Gwen Ifill [The Daily Show with Jon Stewart]

• McCain suggested he might suspend his campaign again so that he can really broker a bailout plan to save the country and be a hero... and we all know how well that worked out the last time. [The Nation]
• An actuarial company has predicted that McCain has a 25 percent chance of dying in office his second term, which is why Sarah Palin is cracking jokes about Joe Biden's age and asked people whether they want "the new energy, the new face, the new ideas" in the White House in her new interview with Katie Couric. [MSNBC, Politico]
• By the way, despite the fact that Republican leaders initially claimed it was Pelosi's partisan speech that caused Republicans to vote against the bailout plan  a stance mocked by no less than Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh  it turns out that it was actually Newt Gingrich's fault! He ginned up opposition to the bill to test the waters for a 2012 Presidential run before releasing a tepid statement of support while the Members he conned voted his will in the floor. Dick. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post, Politico, Huffington Post]
• The Republican strategy to win in Ohio  as in Michigan before that  remains to disenfranchise new, poor and minority voters. For real. It's easier than winning based on your candidate or the issues, apparently. [MSNBC, Michigan Messenger]

• Palin's former aides admit that she's a little ADD about debate prep but usually pulls it out in the end because she's all charming and shit. [LA Times, Andrew Sullivan]
• Palin gave her first newspaper interview  via e-mail, naturally  and managed not to stick her foot in it. Her staff managed to do little more than reiterate talking points in e-mail format, but it's a start. [Mat-Su Frontiersman]
• Gwen Ifill broke her ankle this week (Steve Schmidt has nothing to do with it, he swears) but neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will keep her from asking Sarah Palin about foreign policy. [Fishbowl LA]
• Bill Clinton plans to suck it up and do a couple of Obama rallies in Florida so people will stop saying he's bitter and not really keen on an Obama presidency. Now if only he can keep the passive-aggressive slights to himself while doing them! [The Guardian]

Gwen Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards, asking a total of 20 questions. Ten of those questions were specifically about foreign policy  including the first 9  while Cheney brought up foreign policy in two addition domestic policy questions and Edwards snuck it into one of his domestic policy answers. In the latter three cases, Edwards and Cheney responded to the other's foreign policy forays in kind. That means that foreign policy discussions comprised two-thirds of the last Vice Presidential debate.

Unlike the two Vice Presidential debates (Lieberman-Cheney and Gore-Kemp) before that, in 2008, this country has troops stationed abroad fighting in conflicts that we started  i.e., we're in the midst of two foreign wars much as it did in 2004. During the Cheney-Edwards debate, the foreign policy questions were about Iraq, Afghanistan, the use of intelligence, Iran and Israel  gosh, it kind of seems like those might be ongoing and relevant issues, right? (Let alone that Sarah Palin has suggested that we go to war with Russia, attack Pakistan and has tried to burnish her foreign policy credentials by getting photo ops with world leaders might be relevant.) But Nancy Pfuckingsucks and Doocy think that it would totally be unfair to ask Sarah Palin too much about it.

Doocy said, "it seems like they're stacking the deck against" Palin by asking too much about foreign policy  not that Gwen Ifill has released her list of questions or anything  and added "the average person is more concerned with domestic stuff than foreign stuff anyway." Presumably he meant "the average person that doesn't have loved ones in imminent danger fighting one of the two wars abroad in which we are currently embroiled." Pfuckingsucks agreed, says " "Exactly! I think the moderator will have some serious questions to answer if they do go so heavily on foreign policy," and defined "heavy" as sixty percent of the questions  which is, as I pointed out, less than the percentage of the Cheney-Edwards debate that centered in foreign policy. I guess it's only fair to focus on foreign policy questions when it's the Democrat without a whole lot of experience.

In much the same way that the Obama-Biden campaign is seeking to lower expectations of Biden by talking Palin up, the McCain-Palin campaign is seeking to mitigate her expected trouncing by blaming Gwen Ifill. They're literally going on the airwaves and trashing Ifill and her journalistic credentials in advance of a single question being asked in the hopes that she won't ask too much about foreign policy and to garner sympathy for Palin if she does. How long do you think until Pfuckingsucks takes to the air again to suggest that Ifill is "in the tank" for Obama because they have so much in common? Tuesday? Wednesday?

McCain Camp to Ifill: Go Easy on Palin [Talking Points Memo]
The Cheney-Edwards Vice Presidential Debate [The Commission on Presidential Debates]
Palin: U.S. Might Have To Go To War With Russia [Chicago Tribune]
McCain Retracts Palin's Pakistan Comments [CNN]
Sarah Palin Meets World Leaders [Huffington Post]
Obama-Biden Camp Hypes Palin’s Debating Skills [CNN]