Steph hints there was something funny during the commercial break…

Gravel: I asked all of my rivals to use public financing.

Biden says in his public life he’s never said what he didn’t think; many times he’s said too much of what he did think.

Kucinich: I say what others are afraid to say.

Obama: We have to face choices and sacrifice. Mentions global warming. There will be costs involved. All of those steps are going to require a little bit of hardship and a little bit of pinching. Mentions speech in Detroit. (Credit where it’s due, he did bring a message his audience didn’t want to hear.)

Edwards cites war in Iraq. Said he had huge internal conflict. I cast the wrong vote.

Clinton: I regret giving Bush authority he used and abused. I thought, based on what he said, that that would be an appropriate approach. I never would have persued this war.

Kucinich asks “were you tricked, Senator Clinton?”

But the attention shifts to Richardson, cites his weekly mistakes, but he says he gets the big things right in his negotiations.

Dodd: Military commissions act, regrets not filibustering.

Dodd opposes merit-based pay for teachers. Wants far-less rigid criteria when it comes to highly qualified teachers.

Obama says teachers need to “buy in” to the way that they’re measured.

Debate… getting… boring… all candidates… talking about how much… they care about teachers…

Hillary: Teachers need more support. Focus on kids with disadvantaged backgrounds. Need universal pre-K…. We have changed as a nation, but our schools seem off-limits for bringing technology into them.

Richardson: We need to pay our teachers better. Blah. Blatant pandering. Cites his “one point plan” on No Child Left Behind: Scrap it.

Yet another shot of Mrs. Kucinich.

Gravel: They’re all talking business as usual. Iran, er, no, Spain, Norway – all of those countries fund education from the kindergarten to PhD levels. We can’t do that when you’re trying to expand the military.

(They show some audience member looking terribly confused. Somewhere in Alaska, some family is very concerned that Grandpa is missing from the nursing home.)

Kucinch goes after that “bloated, wasteful” Pentagon budget.

Oooh, mortgages. Should banks lower rates?

Hillary: I’ve offered a plan; the answer to this problem doesn’t lend itself well to yes or no.

Edwards wants a Home Rescue Fund. Argh. Gravel: Follow the money to the people on this stage.

Richardson: This is the Katrina of the mortgage lending industry. We need more transparency, industry is acting like a loanshark.

Biden: Problem is comparable to Savings and Loan crisis.

Obama: We need to make sure we have tough regulation to make sure people who have saved are not hoodwinked out of their homes. Blames special interests. (The problem in many cases, Senator, is that home buyers haven’t saved.)

Kucinich: We’re putting off the day of reckoning… and after a brief moment of almost making sense, Kucinich calls for the U.S. government making loans to homeowners in trouble.

Q: Decisive moment?

Kucinich: My family lived in a car in the inner city. As President, I would remember where I came from.

Obama: Transition from high school to college. At times, I was an angry young man. Reawakened values.

Biden: Got involved in civil rights movement. It makes a difference if you’re engaged. You can change peoples’ lives.

Richardson: Moment my wife agreed to marry me. Given me strength and an anchor in my life. And after 9/11 I wanted to get back into public service.

Gravel: When I realized government was broken.

Edwards: Saw my father watching public television trying to learn from public television so he could get a better job. Also, when I worked in a mill.

Dodd: Joining the Peace Corps. (Poor Dodd had a dark black bug crawling on his white hair at that moment.)

Hillary: I owe where I am to the women who came before me, and in particular my mother.

And that’s it… wrapup coming momentarily…