I’m watching the debate, but not attempting to live blog it. But I have to say that while Palin is doing fine in general, she missed a huge opportunity. When Biden kept going on about how he and The One were going to “end” the war, she should have said, “Senator, you, Senator Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid…you all keep talking about ending the war. But Americans don’t want to just end a war. They want to win the war. Why can you not let the word “victory” pass your lips when it comes America and the Iraq war?”

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, she keeps saying “win the war” and he keeps saying “end the war,” so maybe the point will come across subtly, but it would have been a big blow had she pointed it out.

I have to say that Biden has been surprisingly gaffe free. He’s told lots of whoppers, but no big gaffes.

The latest version of the bailout bill has new earmarks in it. As Mark Steyn explains:

I suppose sophisticated insiders would assure me that regrettably there’s no possibility of earmark reform; this is just the price of doing business in Washington. But that’s why non-sophisticated non-insiders hold the political class in contempt. The same blowhards who run for office on a platform of lowering ocean levels and healing the planet then turn around and insist they’re unable to do anything about the one small area of human endeavor for which they bear sole responsibility.

If this is an emergency, hold the wool research. If it’s an emergency that’s got time for wool research, let’s chew it over for another few months.

And they wonder why their approval rating is even lower than Bush’s?

Rasmussen says that a quarter of the public thinks that lawmakers know what they’re doing in an economic crisis. He says it is “only” that much, but it seems way too high for my comfort. What are they, idiots?

A long, detailed piece on Barack Obama, his associations, and the long-term plans to radicalize the nation through manufactured crises. And it’s a story that we continue not to hear from the press, as they have reporters up in Alaska going through the Palin family trash cans.

As I noted yesterday, Speaker Pelosi’s partisan lies were a clear sign to members on both sides of the aisle that she didn’t take this crisis seriously. Or, to be fair, the alternative explanation: that she is an abject moron (a proposition for which abundant evidence is available from over the years). Now here is more evidence of at least the former notion:

…considering that only a dozen votes needed to switch in order to provide a different outcome, and 95 Democrats in the House voted against it, critics are now wondering why couldn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have assured a different outcome considering how important she said its passage was?

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.

Some leader.

In other words, it had nothing to do with saving the financial markets. It was for raw partisan advantage. The tragic and infuriating thing is that, even though Congress has an even lower rating than George Bush (and if it’s possible for an approval rating to go negative, it probably did so after yesterday’s clown show), many of these creatures will probably be reelected, due both to gerrymandered districts, and the unfortunate psychological notion that people hate Congress, but unaccountably think that their own Congressperson is great.