Althouse: Live-blogging the big "town hall" debate.

9:30: "What don't you know and how will you learn it?" A cute question. Cute and disturbing. why disturbing? I tht it was a good qstn, not easy to answer. and neither did. Obama decides to just deliver his prepared closing statement. y. his only answer was "My wife Michelle cld give you a longer list" and "how I learn it, I usually ask her" then "but I'll tell you what I do know..." The last 8 years sucked. Can't get the same result doin' the same thing, so we need change. McCain says what he doesn't know is what we all don't know: the stuff that's going to happen in the future! what's going to happen. the unexpected. which echoed Obama's statement that president's time usually spent dealing w not what expected but what you didn't.

9:05: What is Obama's standard for when we should intervene for purely human reasons, where there are no American interests? I hear no statement of doctrine. What is McCain's doctrine? We should intervene whenever there is a genocide if we have the means to improve the situation. (That's why he stood up to Reagan about Lebanon.) I was expecting to hear that from Obama ~ seemed I remember hearing him, or maybe Biden?, saying that. hmm no I think it was Obama in the first debate, emphasizing the decisive factor of whether we have the capability to effect a change. well look that up...

8:55: Obama says that health care should be a right. (McCain called it a "responsibility.") Obama seems relaxed and smiling but also oddly pissed that McCain has been "throwing a lot of things out there."

8:50: I was just admiring Obama's elegant gestures with his long, thin hands, when McCain positioned himself in the background which was weird - yes this is where andrew sullivan "9:51" (EST) noted him weirdly walking around the stage and made a hand gesture that can only be described as holding an invisible grapefruit in front of your chest. yep! there - that's the gesture I noticed, and wonder about: was it directed at someone? what did it signify? maybe it was not a communication, but still: what emotion was being expressed?

8:47: I love Brokaw. Watch the damned lights!
8:41: McCain thinks he's making a big funny by saying "I'll answer the question!" Because, you know, Obama didn't want to go on to the next question before. No one laughs, but he looks so happy with his wisecracks. "Too many lobbyists workin' there," he says, and I think he's trying to sound Palinesque.
8:37: Tom Brokaw is in control! Obama will not be permitted to say something about taxes because "it's important."

8:28: An old woman emails in her demand that people be asked to make sacrifices. McCain repeats his ideas about cutting spending, and makes a second reference to an overhead projector that Obama procured for the Chicago planetarium. Again with the earmarks. What was the dollar figure on earmarks? I heard $1 billion. That seems like nothing compared to the $750 billion bailout. And what is the sacrifice? Not getting more earmakrs? Obama reminds us of the way Bush told us after 9/11 to "go out and shop." Bush, it seems, could have demanded sacrifices, but Obama doesn't say what we should have sacrificed then or now, though he does advise us to be energy efficient. It's really not too inspiring hmm this is the response that sullivan thinks was a hit out of the park, but I think Obama is trying to seem cool, solid, and not at all exciting. In the background, we see McCain writing, awkwardly, on a note pad, and maybe some of us think about McCain's sacrifices.

8:11: After they blame each other for the financial crisis, Obama tells us we don't want to hear them blaming each other. We just want to know how to stay in our homes and pay our bills. McCain sounds a little shaky and winded. He's wearing a shiny dark suit and a pink and red striped tie. Obama -- in an unshiny suit and a blue-purple tie -- seems relaxed. He's got a casual way of sitting on the stool. yes.