Palin did alright during the debate, and she only did alright, because the bar was set so low for her after those Katie Couric interviews, everybody was just so happy she didn't outright fail!

She didn't answer a lot of the questions directly, and redirected to talk about energy, because supposedly she's an expert on that. I personally think Joe Biden won the debate, because he was the most direct, and his knowledge and experience on a lot of different subjects was shown, but I wouldn't say that either one of them shined on any level.

We have to have regulation over the mortgage-banking industry, because the deregulation caused Americans to be preyed upon, and I know this because my spouse and I were preyed upon, but we were smart enough in 2005 to buy house at a fixed rate that we could afford, we almost got caught in the whirlwind, but at least we had a lot of people giving us good advice, mainly our realtor who had 20+ experience in the field - I think we need to help these people out who got sub-prime loans, and bought houses they couldn't afford, and I know a lot people say we should not reward people's stupid behavior, but I think it's better to get the money back, and if that requires resetting everybody's interest rate to one they can afford, or lowering the principle on what they owe I think the banks should do it.

Whoever becomes president is going to inherit a huge freaking mess, and you can count on our next president-vice president probably only serving one term in office.

Too bad the CITIZENS can't get a bailout, eh?

Then we have some of these CEO's getting millions in "severence" pay, when they OUGHT to be going to jail.

The VP debate, WHOEVER won it, might turn out to be a lot more important than any of us think.

In my personal opinion, (and I have nothing concrete to base this on), I think no matter WHO wins the presidency, that person is not going to finish his first term, and it's all going to fall into the hands of "number 2", and I trust an "outsider" far more than any of those who have already "been in charge." I'd prefer Paul but I'm backing Palin.

I'm still waiting, what, two or three weeks later, to learn from you when and where Barack Obama said that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontious Pilate was a governor.

In the meantime, I'm reading up on John McCain's associations with a man who plotted to bomb the Brookings Institution, a woman who praised anti-abortion terrorism while McCain sat mutely by, and a group that funneled money to fascist militias in Latin America.

But I'm sure these terrorist associations don't concern you for some reason. Just like Hannity and Limbaugh didn't say a peep at any point in the past eight years about Bush's associations with the terror-funding, terror-loving Saudi royalty.

I'm not really sure what anyone on your laundry list of congressional Democrats is supposed to do when Bush still has the veto pen. But why let facts get in the way of your lame attempt to shift responsibility from Paulson and Bush to the liberal boogeymen?

Speaking of Bush, I couldn't help but notice in all the comments about how big, bad affirmative action denies people with merit opportunities to advance ANY acknowledgement that the "legacy admission" that got him into Yale does the same, exact thing. No one has any objections to setting merit aside when doing so benefits the privileged, huh?

I just don't understand why people would vote themselves a pay cut/tax increase.

Vote for the World Poverty Tax. To become even more puppets of the UN.

Vote for a decrease of our rights in the Constitution. (I know, McCain is no better with the Feinstein/McCain Act and Amnesty Bill.) I'm sure this blog will go away if we are being too negative with either candidate.

You will have the right to the American way of life. Just as long as you don't go over $250,000 in income. Then you will be taxed more. (Sound like Marxism/Fascism to anybody?)

Anybody that does not pay ANY taxes at all will STILL get a tax refund. (Part of the Shared Wealth plan?)

heck, we won't even know if we will have a fair vote. There's another right flushed down the toilet thanks to Obama and ACORN. One of the very rights that this country was built on.

The Messiah Senator Barack Hussein Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l46t_nryS...

All bow.

The video was lame.

The following link you may have seen on CNN. It's the Obama youth/frat whatever they are marching. Not saying that Obama endorsed this. But this video was taped in school. In school. Is anyone here reminded of the Young Pioneers or Hitler Youth or even of some the Islmaic madrasas . Why would anyone teach or approve this in this manner? Seen footage of some of the madrasas basically molding possible future terrorist? and this is just scary. This appears to be the American version complete with cammi's. WTH is going on is this country anymore. Leave the kids out of this crappy election and the brainwashing. I am so glad I had independent parents didn't endorse any political agenda, but to vote what I thought was right. How are these kids ever going to learn this doing stuff like this in school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXd8iH3O...

Sarah Palin makes decisions and they have consequences. As I've said before, Wasilla had a budget surplus when she took office as mayor and was $22 million in debt when she left. That's a decision that indicates she's poor at handling public money.

She also as mayor got a zoning exemption for her home without fulfilling a board requirement for it, appointed unqualified high school friends to major state jobs as governor, allows her husband a great deal of leeway to influence or attempt to influence policy, and tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. These decisions in total are a pretty good indications she can play the good ole boys game with the best of them.

