Tonight at 9 p.m.: Veep Debate Live Blog

I've been looking forward to tonight's debate for quite some time - Joe Biden vs. Sarah Palin. I don't know what I'm more eager to see - how bad Sarah Palin butchers her answers, or how badly the media will be in bed with her as it continues to endlessly, shamelessly pimp her candidacy. I have a whole lot to get to, and I'll get to a little bit of it before the debate, so stay tuned.

I know that all candidates rehearse, but it just kills me how God-awful Sarah Palin has been doing during her very rare interviews with the media, including another disastrous installment with Katie Couric, which CBS released yesterday. But, off to the McCain compound in Arizona she went to Debate School to no doubt memorize the thoroughly rehearsed talking points provided by McCain and his staff of hacks. Maybe I'll be proven wrong tonight, but I don't think so.

Of course, now, since the McCain campaign, led by the empty-headed Palin, is tanking, prominent GOP members of Congress and their many, many backers in the mainstream media are already launching attacks in and about the media, specifically about tonight's moderator, Gwen Ifill.

I can't say it any better than Nicole over at C&L:

The McCain campaign is on overdrive to manage the upcoming vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Over the last week, they have demanded limiting the response time to 90 seconds (perfect for the wordy but meaningless “pageant” answers she’s prone to give), set up the framework that tough questions are “gotcha” questions and any of Biden’s responses may be sexist and patronizing. Now they are suggesting that moderator Gwen Ifill may not be nonpartisan enough to moderate the debate, since she authored a book on politics and race, even though the McCain camp approved of her selection (you’ll remember she moderated the 2004 VP debate between Cheney and Edwards).

It's the typical play out of the GOP playbook - they clearly are desperate campaigners.

Remember how Sarah Palin's e-mail got "hacked" last week? Whoops - that didn't turn out to be the scandal they had hoped for, so now it's time to attack the moderator of tonight's debate (a debate that McCain lamely tried to have cancelled last week when he was flying into Washington to "rescue" our economy and our way of life with a lame-assed Wall St. bail-out plan, but that's another post for later).

It's also interesting that 1. the McCain camp ok'd her many weeks ago to moderate the debate, and 2. McCain came out yesterday and actually defended Ifill in the face of GOP blowhards' attacks, and today, McCain said her selection was "a mistake."

Of course, the GOP stooge Matt Drudge is parroting the GOP talking point that Ifill is "biased" and "partisan" and not capable of doing a good job. The asinine Sen. Orrin Hatch is also joining in the chorus. So be it.

It's hardly a bold prediction that no matter how Palin answers the questions tonight, the minute she's asked the slightly toughest question (such as, "Name a Supreme Court decision you've disagreed with" - more on that in a minute) - the right will scream that Ifill was asking biased questions.

I can GUARANTEE that this will happen.

Bonus - disgraced former Pennsylvania Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum (above, conceding his Senate race on election night in '06 [any excuse to re-run this picture!]) is rumored to be a part of the post-debate coverage tonight. I'm sure he already has written out what he's going to say before one word has been uttered by either candidate.

Illustration at top by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone Magazine