Delivered Friday, October 3, 2008, at 12:41PM.

Stats:

7 pounds, 11 ounces

20 inches long

And after that easy-going niceness, we get fully-formed sentences, cogency, coherency, and … this might have gotten a bit more interesting.

Palin’s GOPAC boot camp seems to be working well right now.

Palin: “I’m not gonna answer maybe the the moderator wants me to … “  I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Liking ThinkProgress’ liveblog tonight, too.  538’s at it tonight, too, along with Andrew Sullivan.  Those places are all far more insightful than I!

9:25PM — Palin seems to be coming off a little better right now.  Is it the chipperiness?  If so, it makes me gag.  Still, Biden’s a little lecture-y.

9:31PM — Her climate change stuff is CRA-ZEE.

9:40PM — Palin on Iraq is really not very good.  Biden is VERY GOOD here, best of the night.  CNN’s tracker seems to agree.

9:47PM — Palin’s voice is like fingernails on chalk.  I can’t stand it!

Oh, goddammit, it’s not hate of “our freedoms.” Stop it.

Biden was even better on Pakistan; Palin even worse.

9:54PM — I just can’t believe Palin is an actual candidate.  Biden’s not all that and a bag of chips, but COME ON.

10:00PM — Palin on the defensive a bit, as Biden *finally* finds his stride.

CNN’s tracked uncommitted voters seem to generally prefer Biden answers to Palin answers.

10:10PM — Did she just say “how is Main St. viewing theocracy”?!?  Huh?  Biden on the “what if I’m Pres.” bit was awesome, Palin, not so much.

10:16PM — Good, Ifill’s pressing Palin on her Cheney-esque “expansion of power” bit re: the vice-presidency.  Anyway, Biden’s better at answering this stuff.  A lot better.

Palin rarely bumps up high in the audience response; Biden seems to hit big peaks regularly, at least in the second half.

10:22PM — Wow, she’s really falling apart.  Who’s “Lingel”?  538 Part 2points this out:

9:12 CDT: [Sean] Palin on Biden’s teacher wife: “God bless her, her reward is in heaven, right?” That is the sound of every teacher in America voting for Barack Obama. Wow. What a mistake.

That there was a good catch.

This one had been way more fun than the Presidential debate. I think Biden started slow, but powered through by the midway point to win it outright.  Palin confused things with chipper mannerisms early on.  Biden wins.  She’s a freaking joke.

After last week’s version, she flipped back to a head-up position.  So back we went to the hospital last night to try again, this time with the goal of inducing labor after the successful version in order to avoid further baby flips before the due date one week off.

Three attempts later, she was still head-up, spine-across.  Stubborn, this one.  So we’re in for a scheduled C-section on Friday morning, preceded by an attempt at a version following full spinal anesthesia to relax the abdomen.  That’s apparently a far more statistically successful maneuver than the normal version technique, so we hope that it works.  A successful version would be followed by immediate induction of labor rather than a C-section.

So we’ll have a daughter on Friday one way or the other!

Moved the bar position up about 1 inch on my back, and shifted the way my grip worked … and boom! Instant fix.  Moved 245 lbs. in regular 5×3 sets.  Easily, I might add!  Nice to get back on track with this stuff.

I thought it pretty even between McCain and Obama, even after reading all the commentary afterwards that punditized it for McCain, and polled it for Obama.  Problem was, I wasn’t among those who needed to see Obama do something (anything) remotely Presidential: I’m already “in the tank” as the term of art goes these days.  So I saw a solid, unglamorous performance that was perhaps a touch stronger than McCain.  I’m glad I seem to be in the minority, in that respect!  Polls are humming along upwardly for Obama, and trending down for McCain.  Woops!  I really can’t wait to see what happens on Thursday night … it’ll be 90 minutes of pure comdey, I’m sure.

So anyway, we seem to heading quickly towards economic doom.  Perhaps even becoming a banana republic! So we have an economic/financial FAIL splatted atop a political FAIL, which appears to add up to a complete and total FAIL.  Not so good.  Although the opportunity now to recraft a bill that doesn’t suck, as so many economists seem to think about the current thing, seems to be overall good … the likelihood of that happening pre-election seems slim.  So that will allow the FREE MARKET to exert its holy self in all its fiery purity, and cleanse the economy.  Right?  Right?  I think I’ll dress up as Failed Economic Policies for Halloween.

9:10PM — Old McCain speaks well about accountability/responsibility. Obama is talking to the audience, not McCain (McC isn’t looking at O either).  McC = “change Warshington.” O = people are hurting.

9:15PM — McC will fix economics by reigning in federal spending?  What?  O’s on the slight defensive here … but points out the miniscule nature of earmarks in comparison to the rest of the budget quite well.  Moves into bottom-up/normal-folks benefits vs. “fixing Warshington.”

Hmm, “maybe 932 million dollars isn’t a lot to Sen. Obama.” Ow.  Obama hits back well though — earmarks are a niche issue.

TPM notes that Obama sports a flag pin, McCain does not.

