I thought that Palin dragged Biden around by the collar for the first 45 minutes last night.  Just abused him.  The second half of the debate was more even with Palin seeking comfortable ground by repeating answers that she clearly understood and avoiding subjects she didn’t understand.  She did operate extemporaneously a couple of times and did ok.  If you thought Palin was a little dim before the debate, your opinion is unchanged.  If you thought otherwise, you too had your opinion confirmed last night.

I do wonder that the moderator allowed her to simply ignore her questions and talk about whatever she wanted.  It is a curious debate format and I wonder why they bothered with it.  As it turns out, conservatives had nothing to worry about there.

Biden’s performance was very even but, with the excpetion of one bright spot where he beat up the “Maverick” label, unremarkable.   It’s probably about the best that they could have hoped for.  Biden has been a senator for way too long to deliver much in the way of a surprise.  He wants to explain everything….dull.

Uncle Sam wants to bail out Wall St. with my money?  Whatever.  It makes me sick but I suppose it needs to happen.  However, attaching a hundred billion dollars of tax breaks and other pork to the bill makes me want to break things.  I hope the house republicans kill this thing.

America has a very fundamental decision to make regarding the nature of our capitalism.  Wall St. CANNOT continue to have it both ways.  They take insane risks and we make them whole?  Not without some strings brother and I see no strings in this bill, no commitment to regulate the industry going forward.  If public money is to be used to fix this mess then the public interest needs to be looked after.  I view this in the same vein as Title IX that drove the emergence of womens sports in educational institutions.  The Universities that took public money had to let the girls play and if Wall St. takes public money, the regulators need to be able to do their thing.

Don’t even start with the “government made them do it” argument.  It is baloney.  If you are the CEO of a company and you allow your company to run in a manner that makes it insolvent, you have but one person to blame.

Here endeth the populist rant…:)