Biden should have turned that canned "There you go pointing backwards again" barb around by saying that he can well understand why, being Republicans, Palin and McCain would much prefer that everyone just ignore the last eight years and pretend they never happened.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. It seems like an obvious rejoinder.

I'm trying to remember if Obama nailed McCain on a similar point in their debate.

Some political cartoonist ought to do that up right, with Obama and Biden pointing out several broken windows and child versions of McCain carrying a bat and Palin carrying a glove. Caption could be a verbatim quote of Palin: "There you go, pointing backwards again".

Watching the debate confirmed it for me -- Sarah Palin really does remind me of Dan Quayle. Just like Quayle, she's not as dumb as her critics make her out to be -- though that's a very low bar -- and sometimes comes across as reasonably sincere and likable.

But also just like with Quayle, what I come away with is that she's just way out of her depth. (Even aside from the fact that I disagree with her on pretty much everything.)

where is Cheney in this campaign?

I was quite pleased that Biden brought up Cheney and nailed Palin to the wall with that. Cheney's approval numbers consistently poll even worse than Bush. Palin's suggestion that she'd expand on Cheney's power grab left her vulnerable.

Quayle Version 2 who wants to be Cheney Version 2? Hell, no!

How nice that both candidates could agree to discriminate

In an otherwise contentious debate, both Biden and Palin said they did not support civil marriages for same-sex couples.

Yeah. Not surprising, but disappointing and annoying as hell.

This is the way I look at it, though: Sooner or later, DOMA will be challenged. I'd much rather that eventually ended up in a Supreme Court that had one (or two or three) Obama picks than that many McCain picks.

What I found to be the most disheartening and snore boring parts of the debate was this habit that the American debates over the last few go rounds have had with bringing up stats on the senator's, congressman's or governor's "voting record". That stuff has got to be the most misleading and ultimately, useless garbage anyone can spout off.

How do we check the accuracy of what the candidate is being accused of? "Well senator, on the bills against dog beating, you voted against them 25 times...." Maybe we should have a little sidebar thing on the TV screen that could show us if the charge is true or not.

Here's the thing: most legislation consists of package deals, and congresscritters eventually have to vote on the whole package (if it gets that far). So they're almost certain to vote "yes" on legislation that includes things they'd otherwise vote "no". Or vice versa.

Biden tried to make that clear by responding to Palin's lame charge that Obama "voted against the troops" by pointing out that by the same criterion McCain "voted against the troops". I don't know how many people understood what Biden was getting at, though.

(This, incidentally, is part of why it's generally easier for governors to get elected as president than it is for congresscritters.)

I suspect Palin's non-response to Biden's mentioning the loss of his wife and child wasn't out of a lack of sympathy but because it simply wasn't in her script. She had the things that she wanted to -- or was told to -- say, and she knew what cues to hang them on. But there was nothing in the script for what to say when her opponent showed his vulnerable side. It caught her unprepared, so she just picked a random scriptlet and let fly.

Without a doubt, Biden also had little scriptlets prepared and ready. But he had enough attention left over to react and adapt and think on his feet. And that showed.

Uh, have you read Watchmen? You're quoting a psychopath.

It's amazing what a little ... well, okay, a lot of lipstick can do.

Sarah Palin's role in this election is now essentially over. Unless she starts speaking in tongues on live TV, nobody but the fundy base (and maybe the Salon editorial board) is going to give a shit.

Isn't it illegal

to hold a prayer session for political purposes?

Um, what? No.

(Were you joking? I can't tell.)

"In other news, dog bites man, a bear shits in the woods, and the Pope attends a Catholic Mass. But first, the weather. Chet?"

"Thanks, Alex. It's raining today, which means that things will almost certainly get wet."

This is more-or-less the same people who took a massive national security failure and turned it into enough political gold to get them years of rubber-stamping.

A little setback like this is hardly a blip on their screen. They've just promised $700,000,000,000+ of our money to prop up the very people who put our economy at risk and then held it hostage. You think some of that money isn't -- essentially, eventually -- going to end up in some oh-so-deserving campaign funds?

At some point early next year, if not before, we'll be presented with a bill or series of bills sold to the public as the "Intelligent Regulation Act" or the like, and it will be touted as a combination of "getting rid of archaic, unenforced regulations and replacing them with 21st century regulations". A few non-corporate financial wonks will dig into the several hundred pages and realize that the essential effect will be to make finance both less regulated and less competitive.

But they won't be Serious People, and MediaCorp will be able to ignore them with impunity.

The only thing "socialized" here was a huge amount of corporate loss. Everything else is still privately held.

Somehow, I don't think that's what Karl Marx had in mind. Groucho Marx, on the other hand, wouldn't have been surprised at all.

Oy, what a mishuga shlemiel.