Two points on that last decision.

First, she fired the public safety commissioner. He says it was because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law. She says it wasn't, but rather it was for insubordination. When pressed to cite an example of insubordination, she said he lobbied for federal funding for anti-rape and sexual assault programs. There is also a pattern here, of Palin being soft on rapists. As mayor, Wasilla had a policy under which rape victims paid for their own medical evidence-gathering. Alaska has the highest rate of forcible rape in the country. I know she's only been governor a short time but what has she proposed to reduce it?

Second, the Palin family claims the ex-brother-in-law was a real jerk, a law-breaking state trooper protected by his crooked trooper buddies who'd only ever give him a slap on the wrist. I can believe that - I recognize the existence of police corruption. But other than try to get her ex-brother-in-law fired what did Palin do as governor about that underlying issue? What police reform did her supposedly real brush with corrupt cops prompt her to pick up? As far as I can tell, none.

But getting back to the good ole boys club, Palin bills taxpayers for her kids' airfare and hotel rooms, including a four-night stay at a luxury hotel for a five-hour event, and the Republican donors for $150,000 in clothing. Politics is crooked because there is so much motive for them to be crooked. And Juneau isn't any better than Boise, which isn't any better than Washington, D.C.

Then there is the "bridge to nowhere," which she supported when she campaigned for governor, opposed after it became unpopular, told America she said "thanks, but no thanks" but had really taken the money and spent it instead on an even worse idea, a road to where the "bridge to nowhere" would've been - if you accept Palin's description of the bridge's site, a road to nowhere.

Which was never really nowhere. It was an island with an airport already built on it. Anyone using it has to take a ferry to get across the sound. Do we federally subsidize an airport while stacking the deck against its usefulness? Are there any private investors in that airport, and now that we're holding up infrastructure improvements so John McCain can look tough on spending, they be eligible for some bailout money as that airport's potential worth evaporates?

Now that I'm on both airports and McCain - that guy you're voting for while publicly denouncing - it's still hilarious he'll fly in to rural airports built by earmarks so he can tell the voters how terrible earmarks are. That he actually believes cutting the half a percentage point all earmarks account for out of the annual budget won't make matters worse, not so funny.

I wouldn't worry too much about McCain winning. I think "pretty boy" and his media have too many of you out there betwixed for that to happen.

Thinking of my kids and grandkids, I'm a heck of a lot more concerned about some dink who's mind has been filled with anti-American rhetoric for 20 years, and who CONTINUES his ties with the unsavory WELL after the age of eight.........than I am about a governor trying to fire some state trooper.

Good, bad or indifferent, at least Palin can MAKE decisions, and an entire state thought well enough of her to elect her Governor.

As for Todd Palin.......if you read the Constitution that our founders laid out..then take a hard look at where these congressional perverts have taken us, our rights that are ALREADY eroding out from under us..the illegal taxation..the graft and corruption.........if you really look at it with an open mind, you might even be able to see where a guy would WANT to save what's left of his home, and try to keep it OUT of the hands of the bureaucrats back east.

His wife now a candidate, there is a glimmer of hope that maybe it could get straightened out in D.C. before the whole country is infected.

But when you live in the ghetto, you don't know that there's anything better out there. You believe that what you see around you for a 50-yard circumferance, is the way it is all over. A hamburger probably looks pretty good when you've been eating dog food. This is Obama's "ray of hope."

Obama is going to be elected, because that's what the media wants, and it is THEY who decide what the people get to read and hear. It is THEY who insure that some things are equally "stifled" as Archie Bunker would say.

Realistically, "Archie" would be the man for the job, if he exists somewhere...........Never happen of course, only the crooks with agendas are ever endorsed.

If there is a bright spot at all, it will come four years from now (IF our country is still in one piece), 4 years under TOTAL Democrat control, America will be done. And if democracy still exists, a Republican or Independent will rise and point fingers at a party that will have nowhere to point back.

So go ahead, Ex-Intern. Vote for your little Muslim buddy. If you start early enough on the morning of the 4th, you might get to hit 10 or 15 precincts under ACORN. You're all in good shape right now, with a media-controlled "stacked deck" and your only opposition being a RINO.

And your dummy will probably get elected. But that's ok too, because i know something that YOU DON'T.

Have a nice day.

Hey............remember once again, that I don't support McCain himself. I'm only supporting that ticket because of Palin.

I also believe that WHOEVER wins this thing, most likely will not finish their first term and it will FALL to "#2", and I like the thought of a Washington outsider in the Oval Office.

