VP Debate

This is just gold. Absolutely gold.

Tina Fey's Palin refusal to answer the question and when answering, always filling them up with non-sequiturs like "Maverick". Queen Latifah's Iffil surrendering her probing questions "to not appear biased towards Obama". And Jason Sudeikis' playing Biden as a contained lunatic was just full of win. This is a flawless skit.

No wonder I was confused about Sarah Palin's body language. She didn't just sound like she was heavily scripted. She sounded like she was reading cue cards or even a tele-prompter.

Because the cable and network television stations did not show a split screen of the debate, most viewers could not see that, during Joe Biden’s answers, Palin spent almost all her time looking down and studiously reading her notes. But viewers did see that when Palin delivered her answers, she would repeatedly glance down to check her talking points.

ThinkProgress has compiled a video documenting some of the instances where it was clear to the audience that Palin was propped up by written responses.

What's outrageous is that I actually questioned my judgment and bias when I mentioned last night that it looked like she was reading off cards. I couldn't fathom her reading off cue cards she'd have hidden in her jacket.

Wow.

Even though pollsters are saying that VP debates have little impact on outcome of elections, I have to say that last night it was Joe Biden's playground and he drank everybody's milkshake.

Mark (the father of my children) and I were watching the debate last night and were actually blown away by Joe Biden's performance. It wasn't that we didn't think he'd be good coming into the debate. It's just that compared to his performance during the primaries this may have been Biden's best debate performance yet.

Make no mistake though, it wasn't because he was against someone who was because he was against someone with less experience or intellect. Sarah Palin proved she could hold her own against Biden.

Biden had only one major opponent last night and that was himself. He needed to beat the image people had of him as being a bit of a bumbling idiot and it's for that matter that he totally knocked it out of the park.

It really was a great night for the boy from Scranton.

Biden was focused :

Now, with regard to the -- to the health care plan, you know, it's with one hand you giveth, the other you take it. You know how Barack Obama -- excuse me, do you know how John McCain pays for his $5,000 tax credit you're going to get, a family will get?

He taxes as income every one of you out there, every one of you listening who has a health care plan through your employer. That's how he raises $3.6 trillion, on your -- taxing your health care benefit to give you a $5,000 plan, which his Web site points out will go straight to the insurance company.

And then you're going to have to replace a $12,000 -- that's the average cost of the plan you get through your employer -- it costs $12,000. You're going to have to pay -- replace a $12,000 plan, because 20 million of you are going to be dropped. Twenty million of you will be dropped.

So you're going to have to place -- replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the "Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere."

yet at times folksy:

John McCain said there would be enough oil to pay for this. John McCain has been dead wrong. I love him. As my mother would say, god love him, but he's been dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war.

Yet the two most spectacular moments for Joe Biden came first when he tore into the "Maverick" meme :

You know who am rooting for. Just follow me at http://twitter.com/blogdiva