For 90 minutes on Thursday night, Gwen Ifill moderated-- fairly, despite the accusations of bias before it even began-- the debate between Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden, candidates from their respective parties for the office of Vice President. During 85 of those 90 minutes, I could not decide whether I wanted to laugh or vomit. Gov. Palin is a joke and an embarrassment and I felt ashamed for Americans everywhere; to know that the world is watching this incompetent yokel, who clearly does not have a grasp of national politics or the responsibilities of the office to which she aspires, is enough to make me blush and hide my face. What a complete disaster for McCain. What was he thinking, picking this woman? Does he believe her youth and breast are enough to gain him the support of independent voters-- who tend to make decisions based on clear reasoning-- and women? Does he think women vote for the vag? How condescending.

Speaking of condescending, was anyone else as angry as I about that winking at the camera? What the fuck was that? Three times Gov. Palin winked at the camera, and all three times I felt insulted. So many times she peppered her answers, short of substance, with homey phrases meant to endure her to the common folk. Well golly gee, how stupid we must all be. Winking? How patronizing! Answer the damned questions!

So I mentioned that for only 85 of those 90 minutes was I completely embarrassed by Palin. The other five, she actually answered a question and got it right! Why? It wasn't scripted by the campaign, that's why. She sounded sincere, as if she might actually know something about the subject. It wasn't read from her note cards.

The 5 minutes in question concerned global warming. Fear not, I am just as eager as Al Gore to do what we can about global warming, I just don't think man is completely at fault. We are at fault for poisoning the air; we are at fault for poisoning our water; we are at fault for raping the landscape. We have even contributed to global warming. However, plenty of global warming events have occurred before the industrial revolution. They occurred even before man existed. Ever heard of ice ages, Joe? Well global warming ends them, and as any scientist will tell you, we are at the tail end of one of the many ice ages that have occurred throughout Earth's history, entering into an inter-glacial period. So yes, we need to put serious effort into cleaning up our act: stop using fossil fuels and stop dumping chemicals into the air and water and stop contributing to the extinction of the animals and plants. (In all fairness, plants and animals go extinct all the time without man's help. It's been happening ever since life was created-- or came into being, however you choose to think of it.)

In any case, Gov. Palin was right when she said it is both man's errors and the recurrent nature of Earth's climate patterns that are causing global warming and we must take this into account in our efforts to tackle it.

Gov. Biden gave his least-factual answer of the night in proclaiming the only cause of global warming to be man-made. Millions of years of evidence say otherwise. So on that one point, you're wrong, Joe. ('Cuz I know you're reading this...)

It would be fun to dissect the other policy bits of the debate, except there were none. Gov. Palin may not have fainted, but she sure won't be winning any forensics contest. She quickly exhausted her list of pseudo-facts memorized beforehand, and fell into a pattern of discussing energy, no matter what question she was asked, and failing that, tripping over the sentence structure of the English language.

Despite all of that,the bar was set so low for her, that the initial conclusions of the pundits were to call it a draw. Fantastical nonsense. Sen. Biden spent the night explaining policy ideas and direction, while Gov. Palin proved unable to do anything but remain upright and audible. Letting retarded people slowly cross the street even after your light turns green doesn't mean they fought your car to a draw, it only means you chose not to run them over. Sen. Biden was the courteous driver of that metaphorical car.

If Sen. McCain was determine to pick an unknown-yet-attractive female to fill the role as Number Two, why the hell did he not scour the country to find a beauty with the already-present grasp of national policy issues. A youngish, conservative-leaning female professor of constitutional law, maybe? Unicorns do exist in the Bible. Look it up.

So the debate score: Palin, 1; Biden, 99.

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

-Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK)

Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. . . . If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade.

-Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE)