Live blogging Debate I: [insert incest joke here]

From a state best known as a counting device used for timing blitzes in backyard football games, Mississippi brings you the first presidential debate...

8:49 - How long will it take for Talking Head to note that one candidate is taller than the other? And that this sometimes predicts who wins the campaign!

8:51 - T. Boone Pickins just asked me to join him on his website after the debate. You know, if 1992 never happened, he would have just run for president, but H. R. Perot ruined that dream for all of us.

8:52 - Channel of choice? Wish it were MSNBC, but they're not hi-def. Can't stand Wolf Blitzer, so CNN is out (I'm still pissed at him for one of the Dem. primary debates, where he talked more than the candidates combined). I'll have to go network. NBC... get SNL previews at least. Kinda surprised that Hammond can't do a better McCain.

8:55 - Chris Matthews: "Obama can't get the racist vote." Wow, he should run for Senate or something.

8:56 - Catch the next installment of Sarah Palin with Katie Couric? She uses 'specifically' like Joe Biden uses 'literally' and the way the rest of us use 'um'

8:58 - Just so I'm on record, I've often said that Obama is not a good debater, at least when compared to Hillary. Of course, McCain isn't a good debater either. Let's see if Obama has learned something from the primaries and stepped up his game.

9:00 - I feel like this is a playoff game. 30 seconds...

9:02 - Yay direct exchanges. That bugged me about the Kerry-Bush debates. Why couldn't they talk to each other? Oh look, Obama's taller. And darker.

9:04 - Eisenhower is an underrated president. His farewell address (warning against the military-industrial complex) is downright prescient.

9:05 - Obama pretty much repeating the Dodd plan, at least the basics. Nice dig at the current GOP ideology. Uses 'fundamentals of the economy' phrase, well done.

9:06 - McCain tries to say that there is currently bipartisanship in DC on this bailout... not claiming credit.... yet... he thinks it is a nice package (heh)... bailout to create jobs to no more foreign oil in literally 10 words

9:08 - Obama asks how we got here in the first place. Not sure if answering the question of what to do next by saying what we did wrong in the past is the right answer... could have been more 'forward' in that respsonse. McCain says he too say this trainwreck coming... and now gives us an Ike-based history lesson. I don't get what point he's making, didn't take the opening Obama gave him to talk about solutions instead of the past.

9:11 - Obama has decided (rightly) to make sure that everyone knows McCain is a Republican and has been in Washington for 26 years. Right move, strategically.

9:12 - I like how Lehrer is attempting to get them to talk to each other.

9:14 - Exporter importer? Vandelay industries?!

9:15 - Lehrer is good. Very direct. "We have now presided" -- that's right John, the GOP brand blows. HOLY SHIT, DID HE JUST TALK ABOUT THE BEAR DNA THING!!! SARAH PALIN DID THE SAME FOR CRABS!!!! IS HE NUTS????

9:16 - Earmarks, 18 billion; McCain's tax cuts, 300 billion to the rich. Nice point.

9:17 - I like the bottom-up language for tax cuts. Seems smart and free-markety sounding.

9:18 - No, you didn't win Miss Congeniality. But your running mate almost did...

9:21 - Okay, I can't think like an undecided voter, but is this pork-barrel-railing-against converting anyone?

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