Biden Wins Debate, Palin Wins "Most Improved"....

Some fact-checking on the debate. As usual, the candidates lied about or distorted a number of things.

Amazing the difference between the way the Con and Lib blogs are spinning this. Each one saw a different debate and very few of them seem to have actually heard the answers (or, in most cases, the non-answers).

I wish there was a way to actually get candidates to answer important questions… so here's Palin's Debate Flow Chart.

Candidates very often ignore a question they don't want to answer and go about espousing whatever line of tortured reasoning gives them an out and they think makes points with the viewers. It's a common debate tactic. However, few have ever done what Palin did by announcing: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you (Biden) want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people.” In other words, silly debate rules don’t apply to me, even though the McCain-Palin campaign negotiated and signed off on those rules.

This "folksy" speech crap has gone too far.

I'm sick and tired of both of them (especially Palin) droppin' the G off of everythinG. I get why she does it -- evidently she's goin' fer what someone is telling her is the countrified/illiterate vote, but why does Biden have to match her? Brings both of them down in my eyes (Biden didn't have far to fall anyway.).

Palin narrowly lost the 1st 3rd, won the 2nd (Energy) and massively lost the last third. But then I was actually listenin' to what was actually said.

She avoided most of the questions. To be fair, Biden avoided them when it was convenient, but he won point by point. Some of her answers were not even in the same Galaxy in relation to the questions, while he was on point almost across the board.

Funny quote from Reason Mag's blog: “I think it was clear that Palin rolled up her sleeves, went a-rufflin' some feathers, winked a few times, was a maverick somethin’ somethin’ and is not from the East Coast. That's good enough for me to think she can handle the job.”

I do think it’s clear that everybody loves Israel. Except that both candidates were talking to Christian Zionists – not Jews.

The upshot is that Biden won the debate, and Palin won the "most improved" award, simply because expectations for her were (and rightly so) soooo low.

Ifill did a terrible job. She didn't make them ANSWER. Probably the debate format and her revealed book deal had something to do with it. Still, she was not an aggressive questioner at all.

I'm sick to my stomach listening to the various spin-meisters doing their fact-avoidance. The obvious is that our “News” providers are becoming more polarized. Each is a functional non-stop press-release of a particular party. Nobody "reports" anymore. They just spin, and spin, and spin, and spin, and....