Bill Maher had a funny line on Real Time: "The good news is that Sarah Palin can complete a sentence...the bad news is that we have to listen to it."

I think this says it all. What about you? Open thread.

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My basic take: Palin survived, Biden won. Excerpt below.

Two comments:

1. David Letterman noted that Sarah Palin has been doing debate prep in Arizona. Apparently, she can see Mexico from Arizona, so it's really helped her on foreign policy.
2. I think the new blog setup at HuffPost will be ready soon, hopefully in the next few days -- I'll have URL information and so forth when it's available.

Did you know that Sarah Palin has never actually seen Russia from Alaska?

As you can see, I've tweaked the layout of TJR a bit over the past few days. I think the current version -- with a single post at the top of the page, followed by my most recent posts at Huffington Post -- will be stable, at least until things are fully ready to go to set up a blog at HuffPost.

My plan is basically to leave a fresh open thread up all day, and use the space below to highlight what I'm posting at HuffPost. I'm going to tweak the look and feel a bit more, and then try to get to sleep before 3AM for the first time in ages. Let me know what you think of this new layout.

Barack Obama, earlier today, raising McCain's gambling for the first time:

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This is everything that I hate about John McCain -- sanctimoniously claiming to be above politics, and simultaneously playing politics of the worst sort. Sam Stein has the details, and I put together the video:

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Food for thought: The Dow is now below the level it was on the day George Bush took office.

Here's a video from CBS News on January 22, 2001 -- and today.

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I just posted my initial thoughts about John McCain's failure on this bailout negotiations.

By the way, it's incredible that Republicans are saying that the reason why they voted against the bill was because Nancy Pelosi offended them.

Update (12:56PM): Chris Matthews says the bill's defeat is a failure of Republican leadership. I've posted video at HuffPost.

Update 2 (1:02PM): Barney Frank was absolutely hilarious in response to the GOP crybabies, offering to be nice to them if that what it takes to get their votes. Video posted at HuffPost.

Update 3 (1:27PM): Mike Allen notes that McCain claimed credit for the bill before it lost. Ambinder suggests that means McCain deserves blame for its failure. Jay Carney poses the same thought.

Update 4 (2:12PM): The McCain campaign is totally losing it. They are actually blaming Barack Obama for the crash of the bailout plan. I've posted video, and Obama's statement in response, at HuffPost.

...but when Steve Schmidt claims that John McCain called for Rummy to go, well, he's just plain ol' lying. He also lied about the $42K tax hike thing.

Update: Unrelated, but there's also a new Obama ad out, this one targeting exec compensation, including Carly Fiorina's golden parachute.

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I've posted video of Barack Obama's newest line on the campaign trail over at HuffPost, and it's a great one:

Senator McCain just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that the storm hitting Wall Street hit Main Street long ago. That's why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response. Sort of stood there. Said the fundamentals of the economy are strong. That's why he's been shifting positions these last two weeks, looking for photo ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do.

Also, Paul Krugman supports the bailout plan, though not enthusiastically. He knocks Barack Obama for not taking a more hands-on role in the negotiations, but I think Krugman is ignoring the fact that Obama's "No blank check" line helped embolden Democrats to fight hard on the equity warrants provisions, which seem to be decent.

In other news, both John McCain and Steve Schmidt lied through their teeth on the Sunday morning shows; I didn't watch them until late in the day, so I haven't been able to do a video debunking their lies, but I hope to put out a couple of them tomorrow.

Just a quick note: I've posted the full video of Barack's speech in Virginia to 26,000 rain-soaked supporters over at HuffPost and also in the vodpod. (Thanks for the link, barath.)

I just got back in after being out most of the afternoon and just started taking a look at the bailout plan announced today. If you're interested in reading it, HuffPost has put up the full text of the proposed legislation (a bit over 100 pages). At this point, I've got no opinion on it, pro or con -- I'm taking a look at it now. What I'm really to do is to hear from trustworthy economists, lawyers, and financial experts on what they have to say about the plan, particularly on how it handles equity warrants.

I've got a new post up at HuffPost on the expectations game for the VP debate. Here's an excerpt, capturing my basic argument.

