"Can I Call You Joe?"

And She Smiled When She Said It...


I fell asleep after about the first twenty minutes of last evening's debate, but by then I had seen all I needed to see...because, after all...It was just a VICE-presidential candidate debate.

Now I'm watching the re-run of the event on FOX News as I write.

I sorta want to say up front here that I think that Governor Palin won the contest outright, but I also have to admit that Senator Biden's commentary was deeper in context and talking points while Sara tended to dance around a bit more with generalities and either didn't have the time or the wherewith all to directly embrace several Reganistic "there you go again" moments where I found myself yelling at the TV screen (she did manage to get one "there you go..." in late in the debate.)

Regarding the current "financial crises" portion of the debate I think that it's unfortunate that Palin and the Republicans have apparently fallen back to supporting the big government position of using regulation to prevent grown men and women from going out and borrowing more money than they can legitimately afford to pay back from "predatory lenders" after allowing the government to get into the business of forcing lenders to make loans to the very people that are in trouble today.

I say that it's not about more government "intervention" in lending practices being a solution, because after everything is said in done in reality its "intervention" in lending practices which got us to were we are today.

(This whole situation reminds me of an old Groucho Marx bit where the patient in a doctor's office says "Doctor, doctor...it hurts when I do this..." and in response the doctor says: "Well...don't do that...")

I have a unique idea.

How about getting the government out of the mortgage business entirely?

Let the market decide loan rates and property values, and most of all how about letting me and my banker decide the pro's and con's of me getting a loan for any given use or on any given property and actually being able to pay it back?

Anyone in business or banking knows that handing out money on a car or house and then having to take it back doesn't result in a profit or financial windfall for the people loaning the money (although unfortunately the people paid for originating the loan and filing the initial paperwork do sometimes manage to get rich in the process.)

My point is that any house sold out of foreclosure or repossessed car sold at auction almost never brings anything even close to the balance owed on the original loan, so the idea of "predatory lenders" running around out in the world trying to "price gouge" on loan rates and fees by forcing innocent white and minority "working families" to move out of their safe secure public housing, apartments or even the trailer park westward into their own mansions in Beverly Hills or south to hurricane prone West Palm Beach--then taking the houses back when the "owner" defaults and selling them again at an obscene profit is mindless partisan economic drivel.

Back to the debate...

Having by now both slept through once and blogged through once the second half of the debate, I think that most viewers like me probably found their eyes glazing over with Sara chattering away about being a soccer mom and Biden blithering liberal Democratic platitudes about "Change" and issuing "evil Cheney" jabs and moderator Ifill doing a fairly good job in spite of the fact that she never should have taken the night's position in the first place.

When it's all said and done, I'll be making the exact same decision in November after the debate that I would have made at Noon Thursday.

I really wish that there was a legitimate third option to McCain or Obamarama, a choice that would turn time back toward what our country and government was before WWI and/or the great depression--a time when I could fly an airplane or drive a boat in free air and on free waters that the government didn't claim to own and control, and be able cut down trees and build fences on property I owned without the government coming in and making me buy a "building permit" and telling me I have to have a fan over my stove and I have to put my chicken house out of sight behind my house (or I can't have chickens at all on MY property.)

A government which understanded that its job was to prevent thieves from taking my money and property and which diligently pursued anyone that assaulted me and my property, rather than bringing laws and guns to my doorstep to demand a portion of my money and property and time as "their fair share" of my life to be "invested" at their inane pandering discretion into programs I despise and people conducting their lives in a manner with which I greatly disagree.

"Fundamental Change," say Senator Biden in closing the debate?

My answer?

Get the %$#@ out of my life and my wallet and let me have a little of your party's sacred "personal choice" for a change.

(BTW...I promise none of my "personal choices" will involve spending my time and money killing unborn fetuses or taking jobs away from "working families.")