Tonight's Debate

In ninety minutes of crisply-moderated tedium, we learned exactly one interesting thing: That Barack Obama is almost eager to talk about Bill Ayers, and John McCain can barely bring himself to grind out the syllables necessary to make something vaguely approximating a point on the subject.

I will die a happy man if I never hear the buzzwords of this debating season again. Energy independence ... spending freeze ... a scalpel ... a hatchet ... when George Bush came into office ... countries that don't like us very much ... I will cut taxes for ninety-five percent ...offshore drilling ... small business ... tax breaks for oil companies ...without preconditions ... what's that fine gonna be? ... families making less than $42,000 a year ... same failed policies ... When John McCain castigated Obama for declining his invitation to do town-hall debates, and remarked that "we could have had ten of them already," I suddenly had an image of thousands of political junkies going mad from the repetition and Van Goghing their ears somewhere around debate number seven.

The whole "Joe the Plumber" bit, though, was fantastic - in a fourteenth century sort of way, as Poulos says, or at least in the way of a Monty Python skit about the fourteenth century. Or so thinketh Ross the Blogger.

That's all I've got. No, wait, I'll venture one further opinion: I thought McCain's best moment came during the back-and-forth over free trade and Colombia. Alas, I don't think that's going to be a decisive issue in this election.

Okay, that's really all. Make up your own damn mind who won. I'm going to bed.