9:28PM — Um, Barack, “programs that don’t work” after a list’o’stuff isn’t all that great an answer to “what would you cut.”  McCain’s coming on better on this bit (esp. killing ethanol spending).  Hint: refer to the WAR and the shitloads of money pouring into that … since it’s foreign policy debate!

… a few minutes later, thanks.  30 minutes in, and we finally get to Iraq!

9:34PM — Nukes are good/bad: good energy, bad costs/returns.  Tough sell, too.

9:36PM — Federal spending restraint - path to happiness!  Christ.

9:40PM — I don’t get McCain’s argument at all.  Well, yes, it’s great to have a great strategy … but we ought not BE THERE anymore.  McCain’s about the present of the Surge, not about the future.  Which isn’t looking stunning.

9:48PM — Obama: “Capture and kill bin Laden.”  Wow.  And McCain just compared bin Laden and Petraeus? Double Wow.

…And on to the next beer for me…

9:56PM — Obama on McCain’s lack of prudency is pretty good.  Nothing really jumping out besides the Petraeus/bin Laden thing.

10:00PM — Bracelet war!

Travel confers knowledge of deep international issues, I guess.

10:05PM — I don’t know that I agree with McC on Iran, but he does appear to know his stuff, and is clearly in comfortable territory here, far more so than on the economy stuff. Obama is doing quite well, too, actually, and brings up working with players rather than democracies only … which is probably more realistic.

McCain mangles Ahmadenijad.  Heh.  Pretty thin causal chain there, John-o.

Agree with Sullivan, Obama’s out-hawking McCain pretty well.

10:12PM — Spain jab! Detail quibbling again from McCain — earmarks, preconditions, etc.

N. vs. S. Korean height differential?  Huh?

10:17PM — Good stuff on Russia from Obama; assume that McCain will have equally good stuff here.  If he doesn’t, big fail. So-so intro for McCain, but getting stronger.  He’s got this whole region down — McCain, that is.  Classy agreement with general principles by Obama.  Pointing out his agreements with McCain definitely pulls Obama more towards the center than he’s being portrayed (he’s never been anywhere but, really, but our politics make slight drifts into screaming left/right differentiations).

10:23PM — Obama’s sliding of the Russian issue into alternative energy/economic points.  Interesting.

McCain’s doing better than I expected, but I suspect he needed to be even stronger.  No major gaffes, but Obama seemed ever so slightly more on top of things, and a little more flexible, reasonable overall. Obama comes off surprisingly hawky, which is good for him overall, especially against McCain.  He’s particularly good at throwing credit to McCain for bits and pieces, which is mature, but McCain gives no credit to Obama, it’s all “he just doesn’t get it,” or variations on that.  Not exactly across-the-aisle politics there.

10:34PM — Holy shit! McCain just compared Obama to Bush!  WTF! Weird way to end it there (that’ll stick longer than the paean to veterans).

Via.

And, whee!

More succinctly, Indexed:

Cray-zee, is what I say.

A great quote about the bailout comes from (of all places) the Wall Street Journal:

David Ader, government-bond strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital, notes that it is a politically difficult sell to go to voters and tell them you’re proud to have kept employed “many of the same firms that created the mess and paying more for their crappy securities than they themselves would be willing to pay. Vote for me.” [emphasis original]

One question: in debating this bailout, nobody seems to even consider a possibility that leaped out at me. If the troubles on Wall Street are preventing Main Street from getting responsibly extended, reasonably priced credit, why can’t we just end-run Wall Street? Take the $700 billion Mr. Paulson is asking for and start up, say, 10 new banks with it. Guarantee the deposits publicly with a better guarantee than the FDIC. They’ll have no difficulty attracting deposits. Then have them lend out money at conservative leverage (say, 10 to 1, much less than Citibank) and generate $7 trillion in new credit. Hire a staff from among the recently laid off, and management from, say, Japan, and pay them so that they only need to make 10 percent ROE (thus making a nice return for the taxpayers) and their bonuses only get paid out when it’s clear that the loans have actually been repaid. No derivatives, no fancy stuff, just plain vanilla lending. Main Street is saved, and the rest of us can find entertainment and moral improvement in watching Wall Street implode and disappear.

Let me point out where this wild fantasy comes from. To whit, everyone, including Mr. Bernanke, says that the ‘real economy’ will suffer without credit. Credit is apparently like, say, electricity and water — a health and safety issue for the economy. We have ‘utilities’ in electricity and water — so why not in credit? Some of those utilities are privately owned but heavily regulated; some of those utilities are publicly owned, at the local, state and federal level. And you know what? The publicly owned ones work just fine. In Los Angeles, I’m currently a customer of the private Southern California Edison, but previously I got my juice from Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. The bottom line: power from LADWP was half the price.

I’d love for somebody explain why it is apparently unthinkable for America’s taxpayers and borrowers to declare their independence from the current crop of moronic incompetents now masquerading as financiers. Remember, this is the same group of guys who misallocated credit (their supposedly core competency) on a scale unknown in human history.

How exactly did these bozos get to be so indispensable? Isn’t this indispensability entirely in the minds of Bernanke and Paulson? And doesn’t that make them, in the most polite terms imaginable, captured regulators?