Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has gotten a few earfulls from you all on his last post… Look, allow him to restate… He believes that given time and some learning, Sarah Palin will a fine Vice-President. She will be able to step into the office of President if the situation requires it after gaining some experience. If she didn’t do well in her debate last week he was ready to kick her to the curb as being a liability to the ticket. She did fine, and while she isn’t exactly perfect she is okay in the number 2 spot.

So… You may be asking yourself, “Self, where has my Maximum Leader been? What has he been doing?” Well… Over the weekend he wiped the hard drive on his computer, reinstalled Windows XP and has been recovering stuff. He hasn’t finished yet. He was going to work on it Monday night and yesterday… But fate conspired against him. The Wee Villain has been sick. (Sinus infection and strep throat.) So that has thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into your Maximum Leader’s plans. But that was Monday. Yesterday was something else all together.

Yesterday, your Maximum Leader and Villainette #2 went on a field trip. Well… It was actually a school field trip where your Maximum Leader was one of the adult chaperones. We went to…

Jamestown VA. (Clicken to embiggen if you care to.)

It was a great day. Kids were well mannered and attentive. The buses were comfy (PTA helps and rents the nice big motor coaches for the long field trips - this one was 2 hrs each way). The day was beautiful. It was a good day all in all.

When your Maximum Leader returned to the Villainschloss, he got himself some dinner. He helped with homework. Then he got comfy and waited for the main TV event… McCain/Obama part 2.

Your Maximum Leader thought that McCain would come out and kill Obama last night. That didn’t happen. The McCain supporter in your Maximum Leader wants to award the win to McCain, but the rational observer came away thinking that neither man scored the knockout that we all hoped for. Mrs Villain, a better barometer of the “typical voter” than your Maximum Leader, thought that the debate was boring and that neither man answered any question put to them. She was annoyed by the rehersed answers to every question. She thought that Brokaw was annoying and a distraction. Your Maximum Leader in fact agrees that Brokaw was a distraction; as well as a poor moderator. Of 80 questions in the hall (and something like 6,000,000 submitted on-line) the ones actually asked were the “best” ones? Your Maximum Leader finds that hard to believe. The questions were boring and allowed both men to give their standard stump speeches for the most part. Couldn’t we have had more of the unusual questions? The “what don’t you know” question was okay, but it set up the whole “can’t see the future” answer. Your Maximum Leader would have prefered to have more questions like “is healthcare a right?” Those types of questions give insight into the candidate’s thinking and beliefs. You could have had a great debate by just throwing out those questions. Additionally, the “offbeat” questions are less likely to elicit a standard response.

If one has to choose “big” moments in the debate your Maximum Leader would say that McCain scored twice when he first announced that he would seek to increase the standard deduction for dependents to $7000 (from $3500) and he scored a second time when he said that he would have the government buy up mortgages. Obama had one big score when he hit McCain with the whole “Bomb Iran” thing. That is an appropriate character attack that might resonate with people.

Now, as for the two memorable points for McCain… Your Maximum Leader is almost always up for a tax cut. He believes that a standard deduction increase is probably okay. He also believes that keeping the “Bush tax cuts” is a good thing. At this point what people need (in addition to confidence) is stability. Lets not go screwing with stuff that we don’t have to screw with. At this point major changes to the tax code are likely unwise. Not just from a revenue perspective, but from the stability perspective. You might be promised a tax cut, but until you know exactly what is in a tax bill you don’t know. Why not just leave things like they are while we focus on other messes.

Now… The “other messes” to which your Maximum Leader just referred might include this whole “government buying up mortgages and refinancing them” plan that McCain seemed to unleash on everyone last night. So, in addition to buying bad mortgages from banks and other institutions (as part of the rescue plan that was just accomplished) we are also going to go directly to homeowners and refinance their mortgages? That doesn’t seem very wise, nor does it seem fiscally prudent. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t really know why we should be too concerned with fiscal prudence given both the size and scope of the rescue package (as well as the past 8 years of spending). This strikes your Maximum Leader as being just too much intervention. How is this going to be done. Are Fannie and Freddie going to be completely nationalized and we have a Mortgage Bank of the United States? Everyone just sign up for mortgages with the US Treasury? That doesn’t seem too smart. People might like the plan, but it seems like a bad idea.

All in all it looks like we will have to wait until next week to see if either man can deliver a solid knock-out to the other.

Carry on.