Morning run-down

• NPR says that Palin walked away a winner in last night's debate because she didn't come off as a brainless bimbo. I don't think that, long-term, this is going to be a positive newscycle for the reeps. Call it a hunch.
• Peggy Noonan agrees, but for the love of god, it's Peggy Noonan! Let's just move on.
• Same with David Brooks.
  
• Over at the WaPo, Tom Shales is less impressed. He makes the salient point that Palin was really up there to debate her own public image moreso than Biden, and that she failed miserably in that regard since she wasn't able to answer anything with specifics. Even the talking heads noticed.
• Early snap-polls show that Biden won convincingly, but that the debate wasn't a "game-changer," which is how the hip kids say "it didn't mean shit."
  
• DailyKos diarist adennak seems to have the most accurate take on what actually went down:

• TheHill does the pregame show on today's House vote on the bailout after the market dropped 348 points yesterday.
• Paul Krugman drops some doom on all of us in his Op-Ed Edge of the Abyss.
  

  How bad is it? Normally sober people are sounding apocalyptic. On Thursday, the bond trader and blogger John Jansen declared that current conditions are “the financial equivalent of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution,” while Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers says that the economy seems to be on “the edge of the abyss.”

  And the people who should be steering us away from that abyss are out to lunch.

• Just found this courtesy of TMTGM: A "No Bailouts Bill" proposed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore). Worth a read.
  

Happy Friday.