Actually, yeah, I've been quite impressed with Palin thus far. Aside from the unfortunate hockey-mom comments, I've been surprised by her cool and her quick and well thought out answers.

Biden, however, is simply giving more non-answers and using slick language to try and impress... who? In my opinion, he's not doing well at all.

Palin is continuing to spew a lot of platitudes and is veering off topic often. Is she giving answers or slogans?

"How long have I been at this? Five Weeks?"

I wouldn't have said that if I were her.

The reason she's winning is because she doesn't lie through her teeth. Biden lied about Barack Obama talking to Ahmedinejad, among other things, and Gwen Ifill is a biased moderator who stands to make money from Obama's win with her book, "The Age of Obama." The rebuttal ratio for Biden:Palin was 6:1. He was allowed to reply 6 TIMES more than Palin. Ifill cut her off multiple times. Despite ALL of that, she is still standing and giving clear answers. Palin may not win the entire debate due to the biased reporting on stations like MSNBC and CNN, but she surely won in reality.

By the way, thanks for covering this debate. Every other OG reporter is a clear-cut Obama supporter. This is the first time a Republican viewpoint has been allowed (yet only on a blog- this should have been a feature). It's really a shame to see that even a high school newspaper can be so biased.

Just because everyone expected her to fail miserably and she didn't doesn't mean she did a good job....

Oh yeah, and Gwen Ifill is a baller.

Anyway, I'm not coming up with particularly objective points.

Katy majors props on being the first person to post an entry. It was humorous too! I vote we debate this tomorrow in journalism class! And by the way, Isaac, you've been making some pretty good points!

As a parent with a son in the military, he's supporting someone who wants to rip the rug out from under the troops just before their hard work comes to a head in the winning of the Iraq war. If he's a single parent, why is he being commended and told he can easily handle the VP position when Palin, who is raising a child with Down's Syndrome and 3 other kids being told she cannot handle it, when she has a husband to support her?

Palin did a good enough job of not embarrassing herself like she did with Katie Couric, but it's quite a stretch to say she won the debate. I was pretty shocked when she straight-out told the moderator that she was going to talk about whatever she wanted, regardless of what questions were asked. In fact, she did that a lot, giving a perfunctory yes or no answer to a question and then talking about something else entirely. She kept going back to her energy policy, which I'm still not really clear what it is apart from more drilling, even when asked about things unrelated. This indicates that she was highly scripted during the debate, going back to her fairly small "safe zone" of stuff she knew whenever she couldn't answer a question, which was quite often, especially early in the debate. Later on she gained more confidence, but I still don't trust her knowledge of the issues, and I certainly don't trust her ability to think on her feet. Occasionally she had some good soundbites, but she was also pretty nonsensical sounding in the later half of the debate. Maybe leaving the safe zone wasn't such a good idea, although staying in it allowed Biden to take shots at McCain with impunity. While both of them ended up doing a lot of repeating slogans and holding up their respective running mates, Biden actually said something, calling McCain and Palin on some pretty important issues and on the whole "maverick" thing, which I was quite glad about. Palin just said what she was going to say and didn't pay attention to anyone else, and on the whole I felt she was giving a speech broken up by Biden's and Gwen's comments more than participating in an actual debate. As I said, she did a good job of not embarrassing herself, but I wouldn't say she won the debate. Part of the reason people think she did so well is that expectations were incredibly low for her. She did a better job of exceeding those low expectations than Biden did of meeting his own considerably higher ones, but if held to the same standard, Palin's habit of ignoring the questions puts her below Biden on actually debating in my book, and while that strategy may have looked gutsy to people who already supported her, I think most independents will see through it and realize all it means is she's uninformed and not really able to think on her feet.

The article and subsequent comments were pretty disappointing. I wouldn't dismiss Obama's prophetic abilities so lightly; it's about time we have someone in the Whitehouse who understands that actions have consequences and is willing to enact policy that takes that principle into account. I'm seeing accusations of lying with no proof, someone who thinks Biden still has ten year old kids or something, and some blather about "the liberal media." Seriously, someone send me a memo when they figure out what that is, if it's anything. I mean, if you don't want to read a liberal perspective, don't read The Nation. By the same token, don't get all your news from Fox. The New York Times is a good place to start. I just watched the debates on PBS and haven't read or watched any pundits yet. And what does "coming to a head" in Iraq mean anyway? I hear so much talk about "winning" the war there, yet no one knows what "winning" actually means. There aren't any major milestones that I've heard anyone describe as important in the near future, except perhaps the day we start the phased pullout, which cannot come too soon.

Also, to all anonymous posters: sign a consistent name to your posts. It doesn't have to be your real name, (though if you have the courage to stand by your opinions, kudos) just something to keep track of how many of you there are would be nice. I can't tell if there are two or three or more or less of you, and what, if any, argument any of you are trying to mount.

The Libertarian camp at Uni: You and me. Good on ya. I'm amazed you watched the whole thing
Cheers!