McCain is either cynical or senile. Or both. He seems to have lost his memory. The economy is in trouble because he and others pushed for deregulation of the financial sector. In the early 1930s, under the impression of the bank crash, the government wisely instituted controls of the banks. These rules served us well for 60 years. Then banks got greedy and, with the help of Congress, circumvented and finally weakened the rules to a point were speculators could run amok. The result was an artificial prosperity, backed by nothing but thin air. McCain was one of the driving forces.

OK, nobody likes to be taxed. But the government of a modern country, which provides all kinds of services to its citizens, needs an income. In the 19th Century the American government was largely supported by selling off the wealth of land formerly owned by Native Americans. When that ran out the people had to pay taxes to help finance the government. Communist countries don't tax their citizens, they own all industry and commerce. I am sure we don't want that in the USA. Even a country like the USA cannot fight a war without taxes. In all previous wars, taxes were raised to pay for the war effort. So what did Bush do? He started a war and lowered taxes - especially for the super rich. An honest candidate would say that it is time to raise taxes. To claim otherwise is dishonest and disingenuous.

How quickly we forgot the lessons of the 1929 Crash. The government wisely instituted controls over the financial sector in the early 1930s to prevent another disaster of that sort. As a result, banks could no longer speculate at will. But then the deregulation craze took hold. Deregulating air traffic only caused many airlines to give up the ghost, deregulating the telephone system only caused higher prices and mass confusion, deregulating the energy sector only caused black outs. But deregulating the financial sector produced one bubble after another and gave speculators immense profits. Banks paid their employees indecent bonuses while business boomed. Now that the last bubble has burst and the house of cards is threatening to collapse, those who paid lip service to private enterprise and a market economy are expecting the much maligned government to bail them out. It would indeed be great if those who made multi-million profits could be made to pay for the disaster.

There is something wrong with that picture. But perhaps the next administration and Congress will have learned a lesson and make the laws needed to ensure a stable finance system - even if this means less windfall profits. Then we may be safe for another 60 years, when the next generation may have to relearn the same lesson.

Palin's agenda and beliefs should scare the daylights out of every sane person.

More than 80% of the people in many European countries are deathly afraid of a possible President Palin. Or any American president with her beliefs. Less than 400 years ago central Europe was embroiled in a deadly struggle because people held similar beliefs as Sarah Palin and the American Christian fundamentalists have today. At the end of the struggle, the population in some areas of central Europe was reduced to a fraction of what it was before. As a result Europeans to this day are opposed to religious fundamentalism.

A United States of America in the hands of Christian Fundamentalists is almost predestined to fight a similar devastating war, but this time on a much larger scale. Yes, we must guard against Muslim fundamentalists but we must also guard against their Christian counterparts. The two are birds of one feather.

One can hope that the American voter will not fall for this line. But an electorate that seems to embrace that phony Alaskan is liable to believe anything.

But why doesn't McCain simply declare that he was wrong and that he will now support clean energy? Or is he afraid to admit an error in judgment? It takes a man of character to do so. And he as well as Obama have not said anything about the obvious: The best way to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels is to use less energy. The USA use more energy per capita than almost any other country in the world and that even though our industrial production has been vastly reduced. But that would be perceived to be a sacrifice of creature comforts and all candidates seem to be afraid to touch such a hot iron.

If I were not already convinced, this article would do the trick. Still, I wished that Obama would resist the temptation to stoop to the level of McCain's dirty campaigning.

This article MUST be tongue-in-cheek. Certainly a man like McCain, who prides himself to have high ethical standards, would not stoop that low. And he wouldn't let anybody on his team resort to such dirty tricks.

Right?

As far as I know, this phenomenon is unique to the USA. If that is the case, then the cause must be some factor only found in the USA. One that comes to mind is the constant movement of hives around the country.