn't be surprising, since opium represents 11.4% of Afghanistan's GDP ($4 billion a year, out of a $35 billion GDP), but it wouldn't really be anyone's favorite thing to find out that the brother of the man who the U.S. installed as the democratically elected president is involved in the business that's fueling the Taliban insurgents that are currently killing underfunded, understaffed, and underequipped American troops.
  
  
• I'm delighted to say that there's a chance that Saxby Chambliss might be losing his seat this year. Most of you will remember Chambliss (R-GA) as the morally bankrupt dickweed with the gall to campaign, six years ago, by suggesting that his opponent, Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, was a terrorist sympathizer. Chambliss' campaign was perhaps the most grotesque example of electoral politics in the era of Karl Rove, and I don't think anyone reading this will be sad to see him go.

That's all for now. How did I ever deal with boredom before blogging?

Killing time at LaGuardia. The electoral map on pollster.com is up to 260 for Obama, with Minnesota going blue.

The Map

It's worth noting, a scant 32 days before the election, the electoral vote map on pollster.com.



If John McCain keeps the map exactly as it is right now, Obama only has to take Ohio or Florida and can sacrifice all other red states and win the election. As you can see, Obama is up by just a hair in Ohio, and a point and a half in Florida. Please take note that this is a poll of polls: they're averaging several different polls to come up with a composite. But as that stands, here's the states on those toss-up states:
Nevada (5 votes): M - 47.7, O - 47.1
Colorado (9 votes): O - 48.9, M - 46.0
Minnesota (10 votes): O - 48.8, M - 45.2
Missouri (11 votes): M - 49.3, O - 45.8
Indiana (11 votes): M - 47.2, O - 45.4
Ohio (20 votes): O - 47.1, M 46.9
Virginia (13 votes): O - 47.8, M - 47.5
North Carolina (15 votes): M - 47.3, O 46.4
Florida (27 votes): O - 47.9, M 46.4
New Hampshire (4 votes): O - 46.2, M - 46.2

If none of these numbers change at all and are (by some weird coincidence) 100% accurate, Barack Obama wins 329-205, with New Hampshire's 4 still upstairs getting dressed and waiting until 2012 when someone will notice them again.

Not that anyone expects this post to be updated all that regularly anymore, I'm excited to say that next week will probably not see much on this page. In the next 8 days, 4 of my best friends* (one of which is a co-author of this page) will be getting married, and I'll be spending the gap between weddings in DC crashing on Anna's couch, so there will likely be some obscenity-filled debate coverage from one or both of us, but not much else. Expect updates when I get back, especially if I happen to run into Chris Dodd at the bar (which I'm not expecting, but you never know: the man has a rep for knowing how to party).

*[Apparently this requires clarification: there are two weddings in the next week, and I'm very close with the bride and the groom in both parties. This is not a 4-person wedding.]

The Vice Presidential Debate

There were a few key moments in tonight's debate that I want to mention that really caught my eye. Any quotations are from the CNN transcript, which can be found here.

1. Ifill asked Palin about her statement that she wants to see an exit strategy to get her son out of Iraq. Palin responded with a convoluted, rambling answer basically saying that she and McCain do have a plan, and what Bush is doing now is working. Biden called her out and said "Gwen, with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan." He then spent two paragraphs concisely and directly laying out the Democratic plan for "responsible withdrawal" from Iraq and why it's superior to the McCain plan. When Palin was asked to respond, she stared blankly into the distance for several seconds, before coming up with this fabulously original response: "Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure." I could often see the charm in her vaunted "folksy" demeanor at times tonight, but at that moment, I could have sworn that she was about to stick out her tongue at him. She was grasping at straws, and she spent half her response trying to regain her footing (which she did). Biden could have easily been perceived as repetitive, and he could definitely have bored a lot of viewers with his actual knowledge of policy and awareness of specifics of voting histories, but he was never caught off-guard like that.
   
   
2. Palin backed herself into a corner with her pseudo-centrist conciliatory bullshit overtures to the Log Cabin Republicans. She started talking about how she didn't support gay marriage, but she didn't have anything against gays. Biden came back with a brilliant response about how he didn't favor redefining the traditional heterosexual concept of marriage, but made it clear that the definition of "marriage" isn't something that the government has any interest in: what the government has a say in is the civil rights granted to citizens regardless of sexual orientation. He knew that he was saying exactly what he had to say, and went into it completely confident, which led to a particularly funny exchange and yet another horrified look on Sarah Palin's face when she was forced to admit that she had just agreed with Joe Biden on gay rights.
   

   IFILL: Let's try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

   BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

   The bottom line though is, and I'm glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference.

   IFILL: Is that what your said?

   PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.

   IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let's move to foreign policy.

   
   
3. Palin's third moose-in-headlights moment came when she talked about the wonder of using vice presidential power to its utmost, and then had that horrible realization shortly afterwards when she realized that she had just put herself in the same camp with Dick "Keyser Söze" Cheney, who everyone hates, and put the apple on her head for Biden to start shooting at.
   

   PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

   IFILL: Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the vice presidency?

   BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

   And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

   The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

   
   

Other thoughts:

• Barack Obama's campaign made a huge mistake in letting Gwen Ifill moderate this debate. They had to have known she was writing a book about Obama, and that as a result, the conservative media would jump all over any perceived imbalance. And there were some issues where Biden and Palin were going back and forth, and Biden just happened to have the last word on the matter and it sounded like the book slamming shut on the issue. Ifill cut Palin off when she was about to (inexplicably) start talking about McCain's increased regulation on campaign finance reform (which he has oh-so-recently tried to undo for his own benefit), she let Biden finish the health care discussion on his "bridge to nowhere" joke, the aforementioned Keyser Söze article of the constitution, and (my favorite) going on a rampage against this common misconception that John McCain is a maverick. These things will not go unnoticed.
  
  
• From Anna: "More or less a draw, if only because she refused to debate on conventional terms. He could've hit her a lot harder... not literally.
  
  
• From Wyl: "I'll never be able to watch Fargo again. She was more folksy than The News from Lake Wobegon, but she comes off twice as fake... Biden handled himself as well as he could, considering he was debating with both hands - and more importantly, his mouth - tied behind his back. Sexism is a touchy subject, but I think people have to take a step back after tonight and say we need to engage that subject in a direct way, because tonight it was pretty clear Biden had to play it safe lest it seem he was picking on her. And that's just as unfair to him as it would be to a woman if he did portray her as weak because of her genitalia."