Live blog — from Nashville, a grand ol’ debate!
Things should be getting under way at Nashville’s Belmont University in just a few minutes.
For those joining our debate live blog for the first time, everyone is invited — indeed, encouraged — to contribute thoughts by adding their comments to this post.
Pre-debate spin is focusing on “John McCain’s last stand.” The consensus of polls is that Barack Obama is widening his lead, anywhere from 6 to 8 points. McCain needs something tonight to stop the bleeding.
Two trivia questions to get things started:
1. What highly-ranked NCAA Division I basketball team lost to tiny Belmont in December 2003?
2. Name the 1975 movie in which a fictional presidential candidate named Hal Philip Walker played a key role, though he was never on screen. Who directed the movie?
Kevin Horrigan is deputy editor of the editorial page. He writes editorials on local, state and national politics and public policy and also contributes a signed column to the Sunday Commentary Page. "The Old Sport" is a former sports columnist for the Post-Dispatch and for 10 years hosted radio talk shows on KMOX and KTRS in St. Louis. He lives in South St. Louis with his wife, Kate, and a dream of one day starting a professional catfish noodling tour. 
By the way, the movie Horrigan described in the teaser opening was, appropriately enough, “Nashville.”
Trivia answers:
1. The Mizzou Tigers, under the late, lamented Coach Quin Snyder, had been ranked as high as No. 3 in preseason polls in 2003. But that 71-70 loss to Belmont in Columbia was a disaster.
2. And yes, Eric (having cheated by checking the Google) is right — Hal Philip Walker was the voice from the sound truck in Robert Altman’s classic “Nashville.”
Damn!
So, what does checking Google prove — that you can look it up? Not that knowing trivia proves anything anyway.
if McCain has the answer to fixing social security and knows how to get bin laden then why hasn’t he spoken up before now…pretty sure if he had come up with these solutions he would be running away with this race…he’s a moron.
Nice! http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/McCaskills_edge.html
Congratulations on the highly successful voter registration drive in the St Louis area. Kudos to ACORN. Now, let’s go that extra mile and make sure we instruct our new voters on proper technique at the polling place. If voting with a ballot to be read by an optical scanner, make sure you fill in the entire circle with a #2 lead pencil. If voting with a punch card ballot, make sure that after you have made your selections, check the card for any hanging chad. If you see one, immediately seek help from the poll workers by asking them for whom they think you voted. After they decide, you can drop the card into the ballot box. And lastly, if you make an oral selection, be sure to pronounce the name “Barrack Obama” not “Bin Laden, Osama”. There’s a huge difference here. The second one is a terrorist bomber, but the first one only supports a terrorist bomber.
Speaking of chads… During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, we heard all about hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads. I always wondered, in relation to those `pregnant’ chads, why weren’t the `deadbeat’ chads ever discussed? I mean, to get a chad pregnant and then split… Horrible.
— mobrockman
“if McCain has the answer to fixing social security and knows how to get bin laden then why hasn’t he spoken up before now…pretty sure if he had come up with these solutions he would be running away with this race…he’s a moron.”
and he’s a liar