The response on MSNBC to Thursday's feisty VP debate was very different from the anguished one that followed last week’s sleepier presidential one.

It was a “fast moving, intensely combative debate,” said Rachel Maddow. “An intensely kinetic night … it could not have been a starker contrast from last week.”

Chris Matthews, who outlined a checklist for Vice President Joe Biden prior to the debate, had his own version of score-keeping: He said Biden won on the three big issues of taxes, Medicare, and abortion, while Ryan only won on his Libya answer. “On the issues that matter to people, [it was] a clear victory for Joe Biden,” Matthews said. “He did what he had to do.”

“He was detailed, he was passionate,” agreed Ed Schultz.

Maddow cited one paarticular exchange, when Biden noted that despite his criticism of the stimulus, Ryan had actually asked the administration for stimulus money for his district, calling it brutal," to general agreement.

"The place where he really did do damage on domestic policy was Medicare,” added Chris Hayes, the host of MSNBC's Up with Chris. Biden repeatedly addressed the camera directly to ask “who do you trust?” on the issue, contrasting himself and Ryan’s privatization plan.

Though most panelists called it for Biden, Lawrence O’Donnell and Republican strategist Steve Schmidt were less sure.

“I think both sides are going to have a real fight in this room tonight about who did better,” said O’Donnell, host of The Last Word, adding that he's “not sure what ended up getting delivered” to swing or low-information voters. Schmidt said Republicans would watch the “fiery debate” and likely say that Ryan won, while Democrats would be “fired up by Joe Biden’s performance.”

One area where the panel almost unanimously credited Ryan was his lack of blatant policy flip-flopping—in contrast to his running-mate last week. “Ryan held his right-wing position, he did not do the chameleon thing that Romney did,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Still, Ryan fumbled on some issues, particularly one big focus of the debate: “Paul Ryan embarrassed himself on Afghanistan tonight like no other issue,” Maddow said. “He doesn’t understand it well enough. I find it terrifying … the Romney-Ryan ticket is not credible on the issue of war.”

Even Schmidt conceded that Ryan’s answers in this arena were weak. “He got lost in the answer on Afghanistan, I don’t disagree with that at all,” he said. 

After President Obama's limp debate performance last week, the pressure is on Joe Biden tonight.

On Hardball, host Chris Matthews said Biden needs to bring up topics where Romney is weak. And in his own words, Matthews laid out a checklist of issues to hit for the veep:

•The 47 percent comment by the presidential nominee.

•The issue of vouchers which [Romney] is pushing.

•The issue of personhood basically criminalizing abortion.

•The pre-existing condition issue, which Romney keeps lying about (the only time I say "lies," about that issue) where he keeps saying his program would cover it.

• And the auto industry rescue which Romney opposed?

On those issues, Matthews added, Biden "wins just by bringing them up."

MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman said if Biden doesn't meet the checklist, "he will have failed ... to focus and fight, neither of which the President did a week ago."

Chris Usher / AP

In this Sept. 30, 2012, photo provided by CBS News former House Speaker Newt Gingrich talks on CBS's "Face The Nation" in Washington.

Newt Gingrich said Jack Welch's conspiracy theory about the latest jobs report is "worth looking at" on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday. On Friday, Welch had argued that the Obama administration had doctored the latest job numbers for political reasons.

Though he called this particular theory "plausible but irrelevant" and admitted the report would be a "significant help" to Obama's re-election campaign, Gingrich also said Welch's words are worthy of consideration because they point to a broad public distrust of the current administration.

“It rings true to people ... You have a president of the United States so deeply distrusted by people like Jack Welch ... who is hardly a right-winger," Gingrich said. He added that it was noteworthy that, when positive job numbers were released, "Welch instantaneously assumes this is the Chicago machine."

Former Obama press secretary and current senior adviser Robert Gibbs appeared side-by-side with Gingrich and wasted no time in shooting the "absolutely crazy" theory down.

