My review of the debate, "Scalpel Beats Hatchet," is up at The Guardian's Comment is free America:

When the two candidates and moderator Bob Schieffer take the stage, McCain and Obama are seated so that McCain will have to put serious effort into avoiding looking at Obama, as he has so carefully done during the last two debates. I half expect him to come out wearing blinders. He doesn't, but when he starts with, "It's good to see you again, Senator Obama," he still can't really look at his opponent. I wonder if there's an email circulating among conservatives reporting that Obama is not just a radical extremist who wants to enslave white America, but that looking directly into his eyes can turn a man into stone.

Moments later, I see that if the Muslim Medusa meme has taken hold in the conservative hive mind, McCain has decided to nonetheless brave the possibility of petrification, because now he's staring at Obama in a vaguely unsettling way, blinking rapidly, and, unless I'm mistaken, spelling out "The Acorn doesn't fall far from the terrorist" in Morse code.

The two senators go back and forth about taxes, the discussion centred around some bloke named Joe the Plumber, who may or may not be related to Joe Sixpack…