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. 
Mr. McCain has indeed fought earmarks, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the federal budget.
Gallagher — you’re gonna’ have to school Gil on Fannie and Freddie oversight and how they work.
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Si Vis… Stick to the debate. There’s another arena for that.
Why are people who do not pay their bills victims? There was a time when they were known as deadbeats. If a person is not smart enough to understand basic loan papers, they are not smart enough to vote. In order to escape responsibility on the grounds of incompetence, a trustee should be required to manage the persons future affairs.
Maybe he will perk up as the evening goes on, but McCain does not seem “on” tonight.
“SI”
Fannie and Freddy, like most of the big financial operations, were involved in outrageous conduct. Some of it may ahve been criminal and if the ongoing FBI investigations hold up, maybe some people will go tojail. You and I can communicate tomorrow about the specifics with citations. But there is no substance to the convenient myth that the Community Redevelopment Act drove anything even close to the world financial calamity that now threatens the security of real people all over the world.
My hat’s off to McCain on this one… And I don’t even wear a hat.
It is NOT the governments money, cutting taxes on anyone is NOT taking money from the government, it isnt theirs anyway. They did nothing to earn it, but they make it sound like it is theirs.
The sacrifice question is a good one — what will citizens be asked to sacrifice? No specifics from McCain. Let’s see how Obama does.
Wow, I agree - McCain isn’t on tonight. He’s repeating himself on earmarks in a way that doesn’t make him seem very in touch.