Point well made. Yes, the loans were of all varieties, and it's easy to forget that the great majority of Americans are NOT in foreclosure and are not subject to horrific rate resets. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out as to how the taxpayer will receive return on investment, so to speak, from whatever bailout package is passed.

One thing I would like to see is this: if you receive some kind of mortgage relief from a bailout because you got in over your head due to poor judgment or a "play the appreciation lottery" attitude, your FICO scores should take a corresponding hit. In other words, a mortgage holder bailout should be weighted so that there's some punitive cost for the irresponsible borrower. Corrective and preventive measures shouldn't be limited to Wall Street.

I said from the very beginning that the empty suit and empty head of Palin would sink the GOP ticket, even during and after the convention bounce that had some of the more timid and doomsaying Salonistas quaking in their Uggs. Feels good to be right, and I'm not shy about saying it. Palin dazzled with pure style at the outset but that always fades and substance has to come into play. She has none. She's over.

And McCain will be stubborn and stick with her because he's a cantankerous old fool who thinks he's entitled to the presidency after his long years of service and--did you know he was a POW? If he cuts her loose, the wacko Christian Right fringe will freak, because they're still all high on her having the witches cast out of her and crap like that. But Sane America will listen to her get bitch-slapped by Joe Biden and think, "Holy fuck, she's George Bush in drag and a twit to boot. Do I want her holding McCain's jock and lurking nearby when he has a myocardial infarction? Hell no."

Senator McCain, you're screwed. Same as you ever was. You can't live with her, and you can't live without her. Your alternatives are Romney and Lieberman. Have a nice defeat.

Nine VPs have ascended to the presidency when the sitting president either died in office or resigned. That's 21 percent of our presidents up to Dubya. Plus, on 3 occasions Section 3 of the 25th Amendment has been invoked to put the VP in power as acting president when the sitting president has been incapacitated by something like surgery.

I'd call that significant. Significant enough that the thought of McCain having to be put under for melanoma surgery just before Kim Jong Il decides to test-launch an ICBM, and having Palin say in her best Marge Gunderson accent, "Oh, y'know, just nuke the little Korean guy, OK?" would leave 150 million sane Americans in a flop sweat of terror for four years.

...and the Democrats had better make sure they don't catch it, or 10 years from now roles will be reversed.

Look! I talk like a hayseed from a backwater town! I'm just like you, Joe Sixpack and your wife, Jane Hockeymom!

That's the barely concealed code here, and the contempt it shows for the American voter, which continues the contempt McCain showed for us in selecting this mouth-breathing political naif as his running mate, is staggering. Apparently, the GOP "base" is a mythical cadre of "folks from that there heartland," who somehow live in a purer, more moral world than the rest of us--people who because they might have blue collar jobs supposedly have no interest in literature or good food or global culture and spend all their time in church, shopping at Wal-Mart or listening to both kinds of music, country and western. It's an insulting, degrading stereotype of the American electorate.

Sure, there are millions of dangerously vapid and mindless Christians in that camp, as well as the disaffected wackos who scream, "Kill him!" at McLame's latest desperate rallies. But most Americans are not that simplistic, for all the bullshit on Salon's threads from a few trolls who insist that we're all doomed because the U.S. electorate is brain-dead. McLame and Georgia Bush will pay dearly for insulting and misunderestimating an American people sick and tired of Dubya/Neocon insanity and terrified of their economic futures: being trampled into paste in November.

...regarding the denial of access to the media, keep it up. The media got pissed off and buried Nixon. Make them mad and deny them access and they will fry you.

..."crushed and rendered powerless." That's the kind of language I want to hear. That's precisely what needs to happen this election. We need Obama to win 400 electoral votes, the Democrats to take 60 seats in the Senate and pick up 30 in the House, and the GOP to be shattered under a progressive tide that will take them decades to dig out from.

The Obama campaign is setting a new standard for Democratic presidential candidates that promises to erase the bitter taste of the flaccid, pathetic Gore, Kerry and Dukakis campaigns: be smart, be proactive, act with lightning speed, don't attack but be vicious and decisive in your counterattack, be relentless in your ground game, and never, ever lose your cool. The Obama campaign is the Joe Torre of politics, aware that it's a long season and only by having a strong game plan, not panicking and sticking to your strategy can you win.

I love the instantaneous action represented by this ad. This is the Web 3.0 spirit of the New Democrats. Now if we can just replace most of them in the House with Obama clones, we can get some things done for this country.