The issue isn't so much what the expectations are for Palin's performance, but rather the fact that for her debate to have an impact on the campaign, she must deliver a game-changer for the McCain campaign -- and it has to be a positive one.

Make no mistake, a game-changer is exectly what McCain-land needs; after all, the only thing more distressing to them than Palin's dropping numbers is John McCain nosedive in the polls relative to Barack Obama.

Making things worse, all this is happening as time is running out. No matter how many times McCain may try to suspend his campaign, the election is on November 4, and nothing can change that reality.

Two really quick thoughts on the NYT article about McCain and gambling.

(1) Wes Gullett, one of the key lobbyists in the article, is an old gambling buddy of John McCain.

(2) Every conservative who does not trust the federal government should read that article because it shows in no uncertain terms that John McCain is a creature of the federal government and that he's very comfortable with expanding its power, oftentimes in arbitrary fashion.

Turns out he was dining at an opulent DC hotel 4-star restaurant in Washington, DC. Perhaps he was enjoying the establishment's "chili consommé with an oval of chili-powder mousse."  Read all about it in my latest post at The Huffington Post.

Update: It turns out Politico got the wrong restaurant, but right hotel in its initial post. I've updated my post at HuffPost.

Here's video from a local NBC affiliate of that huge rally in Fredricksburg, Virginia on Saturday evening. Overall, it's a great report but the brief soundbite from the veteran supporting Obama was particularly awesome. I've also posted another video from another station in the vodpod.

Also, on a housekeeping note, you may have noticed that there is now an RSS feed of my posts from HuffPost in the right-hand sidebar. This is part of the transition process as I migrate my blogging over; things still aren't totally ready, but soon I'll have a blog set up there -- basically TJR at HuffPost, and once that happens, that'll be the place that I do all my blogging at. Same Jed, new URL.

There's been interest in an RSS feed for my posts at HuffPost. Here's a link to a functioning RSS feed to my stuff there, though the feed URL may change at some point. There's also a page with my most recent posts, but it's not quite a blog home page yet. We're working on it though!

One question for those of you who comment here a fair bit: once my blogging transition is complete would you be interested in me posting daily open threads? For me personally reading comments is a great source of information -- there's almost no trolls in the commenters here, and I love hearing what you guys have to say. Let me know what you think, and I'll see what I can do.

I think my web browser might be running out of tabs. The problem?

I've been trying to keep track of John McCain's emerging scandals and political problems and there are just so many of them piling up so fast it is totally overwhelming.

Just in the last day or two, we've learned that McCain's campaign manager not only took money from Freddie and Fannie, but also did maintain ties to his lobbying firm, despite his protests. And it very well might be the case that he was steering millions of dollars of business from McCain and the RNC to his firms. Then The New York Times pens a detailed article about John McCain and the gaming business, touching both on his personal penchant for gambling and his complicated relationship with the industry. And the Washington Post detailed McCain's newest gamble, trying to wreck the bailout deal not for any substantive reason, but rather to advance his poltical career.

Meanwhile, we have GOP defectors speaking out against Sarah Palin, some even urging her to quit the ticket. Not coincidentally, McCain-land prays for an October wedding for Palin's pregnant 17 year-old daughter. They have to be worried about Thursday's debate because even though most people expect Palin to do fine in the highly scripted debate format, if she screws up even slightly, it will be the talk of the campaign. They didn't trust her enough to do post-debate spin, and with good reason: at a Philly cheesesteak shop, she (perhaps unwittingly) supported Obama's position on dealing with Pakistan and opposed McCain's.

It's almost too much for any one person to follow; the flow of information is just staggering. And that's where Frank Rich comes in: connecting all the datapoints of the past few days and weeks, concluding with a powerful and damning indictments of John McCain's character:

He may be the first presidential candidate in our history to risk wrecking the country even before being voted into the Oval Office.

It's worth keeping that bottom-line in mind as we chase the news over the final 5 weeks of the campaign.

(Also posted at HuffPost.)

HuffPost has video up of Tina Fey's return performance as Sarah Palin, this time doing an interview with Katie Couric (Amy Poehler). The freaky thing is that Fey just quotes from Palin's actual interview for extended stretches.