"The notion, quite frankly, that somebody as well-respected as Jack Welch would go on television and single-handedly embarrass himself—it's incredibly dangerous," Gibbs said. He said any believers in that theory probably "assume that the real jobs report is somewhere safe in Nairobi with the President's Kenyan birth certificate."

Mike Segar / Reuters

U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) addresses the second session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida August 28, 2012.

They're not all trading in conspiracy theories, but conservatives are still downplaying the significance of the latest jobs numbers. On this week's Fox News Sunday, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) said the latest jobs report isn't satisfactory progress because two unacknowledged factors account for the drop in the unemployment rate: Discouraged workers are dropping out of the workforce and more people are taking part-time work.

"I think if you told the American people four years ago that the unemployment rate was going to be 7.8 percent at this point during the President's term, I don't think anyone should be satisfied or happy with that," said Ayotte.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, made headlines Friday when he accused the Obama administration of cooking the books to make the numbers appear rosier than reality. He later admitted he had no evidence for such a theory.

Ayotte didn't echo Welch's statement, but she did say the decline in the unemployment rate was because of an uptick in part-time employment, and that the rate would be 11% if it weren't for workers dropping out.

Democratic Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley countered by saying the country is "moving in the right direction" and "making progress."

The pair also discussed last week's debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. O'Malley called foul on Romney's claim that he would not cut taxes for the rich, saying "we saw Big Bird meet the big lie." Ayotte replied, "Governor Romney made it clear in the debate that he is not going to lower the burden on upper income individuals."

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania courts put the state's controversial voter ID law on hold until after the election, ensuring that voters this year will not have to show a photo ID at the polls. Two days later, however, the official website and hotline run by the state were still giving voters outdated and inaccurate information.

Though the ruling is important, said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday, it means a lot less for this year's election if most Pennsylvania voters believe that the law remains in effect. Official state media were declining to clarify the situation.

In the wake of the ruling Tuesday, the Pennsylvania State Department's VotesPA tweaked the small print on their website—small print which runs underneath a still-large "SHOW IT" banner with a picture of a photo ID*.

Since the website revision was minor and potentially still confusing, Maddow staff called VotesPA's toll-free number for more information. As it turns out, two days after the ruling, the official hotline was still telling callers that the "new information about Pennsylvania's voter ID law" was that "all Pennsylvania voters will be required to show a photo ID before voting."

A state official told a Rachel Maddow Show producer that Pennsylvania was trying "to make sure that nothing's out there that's sending mixed messages to the voters." He also encouraged any confused voters to visit the website or call the hotline—the very same website and hotline with wrong information. After the producer pointed out the hotline recording was "factually incorrect," the state removed the message.

The widespread confusion isn't just confined to Pennsylvania. In Idaho, the state government is distributing voter information pamphlets that read "Bring your ID and vote!" on the cover, despite the fact that Idaho law does not require you to have an ID in order to vote. 

"Your state using your tax dollars to misinform you about what your voting rights are in your state," said Maddow.

*This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Romney may have won accolades among pundits at Wednesday's debate, but his vagueness on actual policy points is hurting him—and putting more pressure on his running mate.

Next week, before round two of the Obama versus Romney debates, vice presidential contenders Paul Ryan and Joe Biden will go head to head. On Thursday's PoliticsNation, host Rev. Al Sharpton noted that Romney's decision to move towards the center in Wednesday night's debate could spell trouble for Ryan.

"He's going to have a hard time defending some of the things Mitt Romney said last night," Sharpton said.

David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, agreed that Romney's moderate and vague statements last night put Ryan in a tough position. Romney, Corn said, "gives Joe Biden a lot of lines of attack on the Ryan budget, the Medicare plan, and all those things. The one thing Ryan has done the past two years is be very, very, very specific on all these things ... so he can't do the pirouettes the way Mitt Romney did."

That said, Corn added, "The truth of the matter is that [the debates] don't really matter."

