Quick Notes While Waiting...

...for the House to vote on whether we plummet into an economic abyss...

--On another C-SPAN channel, US Rep. Bill Delahunt -- longtime Norfolk County DA -- just gave a rather impassioned oratory during a House hearing on the US Attorney firings scandal. The committee is taking testimony from the Inspector General about his latest damning report on the topic. Delahunt had no actual questions for IG Fine, but used his time to show just how genuinely bitter he is over the damage that has been done to the reputations and morale of the attorneys who make careers out of serving the DoJ in what are supposed to be non-political positions.

--Yeah, Moody's downgrading your credit rating, that's not so good, Massachusetts Turnpike Authority people.

--Newly out: a two-year progress report on the state's mandated health care insurance plan. One interesting figure is a roughly 40% decrease in the use of, and safety-net fund payments for, free care for the uninsured. That's key to the system eventually becoming reasonably close to cost-neutral. (Romney claimed on the campaign trail that this savings will make up the entire cost of subsidizing insurance, but at least in this one particular case he might not have been completely honest.) Interesting data also on numbers of people facing penalties for non-compliance, but from my first look nothing specific about the revenue from employers faced with those $295/employee fees for uninsured employees.

--I wrote earlier that "at one point I heard that Obama was working a similar tie-breaker idea in Nebraska, the other state that splits electors, but I don't think they actually diverted funds to that effort." Apparently they just did.

--My personal favorite exchange from last night's debate:

Ifill: What should be the trigger, or should there be a trigger, when nuclear weapons use is ever put into play?

Palin: Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet....

--Gotta go... Pelosi's speaking on the House floor about the debate. Wonder if she'll rile up the Republicans like last time?