This is so simple even a politician should be able to understand it. How can you possibly look your fellow Americans in the eye and say you are trying to make this country stronger if you delay on this? What are you guys pod people? Country first right? So....?

I want to see both candidates come out and say this is a national imperative and that it is so important that it needs to be passed as standalone legislation so that we can really see where our politicians loyalties lay...citizens or elsewhere.

It will happen somewhere, because whoever can get it going will make a fortune. It is probably a much easier task to go into markets where you don't have too fight entrenched power GENERATION companies (like arcmite explained). Too bad American companies and politicians can't get it together, we could really use a life preserver to save us from our mountain of debt.

Who WILL it be? China? Japan? Germany? Korea? Saudi Arabia (buying it, of course)?

Maybe Washington is actually full of optimists after all - they seem to think we can drill our way out of this.

Remember why the internet was originally conceived? Communication without a single point of failure. The same idea applied to energy sounds like it would alleviate these problems where a single hurricane can cause turmoil in the markets by f*ing with the price of something that should be STABLE, not bouncing around like odds on a football game.

I honestly can't see why there aren't lots of politicians all over this. National security issues would seem to trump loyalty to the petro-dinosaurs who think we can keep trundling along the same old way.

Maybe Kiva would work best for continuing and expanding this, lots of people would see it. Not sure if there is a local organization for Kiva to work with in Burkina Faso though.

Just agreeing with you actually.

She said:

"And Charlie, we killed the Bridge to Nowhere, and that's the bottom line."

The truth was:

The bridge to nowhere was killed despite her support, and when she finally looked upon it, laying there like a dead moose on the ground, she demonstrated her readiness to provide leadership by acknowledging that the moose was in fact, dead. She did not "call an audible", that implies leadership that actually helped resolve the situation. The situation was resolved for her, and all she had to do was face the reality that the stupid project was killed by an injection of badly needed common sense that arose from the national outrage over the project.

The hosts of the View did great. Other than Walters they are not reporters, but they actually asked tougher questions than some "real" reporters.

Yeah it would have been nice if they had an endless stream of tough follow up questions, but then we already have someone who supposedly already handles that job - the "real" press. Charlie Gibson did actually give the pit bull a little bit of the kind of pressure I would like to see way more of (especially in the part of the interview aired day 1 on Nightline).

Oh BTW, none of the ladies on the view claimed to be a constitutional scholar so lighten a bit. It is the press that should be held to the highest standards of accuracy and depth, not talk show hosts. Talk show hosts are really only required to entertain, the press is supposed to inform people about the truth. Maybe someone should remind the press about that, sometimes they seem to have swapped places.

and ultimately a distraction. But that is what is in the bottle of Dr McCain's Special Reforming Oil, so that is one of the things to talk about.

Responsibly allocated earmarks ARE part of what the government is supposed to do. And as a previous poster pointed out, the $ involved is smaller than what we spend in 2 months in Iraq (nevermind current and upcoming economic bailouts, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, national debt). So if the dynamic duo is going to reform Washington by revamping the handling of earmarks they need to be asked: To what end? To balance the budget? Nope, not even close. We need to come up with a little more than the price of one bridge, maybe only fighting one war instead of two might be a start.

Wanna see Palin's head explode? Ask here to explain how to balance the federal budget. She should have the easiest time of all 4 candidates since she is the only one with real executive experience, let's see how that goes.

Nobody here really give a sh!t why you are obsessed with Walters.

We ARE however very interested in McCains responses to her questions and those of the other hosts on the View - questions that we personally will never get to ask.

I personally couldn't give 2 sh!ts what Barbara does in her personal life, she is not running for the highest office, nor any office, of this country.

...doom and gloom and all that, plus the public feels helpless in the face of it, even the "experts" can't tell you what is going to happen next. However it does mean more work for the press, since they need quotes from "knowledgeable" sources. With the usual BS they can just shoot from the hip with pretty much any opinion and sell it as opinion/analysis of the news.

Real economics they don't understand, so they go find some guy to give them some ominous quote, like "We haven't seen the worst of it yet". Unfortunately for us, that is probably true.