If you want to know what is really going on read Andrew Leonard's piece "The Truth About Fannie and Freddie" in The Way the World Works section. Read the letters, too.

There are a lot of really old people out there who are as resistant to modernity as Osama bin Laden and just as ugly.

There. I said it.

On several occasions over the years she told me that this movie really gave her the creeps. Hmmmm.....

It's one thing if I get mad at them - it's another to have the Republican party dictate to a network.

Somebody needs to tell rupert_c to start floating his cornflakes in something besides Everclear...

Apparently my family is an anomaly. All of the Republicans, my brothers and their wives, and my mom's cousin (he's 80) were so turned off by McCain's choice of VP that they're voting for Obama. All of them have voted Republican since they were old enough to vote.

My mom is still a registered Republican, but her brother re-registered as an Independent in 2000. The last time either one of them voted for a Republican for president was in 1996. She used to be a big McCain fan - stood in line to get her book signed and bought the T-shirt - but is now a bigger Obama fan.

I have one brother and sister-in-law in California, my mother's cousin is in New Mexico, and the rest of us are in Arizona, so there isn't constant communication on the subject.

I can't believe my family is the only one running away from this ticket.

Also, Obama's numbers are holding in state-by-state polling. I'm in for $100.

I wasn't happy with his vote on FISA, either, and, as far as money goes, I haven't had a regular paycheck since March. (I decided to go back to school and have done some consulting here and there.) I donated another $100 to the Obama campaign today and I'm feeling the pinch.

The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac news scares the hell out of me. Not just because the taxpayers will be footing the bill for the bailout, but more for the mindless anit-regulation mindset that allowed it to happen. A poster on Salon nailed it yesterday with "Privatize the gains and socialize the losses". This will continue under McCain and this country - especially the middle-class - can't afford it.

Mrs. Palin isn't up to the challenge and literally half this country recognizes that. Her remarks on Fannie and Freddie yesterday illustrate she doesn't have a grasp of the complexity of the American economy. And then there's the mindless religious right blah-blah-blah-abortion-blah-blah-blah-regular Americans-blah-blah-blah-small town-hickory smoked crap that I'm sick to death of hearing.

I'm from a small town in the middle of Kansas and the best thing it gave me was a first-class bullshit detector, and McCain/Palin keep shoveling it higher and higher.

I just saw Lisa Myers report on David Gregory's show that while it's true that Mrs. Palin holds very extreme right-wing views on abortion, she also said that Alaska has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country.

How do the evangelicals square that?

I knew it was a typo - yes, it's late.

You're a brave man, Frank. I'm originally from Great Bend and when I was back there a couple of years ago, I couldn't believe how hyper-conservative it had become.

I'm beginning to see people outraged over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but they're all older. Nothing wrong with that - they've been around long enough to understand the ramifications. I'm just wondering if all of this negative financial news is going to impact the senior voting demographic which usually skews Republican.

Anybody know?

Since Karl Rove has admitted to advising the McCain camp, they are officially polishing turds.

I know I keep harping on this, and, fair warning, I'm not going to stop. Once you get past all of the bullshit sideshows with pigs and lipstick and celebrity and every other shiny object that fits wedge-wise into the 24-hour news cycle, there is John McCain's posse with Phil Gramm at the front of the pack.

John McCain has said he will appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary if elected. Phil Gramm and John McCain will be an economic disaster and this country can't take another one right now.

All due respect to Ron Paul, please reconsider. Long story short, due to the relaxed regulation Phil Gramm lobbied for, the American taxpayer will be bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and it's going to cost a lot of fucking money. (We have to bail them out, it will be worse economically if we don't.)

Phil Gramm is the king of privatizing profits and socializing losses. How McCain can try to sell himself as a reformer with Gramm in his corner is insane. Seriously insane.

Please don't refer to a blog to back up your claim, especially one so sorely lacking prologue and epilogue. And the Wall Street Journal page doesn't start until 2002, after Phil Gramm had headed up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which relaxed regulation separating banking, insurance and brokerages since the depression era.

His second act, the Commodity Futures Modernization act of 2000 gave us the Enron Loophole, and for his encore performance (not counting his role as unofficial adviser for the McCain campaign) was his lobbying efforts for Swill bank UBS to ease restrictions on predatory lending practices by mortgage brokers. There's a fucking hat trick to be proud of.

Sorry, but this has Phil Nation-of-whiners Gramm's name all over it.

You know, the guy John McCain wants to make Treasury Secretary.

I don't want to hear anymore about lipstick. The so-called ad-lib is an old joke - Mrs. Palin didn't make it up. Lipstick on a pig is just as old, you know, like the expression polishing turds which probably more apropos of McCain's stories of his mavericky image.