Summary: Palin "won", in that she held her own, which was much better than the MSM and the "pundits" expected (and hoped). She didn't eviscerate Biden (even though she got in a subtle dig against Michelle Obama), but simply by being able to match him she hasn't doomed the McCain campaign and her folksy ways probably helped a good deal. She's also shown herself not to be the monster that the MSM has tried to portray her as.

Commencing now..

Biden implies that madrassas aren't schools. I'm sure he knows, but...

Palin had a "good conversation" with Henry Kissinger. Oh my. Was David Rockefeller there too?

TROUBLE IN POWER GLUTES PARADISE! Andrew Sullivan says:

Palin has very little substance but is killing him stylistically. And Biden sounds very liberal. He's throwing this debate away so far... Biden is just foundering... Biden is just dreadful...

Palin points out that she isn't a DC insider; points out that she withdrew state money from a fund that had invested in the Sudan...

CNN's "uncommitted" Ohio voters sure seem to like everything Biden says. In fact, they just redlined when Biden was speaking, and plummeted just as Palin was starting to speak. It picked up again, and it hasn't redlined during a later Biden speech. However, it's not like CNN is above doing things like I suspect they're doing with those "uncommitted" voters... Oddly enough, afterwards several of those "uncommitted voters indicated that the debate had helped them make up their minds. Nervous but gap-toothed Becky Mock was the only one who'd decided to vote for McCain. How incredibly odd that there'd be so many crypto-Obama supporters among CNN's pool of "uncommitted" voters!

Joe Biden spends a lot of time at Home Depot. Most days you can find him in the lumber department, just shootin' the breeze...

"Oh, Joe, there you go again!" Biden laughs at himself...

Palin's specialities will be energy and "working with special needs children", all under the watchful eye of John McCain...

Biden says Dick Cheney has been the most dangerous VP in history. He's probably right, but he said it like he expected a laugh from other DC insiders, only realizing that wasn't who he was speaking to DC insiders...

Inner thought: Is America ready to elect a vice president who talks like a Canadian?

The ticket of "Drastic Change to the Left" and "No Change in 35 Years"...

Biden's house is his total investment? Someone double-check...

Was Biden cracking up or cracking up? Someone get him a Ricola...

McCain voted against "My Heat" program for seniors to allow them to heat their homes? The only search for that brought up a program in England. Is Biden in the right country? [SEE UPDATE 4]

Sarah Palin says she's always been proud to be an American, and so has McCain (and, by implication, she's referring to Michelle Obama's statements and, well, pretty much everything BHO says...)

THE POWER GLUTES HAD A MOOD SWING:

10.23 pm. I'm changing my mind about this debate. Biden is now cleaning up... 10.29 pm. She's just whirring now... 10.30 pm. Biden's sobriety and authority and call for fundamental change is both reasonable and solid. It will resonate, I think...

P.S. Why is Campbell Brown's leg in the foreground on CNN's coverage? I'm sure it's not just eye candy or anything!

UPDATE: A commenter says this unconfirmed bit at meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/media_bias.php:

Media not covering Biden's Lebanon gaffe... First he said Hezbollah was kicked out of Lebanon... Biden's suggestion of moving Nato forces into Lebanon is not practical... Nato is seen as a puppet of the U.S in the middle east and that idea of moving nato into lebanon has long been rejected... Sounds like a good idea but the UN blue hats are the only thing the shia in Lebanon will agree to... This was discussed two years ago and Nato and Hezbollah were both against it.

UPDATE 2: Nine out of ten sockpuppets/BHO supporters posing as "reporters" agree: Biden won the debate (despite unmentioned gaffes). They agree that Palin held her own, but she didn't really answer any of the questions. Plus, she got the name of Gen. David D. McKiernan wrong; she said McClellan, presumably having a minor mix-up with the Civil War general. Oh, my. How will Ahmedinejad respect her now?

Kos says (dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/2/21471/4403/39/618299) "So who won? Who cares. Nothing happened to change the dynamics of this race." Sully, whose mood swings have temporarily stablized, says (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/the-bottom-line.html) "The campaign's trajectory remains unaltered."

Translated from Obamaian, those mean that Palin clearly won.

UPDATE 3: Reuters says:

Biden, who is known for his verbal miscues, managed to only have one major gaffe, apparently erroneously referring to Hezbollah instead of Syria when he talked about the United States and France coming to the aid of Lebanon... "When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said, and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know — if you don't, Hezbollah will control it,'" Biden said.

However, whether the issue in the first update is another gaffe remains open.

Biden might have also gotten his Constitution wrong.

And, straight outta the McCain campaign comes a list of 14 alleged Biden lies (link).

UPDATE 4: Biden was refering to the LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) program above, not "My Heat". There are a lot of pages taking him to task for voting against increased for that program and it took a while to find this McCain quote:

"Of course I favor increases in LIHEAP or whatever is necessary to help people meet literally incredible challenges this winter. I have always supported whatever is necessary to help those who can't care for themselves." But he said with spending "out of control," such programs should be paid for rather than add to the deficit.

UPDATE 5: There's more on the Lebanon bit at americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/and_now_the_mother_of_all_bide.html. FactCheck says they both got things wrong here. Fact-checking them is left as an exercise. And, there are eight more Biden "Errors/Lies/Hallucinations" other than those from the McCain campaign here. That points out that the Katie's Restaurant Biden mentioned in his "I'm one of you" speech shut down in the 80s, changing names and owners. Only recently was it reopened as Wings to Go at Katies. He might have meant to refer to a different restaurant, or maybe all the time he spends hanging out in the lumber department at Home Depot has warped his mind.