I said back when the hurricane Katrina mess was going on that we would regret how it was handled. The liberals, with the assistance of the liberal media and a cowering Republican party, let the notion take hold that the Federal Government was responsible for paying to fix all that ails us.

I am not hinting we should not have helped them, I believe we should have. But we so over-reacted that a sense of entitlement was developed. Since then, anyone with a bad time has looked at the feds for a bailout.

I realize this sense of entitlement was not invented then but it seemed to really come of age during this period. We now have a country full of people that believe they are entitled to have the federal government help them for every bad decision, every twist of fate, every wrong, real or perceived.

Live in a city built 20 feet below sea level and have it flood during a hurricane? The government will pay to fix things.

Build a house along a river that floods every year? No problem, the feds are there for you.

Build a large metropolitan area 100’s of miles from any reliable water source? That’s okay, lets just use federal grants to pay for shipping water in.

I do not want to seem heartless. I believe that if we are to be a civilized society, it is incumbent upon us to be compassionate to others and lend a helping hand. This is one of the things that make America a great country.

I do feel though that we need a dose of common sense occasionally. Why do we build expensive homes along rivers that flood continuously? Why do we have a city that is below sea level and stays dry most of the time more from the grace of God than man’s ingenuity? Or, why do we build cities full of people in a desert? The more relevant question is, why do we keep paying to rebuild these places? Why do we pay for more cities in the desert?

My other issue, and possibly a solution, is to let local funds pay for these things. Go ahead, build that city in the desert, but pay for shipping in the water with local funds. If we develop this system of financing, guess what, we won’t be building many cities in the desert or in flood plains.

Watching John McCain during last night's debate, I am a little concerned about fiscal conservativism.

John McCain talked about cutting the budget and fighting earmarks. Kudos for that.

At the same time though, he introduced a new $300 BILLION mortagage buyup program to rescue homeowners who cannot pay their mortagages. The government would then renogiate them at lower rates.

This is a huge program and I have to be concerned. He is attacking Obama for proposing $700 BILLION in spending and he's the fiscal conservative for only asking for half as much, for one program?

I realize the campaign is lagging and he needed to do something bold but I think morphing into a Democrat on the stage is going a bit far.

Watching the news this morning and scanning the news sites, it is incredible how wide the polls are on who won the Vice Presidential debate last night. This I think speaks more about polls than about the debate and further highlights something I believe, who won the debate is an irrelevant and unanswerable question.

The real question is how do you determine who won a debate. What does a “win” look like? Sometimes it’s obvious. If one of the participants would have spent the night stammering or showing a complete lack of command of the issues, one could point to a winner. Neither did this last night so, we can’t use this to decide.

Further, which part of the debate did either win? Did Biden win the questions on foreign policy? Maybe but how do you measure that absent a knock out? Same with the economy, war on terror, and on and on. So then how do people determine, based on the different questions posed during the debate, who won? Do they keep score at home? Is the last questions, and who won them, stuck in their mind? Is their one or two questions that they remember and this clouds their opinion of the debate?

Finally, there is the question of preconceived bias. The reality, and I am guilty of this myself, is that if you were a Sarah Plain fan, she won the debate. Conversely if you’re a Joe Biden fan, he won the debate.

Some will ask then, what about the “independent voter”?

First, I will go on record to say that I believe this notion of a vast population of independent voters is grossly over reported. I have noticed that over the last roughly 8 years, there has been an increased amount of talk about independent voters. My opinion is that it has taken on the feel of a fad. I can’t help but believe that it has become almost fashionable to say your independent. You have the media clamoring over you and if you happen to be in a diner when the media stops by, you get on the news.

Now this is not to say that there are not voters out there who truly are independent. I believe there are, I just believe it is not in the numbers reported. Actually, I believe that a true independent voter is the best kind. This means they are not blinded by ideology, they look at a candidate and vote according to what they see. They’re a model really for partisans like me.

I believe though that most so called independent voters have an inherent political bias and ultimately vote for a particular party. You will hear qualifiers such as Bob here is an independent who voted Democrat (or Republican) the last three presidential elections. This does not meet my definition of an independent.

Back to our question though, what about the independent voter. The discussion above illustrates that polling this group can be tricky at best. The main problem is what kind of independents are they polling. Do 70% of them lean one way or another, this skews the data.

I think the bottom line is that barring a real obvious win it is hard, if not impossible, to poll on who won a debate. The polls are nothing more than something else to debate and gives the media the opportunity to slant their coverage, a chance the media is taking full advantage of, based on a survey of the sites this am.

The real answer is how they ultimately help their respective campaign. We can ask 400 people who won, or we can see who ultimately wins the election.

Almost more important, I believe, than who is doing better in the “who won the debate question” is the other questions in the poll. Questions such as

-Who was more likeable?

Like it or not, this matters in presidential campaigns. I think it’s an indictment of our system that this is even an issue, but it is. Palin won this on several polls.

So the debate will rage over who won but I feel it’s not a worthy way to spend our time because there really isn’t a good, definitive answer.

John McCain last night announced he was suspending his campaign and wanted to cancel the Friday debate so the candidates could return to Washington as Senators and do their jobs. Obama has refused, opting instead to continue campaigning and fund raising activities.

This may be a case in which Obama may want to listen to his running mate Joe Biden. Biden recently called upon the wisdom of one our past presidents for guidance on how to lead in this fiscal crises. He said that we should use Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership during the stock market crash of 1929 as a model.

 "When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed,"

We will excuse Joe for not knowing that Roosevelt wasn’t president in 1929 or that television was in it’s developmental stage at the time. Liberals have a long history of not letting the truth get in the way of a good attack.

So come on Obama, show the grit Roosevelt showed and get back to Washington. Roll up your sleeves and help save our coutry. If you don’t remember where the Senate building is just go on one of those bus tours, most of them stop there.