"If the Dan Quayle, Lloyd Bentsen debate didn't make a difference, I'm not sure this one is going to," Corn said. That 1988 veep debate was when the Democratic Bentsen famously put down Republican Quayle with the line, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Though the vice presidential debate in 2008 was the most watched in television history—69.9 million viewers tuned in to watch Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden—in general, debates don't seem to have long-term impacts on races. Last night, 67.2 million people watched Obama and Romney, the largest audience for a presidential debate since 1992, according to the AP.

In a heated exchange that was much more tense and rapid-fire than the main event, MSNBC host Chris Hayes argued with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani about tax policy—and Rudy's own security firm—after the first presidential debate.

After Giuliani stressed the need to stop "feeding the beast" of federal spending, Hayes, the host of MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes, asked Giuliani point-blank about federal contracts he said Giuliani's firm holds with the Department of Homeland Security.

"Does the Department of Homeland Security and related spending through contracts on say, private consulting firms like yourself, does that count as feeding the beast or not?"

Giuliani denied that his firm held such contracts.

Hayes later tweeted, "I would list all of Giuliani's gov't contracts through the years, but it's too long for twitter."

Watch the video above.

MSNBC hosts and contributors were almost unanimous in their agreement that Mitt Romney came out ahead in Wednesday night's presidential debate.

Rachel Maddow, who thought the "debate format died a very painful death tonight," said Romney took advantage of moderator Jim Lehrer's lackluster performance. "Lehrer got rolled over by Romney over and over and over again, and it was the President's fault that he did not try to do the same thing," she said.

The debate's focus was domestic policy, "on which [Romney] is weakest," said Maddow, and yet the debate's narrow subject matter still benefited him. "Nothing on education, nothing on women's rights, nothing on immigration, nothing on Bain," she said. "We didn't talk about the things that matter."

Chris Matthews was the most visibly agitated of the group. "I don't know how he let Romney get away with the crap he threw out tonight about Social Security," he said of Obama. "Where was Obama tonight? ... I don't know what he was doing out there; he had his head down. He was enduring the debate rather than fighting it ... What was Romney doing? He was winning."

Lawrence O'Donnell had a more subdued opinion. He diffused the criticism, saying Obama "came in with a presidential strategy: [He] was not going to step down from the presidential podium and become a prosecutor. Mitt Romney was happy to take on the role of the smiling prosecutor."

Governor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic head of Maryland, agreed with O'Donnell. "The President's always had a certain dignified reserve," he said. 

Ed Schultz said Obama "was not properly prepared for this tonight." Many observers noted Obama's cool demeanor during the debate; former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm tweeted during the debate, "More passion, please, sir."

Schultz also criticized Obama for not using the word "obstruction" and said the president "was afraid to use the Ryan plan as a manifesto of what these people want to do for this country. He played soft."

Likewise, Chris Hayes noted that it was "49 minutes in [the debate] before we got a Ryan budget mention, which was shocking to me."

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt summed it all up as a big victory for Romney. "[He] was in command of things from the beginning ... a startling performance, in terms of how good Mitt Romney was," he said.

"He made a good testimony tonight," the Rev. Al Sharpton said of the Republican candidate. "But he will be indicted. He's lying."

At least 69% of Americans think the U.S. should not be in Afghanistan, according to a recent NYT/CBS poll. The longest-serving Republican member of Congress, Florida's Bill Young, has reversed course on U.S. policy in Afghanistan, and is now calling for a troop withdrawal. As Rachel Maddow put it on Thursday's The Rachel Maddow Show, there's a "responsible debate to be had here over the longest war in American history." So why is only one presidential candidate talking about it?

National security issues featured heavily in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections and debates, when the United States was at war with both Afghanistan and Iraq. "We're still not quite as consumed by those issues but we are still in one of those wars," Maddow said, and "Romney has generally done his best to avoid the subject altogether."

The Republican candidate's silence on Afghanistan is particularly deafening this week, thanks to a military report today that gives President Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan an "F."

