Last night's debate

I personally found last night's debate to be a a major disappointment, with neither candidate really saying anything new, with the exception of McCain saying he would order the Treasury Department to buy troubled mortgages and negotiate new ones based on depressed values. The recently passed bailout bill already allows the Treasury Department to do this, but doesn't mandate it. My problem with this suggestion is that Treasury Department money is taxpayer money and it does more to bail out the greedy mortgage institutions that got us into this mess. Why not allow the courts to order the banks themselves to re-finance these mortgages? But then those institutions are some of McCain's biggest contributors.

All in all, I did not see anything that would alter the opinion of any voter last night.

The debate did seem to reinforce the notion of late conservative journalist Jude Wanniski who once referred to the Republican party as the "daddy" party and the Democratic party as the "mommy" party. When McCain talked about drilling for oil and building nuclear power plants as ways to re-invigorate the economy, Obama talked about education and health care, specifically citing the need for insurance that covers maternity care and mammograms.

Even McCain's own advisors admit that if the economy remains the primary issue between now and election Day, Obama wins. That's why McCain has sought to refocus the campaign with a series of appalling, racist commercials and has unleashed running mate Sarah Palin who has been going around making what can, at best, misleading and, at worst, libelous, attack speeches aimed at undermining Obama's character. Fortunately, McCain did his best not resort to those tactics last night, slipping up only by referring to Obama once as "that one" and to the Democrat's associates as "cronies."

There's one more debate scheduled for next Wednesday. I'm hoping we'll hear specific answers and straight talk in that one, but I wouldn't put a lot of money on it that we will. One more thing I would like to see in the final debate is more talk about "Here's precisely what I would do once I get into office" and eliminate all that "Here's why you can't trust my opponent" garbage. I really got tired at all finger pointing last night. I'm convinced it's those kind of tactics that convince American to simply say "a pox on both your houses" and boycott the election process.