Liveblogging The Texas Concealed Weapon Showdown

WE ARE HERE, IN PERSON, writing about this thing that is happening in a room somewhere in this building on the vast University Texas campus. Join us as we look at lots of people at the media buffet table who look totally familiar but unplaceable!

8: 04 PM -- Ugh, Campbell Brown says they're going to have a "real conversation." Dullsville.

8: 06 PM -- Is there some weird microphone problem? Is there a heavy wind onstage? Not sure about this jacket of Hillary's...the piping on the collar makes it looks like two little yellow strings are leaping out of her sternum.

8: 08 PM -- Some bedraggled-looking photographer type is standing in front of the screen. He looks like Crocodile Dundee. He's probably, like, Harvey Weinstein and we just don't know it. Now Obama's talking. The microphone problem persists. This week Obama met people in San Antonio! And Ohio! But has he met people from Vermont and Rhode Island, who will also be voting soon? Has he met their pleas for more delicious Del's lemonade, and Autocrat brand coffee drinks?

8: 11 PM -- They have only been campaigning for 13 MONTHS? Hillary Clinton is smiling at him sort of like Cindy McCain was smiling at her husband this morning.

8: 12 PM -- Hillary does not have dibs on Barbara Jordan. Speaking of, there is an awesome statue of Barbara Jordan smack dab in the middle of the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, which everyone should visit when they are in Austin.

8: 13 PM -- First up, Univision guy! Will the candidates answer in Spanish?

8: 13 PM -- Will Hillary meet with Raul Castro? She says she will, after he makes it clear Cuba will not be Communist anymore. Obama, on the other hand, has probably already been to Cuba, as he is a genetic Communist .

8: 16 PM -- Obama would meet without preconditions, but with preparation. Whatever that means. It is important that we talk with our enemies, as evidenced by this very debate! During his and Hillary Clinton's lifetimes, relations with Cuba have been miserable. (This is obviously a dig at John McCain, as Cuba hadn't even been invented when he was born.)

8: 19 PM -- Hillary is giving us a neat little review of the history of American relations with Cuba. This has been said a million times before, but she does know her shit. "The era of unilateralism is over." Big applause.

8: 21 PM -- It is precisely because Bush was so crappy that we need to embrace all Cubans, everywhere.

8: 22 PM -- John King asks, how would Obama manage the economy differently from Clinton? He points out that you don't have to be an economist to know the economy is doing poorly ... which is interesting because rumor has it that Henry Paulson, chairman of the Fed, is sort of a moron. The woman next to this little Wonkette machine is nodding and saying MMHMM THAT'S RIGHT and whispers, "we need more black people in here."

8: 24 PM -- Crap, he said something about lead paint that got applause.

8: 26 PM -- Hillary? What would DAY ONE look like for you? She agrees with a lot of what he just said because they are both liberal leftist communist protectionists. Also: a different approach to trade. She wants a trade time-out. Does she seem to want time outs on a lot of things? Oh shit, there goes the lead paint again. No more lead paint trade under Hillary Clinton, huzzah!

8: 28 PM -- She has met hairdressers, and hoodwinked postal workers! That is fantastic. Tell us more about this hoodwinked man. Oh noes, now she's going to talk about the "green collar" jobs, the dumbest neologism since..."the war on Science," which she also just mentioned. She is totally talking over Campbell Brown.

8: 30 PM -- Our neighbor agrees that handsome Jorge of Univision is like a Latin Anderson Cooper. He could maybe talk more, and the candidates could maybe talk less? Nope, more hectoring about comprehensive immigration reform. She is so very detailed. She needs a little laser-beam pointer so that she can show us the immigrants in the shadows. Boy, she is going to do a lot in the first hundred days of her presidency.

8: 32 PM -- Obama calls for a toning down of rhetoric, and no more political football. Sorry dudes, dissolve the office pool. Unacceptable. He points out that people with Spanish surnames are being discriminated against, which begs the question of WHY those people don't cheat the system by changing their names. Immigration reform, huzzah.

8: 34 PM -- Ooh, cut to the audience. No Rob Reiners or Jack Nicholsons in this crowd. Willie Nelson, maybe? Who are we kidding, he's totally in Gravel's pocket.

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