"And I May Not Answer the Questions that Either the Moderator or you Want to Hear"

The VP debate drinking game, of course, turned out to be tremendously fruitful. If you, like us, drank every time they said Main Street, maverick, referred to the fundamentals of something, or called each other by their first name, then you're probably suffering in the fetal position right now, under your desk at work. If you, like us, also drank every time Palin said gotcha, gonna, betcha, heckuva, folks, gosh, golly, or any other assorted folkisms, you probably ran out of alcohol within the first half hours. A welcome and added benefit to the drinking game was that, even as her words made less and less sense, by the end of the debate I really wanted to buy her a drink.

Because she wasn't reduced to a blubbering mess of tears, people are calling her performance a complete victory. Anyone expecting the moderator to say something like the following Billy Madison quote was in for a disappointment:

"Miss Palin, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

That said, she does, as others have pointed out, talk like a fifth grade teacher. She sounded less like a person who might lead the free world someday, and more like a substitute teacher trying to convince a 3rd grade class that a field trip to the cracker factory would be worthwhile, you betcha.

She would, however, be a terrible fifth grade teacher in that she doesn't speak in complete sentences. Some are missing verbs, some are missing a subject, some an object, but most of all, most of them miss the point. A sampling:

One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again.

Or:

But I also want to clarify, if there's any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue.

Or:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?

Incredibly, she manages to out-Bush Bush. It's a remarkable feat, and she even managed to ape his pronunciation of "nuclear." It's not "nucular," for the love of Pete. How do they not know this? How have people not told them they're wrong? I will give a thousand dollars to the person who can convince her that, every time she says "nucular," God smites a puppy.

Hey, if she doesn't believe in dinosaurs, maybe she'll believe that.