Reagan and Clinton BOTH were "outsider-Governors" and according to each of us, they both did pretty well, didn't they?

The only one who had the "border situation" inhand was Ron Paul, who would have brought our troops home from EVERY overseas base, and put our troops on OUR borderes, not everyone else's.

Ron Paul was the guy to get it ALL done, and I'm proud to have campaigned hard for him, even in the face of a biased and censoring newsmedia.

Marines and soldiers on the borders wouldn't cost all that much, since we're already paying their salaries ANYWAY!

I wouldn't vote for anyone depending on their religion either. I don't believe in Mormonism, but they're good people and I'd probably have supported Romney, whether Palin was his vice or not.

Muhammed Ali is a Muslim, but I've never looked upon him as a terrorist. Sirhan-Sirhan (Robert Kennedy's assassin is a Muslim also, and the past 40 years have produced a myriad of terrorist acts, committed by those of muslim persuasion.

But I STILL don't knock Obama for his religion. What I don't like is his association and willingness to listen and absorb some VERY VERY un-American teachings.

His disrespect for our flag makes me want to vomit. And he's a liar. He's a puppet and a liar, yet has been slick enough to fool a public which has proven to be more gullible than even I could have imagined.

I don't want this guy in the White House with his fingers near the buttons. I don't want the RINO McCain, either. But if my predictions are true, it'll come down to Biden or Palin before it's over, and I'd rather have someone who is fresh from the ranks of the common.

Now if you "STILL don't knock Obama for his religion," why do you keep bringing it up?

I've never said Clinton did well, he was one of our worst presidents, a sellout who went along with McCain and GWB (he fights for it as Pres. and supported it all as gov.) and the GOP congressional leadership(who all at least have the excuse of coming from a party that usually denigrates labor rights) with unrestricted trade. Even when he would do something right, like going along with Republicans on welfare reform, he still failed to push for the better job creation measures needed to prevent the plan from being, in part, an effort to dump more supply into the workforce so employers could stagnate wages and benefits. And Clinton threw away the last two years of chances to move the Democrats' agenda forward on defending his illegal conduct instead.

Reagan? I'll give him credit for being an effective and competent manager whose personal character didn't embarass his supporters, but his policies have been disastrous - he supported aiding both the same militants in Afghanistan who would go on to form al-Qaida, and Saddam Hussein. And if the media was nearly as liberal as you think it is, they wouldn't let Americans ever forget that.

As far as Sarah Palin, the examples of crooked behavior and poor management as mayor and governor I've already cited, and the ideology she espouses, show she'd more than likely have the management style and ethics of Clinton with the failed policies of Reagan. - Actually, I don't think I mentioned the municipal employees she fired as mayor for purely political reasons, or is that only scandalous when they work in a travel office?

Does she back our Constitution? She believes due process is a God-given right? Does she believe in warrants? Does she believe in the right of people to freely exercise the religion of their choice? She's associated with a minister who doesn't - who went to Africa to harass a woman over her right to choose a faith other than Christianity. "Respects our flag" - that's almost always code for conservatives' anti-American assaults on free speech and the First Amendment.

If America doesn't get a liberal in the White House soon, The conservatives may succeed in destroying everything in the Constitution except for the Second Amendment. They'll have finally brought down the Republic and erected a land of theocratic fiefdoms dotting the countryside.

Palin "isn't perfect" - she's just another crooked Republican, prone to cronyism and nepotism, taking handouts while telling the middle-class to suck it up. No sense of ethics, lies frequently, and bought wholly into failed ideas. And the people of Alaska will get another chance in 2010 - but hey, you still haven't explained what the mighty governor Palin is doing about Alaska leading the nation in forcible rapes, maybe the rapist vote will keep it sewed up for her.

But why answer questions when you can throw out the same tired garbage about ACORN conspiracies, get the Republican machine psyched up to go into the inner-city and suppress minority voting again.

I'm also not sure I understand why Palin winning a first term on a state-wide ballot is a measure of her qualifications when Obama did it too, beating your Alan Keyes with, what, 75 percent of the vote? After all, "neither WE nor the media is as close to him as the Illinois people are."

Speaking of Keyes, who you say you supported in the past, he was never a governor or mayor, never ran a corporation or college or military base or post, never even ran a beer distributorship or an organization that got asbestos removed from people's homes, as McCain and Obama did. When everything you say about Palin boiling down to her being a governor, and never mind how she's done at it, Why did you support a guy with NO executive experience, whose only accomplishment AT ALL is a few years representing the U.S. at a minor United Nations committee?

Did Ronald Reagan say that before or after he aided our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq? Government is not the problem. Conservatism is.

