You said, "I wasn't expecting such a commanding performance tonight, but that's what I got.

"Whatever one thinks about his policies, he's an extremely able and gifted individual."

Sorry, but I disagree with you. I was utterly disappointed that Obama's performance wasn't commanding. I was hoping to see him as the utter master of this debate, but he wasn't. I expected to see the doddering, senile old fool make an idiot of himself -- live and on TV -- but he didn't.

I hope, that by election day, Obama will have proven himself the better candidate, but I realize that the majority of Americans want some vague "Big Daddy" to rescue them from whatever their current problems are.

You said, "In my opinion she brings out the hypocrisy of the left. They speak of inclusion, but hate those twho go to church. They preach feminism, but hate female accomplishment unless it's accompanied by the property leftist ideology."

I don't think it's hypocrisy to dislike S.P. because of her positions we disagree with. You mentioned abortion: yeah, that's one of them. You didn't mention her desire to have creationism taught in science classes. You didn't mention her opposition to gay marriage. You didn't mention a lot of her hypocritical, self-righteous acts, such as firing the town librarian who refused to remove any books from the shelves, or trying to fire her ex-brother-in-law's supervisor for refusing to fire him from the AK state police or whatever it was.

BTW, we don't necessarily hate those who go to church. I spent most of today at my church, taking the minutes for a board meeting. But, then, it's a very liberal church. We have two gay men on our board of directors, and today one of them was ordained as a minister.

This article addresses exactly what I was thinking when I heard McShame talking about Victory in Iraq. What does he think a victory would be?

This is not World War II, where we had specific governments in charge of making war against us. Victory meant forcing top officials in those governments to sign a paper that ended the war and imposed certain conditions on those governments.

And BTW, we occupied Japan and West Germany for decades. We still have military installations in the reunited Germany. And, oh, BTW, we still have them in South Korea, more than 50 years after that war ended.

No, I definitely don't want a president who's determined to stay in Iraq until we achieve "victory," even if it takes a hundred years.

In general, her answers were from the GOP playbook, pat statements and cliches. However, she was very clever at evading actual answers to the questions.

Biden was great at answering the questions, with serious, sincere statements of policy and action plans. And when he was talking about his family, about losing his wife and daughter in an accident, and being a single father with two gravely injured sons, he actually choked up. I think that won it for him. He seemed very human.

Geoffrois, I loved your phrase. It's so apt.

Joan, I agree with your friend. When Biden choked up talking about his family, I knew he had won.

She had talked about bein' a hockey mom, and her Downs syndrome child, while conveniently forgetting to mention her pregnant, unmarried teenage daughter. Then Biden responded with great sincerity about knowing what it's like to be a single father, leading into his own family tragedy. And when he choked up, that sealed the deal.

In the article, you commented about her line, "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again." What I heard in that line was an attempt to evoke Reagan, with his "There you go again." I don't think it worked.

And I think Biden clearly won. In addition to being responsive and responsible (unlike Palin's evasive change of topics), when he talked about his family tragedy, his voice broke, and I thought he won it right there. Palin might be cute and perky, and her story about being the mother of five, with her newborn Down's-syndrome baby, might appeal to some people, but her story doesn't hold a candle to Joe Biden's.

You remarked, "Obama's #1 corporate contributor has been Goldman Sachs (with Lehman Brothers not far behind). And now he has just voted in favor of giving $700 billion of our tax dollars to these corrupt institutions."

Uh, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, doncha remember? And Goldman Sachs has been in trouble.

And, BTW, having watched a recent interview with Warren Buffet, on Charlie Rose's show, I've reluctantly become convinced that the enormously costly bailout is necessary, and may be already too late. Without credit readily available, "Main Street" is already hurting.

And thanks, Joan Walsh, for sharing his political statements with us.

I want my country back, too. This is not the USA I grew up in, after WW II, and during the Fifties. In those days, Fascists were the bad guys. Now they're in charge.

I'm old, but I hope for the best for our country, and for my children and grandchildren, and so on.

Good questions, Cary. Thanks for asking them.

So many people seem to think that if they only had a million dollars, they'd be totally happy. I don't think so, if they have no idea of how they'd like to live life, and what they'd do if they had no financial worries -- all that money coming in, and nothing they have to do.

And yet, look at those who have won big Lotto prizes. After several years, very few of them have any money left. They don't know what to do with all that money. And they don't know how to live their lives.

The most important thing to remember is that you don't have to have a lot of money in order to be happy. For that, you have to do the inner work, and keep on keeping on.