Since the beginning of the troop surge, which ended last week, the number of both enemy-initiated attacks and "executed IED attacks" (bombings) has increased. Those numbers did not drop to pre-surge levels after the surge's conclusion. "Afghan troops are turning around and killing American troops they're supposed to be working with," Maddow summarized, before questioning why it's not more of a campaign issue if "things after the surge are worse than before the surge."

"Does the Republican party have a competing idea? Nobody knows," said Maddow. With 40 days left until the election, "veterans have to be more than just an applause line."

The race to control the House hasn't been getting much attention, but it just got a little hotter. Until recently, Democrats didn't seem to have much of a shot of retaking the chamber, which they lost in the 2010 midterm elections. Now, however, polls suggest it's a real possibility. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi agrees.

Appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night, Pelosi said Mitt Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan—who has made turning Medicare into a voucher program a centerpiece of his political identity—was a game-changer for Democrats.

"August 11 is when the race changed," the party leader said, referring to the day Romney announced Ryan as his running mate. "That's when the election became all about "Medicare, Medicare, Medicare—the three most important issues in the campaign in alphabetical order."

If Romney-Ryan win, "we'll be putting seniors at the mercy of the insurance companies by giving them a voucher, not a guarantee," Pelosi explained..

Democrats lead Republicans by an average of 5 points in generic polling, which is enough to pick up the 25 seats they need to secure a majority, according to Pelosi. She said they are focusing efforts all around the country, both in states where President Obama is competitive and where he isn't.

Pelosi and Maddow discussed another underplayed issue during this presidential campaign:-the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pelosi praised President Obama's timetable for withdrawal, though she said "it may not be as fast as we would all like."

It's "taking us to a place where war as a resolution of conflict is an obsolete idea," she said.

The Virginia Republican Party has asked a local GOP committee to remove offensive and racially charged Photoshopped posts of Barack Obama from their Facebook page.

The Mecklenburg County Republican Committee has myriad photos making fun of President Obama on their Facebook wall, but some are more offensive than others. One portrays Obama as a witch doctor and has been circulated as a favorite among tea party types for years. Others that the state GOP requested for removal depict Obama as a caveman and a thug. The photos put the committee in the spotlight this week after Virginia Senate GOP candidate George Allen—of "macaca" infamy—completed a campaign swing in the area.

On PoliticsNation Wednesday, Rev. Al Sharpton said the GOP was "reaching back into their bag of dirty tricks" to smear Obama. As Sharpton noted, Newt Gingrich said on Fox Tuesday night that Obama is "not a real president" and "a false president." Top Romney surrogate John Sununu, appearing on Fox earlier that night, said Obama is "absolutely lazy and detached from his job."

While the chair of the Virginia Republican party called the photos "offensive and tasteless," the Mecklenburg Committee chair said he was not ashamed. "Good God, you should have seen some of the images they did of George [W.] Bush," chair R. Wallace Hudson said. But as Guardian journalist Ana Marie Cox pointed out on PoliticsNation with Rev. Sharpton, those photos "did not have the racial resonance" that comes with these posts.  

As of now, the witch doctor photo appears to be down from the Mecklenburg Committee's Facebook page, but the other images remain.

"Mitt Romney, at his core, is not a hardcore conservative," Mark McKinnon said Wednesday on The Last Word, laying out one of many of Romney's problems. 

What makes his words different? McKinnon was a top adviser to George W. Bush who also helped out on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

In a brutally honest editorial in The Daily Beast about Romney's latest 47% troubles, McKinnon wrote that candidate is "running out of time, and voters like me are running out of patience."

McKinnon described Romney comments made in the video—which was surreptitiously recorded and posted online Monday by the liberal magazine Mother Jones—as unpresidential. "Presidents don't talk about those people," he said. "Presidents talk about being inclusive."

"He's been a mystery for a lot of us," McKinnon continued, and the latest remarks aren't helping.  

O'Donnell asked if this now means that he is an undecided voter.

"The Libertarian's starting to look pretty good to me right now," McKinnon said, referring to Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.