The Fairness Doctrine - which I still oppose - is not a free speech issue, It's an FCC licensing issue. The First Amendment does not require the government to provide you with time on the airwaves. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and your autism-denying hero Michael Savage will still have their First Amendment rights to say whatever they want, they MAY not have up to three hours on airwaves that belong to me as much as they belong to them to say it.

And if the government wants to take your guns, they don't need any more gun control legislation to do it. They just have to accuse you of being linked to terrorism, and if conservatives keep getting their way you won't get your Constitutionally-protected day in court to defend yourself and your reputation.

Now it's revealed that as Governor Palin let lobbyists for a Canadian company manage the bidding process for that natural-gas pipeline. Surprise, surprise, the contract went to that Canadian company. But keep superficially insisting all that matters is that she likes to hunt. If she ever gets into the White House the middle and working classes will end up so bankrupted they won't be able to AFFORD ammunition.

If you want grant funding, apply for it. Maybe for something your likely better qualified to get it in than for South American zoology, though. I know lots of small businesses and organizations that get grant money from the state or federal government. It helps small businesses compete with the box stores so consumers have choices, decreases energy use, and it helps keep police stations, jails, hospitals and libraries operating.

Including the $1.12 million Mike Simpson got for the Idaho State Police, the $1.22 million he got for the Idaho Department of Corrections, $1.47 for work on Interstate 84, all in earmarks - all eliminated spending if McCain keeps his anti-earmark promise.

Do you think turning the money back over to the wealthy will make anything better? We've cut taxes for investors, money managers, and the rich consistently over the past 28 years, and the money did NOT trickle down. Middle-class earnings fell behind both management pay and the rate of productivity, and our infrastructure is underinvested in.

Huckabee didn't propose a tariff system when he ran - which if it's collaborative with certain other taxes I would support - he wanted a 30 percent sales tax which would've leveled sales and sped up the drain-circling we're seeing now. And Ron Paul's not for tariffs either, he favors "free" or unrestricted trade.

The money for John Edwards' haircuts came from campaign funds, just as the $150,000 for Palin's wardrobe did. Here's a math factoid: Edwards could get one of those haircuts every week for six years and he still wouldn't have matched her bill at all those East Coast fashion boutiques.

PS...the "airwaves" belong to whoever pays for the airtime, and if you don't like Savage or Hannity, you simply do as WE do with NBC or CNN...........just change the station or shut it off.

But that isn't what your people want. They want it BANNED so that the only source of news in ANY form, will be what THEY want the American people to hear and read.

And I hope if and after Obama gets in, they DO declare our gun ownership as some kind of terrorism. We are so primed already and this country is so badly in need of a revolt, it won't take very much to touch it off.

If your side wants to combat terrorism, they should join the several Republicans and Independents who want to get us OUT of the U.N., and boot the U.N. out of this country. That would be an EXCELLENT start.

Or are you now going to defend the one world order United Nations and the Bilderbergers right along with them? (Of which Hillary is a prominent member).

Anybody breaks in here, it will never GO to court. The Feds are going to be in for a rude awakening all over this country if they ever start any Gestapo tactics. Too many of us out here have had enough and are willing to "go for it." Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

I agree with a lot of your tax ideas, ExIntern, but the inheritance tax too? Something in your own family is handed down to you------tax already paid on it long ago-------and "Big Brother" is STILL somehow entitled to a chunk of something that is rightfully yours?

Hey Bro'....you still didn't comment on the "Federal" Reserve or the IRS? How 'bout it?

Who is Paris Hilton?............just kidding.

I still think the tax system is wrong......

Example....Classsic cars are a hobby of ours (wife & I). If I buy a 65 Mustang, I'm expected to pay a tax when I register it, based upon how much money I paid for it. Now.......that car was taxed when it was originally bought from a LICENSED DEALER. It may have had 3 more owners by the time I bought it, and these were all private party sales.

If I bought a dining room set at a garage sale for $200.00, I wouldn't have to pay yet ANOTHER sales tax on something that already HAD been taxed when it was sold new from the store, would I?

The government is WAY ot of hand with this stuff. Give 'em a chance and they put meters on our toilets and tax us for every time it's flushed.

You know, illegal as the IRS is, I wouldn't mind being "robbed a little", IF I knew that money was being spent for US, not given, squandered and bribed away for a myriad of things you and I would NEVER support, if given the choice.

Our tax dollars were meant for America's well being and upkeep.....not everyone else's.

Incidently, I've already done a little research on this, but I'd like to hear your opinion, Ex-Intern...............what does Obama really mean by "spreading the wealth?" Isn't this just a bit like socialism, and if not, WHY not?