The current economic system of America (and the world) rests upon the assumption that consumers will continue to spend more and more every year... when consumer spending increases, then investments in products/economy/infrastructure increase, which leads to more spending increases by consumers, etc. (Yes, I over-simplified things.)

At some point, consumers will run out of "real" money to spend and start spending debt and government/business policy will evolve to facilitate debt-spending to keep the system humming. This happened years ago.

And, at some further point, consumers will realize how indebted they are to God knows who, and begin the process of paying down that debt with money they have instead of spending more money they don't have. That mass realization seemed to occur sometime in the past few months in America. Thus, any "extra" money that ends up in consumers' pockets (like the "stimulus" checks) will be used to pay down debt.

We'll be sick of Obama, McCain, the media, the parties, our TV, our mail, our email, and the Internet by the time this campaign finally ends...

I sincerely hope that He's terrific meet isn't ruined by her scheming federation, the lameness of the IOC and sour-grapes bloggers and journalists.

Really? If He was part of the sham, then her terrific meet should be ruined. As it stands now, she has represented to reporters that she is 16. Thus, He is likely lying and her achievements are worth nothing.

So He should keep the medal because she's a victim of the system? I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense. Every athlete is a product of the system that they come out of. Marion Jones was the product of a system; the legions of bikers disqualified for doping were products of the system. Did we let them get away with their transgressions? No, of course not. They should have known better. The situation here is no different except this time, it is not doping but age. And He is no better than those athletes who lied about whether they were doping; her supposedly innocent age should not be cover for her lies.

Gymnast He is not the only winner here; the SYSTEM also benefits and wins. If He and the Chinese system that created her and her fellow gymnasts get away with this, what's stopping China or any other authoritarian country from faking paperwork and letting in athletes who should not be able to qualify for whatever reason?

The Olympics' integrity is already in the gutter and this does not help. A line has to be drawn, the rules (ALL RULES) must be followed, and I hope the investigation is a serious one.

I do not think Obama is playing it safe, but smart.

Yes, he has not had a very good month and has seen his lead dwindle to nothing. But even after all of the attacks, the lies, the innuendo, and the smears, McCain is incapable of building any sort of lead. McCain also had the floor to himself for an entire week during an international crisis and still was not able to do much with that. Obama's campaign does not seem worried; at this point, Kerry's campaign was openly wondering what to do.

McCain threw the campaign into the gutter first and Obama is taking his time in responding which makes sense; McCain's attacks are vapid, meaningless, and easy to throw together. Obama's attacks are going to be well-researched on how McCain is completely out of touch with reality or how McCain's actions actually financially hurt people (Keating was responsible for 10s of thousands of seniors losing their life savings; McCain tried to protect him from the regulators for campaign contributions).

Also, McCain is known for saying absolutely crazy things; he is a gaffe machine and is known for inappropriate jokes ranging from people's economic issues to whether his wife should participate in mud wrestling (and that's just in the past two weeks). The media isn't calling McCain out on these gaffes or jokes (hand, feeds, etc.) but hopefully Obama is figuring out the best way to use them against McCain.

We are seeing the beginning of it with the houses issue; Obama's campaign was researching this issue for a while and had an advertisement just waiting to be green-lighted. McCain's gaffe to Politico provided the perfect opportunity to release it. How many similar ads does the campaign have waiting to be released? I do not think the houses issues is a big deal but it can create a convincing narrative of who/what McCain actually is.

Is it hoping for too much to think the media will call out McCain on these bald-faced lies?

I was going crazy through the synchronized diving and that was "only" four days long! Instead of the massive numbers of Field events they could have shown from 8 to 9 p.m., we were shown the semis, the prelims, and the finals of every diving event.

Oh, I was starting to get a kick out of how every night's coverage included some form of this line: "The [American divers] are in contention for a medal [which meant they were somewhere in the top 8], they just have to do their last X number of dives really well." The American divers, without exception, ended up in 5th place or lower.